CNBC Host Casually Outs Apple CEO Tim Cook, Panel Reacts With Awkward Silence

That Apple CEO Tim Cook is gay isn't exactly a secret - after all, he's regularly listed at the top of Out Magazine's annual list of the "Most Powerful Gays" in America. Still, there was some awkward silence today on CNBC after one of the panelists casually dropped Cook's name as one of the nation's gay CEOs. Valleywag weighs in:

The inadvertent discussion of reality came after CNBC contributor and New York Times columnist James Stewart said, with an air of surprise, that he had reached out to many (gay) CEOs and received a "cool" response. Stewart journalistic mothership, of course, has stayed in the realm of innuendos when it comes to Cook's sexuality. The paper's star media reporter, David Carr, has been emphatic that a gay CEO isn't even newsworthy. And yet Stewart, who only seconds before had expressed with frustration how unwilling people are to discuss gay CEOs, becomes entirely unwilling to discuss this gay CEO. If Tim Cook's sexuality is truly "consonant in the personal résumé," it's hard to explain this stunned television silence.