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Matt Lauer Fired for Sex...

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Starbuck1975 said:
This sounds like a very Judeo Christian framework of ethics and morality
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Yeah, if you need external morals to satisfy your sense of empathy you are a sociopath. We are all born with these types evolved insights that are shaped by culture and experience (through epigenetical responses creating growing grounds for neural development) so what this is is a basic human insight devoid of religious morals (which are absolutely horrid) or political ideology (which is pretty much the same as religion).

I'm a human, this is what I think and it relies on nothing other than my own thoughts.
 
soulcougher73 said:
I never said no investigation took place. I just said i sure hope one was done. You may well be right. Obviously we don't know. Maybe we should just close this thread since there is nothing to discuss now.
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You said "And you get fired over it before an investigation that yields proof is done?"

What's the practical difference between not doing and investigation and relying on the results of an investigation that doesn't yield strong support for a decision to terminate someone? You think NBC terminated Lauer overnight and put their Today Show anchors in an extremely awkward and difficult position without substantial evidence? They could have easily suspended him pending review etc., but they immediately terminated him instead. That suggests overwhelming evidence, that suggests that if they had not fired him, and the evidence became public, they would have been in very hot water for not terminating him immediately.
 
MomentsofSanity said:
So NBC says one complaint. First in 20 years. But fire him in less than 24 hours. Not buying it. They had to have known more. Much more.

Unless Lauer copped to it and more immediately.
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The report I read said that NBC news was "also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident." It also said that several organizations had been investigating serious sexual harassment allegations against Matt for months and that they were about to come out.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/29/media/matt-lauer/index.html
 
soulcougher73 said:
I was going to go with common sense, but your answer works too i guess. Hmmm i wonder if that was built off common sense? 😛
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I'm not so sure that slavery is part of common sense so perhaps we should leave religious ideology where it belongs, as part of human history.
 
J.Wilkins said:
You means you as a nation, you have a representative democracy and it's the will of the people of your nation that he should be president.
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I mean, we very obviously do not. Public support for the president and the congress are both well below 50%.

woolfe9998 said:
Unless this was rape with DNA material left behind, what sort of physical evidence would you imagine there being? The vast majority of sexual misconduct cases involve either verbal harassment or groping, neither of which leave behind physical evidence. Even with a rape, the evidence disappears if not brought to law enforcement within a day at most.
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For the second time, emails, text messages, recordings, etc. If someone is being continuously harassed, and they have an opportunity to gather physical evidence of that harassment, they probably will.

There are myriad ways to evaluate the credibility of accusations and compare them to the credibility of the denials, assuming there is a denial. This obsession so many of us have over physical evidence I think stems from people watching too much television.
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Exactly. You can have compelling evidence even in the absence of any physical evidence.
 
soulcougher73 said:
I was going to go with common sense, but your answer works too i guess. Hmmm i wonder if that was built off common sense? 😛
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What is common sense? Common sense as it relates to humans in their natural, biological state or common sense as it related to the construct of civilization, social justice and societal norms? Or common sense as it relates to some divine order to the universe guided by some unseen hand?
 
J.Wilkins said:
You means you as a nation, you have a representative democracy and it's the will of the people of your nation that he should be president.

A nation where policy is established through votes for a candidate that has made his intentions clear can most certainly be held responsible for what they chose.

I am not holding YOU or HIM personally responsible, I'm holding the nation responsible and since you ARE a representative democratic nation I can certainly do that.

You can do the same towards the UK over Brexit and May if you wish, I'll take that and I'll take that without protest. I'm not personally responsible but the people of the UK which includes me are.
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We're getting pretty philosophical here, but there is no moral agency except as it applies to individuals. Entities like corporations, states or nations, or abstract constructs like "cultures" and "societies" have no consciousness and no moral will. There is no collective "we" either. That is a fiction we engage because we wish to adopt a sense of group identity. You can say that "we" as a nation are responsible if you like. It's a common formulation, in fact. Yet it's still meaningless as applied to individuals who didn't vote for Trump. And it carries the danger of holding groups collectively responsible for the actions of a subset of that group, like what many are doing with Muslims and the issue of terrorism. At most, you can posit that in some situations, a person is responsible for not doing enough to stop someone else from behaving badly, but that logic only applies when we have a reasonable opportunity to actually change someone else's behavior. If what we're talking about here is voting for Trump, then you may have noticed that trying to get these people to recognize Trump's shortcomings is like arguing with a brick wall.
 
woolfe9998 said:
We're getting pretty philosophical here, but there is no moral agency except as it applies to individuals. Entities like corporations, states or nations, or abstract constructs like "cultures" and "societies" have no consciousness and no moral will. There is no collective "we" either. That is a fiction we engage because we wish to adopt a sense of group identity. You can say that "we" as a nation are responsible if you like. It's a common formulation, in fact. Yet it's still meaningless as applied to individuals who didn't vote for Trump. And it carries the danger of holding groups collectively responsible for the actions of a subset of that group, like what many are doing with Muslims and the issue of terrorism. At most, you can posit that in some situations, a person is responsible for not doing enough to stop someone else from behaving badly, but that logic only applies when we have a reasonable opportunity to actually change someone else's behavior. If what we're talking about here is voting for Trump, then you may have noticed that trying to get these people to recognize Trump's shortcomings is like arguing with a brick wall.
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As I said to the individual you are responding to, it's much easier to blame someone for his affliction than to empathize. Empathy leads to obligation, blaming someone absolves you of any responsibility to help them. It's the same attitude that Republicans have WRT the poor.
 
