People say dumb things to the press all the time. Sometimes we laugh with them, sometimes we laugh at them, and sometimes we just shake our heads. And sometimes you just want to throw up.
Auncha Browne Sanders provided me one such moment. Yesterday, she spoke after her victory in court, which found Isiah Thomas and Madison Square Garden liable for sexual harassment, and awarded her $11.6 million dollars. She said, and I quote:
"I did this for every working woman in America.”
Did I mention the ELEVEN POINT SIX MILLION DOLLARS?
Yeah, Auncha, you were fighting for Judy Secretary pulling down $35,000 a year to take crap from her jovanist boss. That's why you hired expensive lawyers to fight accusations that you couldn't put a coherent budget together for the $260,000 you were hauling in, not to mention that you frequently used some colorful and unprofessional language of your own.
The outcome sickens me. Not for any pity for Thomas. He's honestly lucky to still be employed himself after running the Knicks into the ground, and may well have said some inappropriate things in the workplace. His pocketbook escaped unscathed, and MSG will get by somehow.
But even in the worst-case scenario, with everything she said being true, there is no way the experience and the trauma was worth $11.6 million dollars. Twenty years of hard work and sacrifice teaching school is worth about a million, if the teacher is lucky. Your suffering via harassment is worth 11 of those? Get real.
Don't believe me? Find me one person who wouldn't voluntarily go through what she did for a tenth of the money. Just one. Hell, I'd take that, and run across the middle for a pass to let Ray Lewis take a crack at me afterwards just for good measure. And at the very least, she could cut the grandstanding. "I did it for the working woman?!” Yeah, and my used-car salesman is just glad to provide me with the deal of the century.
Punishing the Knicks is fine. Twenty-nine NBA teams do it regularly anyway. But this idea that you should be handsomely rewarded with bullion just for suffering an injustice in life (just as long as a rich person did it) is wrong and one of the most irritating habbits in the country. Life sucks sometimes, get used to it; stop looking for a cheap payday.
If she was really wronged, award her some damages, a few years lost income and lawyer fees, say a million or two, which is probably still more than she deserved. But take the punitive damages, that extra $10 million, and put it to good use.
Maybe some New York teachers could use a raise. After all, Auncha, it was about the working woman, right?
October 6, 2007
Certain:
I couldn’t agree more. I’m so sick of people getting these huge settlements like this. But thats the country we live in.