Bus Bias and Basketball Bandits

Bus Bias and Basketball Bandits

Move to the back of the bus! Gimme you wallet!

The first of those directives is most often associated with the segregated South when African-Americans were ordered to make room for whites–before Rosa Parks said, “No!” The second is often the command of a mugger who wants your hard-earned cash–now!

In Brooklyn, New York, the first is an acceptable order when given to women by Hasidic Jews. To Bryant Gumbel, the second is also acceptable as a labor demand by the National Basketball Players Association.

The Hasidim represent a sect of Orthodox Judaism in which Jewish males immerse themselves daily in a mikvah for spiritual cleansing, wear distinctive clothing, rigidly adhere to a tradition of gender separation–and reserve front seats for Hasidic men, even on Brooklyn buses.

On the morning of October 12th, Melissa Franchy boarded the B110 bus, took a seat near the front, and everything was fine–until the bus began to fill up with Hasidic men. At that point, male passengers insisted she relocate to the rear. Inquiring why, she was scolded, “When God makes a rule, you don’t ask, Why make the rule?”

Apparently unbeknownst to Franchy, the bus is privately-owned though operating a public service under a New York City franchise and is still subject to anti-discrimination laws. Maybe. An un-resolved question remains as to whether an exception can be made to allow sex discrimination on this quasi-public enterprise since, as NYMag.com explains, “It’s a Jewish bus.”

Should this public service be exempted from anti-bias laws? I don’t know. You make the call. I’m just pretty certain God didn’t “make the rule.”

Former Today show host and current HBO sportscaster Bryant Gumbel tends to make his own rules.

Forced off Today in 1989 after sniping at fellow staffers Willard Scott and Gene Shalit, Gumbel landed a job at CBS. In 2000, he was caught on camera saying, “What a f*cking idiot” following a hostile interview with Robert Knight. Knight has headed up the Family Research Council, the Media Research Center, and other conservative religious organizations but Gumbel didn’t approve his defense of the Boy Scouts’ exclusion of homosexual troop leaders.

Nevertheless, the true f*cking idiot Gumbel landed his HBO gig where he recently proved how f*cking idiotic he is. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5762.)