Blackjack200 said:
I mean, we very obviously do not. Public support for the president and the congress are both well below 50%.



For the second time, emails, text messages, recordings, etc. If someone is being continuously harassed, and they have an opportunity to gather physical evidence of that harassment, they probably will.
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Thank you for clarifying what you mean when you say "physical evidence." So now we're down to a standard where there must have been some sort of written communications or a tape recording. Well guess what, harassers/gropers/rapists/molesters only rarely memorialize their conduct in writing. Almost never, in fact. In a small percentage of cases, someone might have secretly made a tape recording, though it's not going to be admissible in court.

The case of Moore perfectly illustrates why you don't always need anything other than witness statements. First, we've got 9 accusers now. The number of accusations alone tends to increase the probability that at least some are true. While that wouldn't help in a court proceeding to prove that any given individual is telling the truth, it certainly matters in the court of public opinion when the issue is whether the accused is guilty of some misconduct rather than none. Second, dozens of people have stepped up to corroborate parts of the stories of the accusers, including the fact that the accuser told them about the accusations decades ago, and witnessing Moore repeatedly hitting on the person who claims Moore later tried to rape her. Third, we have Moore caught lying at least twice in his denials, claiming a restaurant which existed at the time did not exist, and claiming one accuser had contact with him later on when she did not. Fourth, we have Moore trying to character assassinate accusers by bringing up totally irrelevant issues like the number of times they've gotten a divorce. This smacks of the desperation of a guilty man.

Yet in all of that, there is no physical evidence, no written communications, no tape recordings. The solitary exception here is the yearbook signing, but that isn't necessary to rationally conclude that Moore is very likely guilty.

This simple formulation of "he said/she said" that seems to worry so many people is rarely the case in the real world. If that is literally all there is - a single accusation with no corroboration and no way to compare the credibility of the accuser to that of the accused - then I agree that it's problematic to assume guilt, but that is rarely the case.
 
Blackjack200 said:
I mean, we very obviously do not. Public support for the president and the congress are both well below 50%.
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Your problem is not the electoral college alone but low voter participation. With a higher voter participation you wouldn't have this problem (you didn't until the year 2000 and that was because of low voter participation too) so it's still a problem of the people rather than the rules.

Perhaps the rules need to change but everyone knows what they are and are free not to participate and get the results that you get.

No matter how you turn it, you got what you voted for.
 
woolfe9998 said:
We're getting pretty philosophical here, but there is no moral agency except as it applies to individuals. Entities like corporations, states or nations, or abstract constructs like "cultures" and "societies" have no consciousness and no moral will. There is no collective "we" either. That is a fiction we engage because we wish to adopt a sense of group identity. You can say that "we" as a nation are responsible if you like. It's a common formulation, in fact. Yet it's still meaningless as applied to individuals who didn't vote for Trump. And it carries the danger of holding groups collectively responsible for the actions of a subset of that group, like what many are doing with Muslims and the issue of terrorism. At most, you can posit that in some situations, a person is responsible for not doing enough to stop someone else from behaving badly, but that logic only applies when we have a reasonable opportunity to actually change someone else's behavior. If what we're talking about here is voting for Trump, then you may have noticed that trying to get these people to recognize Trump's shortcomings is like arguing with a brick wall.
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No, a nation can declare war which is a moral evil or right depending on circumstances so there is moral agency to a nation. A nation can be deemed as moral or immoral just like an individual can and in a democracy (which the US is no matter how you cut it) the nation represents the peoples will.

We are all responsible for our respective societies and if we are not then no one is responsible for anything.

Arguing with Trump supporters is indeed impossible though, Dear Leader shall NOT be questioned.
 
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I've heard a rumour that the accuser is a former US Olympian who worked with NBC during coverage of the winter Olympics in Sochi. Apparently, some sort of inappropriate contact happened in Sochi and Lauer pursued her afterwards, and there may have been concern that he was already making moves to get close to her again during coverage in S. Korea.
 
J.Wilkins said:
Your problem is not the electoral college alone but low voter participation. With a higher voter participation you wouldn't have this problem (you didn't until the year 2000 and that was because of low voter participation too) so it's still a problem of the people rather than the rules.

Perhaps the rules need to change but everyone knows what they are and are free not to participate and get the results that you get.

No matter how you turn it, you got what you voted for.
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Our problem is obscenely wealthy political donors that control policy in Washington.
 
Someone puled a clip of Katie Couric from 2012. Asked her "you co-hosted with Matt for 15 years. What was his most annoying habit? She said pinching my ass. Nobody took it seriously at the time
 
Blackjack200 said:
Our problem is obscenely wealthy political donors that control policy in Washington.
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End lobbyism and you'll be OK? Not even close.... Trump wasn't elected because of it, he was elected due to low voter participation.

I agree that you need to end what amounts to nothing but legal bribery though or neither party will ever be on the side of the people, ever. End that and you might even give parties that are closer to the will of the people to vote for.
 
PottedMeat said:
garrison keillor just got fired... from retirement? his production company at least

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo...ropriate-behavior-minnesota-public-radio-says

they're changing the name of the show?
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This one is remarkable to me. First Keillor says that it was a single instance where he meant to pat a woman on the back, but she was wearing an open backed top, and he "let his hand drift up" and she recoiled. Also said he apologized to her. Then he also said that lots of women have grabbed his ass while taking pictures with him. WTF? As far as I know, he's the first guy to make this claim.
 
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