Ethics Dunces (and Most Offensive Donation Plea): The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This ad has been around for a while and running frequently on Fox News. I never paid attention to it until this morning, because I was watching a debate among some legitimate legal experts about the birth-right citizenship issue.

KABOOM! Basically the ad directs donors who identify with the ethnic group behind the plea to be concerned about the victims of the Ukraine war with Russia who belong to one specific group (tribe, race, religion, whatever—pick your word) as if nobody else’s lives count. I know there are many, far too many, Americans who think like this, and the more Americans who do think like this, the weaker, more divided and more imperiled our nation, society, culture and democracy is.

The message is literally “Jews are suffering in the Ukraine, so please send money to help them. Let other groups take care of their own. They aren’t our problem.”

I am not picking on Jewish groups here, for a TV commercial calling for donations to poor black people or poor whites to the exclusion of everyone else equally in distress would be similarly unethical…and disgusting. So far, I’ve never seen such an ad. This thing compounds the offense by making the invalid appeal to emotion represented by playing the Holocaust card. The suffering of elderly Ukrainian Jews at the hands of Russia is particularly cruel today because of what Germany did 80 years ago?

Don’t insult my intelligence. I was a fundraiser for many years: I know the drill. This ad, however, is indefensible. Shame on The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews for creating it. Shame on Fox News for running it. Shame on anyone who gives the group a dime in response to it.

Yecchh.

Ethics Quiz: Freaks in Sports

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Olivier Rioux is a 7-foot-9-inch college basketball player for the Florida Gators. Rioux is a freshman center weighing approximately 305 lbs. Born in Canada and already known as the tallest college basketball player in history, he also holds the Guinness World Record for tallest teenager.

He raises issues related to the transgender sports controversy as well as some that Ethics Alarms has discussed in earlier posts. Several involved intersex runner Caster Semanja, who has always identified as female but who regularly crushed female competitors in sports competitions because of an unusual amount of male hormones. When she was required to artificially lower her natural hormone mix to compete against women, I wrote,

“We can’t have special leagues and categories for however many gender categories science identifies and activists fight to have recognized, and there is no justification for creating artificial standards to eliminate outlier performers. The “solution” imposed on Caster Semenya—force her to take drugs that eliminate her natural advantage—is horrifying. How is this different from banging brilliant kids on the head until they have brain damage and no longer dominate their less gifted fellow students in school? What right do the sports czars have to declare an unprecedented, unique competitor unfit to compete because her, or his, unique qualities are advantageous? Why are so many woman condemning Caster as a cheat, when they should be defending her as a human being with as much right to compete as she is as anyone? Because she’ll win? Because it’s unfair that God, or random chance, or her own dedication rendered her better at her sport than anyone else?”

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A Crucial Baseball Ethics Fix That Worked (and I Missed It!)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Tyler Kepner wrote today that any baseball fan looking for optimism about next season, which is currently imperiled by a looming player strike or owner lock-out over the lack of a collective bargaining agreement, can look to the results of an under-reported rule change for hope that MLB and the union can find creative compromise solutions that work.

That’s nice, I thought. Wait—WHAT under-reported rule change?

For many years before the 2022 collective bargaining agreement between players and the owners, it was standard practice for a team to keep a promising rookie in the minors until after the date passed that would have given the player credit for a year of MLB service. Since young players are bound to their signing teams for a set number of seasons before they have arbitration rights and finally free agent rights, that extra year of control teams got by leaving a minor league stud in the minors was worth millions to the team who owned him. Never mind that it made the team keeping a potential star down less competitive and gave the team’s fans a lesser product. Never mind that it cheated a rising star out of contract that recognized his true worth: it was all about the team’s money.

But in 2022, a new rule was negotiated to discourage service-time manipulation. If a player finishes first or second in Rookie of the Year voting, he gets a full year of service time no matter how much time he spent on the roster. If such a player wins Rookie of the Year or finishes in the top three for MVP or Cy Young before becoming eligible for arbitration, his team receives an extra draft pick.

There have been only four days of games in the 2026 season so far, and several rookies who in past years would have still been languishing in the minor leagues as they teams played the “he needs a little more seasoning” game came out of the gate blazing. In the first weekend (three or four games for every team), rookies batted .309, compared to .226 for veteran players! They also hit 15 homers with a .622 slugging percentage and a 1.008 OPS. Those are all records since 1900 through every team’s first three games.

