What possible justification can there be for setting out to get someone fired for expressing a private opinion, however crude or confrontational? Vengeance isn’t a justification. Intimidation isn’t a justification. Neither is “because I can.” Causing someone to lose his or her job as retribution for legal conduct with no connection to that job is meanness for the sake of meanness, bullying, and a bright-line violation of the Golden Rule.
This is what the head of a prominent Tea Party organization did to Lance Baxter.
Baxter is a voice artist who is often heard on Geico commercials, though is not the voice of the Gekko. He’s also a self-proclaimed liberal who became so annoyed at what he perceived as hateful and irresponsible conduct by Tea Party protesters that he phoned Freedom Works, the grass roots organization launched by Dick Armey that has been prominent in assembling and funding Tea Party protests. Baxter left an angry and insulting message on the organization’s voice mail, and also left his phone number so a staffer could call him and get his comments in person.
Matt Kibbe, the president of Freedom Works, was told about Baxter’s message and decided that it was so offensive that he deserved to lose his job because of it. So, using Andrew Breitbart’s website, Kibbe wrote a column about Baxter’s message, complete with a graphic featuring the Geico Gekko standing with Nazi-themed Tea Party posters, an allusion to the announced intentions of crashtheteaparty.org to make the movement look bad by planting hate-speech spewing infiltrators in its midst. He also included a link to Baxter’s message, and concluded with this:
“Feel free to contact Lance. He was so kind to provide his number in the voicemail. Call his employer too. The customer service line for Geico is 800.871.3000.”
Baxter received angry phone calls, and so did his employer, who quickly and predictably fired him. No company needs bad publicity and threatened boycotts because of an uncivil outburst by someone publicly linked to their products, but there was no good or fair reason, none, for Baxter’s message to come to Geico’s attention at all. He didn’t mention Geico, and his comments were entirely personal. Kibbe and Freedom Works made sure Geico knew about it for one reason: to punish Baxter. To hurt him. To teach him a lesson, and, of course, to send a message to others: don’t mess with us, or we’ll get you. This is a group that claims to represent American ideals? These are the ideals of Michael Corleone.
On his own blog, Baxter describes Kibbe’s conduct as bullying, and he is correct. He describes it as unethical, and he’s correct about that, too. He acknowledges that his message was excessively abusive and a mistake, but if it had been the most foul-mouthed tirade imaginable, it would still not justify a calculated effort to get him fired for it. Publishing a private number left on a voice mail to facilitate harassment is irresponsible and unfair. Publishing the phone number of an employer and urging readers to complain about an employee regarding non work-related conduct is worse.
How much integrity can the Tea Party movement have if its leadership doesn’t believe in the Golden Rule?
Ethics Alarms 
How does this compare to Whoopi Goldberg, I believe it was, being fired by Weight Watchers for a political tirade? That was on the Scoreboard ages ago.
It doesn’t, Jeff. Whoopi’s tirade was public. If a celebrity who represents a company with her image makes controversial comments that might alienate customers, that real harm. An otherwise unknown voice artist leaving a nasty message on voice-mail isn’t in the same category at all.
Gee…I feel vindicated. The things I said in earlier posts about the tea party are being revealed as cogent. I must say i am pleasantly surprised to see this post, though. The tea party started with zero integrity and has been spiraling down ever since. And you wondered why journalists look at them and report on their activities in the way they do. tis not the media but eh message that is skewed…
I can’t imagine why you would feel vindicated. The fact that Kibbe is a self-evidently mean-spirited and vindictive individual doesn’t validate the thesis that Tea Party supporters are racists, homophobes or nascent terrorists (or that they aren’t), even though Kibbe’s target seems to think so. What a surprise: a political movement has a bully at its power center…as if Dick Cheney, Rahm Emmanuel, Tom DeLay, Nancy Pelosi, et al. are disciples of Capt. Nice.
Yes—this reflects badly on the Tea Party movement. But there’s nothing racist about it. And even if it turns out that the media was “correct” with its biased assumptions, that doesn’t vindicate the bias.
This is a serious topic that deserves the depth of thought and level of intense discussion we are giving it. I am going to review the original post and comment thread to make sure I have the appropriate information, then I’ll post up again in detail.
I do find it interesting that the claim is consistently made that there is nothing racist about the tea party movement or its members. An odd claim. One that is remindful of the revisionist tale that the Civil War was not, at its core, about slavery.
Perhaps I am missing something. As I said, I will re-read and re-search and post with more detail directly.
Does the tea party even have any official leaders? From what I’ve seen, it’s been hijacked by new supporters every other week, progressively moving more right. Pretty soon, it will be the tea party of conservative social issues and fiscal conservatives can reclaim the republican party. I guess that’s one way to clean house. Until they all figure out what they stand for, I’m stick with the Libertarians.
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Wonderful site, also it seems like you’ve got a ton more visitors as well, because the final period I had been here. Ciao!