The Labor Department official who resigned after a Bloomberg reporter contacted the department about the employee’s years-old and seemingly sarcastic Facebook post will be reinstated, a department spokesperson confirmed to TPM Thursday.
What the? This is just effing weird. Did his boss tell him to resign so he could briefly be a martyr?
There HAS TO BE more to this story. It doesn’t make sense.
That’s white male privilege for you… a black women even more unjustly fired never get their job back… and I am looking at you Barack Obama…
Olly olly oxen free
Shirley Sherrod is not a white woman.
They apologized to her and offered to rehire her. She declined.
ETA: Before you edited . . .
My mistake, meant black
Only after being unfairly, publicly and savagely criticized. When that was announced I was at a customers cafeteria and everybody around me (most of them of african-american) that agreed that she should not take the job back, it was a matter of dignity .
Folks, once in a great while, even in this administration, a thing is what it appears to be. Some overeager new reporter dug up a sarcastic social-media post, labeled it anti-Semitic, the guy offered to resign and was accepted, and now everyone’s calmed down and it’s smoothed over. No harm no foul, whatever that originally meant. The guy was mocking alt-right anti-Semitism and the like. All a big kerfuffle based on overzealousness and overreaction.
As odd as it sounds, the Trump Administration is looking better than Bloomberg on this. They’ve corrected their mistake. Bloomberg is standing by theirs, last I heard.
I noticed that too. Bloomberg should fire Penn or at least send him back to the mailroom.
Nevertheless, they offered to rehire her. I’m certainly not criticizing her decision to decline, but it kind of negates your argument that she “never got [her] job back.”
I guess the snark meters went away with the last round of budget cuts. Tough times in the news business.
I follow you up to ‘offered to resign’. It made no sense for him to do that.
This whole story stinks. “Good people on both sides!”
Bloomberg, which has stood by Penn’s reporting, did not note the context of Ryan’s 2016 challenger in the story.
I think some editorial self-reflection might be in order as well.
Uh, I was not much of an influencer in any aspect of the situation. 
You’d have to ask him his reasons.
A transitory martyr makes no sense, either. Maybe it’s all a vast confluence of coincidence. A combination of over-reaction on everyone’s part.
I know - so weird. Gets fired for a 2016 Facebook post where he thought Paul RYAN was Jewish and made the requisite “they protect their own” statement? Like, tons of people say stupid things on Facebook and they are morons but that should not preclude them from getting government jobs. I spent years 2014-2016 making fun of Paul Ryan for taking a loser job and for sleeping in his office, but as long as I did not make an anti-Semitic comment about a non-Jew, I can still get a job in Labor?
What are the rules???
I wasn’t saying you’re wrong on anything, just that the resignation part makes no sense. Unless every player in this mini-drama is impulsive. Which could be the case.
I’ve always assumed that, when I see “offered to resign” I’m seeing someone who was “instructed to resign.” Am I all alone here?