The games were better. The teams were better. The rookies weren’t being manipulated by the teams, and the teams have a chance to benefit too. This was a smart and fair compromise that epitomizes exemplary ethics at work: everybody wins.

There is hope.

Harvard College’s Applications Crashed. Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Harvard has issued a102-page draft document to persuade investors to buy a new bond designed to raise funds to replace the billions being withheld from the school by the Trump Administration. The Administration has pledged that those funds are lost until Harvard agrees to comply with “both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.” In other words, Harvard can eschew federal funding until it stops being a leftist indoctrination and propaganda tool and starts educating again.

Harvard has used Massachusetts’ municipal bond authority, overseen by hard-left Bay State governor Maura Healy, for $1,169,075,000 in bond offerings in 2024 and 2025. The proposed 2026 bond offering is for $675 million, which would bring the total to $1.8 billion in three years. You wouldn’t want Harvard to have to dip into its approximately $57 billion endowment, would you?

One eye-catching item in the draft: “First-year student applications received” by Harvard dropped more than 21 % to 47,893 for the 2025-2026 academic year from a high of 61,221 in 2022-23. This is below Yale with 54,919 applicants , Brown with 47,937 applicants, and Columbia’s 61,031 applications.

Harvard won’t release its application numbers for students entering in the fall of 2026 until it is required to by the federal government, the Harvard Crimson reported. Hey! I thought democracy dies in darkness! When an institution refuses to disclose something, one may fairly presume it has something to hide.

The Washington Free Beacon notes that while it is complaining that King Trump is endangering potentially life-saving cancer research with its suspension of federal funds, Old Ivy employs 12 vice presidents, a bit of an extravagance since, for example, MIT somehow survives with a mere seven.

Harvard’s applications drop, I suspect, comes as it becomes increasingly clear that it fosters a culture antithetical to a full education and freedom of thought, all while remaining committed to anti-white, anti-male, anti-American objectives and is actively hostile to large sectors of American society. This has been in evidence for many years; the campus anti-Semitism and Claudine Gay debacle only brought into the open the ethics rot that was already well underway. Veteran readers here know that Ethics Alarms has been pointing to Harvard’s revolting conduct continually.

If my efforts have had even the most minuscule role in diverting a single vibrant young mind from attending this destructive institution, in the eloquent tradition of Lena Lamont in “Singing in the Rain,” it makes me feel as though my “hard work ain’t been in vain for nothin’.”

How Ignorant and Biased Are Reporters? This Ignorant and Biased…

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Oh great: “war crimes” again. I’m afraid to check Facebook because I am sure that about 20 of my Trump Deranged show biz friends will be ranting about this.

Yesterday, President Trump posted on Truth Social that a number of Iranian targets would be obliterated if Iran does not allow the Hormuz Strait to be opened immediately. NBC White House correspondent Garrett Haake channeled his inner John Lennon and mewled to White House Paid Liar Karoline Leavitt,

“The president posted this morning about his threat that on leaving Iran he said, ‘Blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells, hard island, and possibly all desalination plants,’ Under international law, striking civilian infrastructure like that is generally prohibited. Why is the President threatening what would amount to potentially a war crime with the US military? And how do you square that with the administration repeatedly saying that the US does not target civilians?”

My metaphorical hat is off to Leavitt, who was appropriately diplomatic and did not smite this Axis idiot with the rhetorical barrage that I would have.

“Look,” she said. “The President has made it quite clear to the Iranian regime at this moment in time, as evidenced by the statement that you just read, that their best move is to make a deal, or else the United States Armed Forces has capabilities beyond their wildest imagination and the President is not afraid to use them.” Shethen denied that that Trump was contemplating “war crimes.”

I would have said, “Garrett, the United States is in a war, and the Geneva convention, which is an imaginary set of pacifist edicts that the United States does not feel bound by when the interests of the nation, Americans and civilization itself are at risk, will not restrain the United States in its efforts to conclude this conflict or any conflict as quickly as possible. Moreover nothing in the President’s message suggested that he was “targeting civilians.” But if civilians are at risk because it is necessary to remove facilities and resources that Iran needs to continue fighting, and if the real threat of losing these prompts Iran to surrender or make a good faith effort to negotiate a peace settlement, that is regrettable but unavoidable. This is a war. The United States will not limit its options to prevail.”

I might have been able to avoid concluding with, “you idiot.”

