Carlson served up a series of softball questions designed to portray the ex-editor as a victim of leftist intolerance, and Finley accepted the martyr’s role gladly.
In his introduction, Carlson referred to Finley’s firing on Tuesday (it was actually Monday, sir) “after he tweeted questions about a Vermont proposal to create a third gender option for driver’s licenses.”
Well, the tweet that touched off the firestorm was not a question but a plain statement: “Awesome! That makes us one step closer to the apocalypse.”
“There’s a powerful contingent of speech police out there,” Finley replied. “This is an extremely liberal state, progressive state, and I kind of galvanized them unwittingly … and they didn’t want to stop until they had my head on a platter.”
The former Freepster then asserted that those dastardly liberals “think it’s a feather in their cap if they can get rid of someone who disagrees with them.” He continued to wrap himself in the victim’s mantle.
“They’re asking me to toe the line. They’re asking me to agree with them,” Finley said. “They’re holding my feet to the fire to make sure that the orthodoxy wins out.”
Referring to Gannett, the Free Press‘ corporate parent, Carlson posited that “big companies have become the heavies for the cultural left.”
“I think a lot of big media companies are more or less encouraging the left,” Finley responded. “I think they want us to conform to the prevailing ideology that’s out there, and the prevailing ideology that’s out there is leftist.”
Carlson closed the interview with a lovely Christmas Carol invocation. “They take your job away, and here we are in the middle of winter in Vermont, you got no job,” he said. “So our prayers are with you, Denis. Good luck.”
All that was missing was a swell of violins.
A few notes about this mutual love-fest: Finley betrayed a profound ignorance of Vermont by trafficking in stereotypes. That’s unbefitting a person who was trying to reflect the community his former employer serves. He apparently arrived with a closed mind and departed the same way.
He and Carlson misled viewers on the substance of the dispute. Finley was deliberately provocative at best, downright intolerant at worst. He wasn’t just “asking questions.” He was poking his community with a stick.
As conservatives often do, he ascribed far more power to the leftist hordes than they actually possess. Finley wasn’t a victim of liberal hegemony. He lost his job because he worked for a cautious organization that knows it can’t afford to alienate any of its remaining readers. Just ask Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) if Big Media is an arm of the left. It’ll give him a good laugh.
I suspect this is the first in a series of Finley appearances and Fox News program segments. Perhaps a Donald Trump tweet is in his future. Almost certainly a book deal, so he can rail against political correctness and the imagined conspiracy between Big Media and the far left.
Awesome!
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Nothing you quoted was inaccurate or stereotypical. Vermont is an extremely liberal state, and he was fired because his opinions were deemed unacceptable to express publicly. But I get it; if you gin up outrage you get to fight their outrage with your own. We all get to be red in the face and yell at each other, and maybe someone gets hit by a car.
It’s all just lovely.
No, wait. Wrong word. Tiresome. Yeah, that’s it. You’re tiresome, John.
Can Seven Days amend this article to include an explanation about a journalists code of ethics? That is at the core of this editors dismissal. Journalists are required to remain neutral and report without bias. Regardless of the content of his tweets, to comment publicly like Finley did places a shadow over the fair and balanced reporting of his newsroom. In this era of fake news, that is not something that can be taken lightly.
Why are the people of Vermont allowing themselves to consider an X category on drivers licenses for people who comprise a mere .001% of the population? Is no one willing to consider the rights of 99.1% of the people who are not suffering from this affliction(40% suicide rate), and deserve to have their quality of life upheld instead? Wouldn’t that make much more sense? Now the normal folks must put up with this unfortunate debate.
This condition known as gender dysphoria is going to grow now that states are recognizing it and catering to it! Any consideration of special status for these suffering folks should be rejected in favor of loving care and counseling so that these people can accept rather than contend with their DNA. They are going to lose the struggle as one cannot fight against who and what one is in the biological sense. You are the sex you are for a reason, to a very great purpose. You MUST accept it people!!!
The point is, however, this effort by the LGBTQ movement to legitimize these abberant lifestyle choices,is the next step in the further legitimization of ill-advised alternative lifestyles which have been tried countless times before in the history of man; and each time the result was legislation put in place to make such deviations from the cultural norms of the time, illegal; to protect society, and mostly the suffering people themselves from a disastrous fate.
