WHAT IT WAS, WAS FOOTBALL
Earlier today, I wrote about Republican rhetorical tricks, and this morning, Jim Geraghty of the National Review (link below) kindly provided me with a new example, in an essay on the right of professional athletes to stage political protests. The essay was classic anti-anti-Trump, in which the author offers a ritual disapproval of Donald Trump (in this case, his attacks on NFL players), quickly diluted by a spate of “both sides-ism.”
Geraghty wrote: “Once again, we see most people’s perspective on whether one’s personal views should cost them their job depend almost entirely upon whether one agrees with their views. If you’re on the Left, you think that a baker ought to be fired if he refuses to bake a wedding cake for gays, that Kentucky clerk Kim Davis should have been removed from office, that the Google guy deserved to be fired, and that no NFL player should be fired for taking a knee.”
Geraghty mixes up a lot of apples and oranges here, and throws in some lemons and limes for good measure. Let me try to sort things out.
I’ll begin by noting that Geraghty uses a rhetorical bait and switch tactic by framing the issue as a question of whether an employee’s “personal views” should affect their employability – and then quickly and silently segued into scenarios about how four different people ACTED on their personal views.
In my view, the only thing a secular employer has a right to ask is that you do your job. What you think – about politics, about religion, even about the job you’re doing – is your own business, as long as follow two rules: get your work done and don’t prevent others from getting their work done.
Religious institutions are different; I sympathize with any church that asks its employees to believe what the church believe. But none of Geraghty’s examples relate to employees of religious organizations.
Let’s take Geraghty’s first example. Should a baker (assuming he works for a private bakery, and not a church or government commissary) be fired if he refuses to bake a wedding cake for gays? That depends on the bakery’s policy. If the owner says “bake the cake” and the baker refuses, then he violated the first rule and the owner has a right to fire him, although a charitable owner might first ask if other bakery employees were willing to step up and bake the damn cake.
On the other hand, if the owner of the bakery has a “no gay wedding cake” policy, then this hypothetical baker is doing his job, and in my view should not be fired. I’d be happy to boycott that business, but from my perspective, if a private business doesn’t want my money, they can go their own way. Cake is a good thing, but it’s not an essential public right.
James Damore, “that Google guy,” is a slightly different story. By all accounts he was good at his programming job. But he went beyond doing his job to publicly disagree with his company’s strategic hiring plan. He used the company listserv to post a long essay which argued, in essence, that approximately half of his co-workers (the female half) were genetically less capable of doing their jobs than him and his fellow male employees. If Google had ignored that email, it would have created a huge morale problem among current employees, and also made it harder to hire women in the future. In my view, Google had every right to fire him. He violated the second rule about not preventing others from doing their jobs (in this case, by sowing dissension in the workplace).
I have no way of knowing whether Damore was spoiling for a fight, or whether he was just clueless. But if he disagreed with that particular company policy and wanted to keep his job, he had a smarter option. He could have privately contacted Google’s strategic planners and made his case for changing the policy to them. If that didn’t work out to his satisfaction, he’d then have to decide whether he liked his job well enough to stay at Google anyway, or – if that one section of the company’s strategic plan was simply too much for him to bear – to leave Google and found another place to work where the strategic plan was more aligned with his personal views.
(I’m being a little sarcastic here, because I spent a good portion of my career writing, re-writing strategic plans, and then repeating the process the next year. I don’t know anyone who ever said “I cannot in good conscience live with this intolerable strategy. I quit.” Most people just ignore strategic plans and get on with their work.)
What about football players taking a knee during the national anthem? For me, the question is simply: what is their job? Is it in their contract that they have to stand during the national anthem? If not, on what grounds would an owner fire them?
Are they making it harder for their teammates to do their jobs? Those teammates sure don’t seem to think so. This past weekend, the number of anthem kneelers jumped from fewer than 10 to more than 250. And all but two of the league’s 32 owners weighed in with expressions of support for the players, as did the league’s commissioner.
We could get into why the national anthem is played at sporting events in the first place, but it doesn’t strike me as worth bothering about. I wonder how many TV viewers at home or in bars stand at attention when the anthem is played. Sit, stand, drink your beer, go to the bathroom, or whatever. If something so peripheral to the game bothers you that much, find something else to do.
The case of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk, is different yet again, because Davis was a public official. She refused a legal request to issue a marriage license to a gay couple because she didn’t believe in gay marriage. Unlike cake, a marriage license is a public right. Davis took a job, and then decided she didn’t want to do part of it. Perhaps there was no available workaround – another employee who could issue the license – or perhaps Davis didn’t look for a solution. Either way, she deprived two citizens of their legal rights. She absolutely should have been fired.
American workers, public and private, have legal rights (to safe working conditions, for instance), which I support enthusiastically, so what I’m about to say should be understood in that context. As a general principle, if you want the right to decide which workplace rules you will and won’t follow, you’re best off starting a business of your own and writing the rules. If you decide to work for somebody else, do your job and don’t make it harder for your fellow employees to do their jobs.
I don’t want to beat this to death, but I also don’t want to abandon this topic without noting that kneeling is a pretty universal sign of respect. NFL players didn’t say their intent was to disrespect the flag, the anthem, or members of the armed services. Blowhards like Donald Trump are the ones who are trying to brand non-violent protest against racism as unpatriotic.
And that’s another good example of Republican rhetorical dishonesty.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/451684/our-sports-talk-radio-caller-president