Year: 2019

Ethics Hero, Covington Catholic Students Fake News: Dusty Smith

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Who is Dusty Smith? That’s him above. He’s a pundit, activist and atheist who runs the “Humanist Society of Mississippi, ” is a self-proclaimed progressive, and detests Donald Trump. Unlike so many progressives and Trump-Haters however, truth and integrity still mean something to him. Thus it is that after initially reacting in knee-jerk, Pavlovian fashion to a false news story that seemed to bolster all sorts of mainstream news media, 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, “resistance” narratives—Catholics are bad, white males are toxic, whites are racists, Trump supporters are racists, pro-life advocates are fools, “The Age of Trump” has energized racism, just to name a few—-he actually reviewed the evidence, and realized that the story was, in his words, “bullshit.” He was disgusted, and made this video…

Nice job, Dusty.

His is one of many examinations of this fiasco emerging on the web now, not that it has discouraged many on social media from still citing the original story so they can signal to their “Orange Man Bad” friends that the posteris right-thinking and virtuous and deserves  a tsunami of “likes” and  “loves.” I bear an ugly truth:  there is no excuse for this. It is irresponsible, incompetent, and destructive. You don’t denigrate a kid and paint a target on his back…

Reza Aslan

✔ @rezaaslan

Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s?

…without being damn certain of your facts. (Actually, you never paint a target on a kid’s back, but let’s start with baby steps, since Trump-Hate has eaten so many consciences and ethics alarms.) Oh, but these kids were wearing MAGA hats, so they deserve it, right? That was the instant approach of the biased journalists and their inexcusably credulous readers, who then joined the social media mobs. It is not just because I was suspicious of the story from the beginning that I state now that everyone should have smelled a rat. After all, just the day before, the mainstream media whipped itself into an impeachment orgy based on a fake “bombshell” from the internet equivalent of the National Enquirer, BuzzFeed. Nor was that the first clue (or the hundredth)  that the media can’t be trusted, particularly when it comes to conservatives and MAGA hats. Journalists have disgraced themselves progressively (in both definitions of the word)  since at least the 2008 Presidential campaign; they cannot be trusted, and their abdication of ethical journalism now poses a direct threat to democracy. The members of the public who eagerly accepted the attack on the Covington school kids as fact aided and abetted divisive propaganda that they want to be true.

Writes Marta Hernandez about this incident in part at Victory Girls (which I am adding today to the Ethics Alarms links): Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Round-Up, 1/20/2019: Blogging Angry

/ Jack Marshall / 71 Comments

Yeeee-hah!

I’ve been angry all day about the absolute perfidy and vicious dishonesty of the news media, magnified by the hate-fed gullibility of my friends on social media. I wanted to wait until my fury subsided before composing the warm-up. No luck.

1. The most egregious example of incompetent, biased, mob journalism yet? Meh. That story of how online left-wing gossip site BuzzFeed concocted a fake report that suggested impeachable conduct by Donald Trump, and how it was accepted without question by the mainstream media which spent all day feeding a buzz about imminent impeachment until the Mueller investigation had to make a public announcement that the story was crap? The New York Times had it on page 11. The original false story, of course, was on the front page, above the fold. Just for giggles, I checked to see what Rachel Maddow was saying at MSNBC, since she is supposed to be the Best of the Worst, and MSNBC had been reveling in a virtual impeachment orgy. I guess she has been learning at the knee of Al Sharpton; maybe his office is next to hers. She went full Tawana Brawley. Rachel’s spin was that just because this didn’t happen doesn’t mean it couldnt have happened, because we all know that Trump should be impeached and thus this doesn’t really change anything. Then she brought on the editor of BuzzFeed who told her audience that he stands by his story.

I’ve been feeling a lot like Cassandra lately. Long ago I concluded that Maddow was a charismatic fraud, smug and pursuing an agenda, and completely untrustworthy. “Oh no!” protested several of my moderate and progressive friends in the ethics field. She’s wonderful! Funny! Fair! Never biased!

One reason I’m angry is that so many of my friends have allowed themselves and their integrity to be corrupted. I expected better of them. Maddow is an ethics corrupter.

