His opinions as a private citizen do not in any way reflect on the quality or content of his work as a reporter, which his employer took 0 issue with prior to learning about his personal life.
There's a pretty easy correlate for this to understand why it's bad:
Let's say a company discovers that you are gay, and fires you based on some sort of "morality" clause.
Cool?
Why not? From many common perspectives globally, being gay is far more morally incorrect than making a joke about "wokeness".
Many organized religious and even non-religious worldviews have strict strictures against being a homosexual, all over the world.
Conversely, the morality that someone shouldn't say anything at any time ever that isn't completely neutral is siloed to a small band of weirdos.
A salient detail that seems to be overlooked by most in this thread is that this putative comedian was making direct and personal references to coworkers and/or authorities working for his self-same employer.
So not only was he making bigoted and tasteless jokes, but some of them were revealing private business that should've been kept as internal matters. He betrayed the trust and confidentiality of his employer and his coworkers. That in itself is reprehensible, racism or not. Certainly, any employer who takes action against that sort of betrayal can be justified.
I am not the original commenter, but I think saying the jokes are “bigoted” shows a bias, and it was good to emphasize that by not addressing the other argument. We could have a discussion about whether getting fired for talking about conduct at your employer is right, but to link it with the idea that someone told “bigoted” jokes is to conflate two things.
To say those jokes are “bigoted” has a high bar, since comedy is about entertainment and not real. The jokes in the article don’t meet that bar, but one should be circumspect about drawing that conclusion because comedy isn’t real. To throw around that judgment offhand without supporting it is to lend support to a world based on censorship and conformity. It should not just be an assumption - “yeah of course these jokes are bigoted.” - that should be the substance of the discussion before we draw that conclusion.
So it’s proper to call out the bias of the commenter and not address their other argument.
>So it’s proper to call out the bias of the commenter
I think whether or not their words amount to bias is up for debate, but I don't object to that subject being brought up in addition to the subject under discussion so far.
>and not address their other argument.
This part I don't agree with. That other argument is completely independent, and worth pursuing. Abandoning it completely is conceding defeat on that front.
There's a pretty easy correlate for this to understand why it's bad:
Let's say a company discovers that you are gay, and fires you based on some sort of "morality" clause.
Cool?
Why not? From many common perspectives globally, being gay is far more morally incorrect than making a joke about "wokeness".
Many organized religious and even non-religious worldviews have strict strictures against being a homosexual, all over the world.
Conversely, the morality that someone shouldn't say anything at any time ever that isn't completely neutral is siloed to a small band of weirdos.