What I don’t understand is that we’ve all made mistakes, and at some point had someone blame us for intentionally doing the wrong thing when it was unintentional.
There must be times where you’ve wanted the benefit of the doubt? Now, we have the opportunity to give it to someone else.
No. Does the fact that we don’t get to hear all the evidence mean we get to imagine whatever we want about why they were fired and assume it’s the truth?
Let me try to make my point clearer: assuming that this was the only reason for his firing is ALSO SPECULATION. In fact, we have two pieces of evidence here: the audio, for which there might be explanations other than racism, and THAT HE WAS FIRED.
A modern corporation like a news station tends to be very careful about firing people, especially an on-the-air person who is likely to have a contract. They play fast and loose with the rules all the time (HR departments are not your friends), but with an accusation like this, their lawyers likely vetted the firing thoroughly.
That right there is the speculation that i’m talking about. You are assuming that this was the sole event that led to his firing. WE DON"T KNOW THAT.
And just to be clear, i’m not arguing that there were more incidents, i’m just pointing out that his defenders are also making assumptions.
I can almost guarantee you that the senior anchors were called in to view the tape and put their professional assessments on the record before any decision was made, for exactly the reasons you mention. Since everyone makes mistakes, talent will usually bend over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to other talent – unless said other talent is a jerk to everyone behind the scenes. The form and content of his butthurt “apology” strongly indicates that this might be the case.
I’ll even give you a third: we have a rambling, really unfortunate quasi- or non-apology “apology” video.
Not sure why they would need to. As this entire conversation demonstrates, there are quite a few people who will be entirely willing to assume whatever facts are necessary to justify the firing based on those three pieces of evidence.
It’s amazing that even on BB people refuse to try to see both sides and take in context. If the guy had a history or it was known in his work environ that he harbored any feelings like this, then sure…
But, as a couple others have noted, if you say “King Junior” 5 times fast you can almost here what he said. When I thought about it as I ran the words through my head, I could see if you started to stumbled on “King”, then went into “Junior” and, in that split second realized your error and stopped, then “cxxn” is about what you would sound like.
I asked you to quit engaging me once already.
And just to be clear, i’m not arguing that there were more incidents, i’m just pointing out that his defenders are also making assumptions.
Yep, that’s a fair point. And maybe I’m incorrect when I assume his statement was a result of inadvertence. Maybe he steals the donuts in the break room. Maybe he just has really bad BO. Maybe he’s undefinably unpleasant to work with. There are any number of reasons this could have been the last straw for his firing. My only point is that without at least SOME more evidence than something that could very well be a slip of the tongue, I’m not willing to condemn him as a racist.
And a fourth. The apology didn’t come through a lawyer. If that had happened in my town and been plausibly innocent, I could have given you the name of the lawyer doing the talking.
Maybe he just jumbled his words and didn’t realize it’d turned into a slur until he was told later, maybe the environment in that office is so toxic management will fire anyone for any hint of a reason, maybe he’s the least racist guy you’ve ever met ™. There’s a lawyer that’d take that case. If this happens, I’ll apologize on this very forum for jumping to the conclusion that perhaps that wasn’t a one off.
Obligatory:
Meh. I’m gonna give him a pass on that one. Lawyers are pretty unpleasant… always arguing with people, taking up for unpopular causes, and making people appear as though they must have something to hide simply by their presence. 
It’s just not that hard for me to imagine being so horrified at a gaffe and its consequences that I’d try to apologize myself for it instead of rushing out to find a lawyer to do it for me.
I think we agree, there is very little evidence of anything. We don’t know the reasons for the firing, and can only speculate. We don’t know if he did it intentionally or it was jumbled words.
I guess my perspective is, there are many people who are definitely racist, and deserve this negative attention. This guy may or may not be, and our internet mob has bigger fish to fry.
The lawyer apology being the obvious precursor to a lawsuit.
Sure, but lawsuits are unpleasant and expensive (again b/c lawyers ). I’m not an employment lawyer, but the facts here look muddy enough that I doubt this guy could expect to get enough wrongful-termination money to induce somebody to take this on contingency.
Yeah, fuck that guy.
We’re letting go of a dog in the next few days
who is a finer man than he will ever be.
The right will see an embattered hero. The left will see an evil oppressor. Every news item is a Rorschach text, and in this context it literally doesn’t matter what old dude was actually thinking. There’s no way to know for sure, which makes this the perfect story for any partisan. Material conditions are less real than the discourse. The discourse, of course, serves the narrative, and all facts will bend to the will of the narrative.
I’m still mortified to this day about having had such a “slip” some 15 years ago. I was a member of our city’s planning and zoning commission; we were discussing a potential new ordinance to regulate signs, including things like awnings and banners, and specifically materials and their properties. I was speaking at a public hearing, to a room full of people, about the “sheen” of some material, and asked as an aside whether “sheen-y” was a word. The P&Z chairman butted in and said firmly, “No, it’s not!” and the audience laughed. I had no idea in that moment what I had just said – I had probably heard the slur before, but in the context here I was not thinking about the other meaning. Anyway, our minutes were recorded and transcribed word-for-word, so my gaffe is now part of the permanent public record of our fair city. In my (weak) defense, that’s a slur that seems to have fallen into disuse. But it’s still deeply embarrassing.
I had a religion teacher in high school who said near the end of term that the upcoming final exam was a “piece of cock.” I bet just about everybody in my graduating class (now almost 20 years past) would still get a chuckle out of this.
