Literally. Maybe it was the slice of pound cake earlier in the day, but I’d rather give credit to this shitty story for making me feel unwell earlier in the day.
Long story short: Brookhaven PR director is fired due to comments being taken out of context and preemptively reported as an incident of discrimination without all of the facts being present.
Brookhaven is a pretty nice neighborhood, just north of the actual city proper limits of Atlanta. It’s also a neighborhood synonymous for being a somewhat affluent “white” neighborhood.
Two weeks ago, there was supposedly a festival being held in Brookhaven. As lots of public events like to have, a photographer was hired to do some event photography during the festival, presumably so that the city as well as the PR department could have some ostensibly nice photos to glorify the expected success of the event itself.
For whatever reason, this is the guy they hired to do event photography.
During the event, an incident occurred where the PR director confronted the hired photographer over the fact that he was spending time photographing some “models” that he had brought along with him. During the confrontation, the phrase “this is not the image I want for the city of Brookhaven” was uttered.
One of the models was black, and the other was Asian. The photographer himself was also black. As you can see, such a remark is easily construed as very volatile.
This is also where the initial report of the incident pretty much ceased, because it’s far easier to package this as a scandal of racism and discrimination. Naturally, the PR director who made the remark’s name has been dragged through the mud, vilified as this evil bigot, and as of today, now unemployed.
All this, because of one side of a story; the one side that also happened to be equipped with the all-powerful, indefensible, race card.
The fact of the matter is that the photographer was double-dipping his obligations; he brought models to the Brookhaven festival, so he could shoot them for his own personal endeavors, all while on the clock and on the dime of the city of Brookhaven. From a workplace standpoint, this is completely defensible to why it was a problem to the PR director to confront him about this.
“The image” not wanted for the city of Brookhaven clearly means one that’s not artificial, or needing “professional” “models” to portray, but of more natural, candid photos of presumably Brookhaven residents enjoying a Brookhaven festival.
Long story short, a hired photographer was not fulfilling the duties he was hired to do, and was actually trying to fulfill his own personal obligations instead. These facts should be more than enough to understand where PR lady is coming from.
But instead, the photographer pulls the almighty race card, and all involved parties come rushing to his aid. Regardless of facts, PR lady is ultimately given the axe.
The race card is pretty much the worst thing on the planet. I seriously think I dislike it more than greed and disease. Doubly bad when it’s used in conjunction with those. But the point remains is that as much as allegations of racism are flung around in today’s media, somehow it’s way too often unnoticed that wielding the race card itself is in fact being racist as well, especially when it results in casualties like this.
As much as I can’t seem to stop, I really do need to stop paying attention to the news. It’s just endless stories of disgusting racism, tragic stories, agenda spreading and police hating. I can’t help it though, whenever I run into downtime, I need things to help me pass the time, and reading the news just so happens to be so convenient and easy to do.
