I get the feeling that there’s a lot more going on here than made it into the story.
This sounded familiar. It turns out we talked about this when it first happened:
Well, how do you formally address a group of women? Madams? Y’all?
The rest of the story is in the article.
The committee was discussing a job offer with Perrone. Perrone wrote a letter to the committee asking for more pay and more time off. The committee told Perrone they had decided not to hire him.
Perrone then claimed that the reason the committee chose not to hire him was because he addressed them as “ladies” in his letter. Perrone then filed a lawsuit which a judge has now dismissed.
OK, I guess “lost his job after he referred to the hiring committee as ‘ladies’” is technically true, in that one event chronologically came after the other. But it’s wholly irresponsible of the newspaper to phrase it in such a misleading way, because it implies, against all evidence, that that was the reason.
In 1990, at the hearings for soon-to-be *Justice David Souter, Sen. Strom Thurmond referred to a group of women as “lovely ladies,” one of whom was Molly Yard. It had probably been a while since Yard had been described thus. Regardless, they were not amused or flattered.
*Who just died two months ago, I see.
His tombstone will say “post hoc ergo propter hoc”.
You mean he’ll die from it?
27 dopers in the room, anybody know “post hoc, ergo propter hoc”?
OK ! OK! I hoid youse broads in da foist place!
After that so because of that
Sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.
Which is distinctly different from “ladies and gentlemen” as a general, if possibly old-fashioned, greeting term.
Yup.
After something, therefore because of that something. A logical fallacy.
“Good afternoon.”
That’s the way journalism is done now. It’s called clickbait.
Of course. It’s the logical fallacy that one (incorrectly) assumes that something is related just because it followed the other thing sequentially. Like vaccines cause autism.
Dudes.
or Guys.
And Dolls.