Several commentators have noted that the Axis media and the anti-American Left are using the same playbook and propaganda to support Iran against their own country that they embraced to support Gaza (Hamas, terrorists…) against Israel. I still await the tipping point when the public turns decisively and permanently against these people.

Surely it must be on the horizon.

Baseball Ethics: More ABS Notes [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

The major ethics issues animating discussion early in the baseball season are arising from the new computer ball and strike calling system, or ABS. Each team begins with two challenges. A batter, pitcher or catcher may challenge any strike or ball call at home plate, but must do it immediately by announcing “Challenge!” and touching his cap. Challenges that are made after two seconds elapse may be disallowed by the umpire. If a challenge results in a changed call, that challenge is preserved. If not, it is lost.

Already, game results have been affected by the rule. That’s not a surprise at all. Major League Baseball (MLB) umpires miss an average of about 10 to 15 calls per game; the overall accuracy rate was around 92%. in 2025. Every game generally includes at least one incorrect call, and it is estimated that 8.5% of all games have bad calls that alter the score. The accuracy of the umpires has increased since computers started double-checking them, but umpires still made 26,567 incorrect ball and strike calls during the 2025 MLB regular season, and any one of them might have altered a game’s outcome. Some early results:

1. The younger players are better at challenging than the veterans, because the system was used in the minor leagues the last couple of years. Red Sox player Trevor Story was called out on strikes on a pitch that looked well out of the strike zone, but didn’t challenge. Sox TV color man Lou Merloni, an ex-player, said that after a career of thinking that an umpire’s call was final, veteran players are likely not to remember that they could challenge until the two seconds have passed. Now players are being criticized for their strike-challenging skills.

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“No Kings” Hangover Notes

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
  • I found the responses of the two grinning protesters empty and fatuous, but not incoherent. They are protesting to protest, because it’s “democratic.” It’s fun being in all that energy and shared emotion. I marveled at this back in college; I’d venture that most protesters at these large rallies can’t articulate what it is they are so upset about.
  • I also think the mother might have brought her daughter to the “No Kings” rally as to experience democracy in action, and because they probably live in a community where the schools and institutions and communities are knee-jerk Left, and the mother can boast of her commitment and virtue. It’s sort of nice in a way.
  • In New York, there were Palestinian flags, plus signs and chants calling for defunding the police. Communist groups were part of most of the demonstrations. Of course, pro-open borders, anti-ICE signs were in abundance too. Question: how do mostly moderate, educated, otherwise rational  Americans  appear to be allied with such groups—pro-terrorist, anti-law enforcement, anti-American—and not wonder, “Wait, why am I associating with these people?”
  • There were riots in the demonstrations in Portland and L.A. “Peaceful protesters” threw bricks at police officers in L.A. Nice. How many of those people know that the “right to protest,” aka free speech, does not include throwing things?
  • Doug Emhoff, Kamala’s Beta Male hubby, posed for pictures in Malibu with Trump Deranged D-list celebrities like Kathy Griffin. How low can you go?
  • According to a copy of the permit for the “flagship” “No Kings” march in St. Paul, Minnesota, Indivisible, a national Democratic political advocacy organization funded by radical Left billionaire George Soros is the lead coordinator for the protest. Fox News reported that Neville Roy Singham, an American tech tycoon and self-proclaimed  communist living in China also finances many of the activist groups that fueled the “No Kings” tantrums, including the People’s Forum in New York, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the ANSWER Coalition and CodePink, whose co-founder Jodie Evans is married to Singham.

My father used to tell a joke about a man who kept snapping his fingers compulsively. His wife sent him to a psychiatrist, who asked him, “What’s with the finger-snapping?” “It keeps the elephants away,” the man said.

“What?” said the shrink. “There are no elephants for hundreds of miles from here!” “See?” the man said. “It works!”

The “No Kings” protests are like that.

This Is How Axis Media Bias Warps The News (This Also Is CNN…)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[I submit that question above as a less vulgar substitute for “Does a bear shit in the woods?”]

Just sat down a while ago to wake up to what we laughingly call “the news” while cuddling my dog and drinking some Italian Roast to get my brain functioning, sort of. As usual I wandered aimlessly among CNN, Fox News and MSNOW to gauge the difference in emphasis and tone, while jumping back periodically to check with the MLB channel’s morning round-up of yesterday’s baseball games.

