Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais(SNCF)  is bidding to get a piece of the lucrative contracts to build the United State’s first high speech rail tracks. Plans for high-speed rails were announced last January by President Barack Obama. Nothing out of the ordinary about that until you add in the creepy and disturbing historical context that 69 years before they made their current play to transport us in high speed around this country, SNCF was transporting Jews at relative high speed to concentration camp gas chambers during the Holocaust. Between 1941 and 1944, 3,000 wagons — originally designed for the transportation of cattle — were used by the SNCF to transport Jews to Nazi death camps.  Holocaust survivors and others are voicing their opposition to SNCF being part of the high speed rail process.

This is not the 1st time a foreign company with Holocaust ties has caused controversy when trying to do business in this country.  In 2008,  the Germany based financial services giant(the largest in the world),  Allianz received similar treatment when they announced that they would bid for the naming rights to the NFL’s New York Jets and New York Giants new Meadowlands Stadim. Allianz is a Germany based Insurance Company.   Allianz  has has it name on Allianz Arena in its home city of Munich.  It was home to the 2006 FIFA World Cup. That’s the relative present.  In the historical past, Allianz insured the building of concentration camps.  In the past Allianz  had given money owed to Jewish beneficiaries of their life insurance policies to the Nazi authorities instead.

Like Allianz,  SNCF has poured on excuse after excuse of justification and order following to minimize their historical complicity in mass murder. SNCF  argues that it had no control over railroad operations when France was under Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944. It was simply under orders to transport Jews to death camps.  The firm also has said the French government has made an apology and offered reparations.  The company however has reportedly not apologized for its direct role.  Moreover, the “following orders” argument goes directly to the moral low ground explicitly rejected in the Nuremberg Trials  and other war crimes tribunals.  It is insultingly despicable that it would even be put forth in a  good faith attempt to deal with the facts.

In the end, the Stadium Authority decided that the public relations damage that would ensue was not worth taking millions from Allianz.  As I was with Allianz, I am against SNCF or any company who played a direct role in the Holocaust and has not confronted it through direct apologies and/or reparations doing business in this country.

As to the high speed rail, other states have recognized the sensitivity and historical significance of the issue.  In California, lawmakers passed a bill that forces companies  wanting to bid on a share of  California’s $45 billion high-speed rail project to disclose whether they transported Holocaust victims.

Will we reach a historical point where companies who wish to shed their Holocaust past can do business without fear of negative publicity and blackballed business dealings?  To a large extent time is taking care of that.  Within 10 years there will be few if any survivor left.  Many of us will always remember but many will forget, especially when profits make it expedient to do so.  There however,is still more than enough time for companies who have not adequately confronted their past to do so and re-brand themselves for the future without excuse or justification.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger has announced that she will not be returning to her syndicated self help  radio talk show.  Her  exit was precipitated by an ill-conceived attempt to spin the repeated use of the “n-word”  to make what in her mind was a “philosophical point” on  hypersensitivity about race.

“”Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n****r, n****r, n****r. I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.”  When the caller was offended, Dr. Laura went on to state:

“Oh, then I guess you don’t watch HBO or listen to any black comedians. My dear, the point I am trying to make … [is that] we’ve got a black man as president and we’ve got more complaining about racism than ever. I think that’s hilarious.”

You can listen to the actual rant here.

This controversy illustrates how  dangerous  it is to attempt to spin racial epithets in a public forum.  Some words, especially the n-word, are so historically soaked in negativity and hate that just the word itself in any context draws on the worst feelings and perceptions in people.  There is no spin to be had.  There is no upside.  Even if we give her some benefit of the doubt and say that there was a point to be made, there is no question that she used the word in a very aggressive and angry tone that left it open to every negative interpretation that the mind can envision(as if the word does not do that all on its own).

Dr. Laura compounded her mistake by engaging in racial stereotyping in using an out of context example that African-Americans throw the n-word around among each other indiscriminately. I do not know if  she is right or not but it is extremely hostile territory to venture when you are not part of that class of people and making a generalization based on intermittent observations of the class. The final nail in her racial meltdown was to sarcastically suggest that people sensitive about the N-word should not marry out of their race. This was the most indefensible statement in her rant,  not open to any legitimate interpretation.

Why did she go there?  I do not believe she is a racist. She is no Mel Gibson.  If anything, her mistake was arrogance of perceived  stature.  The belief that you are so above the fray that you can make a point in any manner you see fit.  A Bill O’Reilly like belief that anything you say can be force fed to mainstream acceptance regardless of the negativity.

Dr. Laura is now attempting to portray herself as a victim of political correctness.  She claims she is leaving her show so she can “re-claim” her 1st Amendment rights.  While the 1st Amendment does not apply to her situation, she is right about one thing.  She can go to her blog and use the n-word as much as she wants to make whatever point she wants.  No one is going to fire her.  No worry about advertisers.  I am sure that was her long term plan all along….(sarcasm)

Sometimes the satiric/parody news site The Onion can be pretty darn funny.  Sometimes they miss the mark. Sometimes they are downright offensive in a very non-funny way.  This is one of those times.  It appears the powers that be at the Onion have not gotten the societal message that there is nothing funny about Antisemitism.  One of their latest parody endeavors raised my eyebrows in the use of a virulently anti-Semitic graphic combined with antisemitic financial stereotypes.  The  premise of the segment is that you can “Overcome Stress By Visualizing It As A Greedy, Hook-Nosed Race Of Creatures”

I and others raised a similar issue not long ago with NBC in the use of similar imagery in conjunction with their popular Parks And Recreation Series.  NBC was nice enough to respond and provide context for the use of the anti-Semitic image.  Their explanation was reasonable within the context of the show.  I have a hard time imagining any similar context for The Onion.  Anyone there care to respond?

Grabbler image via simplyjews.blogspot.com and thanks to @criticalanalyst on Twitter for alerting me to it.

Overcome Stress By Visualizing It As A Greedy, Hook-Nosed Race Of Creatures

It  bothers me when I see attorneys attempt to hide intolerance under the cloak legal authority. It’s nothing new.  We have a long history of the courts being used to achieve discriminatory objectives. The latest attempt is a legally misplaced opinion piece by columnist/attorney Peter Ferrara who claims that the government can constitutionally regulate the location of the Ground Zero Mosque using time, place and manner restrictions. He writes:

If the authorities believe a particular location would be offensive to some segment of the public, the time, place and manner doctrine gives them the power to prevent construction of a church, or a mosque, at the offensive location.

It is true that Court has held that the 1st Amendment’s Free-Exercise Clause, the right of citizens for free exercise of their religion, is not absolute. A citizen’s free-exercise right must be weighed against the public interest and a state can regulate to ensure that it is practiced in a reasonable time, place, and manner.

What Ferrara does not tell you is that in the case of religion, these types of restrictions are looked upon skeptically and rarely upheld by the courts.

What Ferrara is really endorsing and calling it something else is content based, viewpoint discrimination.  That viewpoint is the practice of Islam.  For those unfamiliar, for a law to be content based, it discriminates based on the content of the message AS OPPOSED to the, time, place and manner in which the message is made, or the reactions it incites in people. These types of laws are presumptively unconstitutional.  What Ferrara is really saying is that the Ground Zero Mosque should not be built because he finds Islam offensive. Regardless of the validity of his viewpoint on that subject or anyone else’s view, this is content based.  It fits into no legal exception for regulation and is unconstitutional.