Reply #42: Exactly.

[backscatter712]

Would you take away someone's livelihood just for calling someone a name?

Even if you disagree with what she said, and agree that Air America should give her some consequences, firing her is just way out of proportion to the offense.

This is a microcosm of a big problem with American society - we, for the most part, live in a totalitarian hellhole, except that most of the time, the tyrants aren't in the government, they're our employers. What can you get away with at your job?

All the time I hear about it - someone makes a snarky comment by the office water cooler, and the boss overhears - FIRED. Someone spends too much time surfing the web - FIRED. Someone puts a political bumper sticker on their car, or is a woman that asks to be paid the same as the men that do the same job she does, or a member of the GLBT community is outed on the job - FIRED.

We have an authoritarianism problem in the workplace. Maybe we could work for making it better by doing things like promoting unions, and pushing our lawmakers for laws that make our states Just Cause states instead of At Will states.

With Randi Rhodes, and with so many others that work for a living, the punishment does not fit the crime.