One of the great things about the time we live in is that it’s become acceptable for professional athletes to speak up in favor of gay rights. The fact that Kluwe just did that while cursing out a state legislator in the style of a hardcore nerd makes it that much more fun.
Burns’ original letter noted that it was cc’ed to the media.
I’m not seeing the comparison to John Rocker. The particularly offensive part of the Ayanbadejo story is that an elected official pressured the owner of the Ravens to stop a player from exercising his right to weigh in on a political issue. If a New York legislator had told the owners of the Braves to shut Rocker up, that would have been similar. Not surprisingly, that didn’t happen. I doubt he did this consciously, but I suspect a major reason Burns went after Ayanbadejo is the fact that public support is going against his regressive views on same-sex marriage. Maryland is moving toward legalizing it, after all. I’m a little confused about the process but I think they’ll be voting on it in November. Rocker was condemned from all sides because he said something offensive about practically everybody and made a total ass of himself, so legislators probably didn’t feel they needed to put their thumbs on the scale.
And yes, just to make it more fun and somewhat more ironic, Burns is a preacher. I’m not surprised a state legislator has a shaky grasp of the Constitution - state legislators do generate a very large portion of “a politician said/proposed WHAT?” stories - and Burns sounds like a kook. In 1999 he was a member of the “Task Force to Study the Effects of Cult Activities on Public Senior Higher Education Institutions.” What the fuck? How did that even become a thing?
I think this incident had far more to do with the fact that he filmed himself acting like a complete asshole to some poor young cashier. The guy was a CFO for god sakes - I suspect that sort of judgement does not inspire shareholder confidence.
Being an ass to an employee != political speech.
That was awesome!
This isn’t a doctrine in free speech jurisprudence.
Yeah–let’s not lose sight of the guiding principle that if you act like an asshole in public, your employer has a lot more moral right to discipline you than if you promote justice in public. And no hand-wringing over who really knows the nature of justice, or both sides deserve equal protection. Being an asshole to a low-level restaurant employee is not morally comparable to promoting justice through donating something to a nonprofit, and I can applaud a company who fires the former person while asking the employer of the latter person to defend him strongly, without being a hypocrite.
Well, let’s not exaggerate the situation. He was being confrontational and mildly jerky. Anyone who has worked in a service job would experience assholish behavior on a much grander scale on a not-too-seldom basis. He did little to seriously distress the girl and was more smug and self-satisfied than abusive.
It is an important difference, hand waving it away does not change that fact.
The primary reason for the right is to protect political speech, especially politically unpopular speech.
Stipulating that you’re right, if more companies had a policy of firing people who acted like assholes to service workers, you wouldn’t catch me picketing.
You haven’t made the case that it was a significant difference, or one that should change his legal position. From any reasonable legal point of view, the guy was engaging in political speech. He was taking a public stance on a political issue and he was speaking about it. He was just doing it in a manner that doesn’t appeal to you. In fact, that makes it exactly what you describe as the primary purpose of free speech it was political speech and it was unpopular.
And you can call it hand-waving if you want, but unless you come up with a rational way of making your distinction, it basically amounts to “I don’t like it, so he shouldn’t be protected.”
Whoa Cowboy…quite the strawman.
Who said I was against what he said? I was saying equating political speech with being a jerk to another employee was not a valid comparison.
As to political speech being more protected than other forms of speech…If you are going to claim it is not more protected well here is your cite.
To clarify…how he said “how do you live with yourself” was stupid and it became an attack against someone with no power over the corp policy…and yes you can get fired for many things.
That is not the same as having an elected “Representative” demand your company shut you up.
So to recap, the drive through dude lost is job because of how he delivered the message not the message it’s self.
I don’t agree with him losing his job but I don’t think that is the same as elective officials taking active steps to quell political speech.
So how would we put that into law? Who decides when an owner is reasonable for restrict speech of his employees because he feels it reflects negatively on the company? Who defines hate?
Should we have a government committee that analyzes employee speech and determine if its hateful or sufficiently hurts his employer? That seems absurd.
Mmno. Not strawman. You asserted that there was a principle here, to boot:
And you implied that this principle made the difference in the Chik-Fil-A case, namely that application of this principle would lead one to conclude that the Chik-Fil-A guy was not engaging in protected political speech, in contrast with Ayanbadejo’s situation.
Now, if this is not what you meant to imply, then it’s incumbent on you to be explicit about that.
It doesn’t matter whether you were against what he said, for the purposes of my post.
And this statement is chock full of fallacies, among them:
-
That this statement has any kind of valid application in free speech jurisprudence.
-
That “being a jerk” and “political speech” are mutually exclusive.
-
That the Chik-Fil-A guy was not engaging in political speech.
Since I didn’t claim that, you’re the one employing strawmen here.
Try this on for size:
-
I posit that the Phelps family’s protest in which they shout “God hates fags” at military funerals is protected political speech.
-
Compare this to the Chik-Fil-A video in terms of jerkishness and politiciality and explain what the legal differences and similarities are.
No, the “political speech” is that the 1st amendment applies to the government and not private parties.
As the protected “political speech” part applies…Once again you have once case where a private non-government company fired the man who made that video, mostly IMHO because he was a jerk.
In the OP there is a** government official** demanding a company quell the speech of an employee while referencing his elected position as a reason the player should be silenced.
Unless you can show in some way that the 1st amendment applies to private parties I see no reason to believe you stance has any standing outside of what a good person would do.
But yes…the drive through firing is not an issue where protected “political speech” is being restricted.
If you want me to follow down this line you are pressing please tell me how the 1st even applies in the case of the drive through rant firing.
So one more time to be clear, the drive through firing was not **“political speech” ** as in the protected kind because the government was not involved, and that is who is bound by the 1st amendment.
You’re skipping ahead to a different step of the analysis. We’re dealing with your assertion that “Being an ass to an employee != political speech.” Let’s deal with that and we’ll worry about whether there has been any government action to suppress speech later.
Nope, you’re conflating separate considerations. Whether something is “political speech” has to be determined separately from whether there was any government involvement.
(And the question of whether there is a government attempt to suppress speech in this case is a side issue, because the question at had is whether a private employer should have the ability to suppress political speech of an employee. We are assuming for the matter of discussion that we might extend the concept of protected speech to situations in which there is no government action.)
You ignored the question because your claim is wrong.
You have no cite to show that the 1st applies to private parties.
I expected so…because it doesn’t.
I will not fall for your strawman.