I have sworn to flag this every time it happens, which is too often. A popular conservative news aggregating website. “Not the Bee,” headlined its story, “The thing that never happens just happened again. Are we allowed to talk about it yet?” The “thing” was a dog attack that killed a 6-year-old child in Virginia, and the topic we are supposed to talk about is how pit bulls are deadly. The site has been stumping for “pit bull” bans for years. But both the picture of the dog involved AND THE NEWS STORY LINKED made it clear that the dog was not a “pit bull” or even one of the six or seven dog breeds dog ignoramuses call “pit bulls.”
That’s the killer dog above. Not a “pit bull,” or one the several breeds frequently lumped into the “pit bull” category The story linked says the dog responsible was an American Bully, and the photo above doesn’t look like an American Bully either. They are quite distinctive dogs.
Never mind. This is how the dogs get banned in many counties and countries—it was how my pit bull mix ended up on a three year Hell-journey among three abusive owners until Grace and I rescued him.
In June 2025, TikTok fitness influencer [Full disclosure: I’m biased already] Nicole Arena attacked Walt Disney World after the theme park’s staff told her that she was not dressed appropriately for the family-friendly venue. She had to buy a cover-up T-shirt before they would allow her to get on a ride.
For some reason the controversy has surfaced again, which is good, because I love dress code ethics controversies. Most of my posts on the topic are here.
That’s a photo of the two at the park above, with Nicole’s full outfit in the inset. Apparently Disney’s employees didn’t raise any objections to her husband John Whitespot’s (!) outfit, which seems clearly discriminatory. He’s also a “fitness influencer”(see bias note above: Ditto, plus any full-grown man who wears his cap backwards is an idiot… ) and an inarticulate musclehead as well. “I couldn’t care less if someone thinks your outfit was inappropriate because we both know that neither one of us would feel comfortable or ok with anything that would expose you in any way,” John wrote, defending his wife.
Oh. What?
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Was it fair for Disney to force Nicole to “cover up”?
The most on-point of my past dress code posts is probably this one, about the fitness model who was denied boarding on an American Airlines flight because she was dressed like this:
That’s a bit more extreme than Nicole’s garb, but the dress code issue is always about slippery slopes. In that post I summed up the problem this way:
Ah, dress codes! They are conduct rules put in place by businesses and institutions because some people have no manners, sense of place, consideration for others or respect, and these codes never, ever, work in the long run, because some people have no manners, sense of place, consideration for others or respect. Once upon a time, children, adults going out into public dressed with taste and modesty as an expression of respect to others, including strangers, that they might meet. The Sixties destroyed this cultural consensus by questioning manners, decorum, conformity, dignity, and respect for others, especially anybody over thirty. Do your own thing! Let it all hang out! Today, a half century later, people nonchalantly wear flip-flops to the opera and church, while the obese passenger sitting next to you on an airplane may be wearing a tank-top, and hasn’t bathed in a week.
I think changing cultural norms may take the issue out of the realm of ethics into the generation gap quagmire, but I’m not certain, hence the quiz. The Disney episode also reminded me of this recent post.
One of the many puzzling aspects of the upcoming mid-terms is that any voter of either the Jewish faith or who is of Jewish heritage is considering voting for a party that has flipped to open and almost full anti-Semitism. I don’t get it. I would ask some of my long-time Jewish friends about it if so many of them weren’t so Trump Deranged that they can barely utter any sounds other than a Frankenstinian, “Arrgagrhah!”
I just saw this on “X” (I guess its time for me to drop the “Twitter”):
…I know, polls. Still, based on my own group of friends, 30% seems too small. What (the hell) is the matter with these people? I know that many German Jews voted for Hitler too, but you know, live and learn (or die and learn). This is an ethnic group renowned for their wisdom and resilience; in other words, Jews are supposed to be smarter than this. What’s going on here?
Here’s the ad that just dropped in the Michigan Senate race for the Democratic candidate, Muslim Brotherhood supporter Abdul El-Sayed:
…Yes, those damn Jews are causing inflation! Funny, I though President Biden said that Republicans were the Nazis.
