“I don’t know that I would say that I’m educated enough from a scientific standpoint.I don’t ever believe that exclusion is an answer. I just don’t. I do think when we think about various levels of sport, various governing bodies of sport and things that go into that, like I said, I’m not, I’m not educated enough at the different levels. I know growing up, I played with the boys all the time.”
—–WNBA’s Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White, asked to expound on the controversy around her star guard, Sophie Cunningham, who has aroused the ire of transgender activists by stating her opinion that young girls in sports should not be made to compete against biological men.
What a pusillanimous, ignorant, disingenuous statement. White would have been better of to simply state that her policy is not to comment on matters that do not concern the WNBA or her job as coach. Her statement is on the same offensive level as woke Justice Jackson saying that she can’t define what a woman is.
How “educated” does one have to be to look at this…
or this..
….and conclude, “You know, that doesn’t look fair to me” ? How hard is that?
It’s hard for Wilson because, unlike Cunningham, she’s afraid of the vengeance of the radical left and its woke enforcers. Cunningham is a role model for young women who take seriously the feminist credo of not behaving passively, fearfully and compliantly or avoiding the role of a leader because that’s how ladies are expected to behave. She said regarding her trans-females in sports opinion when recently interviewed about the attacks on her for standing up for women and reality, “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense.”
Ah, but do you have the scientific training to have common sense?
This kind of confirmation bias-driven sliming of law enforcement has become the norm since the Obama Administration and its leader’s unforgivable sanctification of Trayvon Martin as his crypto-offspring because Martin was black and got himself shot. The news media loves it, however, and you know, Freedom of the Press.
Bryan Axel Ramirez Gomez (above) died in February after starting a shootout with police in Elkhart, Indiana. His last stand lasted only a few second, because two police officers who were crack shots put him down quickly and safely despite others being close to the exchange. Yet that rather straightforward cause-and-effect result generated this headline from WNDU-TV, the NBC-owned affiliate in South Bend, about 20 miles from Elkhart, two days after the shooting:
The deliberately anti-law enforcement and pro-deadly punk story continued,
“The family of a 17-year-old killed by Elkhart police is calling for state investigators to take over the case as the community grapples with three separate shootings and a stabbing in a 48-hour span. Bryan Axel Ramirez Gomez died Sunday around 2 a.m. in an officer-involved shooting. A memorial now sits at High Dive Park where he was killed. Alfredo Ramirez-Gomez, the teen’s brother, spoke at a vigil for Bryan on Tuesday afternoon and demanded the release of police footage: “Bryan was a bright kid, he was a member of this community, this is where he grew up,” Ramirez-Gomez said. “As for his cause of death, we can’t really point fingers yet. We just ask and demand that the footage comes out from the car and from the vest.”
Right. “We can’t point fingers yet” but Ben Crump is on our auto-dial. The response is reflex: the family is angling for a big settlement from the city. Blogger Robert Stacy McCain points out:
NBC's Raf Sznchez claims the Spanish border crisis is "becoming a global political flashpoint" and goes with the old Republicans Seize angle "the images of chaos have rattled Europe and been seized on by President Trump."
It is axiomatic that whenever a news event casts legitimate shadows on Democrats, progressives or their allies, the story is framed by the Axis media as a partisan attack by the political Right (Republicans, conservatives, President Trump) with the event itself de-emphasized. “Republicans pounce!” is the short-hand name for the phenomenon.
Of course the practice is unethical and deliberately misleading. The news media’s coverage of the Fauci hearings was a classic of the genre. For example, ABC’s correspondent Jay O’Brien said on Wednesday’s Good Morning America that the retired scientist would, at “85 years old,” have to face “a fiery hearing” because he “has long been a target of” Rand Paul, who obtained his “private diary.” Later, on World News Tonight O’Brien described Fauci as “the man millions of Americans turned to for answers during the COVID pandemic” now being “needled” by Republicans even though he “served in government for 54 years and has testified in more than 200 hearings.”
