…and the league is letting them get away with it, while the Axis sports media pretends not to notice.
Three years into her pro career, Caitlin Clark is a recognized superstar and a driver of WNBA attendance, merchandising and popularity. She is, however, a white heterosexual in a league dominated by black lesbians, so she has been targeted, attacked, bullied and injured out of, as Outkick recently put it, “a loathsome combination of race idolatry, jealousy, and territorialism.”
“As Clark’s popularity grew during her rookie season, critics increasingly attributed it to “whiteness” rather than talent, charisma, or style of play. Commentators such as Jemele Hill argued that Clark’s appeal was inseparable from her being a straight White woman in a league made up primarily of Black and lesbian players. “We would all be very naive if we didn’t say race and her sexuality played a role in her popularity,” Hill told the Los Angeles Times in 2024.”
Hill, a NYT columnist, is an anti-white racist and routinely enables others in her quest as regular Ethics Alarms readers know. For example, she claimed that Harvard’ incompetent, plagiarizing DEI president Claudine Gay was forced to resign because she was black, not because she embarrassed the university.
Clark was viewed as an outsider and an interloper on black, gay territory, so she was targeted from the beginning. Chennedy Carter hit her with a blindside hip and then entered a social media post encouraging other players to “hurt” her next time. (Baseball would suspend a player who did that.) DiJonai Carrington poked Clark in the eye during a playoff game later posted online accusing Clark of “white privilege.” Angel Reese committed several hard fouls against Clark and posted TikTok video mocking her as a “white girl afraid to catch the fade.” Nice. Baseball would suspend a player who did that, too.
Answer: It happens when that mayor is 1) a Muslim, 2) hostile to other ethnic, cultural and religious cultures, 3) raised by parents who themselves were estranged from American culture, and 4) has no management or governing experience, and 5) has assembled a staff whose radical ideological orientations are compatible with his but who mirror his deficits in orientation, experience and and training.
The result was the “New York City Immigrant Enclaves” map above, released and now going “viral” on social media after someone actually looked at it and noticed that the map omits “Little Italy” as well as Jewish and Irish neighborhoods while highlighting 30 other immigrant communities across the five boroughs. The careless map is part of the city’s Neighborhood Passport campaign tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
That’s kind of embarrassing, don’t you think? Here’s another question for fully acculturated Americans: What is the first “ethnic enclave” in New York City that comes to mind after Harlem? Surely the answer is “Little Italy,” which features so prominently in the iconic film “The Godfather, Part 2.” Not only is the famous and unanimously praised movie embedded in pop culture history and still routinely shown on cable’s various movie channels, it is near “Casablanca” as having one of the most quoted screenplays of all: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” “This is the like we have chosen,” “I just want to wet my beak,”and others.
The movie is “Little Big Man,” 1970’s very strange, sui generis, Western satire/drama anti-Vietnam film that visits Western movie tropes, warps history, and mixes horror with humor. I was second-guessing my leaving it out of “Twenty-Five Indispensable Movies For Understanding American Culture,” so I decided to watch it again.
Is it “Little Big Man”anti-American? I don’t know: the film certainly shows our culture’s admirable ability to engage in self-criticism and reflection fearlessly when it is called for. None of the other films on the list deal sufficiently with the U.S.’s conflicted feelings about Native Americans and their unjust but unavoidable fate. That’s too big an issue to leave off the list.
It’s a tight call: which of the major performance awards are the most biased and meaningless? Even after the Oscars went completely DEI the Emmy Awards were the clear winner of the Most Partisan and Biased Awards Award, but this time the voters outdid themselves.
Billy Bob Thornton is one of the most versatile and interesting actors alive. Actors of his caliber traditionally stay away from television though that tendency is breaking down rapidly now: aging super-stars like Nicole Kidman have been making one streaming series after another. Billy Bob is the star of “Landman,” easily one of the best series on TV, and the latest season of the show (that’s the trailer for the next one above) gave him an especially fine showcase for his talents. Yet he was not nominated for an Emmy, and neither was “Landman.”
