Barack Obama may not be the Worst President Ever, but I am slowly reaching the conclusion that he is the Worst Former President Ever, though Bill Clinton and John Tyler are tough competition.
Incredibly, Obama said, during the opening of his library, “The founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise.” His case, which requires ignoring history and documentation, is the old leftist lie that they should have banned slavery and foreseen the women’s movement. So days before the United States marks its 250th anniversary, an ex-President, whose contribution to the United States, its politics and culture, were overwhelmingly negative, has the hindsight chutzpah to insult men who were wiser, smarter, and braver than he.
Does Obama know how wrong that Unethical Quote of the Month is? I’m guessing that he does. Obama thinks the public and especially the Democratic Part’s base are stupid and frames his rhetoric accordingly. Everyone who has studied the issue knows that insisting on banning slavery would have meant no Constitution at all, just as Jefferson had to strike an anti-slavery section from the Declaration for there to be a revolution. Most of the people O was addressing probably still think the Founders’ three-fifths compromise was an expression of racism, when it was designed to set the stage for slavery’s eventual elimination. As the late Gordon Wood explained here, the Founders had reason to believe that slavery was on the way out, and that it was not the metaphorical hill let democracy die on.
But enough of one of the three most over-rated U.S. Presidents and the only one who is still yapping (JFK and Woodrow Wilson are playing Trivial Pursuit in Hell).
It’s especially appropriate to ponder this phenomenon today, because the manufactured “Black Independence Day” holiday with the obnoxiously precious name “Juneteenth” is one of the most glaring examples.
However, the focus of this post is “Pride Month,” when everyone is supposed to say “Yay!” about what special people do with their hoo-haas as long it doesn’t square with conventional mores or biology. We’ve already discussed some of the more annoying examples of this pandering, as in this post, and certain organizations’ unethical (but not illegal) efforts to punish individualists who object to being forced to celebrate something their faith, good tatste or brain cells tell them shouldn’t be celebrated. To choose an analogous example, baseball players shouldn’t have to promote masturbation on “Masturbation Day” because masturbation enthusiasts banded together and bullied the teams into the promotion
Two ethics tales on this topic:
1. A flag comes down.
It is an ethics tell that some of the groveling organizations find themselves under attack when they finally decide not to grovel.
For the first time in the history of Webster, New York, on June 1 the Rainbow flag at went up the flagpole at the Town Hall and Webster issued a “Pride Month” proclamation. Republicans on the town board, however, voted to adopt a policy that limits flags flown on town property to Old Glory and New York state flags. The “Pride” flag came down after just four days, and LGTBQ bullies and their supporters freaked out. Protesters screamed at the flag removal. One woman shouted that the flag coming down would get children killed.
This is the predictable result when a special benefit adopted for a specific purpose at a specific time in a specific context no longer is appropriate, and therefore is ended. The end of a positive for the affected group is immediately and deliberately treated as a rejection, so the special status must remain in perpetuity. The LGTBQ community is no longer closeted nor widely discriminated against, nor treated as second class citizens. If that community has to have its “flag” flown over government property, what group doesn’t have a claim that their tribe warrants equal status? Notes Victory Girls,
“The American flag does not belong to one political party, one religion, one race, or one sexual orientation. It represents every citizen equally. Gay Americans are not excluded from that symbol. They are included within it, just as every other American is. That is why many people are perfectly comfortable with government buildings displaying the American flag and little else. The flag already represents the entire community. It does not become more inclusive simply because someone hangs extra flags next to it. Nothing about Webster’s decision prevents anyone from advocating for LGBT causes. People remain free to organize events, hold rallies, raise money, celebrate pride month, wear rainbow clothing, and express their views publicly. None of those activities depend upon a town hall flagpole. That is what makes some of the reaction so curious. A movement that enjoys widespread corporate support, extensive media coverage, political backing, and cultural prominence should not be endangered by the absence of a single government-displayed symbol. At some point, the demand stops looking like a request for acceptance and starts looking like a demand for official endorsement.”
It starts looking like that because that is exactly what it is. Days later, the American flag at Town Hall was discovered at the bottom of the flagpole, and a Rainbow flag was flying far above it. U.S. Flag Code dictates that no other flag should be flown above the American flag when they are displayed together. The vandalism was addressed, and currently the American flag is the only flag flying at Webster Town Hall, with padlocks added to the flagpole.
The result of groveling to various tribes, splinters and interest groups is that their members come to regard division as more important than union, and eventually other sectors demand equal submission.