That commentary is revolting in its mendacity. People who do bad things need to be held responsible, and how old they happen to be when the piper must be paid is irrelevant. Citing Fauci’s age was a pure appeal to emotion: “Aw, poor old guy, can’t they just leave him alone?” The diary, legally and factually, was not private because it was created on a government platform. Yeah, sure, millions of Americans turned to Fauci for answers, including the President, and he lied to them all, repeatedly, or gave wrong answers.
You know…when Dr. Fauci revealed himself to be a narcissist, a coward, a fick, and an all-time American villain.
The Fauci Ethics Train Wreck is yet another integrity test for the American Left and the Axis of Unethical Conduct. It has flunked the others, so it is not surprising that it is flunking this one. The ethical course would be to admit the truth:
“Yes, they were thrilled with the pandemic lockdown, because it wrecked the Trump economy and gave them a chance to install a puppet President who could be manipulated by extreme left unelected functionaries. Yes, that made us especially willing to accept Dr. Fauci and Co.’s draconian measures, especially since it gave Democratic elected officials an opportunity to play dictator and constrain Americans’ civil rights in the name of “safety.” Yes, we sanctified Dr. Fauci beyond all reason to enhance our irresponsible “follow the science” grift, which has been so successful in the climate change policy debate. Yes, we were complicit in installing ruinous and unnecessary policies, based on panic that our media sowed, that retarded a generation’s education and social development, ruined businesses, permanently damaged whole industries, and killed people.”
Nah! That’s not how the American Left rolls in 2026. How much better it is to deflect, lie, ignore multiple metaphorical elephants, and maintain a position that has become completely untenable.
The op-ed titled “What We Really Learned From the Fauci Hearing” (gift link, but this is no present) from the New York Times could have been designed by an AI bot with the instruction, “write an op-ed denying that the Fauci hearing was what it was, using the topic to blame Republicans while avoiding inconvenient facts.”
This paragraph, near the end, is a masterpiece of dishonesty and sophistry:
“Dr. Fauci is a complicated man who has been both elevated and reduced to a symbol. His legacy after a decades-long career at the intersection of science and politics is now defined by incompatible, contested accounts of his pandemic-era impact. There is little hope of resolving that contest any time soon.”
“Complicated”! The smoking gun of brazen sophistry, prevarication and equivocation. There’s noting complicated about Fauci. He’s a lifetime bureaucrat who became intoxicated with power when the opportunity arrived, and abused that power for the benefit his own ego, his political party, and the detriment of millions. It is an old story. Faucis have been analyzed by historians, playwrights and novelists for centuries. “Complicated” is an anodyne, toothless word used to excuse wrong-doers.
I believe, and have believed for as long as I can remember—Shut up, I remember more than most people—that everyone in our society has an ethical obligation to know as much as possible about the society and culture we live in. This takes time and effort, as well as humility. For the young, it means showing an interest in what had transpired before they were born, if it had a significant effect on history and culture.
I have related here my interaction with a professional woman, ten years my junior, who revealed that she didn’t know who Jackie Robinson was. I told her that was inexcusable, and sent her to some sources. A lawyer I worked with at one point, even younger, couldn’t come within 70 years of the dates of the Civil War, despite graduating with honors from Cornell and being an associate at Skadden Arps.
The case was made powerfully in the Eighties by J.D. Hirsch in his best-seller “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” and he updated his book several times. His main declaration was that without a shared cultural knowledge, communication and understanding between generations becomes impossible, and society’s connective tissue is eventually degraded and destroyed. Analogies and metaphors no longer work; patterns are no longer detected; “presentism” becomes epidemic. Jackie Robinson was on Hirsch’s list; so were John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Sen. Joe McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, James Watson, Will Rogers, Elvis Presley and Fred Astaire.
