Woman fired for Air America bumper-sticker.

Posted by Joshua Holland at 3:27 PM on March 9, 2006.

This is from the North County Times in California (via Crooks and Liars):

A San Diego County woman is suing her former employer, accusing her manager of firing her on the spot when she saw the woman's car had a bumper sticker advertising a progressive talk radio station. […]

In a civil suit filed at the county courthouse in Vista, Linda Laroca is targeting both her former manager, Beverly Fath, and the company she briefly worked for last year, Advantage Sales and Marketing, Inc. […]

The California labor code prohibits employers from controlling or directing the political activities of employees.

According to Laroca's suit, the bumper sticker in question read only: "1360 Air America Progressive Talk Radio." […]

In her Feb. 21 claim, Laroca asserts that on Oct. 8, three weeks after she started working for the marketing company, Fath called her on a Saturday and requested they meet at a nearby grocery store parking lot so Laroca could pass on some documents Fath needed.

During the brief encounter, Laroca charges, the manager pointed to the bumper sticker ---- the only one on Laroca's car ---- and remarked that it was a new sticker and called it "that Al Franken left-wing radical radio station."

Laroca alleges in her suit that Fath then told her, "The country is on a high state of alert. For all I know, you could be al-Qaida."

A stunned Laroca laughed nervously at the statement, the suit alleges, and then was dealt "the final blow" when Fath fired her on the spot.

You reap what you sow. For fifty years a central element of the right's strategy has been to demonize liberalism, a constant and rich part of America's political culture since the country's founding. The result is … brainwashed psychos like this Fath woman.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.