-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Lindsey Stone, a 30-year-old Massachusetts native, has been terminated because of the photo (shown left) she posted on her Facebook page. Lindsey worked for LIFE (Living Independent Forever), a Cape Cod-based nonprofit organization that assists adults with learning disabilities. Jamie Schuh, who took the photo, and Lindsey’s supervisor at LIFE, was also terminated.
The two were on a company-paid trip to Washington D.C. when the photo was taken. The photo shows Lindsey mocking a sign at Arlington National Cemetery. The photo went viral and over 30,000 people liked a Facebook page set up to demand her firing. The two have apologized for the gag:
We never meant any disrespect to any of the people nationwide who have served this country and defended our freedom so valiantly.
While the photo obviously mocks the sign, many apparently thought it mocked those buried at Arlington National Cemetery. A sign demanding “Silence and Respect” deserves to be mocked. The wording of the sign projects a sense of arrogance and entitlement common to institutions that view themselves as sacred cows.
Adding the word “Please” to the sign would change the command to a request, a more sensible sentiment.
H/T: Mano Singham, Gawker, Boston Herald.
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If the rules are important, which they are or they would not be called rules, then why are they not posted where anyone, including myself, can read when need arises.
To ask the person who is accusing you of violating them seems not to give any result, if the lack of a reply from Gene Howlington is to be taken as an example.
Why?
GeneH,
“But I do care about your repeated violation of the rules here.”
What violations of what rules?
Put up examples.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, someone here said.
I ask you what is the rule? Or are you refusing to cite it?
So you are threatening me. Just as I thought. But you won’t admit it.
So what is the rule which YOU feel that I am violating?
Explain it to me, that would be a correct warning between fellow members.
For we are fellow members. You have expressly said that you as GB have no more prerogatives other than as current blogger to answer for good order in the blog. Which only you seem interested in bothering with.
Other GBs may disagree with me on much or little. But they don’t come bearing threats of banning on the basis of incivility. How asinine.
Of course you can make a case against me. But in reality it would be a false case. I do not attack as I was want to do in the beginning out of fear. But I am defiant of the members of the gang who persist in doing your bidding.
To others I bend over backwards to avoid problems.
But anybody can make a case by clever citation excised out of context, where context stretches often over several exchanges of comments and is not limited to one sentence or two words. The media does it all the time.
So cough up the rule that you say that I have violated and we can discuss it.
More evidence.
The rules around here have been stated numerous times, including since you’ve been here. Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse for violating them.
Proceed at your own risk.
GeneH,
You say “civility rule”.
Cite it. Define it, establish its borders. Never heard of it.
We twice have had threads on civility here. They were the Professor’s blogs. Everybody got so angry airing old hurts from others here that the Professor had to phone in comments encouraging us to calm down and be civil to each other in the current discussion, not once but twice.
The last time from the swimming pool.
The disciussion the next day/thread was somewhat calmer.
Summarum: Lots of bad feelings here, over civility.
Feel responsible.? Stupid question. You are blind to your faults or negative contributions.
You call me crazy. Is that also civil? What a laugh you are.
I characterize people by pointing out defects in their words or reasoning which their words support. That is not uncivil. That is factual criticism based on my judgement of reality.
You called me by a DSM term “passive-aggressive”. Is this the kind of blog the professor wishes to be known by? Where members of GB status label others with DSM diagnoses?
So give me the rule and examples and we can discuss them. But you are too lazy to do that. And fearful of being exposed with no proof to show.
You are a bully GeneH. And that is not uncivil. That is a description which I think there is good proof to be found in your writings.
The point is GeneH, is that there is no rule, defined and enforceable. The Professor has the right to ban anyone he wants. But his open attempt to increase civility was a fiasco, the first time. I wish him luck because I much prefer civility to the way you and your pack have twisted this blog to be.
Without civility it is difficult to discuss. Shamus and I achieved it in spite of conflict .
Shano and I did too, in spite of earlier falling outs.
But some are your running dogs and look to you on whom to attack. (Good ol’ Mao)
I said the turkey buzzards would come soon, and they did. Shamus promised to use his bird call if necessary, but it wasn’t.
I’m not threatening you a bit.
I’m making a promise.
You’re free to say what you like, but you are also free to suffer the consequences. There are few rules around here. If you don’t like that or the fact I’m willing to make a case for banning you for perpetually violating one of them?
Learn to control yourself.
As for you opinion of me? To quote junctionshamus, DILLIGAF? Neither I nor anyone of any import to me cares what some anonymous Internet troll thinks of me. But I do care about your repeated violation of the rules here. You haven’t learned the lesson of futility. That’s fine. There are other options to exercise should you persist.
The choice is yours.
Any action I take in response is going to be entirely premised on yours.
Carry on.
Nal:
“Therefore, the question is: Based solely on the reference to Arlington National Cemetery, why is the objection justified?”
********************
This seems self-evident to me. If she refuses to accord respect to persons who died to protect you and your way of life one wonders what she would respect. That it involves Arlington National Cemetery is precisely the point. I doubt we’d even have a debate if the picture originated at the State Department or the Pentagon though an argument could be made for those two institutions as well.
