Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Colbert's pithy defense of Affirmative Action (kinda)

Watching Colbert Report tonight, he was just discussing the recently-passed Lilly Ledbetter act. This act essentially provides for a return to the status quo in Equal Opportunity Employment and discrimination cases, where when an employee feels they may have been discriminated against, the statue of limitations on an anti-discrimination case starts from the moment of the last discriminatory act -- which in the case of pay inequality, would now be the last received paycheck. This is opposed to (and overturns) the Roberts' Supreme Court judgment finding that the statue of limitations begins at the *first* act of discrimination, i.e. the "first" discriminatory paycheck. (Oddly, supporters of the court's decision argued that this would reduce frivolous lawsuits -- whereas it seems this would have provided perverse incentive to sue ASAP in any POSSIBLE chance of discrimination, the all-feared frivolous lawsuits that Republicans are always tilting against.)

In any case, Colbert pointed out that because provides a corrective to potential discrimination against women, women therefore stood to gain more from it than men -- and it is therefore sexist! This is, of course, exactly the same theory apparently behind anti-Affirmative Action calls of discrimination/reverse discrimination, which I tend to think of as self-serving bunk or crazy-eyed delusion.

I'm illin' (in the literal sense) and gotta get to bed, so this is a link-free post, and I'm'a headin' off now. But remind me to tell y'all the anecdote from my Private Sector days about "discrimination" for those who have been discriminated against.

2 comments:

Daktari said...

I'm curious, J. You say this bill maintains the status quo and then go on to detail how different it actually is from the status quo. I mean, you sound so defeatest. Were you expecting something else?

Q said...

Huh?

It restores the status quo. I'm ecstatic about this bill. Cheers to Obama and Congress and everyone not named "John Roberts", "Scalia", "Alito," "Thomas", and the other one.

The status quo, for years before the Roberts ruling, was as I stated; the most recent interpretation by Roberts et al. was a deviation from that quo; now we're back to the original interpretation, which I view as the correct one.

Colbert was being ironical, and I suspect he supports the bill as well. All in all, like I said, I'm ecstatic. Re-reading it, I could see how my, er, ecstasy doesn't come through, but I can't squint my way to seeing how it sounded defeatist. if so, my bad -- it was an ironical celebrtion that I obviously didn't pull off.