This seems like a propitious time to look in on a lamented ex-Ethics Alarms commenter, “Feminist, anti-racist, pro-fat” and cripplingly woke political cartoonist “Ampersand,” who was long one of the most articulate and engaging progressive commenters here until bias made him stupid, sadly the fate of most EA readers from his side of the ideological divide. That’s his latest creation above, and here is the main section of Amp’s explanation of it:
I know I’m a bit obsessive on this topic, but none of the Democratic Party’s lies (and those of its dead-eyed allies, the news media and academia), annoy me quite as much as the “Trump breaches democratic norms!” refrain. It’s Resistance Big Lie #6 on the list; partisan scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have made a career out of peddling its hypocrisy and the fake history underlying it. Don’t make me go through the rebuttal again: a 2024 update is here.
At the moment, Barack Obama is engaged in breaching a very important democratic norm, the tradition holding that past U.S. Presidents rarely criticize the current occupant, and never actively campaign against a President who isn’t on the ballot. The reasons past Presidents don’t do this and must not are many, including that it is inherently divisive, that it encourages bitter partisanship, that it undermines the office, that past Presidents are supposed to recognize as few do the challenges of the job, and that it is cowardly, since past Presidents have nothing to lose by insulting the current POTUS except, perhaps, the respect of decent Americans. Obama is now on the campaign trail, doing less campaigning for Democrats running for Congress than insulting Donald Trump.
He is the only ex-President ever to do this when the ex- isn’t himself running for the office, as former President Trump was from 2021 to 2024. Theodore Roosevelt was a term-long critic of his successor (and onetime best friend) William Howard Taft, but Teddy was getting ready to run for a second full term. John Quincy Adams was vocal criticizing some of his successors, but that was from a seat in Congress. Obama’s shattering this “norm” because he’s special, or something.
Actually, Obama’s shattering this “norm” he’s an asshole. Obama has the gall to ridicule Trump’s construction projects, when, as Scott Bessent quipped, the design of his Presidential Library looks like Darth Vader’s tomb. He’s ethically estopped from making architectural critiques, just as he’s estopped from criticizing Trump or any President. Barack Obama was one of the weakest, most feckless, most destructive U.S. Presidents in our history: his major accomplishment was becoming President as a black man. Yay. But that’s it.
Obama may also be the most destructive and meddlesome former President in our history. John Tyler did join Jefferson Davis’s cabinet, so it’s close. But Barack has certainly proven that democratic norms only matter to Democrats when Republicans vary from them.
Nothing like reminding voters who are tempted to vote for candidates who want to impeach you why they hate your guts…
The quote, uttered ad lib (of course) at a rally in Perry, Georgia, over the weekend:
“Jon Ossoff personally sponsored a bill to bring armies of migrants from terror-infested countries like Libya, Yemen, Haiti, Somalia. Remember what I called them? Shithouse countries.”
I am reading indefensible conservative pundits trying to rationalize this unpresidential and uncivil discourse by countering, “Is he wrong?” That’s not the point. It wasn’t the point when he first was accused of using the vulgar and undignified term in 2018.
I wrote extensively about the ethics train wreck the then “alleged comments” set off. Like so much the Axis media publicized then and now, the episode was based on hearsay reporting on a private meeting, with the media freakout—pretending that no other President used vulgar and denigrating language behind closed doors—being dishonest and partisan. As usual.
Where’s that woodchipper? I’m thinking about sending a copy of “The New Face of Child Labor?” in The Harvard Gazette to child actor advocate Paul Petersen, but I’m afraid the essay will send him to a woodchipper too.
Leah Plunkett, the Meyer Research Lecturer on Law and a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, is the author of the book “Sharenthood” (What a cute title! Yecchh!) warning of the risks of parents sharing their children’s lives online. She’s also the reporter for the Uniform Law Commission’s Child Digital Entertainers Act drafting committee. Hillary Robinson, an associate professor of law and sociology at Northeastern University School of Law, is the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation research project on the digital platform economy. Both have suddenly had a “Eureka!” moment and want to let the world know that putting one’s kids’ images and activities online for all to see forever might not be responsible parenting.
