patrick.net

It's a bit ironic that the icon of non-PC (the Donald) has said that he dislikes the NC bathroom law. Will he change his opinion when he sees how his followers feel, or is he starting the pivot.

The reason for the swift change in corporate culture is that the majority now side with the LGBTG crew. When 55% were saying ewe, gross, they are ruining culture and raping our children, corporations were happy to play along. Now that 55% of the population says what the hell, let LGBTG do what they want, corporations are also projecting that image. The corps are not worried about the 1% that are actually TG. They are worried about the 54% who side with the TG. Yes, I made the #s up, but whatever the tipping point is, it's a calculus of what type of image the corporation wants to project to capture the most business.

Many of the people who were once in the majority, and now find themselves in the minority are collectively freaking out at this phenomena. There are still politicians who service the now minority. Those pols will keep writing these bills when it helps them get elected even if it is bad for the state in general.

Blurtman says

PC education and program implementation is probably a great consulting business today

However, when most people originally form their views, it comes from the institutions of family and peer groups and they are unlikely to be PC. Therefore, "PC education and program implementation " cannot possibly have an unfair advantage in the battle for hearts and minds.

dublin hillz says

institutions of family and peer groups

Church. Subliminal messages in video games.

It is how the card works. If you against about my pet cause, you are a hate filled brute, who doesn't like blacks, gays or breastfeeding women. You are to be shunned!

Blurtman says

It is how the card works. If you against about my pet cause, you are a hate filled brute, who doesn't like backs, gays or breastfeeding women. You are to be shunned!

This problem is not exclusive to the right or the left, in fact it's present in any wing extremism. Some people are simply extremely opinionated and cannot tolerate dissent due to lack of willingness to debate academically and because they have not done proper introspection on the issues at hand.

it's a joke. j-o-k-e.
a play on babyCher...
now laugh.
hahahaha

HydroCabron says

Dungeness says

OTOH, you want this john goodman lookalike staring at your schlong at the urinal when her birth hormones kick in?

Oh ... My ... Gawd!

Sooooo scary!

astronut97 says

Dungeness says

I was referring to Billary charging 250k per speech.


What the fuck is wrong with you???

Well maybe you should have said that rather than "No free speak in libbyland". What is a person supposed to think when you say that?

www.youtube.com/embed/66X8a-hY0kE

Yet IHLillery GETS a private email server that IS associated with the US gov.
Libbylogic.
I see.....

Rew says

Curt doesn't GET a public voice that isn't associated with ESPN.

Both.

YesYNot says

Will he change his opinion when he sees how his followers feel, or is he starting the pivot.

Dungeness says

Yet IHLillery GETS a private email server that IS associated with the US gov.

In both cases a private account was being used in an official capacity.

Curt didn't separate his private and public life. He could of/should of used an alias account. He didn't seem to know better. Bad judgement.
Hillary used non-sanctioned/non-secure methods for official comms. Bad on all sorts of security levels.

And if you think Hillary has any hope of saying much that isn't in the public eye, well, you are dreaming. She only has her secret service guards, family, and friends behind closed doors for that. I'm pretty sure she is smart enough to know things she posts on Facebook are subject to public scrutiny as a public figure though.

depends on the employment agreement with ESPN and what constitutes "representing ESPN" while on personal time.

may be a really good case for wrongful termination.

If you can't separate your personal and public responsibilities, you are not competent to be president.
She can have her private email server, just not give out the address to anybody working for the feds.
It's an extremely simple concept.
The average office grunt knows enough to separate their work email from their personal gmail/yahoo/microsoft/apple email.
Her excuse is lame. She is as corrupt as the sky is blue...

Rew says

And if you think Hillary has any hope of saying much that isn't in the public eye, well, you are dreaming. She only has her secret service guards, family, and friends behind closed doors for that. I'm pretty sure she is smart enough to know things she posts on Facebook are subject to public scrutiny as a public figure though.

astronut97 says

workers can be let go without cause as long as it can't be proven that they weren't let go because of race, religion, sex or other protected class

so how exactly is freedom of religion different from freedom of speech?

they are both in the bill of rights. why is it that you can not fire someone because of a publicly announced religious belief, but you can fire someone because of a publicly announced political belief?

rando says

so how exactly is freedom of religion different from freedom of speech?

The Bill of Rights is protecting us from the government interference, you are comparing apples and oranges when you apply this to companies firing people. Also, Schilling wasn't fired for a "publicly announced political belief", he was fired for repeatably spouting off on social media in such a manner that was embarrassing to his employer. And again, he is a public face of ESPN and so they had every right to fire him for his behavior.