2. Then there was the Catholic schoolboy in the MAGA hat. This was a flash Ethics Train wreck I stumbled upon it on Facebook: one of my friends there posted a CNN link with a video about an ugly episode after the March for Life in which a group of Catholic school teens wearing MAGA hats harassed and mocked an elderly Native American man who was engaged in some kind of religious ritual. In response to a comment, my friend wrote that this was one more ugly example of what the current “racist environment” had created—in other words, it’s all Trump’s fault. Since the guy is in a profession in which integrity as well as objective and unbiased consideration of facts is part of the job description, I felt this cheap shot was not only unwarranted but misleading to others who might regard him as more than just the usual Facebook goof, and so I noted that a) wearing a Trump campaign cap doesn’t make you racist and b) because someone misbehaves wearing a Trump hat no more implicates him than wearing a Boston Red Sox cap implicated Alex Cora. His response was to write me a terse note demanding that I not comment on his edicts, and then he blocked me.

That turned out to be just  the beginning. I hadn’t followed it, but the story turned out to be yet another manufactured fake news story in support of an anti-Trump narrative. The video was deceptively edited. The Native American Man confronted the kids, not the other way around, and a couple of them smirked at the old wacko beating a drum in their faces. He turned out to be a serial activist who had pulled such stunts before, trying to provoke confrontations. He, it turned out, was mocking the boys, not the other way around. Meanwhile, a radical Black Nationalist group was also shouting at the kids. Continue reading →

Is The NFL Anthem Protest Ethics Train Wreck The Dumbest Of Them All?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It would seem so. Gladys Knight agreed to sing the National Anthem at the Soper Bowl, and is getting criticized. Why? “The legendary singer is being criticized for agreeing to take the gig in light of some fans boycotting the National Football League over its treatment of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.”

One of the thinks that makes the NAPETR so mind-numbingly stupid is that the point of the pointless protest keeps changing, because the protesters just want to protest. Kaepernick, when he was a back-up quarterback of fading skills, claimed he was kneeling during the national anthem to protest “bodies in the streets” and “ people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” That was inarticulate, and also vague Black Lives Matter propaganda paired with a direct assault on the anthem, since he began by saying that the U.S. flag didn’t deserve his respect. Then other players began kneeling in “solidarity,” but claiming that the protest during the anthem had nothing to do with the anthem. When they were all justly criticized for bringing (incoherent, half-baked, virtue-signaling racial) politics into football games, the said they were protesting to exercise their First Amendment Rights. (There is no right for employees to protest in the workplace), Then when President Trump attacked the protesters and the NFL teams for putting up with them, the kneeling was explained (by some) as a protest against President Trump, a nice safe default these days. Now the kneeling is partially justified as a protest against no NFL team hiring a mediocre quarterback whose grandstanding created a huge public relations problem for the league and who cost it many millions of dollars.

Now a pop singer, whose job is to entertain people, is being told she should not entertain people and should refuse to honor the anthem and the flag with her talents because these topics are too important. Of course, whatever Kaepernick thought he was protesting, there was not an electron of a chance that it would accomplish anything positive , particularity since what he was protesting–-you can’t just assume that any police officer is guilty and stop paying him, you moron—was based on bias, racism and ignorance. So why should Gladys withhold her talents from a national sports event that brings Americans of all races and creeds together? Oh, that’s right: because Amy Shumer says so.

This is like a bad Ionesco play.

Ann Althouse’s four reasons that the attacks on Knight are wrong are…

1. Don’t criticize Gladys Knight.

2. Don’t make singing the National Anthem into a bad thing,

3. The question of protesting the National Anthem is separate, and if you want to defend the players who have been protesting, you’re making a big leap if you go from arguing that the protest is respectful, respectable, and permissible to saying that protest is required and anyone not protesting is to be disrespected,

4. Those who are making that big leap are confirming the fears of the kind of people who worry that once something is permitted we’re on a slippery slope to its being required.

Here are mine: Continue reading →

The Prince Flips His Car

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Well, Prince Philip finally did something useful. Not long before my father died at 89, he asked the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles if they wouldtest his driving skills to determine whether he should  surrender his license. They refused, saying that that they had neither the funding nor the inclination to do that.

