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I previously wrote about Adam M. Smith, the ex-CFO of  a Tucson medical supplies manufacturer who filmed himself dressing down a Chick-fil-A drive-in employee and placed the video on YouTube. I said in part…

“He’s a vile bully and a jerk, who thinks it appropriate to embarrass and abuse an innocent employee of a restaurant because he happens not to agree with the politics and moral positions of the company’s owner…The video served to alert millions to beware of this rude, rabid and self-righteous champion of gay rights, who equates faith-based advocacy for the current law of the United States of America with “hate.”

I was more accurate than I knew. Now we learn that since that August, 2012 fiasco which cost him his job, Mr. Smith has fallen on hard times. His self-posted indictment of his own character has poisoned his reputation and career. When he found a new job, he was later fired for not alerting his employers about the incident. When he has raised the video to potential employers, they have declined to hire him. Where he was once earning a six-figure salary, had $1 million in stock options, and lived in a stylish home, he now lives in an RV with his wife and four children, and is existing on public assistance.

It all sounds like the plot of an Adam Sandler movie.

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Lindsay Stone Scores A Jumbo: The “I Didn’t Intend To Do What I Did When I Intentionally Did What I Did” Excuse

I have to give Lindsay Stone credit. You will seldom see as pure an example of an outrageous denial of the undeniable in a public apology as the one she just aut****d. Brava! And good luck with the job hunt.

Stone, who is an idiot, and her friend, who is an idiot whose name has yet to be tracked down by the media, collaborated on a photo showing Stone giving an upturned middle finger to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,while yelling something by the sign there that says “Silence and Respect.” The photograph was posted on Stone’s Facebook page and naturally went viral. Thousands of protesters bombarded the website of their employer, Living Independently Forever, with demands that the two be fired. Today, they were.

Before the inevitable axe fell (more on that in a bit), Stone posted this remarkable explanation:

Obviously? I don’t think when one is intentionally disrespectful by a sign that says “Respect”, “We OBVIOUSLY meant no disrespect” qualifies as a credible or even a sane explanation. And when such conduct takes place, again intentionally, by the sacred Tomb that symbolizes all of America’s heroes lost in combat, arguing that such disrespect wasn’t aimed at that very group is just a doomed and desperate attempt to deny the obvious—in other words, a Jumbo.

Various web commentators, like Gawker, which wouldn’t know an ethic if it came with an interactive exhibit, have suggested that it’s unfair for Stone to lose her job over the incident. My father is buried at Arlington, and I don’t feel vindicated or soothed by the firing of the two women. I agree that they shouldn’t be punished by society for one epically stupid gesture. That’s not the real issue, however.

The issue is whether her employers, a company that provides care and living alternatives for the cognitively disabled, should want to have two women working for them who grievously insulted a substantial part of the country, embarrassed the company, and showed such miserable judgment that it calls into question the competence of anyone who would hire such insensitive jerks. Realistically, Living Independently Forever had to fire them; I’d be shocked if any employer short of Howard Stern or Michael Moore wouldn’t fire them. “We Employ Utter Fools” is not a helpful marketing narrative. The tw0 women aren’t being punished. Their fate is just incidental to the actions they forced their employer to take, for the employer’s own survival.

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For almost a year after Lindsey Stone was fired, she refused to leave the house. 

Her former employer, Life (Living Independently Forever) dismissed her in 2012 over a picture that a coworker had taken of her giving the finger at Arlington National Cemetery.

The firing of both women came after an ardent online campaign that had flooded Life, which works with 'pretty high-functioning people with learning difficulties,' according to Stone, with emails. 

 

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