The chief executive of a Michigan bank has lost her job after facing backlash for a social media photo of her family in sweatshirts that read “Lake America,” referencing Donald Trump’s relabeling of Lake Ontario.
Jane Smith from Family First Credit Union recently went viral after sharing the photo of her and three relatives wearing navy blue crewnecks with the words “Lake America” scrawled in white. The picture was snapped as her family left on September 11 for a 10-day trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but Smith says the sweatshirts were edited onto their bodies using AI.
“We weren’t trying to make a political statement,” Smith told Michigan outlet WJRT. “However, we were kind of poking fun at the fact that one of the Great Lakes’ names were getting changed.”
Family First Credit Union announced Wednesday that Smith was no longer with the company and that Jason Acosta, the chief operations officer, would serve as interim CEO.
I was initially kind of torn on this one, since I don’t think a job should be able to fire you for something you do outside of work, no matter how idiotic, unless it breaks the law. Then I remembered that Republicans got a whole bunch of people fired for things they said about what’s-his-name, with the neck fountain.
So I’m ultimately coming down on the side of “fuck 'em, payback’s a bitch”.
Taking the high ground when dealing with someone who stoops low isn’t a a sign of virtue, it comes off more as weakness. Not because of your restraint on the matter but because your allowing your opponent to walk all over you. This is often what Ill natured people don’t understand or choose not to. If they’re going to bully people using such tactics, it’s justifyed to retaliate in kind.
I was initially kind of torn on this one, since I don’t think job should be able to fire you for something you do outside of work, no matter how idiotic
I have a much more vivid imagination of what idiotic things people outside of work can say and lots of it should be and is a fire-able offense even if it doesn’t break the law.
Even then, its not that “you can be fired for what you say outside of work”, but in the USA instead we have an extremely small list of things that we outlaw firing people for, and its a good list of protections (protected classes):
- Race and color
- Religion
- Sex,including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity
- National origin
- Age (40 or older)
- Disability
- Genetic information
For everything else we have “at will” employment, which means you can quiet whenever you like and you can be fired whenever your employer wants to. I’ll agree its got some flaws, but I would not want to add “anything legal under the first amendment” as a protected class.
For the idiot bully in the OP article, she deserved to be fired.
These boomer’s brains have been fundamentally broken by the internet…
Smith said that her family took the photo and then put it through ChatGPT to add the “Lake America” sweatshirts. “We never had actual sweatshirts. We never wore sweatshirts,” she told WJRT.
"I understand if I was someone in Halifax and I thought a poor group of people walked in wearing those sweatshirts, it is highly offensive and I would understand why they would be so angry,” Smith reflected.
They legitimately think that the Internet isn’t real.
If they understand that the actual sweatshirts would piss people off, then the only reason they think it’s ok to do it with AI, is they don’t want the real life consequences of everyone knowing they support trump.
Like “the picture is AI” only works as an excuse, if you’re not the one who added it with AI…
The only thing this excuse proves, is they really support him and likely have even more extremists views they’re hiding.
I’ve noticed this with other right wingers too, they see trump and his admin “trolling” in real life, and think it’s acceptable for them to do it. They never understand that “just a prank bro” hasn’t worked in over a decade, and that when/if they say it, no one gives a fuck.
Whether or not it’s a joke, doesn’t matter.
If edited pictures of sweatshirts posted online aren’t real, then neither are death threats made online.
These boomer’s brains have been fundamentally broken by the internet…
It started with AM radio and moved on to cable television. The internet was just the coup de grâce.
Source: Watched it happen to my dad.
She said, “It wasn’t political”
It’s always not political when they do anything. But you have the wrong skin color as their neighbor and suddenly it’s political? You love someone they don’t like? It’s political! You don’t want to have children? It’s political.
She wasn’t fired for being political. She was fired for being a fucking idiot. Hell her rich buddies probably all agree with her and created a safe space for her to act this entitledly dumb without consequence - until now.
Actually, if she legitimately did think plastering Trump’s made-up name for Lake Ontario all over the Internet wasn’t a political statement, then she probably doesn’t have the awareness to be running a lemonade stand, much less a credit union.
Exactly, taken at her word, and giving the most generous interpretations there of, I would not want her in charge of a anything touching my finances
I’ve got to assume this bank had a lot of Canadian customers who would rapidly be taking their business elsewhere if they did nothing.
For those who want to see the image without allowing 20 javascripts to run:
Possibly pattern-seeking behavior but if you squint, those waves look an awful lot like the nazi eagle, which just adds to this whole thing
Poking fun at one of the great lakes names getting changed? It didn’t change. Is lake Ontario.
Yeah, among the deluge of things MAGAts don’t understand is that America renaming something doesn’t mean jack shit when the rest of the world doesn’t.
How can someone make a statement like that without it being political? They should also be permanently banned from Canada.
When your employees tell you who they are, listen.
Stupid enough to offend 70% of your customers.
And good for the credit union, they did.
Now she’s unemployed.
So they posted a photo on social media of themselves wearing Lake America shirts. It was either:
A) An absurdist joke poking fun at the renaming, as they said it was
B) A political statement that they would like the lake to be called “Lake America”
C) A political statement that USA should annex CanadaC is kinda a stretch. A and B are not a big deal. I don’t see why people are so happy about this person being fired. It seems like something totally reasonable to post, though maybe in poor taste if you believe interpretation B.
Not really a big deal
Yeah I don’t see how this is a sackable offense
Fuck yes, this shit gets me hard
I came to this
I love this for her 🥰
Everything is just so aggressively stupid.
With every passing day I am more and more shocked that humanity made it this far. I guess it’s because, up until relatively recently, we never had the real opportunity to destroy ourselves.
Tick tock.
It’s because we breed as quickly as rodents.
What assholes.
We should quietly celebrate when MAGA gets hung up on the symbolic. Celebrate because they’re not doing any actual harm, and quietly so as not to interrupt them.
We should just give them cat toys.
I think a lot of them would have the same reaction to meth that cats have to catnip.
