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Since I guess this is reportedly some sort of thingy forwarded from some sort of acquaintance based on a private conversation, I'll hold my breath on being judge and jury until the dust settles.

Paul Tracy may indeed be a private racist dipshit, or he may be just a private shit-stirrer, or a combination of both. But I also know that the media can get things wrong, sometimes loving to lean towards the theatrical over accuracy, and I also tend to distrust the honesty of people when it's a "private spat" like this one smells of.

I follow Tracy on twitter and he recently posted a number of fake accounts on his name. And I have never seen him post anything on facebook. Just saying

Mari Hulman George has passed away

https://www.indianapolismotorspeedway.c ... tuary-2018

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This, I'm not the greatest of PT fans but I'd really wish we'd stop with the Twitter pitchforks at dawn every time someone says something remotely offensive, shielding people from nasty words, whether it be inappropriate jokes, snide remarks or critism doesn't help them, if anything it makes matters worse because it shields them from the realities of life and wraps people in a deluded belief that everything in life is a pink shiny unicorns love in, when reality is very different, if they'd heard some of the jokes I crack in private Twitter would have me locked up and hung from the gallows and I hope people now actually understand that if PT says you are a fat c**t, it's PT saying it, not NBCSports - or are we still that stupid?

That assumes PT actually said those things, I could ask admin to change my username to Paul Tracy, would then everything I've said over the years be attributed to a fat Canadian? Bharat now there's an idea for a social media experiment.

Anyway, this couldn't have been Paul, don't Canadians start or end every sentence with "sorry"?

I actually like Paul. Hell, I liked him when he drove. I agree with most of what Ian says except for the NBCSports part. As an employee of NBCSports, Paul represents that company at all times. So, anything he says, even personally, reflects back at NBC because he works for them. Companies don't want an employee spouting off nonsense because people associate that with the company.

I think it's nonsense, but we were told at work that we could face consequences for anything posted on social media accounts that would reflect poorly on the company should the company find out about it... And we only make consumer products.

It's well known Tracy is a right wing, trump supporting, gun loving douchebag (and as an immigrant to the US himself, quite the hypocrite too..) so it's feasible he made those comments, he's made similar in the past about the mexican border too.

However, his job is to make remarks about Indycar, so I'd be ok if he kept his job so long as he swore to never mention politics of any kind during his broadcasting. It's just not what he's there for.
He can have all kinds of horrible views that prove he's a victim of the fearmongering that is dividing us all atm, but at the end of the day that's his private life, it's up to NBC to decide if their reputation is being damaged enough to see him let go
Hell, the way the world is going, I'd expect him to be patted on the back and promoted for making comments like that.

Saying that, it's 5 months before the start of the Indycar season, so he might well be able to keep his head down and keep his job, it'll all be forgotten by March

(Obviously the worst thing about the article is they have him listed as 2nd place at the 2002 Indy 500. Which obviously just isn't true )

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https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

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And that's my point, are we still so thick as a society that we attribute an (arguably questionable) joke made in private as the public policy of a national broadcaster? This is getting to the point where personal opinion is outlawed even when you are not at work.

I can understand it if he opened up the final race at Sonoma with "Welcome to Sonoma, yeah we know it's in California, but we won't hold it against them, it's a good track and we'll build the wall to keep the fucking libtard moronic Calafornians out of the rest of the states next month", live on TV, yeah, that's stepping over the line and he should get sacked for it, but something said in private, ages after the end of the season - NBC only got dragged into it when the wife(?) made the private comments public, of course they're not going to be ok with them, but did they seriously think PT had his NBCSports cap on when he said them?

I know a guy who works for the BBC, he's a front line presenter on one of their channels and when working as professional as they come. Get a few drinks inside him and he becomes a racist bigoted comedian, but when he does I understand he is not representing BBC policy, he's expressing his own opinion and I don't go calling up the BBC to ask if they are ok with it.