The reason was, simply, politics. Taylor Sheridan, the creator of “Landman,” “Tulsa King,” “Yellowstone” and all of “Yellowstone’s” excellent spinoffs, tells stories that embrace conservative values and characters like Billy Bob’s Texas oil man. Today’s Hollywood neither likes those values or the nation that birthed them. The partisan bias is undeniable: Even the reliable Axis mouthpiece Esquire noticed and objected.
Astute criminal defense lawyer/blogger Scott Greenfield has an amusing “open letter” from guest contributor Chris Seaton to Maine Democrats posted today. Here’s how it winds up…
“…Now I know you guys want someone to say all the right things, so here goes: Black lives matter, trans rights are human rights, free Palestine, and Donald Trump sucks donkey dicks for Putin. There. That covered everything, right? If not send me ten thousand bucks in an envelope and include what position I’m supposed to hold today. You’ll find out I learn fast! Yes, it might sting that I’m a Tennessee boy who really doesn’t give a shit about Maine’s politics. And I think Susan Collins is pretty milquetoast as far as Republicans go—she votes with Democrats a hell of a lot more than most folks think she should. But let’s be realistic: Beggars can’t be choosers, and right now beating Susan Collins is more important than finding someone who ticks all the right ideological boxes.
“And I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone, I don’t have a Kick account, and I’ve never entertained the thought of getting a Nazi tattoo. So here’s my proposal: You guys give me ten million bucks and all the lobster rolls I can eat. I will do the absolute bare minimum and repeat all the talking points you guys give me. I’ll vote how you want and I’ll even tell Donald Trump and Susan Collins to go fuck themselves on command. I know that’s not what you really want, but at least I’m not Mr. Nazi McRapeypants, you know?
“Think it over.”
Utterly deserved. And Scott’s blog is pretty consistently left-leaning. Well-played, sir.
But back to the issue at hand: please write about new, persisting and interesting ethics issues. The podium is yours…
Ironically, while I was feting an old friend over the Independence Day weekend, another old friend, this time a college classmate who roomed with one of my very close friends so I spent quite a bit of time with him, used Linked-In to promote a “Medium” essay he seemed to think was worth reading. Foolishly, I read it earlier this week.
Let’s call this old friend “Bobo.” Bobo has had some tough breaks, but he’s smart and resilient and landed on his feet. He did end up on my blacklist for what I consider to be a major breach of ethics and friendship. About 30 years ago Bobo reached out to me when he was visiting D.C. and said he wanted to get together to catch up. When we did meet, he pitched me on a ski resort he worked for as the head of marketing, complete with a promotional package. The meeting had nothing to do with “catching up”: Bobo was using our past relationship to get a contract from the organization I was working for at the time.
The next time he was in town and called me, I ignored him.
The Medium essay was as good an example of Trump Derangement and progressive indoctrination as one is likely to find. Bobo is based in Colorado, and is apparently a Boulder ventriloquist dummy with the Axis of Unethical Conduct drinking glasses of water while he mouths their message. This thing carried the obnoxious headline, “Is 850,000 Fireworks enough?“, so I knew what I was probably in for. Still, the essay was even worse than I expected. As I said, Bobo is smart, or used to be. But here is what he wrote, absent gratuitous quotes from John Adams, FDR, Dr. Mortimer Adler (?), and Thomas Paine, a pompous introduction, and shoehorned in at the end, another promotion of a project he’s involved in, and probably paid to push
“Nearly every day, our social fabric is being torn apart by executive orders, endless lawsuits, and odious Supreme Court rulings cheered on by the current administration. Let’s also put a bookmark in place to visit the fragmented, siloed media landscape that has amplified unimaginable lies, perpetrated false claims, and exaggerated ludicrous conspiracy theories while doing the bidding of dark money moguls and narrow corporate interests. These bad actors are ripe for prosecution. Criminal disinformation is rampant as they continue to mislead far too many Americans. Do I need to remind my readers that FOX News was guilty of knowingly lying to their listeners and paying nearly a $Billion$ fine? The more we learn about the fragmentation of our sources of information and loss of integrity in journalism, the uglier it gets. There is so much more to say about news deserts, food deserts, lack of trust, wealth disparity, homelessness etc. The meta crises are vast and complex… All this chaos is by design and funded by what many call the Big Ugly Bill — supporting the 800-plus pages of Project 2025. The primary architect and author of that project, Russell Vought, is currently the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