Everyone does have free speech but if you were to start spouting off about hating black people and start posting pictures of yourself dressed in KKK garb sitting in a company vehicle with the company logo displayed, you may find your self fired. Free speech may not be free from backlash.

What sort of protections from firing would you like to see? Should someone be able to say absolutely anything and I still have to let them work for me even though it would now poison the workplace (i.e. the individual hates all -----s and -----s work at your company) environment?

This is a moot point in Florida and other "right to work/fire" states, as I could be let go without notice or cause at anytime. So they wouldn't need to say they are firing me due to my publicly shared views.

astronut97 says

The Bill of Rights is protecting us from the government interference, you are comparing apples and oranges when you apply this to companies firing people. Also, Schilling wasn't fired for a "publicly announced political belief", he was fired for repeatably spouting off on social media in such a manner that was embarrassing to his employer. And again, he is a public face of ESPN and so they had every right to fire him for his behavior.

Everyone does have free speech but if you were to start spouting off about hating black people and start posting pictures of yourself dressed in KKK garb sitting in a company vehicle with the company logo displayed, you may find your self fired. Free speech may not be free from backlash.

What sort of protections from firing would you like to see? Should someone be able to say absolutely anything and I still have to let them work for me even though it would now poison the workplace (i.e. the individual hates all -----s and -----s work at your company) environment?

This is a moot point in Florida and other "right to work/fire" states, as I could be let go without notice or cause at anytime. So they wouldn't need to say they are firing me due to my publicly shared views.

That's a valid view/position as long as you keep it consistent and allow businesses and their employees to refuse service to anyone if they deem so. The problem is that the government (and their extension - the lawyers) interferes in one way, when business and employee are aligned (such as the infamous gay wedding cake incident), but doesn't when firings like those happen. You can't have it both ways, and the employee is always fucked, either for having their employer fire them due to their "views" or because the government passes laws to sue businesses out of existence that have a good relationship with their employees but piss off a few customers who couldn't go next door. Furthermore by your logic it should be allowed for any business to fire their employee because they engage say for example in LGBT causes or women's issues on a public facing social media if it doesn't fit their corporate image. Can't have it both ways. It has to be either protection for both or for none.

mell says

That's a valid view/position as long as you keep it consistent and allow businesses and their employees to refuse service to anyone if they deem so.

This is a totally different issue and not related at all to Schillings being fired. Businesses that provide services to the public should not be able to not serve certain classes of people at their whim. That would be a huge step backwards.

Schilling was hired by ESPN for his reputation in baseball and the people that he would draw to the network. His spouting off damaged his reputation and his ability to garner viewership for ESPN and so he was let go.

I don't believe businesses in general should fire people for their views and shouldn't go snooping on social media for bad behavior of its employees. But employees that are basically the face of the company can and do get fired all the time if they act up in public and embarrass their employer. Think of the Taco Bell exec (Benjamin Golden) who beat up an Uber driver and was fired or the Doctor (Anjali Ramkissoon) would also did this and was put on administrative leave. Now these two incidents involved some violence but there have been other times when just verbal rants from and exec or some badly thought through tweet got someone fired as well (i.e. Justine Sacco for tweeting "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I'm white!").

rando says

they are both in the bill of rights. why is it that can not fire someone because of a publicly announced religious belief, but you can fire someone because of a publicly announced political belief?

astronut97 is correct in saying the bill of rights protects against government interference.

mell says

government passes laws

Different levels of government enact different laws, in a structure resembling a pyramid: the federal government has the highest but narrowest authority, while state and local governments have broader authority subject to federal pre-emption in some areas. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits many businesses from discriminating on the basis of race/color/national origin or religion, but it does not mention political belief. The reasons are mainly historical: there had been a history of discrimination on the basis of race/color and/or religion and/or national origin ("Irish need not apply"), so a coalition formed to enact legislation to change that. The 1964 Act also prohibits discrimination on account of sex, and has been clarified since to state that sex discrimination includes discrimination based on pregnancy, and litigation has clarified its application to related matters. In general, most federal civil rights legislation deals primarily with relatively larger institutions affecting interstate commerce, though as usual the commercial media report loudly on the exceptions to the general pattern; a Martian relying on American commercial news to understand life on earth would think that every plane crashes and would have no idea why anyone buys a ticket.

