Ethics Quotes of the Week: David Harsanyi and Seth Mandel on Nicholas Kristof’s Anti-Israel Libel

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“The only question now is whether Kristof is a dupe for Hamas apologists who can’t be trusted to apply basic journalistic standards to his writing or a willing participant who doesn’t care about them. Either way, he doesn’t deserve to be a journalist”

David Harsanyi in “Nick Kristof’s grotesque journalistic malpractice”

“We want to believe that Nick Kristof and all the people who defended and shared his article are just like us—believers in honesty, men and women of integrity, a community of truth-seekers with a baseline sense of human decency. We want to believe this in part because of that very sense of human decency. But we are making a massive error. Kristof’s named sources not only provided no evidence for his lurid bestiality fantasies but themselves were also people with massive credibility deficits…And there’s another reason we want to believe that Israel’s critics are morally intact. Plenty of them are. Those are probably the ones we don’t hear from. Unfortunately, the ones we keep hearing from don’t believe this conflict has anything to do with where Palestinians live but rather that Israelis live at all.”

Seth Mandel in “The End of Our Illusions.”

I don’t cite these two pieces as an appeal to authority. I reached the same conclusions in my post here before I read either of them. They do, however, reinforce my conclusion that Kristof, the Times staff that published his swill, and anyone you know who cites it, defends it or believes it are not to be trusted or respected. They are bent, or they are stupid and ignorant. There is no less damning conclusion.

What Exactly Are California’s “Values”? Can Anybody Explain?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

ProPublica, an almost entirely pro-progressive, anti-conservative “independent public interest watchdog” organization, shockingly goes after our most progressive state (it’s a close competition), revealing that California allows teachers who have been caught sexually harassing students to keep teaching anyway.

What?? Indeed this seems to be the case. The investigative reporting website states in part, after relating the tale of a teacher named Agan who after an independent panel convened by the state to hear his case deemed him “unfit to teach” based on multiple complaints by students, hired by two other schools prompting sexual harassment accusation by students a

“A broad look at California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing by KQED and ProPublica shows a pattern of delays and inaction, combined with a lack of transparency, that have allowed educators to continue teaching after school districts reported them to the state for sexual harassment or other misconduct of a sexual nature. Agan’s case is one of at least 67 in which the state has not revoked the professional licenses of educators after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets. At least 14 of those educators were rehired by other schools, and of those, at least 12, including Agan, still work in education, according to a review of school websites and employment records provided by schools.” Anita Fitzhugh, a spokesperson for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, said the state automatically revokes teachers’ credentials when they are convicted of sexual criminal offenses, but not necessarily when a district determines they have committed sexual misconduct. She said the state Legislature — not the licensing agency — determines the type of misconduct that results in automatic revocation. The agency appoints a committee to assess noncriminal cases of misconduct, she said. Agan has not been accused of a crime.  “The Commission’s authority balances protecting students as well as the legal rights of educators who have been accused but not convicted of specific crimes,” Fitzhugh said in a written statement.” 

Yikes. What’s going on here? That key question in ethics inquiries seems to be this: California’s kinder, gentler, incompetent approach to enforcing even minimal personal responsibility appears to have resulted in a bizarre calculation that puts children at risk. See, Agan, and many other teachers, haven’t criminally assaulted students or at at least can’t be proved to have done so beyond a reasonable doubt. So as long as the unprofessional, emotionally damaging, conflict-ridden sexual harassing conduct doesn’t rise to the level of a felony, California appears to be satisfied to let bygones be bygones, and a male teacher who leers and drools over and even touches female students get second and third chances to change their ways.

I assume that the teachers unions have a great deal to do with this disconnect that and the fact that the now fairly dead-in-the-water #MeToo movement disgraced itself by turning into a willing DEI weapon. Like so much that goes on in California while alleged adults stand mute and passively by, I don’t get this at all. What does California care about, besides catering to illegal immigrants and environmental virtue-signaling? What value system does a state embrace when it shrugs off sexual misconduct by its teachers?

When Will Indefensible Stunt Casting Stop Me From Seeing a Movie? This is When…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

That’s Ellen, now Eliot, Page above, the talented actress who decided to be surgically altered into male form, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But the 5’1″ delicate and frail trans performer was cast in director Christopher Nolan’s big budget version of Homer’s “Odyssey” as Achilles, one of the greatest of Greek mythology heroes, a badass so feared that his absence from the battlefield prolonged the Trojan War.

I have no idea why such a deliberately political and silly casting choice would be made (or allowed) but I don’t care. I only watched the movie where Bill Murray was cast as FDR because I wanted to see if he could pull it off (no, not even close), but casting Page as Achilles insults the audience’s intelligence. Now, there was a Greek hero in the Illiad whom Page might have played: Ajax the Lesser, a diminutive warrior with a Napoleon complex. But if Achilles is barely over five feet, then Ajax the Lesser would have to be a midget.

No, I’m not so much bothered by Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy. It is also stunt casting but she is exotic and gorgeous, and one could imagine the African’s unique beauty launching a thousand ships.

I love the Illiad and the Odyssey, and I’m open to new interpretations as long as they don’t defile the stories or make them ridiculous. I draw the line, however, at this.

