More from a day in a lawyer’s life
Apr 11, 2008 Lex scripta, Medialites
The excitement wasn’t over after I blogged about my shoes and other critical societal concerns yesterday! Through a process I have yet fully to comprehend, in mid-afternoon I found myself at ABC Studios answering questions about employment law in front of a camera!
Don’t laugh. I have litigated, even tried (successfully, of course!) a number of cases involving employment discrimination. I’m no one-trick-IP-pony.
The issue here was a pending Pennsylvania bill that would prohibit employers from asking job applicants about marital or parental status, which is legal in about half the states. They could not find anyone who would go on camera to explain why an employer would have a fundamentally economic justification to ask such a question — in other words, to go on the record “against motherhood.” So ABC somehow worked its way down the food chain and got to me. (You know what an old hand I am at this!)
I had no trouble saying that. I also think you should be able to ask about religious observance — anything that will affect, or may affect, your degree of commitedness to the job and your ability to be there during the hours for which you were hired.
A very short sound bite, meant mostly to give the impression of balance in a piece that will surely be very anti-employer (i.e., anti-freedom of contract), will probably be on tonight’s World News Tonight with Charles Gibson at 6:30 Eastern time some day, maybe. How I will come out sounding when they’re done dicing and slicing, I have no idea. But I promise you I was brilliant, charming and profound in the studio. Of course.
Oh, and I brushed past a much-taller-than-I-imagined Curtis Sliwa on the 1 train on the way to the studio. Presumably he was on the way from the studio (he does radio there). That’s a good omen, right?
April 11th, 2008 at 11:32 am
[...] like I’m going to be on national TV again. Not a big deal this time — it could be four seconds, and who knows what sense will be left [...]
April 12th, 2008 at 7:36 am
Congrats on your media appearance. A question for … er … more “seasoned” workers who may be reading this blog. Correct me if I’m wrong, but when it came to upper-level sales and executive jobs, wasn’t meeting spouse and family part of the job-interview process at one time?
Granted, my impressions of the 1950s and 1960s workplace are limited to what I can find on TV Land reruns, but I do know from growing up in a military family that wives, particularly officers’ wives, were a vital part of the social fabric of military bases, at least through the 1980s.
–|PW|–
April 12th, 2008 at 7:45 am
I still think you should put together a media packet and go on tour.
It ain’t real work of course, but it can be real money, and of the two, that’s the more important thing.
April 12th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Did anyone see if I was on, ultimately?
Jack, you’re right, really.