Presumably I don’t have to explain why the tweet above, sent out by Gawker writer and editor Travis Okulski, and eventually deleted by him after someone drilled into his skull and planted some sense there, is cruel, disrespectful, callous, ignorant, offensive and wrong.
Here’s your Ethics Quiz, and it requires you to use the previous post, which you can find either beneath this one, or here:
Would you fire Okulski if he worked for you?
The question would be easy if I asked if Gawker should fire him, since that website is shameless and largely behaves as if ethics were a unicorn or the Kraken, a mythical creature only suckers and fools believe in.
Would you give him another chance, or would you conclude that any ass who would even think this can’t be trusted to brush his teeth in the morning?
I’m very curious.
___________________________
Pointer: Fox News
Ethics Alarms 
He, like many recipients of our present educational system, is ignorant and a bit dull (for an editor). No different from the people you see on “jay-walking” with Leno. There is a large contingent of our society that would have no problem with a statement like that and know little of history.
Based on your criteria in the previous post, he’s fired based on offensiveness and extremely poor judgement.
I’d keep them so long as I was convinced that it was satire. Someone who actually thought that was a sane statement? Gone.
WAS that satire? Terrible execution, if so. I wondered.
i assumed he was joking. That sort of humor is not for a broad audience, and certainly not appropriate for twitter-blasting on a company account. So, I would zip him for the venue. If he said it over drinks with friends, nah. (Anyone who is about to start typing a long post about inappropriate Holocaust humor: I read the joke as making fun of people who actually say the sort of thing he tweeted.)
I can see myself saying something like that as satire. Possibly after SMP says something like “No exaggeration tiggy! Gay marriage will cause the downfall of civilization!!!”
I did once shout “Blind people don’t have rights!!!” in the middle of a college campus with the goal of shaming my companion who was complaining about an accessibility feature for the blind.
Gay Unmarriage may not do it on its own, TGT, but your continued existence out of Dannemora just might.
That was my assumption too. I thought it was satire that didn’t work out.
When it comes to saying hurtful and stupid things, I think it’s legitimate to allow for what we might call the comedienne’s pass. Comedy often depends on surprise and a certain breaking of expected conventions, so comediennes often end up working at the edge of good taste and decency. It can be hard to judge where that line is without testing it a bit. This is one of the reasons why even very famous professional standup comics will try out new material in small comedy clubs to get the audience reaction before adding it to their big shows. They want to make sure it’s right on the edge of funny without going too far. This option is not available to everybody, so sometimes comediennes just have to let it rip and see what happens.
So if it’s part of Okulski’s job to be funny, then I’d regard this as just one of the hazards of the job. He just has to apologize and move on. But if it keeps happening, that’s a problem. Either he’s not very good at judging comedy, or he’s deliberately offending people, and neither of those explanations is good for his continued employment.
I’ll show my cards: I wouldn’t fire him, but I’d discipline him, a suspension, maybe. He’s an editor, and this is irresponsibly reckless. I’m pretty sure he was trying to be funny/snarky, as in, “Oh NO! This cold weather is so, so mean and horrible, it’s even worse than the Holocaust!” That wouldn’t be funny either, but at least his intention would be clear. Not everyone can be funny in 140 characters (Steve Martin is amazing, for one), so I’d cut him a break with a warning and a knuckle rap this time. But I’d watch him very, very closely, and my confidence would be shaken.
I think you’ve got him pegged pretty well. He does a blog called “The Shallot” which is not as clever as its title, so I guess I’d cut him some slack on the tweet. He writes about cars for Jalopnik/The Gawker and has a degree in English from George Washington University. He must not have taken any history classes, though, or maybe he slept through them. However, if I was the queen of the world, I’d assign him to research and write an article about The Holocaust. I seriously do not think the horrors of the World War II years are important to those who did not live through them.
I took it as (poorly) parodying those people who post their First World Problems on Facebook and Twitter; stuff like: “No wifi at Starbuck’s! Can things possibly get worse?”, to which some snarky people will reply by posting a link to Wikipedia’s entry on The Holocaust.
Was it funny? No. Was it poor taste? Absolutely. A firing offense? Under these circumstances, no.
I’d qualify the phrase “under these circumstances” by noting this is Gawker we’re talking about. Had it been a CNN anchor, Wall Street Journal editor or White House Press Secretary, the circumstances would be different. I guess if I considered the folks at Gawker to be actual journalists, I might hold them to same standard as other journalists.
“Short people got no reason
Short people got no reason
Short people got no reason
To live”
Whoever wrote this should never win an Academy Award for Best Score.
I would have to agree with an earlier poster who stated if it was satire, then no. If he is dead serious, then see if Glenn Beck will hire him.
Excellent that you brought up Glenn Beck! Very incisive! Great point, and really adds a lot to thoughtful discussion! Spot on! Brilliant and nuanced reference that utterly astonishes in it’s stark relevance! Surely this was your finest comment ever! All other comments pale next to the sheer intellectual firepower evidenced by this one!
Well, to be fair, I get in trouble for this sort of sideswipe occasionally, and I often deserve it. This one wasn’t as gratuitous as mine sometimes are, however, and not even necessarily critical of Beck. His propensity for using Holocaust analogies in strange ways and places caused much comment and criticism when he was on the air, so Finnegan’s reference got a smirk from me, in that he and Okulski are kindred spirits in this one respect.
I love the quip about Gawker and unicorns. To answer the question: I would never fire him for this. Anyone who looks at that and, first reaction, assumes hes serious is letting their PC indigence reflex run wild.
If I’m an executive at Gawker, then I look at the long history of what my publication has done with anyone else making injudicious remarks on social media. Fair is fair.
Gawker is supposed to be edgy, so I wouldn’t fire him if he worked for me and I worked for Gawker.
If I wanted to be taken seriously and have my “journalists” taken seriously I would fire him. He’s clearly not smart enough to work as a journalist, he’s just barely funny enough to work for Gawker.
No, I would not fire Okulski. I would give him the benefit of doubt that he was being sarcastic. I would owe him that benefit personally at least, out of my own guilt for use and mis-use of sarcasm. As his boss, on behalf of our employer, well, I would likely consider counseling him. I would make the obligatory record of the counseling, yadda-yadda, according to the modern playbook for managing human relations in the workplace.
After reading his tweet, my mind jumped to: What if Okulski had tweeted instead, “I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this cold weather is worse than global warming denial”? Then my mind went “Huh?!” and then it went blank (where the world is safest with me). Time to catch a few z’s…
Aren’t they in New York? I would say the news media acted like tropical depression (it was a tropical depression by the time it hit New York, not a hurricane, not a tropical storm) Sandy was some intensely horrible storm unprecedented in human memory instead of a moderate storm with an unusually large storm surge. So, I would say his statement is probably not out of the realm of normal for a New Yorker. I don’t doubt that they like to think that their suffering IS worse than the Holocaust. Also, aren’t most Gawker editors 19 years old or something? He probably doesn’t even really know what the Holocaust is, he just knows it is something bad that you compare bad situations to. He was taught by a school system that can’t tell the difference between a piece of pizza and a loaded firearm and they didn’t get to WWII because some kid didn’t have socks that day in his class and the social worker had to come in.
This fellow isn’t a comic so he doesn’t get that “pass”. I give him a pass for a tweet of poor judgment and glad he took it off after someone explained the impact of his casual off the cuff remark.
There is push in the media to discount the pain of suffering of the Jewish people and statements by some that the Holocaust never happened – it’s no wonder younger generation can’t make the connection with the word itself. (Do they even have this in the history books anymore or has it all been sanitized?)
There is push in the media to discount the pain of suffering of the Jewish people and statements by some that the Holocaust never happened
Citation needed.
(Do they even have this in the history books anymore or has it all been sanitized?)
Push question is bad form. Own your positions.
It’s obviously a joke. Not gonna fire him.
Been meaning to ask—do you have an official reaction to the nastiness here after I posted the Ethics Hero piece about cartoon plagiarism and his acknowledgment? Since you originally suggested the piece involved, I’ve been curious. You can deal with it off-site if you prefer: I’m not trying to put you in on water. Just interested—you know the group and the culture.
You referred to some cartoonists making fun of the ethics award on another site, but since there wasn’t a link, I didn’t know where to go to read it. So I have no opinion on that.
As for the stuff in your comments, it seemed pretty normal to me – Ted is a very controversial guy. The political cartoonists I know tend to be “alternative” political cartoonists, like Matt Bors or Ted Rall. I’ve always found those folks to be extremely nice when I’ve met them in person. Although Ted does love a good argument – the first time I met him, I think we spent a solid hour at dinner arguing over if Chris Ware is a great cartoonist or not.
Well… the short answer is “it depends”. At the moment, I’m not exactly in a position to hire *anyone*, so I can’t apply it to me specifically and can only discuss hypothetical situations.
However… I’m from a Jewish family. A lot of my friends and colleagues either are Jewish or have close Jewish friends (or family). More, I often work in the *disability* field, and people with disabilities were literally the first people the Nazis decided to “dispose of”.
And the most likely context for me to hire a cartoonist is in that of disability rights activism. I shouldn’t have to explain the conflicts and potential problems that could result from this. It would seriously impact his relationship with members of any organization I’d be working with, for, or as… and would also seriously impact the hypothetical organization’s relationship with its constituency.
So — yes, I probably would fire the guy.