I suppose what is relentlessly galling to many of us is just how insensitive this young woman is to the suffering or others — be they interred there or be they the families of those interred there. Maybe it’s the sheer ingratitude of it all and the breakneck speed employed to brag about the stunt publicly thus garnering the laughing approval of like-minded “friends.” She had to know that the Facebook photo would provoke a response. And, boy, she got one.
I don’t think the First Amendment requires us common folk to suffer ingrates passively or fools gladly. The government — maybe? But those of us who still accept the notions of fitting honors and earned respect — not so much.
agreed.
JS,
yeah, was there for EPG only. don’t imagine that humint had come there yet. yeah the streets of baltimore must have been better than the west range or sierra vista for training. 😉 Catcha later.
GeneH,
You sound like you are threatening me? Be my guest.
When is it uncivil to call a spade a spade?
You are a control freak, That is my opinion. Is it uncivil? How so?
Is OS unprofessional using his professional pondus as a psychiatrist to claim that someone is acting like a four year old? I think so. Is that uncivil? How so?
Is your fine mind and logic competence being used for base purposes and in support of your love for kicking ass (you actually appear to think that is tough guy to do so—-weird!), using ad hominems, etc of the basest sort.
I think it is. Is that uncivil to say so. How so.
I think my words are not uncivil, but are spot on descriptions. You may disagree, but don’t say uncivil. Pot kettle.
But you are just a bully, and can not think otherwise.
This just in from CNET Daily News:
http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57556686-285/how-to-avoid-making-one-of-the-10-worst-facebook-mistakes/
Just sayin’…
@I707 – Yes, EPG was there when I was, a different set of folks from the school, and not much interaction as we were just passing through. Wondered if you had been there for just that reason. The HUMINT program was transferred from Ft. Holabird in Baltimore several years before I arrived. The elders in the field liked it better, as it was a more realistic (urban) training ground than Ft. “We gotcha”. You can send an e-mail through my site if you’d like, don’t want to take up others’ time listening to us reminisce.
My daughter uses Facebook, as do several of the other officers in her department. They use Facebook to stay in contact as they work different shifts. She came home last night and had to unfriend and block three or four of her former high school classmates. They have been arrested, and she cannot have them showing up on her Facebook page. She hated to do it, but she is a professional.
Nal,
Spot on. I recently saw an unscientific survey on Slashdot that asked what computer technology would you like to “uninvent”. The overwhelming choice was social media. This confirms what my brief flirtation with social media taught me as well. It’s one giant boondoggle waiting to happen.
Note to self: Don’t put employer on Facebook page.
Second note to self: Don’t use Facebook at all.
As I said, in the world of business, running your mouth unchecked can have serious economic consequences. To wit:
I read back over this thread. I don’t think anyone here has advocated for this silly woman not being able to do what she wanted. Even the spokesman for the Old Guard did not say that, he just said something to the effect that what she did was not even worth commenting on.
On the other hand, businesses must be sensitive to what their employees say and do. Papa John was completely within his legal right to say something totally stupid, and the effect has been loss of business. Radio stations carrying Rush Limbaugh are bleeding sponsors in droves after his offensive tirade insulting Sandra Fluke and virtually all women of child bearing age. As I said before, any employer who had several thousand emails protesting a stupid employee, will cut his or her losses and get rid of the employee. Free speech is not censored by the legal system, but when you represent a business interest, it is better to be civil and circumspect.
shano,
“The whole budget for the war machine should be transfered to development of alternative energy.”
Bingo.
Crazy people are allowed to express their opinions. You prove that every day, id. What I see in this thread is multiple attempts by you to break the civility rule.
Keep it up.
See how that works out for you.
JunctionShamus.
Read your background presentation. I was at Ft Huachuca in ’60-62 with of course time at Ft Monmouth. Was the Electronic Proving Grounds still there when you were there? (USAEPG)
Impressive resumé.
Have you read Ishmael Jone’s book: “Human Factor”. He was a long serving undercover officer for CIA. CIA hated what he wrote and refused to approve it, only censor it all was there answer.
He says the milint was better in the field than the CIA. His solution to the CIA was, briefly put: give the Operations part to milint, but forgot what he suggested with the analysis half. Detailed list of suggestions in an appendix.
He had also been at Huachuca which he emailed me. His contact is in the book.
Well, now gone through the pile.
Conclusions?
OS is senile.
DonS is fully functioning.
GeneH comes to complain of divergence from thread purpose; and spends his time in a long session of mutual masturbation with Mespoooo on Rome and Carthage—–totally irrelevant to the subject. of the thread.
Look to the past to avoid the same future (I said that) is a good motto, but drinking the same poison as Rick and Cato and Socrates is dumb. We are in our time facing our threats. And our threateners are corporations, war bleeding us, fascists and conformity—-plus a MIC that controls the nation.
The rest gave more than expected.
A sacred right to speech must be respected, always. The highest precedence above all. If the protest is disturbing the peace of the cemetery, then ring for an officer to correct the problem. Do not cause a disturbance yourself. The employer should have said: “What my employees do in their private life is theirs to be responsible for.”
The men/women here died for the rights you are obliged as a citizen to protect. So should it be.