Do you remember when Megyn Kelly got in hot water back in 2018 for asking why blackface was offensive? Well, that Halloween, a white woman named Sue attended a party thrown by Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles. She went in blackface, with a big sticker on her jacket saying “HI! MY NAME’S MEGYN KELLY”. So clearly, her intention was to mock Kelly. A couple of women named Lexie and Lyric (really) confronted her about the fact she was in blackface. Sue left the party shortly afterwards.
Two years later, one of the women contacted Tom Toles to demand Sue’s name. She was adamant that Sue face consequences for wearing blackface. Sue offered to apologise to Lexie and Lyric privately, but that wasn’t good enough. Lexie and Lyric contacted the Washington Post and they, insanely, decided this was newsworthy and ran with the “story”. Sue was subsequently fired.
A few key points:
Lexie and Lyric say that Sue tried to laugh the whole thing off at the party. Sue says she actually apologised. Both sides have support on this point from other guests, so I suppose you had to be there.
Sue is not in the public eye, in any capacity. There’s no way this story could possibly be said to be in the public interest. She’s not a politician. She’s not a celebrity. She’s just a clueless woman who made one dumb mistake.
Sue is in her mid-to-late fifties. It’s unlikely she’ll be able to get another job at the same level. She may not be able to get another job at all.
Sue’s obvious intention was to mock Megyn Kelly. She literally had that written on her jacket.
Sue is a liberal. Her facebook feed is filled with pro-immigrant, pro-gay rights, and anti-racist posts.
Sue fully acknowledges she was wrong and offered to apologise privately to Lexie and Lyric but this offer was flatly rebuffed. Explicitly, they wanted Sue to be publicly shamed and weren’t prepared to settle for anything less.
Again, this happened two goddamn years ago!
You asked who was saying that it doesn’t matter if you apologise, and who’s saying it doesn’t matter if the offence was a long time ago. For what it’s worth, neither of these things seemed to matter to Lyric, Lexie, or the Washington Post.
For another example of the minefield society, look at the Boeing executive who had to resign because of an article he wrote 33 years ago, with viewpoints he already said he no longer adheres to.
Another example that just occurred to me is that of Nick Sandmann from Covington high school who was publicly shamed for smirking at a Native American while wearing a MAGA hat. He was only 15, but his name trended on social media worldwide. Meanwhile, adults with blue checkmarks after their names said things like “Have you ever seen a kid with a more punchable face?” (Reza Aslan, author, cannibal) and “Name these kids. I want their names. Shame them!” (Kathy Griffin, comedian), and “I’ll blow whoever punches this kid in the face” (Sarah Beattie, comedian).
Again, they’re not talking about a politician or a celebrity. They’re talking about a child. So it seems there are quite a few people who don’t think age should matter either.
The head of the company “discussing” (at length) the implications of something you did for your role in the company obviously implies that your subsequent resignation is totally voluntary, because you don’t like being criticized on Twitter.
Why not just say you think Golightly should have been fired over the article he wrote in 1987, when he was 29 years old?
If he was fired, maybe. Or maybe he should be reassigned (and maybe he was offered this and refused), since PR is fundamentally about messaging and image, and maybe it’s reasonable that a big corporation would prefer their PR person to have NEVER advocated for a bigoted or misogynist stance, even many years ago. Maybe that could hurt their bottom line.
Same sex marriage is something that was won in a relatively civil way. The advocates didn’t label everyone a homophobe, nor did they claim there was a conspiracy of every heterosexual against every homosexual. A pro-gay-marriage demonstration is the only one I’ve been to as a participant because I feel like I was welcomed as an ally.
The stance Golightly put forward in his letter was not bigoted by the standards of the time in which it was written. Opposition to women in the armed forces was a mainstream position in the 1980s. Should people be required to try and future-proof every argument they make? I don’t see how that’s possible, or desirable.
Also, I’m extremely skeptical of the notion that Boeing’s bottom line could be affected in any way by an internal complaint about a CFO’s essay from over 30 years ago. This is a weak argument. For it to be taken seriously, I’d need to see evidence that a company of similar size has ever been financially impacted by an essay of similar tone by an executive in a similar position.
I disagree there would’ve been bad publicity. 33 years ago, the CFO of Boeing wrote an essay arguing against allowing women to serve in the armed forces. So what? It’s an incredibly boring non-story. No-one would care.
For Boeing? Probably not as much as for a lot of other types of companies. It’s one thing to boycott Chick-Fil-A or Domino’s Pizza. Not very many people are in a position to say “Well, I was going to buy a long-range wide-body passenger jet from Boeing, but then I read that their PR guy said something pretty stupid back in the 80s, so I decided against it”–and the people who are in a position to make those kinds of decisions are probably going to be pretty relentlessly focused on the bottom line. And “I’ll never fly Air Ruritania–they use Boeing airplanes (Ew!)–I always fly RuriJet, who only use Airbus!” is pretty unlikely to get much traction with the flying public (assuming the public ever starts flying again).
Of course, Boeing’s in a pretty fragile place right now, what with the 737 MAX, and then on top of that the Great Covid Global Meltdown, so they may well be taking a “Better safe than sorry!” attitude towards things. But that doesn’t really mean it was the right call.
Again, I’m not saying it was the right call. But I’m not blaming the people who pointed out the article to Boeing. I’m blaming Boeing for reacting the way it did. See the difference?
Those two sentences are contradictory. If what I write today could cost me my job in 35 years, when the social and political climate will likely be different in ways I can’t predict, then the rational thing to do is to either try my best to future-proof my arguments (though God knows how), or to say nothing.
And this is to say nothing of the simple, categorical unfairness of the situation. To personalise it a little, I note from the website link in your profile that you’re an author. I’m not familiar with your work, but it would be quite miraculous if your books didn’t contain a single thing that future generations might find offensive. Imagine if, in 2053, your publisher cancelled your contract because someone complained about something you wrote in 2020 - something which is perfectly innocuous by today’s standards. Imagine if they said they feared bad publicity, and that they’re not at fault because “things you write today may have an effect later, even if you change your mind.” Would you feel like you’d been dealt with fairly?
There are at least two possible kinds of bad publicity here. The bad publicity from the employee continuing to work there. And the bad publicity from becoming a poster child for viewpoint intolerance. Compared to bad publicity from their product crashing, either business harm is obviously too small to measure.
Since I’m against viewpoint intolerance, I want to think that what looks like a forced resignation, coupled with an abject Cultural-Revolution-reminiscent public apology, will have greater long-term impact on Boeing than that they had an public facing employee who 33 years ago wrote what most people thought.
My further hope is that, ten years from now, it will all blend together as part of the thankfully gone Trump era when intolerance on the right sparked intolerance all around;
