Oh, that bill? Don’t mind him. We keep him chained to the Comment Moderator in the 6MB sewer with our collection of CHUDs.

bill Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

However, regarding the recent offensive email, no one has addressed the relevant point:

Was it funny?

I’ll give it a half-chuckle.

It wasn’t as funny as the “slutty flight attendant” comment made recently in front of millions of people.

But it was funny.

If that’s the case, it should not be too hard to search all of the state’s exchange server logs for every offensive e-mail. If this is that important then it’s what needs to be done. We can’t just punish this one idiot for exercising poor judgment in sending it out to the wrong e-mail blast. That’s rewarding the insensitive bigots who know how to use Outlook properly.

I’m a big fan of the work The FIRE does but this does not fall in that category at all. This is an “At-Will” employment state but if someone doesn’t have a history of this type of behavior then in spirit it should not be a hanging offense. A write-up, a warning and a class should do considering the high profile nature. It was an e-mail forward that was probably circulated a million times before and has now definitely been circulated a million times since then. Like the scurge of teenagers “sexting”, everyone who has touched this e-mail either on purpose or by web publishing it, whether their intent was a “teachable moment” or not is literally the same action.

I got on this for what it is. If this woman was Sally Nobody the office secretary this would never have gotten mentioned. It’s been played up for all it’s worth in order to drag down her boss which, if we’re going to play this game, can get extended in a lot of directions.

Say you have blogger meet-ups with local Congressmen, state legislators, etc. You have an outreach program to these new media yahoos. Should you, as that state rep, now be held accountable for some of the whacked out things they say?

You have a relationship. They’re relaying your messages. They’re basically unpaid interns on your staff. They beg for your talking points so they can stay on message.

There. See how deeply silly and self-important that is?

Lynch mobs murdered black people. This particular diverse array of folks — a mob, if you insist — is ridiculing a jackass who forwarded a joke about black people. Some of them are calling for her to be fired. You can think that’s over the line or not. (Personally, even if I were a stone racist, I’d think she was too stupid to work for me under the Gary Hart rule).

“I hate to break your figurative stranglehold on linguistic expression but we’re never going to be able to laugh, or poke fun, or drag uncomfortable subjects out into the open as long as the humorless PC posse’s throwing up gang signs.”

Boo freaking hoo. Some forms of political correctness I care about. (Consider the cases profiled by The FIRE, for example.) But I frankly don’t give a crap about political correctness when people use it to mean “it’s oppressive that I can’t act like a jackass without people calling me a jackass.” That’s unserious. You’re perfectly free to laugh, poke fun, and drag uncomfortable subjects into the open. You’re just not free from social consequences. You’re not free to exercise your First Amendment rights while being protected from other people’s exercise of their First Amendment rights.

You’re giving conservatism a bad, whiny name. Man up, for Christ’s sake.

I hate to break your figurative stranglehold on linguistic expression but we’re never going to be able to laugh, or poke fun, or drag uncomfortable subjects out into the open as long as the humorless PC posse’s throwing up gang signs.

No, they’re not literally throwing up gang signs. It’s just an analogy. I’m not downplaying the plight of inner-city, at-risk youth who struggle daily with peer pressure to take part in anti-social clubs known as “gangs”. For that would display my tin ear again.