XPost: alt.gossip.celebrities, alt.politics.democrats.d, sac.general   
   XPost: alt.rush-limbaugh   
   From: Davecross@kremlin.ru   
      
   Franklin Templeton is an unforgiving company, unless your name   
   is Johnson.   
      
   Amy Cooper is the subject of this week’s two-minute hate. She   
   was playing with her dog in Central Park’s “Ramble” when she was   
   approached by Christian Cooper (they are not related), a bird-   
   watcher who frequents the Ramble, who asked her to put her dog   
   on a leash, as is required in the area. Amy Cooper, who gives   
   every indication of considering herself a nice Manhattan   
   liberal, said she felt threatened by the mien of the … 57-year-   
   old Harvard-educated bird-watching enthusiast, and she called   
   the police, emphasizing that the man she was calling about was   
   African American.   
      
   Christian Cooper documented the episode on his cellphone, that   
   video was uploaded to the Internet, and social media did what   
   social media does. Amy Cooper almost immediately was fired from   
   her job at Franklin Templeton, where she managed the investment   
   firm’s insurance portfolio. “We do not tolerate racism of any   
   kind at Franklin Templeton,” the firm insisted in a tweet   
   accompanied by an image of the firm’s mascot, Ben Franklin, who   
   had some pretty nasty views about race and who was in no way   
   involved in the founding of Franklin Templeton — the company   
   simply appropriated Franklin’s name and likeness when the   
   original firm, Franklin Distributors, was founded by Rupert H.   
   Johnson Sr., whose descendants still control the company.   
      
   So, racism will not be tolerated at Franklin Templeton. Would   
   you like to know what is?   
      
   In 2002, Chuck Johnson was a third-generation rich guy, the   
   grandson of Franklin Templeton’s founder and the son of its then-   
   CEO, working his way around a company rife with nepotism — the   
   CEO had seven children, all of whom worked at the firm at one   
   time or another. Chuck was earning a seven-figure income and in   
   the running to take over for his father as CEO when, in a fit of   
   drunken rage, he slammed his wife into a kitchen stove hard   
   enough to break the bones of her face. He was later convicted of   
   felony assault and incarcerated for two months. After his   
   imprisonment, he quickly returned to the family business,   
   starting Tano, a wealth-management firm supported in part by   
   business relationships with Franklin, in 2004. Franklin and Tano   
   continued to grow intimately connected to one another, and in   
   2013 Johnson joined Franklin Resources’ board of directors, a   
   position he held until February of this year. To say that it was   
   unusual for a company with the better part of $1 trillion in   
   assets under management to name a man who had been convicted of   
   a felony to its board would be a great understatement.   
      
   Franklin executives insisted that Chuck was uniquely qualified   
   for the position thanks to his experience … at Franklin, and at   
   Tano, a family office he founded with his family money.   
      
   It is good to be in the family. Chuck’s father was the CEO at   
   the time of his departure, his brother was the CEO thereafter,   
   and his sister is the CEO today. (Franklin Resources declined to   
   answer my questions for this column.)   
      
   There is every reason to believe that Chuck’s remorse is   
   genuine. There is every reason to believe that Amy Cooper’s   
   remorse is genuine, too. But that doesn’t matter. What matters   
   is power. If you are Chuck Johnson, you’re in the family. If you   
   are, say, Willie Nelson, you can sing rousing odes to lynching   
   and remain a beloved cultural icon, and even be invited to   
   perform at the Democratic National Convention, as Nelson did in   
   2008. Amy Cooper is a nobody, like James Damore and Shannon   
   Phillips.   
      
   Question: How much do we want to discourage women from seeking   
   police help in unpredictable situations? How severely do we want   
   to punish women who do so for being wrong when they are wrong,   
   as some of them will be?   
      
   The numbers vary, but most analysts believe that the majority   
   (and probably the great majority) of domestic violence goes   
   unreported. Similarly, it has been estimated that between   
   70?percent and 90 percent of sexual assaults go unreported. Why?   
   The Brennan Center for Justice reports that 20 percent of   
   victims say they forgo reporting the assault because they “worry   
   about retaliation — not just from the perpetrator, but from   
   society at large.” The bosses at Franklin Templeton have given   
   them another reason to fear such retaliation: Involve the police   
   in a way that upsets the sensibilities of somebody on Twitter   
   and even the titans of the financial world can be stampeded into   
   firing a woman from her job for a minor episode in her private   
   life that has nothing to do with her work or her employer.   
      
   Amy Cooper was in the wrong. And that has nothing to do with   
   Franklin Templeton, which has not been deputized to act as the   
   moral guardians of its employees. Cooper’s offense was somewhere   
   between venial sin and breach of etiquette. She did not commit a   
   crime. She did not fail in her professional obligations. She did   
   not violently assault a woman and break her face. Nor did she go   
   to court and dismiss allegations of wrongdoing as “a gross   
   example of a highly exaggerated filing,” as Chuck Johnson’s   
   lawyers did.   
      
   Johnson says he accepts the full gravity of his wrongdoing, and   
   maybe he does, but he also successfully petitioned to have his   
   offense retroactively reduced to a misdemeanor and then expunged   
   entirely.   
      
   There is no expungement from Twitter.   
      
   It is peculiar that our progressive friends have decided that   
   gigantic financial corporations controlled by hereditary   
   billionaires are the appropriate instrument for the enforcement   
   of social, moral and political conformity. (It is also peculiar   
   that they believe that such enforced conformity is necessary and   
   desirable.) But if it isn’t Franklin Templeton, it’s Google, and   
   if it isn’t Google, it’s Starbucks, and if it isn’t Starbucks,   
   it’s IAC, which famously fired a young woman named Justine Sacco   
   in the textbook example of the Twitter mob. Like the Amy Cooper   
   affair, the Justine Sacco hysteria was a frenzied ritual attack   
   on a woman in a high-status job conducted in highly sexualized   
   terms, with the usual lexicon of misogynistic abuse. (A keyword   
   search in Twitter is illuminating, if you doubt this.) Amy   
   Cooper knew what she was doing when she called the police — and   
   Christian Cooper can’t be surprised by what happened after his   
   sister posted the video to Twitter.   
      
   Social media is a sewer, and it isn’t going to get any better,   
   because people are not going to get any better. But this kind of   
   ritualistic headhunting could be stopped pretty quickly if   
   companies such as Franklin Templeton would simply declare: “Our   
   employees’ private lives are private, and it isn’t our place to   
   act as their moral tutors.”   
      
   It is good that there is grace for wayward executives (and for   
   all us sinners). Perhaps the Johnsons could spare a little of   
   that for Amy Cooper.   
      
   But that would be an exercise in principle where what matters   
   most is blood.   
      
   Kevin D. Williamson is the author of the upcoming “Big White   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)