Social Media Can Get You in Trouble at Work

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this two o'clock hour. At the bottom of the hour,
my friend Jeff Angelo is scheduled to join me. He,
coming from a very political background, will be able to
give us a bit more of the x's and o's,
if you will really how the people in Washington and

(00:20):
how the political fundamentals are being changed as we speak
because of the Charlie Kirk assassination last week and then
what we're seeing this week, which is punishment for people.
That teacher, by the way, in the town I used
to live in Iowa, the art teacher who was fired
on Wednesday night at a school board meeting, has already

(00:43):
filed a lawsuit against the school board, saying that his
constitutional rights were in French. Now we'll have to look
deep into the handbook of the Oscaloosa School District, and
I'm not sure if there's a settlement here, or if
he's looking for money, or if he's looking for dignity
or what it is. He had a week to really
think it over, surely knowing he was likely to be

(01:05):
terminated as the art teacher in the school district. But
time will tell. It's tough for us to forecast some
of that stuff because I don't know what his motivation is,
and so I was thinking about it if I was
in that position. First of all, I mean, I live
in a world where it's probably a good thing to

(01:27):
get pretty political on your social media accounts. It's not
something that I do. It's not something that is exciting
for me, and it's not something that I feel like
me posting political stuff on my social media changes people's minds,
maybe for an uninformed person. If there was a candidate
or some type of thing that really had me going,

(01:49):
I could share that and they would see it and
be like, Wow, I didn't know this was a thing
that was happening. And that's possible. I don't want to
rule that out. But the the idea of being like
a teacher, a school teacher and doing something like that
on my social media, I don't think that would happen.

(02:10):
I don't think I'd be interested in doing that under
any circumstance. Just knowing that I am in a public
position and knowing that my job is really predicated on
people trusting me to educate their children in something. I
did take some kind of low level teaching courses as

(02:33):
I was going through college, not because I wanted to
be a teacher, but they were kind of a requirement
for the degree that I wanted. I just needed, you know,
some leadership level skills and ways to communicate, like different
classes of how to communicate with people in different situations.
It was, you know, it's something that I thought was

(02:55):
common sense, is that you just can't do stuff. There
was somebody, I don't know if it was their school
district or a nearby school district, but one of the
teachers was a female, attractive woman for whatever it's worth,
started an Only Fans and this was found. This was
a teacher whose Only Fans' account was found. And for

(03:17):
those who don't know what only Fans is, it's a
subscription service essentially, and women, men, anybody can go on
there and be a content creator and take photos of
themselves or photos. You know, it can get at as
risky as you're willing to get and then you charge

(03:38):
essentially a subscription and people can look at your photos
or your videos and you can make money that way. Well,
apparently a teacher in a school district. I can't remember
if it was that one or if it was one nearby,
but I just remember there's a lot of hubbub because
one of the teachers had started an only fans account. Now,
this only fans account could not be viewed by somebody

(04:00):
who was underage. I don't know. Yeah, I'm sure you
guys out there know you can pretty easily work around
stuff like that through either VPNs or making up a
different email. And unless you get your driver's license scan,
there's no way to really know how old somebody is
that's looking at it. And I just remember it was

(04:20):
a really big deal at the time that this person,
this female teacher, who was probably not even thirty yet,
had done this and it had become knowledge in the schools.
This was something I'm sure she thought she could do
secretively and make some extra money on the side, and

(04:44):
I don't know how risk a some of the photos were,
some of the videos were, but it started to make
the rounds in the school district and eventually, I mean,
she had to come to the decision as to whether
she was going to immediately resign or they were going
to have to have another big board meeting about her.
This was sad several years ago, so you know, it's
not quite the same thing as maybe something like a

(05:07):
political statement, but it still was a violation in some
way of the code of conduct. Now, I don't know
if the Oscarlous School District asked for the resignation of
the art teacher, Matthew Cargill. And you can go read
about this person's resumes. He's an art teacher. It's not
like he's sitting in there teaching political science to kids

