Cindy's All Grown Up

Susan Olsen

Susan Olsen, better known to me as Cindy Brady, just got fired from her job as a radio talk show host in Los Angeles.  She was fired because she referred to a gay actor with "an offensive term for gay men."  My, my, my little Cindy.

Wonder why she'd do such a thing?

Let me begin first by saying that name calling is the lowest form of debate.  If you care to fact check me, you'll note that I don't ever call anyone names.  So, if it was Olsen's intent to make a point, name calling isn't the best way to do that.  Besides it's unseemly.  My grandmother would certainly not approve.

This story made me curious to see if I could find out what happened to lead up to all of this.

Turns out that there's a gay actor named Leon Acord-Whiting.  I've never heard of him, not that that matters.  Leon was a guest on Susan's show and he didn't like her opinions much, so he went to his Facebook page and wrote this:

"It is wildly irresponsible for LA Talk Radio to allow a Trump fanatic to co-host one of their programs, where she can spew her idiotic lies unchecked. (Being a liberal and a patriot are mutually exclusive? Hillary is causing the protests & hate crimes? The Koran is a political tract?) As much as I love Sheena Metal, I think LA Talk Radio needs to give "Cindy Brady" her walking papers. I will not listen to or appear on any shows there from this point forward until she's gone. This isn't just disagreeing on, say, tax plans or foreign policy. Susan Olsen spreads outrageous misinformation & it is dangerous and unprofessional."

 

-Leon Acord-Whiting



Leon Acord-Whiting

So, Leon thinks that she should be fired for having an opinion about politics.  She's "dangerous."  Maybe she is, maybe not.  I don't really know, but I do know that Leon thinks that opinions which differ from his are dangerous.

Apparently, Susan was pretty unhappy when she found out about his post because, according to FoxNews "the next day Olsen allegedly replied to the comedian with an expletive-laden post.  Acord-Whiting later posted a screenshot of a Facebook message he says Olsen sent to him. In the screenshot, Olsen appears to call the actor an offensive term for gay men."

Little Cindy is grown up.  Wow.  "Expletive laden."

By the way, she's 55 nowadays.

Predictably, the radio station fired her.

"We will not tolerate hateful speech by anyone associated with our radio station and have severed our ties with a host that veered off the direction in which we are going."

 

-LA Talk Radio

She says she didn't do it because he blocked her.  He says it was from her.  Jury out on that, as far as I can tell.

After she was fired, Leon said he was sad that she was fired:

"Getting fired is never a happy event, even when the person deserves it. This is less a victory, more a badly needed course correction. I can't express enough my appreciation for everyone's support the past few days. I merely sounded the alarm. It was ALL of US, working TOGETHER, who made justice happen. Thank YOU for restoring a little of my faith in power of democracy."

 

-Leon Acord-Whiting

Well, not too sad, I guess.  After all, he said that she should have her "walking papers" and that he wouldn't appear on or listen to the station until she had them.  Sounds to me like he got what he wanted.

He was just "sounding the alarm."  It was all about justice, you see.

As I've posted recently regarding LGBT politics, "justice" in their vernacular means everyone giving in to them.

Note that I'm not saying that Susan was right to call him names. 

I'm also not saying that the radio doesn't have a right to fire her.  The station is indeed responsible for their programming and they are the final arbiters of on-air talent.  No problem there.

What I do object to is calling it "justice."  Whose justice?  Mine?  Yours?  His?  Hers?

Parties who argue politics and cultural mores, should be careful about claiming moral authority when presenting their cases.  As far as I know, the morality of all of this hasn't been formally adjudicated, except in the PC-sphere.

I also take exception to him saying that her firing has restored "a little of my faith in power of democracy."  What democratic principle was displayed here?  He said she was a "fanatic," she called him something "offensive," he cried foul, and she was fired.

That's not democracy.  It may be business, it may be political correctness, but it's not democracy.

Again, he has hijacked a word which has a deep meaning to all Americans.  Unfortunately, he then uses it out of context. 

What's even more unfortunate is that most Americans don't even notice that our words are now pawns used to win arguments.  We love words like "justice" and "democracy."  Problem is that they are so familiar to us that we think that everyone uses them to mean what they've always meant.

When I opined about Issues and Ideas, this is the kind of thing I was talking about.  Most, when presented with this story will immediately think about who was right and who was wrong.  For good or bad, my mind doesn't work like that.  I think about what principles are involved.  For instance:

Is this a first amendment issue?

What do I think about name calling?

In what context are important words used?

That sort of thing.  The real truth is that we'll likely never know the whole story.  However, we can use the available facts to identify underlying principles.

Democratically yours,

TheCurmudgeon