A “Kaufman” For People Magazine

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

As it doesn’t come up that often, once again I must review what the Ethics Alarms “Kaufman” designation signifies. I hand out the award for alleged ethics violation or other news stories so unremarkable and trivial that they are literally not worth talking about or thinking about, except to note how foolish it was to raise the matter in the first place. From the EA glossary:

“George S. Kaufman  was a celebrated wit and playwright (“The Man Who Came To Dinner”, “You Can’t Take It With You”, and many more, usually in tandem with Moss Hart),  and he moonlighted as a panelist on the  early TV  show, “This is Show Business,” which often featured a celebrity who would consult the panel members about a personal problem. On one show, singer Eddie Fisher ( father of Carrie and Isla, husband of Debbie Reynolds and, scandalously, adulterous lover and eventual pre-Richard Burton spouse of Elizabeth Taylor) wanted advice from the panel because desirable women refused to go out with him because of his youth. Kaufman ‘s unsympathetic reply:

“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope.  The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.”

A “Kaufman” is awarded when someone, usually in the news media, makes a big deal about something so trivial and unremarkable that it demands apathy. We are all familiar with fake news, and one of its more annoying sub-categories are stories that are presented and framed as news that aren’t news at all. People Magazine just came out with a doozy, as “Hazel” used to say on the long-running sitcom that nobody but me remembers: “Mom Defends Decision to Give Her Daughter an Unconventional Name: ‘It Just Felt Perfect’ (Exclusive)”

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Ethics Hero: Reporter Rachel Menitoff

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is a companion piece to yesterday’s celebratory post honoring the DoorDash driver who completed her delivery after being hit by a car. With her “the show must go on!” exemplary professionalism, Menitoff’s composure under extreme “EW!” has to be cheered, and, arguably, was even more impressive than Miracle’s performance under duress.

Menitoff was reporting live for KTLA in Los Angeles on the lingering effects of Southern California’s heat wave when a huge flying cockroach landed on her shoulder and crawled across her chest.

“And it’s a lot more comfortable at this hour, but we’re still in the 80s here in the Valley,” Menitoff was saying, “So overnight temperatures aren’t necessarily dropping, and this leads to less recovery time from the daytime heat…” Meanwhile, the ugly thing was visible as it scurried across her stomach, chest and neck before jumping onto her microphone, presumably to make a statement.

Only after the live shot ended did Menitoff exclaim, “Oh gosh! Oh, I feel something,” and try to deal with the bug. “I knew it was on me,” she said later. “But I knew if I took notice of it, I wouldn’t be able to continue on with the report. So I said to myself, just get through this moment and then kind of shake it off.”

Brava. Unfortunately, since everything is political now, even this incident was quickly exploited for partisan effect. In a classic of over-reach, Vigilante ex-mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt shared the clip on X to criticize Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is challenging incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in the 2026 mayoral race. Pratt said the insect symbolized conditions in Raman’s council district, where the Rachel’s report took place.

Ben Franklin’s Curse

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The House this week passed a measure, the Sunshine Protection Act, that would set America’s clocks to daylight saving time permanently once it clears the Senate and is signed into law by the President. The bill itself raises no ethics issues at all: it is the reactions to it and the reasons, real and alleged, for those reactions that ping ethics alarms.

The headline is tongue-in-cheek, incidentally. Most of my life I heard that Daylight Savings Time was Ben Franklin’s idea. Ben was an amazingly prolific innovator and out-of-the-box thinker, but he was not the originator of the practice, so we can neither blame him nor praise him. Another myth is that DST was implemented for the benefit of farmers. Actually, farmers have been one of the strongest opponents of DST because the factors that influence farming schedules, like dairy cattle’s readiness to be milked, are dictated by the sun, so clocks going back and forth just complicates things. In general, Retailers, sports, and tourism interests like daylight saving, while agricultural and evening-entertainment interests do not.

Personally, I just want one time in place all year, because the changeover is traumatic for me whenever it happens. I have a long list of screw-ups, missed deadlines and meetings on my record. I bet no year has ever passed without one.

