I hate the junior stuff. It messes everything up. Junior and Seniors get their paperwork, their identity mixed up… it’s a mess because our system of identification is full of lazy people and shortcuts and even incentives not to do it right.
I can tell you right now…
There is absolutely no way renaming Martin Luther King Jr. is going to be seen as anything positive when we do it because a couple of white guys mangle his name and say coon. Millions, millions of other people manage just fine.
I couldn’t even do it on purpose. Coon is not part of my vocabulary. It’s weird to hear and say. I am told though, by other locals, that it does exist heavily not just within racists circles but hilly-billy ones, the latter not really tied to race at all… the former is.
Sigh. Again, ‘Martin Luther Coon’ is a widespread racist expression. If it comes out of your mouth, it’s because you’re in the habit of saying it or thinking it or hearing it.
Yep. And if there’s a tiny fraction of instances where it’s an honest-to-goodness slip of the tongue, perhaps owing to this trying-awfully-hard King/Joon theory, well, that’s bad luck but you fire them anyway. It’s nuking from orbit and the only way to be sure and all that.
Maybe he means growing up in a racist household or environment where hearing it was commonplace.
I find it really unbelievable that anyone claims this is some sort of natural tongue twister. I think it only comes out if you’ve heard it, probably multiple times. The problem is, hearing something and saying something and believing something yourself is not the same thing.
If someone is running around and being racist with Martin Luther King Jr.'s name, I suspect there will be evidence of it elsewhere too, closest racists aren’t good at hiding without a lot of help. If they have that, fire them. If they don’t… maybe give them one more chance.
Mayyyybe. But in this social media outrage climate, that can be risky. Within hours there can be immense financial pressure coming down on a network and it’s a no-win situation.
Yeah. I mean when you can be fired for just about, well anything, no fault at all, just up don’t want to pay your salary, it’s hard not to just let it go. The kind thing to do here though is if they don’t have history of this stuff, maybe believe them, it’s something they’ve heard and they repeated it.
Despite what they might think, I think trying to claim this is some sort of natural twist of the tongue did them no service here. If they have racists in the family, at best, or they seek material with this in it, at worst, well… that’s at least believable.
It’s the same debate we’re having in the other thread about the MAGA hat. If the person who misspoke on the air is a MAGA/Trump supporter, is that enough evidence of a history of this stuff?
(I vote yes. There are other ways to make a living. It’s not like we’re executing them… yet.)
Yes. If their social media is full of MAGA and railing against brown people, then they lose the benefit of the doubt. Oh sure some right wing people will get mad about it but let’s just review why we’re here in the first place… they said a known racial slur on TV. The way to avoid this whole mess is to just not do that. It’s not common, no matter how many Fox news articles and angry people on Twitter claim it is. If you don’t use coon in your daily vocabulary, it’s not going to be said. Find that hard to believe, well we’re an always on society now. Where’s all the footage of the not racist people eagerly talking about MLK and screwing up his name in one of the most offensive ways possible? There’s thousands of videos right because it’s “so easy” to do, right? And they’re not all at Klan rallies either… right?
I honestly don’t think people should be going to jail for this, at least not if they plead guilty and apologize. They should be paying hefty fines, but jail just seems disproportionate.
20 years would be too harsh IMO, but I absolutely see they should spend sometime 6-12 months in jail. Plus probation and big ass fine, and some appropriate community service. Money doesn’t mean a lot to folks like them.
Deterrence is an important part of our criminal system and I argue that seeing Martha Steward or Felicity Huffman in jail is much better deterrence for rich people, than a lot of stuff we do to deter poor people.
Deterrence isn’t a real thing, it’s just what we tell ourselves so we don’t feel as bad about a “justice” system that is mostly about quasi-militarized police keeping the lower classes in fear and in line.
If you really want the justice system to attempt to deter the rich the same way they do the poor, it’s too late. For things to be fair, the police making the initial arrests should have shot two family dogs and one innocent family member. Then we could have heard all about how the poor police were afraid for their safety, and maybe offered some “thoughts and prayers” for the poor rich folks. But only in moderation on the thoughts and prayers, because we all really know they brought it on themselves by their illegal illegal ways.
It’s definitely a real thing. People might overvalue it’s effect, but saying it doesn’t exist at all is silly.
I’ve never robbed a bank and I don’t exceed the speed limit by more than 7. And it’s not because I don’t want to do either of those things at the end of the day, it’s because the risk/reward equation makes neither of them worth doing.
Definitely, I remembered after my junior year in college my best friend from high school got DUI. I lived with him for the summer, watching the hassle and expense of him dealing with his DUI completely changed my attitude about drinking and driving. I certainly wasn’t afraid of dying at 22, but not being able to use my car except to go to work and back, having to go to AA meeting for 6 months, getting a huge increase insurance, and spending a couple of nights in jail. No thank you, I don’t get really drunk if I have to drive anymore.
If that’s the only part of my post you can nitpick then I think my point stands. I freely concede that the concept of deterrence is a real thing. ShivaX: 1 Tortilla: 0
Hell, most penalties for white collar crime are less than you make doing them. Steal a billion dollars from people? Pay $500 million in fine with no jail time. Well, shit that’s just the cost of doing business at that point. Assuming they ever even catch you in the first place.
They occasionally give someone some jail time to try to make an example of them, but even then the penalties are minor compared to what you’d get for much smaller offenses as a regular person.
I’m not sure I follow your original post, then if you think that saying a deterrence effect is real is nitpicking.
I think deterrence is huge part of criminal punishment. The other half being rehabilitation. I don’t know what makes you say, so confidently, that deterrence is not a substantial rationale behind our criminal justice system. One can argue that in the US, deterrence is almost the whole thing, since we’re so bad at rehabilitation.
If you’re arguing that because it isn’t 100% effective (e.g., repeat offenders), then sure. But that’s very different than deterrence not having a substantial impact on behavior, overall.
I can’t speak for Tortilla, but I believe what he’s saying is when deterrence isn’t equal across the spectrum of haves and have-nots, it becomes a tool of oppression instead of just simply law and order.