In this instance, no one sued as far as I know. The employer and professional sports generally depend on advertising. Advertisers want audience attention, especially younger audiences who buy a lot of sports gear and are choosing which brands to identify with. (Do you want to be a Pepper, or buy the world a Coke, or join the Pepsi Generation? You probably decided as a kid and left it at that.) Management decided to identify the company brand in ways that would resonate with young audiences, and an employee who was already on warning for other issues chose to undermine publicly management's decision. BTW, in commercial media, companies invest heavily in building up the profile of on-air talent, and usually the on-air talent are team players who want to build their own brands and raise their own profiles in ways that increase their own leverage and make their own prospects more lucrative. I had never heard of this particular guy before, but he seems to have been in a mode of wanting to step off the ladder. Government had really nothing to do with it: the issue was only how a commercial network and an on-air employee wanted to manage their respective brands, and they disagreed, as they had apparently disagreed about other matters, so the employer chose to terminate the relationship. It wasn't even about political correctness really: the ESPN team built up this guy's profile into a platform, and if he had used that platform to publish written declarations that football should be banned and he hates sports and disagrees with network and league management, after previously having antagonized his employer regarding other issues, then the result would likely have been the same.

astronut97 says

This is a totally different issue and not related at all to Schillings being fired. Businesses that provide services to the public should not be able to not serve certain classes of people at their whim. That would be a huge step backwards.

Ah but it's not different at all. It's done all the time, by private businesses such as bars and nightclubs, gyms etc. Even by the government via affirmative action. Same difference. If you advocate for no discrimination laws then that should lead to immediate abolishment of affirmative action and any special protection laws for any classes as well as abolishment of any firings or admissions at universities and employers that are based on anything but merit.

Mell, you are essentially trying to say that if a company can fire someone for calling black people niggers, then another company should be able to refuse service to blacks.
Replace black with trans or gays, and you pretty much have your opinion.

astronut97 says

The Bill of Rights is protecting us from the government interference, you are comparing apples and oranges when you apply this to companies firing people. Also, Schilling wasn't fired for a "publicly announced political belief", he was fired for repeatably spouting off on social media in such a manner that was embarrassing to his employer. And again, he is a public face of ESPN and so they had every right to fire him for his behavior.

So wait, what if he said "Abortion is killing babies, and those who perform it are murderers" on his Facebook. And many ESPN viewers' were deeply offended by it. Should Schilling be fired for that?

mell says

Ah but it's not different at all. It's done all the time, by private businesses such as bars and nightclubs, gyms etc. Even by the government via affirmative action. Same difference. If you advocate for no discrimination laws then that should lead to immediate abolishment of affirmative action and any special protection laws for any classes as well as abolishment of any firings or admissions at universities and employers that are based on anything but merit.

Fully in favor. And testable merit, with no fallible managers making the decisions - a computer should pick the person with the highest test score.

Militaries around the world have spent billions trying to figure out who is cool under pressure, what kind of person makes a good leader, etc. and have few answers, despite countless eggheads monitoring countless tens of thousands of voluntold people over the years, backed with countless dollars, rubles, pounds, and marks spent trying to figure it out.

YesYNot says

Mell, you are essentially trying to say that if a company can fire someone for calling black people niggers, then another company should be able to refuse service to blacks.

Replace black with trans or gays, and you pretty much have your opinion.

Sure, but not because it's my opinion, but because it's a logical conclusion. Just because you consider something amoral doesn't make it necessarily unacceptable under a law. Now if you want to bar people from being racist to others that's great but then you must follow through on all counts and never ever put a program in place that favors any race, gender or whatnot class of people, hence immediate abolition of affirmative action or laws to "strengthen" any groups (men's, women's, LGBTs etc.) rights. And the common law against discrimination must apply for all business interactions in life, which includes the employer-employee relationship, not just the employer-customer relationship.

thunderlips11 says

Militaries around the world have spent billions trying to figure out who is cool under pressure,

Yeah but even the military is being penetrated by the fight for "equality", weakening it at its core. But maybe that won't matter that much though in the distant future of the pure drone wars if women (and any other non-male gender) could get on par with their male ciphers ;)

curious2 says

In this instance, no one sued as far as I know. The employer and professional sports generally depend on advertising. Advertisers want audience attention, especially younger audiences who buy a lot of sports gear and are choosing which brands to identify with. (Do you want to be a Pepper, or buy the world a Coke, or join the Pepsi Generation? You probably decided as a kid and left it at that.) Management decided to identify the company brand in ways that would resonate with young audiences, and an employee who was already on warning for other issues chose to undermine publicly management's decision. BTW, in commercial media, companies invest heavily in building up the profile of on-air talent, and usually the on-air talent are team players who want to build their own brands and raise their own profiles in ways that increase their own leverage and make their own prospects more lucrative. I had never heard of this particular guy before, but he seems to have been in a mode of wanting to step off the ladder. Government had really nothing to do with it: the issue was only how a commercial network and an on-air employee wanted to manage their respective brands, and they disagreed, as they had apparently disagreed about other matters, so the employer chose to terminate the relationship. It wasn't even about political correctness really: the ESPN team built up this guy's profile into a platform, and if he had used that platform to publish written declarations that football should be banned and he hates sports and disagrees with network and league management, after previously having antagonized his employer regarding other issues, then the result would likely have been the same.

