A sportswriter, the president of "The First Amendment Center", and a winger all walk into a bar.
From Dan Snyder to Don Sterling to Augusta National Golf Club, we've been told how to think and behave, by those who would presume to know. They are preaching tolerance, or at least their brand of it, which amounts to this: I will tolerate your point of view, as long as it's in line with mine. Are we to be proud of a country that practices selective tolerance? Or afraid of it?
-Paul Daugherty, sports columnist for The Cincinnati Enquirer "Dolphins/Don Jones exemplify troubling trend"
Jones' reaction was crude but undoubtedly his honest take. Now the Dolphins are insisting he be re-educated. Have businesses become so sensitive to the perception of intolerance that they're going to punish people for their beliefs? Are employees now to be counseled because they have a "thinking problem"?
-Ken Paulson, USATODAY "Isn't Michael Sam tweet free speech?"
Overall, it should not matter which position you hold on the gay marriage debate. No matter what side you are on, it should be painfully obvious that this new tolerance is not tolerance at all, it is hateful intolerance, by the very definition of the term.
-Rightwing Sports, Sports from a Conservative Prospective
The joke? The punchline to this 'lil joke is that the bartender can't really tell any of them apart. If I had erased the names, you might think that they were all quotes from the same source. Who is the wingnut blogger? The sportswriter? The self-appointed free speech guardian? Shit. Who knows? They all push the ultimate notion of tolerance being in terms of tolerating hate.
When bigotry loses, and necessary change long deferred occurs at last, it is always good news. Unless you are a bigot. Or you are somebody who is deeply concerned about them being upset.
An openly gay man is drafted to play ball in America's most red-blooded macho of national sports. The future has become the now in the NFL. That young man kisses his boyfriend on live TV in triumph and in joy. The photo of the moment becomes seen around the world. As the broadcast is shown live, along with the good comes the bad, as the bigots, and trolling idiots alike, cast their shade and spit their venom on social media outlet of choice.
One, an active NFL player, is fined and is compelled by his team to apologize for his part.
A Miami Dolphin safety tweeted something idiotic as Michael Sam kissed his boyfriend, and that act resulted in some financial and some professional consequences in-house. The Dolphins, already a franchise stung by the public and media blowback from the vicious serial bullying of Offensive Tackle Jonathan Martin by some of his fellow lineman led by a veteran Offensive Guard named Richie Incognito, immediately reacted. Not surprising for a team with previous issues and not wanting anymore negative fallout to live down. The team took swift action.
But. But. But. What about freedom?!?! What about free speech?!?!?? What about... about the concept of being tolerant of the intolerant as an extension of civil rights?!?!?
Tolerance, in the view of those who cast themselves as defenders of speech but are actually apologists for the dead-enders of intolerance, surmise that the truly tolerant must be tolerant of the bigot's spew as well. It is bad faith concern trolling of the highest order, but it is unfair of you to point that out. For, for you to truly be tolerant, why, you must be tolerant of the bigot, and of the mush-minded twaddle of the concern troll. Naturally. It is unfair to puncture the nonsense of either. You must accept both, else, those fighting the bigots are "the real" intolerant ones. The "real" bigots.
"Black people are the real racists."
You know who says that? Racists.
There is no debate about tolerance to be had about it, and there is no inherent intolerance or intellectual dishonesty for not taking a manufactured debate seriously. With Homophobia either.
Sorry, the 90's are over. Navel gazing on demand or cue is as dead as Grunge or the DLC.
You have a first amendment right to openly express your great disgust at gay people kissing in public as an American homophobe without the government sanctioning you.
But.
You do not have a first amendment right to openly express your great disgust at gay people kissing in public as an American homophobe without your speech being met with more free speech. You do not have freedom from your free speech having consequences. You work for the Miami Dolphins, and the NFL, and you say something bigoted or repellant that brings all manner of counter free-speech fueled hell down on your employer, you do not have the right to go on being an activist bigot without any consequences in your professional life.
