Cyclist who flipped off Trump wins county supervisor seat representing his golf club
She was fired for exercising her first amendment rights…
However in a victory for free speech and presumably a defeat for Cancel Culture SJWs…
The cherry on top…
What is this cancel culture?
SJW is a pejorative term for liberal, Democratic, or left-wing activists. Briskman was certainly espousing Democratic viewpoints, so I’m going to call this a win for SJWs.
“Cancel culture” is a pejorative term for a certain type of collective action that the user doesn’t agree with. The term is used by people who don’t want to bear the public image consequences of their anti-social actions. Briskman publicly admitted that she was the person in the photograph and she was willing to bear the consequences. She wasn’t fired because the majority of public opinion was against her. She was fired by people who lick Trump’s boots. “Cancel culture” did the best it could to express its support of Briskman and its opposition to her employer’s action. This was, if anythingm a win for cancel culture.
Thanks for that. I’m happy she got the job, and I hope she gets another chance to flip him off again. But I’m not getting into all that cancel culture whozawhatsis.
“Cancel culture” means using collective action (boycotts, letter-writing, social media activity) to convince some business or other organization to “cancel” a person who did something that collective dislikes, where you can take “cancel” to mean “as in a TV show”; that is, the group wants someone to get cancelled as in fired or otherwise run out of their position.
They don’t consider the effects being fired would have on the cancelled person’s family, but I’m probably not supposed to say that part.
This is nothing new, except now it’s On The Internet and, therefore, a New Moral Hazard we must all be up in arms about.
I know this sentiment is probably shared by most on this board, but I would say this is not necessarily a fair assessment.
I have worked for a federal contractor before and there, like all businesses, you are mandated to treat your customer with courtesy and respect. If you are a federal contractor, you only have one customer, and it is your entire business. Whether you like it or not, the president (of either party) is your customer’s boss’ boss’ boss. If you can’t handle that, then maybe you need to work somewhere else.
If I owned the company, would I have fired her? Probably not. Once it was made well known that my employee flipped off the president I probably would have put out a statement saying something like “Our employee made a private statement on her own time. That statement does not reflect the position of this company. We will work with her to ensure she understands how she should treat our customer.” and then send her to customer service training (even though I know it won’t make any difference).
However, most business people see half-measures as not worth taking, they have 7,500 other employees to think about, and it is easier to just fire her. That doesn’t necessarily make them Trump boot-lickers.
I asked Google about her former employer and found this:
Federal contractors have a first amendment right to criticize the government. There are no federal contracts of which I am aware that have as a condition of their award or performance that the contractor not criticize the government. A government contractor can have an employment policy which prohibits its employees from criticizing the government. Such a policy might be motivated by (1) legitimate concerns that an employee’s speech will reflect badly on the employer in other ways, (2) cowardice that they might have to fight illegal retaliation due to an employee’s speech, (3) laziness because having a policy is easier than figuring out what can affect their contracts and what can’t.
This contractor doesn’t seem to have had a policy prohibiting employees from criticizing the government.
And, to my knowledge, she wasn’t fired because of her social media posts. She was fired because of other peoples’ social media posts and coverage in the news media. This was a rationalization they used to do exactly the thing that they wanted to do.
The first statement is not surprising, that is what I expect the reason to be.
Neither is it surprising that senior directors don’t get the same punishment as the peons. Especially when the director isn’t insulting the customer.
Who else but a Trumpeteer would seriously use the term “Libtard”?
Absolutely true. She has 100% right to criticize the government and is free from any government repercussions. However, she doesn’t have the guaranteed right to do that and keep her job for a private company that serves the government.
Totally agree.
Well, if you post it or someone else posts it, the result is the same to the company, no? Once again, I am not saying I completely agree with them, but I think a company SHOULD be able to fire a employee for this and not necessarily be called a Trump lover.
The term ‘cancel culture’ is also only used for causes that qualify as left-wing to Republicans. When NRA members boycotted Smith and Wesson over it’s support of gun restrictions, or outraged Catholics protested Sinead O’Conner ripping a picture of the pope, or when outraged parents find out that a teacher is gay and get them fired from a school, it doesn’t count as ‘cancel culture’ - generally the thing objected to has to be something like rape, molesting children, or using racial slurs.
Which is why it’s weird to use the phrase as the subject line in this case, because ‘insulted Trump’ is not something that those nasty liberals actually object to.
Yes. In fact, if I ever get the chance I’m gonna flip him off myself. I’ll probably add one of those finger flick under the chin things that movie stereotype Italians do. I could do them both at the same time, like double wielding in Skyrim.
You implied upthread that the contractor had a responsibility to ensure that its employees don’t disparage the government. You said “I have worked for a federal contractor before and there, like all businesses, you are mandated to treat your customer with courtesy and respect.” You didn’t say who was “mandating” this. What I can tell you is that the government is not and cannot “mandate” that its contractors desist from criticizing the government. Not “all businesses” that do business with the government prohibit criticizing the government. For example, there is no evidence that Ms. Briskman’s employer did. She was not disciplined under any such policy, according to published reports.
I’m not sure I understand your point. There is nothing inconsistent with working for the government as a contractor and criticizing the government. Again, you have a first amendment right to do so. This company needs to own their decision to fire her because that’s what they wanted to do.
Is it? Because I think there is a difference between doing something somewhat privately which is, outside of my wish or control, disseminated to a wider audience and my taking affirmative efforts to spread a particular message to the widest audience I can muster. It’s also, frankly, just weird to punish someone for someone else’s social media activity. Would you like it if I posted terrible things about your employer and they just decided to fire you because you didn’t stop me? That’s what happened to her. She wasn’t fired for her gesture; she was ostensibly fired because of what other people posted to accounts on social media that they control and that she does not control. This is irrational.
As I noted on another thread, the results indicate that flipping off Trump in public is more politically effective than appearing at a rally with him. GOP Candidates, take note!
That’s the joke.
Furthermore her victory is not really, “presumably a defeat for Cancel Culture SJWs.”
The people who complain about cancel culture and how cancel culture stifles free speech are generally the same type of people who think Juli Briskman should die in a fire. These people are hypocrites.
I, on the other hand, just found it amusing that the woman who entered the public eye by flipping off Trump’s motorcade basically won an election by campaigning on that in a county where Trump owns a golf course.
While I agree that a more passive form of protest [letter writing, sit ins, classic carry a sign picket protests] are worthy, I have gotten heat many times by pointing out that in general the family members of people fired or otherwise damaged by ‘cancel activity’ gets fucked over [especially when I use the example of Casey Jones - where the ‘strike breaking scab’ engineer who is killed by the actions of the protesters just totally fucks over his family as the wife and kids no longer have an income providing for them in a time when there was sod all for social safety nets. WHile it is commendable the strikers want a better income, poor Casey Jones is just trying to put food on his families table by actually WORKING his job.
sounds like a plan.
Nothing anybody does as a form of protest while they are off the clock and off work premises should definitely fall under First Amendment protections.
It would be helpful to be a little less subtle in your sarcasm in a board where it’s routine for people to non-ironically wring their hands about cancel culture, SJW, liberal elites, etc.
Noted.
Posting something that a Republican would believably post on a sub forum intended for political discussion runs into Poe’s law in a big way.