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.)
Showing posts with label nba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nba. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
PC in the NBA
PC in the NBA
Despite the proven absurdity of the unwritten, unofficial, inequitable rules of political correctness by which America is forced to live, the agents of PC keep finding new ways to enforce it, some subtle, some blatant, all ridiculous.
One observer who has traced the history of political correctness calls it “cultural Marxism” and explains, “the name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, it’s deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.”
Academic Bill Lind elaborated: “For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic:” http://bit.ly/bsNr2b
The only problem with Lind’s definition and explanation of PC, which is right on the money, is that he seems to think it’s not a joke whereas it is a joke, a pathetic, sick, and pernicious joke–on common sense. It rears its ugly head in virtually every venue, from schools to legislatures, to churches and emerges on the most unexpected occasions.
A form of thought crime, another reflection of Marxist mind manipulation publicized if not created by Orwell’s Big Brother, political correctness is also the philosophical basis for such crime. Society and law enforcement agencies now presume to read the minds of accused malefactors and determine, predicated on their perceptions of an accused evildoer’s infraction of PC rules, how to treat the accused commensurately.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate the irrational senselessness of political correctness is to cite a recent, seemingly innocuous example of its implementation, enforcement, in the sports world.
Kobe Bryant, star shooting guard for the NBA’s LA Lakers, escaped certain prosecution and probable jail time for the rape . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4155)
Despite the proven absurdity of the unwritten, unofficial, inequitable rules of political correctness by which America is forced to live, the agents of PC keep finding new ways to enforce it, some subtle, some blatant, all ridiculous.
One observer who has traced the history of political correctness calls it “cultural Marxism” and explains, “the name originated as something of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it as only half-serious. In fact, it’s deadly serious. It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.”
Academic Bill Lind elaborated: “For the first time in our history, Americans have to be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think. They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic:” http://bit.ly/bsNr2b
The only problem with Lind’s definition and explanation of PC, which is right on the money, is that he seems to think it’s not a joke whereas it is a joke, a pathetic, sick, and pernicious joke–on common sense. It rears its ugly head in virtually every venue, from schools to legislatures, to churches and emerges on the most unexpected occasions.
A form of thought crime, another reflection of Marxist mind manipulation publicized if not created by Orwell’s Big Brother, political correctness is also the philosophical basis for such crime. Society and law enforcement agencies now presume to read the minds of accused malefactors and determine, predicated on their perceptions of an accused evildoer’s infraction of PC rules, how to treat the accused commensurately.
Perhaps the best way to illustrate the irrational senselessness of political correctness is to cite a recent, seemingly innocuous example of its implementation, enforcement, in the sports world.
Kobe Bryant, star shooting guard for the NBA’s LA Lakers, escaped certain prosecution and probable jail time for the rape . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4155)
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