Like so many policies, the Daylight Savings Time tradition has had and continues to have all manner of unintended consequences, and those are controversial too. There is some data that shows that crime and accidents are reduced by DST, but precise causation issues make such data inherently dubious. A 2017 analysis of 44 studies concluded that DST leads to electricity savings of 0.3%, but we now know, or should, we can’t trust studies because we can’t trust the reseachers who perform them. Ditto for a 2017 study in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that estimated that “the transition into DST caused over 30 deaths at a social cost of $275 million annually,” primarily by increasing sleep deprivation. Another study claimed that hospitals see a 24% increase in heart attacks and a 6% increase in fatal crashes each year when the time changes.

President Trump has advocated permanent Daylight Savings Time, so that’s enough for the Axis of Unethical Conduct to oppose it. Predictably, the Washington Post rushed to publish “Why standard time is better for your health than daylight saving time: A proposed bill would make daylight saving time permanent. But standard time is actually better for your body, according to science.”

According to science! Even the Post’s readers tended to agree that this take was hooey. A typical reaction:

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Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note [ADDED: A Special Rebuke To A Banned Commenter]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The story is sad but not exactly one that should inspire much sympathy. From the AP report:

“A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said….The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi…”

Let’s be clear, now: a man was eluding law enforcement officials when he ran across a “busy road” and was hit by a truck. There are exactly two possible parties responsible for that death: the man running across the road, and the truck driver. There is nobody else to blame, and finding the truck driver responsible requires a quite stretch. Here is how the Associated Press characterizes the fatality, however:

“It was the third death in a week involving encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, following shootings in Texas and Maine…It was at least the 10th death involving encounters with immigration agents since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation campaign last year.”

That is pure deceit and indecent false framing. In cases where an individual dies at the hands of ICE agents, justifiably or not, the conduct of the agents can be fairly considered factors in the deaths. However, an individual who resists arrest and recklessly flees into the grill of a truck has not been killed by ICE, nor is ICE responsible for the death. The dead man would be alive if he obeyed law enforcement, as anyone in this country is obligated to do. He chose to run into traffic; ICE didn’t make him do that.

Never mind, though. You know we’ll be reading diatribes from the open borders fanatics that the dead man had a family, and was a respected member of the community, and he is dead because of Trump’s Gestapo. The Associated Press (and others) enable these advocates for illegal immigration with their deliberate anti-ICE and Trump Deranged spin. Naturally, other agents of pro-illegal immigration propaganda will add this death to the total that we will see repeatedly cited to show how “brutal” the enforcement of our immigration laws are.

The Ethicist Seems To Be Running Out Of Ethics Questions…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

How is that possible? I’ve got, as Jimmy Durante used to say, “a million of ’em” and would be happy to let Kwame Anthony Appiah, the NYU philosophy prof, take a shot at a few of them in guest columns so I could get them off my list.

Today the best he could come up with was this, which I’ve redacted, from “Name Withheld”:

“I am the mother of two adult children. Their father and I divorced when they were both under 10…they were close to him until their teens…During college, they cut ties with him altogether…He is self-absorbed and has sometimes been verbally abusive…Once brilliant, he now seems to hover somewhere between brilliance and madness. I sometimes receive dozens of manic messages from him in a row about his anger toward the children, his plans to live forever, rebirth, interstellar travel and other subjects. He is also homebound, in precarious health and in his mid-60s…I have encouraged my children to reconnect with him…My younger child has professed to be “not ready.” I respect that. Still, I worry that he will die and that the children will live with regret….My children know he has health problems, but I’m not sure they fully grasp that death can come suddenly.They will, of course, make their own decisions. But I wonder …Should I encourage them to see their father, so that they do not later regret staying away? Or should I keep my fears about time running out to myself?”

Wait: Where’s the ethics issue? There is none. This is “Dear Abby” or “Ann Landers” stuff. I have nothing against advice columns, but supposedly “The Ethicist” column is supposed to be about, you know, ethics.

