Yes, but he's going to get soooo much tail out of this that it will be worth is job.

Good Afternoon Charles,
Indeed, this police officer was a fool. Clearly, it was the technology that did him in not necessarily his sporting of the Confederate Battle Flag as an undergarment. He could still be wearing the garment & have his job without posting a photo. Whatever his motivation to post this photo he, along with millions (?) of others cede their privacy. Yep, it's Technology 1, the private citizen nil.

You have a good point. However, I find it disarming how consumers are still wanting to post compromising pictures of themselves (selfies) for all the world to know and for eternity to keep. To me, that's damn foolish. Sure, I use the technology but judiciously. I usually post photos of my travels for example.

At the end of the day, we need to control the technology not have the technology control us. This police officer found out the hard way.

In the 1950s, what kind of person was 30 and unmarried and not an active and visible churchgoer? Did that impact your business opportunities? It sure did. And nevermind what women were and weren't able to get away with socially outside of the office.

Social status and what you do outside of the workplace has had an impact on your professional life for much longer than Facebook's existence. Facebook just made the tracking easier.

(There was probably a tiny window in the 80s-90s where social liberalism increased and you were able to maintain a more private personal life with less impact on your professional one.)

Feh, Facebook.

#5, We actually have more privacy today. Nobody on my street knows who I am or who I am supposed to be with or what time I usually leave. Hundreds of thousands of people were hired last year without any scrutiny of their facebook profiles, and one employer who asked for applicants' passwords was pilloried for it, because that window you refer to has continued to expand the entire time. This cop would still be on the job if he just adjusted his settings.

The gilding of the past and the beshitting of the present is a trend in need of a one word name, it has been mis-directing dialog all of my 42 years. It is my white whale of social ills.

I like a police department that can fire people. I only hope that Charleston fires cops who beat the fuck out of people and bring a massive lawsuit on the city. While I'm hoping, I hope they will stop firing people for wrongful shorts wearing. That is monstrously stupid. If they think jurors can't take a cop seriously for this, how is any cop's testimony going to be worth something? Have they not heard how right-wingers freak out about people wearing American flag shorts? He has the confederate battle flag over his balls! If he had a cartoon of Muhammad over his ass-crack would he be under scrutiny as a jihadist?

I hope they had more on him than just this and that he genuinely deserves the firing.

On the related issue of mistaking the significance of a symbol in a destructive way, The Korean has some thoughts on magic word racism that are relevant, and like all he writes, well worth a read: http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2014/03/a…