Didn’t take long…
Nowhere in my post did I suggest that public figures should be immune from criticism. I mean, there’s not a single line that suggests it. This demonstrates what I said… people’s brains shut off when someone suggests that maaaaybe, somewhere, sometimes, consequences are excessive. That’s why we got that strawman above, and it’s what brings us the argument from ignorance below:
So you’ve personally never seen it, and therefore it’s never happened. Okay.
He’s not saying you did. He’s pointing out that the only solution to the problem you’ve noticed is to institute limits on what people are allowed to say about celebrities.
I’ve also never personally seen it happen, and all the times I’ve seen someone claim it happened, it turned out not to be what they claimed.
But I’m sure you’re different.
Would the Justine Sacco case not be a prime example of this?
I read the Jon Ronson book and found the treatment of her to be completely unjustified and, in a move you’d think counterproductive their point, people attacked the person who reported the Sacco case sympathetically.
Considering that I didn’t “takes issue with even the faint suggestion that limits to punishment should exist.” you can stop patting yourself on the back here.
The rest of your post is a similar mishmash of motivated insinuation and misunderstanding, and I’ll leave it to the readers to determine which is which.
And what sort of “constraints” would have prevented that?
That is a worthwhile question to ask, you could certainly have checks and balances in employment law that would leave a company open to wrongfull dismissal cases.
That wouldn’t prevent all of the bad stuff but may provide a buffer against the worst effects of it.
That would certainly not fly with most of the conservatives in the US who believe in “at-will” employment. I can fire you because I don’t like you, but I can’t fire you because you are a racist? Come to think of it, that’s exactly the type of hypocrisy that conservatives seem to be into these days.
But, you are saying that I would have to let my business fail, because I would not be allowed to terminate an employee for publicly organizing and holding a Nazi rally, and I am being boycotted for employing them?
Or would the boycott be what is illegal?
What law would you suggest to prevent a President of the US from calling for the firing of an individual for their symbolic protest against systemic racism?
In any case, I really don’t agree with your notion that people should never be held accountable for the things that they say.
It’s funny that for decades and longer, “cancel culture” was a favorite tool of the right used to oppress minorities and other “undesirables”, but now that things have evened out a bit, to where the public actually has some power again, where minorities have a voice, they are suddenly terrified of it and want it shut down. Except of course, when they want to use it.
not necessarily–in the Ferguson riots, most of the businesses looted/burned were neighborhood Black-owned small shops, so the looters were penalizing the neighbors
but she didn’t include female “penetrative” sex (fingers, dildos) and that women rape women
remember Paul Ehrlich who prosed “Zero Population Growth”, the idea meaning that any given society only has limited resources for their population–that why some countries with large populations have trouble feeding their citizens
No, when I use the term “checks and balances” it is precisely that. It wouldn’t be a hard-line law that means you must accept any words or action by your employee and not be able to sanction them.
It would more be an expectation that you take reasonable care to judge the case on its merits.
On one hand we have the Sacco case with a joke that was misinterpreted, on the other you have an active nazi rallying to the cause.
In my ideal world there would be an expectation that, at the very least, the employer applies a proportional response. That doesn’t mean no response.
That is absolutely not what I have ever said, I’d go so far to say that I’ve never seen that said by anyone.
What I would seek is a reasonable assessment on a case by case basis.
For Sacco that may have been some corporate instruction in the use of social media, for the campaigning nazi, that may be the DCM (don’t come monday).
It is not beyond the realm of possibility that, as a society, we can manage to make that distinction.
But what if I, as Sacco’s employer, in fact want to say Don’t Come Monday? If I don’t want to limit myself to that corporate instruction you mentioned, but do want to go straight to — as you put it — DCM, then what the heck do I care that you’d draw a different case-by-case distinction?
That’s Paul R. Ehrlich, not to be confused with the guy who invented Salvarsan.
The Population Bomb was based on the stupendous population increase rate in the developing world at the time. Western medicine was reducing infant mortality but industrialization and modern prosperity was lagging behind. Given a naïve extrapolation and the example of a few extraordinary locations (Bangladesh, eastern China) that would have led to beggaring population levels. The fear was that population equilibrium would only be reached after the despoliation of the planet. It did spur efforts to liberate women from mandatory child bearing by focusing on birth control and education.
You could still do that, an employer would always be free to do so but you would be expected to justify taking such extreme action.
You would be at risk of being found negligent in any subsequent wrongful dismissal case and have to cough up to the person you sacked if what you did was found to be unreasonable.
I’m supportive of a suitable level of employee rights and expect the employer to exercise a reasonable level of care.
I am completely against the concept of “at-will” employment.
You’re completely against it? Well, that’s just super! Let’s say that I’m not completely against it, and that I make an at-will job offer to Sacco — and that, as it happens, Sacco (a) isn’t completely against it either, and so (b) accepts.
Just to be clear: is this the point where you’d step in and say whoa, hey, I’m against that, and so you two can’t do it, or would you let Sacco reach that agreement with me?
No, I’d want such contracts to be invalid and illegal.
There are places in the world where they are not allowed and I’m supportive of that approach. I think it leads to a more balanced employer/employee relationship. Crusty old lefty that I am.
None of those are fundamentals. Entire societies have existed without them.
I’m onboard with the idea that we need more worker protections in place, but I don’t think that really answers this particular situation. The backlash to Sacco’s tweet included a lot of people calling out her employer, and calls for boycotts against them if they didn’t fire her. We can all piously agree that the mob was wrong to target her, but the mob being wrong doesn’t negate the damage being done to her employer by association. Should her employer be forced to eat the damages?
The problem isn’t her employer firing her to protect themselves from the controversy, the problem is she posted a dark joke on a world-wide forum, and a lot of people missed the joke, and took her post at face value. How do you fix that? You can’t legislate everyone a sense of irony.
You fix that by supporting and promoting the support of the concept of robust individual liberties including the liberty to offend. Otherwise you get a society that is ok with varying forms of life altering consequences for speech, comedy, satire, etc. Salmon Rusdie and the Charlie Hebdo office are examples of being consequenced by illiberal forces.
So, anything or anyone on the left that promotes censorship or being consequenced for thought crimes is in the loony left category.
It’s summer, and the usual host is on vacation, I guess. These weren’t the usual presenters.