I sure would have liked to have Curmie’s take here, but he’s off in a No Kings rally somewhere…

The Israelis Have Trained Dogs To Rape Hamas Prisoners of War! Right. “A Bias Makes You Stupid ” Classic From the NYT’s Nick Kristof

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wow. I used to think Nick Kristof was the best and most trustworthy in Times’ generally unethical stable of pundits. Now I learn that he is nuts, or so biased against Israel that his brain sneaked out of his skull while he was sleeping.

This insane “report,” which his paper dutifully published because it no longer operates as a professional news source when politics are involved, is based entirely on second hand sources that have been anti-Israel and pro-Hamas from the beginning of the 2023 war Hamas began with a surprise terror attack on Israel’s civilians. Kristof cites only the claims of Palestinians, and sources that base their reports on the same. His main source is Sami al-Sai, a “free-lance journalist who has been painting Hamas and Gaza as victims of “genocide” since the war began. That is not an independent source. Neither is the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, also an anti-Israel group, or the United Nations, which has supported Palestinian propganda since the war began. At one point, Kristof even writes, “There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes.” There is also no evidence that the alleged rapes occurred.

There is definitive evidence that the Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women, however. Kristof’s fantasy appears to be a deliberate rationalization (#2. Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad“) to excuse Hamas/Gaza/ Palestinians for starting the bloody conflict. Coincidentally (?) an extensive, genuinely sourced report was released today documenting Hamas’s attack, including the rapes, and sexual assaults against the kidnapped hostages. One commenter on “X’ wrote, “If you do not believe @nytimes knew EXACTLY what they were doing with the timing of the Kristof “opinion” piece [ie, trying to preempt justified outrage at Hamas’s sexual crimes by suggesting that Israel similarly engages in such crimes] I have a nice bridge to sell you.”

The Kristof piece seems like smoking gun evidence that the Times is filled with anti-Semites, or, in the alternative, people too stupid to put on their shoes after their socks. At very least, I would expect the Times to find a dog training expert to explain how the hell you would train a dog to rape a human being. Spuds (above) laughed when I told him about the article.

As Jack Nicholson says in “A Few Good Men,” this isn’t funny, it’s tragic. The American Left is embracing anti-Semitism to an extent that hasn’t been seen since the Thirties. David Bernstein wrote today, after an attack on a Jewish neighborhood in New York City, which elected a pro-Hamas mayor, “We are getting closer to an actual pogrom like Crown Heights 1991. Seriously time for Brooklyn Jews to arm themselves.”

Pages: 1 2

Can You Trust A 2026 Democrat? [Link Fixed!]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Democrats are certainly tempting Republicans to repurpose that 1960 JFK campaign poster to impugn the wisdom of trusting any Democrats “as far as you could throw them,” in one of my father’s favorite phrases.

Item: Eileen Wang, the former mayor of Arcadia, a city within LA County, resigned after admitting to acting as an illegal foreign agent for China. Her federal plea deal was unsealed today. She worked with the People’s Republic of China to distribute propaganda with a fake news website between 2020 and 2022. She was elected to the Arcadia City Council in November 2022, then moved up to mayor. She faced a maximum of 10 years in prison, but the deal got her much less. I don’t know why she shouldn’t be shot. She’s a traitor.

She’s also a Democrat. Her fellow California Democrat, Eric Swalwell, had a sexual affair with a Chinese spy. Speaking of JFK, he also had an affair with a comely spy, in his case from Israel.

For some reason, I had a difficult time confirming Wang’s party. She’s a Democrat, of course, but most news reports omitted that fact. Were they covering up for their favorite party, or did they just assume any one paying attention could guess which party is more likely to sell out to China?

According to court documents, Wang worked with her then-fiancé, Yaoning “Mike” Sun, on a web site called “U.S. News Center,” supposedly a news source for Chinese Americans. The loving couple, however, were really taking marching orders from Beijing. They “executed directives” from the Chinese government to post pro-Chinese propaganda and reported back with data on how many views each story received, according to the plea agreement.

In one case, Wang was ordered to post a PRC-dictated essay denying the existence of genocide and forced labor in the Xinjiang region. “There is no genocide in Xinjiang; there is no such thing as ‘forced labor’ in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumor is to defame China, destroy Xinjiang’s safety and stability,” the mayor was told. Wang complied by publishing the required lies, and her handler wrote back, “So fast, thank you everyone.” Receiving praise for her work, Wang wrote back to her handler, “Thank you leader.”

The Wang story comes out just after Rep. Jayapal announced that she has been working with Cuba to undermine U.S. policy. The whole Democratic Party, meanwhile, is openly parroting Iranian propaganda and vocally hoping that the U.S. loses that war. All this, and the cheating and lying about redistricting too.

Would you buy a used car from this party?

Why???

Yes, Ted Turner Is An Ethics Hero For This…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Verdict: True.

Turner’s contribution to cultural literacy and cross-generational communication as a result cannot be denied or understated. Ted Turner used his power and wealth to create what might never have existed without him.

He lived a worthwhile life indeed.