Older generations have obligations too. As a child who watched more television than anyone I know (or knew), I became convinced that TV was an essential cultural literacy tool. My parents, one a lawyer and Harvard College grad and the other a career Harvard administrator, had many friends who boasted of either never watching TV or only deigning to watch PBS. Even when I was ten, I regarded them as arrogant and foolish, which they were. They didn’t see the Sixties coming, or comprehend the culture that was its catalyst when it fell on then like a rock squishing Wile E. Coyote.
I acknowledge that keeping up with current culture, while in some respects easier than it used to be due to technology, is overwhelming, and to some extent even impossible. We have many parallel cultures trying to coexist today, and some are antithetical to each other. At very least, I believe, all of us have to try to keep abreast of popular culture, which includes important societal developments that drive that relentless engine.
Last week EA expressed disgust that Sen. Jim Clyburn had revealed that he only recently became aware of ChatGPT. He’s 80: it’s no excuse. It would be almost as inexcusable if Clyburn announced that he didn’t know who Taylor Swift is. President Trump was recently dragged in social media for apparently conflating a kids’ TV host from the Fifties with Eighties star Paul Reubens, aka. Peewee Herman. At least Trump is aware of Peewee’s existence; that fulfills his cultural literacy obligation.
Five years ago, I wrote a discouraged post about how my cultural literacy commitment was failing, Confession Of A Life Competence Failure. I am obviously over-due for an audit, so I went to the same source for a pop quiz: WeSmirch, a web aggregator of celebrity news. In 2021, I regarded my performance as a failure, writing in part,
“It was horrifying. I never heard of most of these people. Those I have heard of seem completely irrelevant to me. Almost all of the important people in these stories seem to be morons, famous for being famous, illiterate, notable mostly for being rich. The so-called “news,” breathlessly shouted from various headlines, seemed less than inconsequential. And yet this is what a rising generation cares about. Here is a typical headline from this morning: “Vanessa Morgan’s son is called River.” Who is Vanessa Morgan? Who cares what her son is named? It turns out that she is an actress on “Riverdale,” a TV show based on the comic book whose appeal I never understood (but I read the damn thing so I knew what my friends were reading). My score was 15 celebrity names recognized, with 17 complete mysteries. My conclusion: “When all the celebrities are strangers, I will have reached the dreaded stage of my uncle, who got the Beatles mixed up with the Rolling Stones, and the codgers today who talk about the internet like it’s some new-fangled fad. And at that point, I will be useless.”
Let’s see what my score is today. The “celebrities”…
I don’t understand this at all. Even for Seattle, the current controversy over the ex-chief of police is nuts.
The city’s far left Mayor Katie Wilson is under fire for the city’s botched handling of the Bite of Seattle mass shooting, which saw seven people shot with three dying. A toddler was among those wounded. Seattle Police issued a brief report to the public shortly after the shooting, urging everyone to stay away from the area, but nothing more for five hours, when a press conference was called. The city’s emergency alert system wasn’t activated, though this is exactly the kind of situation it was designed for.
Meanwhile, Police Chief Shon Barnes was out of town, as he is remarkably frequently. He was at a police convention in Dallas; since March, he’s also attended police gatherings in Washington, D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Baltimore. Barnes doesn’t reside in Seattle full time, you see. He lives part-time in Chicago, where his family is. Over the last six months, Barnes has been out of town for about seven weeks, including four trips to Chicago.
When he got back to his place of employment, Barnes got in the face of a reporter who dared to ask him whether reports were accurate that Barnes planned to be away from Seattle until mid-August, and whether his travel schedule might be a bit problematic. Barnes stepped into his questioner and said, “I don’t have to tell you where I go…,” before a city employee pulled the chief away from the reporter and out of the room. At another news conference, Barnes denied that he frequently travels or is routinely absent from the city, and said that he doesn’t travel as much as he would like to. He really said that.