I'd argue that ESPN will be losing business over this, esp. if you read the reactions on social media. Sports die-hards are usually not the sensitive, leftoid kind, so I don't buy the business decision for a second. However one could say that Shilling should/could have seen it coming as ESPN has been heavily influenced by progressive-leftist forces in the management for quite a while now. So he was definitely careless. The question is whether we want to live in a society where everybody is afraid to speak their mind because of immediate repercussions and where we thus will become an amorphous mass of zombies under a true Orwellian dystopia and descend from meritocracy to idiocracy.

It is the tyranny of the minority and make believe minority. Sniff test - change the special group of privilege to white men (and versa vicea) and see if it flies. For example, try defining affirmative action as letting in white men with inferior qualifications. Bad idea? Yes, then it is a bad idea period.

This is all made possible by the consolidation of all media sources into a few owner hands. Now that the media is wholly owned by a few billionaires, they set the tone and agenda for the discussion, and choose to publicly shame whoever offends them. This defeats the first amendment freedom of the press before it has a chance to be invoked. And furthermore, sets up this hijacked press to be a kangaroo court in which those with conflicting beliefs are tried and hung out to dry.

astronut97 says

What sort of protections from firing would you like to see? Should someone be able to say absolutely anything and I still have to let them work for me even though it would now poison the workplace (i.e. the individual hates all -----s and -----s work at your company) environment?

i'd like to see employees protected while exercising freedom of speech on their own time just the same as they are protected while exercising freedom of religion on their own time.

if you want to be consistent, you should argue that employers should not have to let a jew/christian/muslim/whatever work for them, because it would "poison the workplace" as you put it.

rando says

if you want to be consistent, you should argue that employers should not have to let a jew/christian/muslim/whatever work for them, because it would "poison the workplace" as you put it.

Shame on you, this is obviously a false dichotomy and in no way represents what I said or what I stand for. Someone belonging to a religion doesn't "poison the workplace" unless the other workers are religious bigots and can't stand for anyone to worship differently than them and then they are the problem not the other person.

astronut97 says

obviously a false dichotomy

not at all. it's a perfect analogy.

someone belonging to a different political point of view doesn't "poison the workplace" unless the other workers are political bigots and can't stand for anyone to believe differently than them and then they are the problem not the other person.

see how your own argument works perfectly against yourself?

rando says

i'd like to see employees protected while exercising freedom of speech on their own time just the same as they are protected while exercising freedom of religion on their own time.

Some states (including New York) have laws at the state level protecting against employment discrimination on the basis of lawful off-duty activities. The tobacco industry lobbied for them, to protect smokers. We don't really know how that would apply to this case though, because a commercial network would likely have a whole team of social media coordinators to help on-air talent manage their public posts, as part of their work. IMO, the result may have had more to do with something the linked article says he did last month:

"Schilling appeared to have violated ESPN's guidelines for election coverage by stating that Hillary Clinton "should be buried under a jail somewhere" during a radio interview."

She is the most likely next President, and both ESPN and its parent companies have a lot of interaction with regulators whom the President appoints. The network may have considered him a loose cannon and sought an opportunity to remove him from the deck before he did more damage.

mell says

The question is whether we want to live in a society where everybody is afraid to speak their mind because of immediate repercussions and where we thus will become an amorphous mass of zombies under a true Orwellian dystopia and descend from meritocracy to idiocracy.

I respect that concern, although even the word "meritocracy" originated as a dystopian warning. That concern may help to explain some of the popularity of Donald Trump, and likewise fellow New Yorker Howard Stern (who also considered running for President): both made their public reputations partly by daring to say controversial things. In commercial media though, it isn't so much about political correctness as rather staying on message with regard to management priorities, as Phil Donahue explained after MSNBC fired him in 2003 for trying to balance coverage about the Iraq war. As Marshall Mcluhan had said in the 1970s, "The medium is the message." Although the OP attributes this particular incident to political correctness, it seems more likely a consequence of corporate consolidation in media.

thanks @curious2 there are a lot of great links in that comment!

this book looks quite interesting:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/338086413?ref=patrick.net

Simultaneously, there arises a new, feminist-led, egalitarian, socialist opposition to meritocracy, hoping to establish a classless society.

and it looks like California in particular has exactly the kind of anti-discrimination law which we need at the federal level:

Some states, including California, have laws prohibiting employers from taking any job-related action against a worker based on that worker's lawful conduct off the job.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/off-duty-conduct-employee-rights-33590.html

rando says

not at all. it's a perfect analogy.

someone belonging to a different political point of view doesn't "poison the workplace" unless the other workers are political bigots and can't stand for anyone to believe differently than them and then they are the problem not the other person.

see how your own argument works perfectly against yourself?