(05:29):
that are sixteen years old. But he is in classrooms
with kids of various ages, and he has that political background.
He seems to be willing to talk about it, since
he put on social media one Nazi down. I would
I was thinking, you know, if I did something so
outrageously offensive, or even if I didn't think it was

(05:52):
offensive at the time, I'm certainly tone deaf. I don't
understand the people around me, and I don't really have
a pulse on the society around me. And then I
was asked to resign. Would I resign or would I
fight and say that I deserve the right to express
myself politically however I want. Now if they pull the
handbook and say, well, here's the violation in the handbook,

(06:16):
and then I say, I still I disagree. I don't
think that that was a violation of what the code
of conduct was. I was expressing my own personal opinion
on my own personal Facebook page, and it's not my
fault that people took offense to it, took umbrage to it.
I don't think I said anything wrong. Sounds an awful
lot like what people are saying about Jimmy Kimmel, isn't it. Well?

(06:42):
If I were to be terminated and they had a
school board meeting, they heard from people in the community,
and they terminated his contract, would I be willing to
sue or would I want to leave this behind? And
maybe if I wanted to continue to be an educator
go to a different school district, this would be a
cloud that would hang over my head. Certainly, at any

(07:03):
time that another school district were to bring up my resume,
they would see this unfortunate news story that is never
going away on the internet. Now I'd have to somehow
tell them that I understand the situation, and I would
not want to do this. You'd certainly want to be
picking a place that probably fits your political lifestyle, because

(07:25):
if you have some conservative parents that find out who
you are as you are getting this job, they may
go have a cow to their school board and say
we don't want this kind of person here. This is
not the kind of attention we want. So by all accounts,
even if he doesn't sue, there's a chance that his
teaching career is over. But this tells you, if there's

(07:48):
nothing else to learn from this, you can be punished
by your private employer for your own personal political opinion.
And we know that to be true, and we know
that is not something that seems to be super duper debatable.

(08:11):
So if we're all in agreement on that, and we
understand that certain people we probably know or you probably know,
have been let go from their jobs or fired from
their jobs for code of conduct violations which could include

(08:32):
public displays of their political beliefs which could negatively reflect,
according to the company, on the company. And they have
to protect themselves in their own interests, even if they
may agree with you on a personal level. They don't
necessarily want their employees talking about stuff like this. But

(08:53):
we are about to find out, at least in this case,
and I don't know how long it'll take that even
in the most lamb dunk situations where it was obvious
this guy was getting terminated, it was obvious this guy
was never going to teach in the Osculusa school district. Ever, again,
based on his one Nazi down Facebook post, well, does

(09:16):
he still somehow legally have a leg to stand on.
Is there an actual case there and is there a
chance that he wins. Now that doesn't mean he's going
to get a job back, but he could receive money
out of this, and it could be ruled in a
court of law that it was not handled properly by
the oscar Usa school board. If that happens, I think

(09:40):
that opens a huge can of worms around the entire
country for people to point at that particular case, which again,
every state has their own different rules and every school
district has their own code of conduct that in handbook
that needs to be followed. But if he does make
something out of this and does get a settlement or
there is some sort of victory for him, even if

(10:02):
he doesn't get his job back, it is going to
be utilized as a way for people to fight back
against school boards and school districts everywhere. Whenever there's a
controversy about somebody's opinions and them publicly posting them, it
is something to pay attention to and we will do
that for you, what is being called an attack on

(10:25):
free speech by people in on the political left or
people that are in positions of their jobs that have
either lost their jobs or are seeing people that have
similar points of view getting suspended from their jobs or
fired from their jobs or whatever, and then includes Jimmy Kimmel,
And we'll do the best we can to give you
an update on that. I had Aj sent me this

(10:47):
and said, were these parents mad about that only fans
page but not trying to convince your kid that they're
a different gender. I don't know. I don't know, right,
so the only fans thing. If I was a parent,
I would like to think that I don't care about that.
You know, there are plenty of teachers that have a
side hustle, that have a side gig. They work as
like a server, or they are out and about, and