“In 2017, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Steve Bannon declared that Donald Trump’s cabinet appointees were selected for the purpose of the “deconstruction of the administrative state”. And, that was his first administration. My last article in Medium addressed the issue of accountability — it fell on the deaf ears of Republican Senators….In Trump 2.0, think of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk. This all boils down to fewer public servants looking out for what people care about, like clean water, clean air, food safety, and better schools for our children. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“…Wondering whether there was anything to be said that hadn’t already been said, concerned that more words would simply be adding trauma to an already deeply traumatized citizenry, I hesitated…. In 1993, we were celebrating our nation’s 217th anniversary of the courageous Declaration of Independence. I had recently returned from the United Nations’ Earth Summit in Rio, where I had been embarrassed by the proclamation of then President George H.W. Bush, whose first words to the assembly and the world were: “The American Lifestyle is non-negotiable”…
“…Celebrating our independence from tyranny and oppression is baked into our cultural heritage. Yet, in the midst of an historic heat wave, ironically fueled by more than a century of polluting our atmosphere, we have a President determined to “set a world record, like you’ve never seen before” by adding 850,000 bombs bursting in air this evening. Let’s find another way to celebrate that doesn’t add one more molecule of pollution to our precious atmosphere… before this administration literally burns down everything they detest.
“Most observers agree we have precious little time left to change; others are certain collapse is unavoidable. The optimists see this as a golden opportunity to redesign everything that is dysfunctional and destructive. A friend recently reminded me that HOPE is a VERB with its sleeves rolled up! With empathy and compassion, courage and heartbreaking bravery we can move beyond this moment of cruel havoc and selfishness…”
As you know, I have been regularly wrestling my fingers to the floor to avoid responding to such junk on Facebook and elsewhere, but this was too much, especially coming from a fellow Harvard grad. I wrote as a reply to his Linked In post that included the Medium link:
Since you asked for feedback, [Bobo], it’s bad form to complain about false media reporting and then to post “that FOX News was guilty of knowingly lying to their listeners and paying nearly a $Billion$ fine.” That’s not true in several ways. 1. Fox wasn’t found guilty of anything: there was no trial. 2. The issue was alleged defamation, not “lying to their listeners.” The First Amendment protects networks from being punished for lying; otherwise, MSNBC and CNN would be indicted every day. 3. There was no “fine.” A settlement is not a fine or even damages.
Spinning like that removes an essay from the realm of enlightening commentary to just partisan talking points. A collection of characterizations isn’t an argument. Which SCOTUS opinions to you consider “odious”? I read them all, and they were all legally sound, including the one that rejected the President’s EO ending birthright citizenship.
Meanwhile, how about that Graham Platner?
Linked In made me delete a several hundred words. What I originally had before the Platner sign-off was this:
“Oh bloody hell,” as self-exiled EA columnist Curmie would say. The New York Times actually published this round-table circle-jerk by three of its writers on the opinion page: “‘There’s No Graham Platner Without Donald Trump’: 3 Writers on the Fiasco in Maine.” [Gift Link, with a head explosion risk warning] Sorry for the vulgarity, but seriously folks, how long can the New York Times go on like this? Yesterday the highest-ranking news editor at the King of the Axis Media, executive editor Joe Kahn, finally admitted that the outrageous May 11 opinion column by Nicholas Kristof accusing Israel of training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners didn’t meet Times news standards. Got that? So Times columnists can publicize fake news and unverified positions, and the paper lets them get away with that.
Now we have this garbage, with three progressives blaming the Platner debacle…on Donald Trump!
“In retrospect, it seems clear that Platner had something of Trump’s shamelessness. I saw him when the first scandals had just broken, and wondered both how many people would be in the crowd and how he’d explain himself. (No one knew at the time that much worse was to come, though of course some people suspected it.) He was unbowed in a way that read as strength…There’s no Graham Platner without Donald Trump. Trump’s ability to keep winning and hold G.O.P. support made Democrats feel like they had permission to accept Platner’s faults for as long as they did,,,”
What a crock. Platner is nothing like Trump, who was a CEO of a large and successful development company, had extensive business, negotiation and management experience, had authored books on management and was a national figure before he got into politics. Hhe doesn’t drink and has never used drugs. He also was and is about as far away from being a communist as it is possible to be. Platner was a substance-abusing part-time oyster fisherman who has accomplished exactly nothing: his “faults” are all there is.
