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emnmnme
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This past year, there has been a string of careers being scuttled by insensitive or insulting remarks made by the famous and the influential ... I don't know what to think about all of this. Vulgar or hateful comments made in the workplace should most definitely be grounds for termination but, somewhere in the back of my mind, a tiny voice is screaming, "Zero tolerance policies cause more harm than good! Losing a career over something said is a harsh penalty!" Hmmm .... firing someone for a slip of the tongue seems unfair - but wait, is there such a thing as a slip of the tongue? ... of course he meant what he said or else he wouldn't have said it. Or did he mean it? To help untangle this knot of confusion, let's discuss cases where people have lost their jobs after saying or doing something controversial.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/post/ESPN-fires-announcer-for-calling-female-colleagu?urn=top-303299
ESPN announcer Ron Franklin was fired earlier this year after he verbally harassed a female sideline reporter.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43181734
Ed Schultz hasn't lost his job but he is most definitely on thin ice after calling conservative radio host Laura Ingraham a right-wing slut on-air. Using the word 'slut' has riled women's groups and a few are petitioning for a longer suspension.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39464138/ns/today-entertainment/t/cnn-anchor-fired-after-jon-stewart-rant/
Rick Sanchez was given the boot after his short on-air tirade against Jews and Jon Stewart. He accused Stewart of being a bigot even though the context made no sense. It's as if he wanted to nail Stewart but didn't know how and ended up inserting his foot in his mouth instead.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011099-503544.html
Shirley Sherrod, after years of government service, was fired after Andrew Breitbart circulated a video of Sherrod recounting a past incident where she neglected a farmer's USDA case because of his race. This is a weird one. The speech she gave was about her overcoming prejudice yet her superiors were so sensitive to the idea that she was racist, they fired her before she could explain her side of the story.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/14/2010-09-14_koran_burner_derek_fenton_fired_from_his_job_at_nj_transit.html
Derek Fenton thought it was a good idea to burn the Koran in protest of the proposed mosque to be built blocks away from New York's Ground Zero site. Even though he was doing this on his own time and not wearing his uniform, the New Jersey Transit Authority promptly fired him for violating their code of ethics. With the help of the ACLU, Fenton has recently won back to his job. He will not be required to attend sensitivity training upon returning to work.
There are plenty of other similar cases of people being fired for saying or doing controversial things if you feel like digging around for them. Most are well-deserved firings and forced resignations, a few aren't.
Don Imus - Nappy headed ho's
Peter Vidala - Bad stuff
David Howard - Niggardly
Laura Schlessinger - N-word N-word N-word
Kermit Washington - Panicked punch
etc.
No one wants to suffer a bigot in the workplace. Off-color comments are unprofessional and make other co-workers feel hurt or unwelcome. And, of course, if management doesn't step in and handle the situation, lawsuits happen. The problem is the handling is about as subtle as amputating a limb with a chainsaw. Does sensitivity training work or is immediate job termination the best way to show that kind of talk won't be tolerated? Should an organization adopt a zero tolerance policy or should each incident be reviewed individually as they come up?
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/post/ESPN-fires-announcer-for-calling-female-colleagu?urn=top-303299
ESPN announcer Ron Franklin was fired earlier this year after he verbally harassed a female sideline reporter.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43181734
Ed Schultz hasn't lost his job but he is most definitely on thin ice after calling conservative radio host Laura Ingraham a right-wing slut on-air. Using the word 'slut' has riled women's groups and a few are petitioning for a longer suspension.
