Concise, pointed, attractive, harmless, and funny, while calling timely and appropriate attention to the core presumptuousness of the Mormon practice of Baptizing dead Jews and others to save their eternal souls.
Excellent work, whoever you are.
Check it out here.
[Yes, I found this one on Fark.]
"FOCUS!"
The husband of the President of Finland is being widely ridiculed in the news media after being caught by a journalist’s camera as he plainly ogled the cleavage of Princess Mary of Denmark and was seemingly caught in the act by the Princess as well. Unfair. He allowed his gaze to linger a bit long, perhaps, and one’s manners are supposed to be somewhat elevated, theoretically, in the presence of royalty, but Pentti Arajarvi was mostly a victim of the sad reality that being discrete, once the primary etiquette requirement of men relentlessly drawn to a woman’s comely assets, is no longer possible in public and often in private as well. President Obama, you will recall, was caught doing a classic male turnaround to catch the spectacle of a perfect female butt passing by.
Even more unfair, and ridiculous, are the opportunistic women’s rights warriors who use such incidents to show how women are still treated as sex objects by men in the workplace and elsewhere. Continue reading
Every picture I could find to illustrate this story was offensive, so here's a bald guy with a dog on his head.
Combine the comments I’m getting from the “cannibelles” launched at Ethics Alarms from the “Wisconsin Sickness” website (“Personal conduct has no bearing on professional trustworthiness!“), and add the film negative of the recently posted Ethics Hero, the selfless pastor, add some eye of newt, and ABRACADABRA! You get…. Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, whose pastor, Darrell Gilyard, is a registered sex offender!
And of recent vintage, too. This apparently doesn’t faze the good parishioners of Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist because—well. pick your rationalization…I’m sure they have:
Gilyard’s last church wasn’t so understanding, but then it was that congregation’s underage girls who he pleaded guilty to molesting in 2009. You can’t blame them too much for being intolerant.
But his new church is being reasonable about this as well as broad-minded; they are taking the responsible course. Children aren’t allowed in church while Gilyard is preaching.
Problem solved!
Rev. Keinath on holiday, under the overpass
Thomas Keinath is the pastor at Calvary Temple in Wayne, New Jersey, a so-called mega-church with a 2,000-plus seat sanctuary in an affluent community. It was time for him to take some vacation time, so he did. And what did he do?
Keinath spent his week off living with the homeless in the very un-affluent community of nearby Paterson, New Jersey. During the day, he wandered through the streets along with desperate, sick and destitute. At night, he stayed with them as they built fires to keep warm in freezing cold, and slept with them, under a bridge, surrounded by discarded hypodermic needles. He wrote down the life stories of the people he met, so he could learn from their life stories.
“I needed to understand what they were experiencing, and I needed to feel their pain. How could I bring help or healing to the streets if I did not know what their needs are?” the pastor told reporters. Continue reading
Just what I want to see on my daughter's Girl Scout troop leader's husband's website! And you?
The Girl Scouts have been going through a strange period lately. There was the controversy over a transgender troop member, a boy who identified as a girl. Then it was revealed that the organization’s literature was promoting Media Matters as a means of civic education. This, however, takes the cake.
Stacy Hintz, a 28-year-old mother from West Bend, Wisconsin,was removed from her volunteer position as a Girl Scout troop leader because of her husband’s website. The site is called Wisconsin Sickness, is slick, professional, unique, and 100% batty. Here is its introduction:
“Whatever the reason, there is a deep and passionate psychosis that runs through the unstable synapses of those of us from Wisconsin, land of serial killers and cannibals. And we’re proud of it. Wisconsin Sickness, a Mental Shed project, is all about bringing the independent, underground Wisconsin scene together and spreading the sickness like a virus.”
And really, that’s nothing: wait until you see the site, which, among other things, celebrates Ed Gein, the serial killer/cannibal/necrophiliac whose horrific crimes and, uh, interior decorating style inspired “Psycho,” “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” and dozens of lesser horror films. Continue reading
If the long Presidents Day weekend took you hither and yon and away from ethical dilemmas and controversies, welcome back! Here is what went on here in a lively three days:
Two Denver TV stations are feuding, and why? Because one of them refused to allow the other to suppress news footage that was embarrassing to a news anchor.
