Wow. Why do I have the feeling that lawyers will gain the most from this? 
who needs cops?
Article in today’s NYT felt icky. There has to be a better way.
While I expect their process needs refinement, I think it is a good thing for the award and the brand to have some “character” checks in the process. We all know there are celebrated chefs who are quite toxic and I have seen at least a few beard award winners that later have scandals come out. Vetting out toxicity as a criteria may help incentivize better behavior.
You can’t legislate morality. This whole thing screams of CYA behavior rather than actually trying to do anything good.
i think this is the typical situation of the method doesn’t align with the objective.
they want chefs who treat people properly. if they want to operate a tip line where disgruntled (possibly rightfully so) employees can drop anonymous tips on their employers, cool. direct them to call the cops or attorney so they can pursue civil litigation or file a criminal charge.
beyond that, i don’t really get it.
That sounds slick and clever until you actually consider the context that there is no legislation happening and they can give their awards with any criteria they choose (under the actual law).
In other words a pretty ridiculous statement.
That’s a rather myopic interpretation. The word legislate applies to more than statutory laws. They are creating rules and laws for their awards and demanding some sense of morality. It’s doomed to fail.
For better or for worse, winning or even being a finalist for the James Beard awards is a huge boosts to those the foundation features.
I don’t think they are demanding a sense of morality, but rather—as far as I can tell—they don’t want to continue to feature people that are assholes/sexists/bigots/etc because as a foundation they don’t think those are people and institutions that should give the spotlight to.
That’s something I’m for. I like supporting people and institutions that I not only like that quality of their work output, but also the people themselves. A restaurant’s food may be great, but if the people involved are dicks, I don’t really have much desire to dine there. But that’s just me.
The way the foundation executed it is incredibly poor and I’m surprised that no one that looked at that plan didn’t realise it had massive holes from the onset, but that’s a whole other thing.
that’s impossible. and i don’t even think it’s anything other than a noble ideal. there’s a big difference between being an asshole and violating labor or criminal laws.
Messaging and correctness has resulted in some pretty nonsensical (at least to me) awards in the last few years so this just seems par for the course.