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39464138/ns/today-entertainment/t/cnn-anchor-fired-after-jon-stewart-rant/
Rick Sanchez was given the boot after his short on-air tirade against Jews and Jon Stewart. He accused Stewart of being a bigot even though the context made no sense. It's as if he wanted to nail Stewart but didn't know how and ended up inserting his foot in his mouth instead.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011099-503544.html
Shirley Sherrod, after years of government service, was fired after Andrew Breitbart circulated a video of Sherrod recounting a past incident where she neglected a farmer's USDA case because of his race. This is a weird one. The speech she gave was about her overcoming prejudice yet her superiors were so sensitive to the idea that she was racist, they fired her before she could explain her side of the story.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/14/2010-09-14_koran_burner_derek_fenton_fired_from_his_job_at_nj_transit.html
Derek Fenton thought it was a good idea to burn the Koran in protest of the proposed mosque to be built blocks away from New York's Ground Zero site. Even though he was doing this on his own time and not wearing his uniform, the New Jersey Transit Authority promptly fired him for violating their code of ethics. With the help of the ACLU, Fenton has recently won back to his job. He will not be required to attend sensitivity training upon returning to work.
There are plenty of other similar cases of people being fired for saying or doing controversial things if you feel like digging around for them. Most are well-deserved firings and forced resignations, a few aren't.
Don Imus - Nappy headed ho's
Peter Vidala - Bad stuff
David Howard - Niggardly
Laura Schlessinger - N-word N-word N-word
Kermit Washington - Panicked punch
etc.
No one wants to suffer a bigot in the workplace. Off-color comments are unprofessional and make other co-workers feel hurt or unwelcome. And, of course, if management doesn't step in and handle the situation, lawsuits happen. The problem is the handling is about as subtle as amputating a limb with a chainsaw. Does sensitivity training work or is immediate job termination the best way to show that kind of talk won't be tolerated? Should an organization adopt a zero tolerance policy or should each incident be reviewed individually as they come up?
emnmnme on
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I've also never seen someone attend any form of sensitivity or discrimination (or fraud or any other) training and come back a changed person. I'm pretty convinced at this point we all just smile and nod through any form of training, and it's only done as a check box on a form somewhere.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The US Army has a lot of this stuff. Like, every three months, at the unit level (at least while in garrison), they have Equal Opportunity and related meetings and training sessions. A lot of people come away having learned a thing or two they may not have known before, but by and large, yeah, the point of the training is, "This is crap that will get you in trouble. Don't do it. Think it, believe it, feel it, just for the love of all that is good, don't DO it!"
Most corporate culture has at least a yearly Fraud/Ethics training and a yearly IT Security training, and if they're public a yearly "this is what insider trading is. Don't" training. I've always laughed at the ethics one, because if you're unethical, you're just going to lie on the quiz. And the questions and situations are always laughably unethical. "Susan wants project X done, but it's over time and budget. She tells the employees to not charge their time to the project anymore but do the work anyways. Is this okay?"
Basically, my opinion on immediate termination versus other types of response is "were you acting as a representative of your employer at the time", whereas I think a lot of companies respond to off-duty activities harshly, because the public at large will make no mental difference if the head of the KKK is a totally chill dude during his work shift and only busts out the racism after hours.
Pretty much. However, it's basically just sweeping the stuff under the carpet until you get discharged. Then go as crazy as you want.
The whole point of the David Howard thing was that niggardly has no etymological or any other link to the N-word, and he didn't use it in a context where he was talking about African-Americans, but he got in trouble anyway because the word sounds like the N-word and people didn't know what it meant. So basically he got in trouble for having a vocabulary bigger than the average American.
EDIT: My point being that to edit it would be to basically recurse the whole controversy.
Though it turned out alright: "Howard refused (his old job) but accepted another position with the mayor instead, insisting that he did not feel victimized by the incident. On the contrary, Howard felt that he had learned from the situation. "I used to think it would be great if we could all be colorblind. That's naïve, especially for a white person, because a white person can't afford to be colorblind. They don't have to think about race every day. An African American does.""
It was a bit of an open secret, say the policy rags.
if you think that's the only time he's done something like that, you're kidding yourself
he just got caught
As for the topic of the thread, if you want to be controversial, do it off the clock. In the case of journalists I think they should be held to a higher standard since they are "supposed" to be impartial and they have a much wider audience.
Journalists are not supposed to be impartial.
Ok let me rephrase, their reporting is supposed to be objective. I know that some of the cases listed in the OP are referring to pundits and not journalists. Even so I don't think pundits should have tirades against Jews or call someone a slut.
