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This Hateful Fool Shouldn’t Lose His Job
In a surprising twist on the usual social media pile-ons, a left-wing Alabama man has just lost his job after posting mean comments about the victims of the Sevier County, Tennessee fires on Facebook. Bringing to mind the Left-wing social-media-fueled persecutions of Justine Sacco and Brendan Eich, this case is one where the Right has done the pile-on, and the man has apparently lost his job.
Perhaps it’s easier for me to make my point when I might be expected to be on the other side of this, and I can stand up for principle without people thinking that I have an interest in this man’s case.
I want to make a stand for the right of any fool to say stupid, cruel things and not be in danger of an online mob of villagers with virtual pitchforks and torches spreading his name around and pushing his employer to fire him. Surely we can agree on that. Right, America?
Published in Culture
I agree but that’s not the precedent that was set.
I hope that once the left stops doing it, we’ll stop doing it.
What’s that saying? I didn’t start it, but I sure as hell will end it.
Let them taste the bitterness of the medicine they have been dishing.
Amen, Tim.
Amen.
As a perpetrator of saying stupid things all the time, I’m sympathetic to the idea of protecting speech.
well, maybe….I don’t want to commit myself too quickly.
Are we sure that it’s just the Right who has done the pile on in this case? I’d like to think many on either side of the fence would be horrified at this man celebrating deaths and destruction.
And I certainly don’t think this man’s comments are in any way analogous to what happened to Brendan Eich, who quietly donated to a cause and that information was leaked. The Alabama man made his comments on FB where there is no illusion of privacy.
I work for a very small company here in my little town. Had I made a comment on FB celebrating death and destruction I don’t doubt there would be blowback and my boss would lose business. No reason he should pay for my stupidity.
@CM—
I disagree. We’ve got to stand up for principle. I have no evidence that this particular man did anything wrong to Justine Sacco or Brendan Eich personally, and he doesn’t deserve revenge for what other people did, just because he might be on their side of politics.
This is an issue of personal, individual behavior, not votes in Congress, and the Golden Rule absolutely applies. If you believe the social media pile-on is wrong when it’s done to you, it’s just as wrong when you’re doing it to someone else.
Make them suffer. It’s like the filibuster in the Senate. If we let “them” (The left) get away with punishing speech/ungood thought, and we don’t retaliate when it’s our turn, they’ll just keep doing it.
that’s the spirit!!! If I can’t endorse this post I can’t endorse anything.
It makes sense to me, but is not currently the reality on the ground.
Someone forgot to teach them manners and civility.
I don’t like this. Let me make this clear. It is distasteful to me and I would never engage in it. However, the left has been engaging in this with so much success that they were completely SHOCKED that anyone could vote for Trump… because everyone who did or agreed was afraid of losing their job.
Free speech was compromised by THEM and it won’t be fixed by twiddling your thumbs and bemoaning how wrong it is. They don’t care what you think. Your place of work only cares about money and the left has your number.
This is very true.
The same right to smear people for the idiot applies to the online mob with pitchforks.
Sorry that our side has caught on and stopped being the patsy who never fights back. As far as I am concerned, we need to do this to every corporate foundation that supports causes we do not like, every local tv show that carries left wing views.
We are in a culture war and I get tired of losing. We did not choose sides, the other guys did. Now we have a side by default.
We have held our tongues, and been made to feel like strangers in our own country.
We have at will employment in some places. Do you wish to change that?
I agree with you. But it would be nice to hear some outrage from the left over what happened to him. I seek constant affirmation of my opinion of them.
Those exist??
I have had internet conversations with such.
I’m with you, Tim H. It’s an old saying but it’s still true: Two wrongs don’t make a right. Anybody that would boycott a business because an employee there has a reprehensible opinion that they’ve expressed outside the workplace is a jerk. If it was wrong of Mozilla to ask Brandon Eich to resign, it was wrong for this idiot to be fired.
My father-in-law was one of 32 McGovern votes in Colbert county in 1968. They exist but in small numbers. Of his four children, only one believes that way now. My brother-in-law lives in Muscle Shoals. Rare, mostly hidden, but still there.
It is anyone who only watches half the football games
Brandon Eich was targeted for making a private donation; a donation with a reasonable expectation of privacy. That donation was in support of traditional marriage. Not for the death and imprisonment of anyone, not celebrating anyone’s death.
The man who is the subject of the OP celebrated death and destruction of those whom he perceived to be Trump voter in a very public way.
Hardly the same.
Second, if I made the exact same comment as the man who is the subject of the OP on FB and some people in my small town decided not to bring their business to my boss, where they would be forced to work with me, I don’t think it makes them a jerk.
I think that’s people making a rational decision to not work with/deal with a jerk.
And voting with their feet, which if memory serves we on the right are all about.
A donation that was in sync with the (then) currently expressed sentiments of the President of the United States.
Too bad we couldn’t get Obama to resign over it. Failed opportunities :(
I do. I do not hold employers responsible for the off-duty thoughts of their employees. Where I live a guy is in hot water for saying that the Dakota Access Pipeline protesters should be shot (or words to that effect) on Facebook. People found out where he works and are trying to get him fired. His statement is loutish, but so what? What good is it to have the First Amendment if we have a culture that demands that employers police the words that that employees use when they aren’t on the job?
Must be a Bama fan.
By the way, the Alabama man in the story is named Coleman Bonner. It took my a couple minutes to remember where I new that name from. The opening lyrics in the song, “New Cut Road” by Bobby Bare.
Coalman Bonner was a fiddle playin’ fool.
He was a backwoods rounder and a breaker of mules.
Coalman Bonner’s got a wor’ out bow,
He been playin’ two days down a new cut road.
Hmmn, I know some Bonners from the Alabama/Georgia border area. Might explain a lot.
In my comment I am saying that my boss would very like lose business because of my off-duty FB comments and in my opinion he would have every right to fire me. Why should he have to pay money out of his pocket for my salary AND reduce his revenue?
BTW we have some very vocal idiots in my small town. I have NEVER called for anyone’s firing, but I have shifted where I take my business. Does a business owner have the right to fire someone if that someone has caused a reduction in business?
And anyway, doesn’t the first amendment protect us from government sanction? It certainly doesn’t absolve us of responsibility and repercussions in the private world.
Yes, the business owner has the right. But he shouldn’t have to buckle to a public that would punish him because they dislike the views of an employee. I would not shift where I do business because an employee there has views I disagree with. I’m sure there are people who live in left-leaning towns who make pro-Trump comments on Facebook every day. Should they be fired for expressing viewpoints (not at work, but on their own Facebook page) in opposition to a large portion of their employer’s customer base?
I totally understand that the Bill of Rights is a set of handcuffs on the government, not individuals. My point is that even if government never sanctions us for disapproved speech, if the people are striving to punish one another in other ways, we have a less free society.
I’ve been to Gatlinburg. Mid-July. I’d just hit town and my throat was dry. I thought I’d stop off and have myself a brew. At an old saloon on a street of mud, there at a table dealing stud sat the dirty mangy dog that named me “Sue.”
Wait — that was someone else. Never mind.