By now, I’m sure you’ve seen that Roseanne Barr’s new show is now in the bin because ABC parent company Disney wanted to distance itself from her vile comments toward Valerie Jarrett. And did so with remarkable speed, I might add…
That rather begs the question of why in the world would Disney ignore one of their most famous characters and fail to insist that everyone who works for them who has had a history of shooting their mouth off prior to thinking employ their own personal Jiminy Cricket with absolute veto power over that star’s utterances and behaviours?
If for no other reason than to protect their investment in their products and profits from advertisers!
Now I know that idea would be met with instant hostility cloaked in the First Amendment. However, the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech” right has been interpreted time and time again by the Supreme Court as something that is not an absolute and in this particular instance, Disney certainly has an interest in protecting their business reputation as presumably a more family-friendly media company from being associated with racism or other divisive behaviours.
And interstingly enough, the First Amendment seems to fall by the wayside in pretty much every employee manual I’ve ever had imposed upon me. Corporations have often had provisos in them with the intent of governing my conduct even when I wasn’t on the clock at the job. And being in a right-to-fire state, I can assure you there wasn’t anyone in Raleigh who would give a toss about my First Amendment or any other rights I theoretically have!
So what makes Roseanne or Tiger Woods (who really could have used a Jiminy Cricket vetoing the “cheating on Swedish bikini model wife” thing!) so special that would preclude a corporation insisting on someone to monitor and if necessary veto the star’s behaviour as a contractual requirement?
In fact, our current President really ought to consider several Jiminy Crickets. Oh wait…he’s already got them and it’s called the White House Press Office and it’s actually their job to translate his rantings into more politically acceptable statements but it only works if his every path to Twitter is blocked and censored!
However, I must confess to a bit of schadenfreude here…CNN’s headline “Roseanne unleashes a rash of new tweets” is just too funny, especially when the story says she’s now blaming her outburst on Ambien prompting a response from the drug’s manufacturer that racism is not a side effect of their medication!
https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/30/media/roseanne-barr-tweets/index.html