Good jokes — and good union support — helped a public radio reporter get his job back after he was fired over clips from his stand-up set posted on social media.
As Vice reports, Jad Sleiman emerged largely victorious from an arbitration dispute with the Philadelphia NPR affiliate, WHYY. The third-party arbitrator found that the station didn’t have “just cause” to fire Sleiman over the jokes he posted to social media, and should be reinstated. The arbitrator also ruled that some of the material was inflammatory, and should be removed from social media — but also stated that some of the jokes were pretty funny.
“The one thing I’ve been told about arbitration is they usually split the baby, so nobody gets everything they want,” Sleiman said. “But what’s been on my side this whole time is the case against me has just been such bullshit.”
Sleiman spent five years working at WHYY as a reporter on the health and science program, The Pulse, while pursuing stand-up on the side. He was fired last January after management found some of his clips online, deeming them offensive and a violation of the company’s social media policy. The arbitration case centered around nine bits, in which he joked about his experiences as an Arab-American and serving in the Marines, as well as politics, sex, and racism.
Amazingly, in the final ruling (which Sleiman shared online), arbitrator Lawrence S. Coburn effectively broke the most basic rule of comedy and explained Sleiman’s jokes. In doing so, he declared some funny, some not funny, and acknowledged what parts could be considered inflammatory. For instance, the joke “Pussy Transplant” — about Sleiman’s dumb Google search: “Can you be born without a pussy?” — could certainly be “interpreted as inflammatory simply because of the vulgar language used.”
Another bit, “Went to Chinese Whore House,” found Sleiman joking about a harrowing experience where some European volunteer soldiers fighting ISIS in Iraq took him a “Chinese whorehouse.” The routine touched on the irony of these soldiers, as Coburn put it, “fighting ISIS in part because of its inhuman treatment of women,” yet frequenting an establishment where blatant sex trafficking was taking place. It also closed with sharp punchline from Sleiman, “I don’t care if you paid for it, I’m not banging out a slave. I’m not half of the founding fathers.”
Coburn said the routine offered “insightful, principled, and serious” commentary — but also declared it “not very funny.”
On the other hand, Coburn did seem to like Sleiman’s joke, “Kind of Racist,” which appeared to allude to his day job. In it, Sleiman quipped: “I work at one of these places that’s so woke it’s kinda racist. Like this lady asked my boss, she’s like ‘Yo, does Jad consider himself a person of color?’ Uh, because she was making a list of us. Fucking hell? Sick alright. I get to be on in this lady’s brown dude Pokédex.”
Coburn called this joke “a powerful condemnation, in a funny way, of what [Sleiman] calls corporatized racial consciousness that makes him, a person of color, feel uncomfortable because he would prefer to be categorized as a whole person regardless of the color of his skin.”
Sleiman was supported in the arbitration hearing by SAG-AFTRA’s grievance lawyers, who claimed he’d been fired without due process. The reporter/comedian credited the union for helping him get his job back, especially because Pennsylvania has “at-will” employment laws.
“They could have just fired me and that would have been the end of it,” Sleiman said. “The fact that it’s a union shop is actually the whole reason I was able to fight back at all.”
In a statement shared with Philadelphia Magazine, WHYY said it was reviewing the decision and considering “appeal options and next steps.” The station added: “While we do not agree with all of the arbitrator’s conclusions, we certainly accept the arbitrator’s decision that Mr. Sleiman needs to permanently remove all inflammatory or offensive social media posts as a condition of any future employment at WHYY.”
While Sleiman took his firing as a chance to focus on comedy full time, he admitted he’s ready to walk back into work “like fucking Vince McMahon.” He added: “They tried their best. They called me every name in the book. They cut off my health insurance. They deleted all of my fucking stories, which like, what the fuck? And then they still lost. People keep asking, ‘Is it going to be weird going back?’ I’m like, yeah, for them.”