Express your opinions, get fired
A man in West Virginia was fired for heckling President Bush at a campaign rally, according to the Saturday Gazette-Mail:
Glen Hiller, of Berkeley Springs, was escorted from the Hedgesville High School event on Tuesday after shouting comments about the Iraq war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction there.
The crowd had easily drowned out Hiller with cheers of “Four More Years, Four More Years.”
Arriving at his job with Octavo Designs in Frederick, Md., on Wednesday morning, Hiller said he was told that he had embarrassed and offended a client who had provided the tickets to the rally.
“I was told that my actions reflected badly on the company and that a client was upset,” Hiller said.
A woman at Octavo Designs who declined to identify herself confirmed Hiller had been fired because of his conduct at the rally.
So he was rude. Heckling the powerful is one of the last resorts for free speech. “There is no venue for the regular guy to ask a question,” Hiller said. “We don’t have access to people in power. And those events are completely scripted and controlled.”
Our democracy is a little bit worse today because a guy was fired for yelling his opinion at the President. And until President Bush condemns the Swift boat ads, don’t dare talk to me about “civil discourse.”
PS: Even if Bush disavows the lies about Kerry’s service record, I’m going to favor heckling, albeit not up to the point that it drowns out the speaker.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Fired for conduct — reasonable people could differ.
Fired for belief — dangerous das Man shit.
There are some today who might be fired for an impolitic joke, told in a hush at a cocktail party.
Geez. Don’t Americans at least remember Sound of Music?
My condolences on the death of your country’s constitution. Where do we send the flowers?
Don’t know that the Constitution is dead … just being prepared to be amended to fit this new situation. Free speech, as long as it’s the right kind of speech. Remember, 911 changed everything !
hah … pitiful, really.
You say: And until President Bush condemns the Swift boat ads, don’t dare talk to me about “civil discourse.”
Oh, please. How much money has MoveOn sunk into defeating Bush, using fairly nasty language? How about Al Gore, calling the administration “Digital Brownshirts?” How about Howard Dean stating that the administration likes to burn books? Good gosh, the invective has mostly been from the left – complaining makes it look like Kerry and his supporters can dish it out, but they can’t take it.
Grow up.
dude! yea, tell me about it! let’s share stories sometime–there is no rationality to it–at all.
Move-on hasn’t lied to me about anything that I’m aware of. The Swift Boat Veterans for (un)Truth are demonstrable liars, deliberately trying to discredit someone unjustly. They’re hitting below the belt and the president is the benificiary. He should denounce their ads.
At this point, any reasonable person has to look at the Kerry stories from Vietnam, the Swift Boat group stories from Vietnam – and throw their hands up in the air. Kerry made up the Cambodia trip, and there’s no way for anyone who wasn’t there to tell which of the other accounts (if any) are true after this much time. Deciding that the Swift Boat vets are liars is partisanship, nothing more. There’s really no way to tell.
My brother was one of the airborne guys that Nixon (a Republican, BTW) illegally deployed across the borders of Vietnam in a futile attempt at interdiction of traffic on the Ho Chi Minh trail. This violation of international law began, I believe, after Johnson was out of office, and if Kerry actually claims that he was sent over the broder, then he is probably lying. I haven’t heard him say that. If he claimed it in an earlier day, then he was probably lying at that time.
So, I am faced with a choice between two men who have not always been truthful in their public utterance, two men who have lied. I think lies are wrong, so imagine the guilt I felt on those occasions when I lied! But this isn’t about me. It’s about our choice between two men, each of whom wants to be president. One of these men seems to have lied for effect, perhaps for self aggrandizement, between 1979 and 1986 in an attempt to oppose war. The other lied when he was President, leading the country into an unjust war based on a falsehood that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that had to be neutralized.
Frankly, I’d vote for a Rhodes scholar like Clinton who lied about sex, or a war hero like Kerry who lied for effect in 1986 about a misadventure in Vietnam 18 years earlier, over a man like Bush who lies about public policy matters in order to win votes and public approval. If there’s a character comparison that people want to make, I have a sense that Kerry, a flawed human being, will shine when compared with Bush, a deeply flawed human being who is a failure as a national leader, a failure in his advancement of social programs, a failure in international diplomacy, a failure in the area of national fiscal policy, and a failure as a wartime president.
The fact that the Bush campaign is dragging out this Swift boat discussion through the heckling behavior of proxies and true believers like Mr. Robertson tells me that they have nothing substantial or positive to offer.
