What can I say?
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Hi, long time no see! I’m still reading the blog though, looks like you’ve been very busy with your writing.
I agree, that was the first thing I thought too when I read it on http://www.fark.com last night. It reminded me that on the one hand, here in non-PC Korea you can advertise for female waiting staff 20-23 years of age…but on the other, bullshit like that case in Scranton wouldn’t happen in a million years here.
I’m going on a very overdue 4 week trip to Australia and NZ soon, which I’m looking forward to but those countries are just as full of bullshit like that, so in the end it will probably remind me of how much I like living in Korea.
Cheers,
James.
Two words: “Demolition Man”
I predict the case will be thrown out of court, though.
James,
Yeah, there’s something about non-PC that at least cuts through the bullshit. I’m also a firm believer in the fact that it’s preferable people say what they mean directly, instead of through a veil of PC language, because it facilitates addressing those ideas or smacking people in the head when they’re being racists, sexists, and whatever.
If a shop is going to hire only young women, advertising it saves people time, for example. It’s hard to change the hiring practices, so PCifying the advertising only wastes time for a lot of people. Far better people say what they want in public, and if anyone cares enough, they can get angry and ridicule it in public too.
Maybe I should remind myself of this when Korea starts to get to me.
Enjoy the Southern Hemisphere!
Charles,
God, I forgot about that movie. Yes, it is kind of u/dys-topian to try to control how people speak. Hell, I even object to language policing in the workplace. I had some old Christian fellow telling me not to say “fuck” during informal lunch chats in the office, and I was ready to tear a strip. It’s weird how people think they have the right to tell others how to speak. (Only a step away from dictating thoughtcrime, in my opinion.)
I imagine it would be thrown out of court. However, I’ve been thinking for a while that there should be fines like those levied when someone misuses the DMCA Act — you can be fined for a false DMCA takedown notice, for example. Like that, why not fine — heftily — people or police departments who bring charges so stupid that they don’t even deserve to be brought to court in the first place? Certainly I wouldn’t want to create a disincentive to using the legal system, but on the other hand, a disincentive to abusing it would be nice.
You’ve got a good point about disincentives to abusing the legal system. Reporting stuff like this and setting the legal system into action costs the taxpayer a huge amount of money. Maybe not the same amount as its costs to, say, wage a war, of course, but it’s still probably more money than the person reporting the “crime” could afford to spend personally. It would be nice if the system could actually earn money off of dopes like this rather than have to spend money on them.
On the other hand… it is a rather sticky issue, and it would have to be handled very carefully. Lean too far in either direction and you take the first step toward totalitarianism.
Yeah. It just seems to me that some things are quite obviously stupid, and most of the world operates in such a way that they don’t get filed in most places.
It may be that it’s just the intersection of economic conditions with “freedom” in the elgal sense — freedom to sue for almost bloody anything — that encourages this. Surely a lot of people have big hopes about hitting the jackpot because it’s the only way they’ll ever live in relative luxury.