Posting dumb pictures on web can get you fired

Sam Wakim who had been appointed by Governor Schwarzenegger to the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board last November was forced to resign for a web posting made in 2005. Wakim did not create the image, which has floated around on Web during the time that the state considered giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.

These appointees to state boards are usually part time employees and essentially conduct meetings on various state institutions like license regulation.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata called “hate speech.” “I think it’s appalling for someone who’s supposed to represent the public as a board member of a public agency to be engaging in hate speech,” Perata said in a statement. “Mr. Wakim’s Web postings clearly cross the boundaries of acceptable public discourse.”

Here is the image in question:

Wakim tendered his resignation to the Schwarzenegger administration in the afternoon after The Sacramento Bee made inquiries about the nominee’s Internet postings.

Adam Mendelsohn, the governor’s communications director, said the administration was “not aware of the images” before The Bee’s inquiry. He called them “unacceptable and inappropriate.”

Mendelsohn declined to say whether the Governor’s Office requested Wakim’s resignation. “I can’t comment on personnel matters,” he said.

On Thursday morning, Wakim, who was facing a confirmation hearing next week, had said, “I am confident that I am going to get a fair hearing.”

But by late afternoon, he had resigned “with mixed feelings,” according to his resignation letter.

A Yreka dentist and Republican candidate for Assembly, Wakim is chair of the Siskiyou County Republican Central Committee and was county chairman for Schwarzenegger’s re-election campaign in 2006.

What is really terrifying that is in the wake of Don Imus being fired and now sued for making a statement that was clearly in poor taste. Now this dentist working part time voting on mundane water board issues is targeted as a hate monger and forced to resign for reposting a single image. It would be hard to find a myspace page that did not involve one image or statement that did not offend someone. Judge for yourself but his web page did not seem to be offensive, it looked pretty boring and politically oriented. Perhaps it’s not what you say but who you say it about that is the crime in this new politically correct frontier.

Here is a link to a google cache of Wakim’s website:
Wakim’s site

This is even funnier in the wake of various newspapers and organizations being caught writing offensive things on wikipedia by their IP addresses. I wonder if the guy at the New York Times will be fired for writing even worse things than Imus said about Condoleeza Rice from his work computer? Nah, probably not – but it would be funny if she sued.

Source Article for Wiki Vandalism

Source Article on firing of water board member

Here is a list of other people posting things that should be fired:
More Wiki “Hate Speech”

In point of fact everyone who has ever been on the internet should be pre-emptively fired because if they haven’t forwarded, laughed at or posted an offensive comment, picture or link they invariably will at some point.