This week, the Duke of Edinburgh, 97 years young as they say, flipped his Land Rover and injured another motorist while driving by himself on a country road. He said the sun was in his eyes, the same excuse famously used by a member of the 1962 Mets after he missed a ground ball. Why the hell is Price Philip still driving? The New York Times article about this foolishness is called “After a Crash, Prince Philip, 97, Stokes Debate on Older Drivers.” Continue reading →

Illumination From The Shutdown Follies

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

In this remarkable video, a park ranger explains to park visitors that while they are certainly free to enjoy the park, they can’t pick up litter while they are there.

I’m not kidding.

Is it fair to make general assumptions about federal employees and our government bureaucracies based on the babbling of this poor ranger?

Sure it is.

For one thing, anyone who has dealt with bureaucrats recognizes this mentality, although  admittedly Mr. Ranger is an extreme and depressing  case. Too often they don’t think, refuse to think, or are incapable of critical thought….in other words, they are incompetent for doing anything but following black letter instructions, and as soon as circumstances render those instructions less than applicable, they retreat into the Twilight Zone of Power Without Ethics.

A competent and trustworthy government doesn’t ever put its citizens in the position of having someone in authority lecture them on why it is against the rules to pick up litter in a public place because you haven’t been formally designated a volunteer. A competent and trustworthy government never places an individual this incapable of rational action and thought in a position of power over the liberty of citizens. I am not a libertarian—far from it—but if you wanted to find a video to bolster the cause of libertarian ism, you would be hard pressed to find better.

I have compassion for the poor ranger; he has no idea what to do. However, if you don’t have the reasoning skills to say, “Sure, pick up all the litter you want. Thanks” in this situation, you really have no business wearing a uniform. I agree with the commentator. The unofficial volunteers should have defied the edict, kept picking up litter. and dared the guy to arrest them, warning him that he and his bosses would be subjected to merciless public ridicule, and that he would almost certainly be fired.

This video also illustrates why, outside of Washington, D.C. and some leftist bubbles, the fact that the government shutdown has resulted in some federal employees  being furloughed is not seen as an existential tragedy. They are seen, and the video shows why they are seen, as frequently under-qualified, over-paid, overly secure, definitely richly-perked people who are given too much power to constrain our choices and liberty without the sense, ability, accountability and motivation to do so well or fairly.

___________________

Pointer: Michael

Demanding Blindfolds

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

From the New York Times:

“Netflix said on Thursday that it would not edit its movie “Bird Box” to remove footage of a disaster that killed 47 people in a Canadian town, rebuffing calls from town leaders who called the use of the video insensitive.”

Good.

This has got to stop somewhere, and “Bird Box,” the sensationally popular sci-fi horror film about Sandra Bullock and her children wandering around a forest blidfolded so they won’t see whatever it is that is driving everyone crazy and making them kill themselves, is a good a place to make a stand as anywhere.

In the movie, some things, or demons, or vibes cause insanity if they are seen: people really aren’t safe if they see them. Images that raise unpleasent thoughst and memories in real life are different, but somehow the idea was pawned that people have the right to expect to be “safe” from thoughts, memories, sights, symbols and ideas that might bother them. Thus “woke” college instructors felt compelled to give students “trigger warnings.” This principle, a really bad one that mistakes censorship for sensitivity, quickly metastasized into historical and artistic airbrushing. The National Park Service banned Confederate flags and their images from battlefield  gift shops—might remind some people of the Dylan Roof church shooting. Or slavery. Or racism.  Then the statues started coming down, because, as Carol Folt, blessedly outgoing chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explained about why the terrifying pedestal of now toppled “Silent Sam,” a campus statue of a fictional Confederate soldier, must be destroyed:

“The presence of the remaining parts of the monument on campus poses a continuing threat both to the personal safety and well-being of our community and to our ability to provide a stable, productive educational environment. No one learns at their best when they feel unsafe.”

Unsafe! Continue reading →

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 1/19/19: It’s Fake News Day!

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

Welcome to the Ethics Alarms Dead Zone!

