The Sound of San Francisco

I love San Francisco. I went to law school at Stanford and would head up the peninsula to The City whenever I could. Certainly, San Francisco is a gay wonderland. At the same time, apparently it breeds morons.

This summer, the San Francisco 49ers created a media storm after an offensive video created by a public relations employee was leaked to the media. The video, ostensibly created as a training video contains racial slurs directed toward the Chinese community as well as a mock topless lesbian wedding filmed at a strip club. Of course, the public relations employee was promptly fired and the team went into damage control. At the time, I remember thinking that if you're going to do something THAT stupid, you've really gotta want to get yourself fired. Of course, I thought, it'll be a while before someone is that stupid again.

Apparently, a "while" means exactly 6 months... and in the same city, no less. Hey, at least its not the 49ers this time. Members of the San Francisco Police Department created a video for an office Christmas party that includes such gems as a white police officer in a patrol car running over a black homeless woman. One of the officers had posted the video to his web site, sparking an internal affairs investigation, resulting in the suspension of an officer and a whole lot of gnashing of teeth by the Mayor and Police Chief.

The suspended officer defended the video by saying that it was fun and because it had been made just for internal use, its ok, right? Hrm, seems remarkably similar to what that 49ers PR guy said. Apparently he didn't pay any attention to the news this past summer.

I think there are a few morals to this story - First, there are some monumentally stupid people out there. Second, if you're going to make racist, sexist, homophobic videos, DON'T BRING THEM TO WORK, even if they're really funny. Third, racism, sexism and homophobia are still issues, even if we're not talking about them much.