Ah, moral equivalence raises its ugly head. If you think Kerry made up the Cambodia story, take a look at the examination:
Tet, not Christmas Eve
On Swift, there’s the fact the other Bronze Star winner that day was also said to be under fire, and the other officer has come forward to support Kerry.
If someone tells a lie, does that automatically win by at least half? That is, “Here’s a liar, here’s a truth-teller – but the liar says the lie, the truth-teller says the truth, so therefore we throw up our hands and say we can’t tell which is which”
Do you see the problem here – that it means any liar can kill the truth, just by the act of telling the lie?
I feel dumb, and I don’t get it Seth. Both men are demonstrably human and imperfect. The imperfections of Bush the Younger have worked themselves out in public policy over the last four years and we have suffered for it. The imperfections of Kerry are dramatic… where did the moral equivalency come in?
I don’t believe in the perfectability of man. Although, with steroids… nevermind, dumb thought. Both these guys are no more or less human than we are, although the office itself commands respect and I’ll allow that Kerry at least is more fit to govern than almost anybody I know.
Still, I don’t get it. The Swift boat liars for truth prepared the ground for the analytic goofballs for perfect truth who seem to have a case that Kerry wasn’t illegally in Cambodia when he says he was, although we all know that the US was illegally in Cambodia not long after. Perhaps having expressed a willingness to have followed illegal orders through fibbing about having done so is the real disqualifier here.
Is Norman Thomas running?
“Oh, please. How much money has MoveOn sunk into defeating Bush, using fairly nasty language? How about Al Gore, calling the administration ‘Digital Brownshirts?'”
James, you have been reading those nasty Internet Blogs, haven’t you? What you SHOULD do is wait for the New York Times and Washington Post to tell you what is important, then go to Kos or Atrios or Talking Points to learn who, precisely, we have to hate, and how.
There is one person, and only one person, who can stop these smears. President Bush must finally release *all* his medical and armed-forces records — as he said he had done on his website, as he had promised he would later do, and as he has manifestly never done. Signing the Form 180 and releasing his records is the only way we can be sure who wrote the After Action Orders, what his medical injuries were, and whether his handful of supporters can confirm his Cambodia stories, the Peck theft, or whether the hundreds of others telling very different stories are lying (as we know those lying liars are).
As much as I dislike the work I do as a contractor on a day-to-day basis, I consider myself fortunate to work for folks who are progressives or right-leaning libertarians. The progressive guy has no qualms about me taking unpaid time off to attend rallies/protests; the libertarian thinks I’m nutty, but defends my right to free speech. It’s a shame that I might have to screen my next clients/employers for suitability based on their tolerance for the practice of free speech. It’s a greater shame that any corporate interest feels it has a right to interfere with an individual’s rights; since when did corporations and businesses become entitled to greater rights than that of actual human beings? Corporations/businesses cannot vote, after all.
OK, so we have two politicians accused of lying…and the surprise in this is???? Unfortunately, lies are part of the freedom of speech. Hopefully, Americans take the time to educate themselves from both sides and not just one. Unfortunately, apathy is way to prevolent in this country, and will eventually lead to the loss of all of our freedom. The two bickering parties actually have a common goal…gain more control, whether its the democrats wanting more money so that they can help control domestic policy greater, or whether its the republicans taking more money so they can fund their world domination drive. Either way, I may end up in Europe or someplace else for the simple fact that the electorate foolishly believes that ‘their’ party is looking out for them. Fools get what they deserve. Enjoy your federal government running amok…I don’t necessarily like it, and I do have choices. I would love to stay here, but as long as the average American continues with their fool-hearty ways…Freedom will never be the common focus of our federal government.
express your opinion, get fired:
express your opinion, get fired: Our democracy is a little bit worse today because a guy was fired for yelling his opinion at the President. that’s the general comment about this story… But everyone’s missing a critical piece in their rush to martyr …
We Should give Sue Hough, owner of Octavio Designs the opportunity to stand behind her actions by contacting her clients listed in the article below, especially the NATIONAL SCIENCE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION. I’ll bet science teachers would really like her behavior.
http://www.discoverfrederickmd.com/news/news/newsitem.cfm?item=1185
Octavo Designs has been located in Frederick’s Everedy Square since their inception in 2000. Octavo’s clients include local firms such as Enforme Interactive and New York New York, in addition to national firms and associations such as National Geographic Society, and the National Association of School Psychologists. Gecko Media Group has brought many large clients to the Octavo team, including; The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, University of Maryland, the National Science Teachers Association and the Frederick County Office of Economic Development.