The Ethics Alarms “Worst Excuse Ever” list of champions gained a new member this week.
Meet Merlin Lu.
Merlin Lu, a 21-year-old moron, has been charged with a hate crime, arson and other offenses after he set a cross on fire on June 9 in a Chicago park, police said. Lu admitted to a TV station this week that he was responsible for the the cross burning in Grant Park, but insisted that it was not a hate crime or intended to emulate the cross burnings the Ku Klux Klan infamously used during the Jim Crow era to terrorize blacks in the South.
Lu appeared in court Thursday on four felonies and four misdemeanors, including a hate crime, property damage and burning a cross to intimidate. He insists that he was protesting President Donald Trump and Christian nationalists, and had no intention of expressing racist hate for blacks, Catholics, and any of the symbol’s original targets. “I did know about this historical relevance beforehand. But I didn’t know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did,” Lu said of a burning cross. “Cause my protest has nothing to do with race.”
Lu’s defense attorney, Alexander Michael, told the judge that Lu was exercising free speech in a “foolish manner.” You mean like expressing himself in a manner that didn’t come within a mile of expressing what you meant? This reminds me of a bit in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the Sondheim musical comedy, where the Roman slave Pseudolus is asked a question by an intimidating general. He answers “No!” and the general reacts by bellowing menacingly, “NO???!!!” to which Pseudolus quickly replies, “I mean yes! I said “no,” but I meant yes!”
Lu’s LinkedIn page says he has attended college in Indiana and Chicago, but he apparently never studied American history. Or law. Or logic.
Lu’s “My burning cross didn’t mean what burning crosses always mean and I didn’t think it would seem racially motivated” now joins the three previous worst excuses in Ethics Alarms annals, making the total four. In chronological order, the three earlier winners are…
That this episode could occur anywhere is ominous evidence of just how determined our progressive-infested institutions are determined to indoctrinate rising generations.
Gabby Stout, a junior at Ardrey Kell High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, and part of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district, received permission from the school to paint a message on the school’s “spirit rock.” This is a large boulder on school grounds traditionally used by students to paint various opinions and messages. They don’t have to be wise or uncontroversial either: one such message was “Black Lives Matter.”
Stout painted a Bible passage and her support for the recently assassinated Christian conservative leader of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. For reasons never explained (but you can guess, can’t you?) the school quickly reversed itself. Within hours the school officials ordered her message to be painted over.
I was going to make this an Ethics Quiz, which is typically what I do with issues I believe can generate multiple and diverse ethics verdicts from the analytical and perceptive readers here, and often with matters I am not certain about myself. However, Michelle Obama’s custom designed skirt she decided to model as she appeared on a stage at the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago this week before “stakeholders” (Translation: Donors) was so indefensible by anyone who has not been permanently Obamafied, the crippling mental state where one is incapable of criticizing anything either Obama does or has done, ever, that my building a quiz around it would be dishonest.
Somebody should tell her—Remnick didn’t—that pretty much everyone in the nation who wasn’t in a coma during the Biden administration before the election—that’s almost four years of painful observation—had figured this out the second Biden announced his candidacy. Those few dense souls who hadn’t already recognized the obvious certainly saw the writing on the metaphorical wall when Joe descended into Authentic Frontier Gibberish during his debate with Donald Trump. And surely when the result of Joe’s egocentric and demented botch resulted in his party anointing the hopeless and hapless Kamala Harris, absolutely everyone with the possible exception of Harris herself knew that Joe had engineered a disaster, though not without the incompetence of many, many others paving the way.
Hillary also proclaimed that if Biden had decided to “pass the torch” and the Democratic Party had held a competitive Presidential primary, “whoever emerged from that contest — whether it was the Vice President, or a governor, or a senator or anybody else — would have beaten Donald Trump.”
I was once accused of engaging in deliberate candidate confusion. Arlington, Massachusetts is the largest municipality in the U.S. that still employs the ancient town meeting government structure. When I graduated from law school, I registered to run for the town Board of Selectmen, which sort of serves as the town equivalent to the U.S. Senate with the town meeting members playing the House of Representatives. People freaked out. My father was well-known and respected in Arlington, and since our names were the same, both of us were accused of deliberately trying to mislead voters.