Clearly, freedom of speech is not a freedom from the consequences of odious free speech in any arena. That wet toilet paper cannot stand up to a rapidly passing train.
So, what to do? What to do? Aha! The answer is so simple! In every sense of the word!
Make standing up to bigotry a form of bigotry!
Call the crusaders for tolerance the 'real' intolerant.
Two plys of wet toilet paper to try and hold back a rapidly passing train! Three!
This requires intelligent people to hobble themselves in the service of someone else's deliberately high tolerance for hatred and stupidity.
Did I mention that the 90's are over? Navel gazing. Dead. As Grunge and/or the DLC.
How about this? As dead as DOMA. (I twist the knife. Call me "Intolerant" all you want.)
They are preaching tolerance, or at least their brand of it, which amounts to this: I will tolerate your point of view, as long as it's in line with mine.
Are employees now to be counseled because they have a "thinking problem"?
No matter what side you are on, it should be painfully obvious that this new tolerance is not tolerance at all, it is hateful intolerance, by the very definition of the term.
This is what you get when you cannot defend what you are defending. Nonsense as substance. Vapidity as intellectual rigor. In this arena, you have to rig the rules of the game so that it is actually as wrong, if not more so, to dare to call the wrongdoer (or the apologist for the wrongdoer) out. This?
"From Dan Snyder to Don Sterling to Augusta National Golf Club, we've been told how to think and behave, by those who would presume to know." This is exactly the kind of garbage I am talking about. Let us now unpack what sportswriter Paul Daugherty is lamenting as symbolic of the intolerance of those who are fighting bigotry.
The Redskins? That's Racist. It is. Don Sterling's rant? Also Racist. Blatantly. Not allowing women to be members of a club? That's Sexist. Clearly. Sneering at Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend? That's Homophobic. Unmistakable for another sentiment. It is not intolerant to point that out. It is not intolerant to fight that when it is encountered. It's blunt force honesty for the greater good directed at those who depend on good people just keeping quiet to maintain the bigot's status-quo.
This is one of the foundation principles of the age of the Rove-Atwater Movement Conservative and the castrated Village. It is a bigger sin to call a liar a liar, than for you to actually be one. The first refuge of a bigot is to play the "real" victim. From the first person held accountable for racism or sexism or homophobia to wingnut deadweighter Wayne Bundy. The first refuge of the bigotry apologist is to wrap themselves in the notion that a higher principle is being violated by not simply accepting the bigot's spew without comment or consequence. Either to prove that you are truly "tolerant", or in the Very Serious Person's daft hopes that ugliness has "natural blowback" all on its very own. As if outrage is, somehow, tainted if it is directed or harnessed by those who are outraged and offended.
Thankfully, this is not the world that this kind of thinker has become so greatly accustomed to. The one where DOMA was king, where regression and bigotry was bargained with, and the one where the only "politically viable" pathway forward was to accept second-class citizenship gratefully and silently, if you were even offered it at all. Thank god the gay rights movement is... the gay rights movement. The rest of non-Conservatism could learn a lot about how not to get concern trolled into mediocrity from them. This is a hard time to be a bigot, and it's now a hard time to be an Very Serious apologist for the bigotry of others. Once so easy because the bigotry doesn't effect you personally, so you have nothing to lose, and so, since you are okay, it's not really your concern. Now, a hard slog.
Yes. You have to change if you are a bigot if you want in on being "tolerated".
No. You are not "intolerant" if you won't accept bigots or bigotry-related concern trolling or apologia about what is truly tolerant and what is not when you meet hate. That ship has sailed.
A federal magistrate judge ruled Tuesday that Idaho's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Dale wrote in the decision that Idaho's laws banning same-sex marriage unconstitutionally deny gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry.
Michael Sam will one day suit up for the St. Louis Rams and play ball in training camp, and someday he will have the ability to marry his partner anywhere in the nation he wishes. It will never be okay again to be blatantly homophobic like it once was, any more than it will be okay to treat him as a second-class citizen again. It's not the gay people, or the people who love them and fought with them, that have to change or get over it.