I don't do social media but if I did and my employer tried to restrict what I could write on social media when on my own time, we'd be having a chat over a big oak table with a Judge between us because that's not legal in the slightest, I'm no expert on US law, but I'm also fairly sure your employer is in breech of your first amendment rights too by restricting what you can say on social media when on your own time, you only represent the company when they are actually paying you to be, not when you're sitting on your sofa yelling at NASCAR on a Sunday afternoon tweeting how Jimmy Johnson did it and sucks balls.

Never tolerate racism. Just saying.

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When I was teaching English in China I once worked with a guy from the States who flipped out that someone moved his coffee cup in the break room. He left it in the sink, unwashed....someone just placed it on the rack next to the sink. Well he started carrying on about having his personal space invaded??? and that somehow he had his rights violated...and I shit you not, he started quoting scripture and banging on about Jesus's persecution (in the same vein as his fucking coffee cup).

I told him to stop being such a fucking pansy. This was the first time that I have actually seen some one get hysteric before. I'm talking about the high pitched squeal, the hyperventilating stuttering, the wide eyes...."He called me a pansy, hate crime"!!! screaming. So I said sorry, would c**t suffice??? He nearly fainted lol.

Anyway he basically shut down the school and demanded that I be fired by the General Manager of the entire company. The second in charge (Chinese guy) came down, heard what happened and just started laughing in his face and fired the guy for causing the school to cancel classes....over a coffee cup, that he left unwashed in the sink, that someone else washed and placed on the rack for him.

So yes Ian, we (Western society) are plowing headlong into an era where people are just not cut out to cope with reality, or understand the differences between real injustices and faux outrage.

But Tracey is still a moron if he really did post that, especially in light to today's current hysterical climate.

The problem is, social media is not private in the least. It's been a bit deceptive because when you are on your general social media networks it doesn't necessarily feel like a wide open public forum. But pretty much everything you say, especially on the major networks that employers know about (Facebook and Twitter *especially*), can for the most part be searched, dissected, downloaded, etc. by anyone. You really need to put on Public Face on these forums, especially if you are a public figure.

Yes, ethically, IMHO employers shouldn't care. But they do. (Though generally, "off major social web" is relatively safe because HR departments and managerial types aren't *that* Internet savvy. )



What I will say about this is (in the manner of Avenue Q) everyone is "a little bit racist" (don't kid yourself, tribalism is a fact of humanity). However, some are more racist than others. The type of stuff Paul T. allegedly wrote, just out of context, I don't really find funny at all, and I don't think anyone would find funny unless they were a dipshit racist. But "allegedly" is the key, context might adjust what I think (EG: If I quoted some random Blazing Saddle lines out of the blue, you might think I was a major racist unless you knew the source material). And given this is a "private spat" thing, who knows the truth.

I will say that knowing what I've seen of Paul T.'s tweets my "first read" is that codename_47's view is correct, it's entirely probable he is a privately racist shit-stirrer type. I'm not sure it should affect his job per se. (If the joke is true and you want to adjust this sort of behavior, maybe assign him a little bit of a minor gig of some sort with a Formula N Latin America thingy just so he can maybe see how wrong-minded that sort of joke is. We're all human in the end, we just have different rituals and habits. Some are uncomfortable with the ritual difference, and there's a lot of politicians entirely willing to exploit this discomfort.)

Many people place their jobs on their social media. Just click on their name on Facebook and it'll say 'works at: blah blah blah. It comes back to the employer and drags their name through the mud.

The First Amendment doesn't apply here. The way the First Amendment is written (Congress shall pass no law...) only restricts government entities from restricting speech, exercise of religion, the press, assemble and the right to redress grievances, and the word "Congress" has been interpreted to mean any government body. NBC is a private entity that lives off advertising dollars, not a government-run organization, and thus has the right to do what they see fit with Paul.

If Paul Tracy was the fire chief for the city of Atlanta, on the other hand and he wrote a book detailing his views and was fired for it, the city of Atlanta would be held liable for restricting his first amendment rights as they were in the case of Kelvin Cochran, the ex-fire chief who was sacked for a book that compared homosexuality to bestiality.

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Of course, but then knowing the correct meaning of racism when taking the moral high ground is a good start.

