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When Should the Beating Stop?
You may remember Adam Smith. No, not the philosopher — the CFO who took a stand for same-sex marriage and against Chick-Fil-A by filming himself acting like a complete tool at a drive-thru while receiving a complementary glass of water from the young girl working the window.
He posted his righteous indignation video online, it went viral, and his employer showed him the door. Well, according to ABC News, the hits just keep on coming for him. Three years later, he remains unemployed and has been reduced to accepting food stamps to feed his family.
My initial reaction is “Good, serves him right for being such a jerk.” But is this appropriate? When he realized the error of his ways, he made amends. He offered his apology and it was accepted by the young lady he verbally abused. So far he’s lost his livelihood, his home, and a significant portion of his dignity.
When is the punishment over for Mr. Smith? When is enough enough? Perhaps he still lacks the heart change necessary because although he regrets how he did what he did, he does not yet regret the stand he took. I cannot muster significant sympathy for him to wish a different outcome, but perhaps that is because of my heart issues rather than his.
Published in General
So many thoughts, some of which are probably contradictory. Here are the things that jump out at me: He feels like a failure because he can’t get a job. If he wants to work, he can find a job if he’s not picky about what he does. The problem is that he can’t find a job worthy of his high opinion of his skills. Big difference. So, his wife is working and he’s staying home with the kids–no argument from me there if that’s the way they want to arrange their lives. If he accepts marginal employment, they will struggle with the same equation that many families do: Is the second income worth it once you factor in child care, basic expenses, time apart from your kids, etc. Welcome to the real world.
The videos of his kids taking their favorite toys to Goodwill because they could no longer afford them was pitiful and self-serving. “Look at what the cruel world has done to my kids.” Losing your home and completely rearranging your life must be incredibly hard. Some people handle it with more grace than others I suppose.
The Goodwill video is just a continuance of the poor form he showed by rudely confronting a drive-through clerk who had no graceful choice but to treat him politely while he ranted at her. If you want to convince the owner of Chik-fil-A that your stand for gay marriage is the correct and moral one, do something besides lob a flaming incendiary of a video over the transom and then be gobsmacked by the entirely foreseeable consequences (whether they are justified or not).
He’s sorry he was rude to the young lady, but somehow that doesn’t seem quite sorry enough. I’m a little dismayed that I can’t work up more sympathy for him, because I know I could easily make the same kind of un-erasable, grievous error in judgment. I’m not sure I like what that says about me.
Smith says “I think people are scared that it could happen again.” He doesn’t say “I think people are scared I could do this again.”
I think Smith isn’t unemployed because people don’t forgive, or because he made “the choice to stand up for the rights of someone else”, or even because nothing on the internet goes away. He’s unemployed because people see he doesn’t regret, or take responsibility for, being stupid, selfish, and tasteless enough to try to gain status as a champion of gay rights by being a Jackass to a person at work. His attitude still doesn’t give people any reason to believe some incident like the one on You Tube won’t happen again.
To answer the post’s question: When morale improves.
No sympathy for somebody who did something pre-meditated and stupid, and here we are feeling bad for him because of what this does to his family. Perhaps Captain Genius should have thought of his family first before setting his life on fire.
Sometimes when you show your ass, everybody sees it…
Thank you for not sending them to Greenville, SC. Chick Fil As are plentiful here but we also have enough jerks (not employees of CFA).
Look I am sorry, but we are at war with these people. Until we can separate and have a completely autonomous country away from the Jacobins and Nazis of the Left, then my violin is going to remain in its case when I hear of Leftist twits having a rough go of it after they make complete a**es of themselves.
Just wanted to say that The King Prawn has unearthed a fascinating story with the ABC video report, and this post by Don Tillman adds the perfect capper with the scene from Portlandia. Well done, both of you!
Insofar as the guy, yeah, let him up, but maybe after he switches his food stamp purchases to Costco’s cheapest chicken pack and inexpensive store brand yogurt out of true financial need. If his wife is supporting the family with her job, why is this stay-at-home daddy eligible for an EBT card in the first place?
AUMom – I’ve been to Greenville- Spartanburg a few times for work. Lovely area – I wouldn’t wish any more jerks on it.
Maybe Bentonville, AR… Hmmm…
“My voice is cracking right now, it’s humbling”
Didn’t hear a crack there.
Got a car?
Heard of Uber?
Get over yourself.
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
This post ties to the one about foreign policy wimps. The vile left shows no mercy in attacking the ideas and people who support freedom. As in foreign policy you must be ready to vanquish you enemies and hear the lamentation of their women. Our side has become wimps in most matters most of the time.
He believes that people should suffer economically for behavior and opinions having nothing to do with their livelihood. He has no right to complain or seek sympathy because that’s what happened to him.