The second I landed on CNN, I was told that a new HUD policy put forth by…THE EVIL TRUMP ADMINISTRATION!!!!…could put thousands of homeless people “including many veterans” back on the street. HUD wants to transfer billions in funding from permanent housing to temporary housing, which means, CNN kind of explained, two-year residency. BUT, the grim-faced reporter said, many homeless would probably leave sooner than that. A judge has halted the policy’s implementation after a law suit—of course—but the report simply regurgitated what the complaint from homeless activist organizations alleged.

What they alleged, CNN appeared to believe, is the only way to see this situation. All CNN did was quote the plaintiffs’ filings. Why does HUD want to change the policy? We got no information about that at all. I have other questions: what are the benefits of “permanent housing” as opposed to “temporary housing”? What is “permanent housing” anyway? If someone is in “permanent housing,” why are they still called homeless? If they leave temporray housing before their time is up, why wouldn’t they leave permanent housing? Will spending money on temporary housing rather than permanent housing serve the homeless population better? Will it serve taxpayers better?

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Kim Novak: I Hereby Introduce You To “The Golden Rule”…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Kim Novak is now 92 years old. She is one of the more forgotten sirens of the Hollywood Fifties Golden Age, and to the extent that she is remembered at all, it is because she was one of Alfred Hitchcock’s interchangeable blondes somewhere between Doris Day and Tippi Hedren. Her Hitchcock vehicle, “Vertigo,” is for some reason regarded by film schools as Hitch’s best, but it can’t be because of Novak, who was cool, sexy, but not much of an actress.

They are making a movie about one aspect of Novak’s life because it can be twisted into some kind of woke message: she had a relationship of some sort with quadruple threat (drama, comedy, singing and dancing) Sammy Davis Jr., at a time when white sex symbols weren’t supposed to hang out with black superstars. Chosen to play Kim is current hot blonde Sydney Sweeney. It’s a high profile opportunity for the young woman, who is looking for opportunities to be taken seriously as an actress before her window of genuine stardom closes, just a Kim was, once upon a time.

So what does Kim Novak do? She gives an interview to the U.K.’s scandal The Times and trashes Sweeney, whom she has never met. Novak called Sydney “totally wrong” to play her in the upcoming biopic “Scandalous,” sneering that she “would never have approved” of Sweeney’s casting in the film, because she “sticks out so much above the waist.”

Funny, the degree that Kim was regarded as “sticking out above the waste” was substantially responsible for her having a career in films at all; Bette Davis she wasn’t. The size of women’s breasts that caused them to be lusted after as unusually busty has increased substantially over the decades: Raquel Welch, whose endowments were the object of endless jokes in the Sixties, would be regarded as unremarkable today.

But never mind the fact that Novak’s complaint is silly: she is 93 after all. Because Kim was a rising young actress once, she demonstrates ethical incompetence by not considering how would she have felt if she got a plum part in a Hollywood film biography portraying an earlier era’s blonde sex symbol like, say, Mae West, and Mae had announced in public that Kim was wrong for the role. She would have regarded Mae as a vicious bitch…and she would have been right.

Now Novak has laid the foundation for critics to crush whatever Sydney does in the film, something many of them are itching to do anyway. Woke World hates Sydney because she made a jeans ad that they absurdly claim advocated white supremacy. Yes, they are that desperate.

Nice, Kim. Here’s a little bit of advice that somehow you’ve managed to miss in your nine decades: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Bi…never mind. You owe Sydney an apology, Kim.

Another Dispatch From The Trump Deranged:

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I keep posting these because I regard them as snap-shots of how the combination of irresponsible biased journalism, bubble-bases ignorance, and peer reinforcement is warping our social discourse and pushing the public into foolish and dangerous misconceptions. Is it an ethical problem? Sure it is. Posts like the one below make readers upset and irrational. They create false framings that warp perceptions of reality. The activate cognitive dissonance, in which the people who like, admire and respect the writer are moved to feel postively about the absolute garbage that he has published.

The author of the screed below that arrived on my Facebook feed yesterday is a wonderful human being. He is kind and effusive in his positive rhetoric; he sends me a birthday card every year, and I have only spent time with him face to face twice in 30 years. He never posts political rants: he is a lifetime showbiz writer, scholar and producer.

I assume this was triggered by the latest “No Kings” lunacy. My friend is also virtue-signaling to his showbiz connections, including me; since he likes and respects me, he assumes that I must agree with his sentiments. My friend is way, way out of his lane.

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