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Ethics Hero: DoorDash Driver Miracle Heron, and Say Hello To Rationalization #18 A: “Nobody Could Blame You!”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The video is self-explanatory, though the various news reports haven’t always emphasized the ethics issue.

Heron was hit by a car and knocked down as well as, I assume, traumatized just a bit. Nonetheless, she picked herself up, dusted herself off (just like Fred Astaire!) and completed her job.

That she would deliver the food despite her mishap shouldn’t have been so shocking: it was the ethical thing to do. Yet I just heard my local news readers exclaim that they wouldn’t complete a delivery after that. Good to know: no one should hire them for any job requiring dedication, diligence, commitment or fortitude.

Since Miracle wasn’t hurt and the incident did not in anyway impede her ability to deliver the food, it would have been unethical for her not to do so. Once again, my theater background is governing: “the show must go on” is a core principle with me, and should be in any field. We never have leave to make our problems into other people’s problems for our own convenience. Undoubtedly, the driver could have used the accident as an excuse not to complete her job; nobody would blame her if she hadn’t. That fallacy, however, is at the root of Rationalization #18. Hamm’s Excuse, or “It wasn’t my fault“ and I realize #18 A is called for.

“Nobody could blame you!” is the new rationalization. The fact that you have an easy out to let you avoid your responsibilities doesn’t make it ethical to do so. Most people default to emotion over rationality and will allow sympathy and empathy to over-rule duty. Most people are ethics dunces. Miracle Heron did her job because someone was depending on her, and her employer had made a commitment to complete a transaction. She could have used the scary brush with serious injury as a reason not to do her job, but she didn’t, because it would have been unfair to the customer as well as her employer.

That near-miss definitely didn’t damage her well-regulated ethics alarms.

And Speaking Of DEI: The Ethical Conflict Regarding Racial Disparities In Academic Performance Raises Its Ugly Head Again In NYC

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

62 %, approximately, of the students in New York City’s public schools are black or Hispanic. In its eight most prestigious and academically rigorous high schools, however, only10% of the students in the incoming freshman class will be black or Hispanic, just like last year. 80% of the seats will be filled with Asian and white students, mostly Asians. This pattern of racial and ethnic disparity has existed for years at the city’s elite public high schools. Not surprisingly, the seeming inequity creates anger, frustration, demagoguery and and accusations of racism. Solutions, however, have been elusive and remain so.

Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, perhaps the most famous of the city’s specialized high schools (after the renowned High School For the Performing Arts), only awarded three of its 777 offers to black students, 21 to Hispanic students, and the rest to white and Asian students. Admission to these schools is considered a potential way out of poverty, but that factor (true or not), is not included in the consideration of who gets in. The sole criteria are the scores on a 114-question, three-hour exam, the Specialized High School Admissions Test. It is designed to assess a student’s math, English and critical thinking skills, along with time management ability.

Under the boot-strapping “disparate impact” logic used to find racism whenever results don’t fall neatly into demographic percentages, the admission test has been perpetually attacked as racially discriminatory, but no one has figured out how or why. Nor has anyone been able to devise a skills or ability test that does not consistently result in the same racial and ethnic stratification. Hispanics do better than blacks, whites perform better than Hispanics, and Asians perform the best of all. Sure enough, while just 19% all public school students in New York City are Asian, they received 57% of the offers for the specialized schools.

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Rep. Gill’s Question To Rep. Pressley: More Than a “Gotcha!”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

An exchange yesterday between Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) and Republican Representative Brandon Gill during a House hearing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is rapidly going “viral” this morning, no thanks to any left-leaning news aggregators and the Axis media, which are trying to ignore it.

During the hearing, Representative Pressley criticized Republican anti-DEI policies as harmful to women (translation: not discriminating against men is harmful to women) and in her usual obnoxious “I wish I didn’t have to deal with these racist idiots” air asked Representative Gill to support her legislation to support the justly dead-in-the-water Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Gill immediately responded, “Does it define what a woman is?” and was met with crickets by Pressley, who pretended he hadn’t said that and muttered weakly, “I look forward to your signing on.” Gill, triumphant, replied, “I just was hoping for some analytical clarity, but thank you.”