(11:10):
as a kid, I always found it kind of weird
when I would accidentally run into one of my teachers
doing something else, Like there was a teacher that had
a part time job at minards, you know, and I'd
just like be in there with my dad as a kid,
and I'd just see like, oh, there's my history teacher.
Just like hanging out and you know, working on a
Saturday at the hardware store. It was a little strange

(11:33):
for me, but obviously there was no judgment and I
didn't care. And they have to do what they have
to do to, you know, keep themselves happy, whether they
have to do this for financial stability or not, Like,
I don't know, but it's interesting when I was a
kid to see that. Now, if I was a fifteen
sixteen year old kid and an attractive teacher in the
school district was on an OnlyFans account and we accidentally

(11:56):
discovered that in some way and knew it was her,
and we somehow had access to the photos in the videos,
that could be incredibly embarrassing for her, I suppose, But
I guess I don't know what the inherent danger of
that is. And what is she gonna do in private?
Is she's one of your kids teachers? Like are you?

(12:17):
And is your kid going to be in danger of
her OnlyFans profile? Like that doesn't make much sense to
me as far as something this political. This is kind
of dangerous stuff, isn't it Like you could talk to
your kid and say, hey, get off OnlyFans Like that's
not like you shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be

(12:39):
looking at it. You know, it depends on how you
viewed stuff like that and whatever. But I mean, it's
kind of the modern equivalent in a way of the
newty magazines of you know, previous generations youth. This isn't
a brand new thing that like fifteen and sixteen year

(13:01):
old boys are just like, oh, I didn't know this existed.
Now they know it's there, and they may have just
accidentally discovered their teacher doing that. That created a hubbub,
I think because people felt like that may be an
inappropriate side hustle for a teacher who were trusting to
educate the children. I don't know how that affects her
ability to educate children and may affect the ability to

(13:23):
for your kid to respect her the same way. I
guess I don't know, but that sounds like something that
you can talk over. That doesn't sound like a big
enough deal for me to be trying to get a
teacher fired. This is a big enough deal for me
to want to get a teacher fired. You are, You're
in a classroom alone, as the single adult amongst however

(13:44):
many kids are in your class. You're in a public
school district. Your entire job is predicated on the fact
that we the parents, and the school district, the school
board that we have elected, they can trust you to
educate children in whatever subject matter you are an expert in,
You're supposed to teach them that. And when we see

(14:06):
that you are willing to have bad enough judgment, not
just to feel the way that he feels, which again
first of Memma writes like, I'm not going to tell
people how to feel about stuff. I can say that
you're a jerk. I can say that you're insensitive and
you have no empathy and you're an incredibly large hypocrite
if you say something like one Nazi down after Charliekirk
is assassinated. But I'm not going to tell you how

(14:29):
to think about yourself, and you don't tell me. You
can think I'm a jerk all you want to, but
we have the ability for free thought. The bad judgment
is posting that in a public forum for some reason,
insensitively immediately in the aftermath of this happening, knowing the
kind of firestorm that this assassination was creating, and then

(14:51):
on top of that, in immediate regards beyond that, now,
all of a sudden, you're surprised that the school district
is public school district and the parents of these kids
in said school district are somehow angry enough to want
to get you terminated from the job. We can't trust you, man,
We can't trust you to teach your kids, keep politics

(15:12):
out of it, and we can't trust you have good judgment.
We just don't trust you. And that's why there is
a code of conduct and an employee handbook and why
the school board waited for due process and gave it
a week before they made a decision, so it didn't
seem ration, and it didn't seem like it was just
because there was a ton of piling on from angry
parents in the school district and they were just caving

(15:33):
into that. They did their due diligence and did it
the way that they needed to, and they still came
to the decision to terminate that employee. Now, whether or
not he has a leg to stand down in the
lawsuit is a different conversation altogether. But it is interesting
when you hear about what really grinds the gears of
the people who are sending their kids to school and

(15:56):
what they want their school to be teaching their kids
and as hands on as a lot of people seem
to be with that. Now, we learn a lot more
about our teachers and our administrators now because of social
media than we've ever had the ability to learn before.
If this whole snafuo were to happen in some different
forum thirty years ago, this guy would have just packed