Also, didn't Sherrod get her job back after the wider context of her quote became known?
And the Fenton call is the right one, if NJ's civil service laws are anything like CA's. You pretty much can't be fired for political/religious beliefs, short of advocating the violent overthrow of the government. Not allowed to ask about them when hiring, not allowed to consider them if the candidate volunteers them.
She was offered her job back two days later.
http://articles.cnn.com/2003-06-13/us/coke.pepsi.firing_1_coke-jim-santangelo-delivery-driver?_s=PM:US
Coke employee fired for drinking Pepsi on the job.
when you work for the govt discrimination sort of becomes an important issue
Speaking of jokes, what was up with Gilbert Godfrey and the Aflac duck? He said some joke about Japan and he was gone the next day and I didn't catch the details.
EDIT: Huh, now they're looking for a new voice for the duck mascot. "AFLAC!"
He harassed a student on his own time - he didn't just say things on his own time, he actively harassed the student.
If you have a public role in a government/political/media organization, part of your job is to not do or say stupid things that reflect poorly on your employers.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The funny about this was, it's Gilbert Godfry. If the hugh hefner roast wasn't enough to scare you off him being your spokes-voice, I would've thought nothing would be.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Turns out Aflac has a lot of accounts in Japan.
So not only was it a poor taste joke way too soon, it was also likely to cost them business that the "voice" of their company was being an asshole about the death of thousands in their country
As I recall, he was busted out of his job for doing this on government time, partially. He also was doing this for a while with no repercussions until the national news media picked it up and ran with it.
That said, what he was doing was well beyond "I posted something nasty on my facebook page", he was actively stalking and harassing someone.
I can't see anyone being fired for a ranty blog post without having a history of at least being disliked in the office. But if you take that and run a campaign for the Aryan Nation and start getting attention for it, your employer has every reason to find ways to go "that dude? No fucking way, we don't support that dick at ALL."
Dude, he made a 9/11 joke like a month after it happened. And then launched into The Entertainers cause the audience wasn't laughing. So I'm gonna have to say that Aflac didn't do their part when hiring.
Disliked or not, Shirvell would probably still have his job if he'd posted pictures of him attending Aryan rallies on his own time instead. Political beliefs are usually protected by civil service codes (so long as they don't intefere with work performance), stalking/harassment is not.
What do you think about the 'little Eichmans' guy? Remember him?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19940243/ns/us_news-education/t/professor-fired-after--nazi-comparison/
While the university claims it didn't fire him because of a paper he wrote calling World Trade Center victims little Eichmans, it doesn't take a genius to guess the university looked hard for any reason to cut the guy loose after that. So he technically wasn't fired for expressing his political view ... but, come on, y'know?
Nor should it be. Especially when you work in the Attorney General's office.
I think that it would impact his job preformance pretty quick though. Every African-American defendant would launch an apeal so fast your head would spin.
In fact any job that requires interacting with the public is de facto off limits to certain political creeds. Who are you going to believe: a dissatisfied minority customer or Guy with a burning cross photo for a facebook profile? And there always some dissatisfied customer out there, no matter how good you are at your job.
Man, that Nazi joke basically started an entire cottage industry of people getting paid to write articles about it.
He seems to be losing some sponsors as well, though it might be just talk.
Its pretty funny how everyone in Denmark are just shrugging their shoulders and going "oh Lars, you silly man". We've gotten used to him over the years, and he still makes awesome movies. He's basicly the Tarantino of Denmark.
I was at CU at the time of this incident and Ward Churchill started doing these very aggressive speeches and events with his new found fame. If he stayed quiet, I'm guessing he would have kept his job.
He's an educated guy. He must have seen those signs coming. I wonder if he wanted to get fired so he could maintain and image as a man of uncompromising principles and sue the university for big bucks. That doesn't make sense, though, because he had tenure. Hmmm.
Just FYI guys: it's Gottfried.
http://www.khou.com/news/local/Talk-show-host-Michael-Berry-under-fire-for-mosque-bomb-remark-95129684.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnIlBvqtsIg