To quote Mammy (Hattie McDaniel ) in “Gone With the Wind”, “I done told you an’ told you!” In two scenes, she used that introduction to remindScarlett that “you can always tell a lady by the way she eats in front of people” and Rhett that “it just ain’t fittin’ for a girl child to ride astraddle with her dress flyin’ up!” Well, I’ve done told lawyers, business executive and anyone else with a job that requires public trust and that affects a larger organization to eschew making political statements on social media, even in jest. Nobody listens.
Jane Smith, the chief executive of a Family First Credit Union in Michigan was fired after posting a photo of her family in sweatshirts that read “Lake America.” She allowed the picture to go viral as her family left on September 11 for a 10-day trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Subsequently Family First Credit Union announced that Smith was no longer with the company.
“We weren’t trying to make a political statement,” Smith told Michigan outlet WJRT as she pleaded her case. “However, we were kind of poking fun at the fact that one of the Great Lakes’ names were getting changed.”
Her actions put me in mind of the New Mexico judge who recently excoriated a lawyer who had cluelessly submitted an AI-composed court document without checking its accuracy. “Do you watch the news? Do you listen to the radio? Do you read anything about what’s going on in the world?” she asked, incredulous that any lawyer would be so unaware of all the recent AI debacles in court. The same questions apply to lack of awareness regarding Trump Derangement. What a normal person might consider a joke about our President’s re-naming obsessions, a Trump Derangement sufferer, and there are millions of them, might well let the Cognitive Dissonance Scale take over and refuse to do business with a bank whose CEO goes on social media to extol the “Lake America” episode.
“We sincerely apologize for the concern, disappointment and pain this situation has caused our members and community,” the bank wrote on Facebook.
Of course it did. I don’t feel sorry for her, and neither should you. If Jane Smith couldn’t see this the danger of this familiar sequence playing out sufficiently to stop her from posting the “Lake America” photo, she’s not smart enough to be a CEO anyway.