(16:17):
up and moved to the next town over and probably
would have been okay. In this situation, this stuff is
going to follow him for the rest of his career.
I don't know if he can go back to teaching.
Maybe that's part of the lawsuit, but I just have
a hard time understanding how he would think in this
technological age to come to the judgment that that was
a good idea to make that post and not expect

(16:38):
to have any sort of consequences. That is just completely
tone deaf, and it just tells me he has first off,
bad judgment, but the complete lack of self awareness, no
awareness at all. We talk about news, info, have fun,
and everything. A guy who knows about the news, guy
who knows about fun, guy who knows about politics, and
a guy who knows about unshaping the people is my friend.
Jeff Angelo, who is the He's the guy who's in

(17:01):
charge of the morning show on our sister station ten forty.
Who Jeff, How you doing today?

Speaker 2 (17:07):
I am doing terrific, beautiful afternoon, getting ready to really
enjoy a beautiful fall weekend. Emily, how about you?

Speaker 1 (17:16):
You know I I'd say same, It's going to be great.
I know that a lot of people are excited to
get at the end of the work week at any point,
but it's been a long week of discourse and of politics.
I spent the first half hour kind of talking about
the example that could end up being made out of
this Oscaloosa art teacher, and I know you've been covering
that story on your show as well. This lawsuit's interesting

(17:39):
because I think a lot of people on the political
left are curious to see what leg he has to
stand on. Is there a leg that he has to
stand on? And what would you guess is his attempt
here and he'ssuing the school district? Is it for money?
Is it for dignity? Is it because he wants to,
you know, try to make headway and say that you know,

(18:01):
people in his position can say what they want on
social media with no repercussions. What do you think he's
looking for here?

Speaker 2 (18:09):
I do think he's looking for money. I mean, you
see this pattern over and over again with pursuing of
governmental entities, local governmental entities, county governmental entities, and schools
looking for a settlement. That's what he ultimately wants. I
hope he doesn't get one, but often school districts and
school boards are really aware of how much money is

(18:29):
going to cost them taxpayer money to defend themselves, and
they'll often settle, which I hate because the school is
completely and utterly in the right and everybody knows it.
You know, let's get back to basics on this First
Amendment discussion. The First Amendment protects you from your government.
You can speak out and you can say anything politically.

(18:52):
You will not be jailed. You will not be put
into jail. That's what the First Amendment is all about. Now,
all of us that have a job, including his teacher,
have a code of conduct that we're asked to abide
by in our jobs, and particularly in schools. There are
a lot of schools now in their directories, in their

(19:15):
rules and regulations, they have a social media policy not
only for teachers, but for kids. And I'm guessing if
I'm the lawyers for the Oscaloosa School District, I'm simply
going to go to the court and say, here is
the contract for the teacher. And he completely and utterly
understood that anything that makes the school look bad on

(19:38):
social media, that's understood that there will be consequences, there
will be penalties. So I think he doesn't have a
leg to stand on, and I don't think most of
us would in any of our jobs. If we pose something,
as iHeart employees emory that is offensive and makes the
company look bad, we can get fired, and we're not
going to have grounds to stand on in saying, well,

(20:01):
that's just my free speech. Well, yeah, you have free speech.
If I post something on the air or say something
on the air that's offensive, I'm not going to go
to jail for it. But I have a code of
conduct that I have to buy. Not only does iHeart
have a policy, but the FCC Federal Communications Commission has

(20:23):
rules about what I can or cannot say on the air,
which of course is part of a broader debate over
Jimmy Kimmel getting taken off the air. But again, we
all in our jobs, we have codes of conduct that
we adhere to. No one's free speech rights are being
violated here. Unfortunately, he's looking for a settlement. He might

(20:44):
get it, and I hate that because I'd love the
school to take a strong stand in this and say no,
we have the right to police our people and what
they say on social media because the bigger, broader issue
memory is that we cannot have a sloth of the
American people endorsing or cheering for political murder. We can't

(21:05):
have that. We are a free speech country. We do
invite debate, and you and I need to be able
to express an opinion without fear for our physical safety.
So people should be embarrassed, they should be shunned, they
should be fired from their jobs for celebrating the murder
of Charlie Kirk. They're not going to be put in jail.