Ethics Test For Progressive Americans, PART II: The New York Times Has Already Flunked

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

The Times has so many dishonest, biased, partisan and unethical columnists that, as I have written too many times, identifying the worst of the worst is well nigh impossible. With the execrable Charles M. Blow mercifully retired as the Times house anti-white racist, it is at least easy to single out the most unethical black pundit currently disgracing the paper. That would be Jamelle Bouie. He has one of the worst EA dossiers of any Times pundit (though not as bad as Blow’s) going back to when he was a writer for Slate. However, as indefensible it was for the Times to hire Bouie, it is even worse that no editor, publisher or staff petition stopped his latest screed from being published under the Times masthead.

Here is your second gift link to a Times product of the day, though this “gift” is more akin to a flaming bag of dog poo left on your front door. Among its features…

Pages: 1 2

Ethics Test For Progressive Americans, PART I: The Democrats Plot a Coup

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

For some time now, the biggest ethics issue facing the nation, and wow, there are a lot of them, has been the increasingly flagrant contempt for democracy and basic principles of ethics being exhibited by a single political party—guess which—in its drive to gain sufficient power to make over the government, principles, ideology, society and culture of the United States of America. The clues that party and its allies in the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance, Democrats and the nearly completely corrupt mainstream media) have been revealing have been increasingly obvious, most flagrant among them being projection—-accusing Republicans and President Trump of engaging in what his Machiavellian opponents are actually doing.

A private discussion this weekend including Democratic House members from Virginia and Congressional Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York was leaked to the New York Times by several participants. According to the Times, the participants expressed their fury at the Virginia Supreme Court, as if it was the bi-partisan majority of judges who were at fault for the election-rigging scheme the party had tried to inflict on Virginians. Part of the discussion centered on what the Times called “a bank-shot proposal to redraw the congressional lines anyway.”

Pages: 1 2

“Mad Men” Ethics: The Motive vs. Conduct Conundrum

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I’m finally watching the acclaimed AMC series “Mad Men.” I’m impressed: the character development is deft and complex, the evocation of the Fifties and early Sixties is fairer and more accurate than it usually is, and the ethical issues explored are many and complex.

At the end of season five the series presented as good an example as you will find of how motives behind conduct usually don’t change the analysis of whether the conduct was ethical or not. Series anti-hero Don Draper, a talented advertising innovator, finds the Madison Avenue firm where he’s a partner facing ruin because its biggest client, Lucky Strike cigarettes, has defected to a bigger agency. Now all of his agency’s clients are spooked, and potential clients are waiting to see if it survives.

Impulsively and without consulting his other partners, Draper buys a full page ad in the New York Times, announcing that he, and therefore his firm, is giving up tobacco and cigarettes because they kill people, and marketing such a deadly product is wrong.

Draper doesn’t do this as a matter of conscience. He does it to take control of his firm’s fate, to make it seem like the loss of a large cigarette client was in fact a proactive decision made in the public interest, and by virtue-signaling and grandstanding, to attract new clients impressed by courage and integrity. The ad is, in short, self-serving, desperate, and cynical: ethics have nothing to do with it. Appearing ethical is the point.

Yet that does not change the fact that the public condemnation of smoking was the right thing to do regardless of his motives. The results of the declaration will be the same, whether the reasons behind it were pure or not. Thoughts are not ethical or unethical. Conduct is ethical or unethical.

The complicating factor in the “Mad Men” scenario is that advertising is a Bizarro World culture, like war and politics. It is inherently unethical, so applying traditional standards of right and wrong often don’t make sense, nor are ethical and unethical actions dependably likely to have the same effects they might have in other contexts. Conduct that may have salutary consequences outside of Madison Avenue may be disastrous in the weird world of advertising. Don Draper only cares about whether his shocking public attack on tobacco saves his firm, not how many lives it saves, if any.

Ironically, however, it may do both.

But even if it accomplishes neither, it is still an ethical act.

Addendum To “Ethics Update On the Axis Freakout Over Virginia and Tennessee’s Redistricting Results”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I realized that I hadn’t included any of the crazed (and hypocritical) freakouts over Tennessee eliminating the Memphis district that had voted in one of the worst (white) Democratic members of Congress for years, Steve Cohen.

Here’s one especially silly example: Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D) demanded that Tennessee allow Memphis to “secede” because of the redistricting.“Let Memphis secede from the state of Tennessee!” he said.“Let my people go. I’m dead serious. If you’re constantly beating on us, let us out.”

Parkinson represents part of Shelby County, which includes Memphis.“This is about whether Memphis, a majority-Black economic engine for this state, is expected to continue contributing billions in tax revenue, culture, labor and commerce while being systematically stripped of political power.” Which it is presumed to exercise only by voting for black candidates? Are the Republicans in such areas being stripped of their political power? Should they have to give up their state citizenship because Democrats are throwing a tantrum?

Parkinson said that if the state’s elected officials no longer believe “the people of Memphis deserve the ability to choose a representative who reflects their community, then at least have the courage to say it plainly. Do not hide behind maps and procedure.” What does “reflect the community” mean?

Parkinson has called for the city to secede before. Are we going back to city states now?

What an idiot.