No kidding – the irony is thick.
Still, I would like to think that an employee of an ammunition company could contribute to the Brady gun-control group without losing his job. It’s possible to believe in selling ammunition but also believe that guns should be tightly controlled without being a hypocrite, and it’s possible to enjoy staging musical theatre and not support same-sex marriage similarly.
Nope, no conflict for me. The principle of boycotting a business because you dislike the actions of the employees is not something I have a problem with. The motive behind the boycott is a different matter, and in the scenario you describe, I would be pissed off at the people mounting the boycott, and at the radio station for caving in to bigotry. But I wouldn’t be upset at the mechanism of the boycott itself.
I very recently googled “gay boycotts” thinking I’d find companies that gays are boycotting, and instead found a scary number of companies religious people boycott because they don’t discriminate against gays.
We’re going for equal marriage rights, why shouldn’t we employ equal boycott rights?
OK.
I’m conflicted, myself. I think part of holding opinions is taking the flak that may come with them, so part of me wants to say that he made his bed, so to speak, and now must lie in it.
But part of me thinks that this will have a chilling effect on participatory democracy.
So… conflicted.
Yeah. I am as against prop 8 as anyone, but what happened to him sounds like it was out of hand.
Though I don’t know how he could have expected to keep working with the people he works with on a regular basis once the donation was made public. The theatre world is small and very gay friendly on the whole, and these sorts of stories spread like wildfire. No one would have wanted to work with him, but that is a different issue.
People shouldn’t be calling for boycotts, not in this particular situation. That’s not the way to change people’s minds; not right now at least. It just seems reactionary and knee jerk and the embodiment of everything we on the left complain about the conservatives for doing.
Firing is problematic in both cases. The Yes Man may have a case for wrongful termination based his religious convictions and exercising his free speech. The No Man, for sexual orientation discrimination.
Boycotts are not so problematic.
Um…
I guess because you give up the moral ground to complain when the same tactic is used against your interests.
But you’re right – it’s done by both sides. I don’t like it in either case.
So then the burden comes to rest on an entirely innocent party: the employer. If you fire him, you’re faced with a lawsuit; if you keep him on board, you’re faced with a loss of business via boycott that could require you to lay off multiple people.
Boycotts against companies for their official policies is one thing; boycotting a theatre with what must have been the intention to get them to fire one of their employees for donating to a bad cause is another.
On the other hand, if I were a playwright, I’m not sure I’d want my play directed by him, either.
There’s also a local popular and historical ice cream & sundae shop in Sacramento that also serves lunch and dinner, and they donated to Yes on 8. They are now feeling the heat of potential boycotts. I went to some of the restaurant review sites, and they are getting hammered with “one star” reviews and negative comments such as, “I prefer hate-free ice cream.”
Some Yes on 8 folks are giving 5 star reviews in an effort to be fair and balanced.
I think the playwright or producer of the current play at that place said something to the effect that he was saddened that some of the proceeds of his play ultimately helped fund Yes on 8.
Well, I can’t remember who said it, but someone on this board reminded me both sides spent around $37 million on this campaign, but anti-prop 8 dropped the ball, didn’t play the game as well.
Sometimes it comes down to the game, and how you play it. I’ve always believed boycotts are a risky game. But it’s a game, or battle if you will, and you pick your battles. Gays boycotting Coors got a reaction out of Coors. The religious right boycotting Disneyland & McDonald’s got a laugh out of both corporations and a “whatever” from the people they depended on joining their boycott.
Totally distinguishable.
If a BUSINESS donates money to a cause, then they deserve what they get – no problem with that at all.
In this case, the employee, on his own, donates and the business suffers.
I agree that the idea of a business going under due to a boycott brought about by an individual employee’s personal contribution is very bothersome.
Was he really “forced to resign”? Trying to look at it objectively, he and his employer each had choices of how they could deal with the boycott.
The theater could (and arguably should) have gone out on the sidewalk with their own megaphone and reminded the rioting masses that he was not representing the theater when he made the donation. He could (and arguably should) have gone out there and said the same thing. Did they do so?
It was his choice to resign. He didn’t have to. People can be unreasonable, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and reason with them.
To me, the touchstone of fairness is: would I still feel it’s fair if the positions were reversed?
I can’t help thinking that if this were our poor beleagured radio station guy, his resignation would not be analyzed as you’ve done so here. There would be (correctly) a near-universal understanding that his resignation was effectively forced by the circumstances.
Perhaps I’m wrong.
Which place?
BTW, if we boycotted every business that an had an employee that contibuted money, we would probably never leave the house (and not use our computers). I just think it is chilling to boycott a business for something an individual did out of his or her own convictions.
Leatherby’s
Something else to consider: should the position the employee holds in the company be considered when weighing wether or not to boycott the company? I think an argument can be made that, the higher a persons position in the corporate hierarchy, the more he tends to represent the company itself. For example, if I go to McDonalds, and I recognize the guy behind the counter as a vocal local racist, I’m not going to boycott McDonalds over it. So long as he’s not harrassing the customer, I don’t give a shit what the guy bagging my fries says in his spare time. On the other hand, if the CEO of McDonalds is revealed to go on regular racist tirades in private, I’m likely to move on down the road to Burger King when I want my cholesterol fix. On the continuum of CEO-Fry Jockey, “artistic director” seems much closer to the CEO side of the scale. Indeed, as a professional artist, isn’t he specifically being paid to represent the theater (or at least, aspects thereof) to the public?
I’m conflicted. My wife’s cousin is the executive producer at CMT, and the man who took delivery of Eckern’s resignation letter. I’m not pleased to learn that he was put into this position. Up to now, I’ve been maintaining a stony silence.
At KBGT, was the young donor the program director, whose work affected the public face of the station, and how its editorial policy, such as it was, appeared to conform to local community attitudes? Or was he the guy who came in every night and vacuumed the dust out of the transmitting euipment? If it’s the former, I can see how the local advertisers might feel a bit back-stabbed. If the latter, they’re being dicks, and my own sense of outrage on his behalf is a bit higher.
Similarly, if Mr. Eckern had been a lighting technician, I would feel that the people behind the backlash were being a tad doctrinaire. Considering his position as artistic director, I can see a sense of betrayal there.
I thought you said he was fired, not that he resigned. I haven’t seen anything, btw, to suggest that Richard requested Eckern’s resignation (and we’re not in regular contact, so I’m not really in a position to ask him), so I don’t think we can characterize his departure as a dismissal.
I like to think that if Eckern had been a lighting technician, a) there would have been no boycott in the first place, and b) Richard and the board would not have accepted any hypothetical resignation. But I have no basis upon which to make an assertion of that.