{"id":182753,"date":"2015-06-13T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-14T02:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/13\/what-are-the-limits-of-political-activism-by-an-employee\/"},"modified":"2015-06-13T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T02:26:00","slug":"what-are-the-limits-of-political-activism-by-an-employee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/13\/what-are-the-limits-of-political-activism-by-an-employee\/","title":{"rendered":"What Are the Limits of Political Activism by an Employee?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few days ago, I wrote of a Texas elementary school teacher, who, in response to the police officer abusing black teens in McKinney, <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2015\/06\/can-we-please-give-texas-back-to-mexico.html\">suggested that the reinstitution of segregation might be a good thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I just learned that this teacher, Karen Fitzgibbons, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/2015\/06\/fired-texas-teacher-let-go-after-saying-mckinney-pool-party-almost-shows-need-for-racial-segregation\/\">has been fired<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 170px;\"><span style=\"font-size: 110%; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\">Good news everyone!<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/Xm6MaEg.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/Xm6MaEg.png\" width=\"160\" \/><\/a> <span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><br \/><span style=\"font-size: 67%;\">I invented a device that makes you read this in your head using my voice!<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p>My first reaction is that the Professor Farnsworth quote, &#8220;Good News, Everyone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Certainly, I don&#8217;t want any children taught by an open racist, which Ms. Fitzgibbons post clearly indicates.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, it is profoundly worrying when a public employee is fired for expressing their political views as a private citizen, no matter <b>how<\/b> abhorrent.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, I think that the firing is justified, I think that she no longer had the credibility required to deal with students and their parents, and any decision made regarding minorities in her class would naturally be suspect.<\/p>\n<p>I do hope that the school district is reviewing any disciplinary actions involving minorities.<\/p>\n<p>Skepticism of her entire career as an educator is justified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few days ago, I wrote of a Texas elementary school teacher, who, in response to the police officer abusing black teens in McKinney, suggested that the reinstitution of segregation might be a good thing. I just learned that this teacher, Karen Fitzgibbons, has been fired. Good news everyone! I invented a device that makes &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[967,968,975,1001],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bigotry","category-education","category-employment","category-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}