Of course if they did stand behind their employees, they’d still experience the social fallout you’ve mentioned (reader/viewer boycotts, decline in sales, etc.), but what if they didn’t? What if public outcry was tepid at best and neither NBC nor Golfweek sustained a substantial loss in viewers or readers, post-slurs?

That’d empower more people to hang nooses or to say whatever they’d wish about whomever they wish without threat of serious consequence. I think this may have been what happened with Tilghman (if the Golf Channel does stick to its initial wrist-slap of two weeks off) and with the folks who continue to display nooses on college campuses or burn crosses in residential neighborhoods. They see that nothing much is being done to their predecessors (Imus got a new job; the initial noose-hangers in the Jena Six incident have yet to experience any of the ramifications of the Six themselves; and Tiger’s agent claims he and Tilghman have “been friends for years,” making her statement a “non-issue”).

A person’s right to say something doesn’t protect them from social fallout regarding their words, like, say, losing your job at the head of a niche magazine. The host of The Today Show, say, has the right to yell ‘I hate fags!’ at the top of his lungs, and NBC would be well within their rights to distance themselves from him for saying it. He is using their organ to say it, and they reserve the right to take that platform away from him.

Tighlman and this editor had the right to say what they said just as the people who watch her network or read his magazine have the right to complain about what they said.

what say you?

free.dumb.just.us and de.mockery
this surprises you? lol

kind of makes you wonder how long they’d been waiting to do that.