Up On My Soapbox

There is a writer for ESPN.com by the name of Paul Shirley. Shirley is a journeyman basketball player who bounced around various teams in Europe and wrote a fairly interesting book about the experience. He was discovered by the mainstream media while penning an "Inside the Locker Room" blog during his time playing for the Phoenix Suns and now writes as a music-snob for "The Life" section of ESPN.com, touting the latest shitty indie rock band. (Seriously, I want to like this guy because we're loosely connected through a friend, of a friend, of a friend, but his music columns are very much in the vein of, "You don't get real music. You probably like bands like Daughtry."... And yes, I love Daughtry.)

Anyway, Shirley also writes for various other website and wrote an essay for Flip Collective in which he stated that he would not be donating any money to any organization for Haiti relief. His main point was that he wasn't sure what they were going to be doing with the money and he doubted the Haitian government would really put it into things that would actually help the country. He thinks that we are being too quick and just blindly throw money at a problem. You can read the entire essay here, but the particularly damning quote that everyone seems to be ripping him for is when he compared giving money to Haiti to giving money to a homeless man. Needless to say, ESPN was quick to act and came out with a statement within hours saying because Shirley is not a full ESPN employee and just a freelancer they would be washing their hands of him and would simply not throw any more work his way (welcome to the world of freelance writing).

To Shirley's credit, he openly acknowledged at the top of his essay that this would be an unpopular view, but he went ahead and wrote it anyway. Now, whether or not you agree with Shirley, the fact remains he has the right to say what he thinks. [Sidebar: I actually could not agree with him less. I think that people helping others in a time of great tragedy is an act of kindness that routinely re-affirms my faith in humanity... (another act that does that is when people let you merge in traffic. Those people are saints.) Add in the fact that people have been so quick to donate in a time when money is tight for just about everyone is and it's an even greater show of the good in people. It's actually the kind of awesome that should be a bigger news story, not kid posting schoolyard fights on YouTube. But, one soapbox at a time.] The point is, the fact that ESPN was so quick to can Shirley without giving him a chance to expound on his point or defend his stance really disturbs me.

When did we as a society decided that having an unpopular opinion is a fireable offense? I thought the whole point of freedom of speech is that it is meant to protect speech we hate, not the stuff we all agree on. To me this is no different than if someone decided they didn't want to partake in the office Secret Santa. Ok - that guys being a dick, but you're not going to start calling for his job because of it. It's his right to not want to play along. When we start punishing people for speaking their minds then we have already started to lose focus on what is important. I'm not trying to make Shirley a martyr in all of this, but losing your job just for saying things that go against the grain sets a bad precedent. I just find myself wondering where the line is in all of this.

I also fear for the creative process when I see situations like this happen to writers. Any asshole with a keyboard can sit down and write about how rainbows are pretty, puppies are cute and mean people suck. But, it actually takes a fair amount of balls to say, "This is unpopular and people are going to hate this, but it will get a discussion going, so I'm writing it anyway." Now, I don't know is Shirley was trying to raise the level of debate in this country or if he just doesn't like giving to charities, but he has the right to voice that opinion and he shouldn't lose his job just because he feels a certain way. When unpopular opinions are enough to make you lose your job, we all should take a step back and wonder if we've gone too far into a politically correct world.