Let me spell it out for you, real nice and slow.

You asked:

If the employer didn't know, and didn't endorse, why on earth would they be liable for actions taken by employees?

I pointed out in reply the standard legal doctrine that companies are liable for negligence if they let things happen that they should have known better than to let happen.

At that point, you changed tack and wanted to argue the evidence. Fine. Go argue the evidence.

All you asked for was a reason. I gave you one.

If you're doing this on purpose--if you're deliberately trying to obstruct this conversation by use of slurs, insults, and repeated claims of paranoia--then you're beneath contempt.

Posted at April 15, 2007 6:13 AM in response to What's with the sexualized threats against women?

It's called willful negligence, and companies lose lawsuits due to it all the time.

And speaking of willful ignorance, who you jivin' with that debris, kosmik?

Posted at April 14, 2007 11:02 AM in response to What's with the sexualized threats against women?

Sarcasm is wasted on the ironically named.

Posted at December 19, 2006 4:39 AM in response to Jimmy Carter, Israel, Apartheid and the Shame of Brandeis University

Carter is...senile

Fascinating diagnosis, Dr. Sage. What do you think about Terry Schiavo?

Posted at December 18, 2006 4:46 AM in response to Jimmy Carter, Israel, Apartheid and the Shame of Brandeis University

Problem with your analogy is, New Orleans is (on my scale, at least) a hell of a lot closer to Angelina Jolie than the bum.

(I'm also pretty sure that spitting on a bum wouldn't make any points with her, so the ten bucks would just be down the drain given to her.)

Posted at August 15, 2006 2:07 PM in response to New Orleans is More Important Than Israel

You put your finger on what bothers me better than I did. I don't like making that overly individualistic argument--it's wrong to have to do so--but it's a pragmatic argument also in the sense that it might, maybe work. Or it might not.

How I feel about this is a lot like what I read once in a Jonathan Kozol interview where he said about illiteracy that he hated making the "it's better for business if people can read" argument, because the right to literacy, not the interests of business, was the point.

Posted at August 15, 2006 11:35 AM in response to New Orleans is More Important Than Israel

There's a long-term pragmatic argument for rebuilding New Orleans, or at least for agitating for rebuilding New Orleans, but it pains me to have to state it: Changing the political climate in the United States so that an injury to any of our citizens is seen as an injury to all of our citizens. Next time, the disaster may strike your block and everything within a five-mile radius of it. If we don't start changing our ethic toward others now, then you are likely to get the same shameful treatment that New Orleans and its people have gotten.

It pains me, because my suspicion is that the sort of change in our politics I seek can not be relied on in time to help New Orleans.

Posted at August 15, 2006 6:59 AM in response to New Orleans is More Important Than Israel

You can't have your big guns using the word "racist" necessarily...

Why not?

Posted at August 9, 2006 6:58 AM in response to Racists Among Us

One of the things which makes it easier to objectify people - to pawnify them - is the growing spatial distance between cause and effect. I push a button over here, the effect of that happens over there and the reality of what I've done is distanced from me. I feel less responsibility for what I do not see (out of sight, out of mind). Of course this has been going on for a very long time (I shot an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I knew not where).

These days, this is how it goes:

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Posted at July 31, 2006 10:06 AM in response to Lebanon: A Jewish Moderate's Lament

I think people use this example because it's just too crazy to be taken seriously, whereas there are people who would treat a similar example involving Mexico as a pretext for explaining why we needed space-based energy beam defenses of our southern border. That said, see the wonderful short story, Under the Covenant Stars, in John Barnes' anthology Apostrophes and Apocalypses.

Posted at July 30, 2006 6:27 PM in response to Lebanon: A Jewish Moderate's Lament