I don't know where you guys get this from, I said nothing about political points of view I was only taking about people who hate/dislike certain classes of people and publicly broadcast their position. This is not about political points of view. Hating the different races, sexes, transgendered, Muslims, etc is not a political point of view. So you are wrong, not tolerating bigotry is not bigotry.

Shame on you again!

astronut97 says

Hating the different races, sexes, transgendered, Muslims, etc is not a political point of view.

i'd bet you money that if you asked the people you accuse of being "haters" they would say they don't hate anyone, and that you yourself are the one who introduced the term "hate" because it gives you an easy way to not actually listen to the points they are trying to make.

accusing people of "hate" is pretty much the same thing as accusing them of being a nazi. all rational discussion ends right there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

so there should be a corollary to godwin's law, called the "hate" strawman or something like that.

astronut97 says

bigotry

...has almost by definition a religious component, as the word originates from "by god," where somebody can't think of an earthly reason to hold a particular position and then resorts to saying it's religious. For example, "Even though I run a pizza parlor, some god prohibits me from selling pizza to certain people if they're getting legally married, at least when a GoFundMe campaign can get me more money from bigots than I could ever hope to make by selling pizza."

astronut97 says

Hating...Muslims....

Hate is an evolved emotion, closely related to fear, and it can have adaptive uses. Muslims, by definition, believe in a doctrine that commands them to kill unbelievers "wherever you find them." It is natural and rational to feel at least some concern about people who say they believe they are omnipotently commanded to kill you, wherever they find you.

To distinguish politically correct from factually correct, I would ask, what is the difference between a Muslim and a KKKlansman? Both believe in religious doctrines that contain a lot of hate. A Klansman believes in ethnic cleansing, including forcibly relocating Afro-Americans to Africa. A Muslim believes in ubiquitous genocide, which is even worse. Rejecting bigotry requires rejecting both the Klan and Islam.

rando says

accusing people of "hate" is pretty much the same thing as accusing them of being a nazi. all rational discussion ends right there.

What if it's true?

Why not call a spade a spade?

If someone feels transsexuals are taking female hormones and possibly undergoing a horrific surgery, as well as public ridicule from some quarters, just so they can peep at whatever they're gonna see in the ladies' room, then perhaps they're hateful. It is one strong possibility.

But, then, I don't see smelly cold linoleum rooms which stink of piss and shit as being erotic places. Maybe that's why I'm not a conservative.

rando says

accusing people of "hate" is pretty much the same thing as accusing them of being a nazi. all rational discussion ends right there.

I'm trying to have a rational discussion but it appears not to be possible with you. I was just trying to make a case when a persons "free speech" may not be appropriate and so a company may be in the right to let them go. Stop making things up. Again there may be repercussions to "free speech" and that's not always bad. Be rational for a minute and think about it. If someone comes out and says that they are in agreement with Man/Boy sex, possibly a daycare center might not want to hire them or fire them if currently employed by them. I am not in favor for companies monitoring social media but if something becomes viral then the company cannot in good faith ignore it. Schilling totally deserved to be fired from ESPN for being a crude bigot in his opinions. If he had respectfully posted that he had some issues with certain things instead of posting or reposing with additional comments crude and rude posts, he might still be employed by ESPN.

rando says

i'd like to see employees protected while exercising freedom of speech on their own time just the same as they are protected while exercising freedom of religion on their own time.

They are. People have the right to practice any normal religion on their own time. But if the religion promotes harm, and the employee is encouraging people to participate in a very public way, all bets are off.

This one is for the .001% of the population that have their essential bathroom human rights denied by the Evil Stale Pale White Male Capitalist Patriarchy.

www.youtube.com/embed/CQl4NzkWSNU

HydroCabron says

Why not call a spade a spade?

If someone feels transsexuals are taking female hormones and possibly undergoing a horrific surgery, as well as public ridicule from some quarters, just so they can peep at whatever they're gonna see in the ladies' room, then perhaps they're hateful. It is one strong possibility.

Or maybe they're just calling a spade a spade.