Oh, To Be A Fly On The Wall For This One

(Another in the occasional series of departing from DSW posts while Shank pisses in some water bottles in Fort Myers...)

You know where I'd love to be on Friday morning? Sitting in between Lou Merloni and Kirk Minihane when this goes down:

Boston radio station WEEI will have all of its employees undergo mandatory sensitivity training on Friday, the network announced Wednesday, during which time all live programming will be suspended.

“Nothing is more important to WEEI than the close-knit and diverse Boston community we call home, and we are committed to actively contributing to its betterment,” WEEI said in a statement. “WEEI is in the process of closely reevaluating our policies and procedures in an effort to ensure that our programming is never intolerant or harmful to our listeners or our city.”

The decision comes after two recent incidents that led to the suspensions of two hosts.

A few thoughts here:

1) They should broadcast this 'sensitivity training' instead of whatever's going to replace the twelve hour void.

2) Make no mistake about this - this isn't an exercise in 'sensitivity training' as it is an excuse for a good healthy dose of political correctness to be shoved down the throats of a mostly male audience. You can already see it in the above statement referring to the 'close-knit and diverse Boston community' codswallop they're trying to sell. Human Resource departments in organizations are generally speaking where companies stick their most useless employees when they lack the balls to fire them outright, which helps to explain why they're the petri dish for these things to grow. A general observation of organizational behavior is this - as an organization grows larger, it becomes more infused with rules and procedures, and as a result conformity / playing by these rules is encouraged while certain behaviors are discouraged and actively punished. Just go and Google the name 'James Damore' (a former Google employee, oddly enough) for further discussion of this phenomena.

The notion of 'sensitivity training' is approximately twenty years old as best I can tell. Compared to 98.5 The Sports Hub, there are a lot more incidents at WEEI, both historically and recently. My roommate (a local law enforcement official) was just today subject to this very thing, where he described it roughly like this - 'Sit down and shut up while we verbally beat the shit out of you for the next six hours', which I equate to my remedial drivers education course from twenty years ago. I guarantee this is how this Friday 'sensitivity training' will be described by every single participant, in the event any of them are allowed to go on record to discuss it.

There's an old Klingon proverb - 'Revenge is a dish, best served cold'. Break out the cutlery, Lou and Kirk...