The ones who oppose this transgenderism effort are the ones who are truly loving these people. They want to save them from their own disastrous destiny if left unattended.
He “poked his community with a stick”? That’s dangerously close to freedom of expression. Thank goodness we have newspaper columnists advocating for his censure. After all, failing to ostracize those who express unpopular ideas might result in an unfettered marketplace of ideas. Apparently that violates what now passes for journalistic ethics. Thanks for setting us all straight, John.
Emily McManamy, you are spot on. John Walters, i disagree with your statement, “He lost his job because he worked for a cautious organization that knows it can’t afford to alienate any of its remaining readers.” (Besides, how do you know?) Read the code of ethics, read Gannett’s social-media policy. I would expect (hope!) that had he tweeted favorably about the issue he also would have been let go. It’s just not acceptable. He was a journalist and an editor, not an editorial columnist. He should have known better. The fact that he didn’t tells me he never should have been in that position in the first place.
Poor Denis: easier to play the victim card and blame those big bad leftists than to accept responsibility for your own ill-thought out actions. Seriously, there’s no way he could have not seen this coming.
He was a hack as an editor at best anyways. Good riddance.
I am old enough , but still much younger then Walters, to remember when it was right wing intolerance that was worry some . Now , at least in this blue state, it’s the left wing zealots who will lynch you . Ain’t that ironic .
This is a pretty dishonest news story: neither of these correspondents acknowledges the journalist’s “apocalypse” statement that triggered the whole thing. This was not a “question” but a prejudicial statement.
Suggest that ‘I give up’ be limited in the number of ridiculous comments he is permitted to make. You’d think that Seven Days was his own personal website.but then, maybe it is. I can take only so much of the braying of a mule or is this case as ass.
A bigoted journalist who didn’t have enough self control to adhere to the ethical precepts of his employer and his profession found a friend on Fox News? Now there’s a surprise! LOL!
Simple fact of the matter is that Denis Finley didn’t have the courage or integrity to recite the Twitter comment that got him fired. Instead, he dishonestly presented his firing as due to “raising a question”.
Maybe he would have been fired if had simply “raised a question” about whether this was an appropriate policy, but that has nothing to do with this situation.
Instead, due to his actions, his extreme bias was clearly evident for the world to see.
And, I’m tired of hearing about how Vermont is simply this homogeneous left-wing state. Anyone forgetting about how we elected a Republican governor and by a good margin?
@Vermont Patriot
Don’t assume my gender pronouns. lulz.
In January 2016, City Councilor Joan Shannon tweeted that her opinion that all Trump supporters are essentially racists. No one batted an eye.
Let’s be honest: Mr. Finley simply offended the wrong contingent. If he had tweeted that Trump’s victory was the beginning of the apocalypse, he would be lauded by liberals.
“Suggest that ‘I give up’ be limited in the number of ridiculous comments he is permitted to make.”
I Give Up has only posted 15 comments. You’ve posted 27. And all of yours qualify as ridiculous.
Liberal thought is the downfall of democracy. They say they support freedoms such as free speech but in reality they only support group think that supports their dumb ideas. When are Vermonters going to wake up and return to their conservative values that made the state such a wonderful place back when America was a great nation. Its time to run the libs out of power and take back Vermont. Flatlanders go back to what ever hell you came from. Mainly place like Sanders home of New York and places like Jersey. If God intended for us to be sexless he would have never give Adam a penis and Eve breast. But he did. If you dont want to believe that ask yourself why is it we evolved with such organs.
dear citizen and mr rousseau,
kindly remember that, even as higher vertebrates, you (and I) are nothing but a big tube within an even bigger tube, a design plan that was also used for the first multi-cell organisms. given that observation, I really can’t understand why humans never thought of worshipping The Plumber, rather than bowing down to a calf, or a many-headed flying monkey, or a smiling jesus straight out of central casting whose eyes follow you around the room.
in any case, your man (a creator with a fine sense of humor) designed the vagina and the penis as basically the same organ — one an involuted form of the other, each composed of two columns of erectile tissue crowned by a glans that hosts the many lovely nerve endings we humans so enjoy fooling around with. which lends an interesting twist to the concept of gender as a fixed property, doesn’t it?
by the way, dollars to donuts Finley was hired to be undertaker for the Free Press print edition — an edition which hasn’t been worth wrapping a fish in for years. so he spared himself that indignity, anyway.