Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Strange Times
An anti-Israel antisemite writes some rather unpleasant stuff about rich Jews in a French periodical and gets fired over it. A columnist in the NYT with the distinctively Muslim surname of Cohen defends the free speech rights of the foul Frog and says he should not have been fired. And I agree with the NYT columnist!
I rarely agree with anything in the NY Pravda and I am about as pro-Israel as you can get so it does feel pretty odd.
But read the whole thing, as they say in the classics.
Update:
Another account of the affair here
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9 comments:
Free speech is guaranteed in America. Everyone has the right to disagree with anything they see fit.
You can criticize anyone, it won't kill them.
But free speech and hate speech are two separate things.
In Canada that's a different story. You can be sued for being killed by someone for no reason.
Any speech is considered hate speech.
Homosexuals pass on nasty comments about those who are heterosexual and they call it free speech.
This however happened neither in Canadadada nor the USA.
It happened in France, where it's still legal to fire someone for deliberately acting in such a way as to damage the company.
That the person being fired was also an anti-semite is icing on the cake, that he's fired at all a sign that the Islamofascists don't yet completely control France.
Free speech does NOT mean you can say anything you want on private property. If a property owner doesn't like how you're behaving towards his guests or customers he has every right to remove you, as happened here.
It's only the government who cannot dictate what citizens can and cannot say (and in France that's applied less strictly than in e.g. the US).
So I don't mind this person being fired, and would consider it a blow for free speech if he won his lawsuit. But that's irrespective of his statements, that those are anti-semitic is just a nice bonus.
It's very odd to see the far-left fighting with jews, since they're usually one-in-the-same. But it's all rather moot since soon France will be but another Muslim outpost, and it couldn't happen to a nicer place!
Since when does free speech equal speech without consequences. I live in America and have the right to say what I want. However, if I say something that offends my employer's customers, I can be terminated today.
I think we all agree that the newspaper was within its rights to fire a writer who expressed views in the paper that the management did not support. Free speech does not mean that I have to publish your rantings.
I think the point is, rather, that the newspaper ought not to have so acted - even though they may have been entitled to do so. While I agree that in my view perhaps management should have shown restraint they were free to act as they wish with their publication.
OK, so you state that the newspaper had every right to fire the man but should not have had the right to fire him?
Doublespeak if I ever heard it...
Actually, it doesn't look like doublespeak to me. It is two different statements. One: The paper should have had the right to fire the worker. Two: The paper acted inappropriately (yet not illegally) in firing the worker. It is a question of the government can/should compel through law (legal arguments) versus what a company should do (personal opinion.)
Law should reflect what people "should" do.
So you're stating that people should not do things that aren't politically correct.
This guy should never have gotten that job in the first place.
When he got it, his rant should never have been published.
Now that it has been published and he exposed as harming the business of his employer, he should be terminated.
Once you start dictating that companies can't fire people who hurt their business through their actions, businesses are at the mercy of any employee who wants to extort them.
"Law should reflect what people "should" do."
And just exactly who should determine what a person should or swhoud not do? You? There are plenty of countries that have laws about what people should do that others think are wrong. There are a lot of laws on the books the are BS.
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