But Democrats really did try to cheat this way in Alaska. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) is trying to hold off a challenge by former Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat trying to flip a critical GOP seat as her party is determined to take over the U.S. Senate in November despite being repeatedly revealed as the most cynical, ruthless and untrustworthy major U.S. party in history. To aid the cause, Democratic Party operatives recruited a retired teacher also named Dan Sullivan and got him on the ballot to split the Republican vote so Pelyola could prevail.
Piper Rockelle is human civilization rot. The child star turned slut-for-bucks epitomizes how the social media age has curdled childhood, taste and ethics. It’s an ugly story, and one that I was blissfully unaware of until recently.
Piper, 18, has been performing for money since she started winning kiddie beauty pageants—a dubious “ick or ethics” activity itself—from about the age of three. Her mother began uploading clips of her prancing around to YouTube when Piper was 8. The mother, a stage mother from Hell (and hopefully destined to end up there) moved her budding meal-ticket to LA when the girl was 10, “homeschooling” her (it is anyone’s guess how much of the schooling involved actual education) while selling her daughter’s images online. Next, Mom began recruiting “the Squad”, a group of other preteen children to exploit with Piper as the leader. First they were filmed doing darling little girl things until they were transitioned to tween “crush content”: scripted reality show-style drama with episodes about infatuation, coming of age, teenage angst, first kisses and dating.
Piper Rockelle became the most famous online “kidfluencer.” Her tween and teen content was popular and lucrative on YouTube, and Piper built a fan base of millions of bored low-lifes and budding pedophiles on TikTok and Instagram. Then, in 2022, eleven members of the Squad sued Rockelle’s mother Tiffany Smith, and her boyfriend and business partner, Hunter Hill, alleging abuse and exploitation. TheirYouTube channel was demonetised, costing Piper and her mom hundreds of thousands in lost dollars every month.
The San Francisco Giants asked for this controversy; Major League Baseball asked for this controversy; LGTBQ+ culture bullies asked for it too. They got it. Good.
Three Giants pitchers, Landen Roupp, who started last Friday’s game against the Cubs, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker, who also appeared in the game, have been officially reprimanded by MLB, which notified the players that similar behavior “would not be tolerated in the future.”
The three pitchers had Bible verses written on their caps. Roupp’s cap read “Gen 9:12-16” with the writing reaching the “Pride” logo on his cap. It was “Pride Night,” when Major League Baseball forces its players to express a political and social position with which they may not personally agree. The verse in question reads like this:
It is not an anti-homosexuality passage, but then any Bible reference on Pride Night might be seen as subversive.
“The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB’s chief communications officer Pat Courtney told “The Athletic.” Later, the office added as clarification,
Some recent studies suggest that Trump Derangement is taking on the characteristics of mental illness. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who isn’t suffering from it, and this latest example should go into the research files.
Anne Schedeen was one of those moderately successful, fungible and forgettable actresses who can most charitably described as a “working professional.” When a sitcom role that has you starring as a puppet’s protector—Alf was an illegal alien from outer space who had crash-landed in a family’s garage, and Schedeen played the mother in the family that helped keep him secret from government authorities—-is your most famous credit, you will not get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But upon her death at 77, Schedeen’s family thought it appropriate to virtue-signal to their fellow Trump Haters by issuing this tribute:
“She leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of creative energy, whip smart humor, delight in her family, adoration for little dogs, burning hatred for Trump, passion for second-hand thrifting, and love for a good story. We are bereft without her. We loved her so so much, as did all who met her.”
That, my friends, is insane. Variety, meanwhile, the so-called bible of the entertainment trade, didn’t have to put that feature in the statement in its headline, but did. None of the other outlets reporting the death thought that weird section was any more worthy of highlighting than Anne’s “passion for second-hand thrifting,” because it isn’t. Variety’s typical reader, however, is just as insane as Anne Schedeen.
I cannot imagine any previous President being used in this manner. Being noted for hatred of anything as a life highlight is hardly impressive; to me, that headline demonstrates what a wan career Schedeen had. No, she was never in a successful movie, never had a big role, never was nominated for an Oscar or Emmy, BUT she did hate the President of the United States, so there’s that.
The family might as well have pointed out that she won an award in the fourth grade for an essay about her goldfish. Having one’s family hurl your hatred at a President from beyond the grave is hardly as impressive as Ahab screaming at Moby Dick right before the Whaie Whale drags him down, “Thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!” Ahab was nuts, but at least he wasn’t mad at Moby for mean tweets and enforcing immigration laws.
The family and Variety using the death of a minor actress to spit at the President, however, is a sad, foolish madness.
Ethics Alarms 