Ya think? Ethics Alarms has been beating that particular metaphorical drum repeatedly over more than a decade.* A recent post (2024) on the topic is here. This is the Harvard Gazette today (in part) reporting on this sudden discovery as if the perpetual motion machine had finally been invented, beginning like this:
“A mother posts her toddler’s first steps on Instagram. Children gather around the kitchen counter to help their father make sourdough bread in a YouTube video. On TikTok, a young gymnast performs a backflip atop a balance beam. These intimate snapshots of family life may look spontaneous and wholesome, but they are also often the raw material of a $30 billion (or more) influencer industry — one in which children’s lives are packaged, promoted, and monetized, often by their own parents. When does sharing family life online become child labor — and what protections do children have when it does?”
My answers of long-standing: 1) Immediately, and 2) Ethics literacy, if the parents have any, and most don’t.
But those aren’t the two experts’ answers. They muse “whether a child being paid to play with a toy on camera should be regulated like manual labor in a factory,” pose “the alarming parallels between influencer culture and the adult entertainment industry,” and ponder “the real-world harms that can result when images and video of children are posted online — either by themselves or by adults.” Then—and here’s the path progressives follow as surely as night follows day, the two professors wonder “what what policymakers can do today to better protect kids.” They ask, “Does the platform economy upend one of contract law’s most basic assumptions? Traditionally, mutual assent precedes production. Online, however, people may create the product, generate its value, and expose themselves to its risks long before any contract — or meaningful consent — exists.”
Ugh. I answered those questions 16 years ago when PBS was peddling the child exploitation and abuse “reality show” “Kate and Jon plus 8.” That show’s EA dossier is here. The current social media abuse of children is the same social contagion, just on a different platform and a far more widespread infection. I was substantially guided in my posts by the genuine expert on the subject of show biz child labor exploitation Paul Petersen, my friend who was a famous child star himself.
One of my father’s most elaborate family vacation expeditions came when I was 9 and my sister was seven. He plotted a two-week auto tour of all the “natural wonders” of nearby New Hampshire along with quite a few non-natural sort-of-wonders in the Granite State—strange museums, odd theme parks, and the equivalents of Clark Griswald’s “World’s Biggest Ball of String.” I loved that trip for its random weirdness: it was one of the family excursions I remember most vividly.
One of the attractions Dad led us to was “The Flume,” a natural 800-foot-long granite gorge in Franconia Notch State Park in Lincoln, New Hampshire. There were lots of “wonders”to see there: The Flume Covered Bridge, Avalanche Falls, Table Rock, Sentinel Pine Bridge, The Pool, and a tight boulder tunnel known as the Wolf’s Den. It took about an hour and a half to traverse the winding trail on foot, an adventure featuring wooden boardwalks, packed gravel, steep grades and many stairs. Another attraction on Dad’s itinerary was the striking “Hanging Boulder” at the Polar Caves in Rumney, N.H. Somewhere there’s a photo of me and my sister standing exactly where that guy and his baby were posing above. Yet another was the legendary “Great Stone Face,” immortalized in a Nathanial Hawthorne story and used to describe silent movie genius Buster Keaton. Remember it?
That wonder crumbled and fell in 2003. And on October 18, 2026, Hanging Boulder came crashing down too. The boulder had been an attraction in the park since it opened more than 100 years ago, but is no more.
I don’t get nostalgic over rocks, but the news hit me surprisingly hard. Dad died in his sleep in 2009. Just because something has been around your whole life and seemingly forever doesn’t mean that it will always be there. That’s the life competence lesson.
The amazing part is that they are so shameless about it! Can you imagine the Axis media calling the J-6 riot—which lasted a single day—“mostly peaceful” based on all the video showing protesters casually touring the Capitol while the physical confrontations were going on? Even the conservative media didn’t try to spin the protest-turned-riot as “peaceful.”
