
Diller says she was shitcanned because she rejected her superior’s repeated requests to join him in imploring Jesus to take the wheel, so to speak, of animal control affairs up in Ventura.
Praying at work is hardly uncommon. It is probably the third most common forum in which the Almighty is regularly beseeched, after religious services themselves and watching sports events on which one has placed a bet. Prayers are soaring aloft from the hearts of innumerable members of the workforce even as I write this, prayers like “Oh Lord, I please grant my wish that the guy in the next cubicle put on deodorant today,” and “God, I hope the boss never finds out that Excel is a bigger mystery to me than string theory,” and even “Jesus Christ, would somebody turn down the air conditioning? It’s fifty fucking degrees in here!”
Whether prayer is in any way effective in improving workplace conditions is debatable, and the value of coerced prayer extremely so. It is not known what faith Johnson Gill, the man who wanted to make Diller his prayer concubine, belongs to, but it must be an extremely fervid one, perhaps one in which the soul of every beast Ventura County puts down must be prayed over, so they can wing or hop up to Birdie and Bunny Heaven when their existence on this plane is done. Or it’s one of those offensive proselytizing ones, and Gill was just saving Diller the trouble of knocking on her door on a Sunday, particularly one on which she had a morbid hangover, and trying to persuade her to buy a ticket on the Salvation Bus on her stoop.
The question is whether Diller deserves an honored spot in the #MeToo pantheon. Some would say no. A simple request to worship together should not be compared to the self-loathing and personal yickiness endured by the people preyed on by Weinstein, Ailes, Spacey etc., men who left trails of forced sex and ruined careers in their horny wakes. After all, a short (hopefully) prayer that you engage in, however unwillingly, doesn't leave you running for the nearest tank of hand sanitizer.
But over here, we feel Diller’s pain. Your boss shouldn’t be able to fire you if you refuse to touch his worship wang when he whips it out.
Keep your prayers in your pants, please.