Tsk… When he gets audited by the IRS and they confiscate everything he has (this has happened to many who offend the Left), can’t rent an apartment, can’t get a library card… then, maybe I’ll feel sorry for him. Sometimes they deserve a huge dose of their own medicine.
Modern technology has indeed made it impossible to hide your past, which eventually becomes an unfair burden. The only solution is for a cultural consensus to evolve that people shouldn’t look further back than some finite number of years when investigating people.
Of course, in a world full of leftists, evolving any sort of cultural consensus is damn near impossible.
For all leftists: no quarter.
Not being a YouTube addict, I’m among those who were completely unaware of this person’s story until reading this post. It sounds like the sort of story Drudge would have linked to, back when it first happened, but I think I would have seen it then, so I expect Drudge passed on it.
My feelings about the guy’s present circumstances are mixed, and have been expressed perfectly well by everyone else present. But it is still interesting and instructive to note the contrasts between this story and the Brendan Eich affair. I don’t watch MSNBC, but if they’ve picked up on the ABC story, I would expect them to attempt to draw some sort of moral equivalence, or perhaps even to construct an argument for why Eich should have been sacked but Smith not.
First of all, as has been pointed out, Smith went out of his way to advertise his attitudes, while Eich merely made a private donation that left-wing activists publicized. Second, Smith wasn’t fired for his political position–as the story says, even people who agree with his position think he did something really nasty–while Eich didn’t harm anyone, but merely supported a popular cause that the left despises. Third, Smith may have been fired in part because the company was worried about all the vicious e-mails they got, but such things are all sound and fury, signifying nothing; once that blows over, any residual ill will is negligible compared to the formidable ability of the Left to organize protests and boycotts.
So there is little to be learned from this episode that casts the Left in a good light.
Yes, a good world is a world of second chances. I’ll be in favor of Smith getting a second chance sometime after Brendan Eich is re-offered his job at Mozilla.
When you excuse the aggressors before you comfort the victims, you are an accessory to evil.
That is damned straight!!!! Eich needs to have his job reinstated, back pay, with interest before I even think about shedding a tear for any of these Nazis.
For several years I had a boss who had spent years in the Navy. His motto was “If they aren’t [complaining], they aren’t happy.” And he gave us lots to [complain] about.
“Those who are kind to the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the kind.”
Wait, what? How does taking toys you already own to Goodwill help with “affording” them? It’s not like Goodwill gives you cash for your donations.
So, the consensus I’m getting is that while we may wish to feel some compassion for his plight his attitude keeps us from doing so.
I suppose the next question is this: will we see more instances of the left being forced to take their own medicine? I kind of hope so. Schadenfreude is delicious.
Funny how he makes the little people into pawns so he can make his point. First the drive-in server, now his children.
You can usually tell scoundrels because they take cover behind children. All politics aside, the book, the videos, the moral posturing (Look at me, I’m a martyr for my progressive beliefs) betray a really ugly, arrogance in his soul. I wouldn’t want to associate with him personally or professionally.
Re: comment # 82
A person interviewing Smith for a job can see he still either can’t or won’t resist his urge to use some cause to deliberately call attention to himself. I hope he gets help, but my compassion is for people who are unemployed, or who lost a job, because they genuinely were trying to do what they think is the right thing while earning a living.
If Smith had been fired or forced to resign after it came out that he donated his own money to some group promoting SSM, I would at least know I should be angry. I would certainly recognize it as a threat to my own rights. I hate to say: “depending upon the cost to me”, but , depending upon the cost to me, I would speak out against the way he was being treated.
The problem with Smith is that we smell he’s a fraud. We sense he’s posing as a martyr, either out of a sick need for fame or to make gays look persecuted when they aren’t or both.
The other problem is that those of us who have worked low level jobs are sick of the way people at work at those jobs are forced to be a part of other people’s activism. They’re subjected to harangues. They’re ordered to share their views on race (or to pretend to). We’re disgustingly arrogant in our treatment of them.
Bingo. Hit it on the nose.
Yes. Especially for CEO’s. They are the high profile representatives of the company. Regardless of questions of judgement or politics, potential employers of CEO’s probably frown on their execs taking stands on controversial topics. Add to that the manner in which the stand was taken and we have a person indicating that he’s not willing to prioritize the company’s interests over his own and that his judgement is questionable.
That said, I don’t see why he couldn’t go get something less than an exec job.
I would hazard a guess it is only his ego that prevents him from taking a lesser position.
Another aspect to this. If he could dress down a total stranger for something that person had no part of and post it for public view, what would he do with one of his own employees or co-workers if they said or did something he disliked. If I owned a business I would never treat one of my employees in such a manner and would never take the chance on hiring this guy.
That such behavior being socially unacceptable was a complete surprise to him (and many on the left) is why I believe leftism is best discussed in language normally associated with describing toddlers.