(21:25):
This is a free speech country. But culturally we can
force people to be ashamed of what they've said or done.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
Is this cancel culture? Would you define this as a
variation of cancel culture, even if it's now kind of
on the other foot than it usually is.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
No, Because thinking about what cancel culture really was when
a lot of us were expressing our annoyance with at Emory,
cancel culture is that you're not allowed to say something
that is against another person's political beliefs. A cancel culture
at its gin was the left saying, look, everyone's got

(22:03):
to think like us, and if they don't, there will
be penalties. There will be consequences. Actually, ironically, in the
town where I live, Anchony, we're seeing cancel culture right now.
There's a local business that put up a very nice
sign as a memorial to Charlie Kirk, and he got
box to the business owner on the internet. People started

(22:25):
leaving one star reviews on his business on a Reddit thread,
people started naming his business, threatening his business. He since
taking the sign down. That's cancel culture. What this is
is that people cannot be We as a society are

(22:46):
culturally saying, look, you cannot go onto social media and
endorse the murder of people with whom you politically disagree.
That is unacceptable. There has to be consequences for that.
Because Emory, we can't normalize this. We can't say, well,
you know, that's part of discourse now in America, you
might get shot. I mean, we can't, so we have

(23:09):
to take a strong stand. You want school districts and
businesses firing people like that. That's not cancel culture.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
We have Jeff Angelo here with us on the show.
He's the morning show host and our sister station in
Des Moines ten forty who. Yeah, the Kimmel things interesting
because you have affiliates that are threatening to, you know,
preempt the show. You have the network television aspect, where
the FCC is a bit more regulatory of what goes
on network TV than cable for instance. You have likely

(23:40):
a platform that is no longer nearly as profitable as
it once was. There are a lot of factors in
here that create this idea that maybe this is a
great way for Disney to try to get out of
the late night TV show business like CBS is. Maybe
this was an opportunity for Jimmy Kimble to try to
like force his way out in a way that made
him look like a arder of some kind. There's that

(24:02):
element too, But you know, from the standpoint of the discussion,
it just feels like people just don't have the information
right And Donald Trump he said it was because of
low ratings. You hear from the SEC that they have
put pressure on them for this. How do we debate
this particular thing or this type of thing, because the
crux of it seems to be simple enough, but it's

(24:23):
actually a very complex issue with a bunch of different
factors that created this circus that we've seen this week
with this show.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah yeah, I mean I think this is in cancel culture.
This is not a First Amendment issue. This is actually
the free market at work. And keep in mind memory,
the Jimmy Kimmel Show is taped in advance and then
played back. Okay, so they could have edited this comment.
In the comment which created the controversy, Jimmy Kimmel says

(24:55):
that the alleged shooter has ties to the MAGA movement. Basically,
he knew when he made those comments and when that
show aired that that just simply was not true. That's
an inflammatory, slanderous comment that is being put on the
air on purpose. That said, again, this is not a

(25:15):
First Amendment violation. Nobody's going to jail for Jimmy Kimmel
saying that this is actually capitalism at work because he
allowed this thing to air. Kimmel did, and affiliates across
the country said, look, this is really offensive and inappropriate.
So we're not going to air his show anymore in
our markets. Okay, you sold advertising into the Jimmy Kimmel Show.

(25:40):
You promised the advertisers that a certain number of people
would see those commercials. You are now guaranteed that a
huge chunk of those people will never see commercials that
the sponsors paid for. Therefore, this is financial disaster for ABC.
So they said, we're going to substitute another show for

(26:05):
the Jimmy Kimmel Show, and we'll try to mitigate our
losses here with the advertisers. So, in my mind, this
is capitalism at work. It's not a First Amendment violation.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
That's interesting. Jeff, can you stick around for one more
segment with me this half hour?