In 2021, as the George Floyd Freakout, the BLM scam and The Great Stupid spread their dark wings over the land, CNN national correspondent Omar Jimenez was reporting live on the violent rioting taking place in Kenosha, Wissonsin following the police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake…who absolutely, unequivocally, undeniably provoked it and got it.
[Notice of Correction(and my stupid mistake): I carelessly wrote “fatal” with “shooting” while describing ever so briefly the Jacob Blake affair. That one, of course, was the one police-involved-shooting where the perp survived. I didn’t check my own sources, including EA, because the details were irrelevant to the reference. Stupid, as I said.]
Standing in front of a raging fire, Jimenez was accompanied by the fake news chyron at the bottom of the screen reading, “FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS AFTER POLICE SHOOTING.” The moment became an iconic example of Axis media dishonesty and spin, and rightly so. “The phrase ‘beyond parody’ doesn’t begin to describe this,” conservative commentator Matt Walsh said. “Clowns. Irresponsible clowns. It’s not even funny. Months of enabling violence and destruction by ignoring and downplaying it, thereby eliminating any pressure on politicians to take action,” conservative writer A.G. Hamilton reacted.
Naturally, the Axis news media—the Times, the Post, PBS, the rest— circled the wagons and featured no criticism or even mention of CNN’s mendacity. And now, here is the BBC, pretending that kind of gaslighting is “independent journalism,” doing the exact same thing again as if it is competent reporting.
I haven’t done a Trump Derangement check on my Facebook friends for a while now, and that nonsense above compelled me to return to the field. Curmie posted something almost as idiotic a few days ago, and it just made me sad; I couldn’t bear to chronicle the shocking intellectual and ethical deterioration of EA’s former esteemed columnist since President Trump was sworn into office.
The thing above was posted yesterday by long-time friend from Harvard, a sharp, indomitable woman whom I admire in many ways and have always found delightful in person. But that dishonest, ignorant, gaslighting rant is beyond redemption. It’s so stupid that I have to wonder if my friend just posted it without thinking, as a lazy virtue-signaling exercise.
Just to address two items that are easily debunked:
The highest national average gas price during the Biden administration was $5.02 per gallon in June of 2022. The national average was $2.39 per gallon on January 20, 2021, the day Biden took office. The national average was $3.10 per gallon when Biden left office in January 2025. Gas was not “1/2” what it is now.
Inflation always goes up. The inflation rate fluctuates. Making that error is signature significance: anyone who makes it doesn’t know what they are talking about.
We were “friends” with Canada, Mexico, and “Europe”! Who wrote this, a third grader? Not one single thing is “better”? Gee, I don’t know, I’d call not having 2.5-3 million fewer illegal immigrants in the country “better” than having the law breakers still here. Not having open borders is also “better” unless one’s perspective is, you know, legally, historically and logically insane. The whole list is, or should be, an embarrassment to anyone who would post or “like it.” Once again, I wrestled my fingers to the ground. My friend is a lifetime theater community denizen despite the Harvard degree, and I suspect her sophistication regarding current events is approximately that of Elmo’s. But why would she post such garbage, knowing that she’s asserting talking points without research or understanding? If elite college-educated voters are this addled, what are the rest like?
The famous “Dancing in the Dark” number from “The Bandwagon” (one of Fred’s best) ends with Fred Astaire and the ethereal Cyd Charrise seamlessly collapsing in to a horse-drawn Central Park carriage. Can’t have that! New York’s communist mayor Zohran Mamdani (“There’s your party! There’s your party!”) has accomplished what New York City’s previous communist mayor Bill DeBlasio couldn’t. The New York City Council voted on last week to ban horse-drawn carriage rides from Central Park in two years.
Why? Because they could. Because a progressive constituency, albeit a wacko one, had been trying to put the Central Park carriage ride drivers out of business for decades: it’s cruelty to animals, see. It’s so much better to have those horses end up as dog food and their owners on Welfare. Anyway, it’s the principle of the thing.
