Laid Off for Voting Obama in Aggieland
by Chris Zebo
If you’ve ever browsed the popular political message board on TexAgs.com then you already know that the rousing group of redasses posting there don’t bite their tongues. Some writers on the board take (anonymous) liberties to be as puerile, bigoted and unsophisticated as those irrelevant comment tirades you find under YouTube videos. As you’d suspect, visitors to the forum can find the usual Fox News Obama-bashing subject threads, the talking-to-death points, like the birther conspiracies, Obama the Socialist threads, the Tea Party rancor, and–of course–the colorful debates about the new health care bill.
The health care debate reached new lows here in Aggieland last Wednesday, though, when a story broke about a dermatologist in BCS who had recently announced laying off an employee for having voted for Obama. CBS News broke the story (at least nationally) and the Houston Press released a blog called “Alleged Aggie Doctor Brags of Firing Obama-Voting Employee.”
Richard Connelly, the blogger who covered the story for the HC in the paper’s popular Hairballs section, found the story on the TexAgs.com political forum before it was taken down. Within three days, there were over 500 comments made in response to the posting on HC’s website, igniting a firestorm in Texas, around the country and, especially, in Aggieland.
The controversial posting was made by a contributor on TexAgs with an avatar named “dermdoc.” Apparently, the story goes like this: dermdoc’s medical practice was suffering financially and he (dermdoc) was recently forced to make some cuts to his staff. He chose to lay off, before others, an Obama supporter because he believed the downturn in his business was result of the health care bill passing. Here is the post as it existed before it was taken down:
Subject: “Laid off my first Obama voting employee today.”
“Our reimbursement rates are spiraling downward, taxes are projected to go up with Obamacare, so I did it.
This is for you crag.
On another note, my internal medicine doc for 20 years is retiring over this Obamacare crap. I am really starting to get pissed……”
As you can imagine, the dialogue (if you can call it that) that followed dermdoc’s post on the TexAgs.com site deteriorated to cyber fist fights quickly. But there were some on dermdoc’s side that tried, as valiantly as they could, to justify the lay off. One contributor wrote:
“To those of you complaining…STFU. DermDoc is a business owner and had to make a business decision. As somebody said, elections have consequences and the person they voted for, and whose policies they support, directly led to their job loss.”
On the other side of the debate (since there are only two anymore), some argued the obvious rebuttals. But many more were concerned with how the national media’s coverage of the story would impact Aggies and Aggieland in general. One person wrote:
“What I…care about is if this turns into national media coverage that makes A&M look like an isolated colony of pugnacious cornbrains (like dermdoc), rather than a consistently excelling center for education and research. I’ve said it a couple of times now, I think the current political environment is pretty ripe to support such coverage. Translation: dermdoc is playing with fire, and it’s our school’s reputation that is going to suffer the most damage if his cute little episode gets out of hand.”
As the controversy escalated and as the media dug deeper and finally found out who dermdoc really was (he is a doctor in the area, although his name has not been released), dermdoc allegedly began getting threats to his family.
But then, in an interesting turn of events, just as the story was reaching its fever pitch, dermdoc returned to the spotlight and released this message:
“there was no layoff of anyone at my office. Any of you reddit dweebs can check my employment records or call my office on Monday.
IT WAS ALL A TROLL!
I was merely making a hypothetical because of frustration with decreased reimbursements and future increased taxes.
It is really hard to believe that simply by posting a topic on the internet that I could make newspapers, several national talk radio talk shows-WITHOUT ANY VERIFICATION.
Whatever. What has the US become when you have entire web sites of people sitting around just waiting to screw with people and their families without even checking out the source.
Granted, all of this is my fault but any “Ag” who would screw with other Ags or this website because of one unverified post needs to seriously check out their life.
All you lefties can call off the preemptive strikes on me or my family, my wife actually was the one who made me do this because she feared for our safety.
I am done.
But many still had their doubts. One writer on the board wrote:
“Dermdoc wasn’t trolling to purposefully get a rise out of people. He was doing it to prove a point and look like a tough guy on Texags. Why are you congratulating him. He just lied to make himself look like a bad ass, not play a massive joke on the board.”
Another writer added:
“I’m still kind of doubting that this was a troll.
I bet he actually did it, but had no idea it would backfire as it did. First he just took the thread down, then after sitting for a while he figured he should log back in and pretend like it was all a joke?
Who would seriously ask to see your employment records? I bet you are counting on no one doing it!”
Regardless of whether it was a troll or not (and it probably was), dermdoc was at least right about one thing: journalism is really bad lately.