re: #34 Killgore Trout

If it hurts sales then the problem needs to go away. I guess my main concern is I’m not comfortable with PR agencies, car maunfacturers and mattress companies deciding what their employees can say when off work or which radio shows can be heard on the radio. I don’t like them having that power.

Good news: They can’t. They can decide whether or not to continue to employ the person who said the thing.

This is really obvious if you think about it for five seconds.

I am interested that you don’t think that companies should be able to terminate employees for that reason, though. Given that you’re a self-declared ‘classical liberal’, this pro-workers’ rights stance is at odds with that libertarian philosophy in general. I’m personally against companies being able to fire employees ‘at-will’, instead preferring they have to show some form of cause. In this case, the ‘cause’ would be “This woman is no longer credible as a communications director”, which would strike me as eminently reasonable.

You have some sort of constant, bizarre problem in your head with not being able to distinguish between R. Murph Gimrack, Jr, the lathe operator saying dumb shit about black people, and the head of communications saying something this dumb, or Rush Limbaugh saying stuff. Basically, you continually confuse spokespeople with grunts in the trenches. It’s one of those odd little quirks that makes your performance art so nicely predictable.