There were a lot of contenders for this prestigious award: Harold Johnson vs. Tim D'Annunzio was a no-brainer, as were a variety of shenanigans by city and county "leaders." However,  a mundane, but all too typical, firing of an employee who dared speak her mind took the cake, in this writer's opinion.

In May, a controversy provoked by the rise of online social networks brought national attention to Charlotte, but not in a good way. It was all about the firing of a gabby Facebook-posting waitress. Ashley Johnson, 22, had to work late one day at Brixx Uptown, when a couple having lunch stayed for three hours and then stiffed her with a crappy $5 tip for her trouble. Johnson went home and, via a Facebook post, told her friends her tale of woe about the inconsiderate couple, whom she called “cheap piece of shit camper(s).” Hey, it’s a free country, right? Well, apparently not, because the folks at Brixx soon told Johnson to hit the bricks for violating the company’s policy against speaking disparagingly about customers, and against “casting the restaurant in a negative light on social networks.” That move by Brixx, along with the restaurant’s ongoing defense of their actions in the face of widespread criticism, is the winner of our Stupidest Thing to Happen in Charlotte in 2010 Award.

We were particularly concerned about the violation of Johnson’s free-speech rights. At the time, we wrote:

If Johnson wants to talk about customers once she is away from her employer’s premises, what right does her employer have to tell her she can’t? . . . just because Johnson used “new media” to lodge her gripe, how is the new media’s long reach her fault? — and, more importantly, how does it nullify her right to free speech?

In the past 20 years, American employees have seen an increase in employers’ attempts to control their speech, to the point that the practice has become old hat at many businesses. . . . Contrary to what many corporations think, employees are not company possessions, and businesses are not our parents. They are also, most certainly, not above the U.S. Constitution. . . . Any rule against making disparaging comments about customers away from company property is intrusive and offensive. And if a worker casts her employer “in a negative light” while she’s away from work, that, too, is her business. . . . Sure, Johnson’s Facebook post could conceivably, albeit slightly, affect Brixx’s bottom line. But here is another, more critical, bottom line: Employers are neither feudal lords nor plantation owners, and employees are not company possessions.

I know, I know, there are too many godawful things going unreported to name just one award “winner.” But one true story, which received pitifully little coverage in America despite the whole thing being funded by U.S. taxpayers, needs to — at the very least — be given some kind of Shame Award.

While the government and our happily compliant press were busy calling for the head of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, a shocking revelation from one of the released diplomatic cables was blithely ignored. DynCorp, a government contractor providing training for Afghan security and police forces, gets nearly all its money from you and me. The company used some of that money to throw a party for a group of Afghan police trainees. The evening’s “entertainment” consisted of “bacha bazi boys,” whose pimps were paid so the boys would sing, then dance, then submit to anal sex with the police recruits. Read all about it here, along with more info on DynCorp doing the same kind of thing in the '90s when we paid them to train people in Bosnia.  The leaked cable also makes clear that our government put pressure on journalists to not report on the "party." See the leaked cable here.

So there you have it: your tax dollars at work, fighting terrorism by trafficking in little boys as sex slaves. Tell me again why it’s a bad thing for WikiLeaks to expose this kind of grotesque corruption? And the insanity just keeps going and going ...

If you'd like to tell DynCorp what you think of this issue, just go here.

• Scene from documentary on bacha bazi in Afghanistan

In response to yesterday’s post about his latest anti-gay slurs, County Commissioner Bill James responded, in CL’s comments section, that “I just say what everyone else thinks and believes.” Which is true, if what you mean by “everyone else” is “other bigots,” or maybe “those on the losing side of social progress.” In James’ latest slam against gays, triggered by a proposed letter of support for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, he claimed that  homosexuals are all “sexual predators.” The story was featured on Huffington Post yesterday, and, amazingly, was the lead story on MSNBC yesterday afternoon. James sent us an e-mail touting his TV appearance, which he claims “should be good press for Charlotte.”

Yeah, really good press — like the “good press” Charlotte received in 1996. That’s when James and other County Commission homophobes pitched a fit over a theater production of Angels In America, exposing the city to national ridicule and justified charges of gooberish provincialism. Yep, that’s really good press, all right. It just screams to the nation, “Hey, we’re still wearing overalls down here, and we’re dumber than stumps — come on down and enjoy the good life!”

The County Commission should censure James for making such blatantly ignorant, hateful statements against a specific group of citizens. It probably won’t happen, considering the Commission’s shortage of real leadership, but it certainly should. In the meantime, while we’re waiting for someone in power to do something decent for a change, let me point you to a piece from BlueNC poster fritzpardue, in which he nails the absurdity of the right’s newest idea of separate showers for gays and straights in the military. Here’s an excerpt:

I just can't quite get my arms wrapped around this policy. It is okay for a homosexual man to take a shower with a heterosexual man, and just fine for a lesbian woman to be around when a heterosexual woman washes herself off, just as long as those homosexuals haven't told someone openly that they are gay.

But, on the other hand, if everyone knows that that homosexual man is the way he is, and that woman being a lesbian is common knowledge, then the military of the US is in danger of crumbling into a pile of ineffective rubbish that can no longer protect our country. . .

Personally, I like the view of Gen. David Petraeus’ senior aide Marvin Hill, who told the press that if there are troops who can’t deal with the repeal of DADT, they should leave the service. Amen. If you can’t serve in the military without discriminating against other troops, then get the hell out. Once and for all, enough of this homophobic crap.

• We'll discuss this further in the shower, sir

I received an e-mail from a friend this morning who, referring to Bill James’ latest round of outlandish gay-bashing, wrote, “What the hell is wrong with this guy?” What my friend (who is a straight male, in case you’re wondering) was talking about was James’ refusal to sign on to a county commission resolution from chairperson Jennifer Roberts, praising N.C. members of Congress who voted to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. James didn’t just say, “Thanks but no thanks,” though; he grandly declared, to all and sundry who may give a rip what he thinks, that he is against “endorsing immorality and allowing military recruits to be preyed on by homosexuals.” In other words, to James, all gays are, by nature, sexual predators. (Fellow GOP commissioners Karen Bentley and Jim Pendergraph also refused to endorse Roberts’ resolution.)

As for my friend’s question about James, I don’t know what’s wrong with the guy except plain old-fashioned homophobia. At times, as I’ve written before, the commissioner reminds me of guys in high school whose jokes and put-downs often revolved around homosexuality: mocking queers, insinuating that others were queer, laughing at someone's shirt, shoes, haircut, whatever, because it was somehow, in some vague, unexplained way, queer. As a clueless adolescent who wanted to fit in, I often laughed along with the jokes, but the truth is, I never quite understood why others' sex lives should hold such interest. And I still don't.

Those guys in high school were doubtless going through the common, well-documented male teenage phase of defining their sexuality by acting macho and mocking feelings they’re terrified of finding in themselves. The real question here is why, for people like James, that type of insecure homophobia lasts past adolescence, eventually evolving into a bizarre, hateful obsession. We once named Bill James “the Generalissimo of local homophobes,” and if you’re relatively new to the city, now you know why.

The one good thing that comes out of this latest flare-up of gay-bashing is that it’s obvious that homophoic bigots are on the defensive these days. They may never give up, but nevertheless, these bigots are becoming increasingly irrelevant, as life passes them by. Let them wallow in their pre-‘60s, Ozzie & Harriet fantasy world; the rest of us will be busy getting on with life in the 21^st century.