Dopass.com

I rant a lot. I always have. I love the rant. It's a form of performance art - with a catharsis chaser - that I've come to appreciate. I blame my father, a spectacularly foul-mouthed British man who worked on oil rigs for most of my childhood. He could rant like no one else I've met.

So, perhaps it comes as a surprise when I say: I'm tired of ranting. I swear, this decade has taken all of the clever rant I had left and burned it up in a flame of rage. I'm just angry old guy, now.

There was a time when I'd have said something profound and clever about this whole Nintendo Blogger gets fired, thing. Now a days, though? I just want to rail at the world as a whole. Nothing clever, nothing funny, just a plaintive cry of rage followed by a question, "Where do I have to go to actually be free?"

What this incident says is that, if you work for Nintendo... Nintendo owns your ass -- even when you're not working there and even when you haven't done anything to implicate them, at all. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's the "Freedom" our country claims to protect and espouse, do you?

*sigh* This particular axe of mine in an interesting one. I've wielded it in the name of free speech, against censorship, against the loss of civil liberties... hell, I've wielded it in so many fights that I can't even name them all anymore... but ultimately it's the same axe: I believe that the purpose of our government is to protect the people and I believe that the people are the individuals that make up the populace of this country. Not the corporations, the PACs, the think tanks, or any other organizations -- the individuals. I am clearly in the minority in this regard.

Take a case in point: Did you know that if you get money from your bank that you weren't supposed to get -- money given to you as a result of their error -- you are breaking the law to keep it? On the other hand, if I accidentally overpay the cable company, say, they commit no crime by refusing the return the money and instead applying it pro-actively to your future debts with them.

In the same vein, if I write a check that bounces as a result of my clerical error, I've committed a crime. If the bank does the same thing, they've simply committed an error (one you're legally obligated to report, if I understand the law correctly).

If it were my place to enact the laws of this country I think I'd attempt to equalize all of those problems.

I'd make it illegal to fire someone for exercising their free-speech rights in a way that does not directly infringe on the rights of another individual or organization. That is to say: This girl would have been fine in my world because she never named names or revealed any corporate info that could harm Nintendo.

Then I'd go a step further and have an amendment made to the constitution that says something along the lines of:

Congress shall pass no law allowing the rights of the organization to supersede or exceed the rights of the individual.

The idea here being that it would force the government to focus on the needs of the people above the needs of the organization - and that any laws meant to govern organizations must afford the individual the same rights, if new rights are being granted. As worded there is nothing in that amendment (Well declarative statement) that says a corporation or organization has to have the same rights - they just can't have more or better rights. Thus the corporation is on the ass end of the stick in legal exchanges vs. the individual. As it should be.

Nintendo should not be able to fire you for blogging about the fact that your co-workers annoy you. For that matter no one should be able to do anything to you - except tell you how you annoy them - for blogging that you're annoyed by them. I swear, there ought to be a law about that, or something.

-Snipehunter

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