Subsequently Mayor Wilson announced that Barnes had “resigned.” Incredibly, the Seattle City Council was troubled by that. City Councilman Bob Kettle said working with Barnes was going well—yeah, it all seemed to be going swimmingly!—and that firing him would just increase the city’s feeling of insecurity. Barnes lasted a year, and the city has had four police chiefs in just two and a half years.
Wait, let’s back up a bit. Why would any major city—Seattle is one, or at least used to be until it was engulfed by The Great Stupid—hire a police chief who wasn’t prepared to reside full time in that city, or at least nearby? Unless the individual was some kind of miracle worker, it makes no sense. Based on his biography Barnes is an anti-policing police advocate, a social justice warrior, and, of course, he’s black:
How desperate must progressives be to stoop to an appeal to an authority as untrustworthy and ridiculous as Alex Jones? “Headquarters” is a Democrat social media account “followed by” Kamala Harris and others in the Democratic leadership. Alex Jones told the morons who listen to his garbage that he thought the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. Who could be a worse character to use as validation for anti-Trump positions? Tucker Carlson? Daffy Duck? Luigi Mangione? Mr. Ed? Marley’s Ghost?
I have never understood how Jones gained any notoriety at all, except that there are a depressing number of cognitively impaired right-wingers out there. Even in that brief clip he broadcasts his ignorance: Congress doesn’t invoke the 25th Amendment and even raising that (the ever-popular Plan E on the list of Axis “Get Trump!” plots) is signature significance for an idiot.
But I digress. This is your weekly white board for new ethics issues and angle. Fill it up!
Francis Turner, a Brit I have never heard of who is currently living in Japan, has a substack up titled “Pleading the Fifth when you have already received a Presidential pardon is like wearing a mask after being fully vaccinated.” It’s a good line, but untrue. There were good reason, in Fauci’s villainous mind, for not testifying honestly in a Congressional hearing. He’s a narcissist and an unapologetic former Deep State operative, and he knows the Axis of Unethical Conduct is invested in defending him forever as long as he never betrays it. To testify honestly, Fauci would have to admit he was wrong, that he lied, and that terrible damage was done to the nation because of his lies and mistakes. It would mean accepting responsibility and being accountable. People like Fauci aren’t capable of doing that.
It was this argument by Turner, however, that fascinated me.
“I’m willing to forgive people but has to be a quid pro quo that is an acknowledgement that there is something to forgive. If you can’t admit you made mistakes and that those mistakes killed people, bankrupted businesses and so on then you don’t get my forgiveness. And as I tweeted1 people who got things wrong up to about June 2020 get a pass because there was a ton of confusion and (especially from the PRC) misleading information so figuring stuff out was hard. But anyone who continued to advocate school closures, isolation of the elderly, mask safety theater and so on after that date needs to apologise. Anyone who insisted on vaccination of everyone, including the young, and wanted passports, mandates or other coercive measures needs to apologise. Anyone who mindlessly mocked recommendations for Hthe world a huge favor by admitting that they made mistakes and apologising for them.CQ, Zinc, Vitamin D, Ivermectin and so on needs to apologise […]. So does anyone who deliberately misinterpreted President Trump’s remarks about disinfectant to imply that he said people should inject bleach. In fact the mainstream media needs to do a general apology for their un-questioning slavish devotion to “the science” even when said “science” changed its mind and their related trashing of anyone who didn’t follow “the science” as it was declared to be at the time….
“In the midst of all the “under the advice of my attorneys I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment to the Constitution, to refrain from answering your questions” blather, Herr Doktor Science notably failed to apologise. Not in his opening statement, and not when explicitly asked to by Senator Bernie Moreno. He just repeated his 5th amendment spiel… The world has moved on. But I read some of the Fauci diaries. I’ve read the commentary on it by Alex Berenson and Jeff Childers and many others. And my frustration has come raging back…”I don’t require a jail term, repayment of all the moolah or even an admission of guilt. Just man up (almost everyone concerned is of the male persuasion), put on your big boy trousers and say sorry.It can be just that one word. “Sorry” No need to say why you are apologising. No need to say who to. Just say the word.This particularly applies to Herr Doktor Science because he’s got a presidential pardon so saying sorry won’t land him in jail. Unless of course he shares other people’s skepticism about the validity of the autopen pardon he received…
“Sir Elton John says ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word’ but that’s no excuse to not say it.”
