Rockets GREAT Photographer Bill Baptist slurs Kamala on Facebook

We are talking past each other. I've already said I'm not questioning the decision of the NBA in protecting its business interests. This isn't about that. If you don't think the concern I'm raising "matters", well fine. We disagree.

 

I actually disagree. CBS is doing some reporting on this, and you might find it interesting. There are way too many cases like Adam Smith's, told here:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cancel-culture-changed-lives-forever-cbsn-originals/
Dude made a little protest video against a fast food company and has never really recovered his life and livlihood. And it doesn't only suck when it happens to people we agree with. I'd argue if someone has years, even decades of commendable work, our society shouldn't throw that out the window for the person sharing something briefly on a social media platform. The criminal justice system, warts and all, is actually more forgiving in a lot of cases, for actual criminal conduct.

It's all out of proportion, and history shows that mobs of emotional people (in this case on the internet) model some of the worst human behavior.

For this photographer? He shared something, deleted it, and apologized. His multi-decade career is over? To me it seems out of whack. Maybe he had a history of questionable racial remarks in the Rockets' org and this was just the straw that allowed them to fire him. But absent that? If he'd been a law-abiding, decent employee who did his job well? And then a 10 second decision > 25 years or whatever?

Separate topic: the reaction of some posters with "well she is a hoe" or whatever does underline that we still have like a 19th-century problem in parts of our culture. She allegedly slept with Willie Brown (a charming, powerful guy to be sure), but would these posters bat an eye if one of their politicians had slept with some other politician in their youth? Never mind some of what passes as okay with them for their party leaders. Yeesh.

 

Cancel culture only effects rich people (even people the CBS episode you posted are well off) and they eventually get back to work when news cycle passes and emotions cool off.
It serves a purpose and is no scarlet letter type of situation. No one is stoned to death, but morality is "protected" to a degree. Trump is fighting the cancel culture tooth and nail, so that should help one decide the lesser evil hopefully..

Edit: and Baptist will go back to being a maintenance guy most likely. Sucks for him

 

And I would expect it wouldn’t even be worthy of a thread title and if it was it would be outrage that he got fired.

 

Very True...

Texas is a Right To Work State..

T_Man

 

I just think it's an artificial construct.

It's not a societal or cultural thing. It's a power thing. And if people have the power to complain about something someone posted on social media to their place of work, they will do it. That's why when we trained people back in 2008 regarding social media publishing, first rule was - don't ever post anything controversial to your personal feeds. Back then it wasn't an issue, but we all knew it was going to be one.

This isn't a cultural issue, it's a human nature meets technology issue.

 

All moral questions of the form "should people do this?" only apply to cases where they have the power to do so but can choose whether or not to go ahead and do it. Necessarily -- if they don't have the power to do it anyway, then there is no moral decision involved.

If your point is simply that people will do what they have the power to do and there's no point questioning whether they should do it, then I think that's a fundamentally amoral position.

 

I understand this joke 99er

None of the lesser members have ever been to a hotel establishment
they are living in hostels

 

Lebron James is much harder to replace than this idiot

This idiot is harder to replace than the fry cook

So forth and so on

 

fify

 

But you haven't stated what behavior you are even questioning precisely. Are you questioning whether people should speak up and complain if someone calls a Kamala Harris a hoe? Are you saying there's a moral question of responding?

Why does Baptist get to express himself and that's ok but no one can criticize what he writes because it might cost him his job? Is that what you are debating here?

 

That's not the definition of cancel culture and if you try and downplay it as such is dangerous.

There are literal people who wake up everyday looking to cancel somebody or something to get a rep.

That canceling somebody is usually at a minimum to get somebody fired from something.

I really don't think incident is a cancel culture thing there is no way he was gonna keep his job in sports after posting that on a public forum.

 

I agree with all of this but is his career actually over?

If he was this great guy and is good at his work I am sure he will continue to get free lance work because of the relationships he has it will be easy enough for people to buy his pics without any names being involved.

What is eye opening to me is this question of fairness in employment especially as a contract employee, people are fired everyday for for less egregious things and blackballed for pettiness I have personally experienced this.

What is the responsibility of this guy to know how this would play out?

What does him posting it and taking it down have to do with anything, he made a conscious decision to do that and the reason he deleted it was because his group told him what was gonna happen.

What is out of whack that the NBA wants nothing to do with him publicly anymore?

Yeah it sucks and I don't think anybody should have everything wiped out because of one incident but did this guy just wake up from a comma?

 

Let's get this out of the way, if I haven't been clear enough about it: Criticizing him is fine, and even appropriate. What Baptist did was not appropriate.

What I'm talking about is seeking to have him fired for what he did, as punishment, and pressuring his employer to do so. I don't think that's appropriate. Maybe you think no one did this. But he was obviously fired because of the threat of this happening. Either from people within the NBA itself, or from outside influencers.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you but that is a problem. For example I thought it was crass and completely lacked perspective when people were harassing employees at Chick Fil-A over their CEO's anti-abortion and Rightwing politics. Whatever you might think of their CEO's views it's certainly not the responsibility of the person working the drive thru to shape or address the CEO's political beliefs.

As I said this is a problem not of just the NBA but really where society is at. The NBA isn't leading this, they didn't create it but they certainly aren't doing anything here to make it better.

As far as would Baptist get fired by the WWE I have no idea. Vince McMahon is obviously a Trump supporter but haven't not watched it in years I don't know who their sponsors are. For that matter as I said I'm less concerned about the content of the post. I agree it's offensive. I just think that for one post should cost his livelihood.

 

No one is saying you can't criticize what Baptist writes. Just because you think it is excessive for him to lose his job that apparently he's done well for decades over this doesn't mean you can't call out what he said. Again lack of perspective.

 

This is the NBA covering their ass because of the fear of cancel culture. The NBA is afraid that if they don't sever their ties with him people will automatically assume that they approve what he posted and want to cancel the NBA.

 

He woke up from an Oxford Comma, dazed and confused.

 

And this is bad why?

What is this guy to them that they need prop him up and face that backlash, what is wrong with this/

How about Bill not post stuff like this on a public forum?

Why are you singling out the NBA, do you think the NFL or ESPN would have kept him on?

It's becoming obvious your issue is with the NBA, yet any other public facing company with these demographics and partners would do the same thing.

How about you direct some of that ire to the guy who put himself in this position.

 

Who exactly pressured anybody to do this?

Yes it was bound to happen but it seems like this was fate accompli once they became aware.

Any other corporation would do the same.