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yep? Sure, yep, sure can, as long as you don't
cancel me during the break.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
Hey, you never know. You loud mouthed and I might
have to do something about that. We'll take a quick break.
Be back with more with Jeffangelo here in a second
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Speaker 1 (29:06):
It's Emery Songer here with you at two fifty and
I'm joined by Jeff Angelo here, who's my colleague. He
works for our sister station ten forty who in Des Moines,
and he's really smart in a lot of this stuff.
It's not canceled culture with Jimmy Kimmel. But I know
that Charlie Kirk situation has led to a lot of
discussion about what is or isn't a good way to

(29:30):
discuss politics in this country. And I was wondering to
get the temperature to be lower. It doesn't sound like
that's going to happen either. How do you best put
a state of the Union, if you will, on political
discourse in this country in the wake of this assassination.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Well, I think really in the light of the assassination
of Charlie Kirk. Everyone has to go through an outrage phase.
We're grieving as a nation, and people who were supporters
of Charlie Kirk and his message and what he was
doing from an organization standpoint or outrage right now. The

(30:07):
temperatures are high, and I mean, we're just being human.
I don't think that anything horrible is going on other
than a very human reaction. At the same time, people
who stood against what he said and thought they're indignant
about it all that. Don't you understand what he did
or said was wrong? You know, I see that as well.

(30:32):
You know, you hope the lesson that comes out of
this is that we're at our best when we're debating
ideas in the political sphere. That's what Charlie Kirk did
so well, one of the best ever at doing it
and debating people who disagreed with him and did so
with intelligence and grace. And that's where I wish the

(30:56):
nation could focus on in politics. But unfortunately, we take
politics so personally these days, and we we demonize the
people with whom we disagree, and that's why people get
so angry and unfortunately, for a swath of the nation,
when you decide that politics is not the clash of ideas,

(31:18):
it's the battle between good and evil. Then you can
justify anything when you're stopping evil, you know, including political violence.
And we're never going to be able to completely get
away for that from that type of discourse in this country, Emory.
But at the very least we're better served if everyone says,

(31:39):
you know, really the way to talk about politics is
to debate the ideas of politics, is it, you know,
whether or not you disagree on climate change, or tax
policy or immigration. That's what Charlie Kirk did. But again,
this is such a personal thing for so many people

(32:00):
that it's hard to get away from the personal in
politics anymore. And that's why people get so angry at
each other and then start to justify doing whatever means
are necessary to accomplish a goal.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Well, Jeff, last thing for you before I let you
go here, how do we get there? Is there a
waving get closer there? Who's responsible? Is it our political leaders?
Is it the President of the United States? Is it
us our social media accounts? Do they need to kind
of take the lead and say we need to get
this back to being about the ideas. How do we
get there?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, it's all of it, Emory, it's all of what
you just said. It's everybody. It's just a commitment to saying, look,
we have a great country here, and we're a free
speech country, and we're going to debate things and whether
or not I'm for lower tax policy, or whether or
not I'm for a strong border, or you know, I'm

(32:54):
a capitalist. That doesn't make me evil, does it make
me greedy? It doesn't mean that I hate other people.
I really, you know, we've really made the term racist
kind of useless at this point in politics. It just
got thrown around so much in politics, and I worry

(33:15):
about the word hate and the fact that we just
accuse people that we disagree with of hate. And if
we just could get back to if we just said, look,
I think discourse in this country is best served when
we just debate ideas and I don't attack you as
a person, then I think we're better served as that. Now.

(33:36):
Is that naive in some quarters? Yeah? But I mean
it all starts with you and me. I mean, if
we make that decision in our lives that we're going
to debate not the person, but the idea, then we're
a better nation for it.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
I think Jeff Angel is a great guy at debating
the idea is. Hey, Jeff, really appreciate you jumping on
my show. And of course you can hear Jeff do
in the mornings if you're in the Des Moin area
on ten forty who as always man a play. Sure
have a great weekend.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
Yep, you too, Emory, talk to you very soon.