One of my oldest (in both senses of the word) friends is a history professor at a major university here in the D.C. area. The things he posts on Facebook are head-exploding: like the mutation of his former rational self that EA expatriate Curmie has morphed into under the gamma rays of Trump Derangement, my scholarly friend frequently makes arguments I would expect from Ben Stiller’s character in “Tropic Thunder.”
Today he posted several defenses of Anthony Fauci, who is literally indefensible, comparing Rand Paul’s correct, factual and fair evisceration of the villain to a Soviet show-trial. Before that, the Professor posted with approval the following attack on the late Lindsay Graham by professional snot Andy Borowitz. I knew Andy in college. He was a standard issue Harvard Lampoon guy, overly convinced of his own wit and a sucker for a cheap shot. Whatever formula he developed over the years obviously works: he’s created and written successful sit-coms, has been a successful stand-up comic, and his satirical columns have been syndicated all over. That his major employers have been The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The New Yorker should tell you all you need to know about Andy’s biases, and partially explains this effort which my Trump Deranged friend found so trenchant.
I think I’ll footnote it to make my commentary more accessible…
I have concluded, over the past year of almost constant disillusionment, that the public is being deliberately deceived regarding the legal profession’s “self policing” duties. To watch TV or legal-themed movies, one would think that any significant violation of a lawyer’s jurisdiction’s Rules of Professional Conduct is likely to result in disbarment. That isn’t true. It isn’t close to true. The overwhelming majority of unethical lawyers, even flagrant, criminal unethical lawyers who prey on trusting clients, are never disciplined. Not only that, lawyers use their bar associations to make certain that is the case.
I have two clients who have been victimized by the same D.C. lawyer. A detailed and fully competent complaint by one of those clients, a non-lawyer, was ignored. I am a recognized legal ethics expert, and after I learned the facts regarding a second client’s victimization by this predatory lawyer, I realized that as a D.C. lawyer myself, I was ethically obligated to file a complaint to the D.C. bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, as well as the lawyer’s other bar association. Rule 8.3 in almost all U.S. jurisdictions requires lawyers to file complaints when they know that another lawyer has engaged in conduct calling into question his or her honesty, integrity, or fitness to practice law in other respects.
A third bar association in a jurisdiction where this unethical lawyer has practiced law without a license refused to receive my complaint, arguing that since this crooked lawyer wasn’t licensed to practice law there, they had no jurisdiction. I’m not making this up.
In undertaking this task, I was shocked at how deliberately burdensome it is in every jurisdiction. You are forced to use websites which are written in jargon, with unduly verbose instructions and explanations. You are forced to fill out on-line forms which freeze and often don’t work. It is almost impossible to get anyone in the appropriate offices to answer the phone, so questions are not answered. The process is confusing for lawyers; non-lawyers are likely to find it impossible.
I believe this is intentional. I know the contempt lawyers have for client complaints; they are open about it. And it is true that a lot of clients think lawyers must be unethical because they didn’t prevail in a case. Therefore there is an institutional bias against complaints against bar member by non-lawyers, and that presumption that they are just a nuisance. Apparently the complaint system has been made so confusing and user-unfriendly in order to make all but the most determined victims of lawyer misconduct give up, throw up their hands and say, “Oh, the hell with it.”
But I am a lawyer and an ethics expert, and I was and am determined to get this spectacularly unethical lawyer where he belongs, ideally in prison, but at the every least in some other occupation where he will do less damage.
Ethics Alarms 