Monday, December 23, 2013

"Your boss may be wrong, but he's still your boss."

I remember my dad making this statement more than once, long before I ever knew what it was like to hold down a job.  Once I did get a job, I understood it all too well, and the words came back to me many times over the years. 

So, your boss gives you some task that is harder than what your coworker is doing?  That isn't fair, you say?  Perhaps not, but the boss is the boss, no matter whether he's fair or not.  

A certain TV personality shared his beliefs, and his employer put him on hiatus, and people are saying the employer is taking away his freedom of speech.  

I say no, his employer is just doing what bosses do:  Old Phil still has the freedom to say what he thinks, and he's still talking.  Now, if cops had arrested the guy and tossed him in jail, that would be taking away his freedom of speech.  Just think about that "God hates fags" bunch.  I don't know anybody who likes their agenda, but it's a free country, so they get to state their beliefs in public, just like anybody else can in America.  Until you are arrested and jailed, I don't see that anybody is robbing you of your rights.  

And nobody is taking away the boss's right to fire you.  

The one thing very few people are talking about is that this guy who is all over Facebook and in the news also said this:  "I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person.  Not once.  Where we lived was all farmers.  The blacks worked for the farmers.  I hoed cotton with them.  We're going across the fields, they were singing and happy.  I never heard one of them, one black person, say 'I tell you what:  These doggone white people'... not a word!"

Of course they didn't say anything against white people.  It was the south, and they would have been strung up if they said anything negative!  



They were singing... and happy?  Did you ever listen to the words of the old negro spirituals, or even to the blues songs of later years?  They were singing because the only way they could get by with stating their feelings was to put those feelings into song.

We're talking about the south here, after all.


    
Happy happy happy.



6 comments:

  1. Yes, the bosses can do what they want for sure. I learned that in the many years I worked. Sure am glad that now I am my own boss, one of the benefits of retirement.

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  2. Great post and true on all counts. There are many of us who would be fired for saying a fraction of what PR said. (but we wouldn't be thrown in jail because we do have freedom of speech--from the government)

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  3. A painful part of history we should never forget. Where a person works is not a democracy. So what the boss says is law.

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  4. With all due respect, let's add a little context. Robertson did not say this in the workplace, nor did he "share" this as part of his job. He simply stated his beliefs in response to a direct question, which was to define sin. It's worth noting that his response was 100% in accordance with what the Bible teaches.

    We live in a brave new world in which intolerance is foremost of the few remaining sins. Am I the only one who finds it ironic and, dare I say it, hypocritical that the Apostles of Tolerance consider that same intolerance to be the most noble of virtues when it is directed at Christians? Thankfully, I believe I still have some company as A&E and Cracker Barrel are in the process of discovering.

    I also do not question Robertson's observation of blacks growing up. He was there and we were not. It wasn't uncommon for blacks and poor whites (the vast majority) to work side-by-side in the fields a generation or two ago. The assertion that blacks acted happy because they feared lynching plays beautifully on the Hollywood stereotype of the South. Lynchings, while a pox on the South's history, were relatively rare. However, modern black-on-white crime is becoming ever more common. Where's the outrage?

    A new tyranny is growing right before our eyes and most people are like the proverbial frog in the slowly-heated kettle.

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  5. Oh believe me, I was talking about it! I never liked that show. The first time I tried to watch it, I ended up telling Thomas, regarding that certain TV celebrity who had his say and now is on hiatus, "He's the type who would have given me a dirty, disgusted look when you and I first got married." I just had that feeling about him. Glad I never watched the show, and he can express his personal feelings all he wants, as far as I'm concerned. But I'm not giving him any of my time or money.

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