Opera Foundation Removes Trustee Over Offensive Comments

NYT ^ | July 22, 2020 | Sarah Bahr

[Stravinsky]

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation, which grants prestigious awards to young singers, removed David N. Tucker from its board of directors on Monday evening. Mr. Tucker, a son of the distinguished tenor for whom the foundation is named, was removed after an uproar over racially charged comments that he made on a Black singer’s Facebook page.

“The Richard Tucker Music Foundation condemns the hurtful and offensive comments made by one of our board members, David Tucker,” Jeffrey Manocherian, the foundation’s chairman, and Barry Tucker, its president and another of Richard Tucker’s sons, said in a statement.

On Saturday, Julia Bullock, a Black soprano, shared a Washington Post story on her Facebook page that quoted protesters in Portland, Ore., who said they had been detained by federal officers in unmarked vans. In response, Mr. Tucker commented, “Good. Get rid of these thugs and I don’t care where you send them. They are a Pox on our society.”

In another comment, he wrote, “About time someone tough will try to crush the mob before they destroy and kill more innocent people. Bravo to Trump to send in Federal troops.”

When Russell Thomas, a Black tenor, replied in a comment that the Tucker Foundation had given its top prize, the Richard Tucker Award, to only one Black artist since it was first granted in 1978, Mr. Tucker wrote that “pulling the race card is another convenient excuse to modify excellent standards of vocal artistry.”

A spokeswoman for the foundation said on Monday that while there had been a single Black winner of the Tucker Award — Lawrence Brownlee, in 2006 — the foundation had awarded a dozen smaller career and study grants to Black artists over the past decade.

Mr. Brownlee called Mr. Tucker’s comments “racist” and “deeply disappointing” in a Facebook post...

[E. Pluribus Unum]

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is, indeed, a revolutionary act.

[Pearls Before Swine]

The comments are only “racially charged” if you assume that blacks exhibit higher than population average criminality.

Which, everyone knows they do, especially in the looting outbreaks. But, as George Carlin said, it’s one of those things everyone knows but you can’t say.

[SunkenCiv]

There is scarcely a more "white adjacent" thing than opera.

[IronJack]

I believe it was Voltaire who said something like "To understand who rules you, ask yourself whom you are not allowed to criticize."

How much longer are we going to allow ourselves to be ruled by this PC lynch mob?

[madison10]

There was no "race" in the comment. Also. I was under the impression that most of the violence in Washington and Oregon was Antifa, "maybe with BLM, but still, mostly white. So the singer was black...what a stretch to make the Trump comment about the singer.🙄

[Skywise]

The statements were not racist nor were they racially charged.

He should sue for this libel against him.

[joshua c]

No dissent. Resistance is futile.

[Romulus]

If you resist the revolution (which can hardly wait to change opera into a dreary tool of propaganda), you will be labeled racist.

The Left is over-playing its hand. People will not stand for much more of this.

[I want the USA back]

Here are the offensive words that got him fired: “Bravo to Trump to send in Federal troops.”
Saying anything positive about Trump is now a crime, and it gets you fired.

[clintonh8r]

Anybody notice that the NYT style book now apparently requires an upper case “B” when referring to a black person?

[DUMBGRUNT]

upper case “B” when referring to a black person?

Black with a capital “B”!
How white of them.

[Stravinsky]

That’s changing all over. Capitalize black, but not white. Their agenda is obvious.

[billyboy15]

“How much longer are we going to allow ourselves to be ruled by this PC lynch mob?”

I think this is entirely up to the individual. If you fear saying what you feel, that is on you. When people take a stand and push back it will stop but if we allow it it will continue and worsen.

What this man said was absolutely factual and in no way racist. I only hope he does not see fit to apologize.

[Thommas]

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is, indeed, a revolutionary act.

As truthful a pithy maxim as has ever been uttered. Furthermore, telling the truth, today, will get you fired from your job.

[Thommas]

an upper case “B” when referring to a black person and a lower case "w" when referring to White people.

[cgbg]

The great analysts of truth and language in politics”---writes McGill University political philosophy professor Jacob T. Levy---including “George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel—can help us recognize this kind of lie for what it is....

Saying something obviously untrue, and making your subordinates repeat it with a straight face in their own voice, is a particularly startling display of power over them. It’s something that was endemic to totalitarianism.

[butlerweave]

Truth is the stake through the Heart of the Left

[9YearLurker]

Of course, zippo racist in what he posted.

But John McWhorter’s tortured explanation of how thug doesn’t mean thug:

https://www.npr.org/2015/04/30/403362626/the-racially-charged-meaning-behind-the-word-thug

[Sir Bangaz Cracka]

More obvious is the spoken support for Trump. Certainly that is grounds for banishment.