I'm guessing most of my Dear People have seen this:
I'm hoping most of the same have seen this, as well:
Good. Now let's chat about the apology.
That poor man. He did a stupid. People do stupids all the time, and according to him, he simply did not weigh the consequences of his actions well enough before-hand. Frankly, nobody expects to get fired and receive threats of violence and death from total strangers for posting videos, even if it's written somewhere in their work contract ("If you publicly show yourself to be an ignoramus in such a way that it reflects on this company, thou art fired!") not too many people remember every nuance of their work contracts, they won't be thinking of it when the fiery passion of a holy war shakes the core of their being, which is essentially what happened to this guy, the way he tells it.
Also, what is it with the last few generations and their passion for making death threats to express disapproval? How, precisely, are any of us in a position to take the moral high ground when half of us aren't even trained on what the moral high ground is? It's a shame that nobody seems to be learning anything from these incidents, but here is a hint: behave like Rachel from the CFA video, and don't make death threats, seriously. You got a six-year-old boy on the youtubes right now getting himself some death threats, he and his family, for this video:
Adam Smith didn't deserve the level of backlash that he got. Honestly, if I jumped on the bandwagon and did something similar to what he did, I would be appalled to learn that my coworkers were getting threatened: people who had no bearing on my actions whatever. However, I don't like bandwagons, I don't trust them, this is why my facebook compadres see very little of the "share if you love Jesus" posts from me. I do love Jesus, and God, and the Holy Spirit, but I have a stubborn heart, and since I do not like to confuse my brothers and sisters in Christ with my Father, I do not do everything they tell me to do just because they told me to do it. Pray for me.
I hope the girl forgives him. I am not in a position to publicly forgive him as a direct response to this apology, he has asked me for no such favours, he did not apologize to anyone except the girl, as an individual, and possibly his coworkers. He did not even connect the dots and figure out that a lot of people at CFA would have handled the situation exactly as she did because the company thoroughly trains its employees to treat their guests respectfully no matter what, so ya, from his perspective, CFA is still a cesspool of hate. The guy humiliated her in a very public way, with little necessity considering how badly executed his intent was: he didn't even get as far as quoting the proverbs passage at her, and that was the stipulation of the protest he was supposed to be partaking in. She has a little more to forgive than I do.
I've had such people in the drive-thru when I worked at CFA, with funky agendas to ram down my throat no matter who I was. I liked it best when they handed tracks through the window: short and sweet and mildly amusing, but they aren't all sniggers and grins. Once, some lady made one of my favourite people cry, one of the sweetest people I know, because she could not directly substitute something without making the lady pay for the difference. The situation escalated, my friend couldn't figure out what was wrong, eventually she burst into tears and went to find a quiet place to calm down. When the lady promised that she'd never be back and stormed out of the building, the rest of us rejoiced and also went to the walk-in fridge to give our weeping friend the good news and a hanky. It can be a difficult job. We don't usually look for catharsis after such incidents, we just want to move on quietly, it's not a punishment for the other person and it's not the silent treatment: it's a shield for ourselves.
Back to the next 3/4s of the apology, and Adam Smith's regret at not being the champion for the homosexual community that he wanted to be. He is now in a position to sympathize with George Zimmerman. He is probably not GOING to sympathize with George Zimmerman because he cannot look at anything with objectivity. He realizes his own passion for what he believes is right caused him to say and do many stupid things, to overstep the bounds of civility so dramatically as to bring great personal consequences on himself, but he did not apply that possibility to the very company against which he was trying to make a stand. He STILL interprets the situation as a hate situation. He learned a lesson in personal behaviour, but not in human nature.
Can I play a game with you? Replace all the nouns and proper names with letters. So, Adam Smith becomes (a), the CFA company becomes (b), the homosexual community becomes (c) the political group of conservatives becomes (d) and Adam Smith's employers, coworkers and family become (e)
Now, in this circumstance, (a) has made an attempt to stand up for (c) by making a political attack on (b) with the result that an unaffiliated entity who doesn't even get her own letter has been considered collateral damage. Now (a) is reaping the results, with (d) doing everything they can from sneers to death threats to bring him down, and (a) and (e) are both suffering for it.
Let's play again. This time, Dan Cathy is (a), the homosexual community is (b), the traditional marriage campaign is (c), and the political group of liberals is (d), the CFA company and its employees are now (e)...do you see where I am headed with this?
Now that we've taken the bare bones of the situation and applied it to something else, (and you can do this anywhere! You don't even have to use letters, you can use kittens, zebras and electric guitars! Do it to anything! It's FUN! Someday all our thought processes will look like the cover of a Lisa Frank trapper keeper!) we can kinda see that Adam Smith's defense describes Dan Cathy's actions to a magnified degree. I say magnified because, to my knowledge, Dan Cathy has never made a deliberate full front attack on the homosexual community.
The trouble is that Mr. Cathy has a political opinion and has donated in his company's name to people who share that opinion, though if these are the companies I remember being under discussion then these aren't people who run smear the queer rallies, they have marriage seminars and make signs saying "vote for this." Ignominy! He has not joined the kkk of gays and gone around throwing soup in people's faces. Homosexuals are served with the same courtesy, affection, and friendliness as anyone else, and receive the same standards of employment: be courteous, be flexible, learn to count, don't make out with other people in the walk-in freezer...ever. It can be stressful if you're not a Christian because Christians tend to flock to Christian-run corporations for employment and they all talk about Christian stuff in their downtime, but that's nothing to do with company policy. Death threat worthy? Absolutely...apparently. But taking Dan Cathy's comments at their very worst, and in the same vein that caused this boycotty mess of doom in the first place, we have on our hands a beautiful, poetic, chiastic harmony, and yet Adam Smith still sees Dan Cathy and CFA alike as a monolith of villainy.
Now, the reason the situations, both situations, exploded the way they did was because CFA and its employees are both more liable to put up a beatific face and a free meal than they are to explode and try to kill everyone. They got to become martyrs, and trust me, a martyr is a much, much better way to make a point than a screamy yelly death threat. And as we have just seen, most martyrs don't even have to die nowadays, how cool is that? The point I'm trying to make here is that if something happens to you that you can't even understand, or if you see some massive injustice on the internets, respond with grace. If you need to scream and yell at stuff, go play some Zelda, s'what it's there for anyway. You can come back later and donate money, or say something kind to the injured person, whatever is the right thing to do, but be VERY careful not to hang your anger on your sleeve, be VERY careful not to grab a torch and a pitchfork. Put the kettle on and read 1Peter 3:13-20. If old scripture has no bearing on your opinion and behaviour, then just think: What Would Jeeves Do?