I know, I know. What’s the point of another test the Axis media is sure to flunk?
The Washington Free Beacon reported this week that an Inspector General audit of the Minority Business Development Agency’s flagship program found that 96 % of the reviewed transactions were improperly approved.
Wowsers.
The November 2025 audit reviewed $16 billion in transactions approved by the MBDA business center program, a network of federally funded consultancies, public and private, aimed at “supporting minority-owned businesses.” A business had to be at least 51% minority-owned to qualify for services: you can figure out how easy that requirement is to scam around. $15.4 billion of the $16 billion in transactions reviewed were “duplicate transactions, transactions with missing or inadequate documentation, and transactions that MBDA should not have approved based on the underlying activity.” One “minority-owned business” obtained a $33 million contract through the program without providing any paperwork to justify it.
President Trump issued an executive order in March 2025 killing the agency. Naturally a partisan federal judge blocked the EO, so the administration fired all its employees in October because another federal judge in March 2024 had ruled that basis of the agency’s mission was unconstitutional and that it was illegal to use race or ethnicity to determine what businesses deserved grants. The Biden administration ignored that ruling.
Did you know that President Trump, that fascist, has ignored court orders?
The audit began under the Biden administration, so it can’t be discredited as a partisan exercise. It did only look at ten of the 40 business centers funded by the agency before the Trump administration ended it last year, and it only chose only those centers with a documented history of bookkeeping irregularities.
Six months ago an elementary and high school classmate whom I had not seen, spoken to or, frankly, thought about or missed in 50 years contacted me and said he and his family would be taking a cross-country road trip with his 86 foot long trailer in honor of the 250th Anniversary of our nation’s founding. For his D.C. stop, timed to take place on July Fourth, he was wondering if I could accommodate his monster vehicle. (He had checked my Alexandria home’s locale via Google satellite, and saw that there seemed to be a lot of space on my cul-de-sac.)
Let’s call him “Jeff.”
I said “Sure! It would be great to see you!” as a reflex, and promptly forgot about him as well as my commitment.
Well, Jeff arrived as planned after calling me for three days as he drove here. It was immediately clear that he expected me to be his family’s chauffeur, host and tour guide until they departed Monday afternoon. So I was. I took them to museums and D.C. area attractions. I accompanied them to restaurants. They left their trailer and knocked on my door early every morning—earlier than I would usually be up— assuming I was ready to start the day’s events.
This was a weird family. Jeff’s wife (his fourth, I learned) was an Armenian woman 25 years his junior who barely spoke English, and Jeff never indicated that he spoke her language. They had a delightful, happy four-year old boy (whom she dressed like a girl) whom the couple had adopted after his mother, Jeff’s wife’s niece, had been murdered by a serial killer.
“Why does Trump keep talking about ‘communism’?” CNN asks in a funny headline that answers its own question. Because, you hacks, today’s Democratic Party is crawling with communists.
“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” Trump said during his July 3 speech at Mount Rushmore. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.” At a Fourth of July celebration on the National Mall, the President pledged that “America will never be a communist country.” CNN is perplexed! What is this mysterious “communism” of which the President speaks?
Gee, what could it be? Graham Platner said he was a communist, and was endorsed by Bernie Sanders (who went to Stalin’s Soviet Union on his honeymoon), Sen. Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Ed Markey, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Ro Khanna, and Sen Ruben Gallego. Is the argument that Platner’s Nazi tattoo appealed to them? His non-existent leadership experience? Was it his record of domestic abuse?
The Mayor of New York both spouts Marxist slogans routinely and is being hailed as a Democratic Party “rising star.” Hilariously, both Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York and Melat Kiros in Denver, who won primaries over establishment Democrats, are defended against allegations that they are communists because “they identify as democratic socialists.”
Riiiight. And Lia Thomas identifies as a female. “You solve homelessness by giving people housing, you solve hunger by giving people food,” Kiros has said. You know. “To each according to his needs.” Chevalier, in addition to wanting to abolish police, prisons and borders, has said that she wants to “seize the means of production.”
Ethics Alarms 