Keith Olbermann Suspended For Calling Penn State Students "Pitiful"

He knocked their "academics," out of the blue, as far as I can tell. I guess Penn State isn't as good a school as the Cornell Cow College (the ag school satellite of Cornell Keith went to, though he never mentions that part of it).

But now he's been suspended -- for being a dick on-line.

I don't know why we are just encouraging and encouraging corporations to suspend us or even fire us for the "Problematic" things we might say when we conservatives are guaranteed to be on the wrong end of "problematic" speech complaints far more than progressives.

Ummm... whatever, Keith.

Obviously Keith is a damaged and inadequate individual who wins all his petty "victories" by being nasty to people online. (Hey, wait a minute....!)

But so fucking what? What does that have to do with ESPN? ESPN pays him to do a job; why do they insist on patrolling his behavior outside of the scope of employment?

Conservatives are way too accepting of this idea that if your company wants you to act as a Corporate Ambassador 24/7/365, always helping the "corporate brand," then they are perfectly within their rights to demand this.

Bullshit. You don't get to micromanage people's lives outside of the context of work. And we should not accept this and make excuses for it or, worse yet, justify it as good and right.

ESPN, yes, has the legal right to do this. Any company can fire an at-will employee for any reason they like; and any employee under contract can be disciplined for violations of his Morals clauses or whatever.

But we should not encourage corporations to be too eager to punish employees for their non-work-related speech.

Because all corporations except the explicitly conservative ones tow the soft-leftist PC line. All of them.

I'm telling you, in empowering corporations to patrol speech violations, you are in fact empowering the people who will, ultimately, be enforcing the PC Speech Codes which run afoul of the Constitution. The state will not be able to impose consequences for "hate speech," like questioning Obama's patriotism, but your employer will always have this power.

Accepting this idea that a company's power to patrol its workers' private lives for all sorts of Social and Political Deviancy is cutting our own throats.

Well:

Ah, the corporate-compelled apology. There is nothing more sincere.

posted by Ace at 02:31 PM

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