I wouldn't trust anything that's being posted on FB these days. It's a modern day cancer.

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Another article on Gold Coast


IndyCar has formed their own media rights group for overseas broadcasts of IndyCar. (paywall article)
https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Jou ... dyCar.aspx

So, Cunningham gets to offend Paul in private conversation but it's Paul's dark humorous comeback that mrs. Cunningham makes public because she wants to get Paul fired?

I don't know how it is in America, but in Finland bringing someone else's private conversations to public is a crime especially if the other person would lose his job because of it.

It's probably difficult for NBC to prove Paul wrote that if his account was hacked or it's a fake account. Firing someone based on a screenshot?


No matter if Paul said that or not, he should not be fired. But then again we live in this hypocrite kneejerk SJW world where you can only say heinous things if you label your opponent correctly. It's equally bad to me and doesn't make you a better person. In this case I see mrs. Cunningham actually much worse individual. That's a sucker punch with sledgehammer because someone said something that you didn't find funny. She's a horrible person for going to his employer.

I'm not a big PT fan and I've always thought he can be a bit of a jerk (last month I wasn't that pleased of his comment about Dan Wheldon's alleged medical condition, disrepectful), but her actions are over the top for what Paul allegedly did.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

I've heard of people being fired for less.



Hahaha I don't think if he'd said "I'm going to invite a person of colour who has Latino decent around to your house" instead of "I'm going to invite Mexicans" would have made much difference, fuckwits will have still go their nickers in a twist over it.

Yes. Because both of those are equally abhorrent and if you need people to get their knickers in a twist over it to teach you that, there's just no hope for you

Paul will probably be fine, he's said worse on his facebook....

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

So what you're saying @

codename_47 is it is abhorrent to refer to anybody in a context like that, so I cannot refer to my uncle as a jock since he comes from Scotland, or my brother-in-law as a Irishman because he comes from Ireland because somehow singling someone out based on the country they live in or come from is somehow now racist, and even if the wording doesn't offend them, it offends you so I shouldn't say it, how very tolerant of you.

When I went to school, racism was a simple case of thinking you are better than another person or prejudicing against them based solely on the colour of their skin, referring to a person living in Mexico as errr, a Mexican wasn't it.

So let me get this right, what you are saying is it would have been OK if Paul had said "I'm gonna invite some guys round to rape your wife" because it wasn't singling out a particular ethnic or racial group as being the target, correct? No I'm sure that's not what you mean, but that's what it sounds like.

No I didn't mean using a different term would have made it better or worse. What I mean that in these days it's not ok to make joke that includes another race or nationality and rape. Which is fair, we don't need stereotypes like that to be reinforced. But at the same time it's totally ok to make that same joke about "your own people", like "rednecks". Or like here in Finland a woman of color (half Finn, half African, to be precise) politician tweeted how everyone who lives in a countryside of Finland does it only so they can inbreed beat their wives and no one can hear them screaming.

Little innocent joke, right? Of course there was a backlash on her in social media, which she covered up by saying that her family comes from countryside of Finnish Lapland and there's a disability caused by inbred that was named after another municipality close to her family's. Which of course was a wrong fact, the disability was actually genetic and the two municipalities are over 300 kilometers apart and the disability was only named after the municipality because of a patient zero was found from there. There were actually more patients in other areas of the country. So facts were bit wrong, right? The politician got invited to the mentioned municipality as a guest. She didn't lose her job in the Green party politician in Helsinki. And I don't remember her apologizing anyone with the disability or living in that municipality.

For me it's double standards, which is never a good thing to have if you want avoid segregation and increase democracy.

TL;DR, I'll end with this gem from the IndyStar article.



Gee, I don't know, maybe because of her going public and trying to get him fired has something to do with that? Maybe verified Paul Tracy is rather upset of her actions, Chris.

And that explanation of real Tracy knowing he owns a mandolin but who's not actually a friend or a fb-friend with? At what point when talking about Wickens crash Cunningham felt it was appropriate to mention his mandolin?

For me this starts to look like heat targeting on Tracy. But let's wait and see how this turns out.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."