What you probably shouldn’t do is bully a pleasant, courteous young woman serving customers at one of the company’s outlets, film yourself acting like a nasty, smug, sanctimonious prick and then post the results on YouTube. Which is what this arsehole did:
Because of the American public’s adverse reaction to the video (it went viral), Adam Smith, the CFO of an Arizona-based medical device manufacturer, was fired (which I think was a trifle harsh, given that he hadn’t threatened violence and hadn’t mentioned the company he worked for – after all, even jerks can be good at their job). Smith then posted another video apologising to the evidently very nice girl he had berated, praising her dignity and compsure in the face of his appalling rant, and she then appeared on Fox News with her boyfriend and said she accepted his apology.
This much – even if you’re a UK visitor to this blog – you probably know: it’s been in the papers and all. But what really interested me about the story is why so many liberals feel that holding what to them is the self-evidently morally correct view about every issue ultimately justifies them behaving like pigs towards people who happen not to agree with them - or whose opinions, as in this case, are unknown.
I’ve already written that left-liberal ideas seem make the holder feel so euphoric that they become as addictive as crack (you can read the item here). The wonderful, self-satisfied glow that results from supporting, say, gay marriage or positive discrimination in education or outlawing hate speech seems to require the holder to keep upping the dosage in order to remain high – you start off supporting mass immigration, you move onto to lauding multiculturalism, you then find yourself making excuses for the way Muslims treat women, and, before you know it, you're supporting the introduction of Sharia law into Western societies.
Similarly, you start off thinking it would be a good thing if more poor kids went to university, so you allow polytechnics to pretend to be universities, you then decide more poor kids should go to good universities, so you make exams easier to pass: then you decide they should be allowed into Oxbridge even if their results are poor… and you end up demanding private schools candidates be punished for working hard and achieving impressive results.
Similarly, I presume Adam Smith started off thinking gay rights were really rather agreeable, but that stopped making him feel sufficiently morally superior after a while, so he decided that gay marriage would be a good thing, then that everyone who didn’t support gay marriage was full of hate, then that they deserved to be punished, then that anyone who worked for someone who didn’t approve of gay marriage deserved to be shouted at and humiliated and made to feel bad about themselves.
It's not that different from the way an occasional smoker of dope ends up stealing from pensioners to feed a massive heroin habit.
As with any recovering addict I hope Adam Smith bounces back from all this and at the very least winds up realising that feeling good about yourself doesn’t mean you have to try to make others feel wretched. And I hope that, should he ever fall off the wagon, he picks on someone in a position to answer back – and that his chosen victim has instant access to a baseball bat.
Well, the 18th century Adam Smith was close to his mother and never married so there may be some sort of cross- the-centuries morphic resonance in which the 21st century namesake from the world of medical appliance manufacture feels some sort of obligation to defend his ancestor's possible sexuality.
ReplyDeleteWhatever one might think of this fast food outlet, it did inspire the best ever lyric about playing in an unsuccessful band.
"Grew a moustcahe and a mullet, got a job at Chick-Fil-A,
Citing 'artistic differences' the band broke up in May
And in June reformed without me, got themselves a different name,
I nuked another Grandma's Apple Pie and hung my head in shame."
On the other hand, your supposition that the guy is simply an arse is the more credible explnation. what a Royal tool.
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ReplyDeleteI had never heard of Chic-Fil-A before Scott wrote about the organisation 11 days ago. Since then, the number of sightings has multiplied ...
This time last year, the Guardian – or more precisely GNM, Guardian News & Media – announced pre-tax losses of £43 million:
QUOTE
Andrew Miller, the GMG chief executive, has warned that the group could run out of cash in three to five years if the business opera-tions did not change, adding that the newspapers would aim to save £25m over the next five years, releasing funds to be reinvested in other activities.
The GMG referred to in that quotation is Guardian Media Group, which owns GNM and 50.1% of TMG, Trader Media Group.
UNQUOTE
The Guardian is permanently incandescent about tax avoidance by irresponsible capitalists. Strange, because TMG is jointly owned with private equity firm Apax Partners through a Cayman Islands-based tax avoidance structure.
Irresponsible capitalism notwithstanding, last year the spectacularly profitable TMG provided an extraordinary £50 million dividend to GMG without which the Guardian might run out of the means to express its permanent incandescence even sooner.
Has any progress been made towards those savings of £25 million? The auguries are not good – last Friday the Guardian announced pre-tax losses of £44.2 million for GNM. Andrew Miller has nobly taken a 10% pay cut and waived a £174,000 bonus. Alan Rusbridger also has taken a 10% pay cut and a 50% cut in the company contribution to his pension scheme.
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ReplyDeleteWhich may leave Messrs Miller and Rusbridger feeling a bit green when they see the coup Mark Thomson has pulled off.
When he ceases to be director general of the BBC, Mr Thomson will become president and CEO of the New York Times (NYT). NYT announced second quarter losses of $88.1 million the other day. They're going to pay Mr Thomson $10.5 million in his first year in the job and they're paying off his predecessor with £24 million.
It must be tempting to fill the paper with articles about how this is a realistic way for a major loss-making newspaper group to spend its last remaining money but, no, the Guardian continues gamely to write about the upcoming US presidential election.
They join the NYT in calmly accusing Mitt Romney of dog abuse, granny abuse and deliberately giving cancer to the wife of a man who had been laid off five years before by a company Mr Romney was connected with but not actually running at the time. These allegations are passed off as uncontroversial matters of fact.
Then Paul Ryan was named as Romney's running mate and he's got something to do with the Ayn Rand Institute and that's got something to do with the Tea Parties and so Rory Carroll was let loose in the Guardian to write Ayn Rand Institute finds dilemma in radical author's evolving legacy:
QUOTE
To critics who consider Rand's philosophy that "of the psychopath, a misanthropic fantasy of cruelty, revenge and greed", her posthumous success is alarming.
UNQUOTE
Psychopath? Misanthropic? Cruel? Revenge? Greed? Just a few more uncontroversial matters of fact. Just a few more commonly accepted synonyms for "conservative".
As it happens, neither Ms Rand nor Mr Romney nor Mr Ryan currently faces a murder investigation. But Floyd Corkins does. Mark Steyn has the story.
It's all back to front. Floyd Corkins is an LGBT volunteer and therefore a liberal and on the side of the angels and impossible to criticise in the NYT or the Guardian.
Nevertheless, he shot a man called Leo Johnson, a security guard at the Family Research Council, a "conservative" organisation or "hate group". Mr Corkins told Mr Johnson "I don't like your politics" and then shot him dead. And according to Mark Steyn:
... In his backpack, he had one box of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches.
When Fox, NBC and CNN (among others) were already describing the murder of Leo Johnson as a political act (there's a small clue in your "I don't like your politics" quote), MSNBC gave the story 17 seconds and claimed the police were still trying to figure out a motive.
DeleteOn Ayn Rand, I read a book on philosophy by her once in which she attacked Kant as a rabid, bleeding heart, liberal, pinko and I've rather steered clear of her since then. She ended her life as a very keen stamp collector. I might have to give her another go, as some very sound people have been fans.
Yes, my old boss Thommo's done rather well for himself - but I expect he and Rusbridger give most of their earnings away to their pet victim groups.