However, this article wasn’t actually about Donald Sterling, rather it was about Josh Olin, a man who Tweeted an opinion that was perfectly measured and reasonable and was fired for it. I find this to be much more upsetting than what is happening to Sterling, and I find the conduct of Turtle Rock to be even more troubling than that of the NBA. Now I’m sure that Olin doesn’t have a legal foot to stand on since there are few workforces that are treated as disposably as software development, but morally Turtle Rock have acted as cravenly as is feasibly possible for fair-weather management to do, and I will endeavour to not support any of their projects going forward. Very poor form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXDSfUJBCj0

I don’t think that it has a single thing to do with popularity!

Freedom of speech is an inalienable right of a free society; there should be no talk of any amendment needing to “grant it” to a person. What does that matter though to a society of hypocrites and a generation of vipers?

Of course it’s completely fascist to fire these people; however, such freedoms are a myth to this society that we hold up and ignore according to the whims at present. They apply only to an individual who is not talking to any other person(s), nor being covertly recorded. Corporate rights aren’t “granted” constitutionally; they exist nebulously from a history of court decisions. On the one hand you want to believe in and work towards a free society, but on the other realize that it’s the goal and not the current state. If no one or a just a few like-minded people hear you, you might be safe to speak freely…

The “Community Manager” positions looks like a really hot seat for these companies. Their job is to be popular to get momentum going and steady for their products, so putting out an opinion that is self-referentially “unpopular” must seem counterproductive at least to the masters. Again, don’t confuse your “granted right to freedom of speech” with the privilege to actually use it.

And if I have to spell out that I hate this kind of fascism, I will be sorely disappointed.

I agree with everything Lusi said in his final paragraph. The only way to fight these morons is by having companies take the side of their employee in situations like Olin’s and, to an extent, Sterling’s. Sterling has a long history of racist remarks and has lost a few lawsuits because he wouldn’t rent to blacks, Hispanics, and people with children. Still, Sterling is entitled to his views and is free to have them and flaunt them as long as he doesn’t break any laws during the course of business (which he did by discriminating who he would rent to).

If the NBA was really pissed about his racism, he should have been gone long ago, yet the NBA saw fit to orchestrate a trade of one of basketball’s biggest stars to Sterling’s team, despite the years of allegations. The NBA should be in the cross-hairs of the social media warriors just as much as Sterling, but that would require a bit of research and an ounce of intelligence.

All I have left to say is fuck the NBA, fuck Donald Sterling, fuck Turtle Rock Studios and fuck the Daily Mirror for trying to get Jeremy Clarkson fired from Top Gear.

NOT ON MY WATCH.

Donald Sterling is a bigot. If he wants to say bigoted things in his own home to his own girlfriend, I fail to see why anyone should have a single ounce of legal recourse to deprive him of his possessions. Hell, if he wants to stand on a street corner and shout them, I fail to see why there should be a way to take his stuff.

Either we have a freedom of speech, behind which we can ALL stand (including bigots and those with whom we disagree)–

–or we can punish those whose opinions we find troubling, in which case we don’t have a freedom of speech at all.

If there is no freedom of speech, out the window goes critique. And thought. And a marketplace of ideas. And debate. And reason. And, indeed, we can then never say anything because, when the wind changes, yesterday’s laudable truisms will be today’s illegal sentiments, and it’s off to the gulag for statements made illegal ex post facto.

I think Donald Sterling is an idiot. I disagree with his views. But he has absolutely the right to say them without suffering legal dispossession. –A fact lost on all the lynch-mob-mentality morons on the internet who forget that their vaunted high-ground principles were once, too, positions which depended upon the freedom of speech to risk being uttered. For these feeble, crawling, scum, ‘freedom of speech’ is simply ‘the freedom to say what I want, and the freedom to deny others the same right’. And every time some public-placating jackass capitulates to them, they become stronger, and worse. The bar to ‘offend’ them drops ever lower. Their demands grow increasingly unreasonable. And so it goes, worse by degrees and by the day.