Lindsey Stone Fired for Vulgar Facebook Photo at Arlington National Cemetery

The Other McCain reported on this earlier, "Lindsey Stone of Plymouth, Mass., Has ‘Been Placed on Unpaid Leave Pending the Results of an Internal Investigation’."

But she's gone now, according to the Boston Herald, "Shamed Facebook poster loses her job":

Lindsey Stone — the Plymouth woman taking an online beating for posting a photo of herself flipping the bird at Arlington National Cemetery on Facebook — has lost her job.

“Lindsey resigned and we accepted her resignation,” LIFE Inc. CEO Diane Enochs told the Herald tonight.

LIFE Inc. of Hyannis — a Cape Cod nonprofit that helps adults with special needs — announced tonight that Stone, along with the woman who snapped the offending photo, are not working there.

Ironically, the formal announcement was made on Facebook.

“We wish to announce that the two employees recently involved in the Arlington Cemetery incident are no longer employees of LIFE. Again, we deeply regret any disrespect to members of the military and their families. The incident and publicity has been very upsetting to the learning disabled population we serve. To protect our residents, any comments, however well-intentioned, will be deleted. We appreciate your concern and understanding as we focus on the care of our community,” the statement reads.

There's more at that top link, but see this from the Herald as well, "Father ‘appalled’ by disrespectful Facebook pic":

The mortified father of a Plymouth woman under cyber assault for posting a photo of herself flipping the bird at sacred Arlington National Cemetery said his only daughter apologizes to anyone she’s offended — especially soldiers.

The controversial Facebook photo shows Lindsey Stone with her mouth wide open and giving the finger near what appears to be the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and a sign that reads: “Silence and Respect.”

“She’s totally apologetic. She apologizes to anybody she’s offended,” her father, Peter Stone, told me last night. “She was reacting, I guess, to the sign instead of the place and didn’t intend it to be what it turned out to be.

“She had a lack of judgment,” added her father, who learned of the controversy yesterday. “I think they were just being funny, which is sad. It’s not how she or the family feels by any means.”

The photo wound up in the blogosphere and has sparked a “Fire Lindsey Stone” Facebook page that had fetched more than 9,000 likes as of last night.

Stone and Jamie Schuh, the woman who snapped the photo, have been put on unpaid leave from their jobs at the Hyannis-based LIFE Inc. — a nonprofit that helps adults with special needs — while it investigates the incident.

Well, it's permanent unpaid leave for the both of them now.

And extremely poor judgement it was. No doubt the company considered the woman to continuing liability to the concern and had to cut her loose.

And head back over to The Other McCain for a bit on the sordidness of Ms. Stone's actions. Word has it she was visiting Arlington on a company-paid trip, so that would make it look like the non-profit was financing the vulgarity. There's no way they could keep her on, although as bad as it was, for all it's vulgarity, flipping off the Tomb of the Unknowns is a form of political speech. Perhaps the outcome would have been different had Ms. Stone visited on her own time and her own dime. She would at least have had a better case for keeping her job. Either way, she's paying for her stupidity as much as her speech.