On February 8, KUSA-Channel 9 news anchor Kyle Dyer was interviewing the owner of Max, an 85-pound Argentine Mastiff, and the firefighter who had rescued the dog from an icy pond. I saw the video. Dyer had me wincing throughout the interview, showing herself to be the most dangerous kind of dog lover, someone who is fond of animals but naive and ignorant about their behavior. She kept rubbing the dog’s ears and face during the interview, and the mastiff was obviously stoic but stressed by the strange environment, the cameras, and this women talking and running her hands all over him. Mastiffs are gentle dogs, but very shy; it was clear to me that Dyer was not according sufficient respect and caution to a powerful creature. As the interview ended, she suddenly moved in to kiss the dog on the muzzle, and the dog reacted defensively, biting her on the face and taking off part of her lip. She was seriously injured, and she had to have 75 stitches. Continue reading
When I am asked who I think was the most ethical President of the United States, my answer is the man whose birthday President’s Day preempts: George Washington. He was not our most brilliant or eloquent President, and it often took him a while to find his way to the right thing to do, slavery being the most important example. Still, the United States was extraordinarily fortunate to have such a principled and instinctively wise leader as its first. He created the template that, though weakened by time and inferior successors, continues to exert a powerful influence over our choice of Presidents. He was honest. He was civil. He was dignified and insisted on respect, but never worship: his simple decision that America’s Chief Executive be called, humbly, “Mr. President” had immense consequences for the nation’s attitudes toward executive leadership. Perhaps most important of all, Washington was a gifted leader but a reluctant one. He believed that a citizen should heed the nation’s call when needed, but he was a reluctant public servant, and condemned those who sought power for its own sake.
I am always amazed, when I return to Washington’s writings and speeches, how sure, persuasive and perceptive his statements remain, so long after they were made.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from our most ethical President.
Happy Birthday, approximately, General Washington. Continue reading
I'd advise staying away from "niggardly" too, Max.
Ethics Alarms first promulgated the Niggardly Principles in the midst of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque controversy. The Principles are named after the embarrassing controversy that roiled the Washington D.C. government more than a decade ago, in which a supervisor who used the good, old English word “niggardly” meaning “penurious or cheap” was fired for racial insensitivity after an African-American who hadn’t kept up on her Reader’s Digest “It Pays To Increase Your Word Power” complained that he had made a racist remark. The outcry in D.C. over this capitulation to ignorance was so great that the D.C. government reversed itself, though there remained some, like those supporting ESPN’s decision to fire Bretos for an innocent and appropriate application of the idiom ” a chink in the armor” today, who argued that the supervisor should have chosen his words so as not to offend those too ignorant and hair-trigger grievance-minded to comprehend them.
The First Niggardly Principle, therefore, is this:
“No one should be criticized or penalized because someone takes racial, ethnic, religious or other offense at their conduct or speech due to the ignorance, bias or misunderstanding of the offended party.”
A corollary of the FNP is that violating it unconscionably empowers the kind of people who should not be empowered in a free, fair and intelligent society: bullies, race-baiters, grievance police, censors of free expression, and the shamelessly ignorant. That was the theme of a disgraceful incident in which Hallmark pulled an “offensive”card because some African-Americans complained that the term “black hole”—as in Stephen Hawking and “Star Trek”—sounded too much like “black ho”—I’m not making this up— and was thus a racial slur. Hallmark’s craven capitulation was off the charts as First Niggardly Principle breaches go, but in some ways ESPN’s breach was worse; at least Hallmark didn’t pick an employee’s pockets and finger him as a closet racist. Continue reading
What Max Bretos means by "chink in the armor." Not that ESPN cares.
The headline “Chink in the Armor: Jeremy Lin’s 9 Turnovers Cost Knicks in Streak-stopping Loss to Hornets” appeared on ESPN’s mobile web site last week, and it was quickly removed. ESPN apologized, then fired the over-night headline writer who thought it would be cute to make a racially-offensive play on words between the derogatory slur for a person of Chinese descent, and the old, respectable, and the completely non-racial phrase meaning “a flaw or weak point.”
ESPN’s response to the tasteless headline was appropriate.
But it wasn’t enough for ESPN, which was under a full barrage from the political correctness police and race bullies as well as Jeremy Lin fanatics. So the station also decided to make a victim of innocent anchor Max Bretos, suspending him for 30 days because he used the expression Wednesday when he asked New York Knicks legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier on air about Lin.
“If there is a chink in the armor, where can he improve his game?” Bretos asked. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 