Gil’s question was deft and significant. It instantly drew attention to the intellectual dishonesty, internal contradictions and the procrustean nature of so many progressive obsessions, including affirmative action (violating laws against discrimination in order to remedy discrimination), trans-female sports competition (harming biological women by warping Title IX) and, of course, DEI.

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The Other Shoe Drops On The Collusive Trump-IRS Deal. Good.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

In May, Ethics Alarms expressed its horror here, here and here over the unethical, conflicted deal engineered by Trump’s acting-Attorney General and Trump’s Treasury Dept. to bestow undeserved benefits on the President, his family, and the Trump Organization. I wrote at the end of the last of these, “I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense.”

Well Calloo! Callay! It has been stopped, and very emphatically too.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in her 56-page order yesterday that the President and his fellow plaintiffs, his adult sons and the Trump Organization LLC, may not refer in any judicial, administrative or other official proceeding to the “purported ‘settlement agreement'” that gave them broad protection from federal government audits and investigations. The judge then sanctioned the attorneys that represented Trump in his personal capacity, Daniel Z. Epstein of Epstein & Co. LLC and Alejandro Brito of Brito PLLC.

Good. They should be sanctioned. They should be suspended. If I had the choice, I would disbar them. They are both a disgrace to the legal profession.

“This lawsuit was not brought to vindicate rights,” Judge Williams wrote. “It was brought to manipulate the judicial process to pursue benefits unavailable in litigation because the parties were not adverse.”

“Because the parties were not adverse”! Bingo! On that basis, the case should have been at very least stayed by this same judge until Trump was out of office and not controlling the adversary party, and may I add, DUH! Judge Williams was asleep at the switch in May, and perhaps that adds to her obvious fury now. Her one excuse is that she didn’t realize exactly what was going on because it happened so fast and no President has had the gall to try anything like this before.

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On The Strange GOP Candidate For Governor of Colorado

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

He hasn’t received as much attention as Graham Platner because 1) he has no chance of winning, and 2) so far, no prominent Republicans who aren’t known lunatics have endorsed him. (Rep. Lauren Boebert has. Of course she has…). However, to call Victor Marx, who won the Republican primary for governor in Colorado, the Republican Graham Platner isn’t far-fetched at all.

Here are some “highlights” of this guy:

  • A supporter and associate of the late Charlie Kirk, Marx is a right-wing “influencer.” He has about three million followers on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X, where he likes to post videos of himself disarming people holding fake guns.
  • He is the founder of All Things Possible ministries, which he has claimed rescued more than 40,000 women and children from abuse, though the number can’t be substantiated.
  • Platner had said he was a communist. This guy’s father was named Karl Marx.
  • He has made a lot of dubious claims, such as that he once was in a gun battle with ISIS. He has also claimed that he can perform exorcisms over the phone. Cool!
  • Marx served for three years in the United States Marine Corps ,which he said he joined to avoid prosecution for fighting, theft and drug use.
  • Marx has been arrested at least twice for disorderly conduct.
  • In 2023, Marx’s brother-in-law shot at Marx, who was not hit. The brother-in-law is currently awaiting trial for allegedly murdering his girlfriend .
  • Before entering politics, Marx ran a Christian martial arts school.

Marx also was the target of another Michelle Goldberg deceit column, this one with the deliberately deceptive headline, “He Says He Killed a Man. Republicans Nominated Him Anyway.” The headline refers to an unsubstantiated story Marx tells, claiming that at age seven, his abusive stepfather took him to a rural area in Mendenhall, Mississippi, and made him shoot and kill someone. The victim has never been identified.

I think we can agree on this, however: both parties need to stop nominating res ipsa loquitur whack jobs for national positions of trust, and citizens need to stop voting for them.

It is irresponsible and unethical to inflict these lying, unstable, untrustworthy people on the rest of the country, especially voters who take their civic duties seriously. We don’t deserve this. The nation doesn’t deserve this. The Founders don’t deserve this either.