Increasingly, almost nobody comes here on Saturdays. For me, Saturday is when I have time to catch up on ethics issues, and that’s fun for me. Everybody else doesn’t find ethics fun? How strange…

1. Another day, another fake news story designed to thrill and energize the “resistance.” BuzzFeed published a “bombshell” about Michael Cohen, that impeccably reliable witness, telling investigators that President Trump instructed him to lie to Congress about his pre-election hotel plans—odd that, since there is nothing illegal about planning to build a hotel in Moscow. Without checking sources, without considering the media source’s record of those of the reporters (one of whom has a well-documented pattern of making stuff up), the mainstream media was off to the impeachment races, with CNN and MSNBC in particular talking about almost nothing else all day.  Then, as the day edged into evening, the Mueller investigation dropped its own bombshell, taking the remarkable step of declaring the BuzzFeed story a lot of hooey.  Some pundits on the Right who trust today’s incompetent news media as much as I do even suggested that BuzzFeed knew its claim was false all along, but were confident that nobody could prove it except the Mueller investigation itself, and of course it would never speak up. The same logic was behind Clifford Irving’s Howard Hughes autobiography hoax (Irving assumed that the reclusive Hughes would never come forward to expose him—but he did.)

The Daily Caller quickly compiled a list of eleven previous botched news reports related to the “collusion” narrative, and it was not all of them by any means. I haven’t checked, but I am quite sure that there were not this many mainstream media headline-generating news stories that proved to be false in the past ten Presidencies combined. What will it take for the industry to declare its performance a crisis? What will it take for even the “resistance” to conclude that their pals the journalists are hacks? Blogger Ann Althouse is so disgusted that she has taken to drawing rat cartoons and diagramming the sentences in anti-Trump screeds. “How embarrassing for the Trump haters,” she writes. “I didn’t even write about the BuzzFeed story myself. I’m so jaded about the latest impeachment bait.”

Why isn’t everybody? It isn’t just bias that makes you stupid. Hate makes you stupid too. Worse than that, it makes you LOOK stupid.

Entertaining accounts of the BuzzFeed fiasco are here and here. Continue reading →

From The Ethics Alarms “Double Standards” Files: Should Tulsi Gabbard Have To Apologize?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Like Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, like millions of Americans in both political parties, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard began with a belief that the institution of marriage was limited to heterosexuals and partners of opposite sexes. Over time, evaluating the issues, human, legal and ethical, she came to the conclusion that she was originally mistaken, like almost all of civilization, and changed her position Apparently that’s not good enough.

Now Gabbard, who last week announced she was running for president, is apologizing profusely for her past views on gay rights and her past work for an advocacy group, the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, which was run by her father, State Senator Mike Gabbard. “In my past I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to people in the LGPTQ community and to their loved ones,” Rep. Gabbard says in a video posted to YouTube. “My views have changed significantly since then,” she added, “and my record in Congress over the last six years reflects what is in my heart: a strong and ongoing commitment to fighting for LGBTQ rights.”

Admittedly Gabbard hasn’t merely been a passive part of the past majority that opposed gay marriage; she’s been one of the leaders of it. When she first ran for office in 2002, (she was 21) she said that working “to pass a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage” had taught her that “real leaders are willing to make personal sacrifices for the common good.” After being elected to the state legislature  in 2006, she could be fairly called an anti-gay rights activist. She led a group called Stop Promoting Homosexuality America and hosted an anti-gay radio show called “Let’s Talk Straight Hawaii.” As a result, many gays, activists and not, are pronouncing her permanently tainted.

“We would hope that people have lifelong values of equality and inclusion that have been demonstrated over their lifetime,” said Stephanie Sandberg, the president of LPAC, an advocacy group for LGBT women. “From my point of view, this does not make good presidential material, especially from a progressive perspective.” Continue reading →

Is There A “Naked State Legislator Principle”? [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I guess we may find out.

In a profile of Virginia’s new House of Delegates member Lee Carter, one of the Ocasio-Cortez school socialists that snuck into the Virginia’s House under the Democratic Party banner, the New York Times quotes him as tweeting this as part of his (smart) efforts to get all of his dirty career and personal laundry out and in public before the next election:

“Just like everyone else under 35, I’m sure explicit images or video of me exists out there somewhere. That’s just a reality of dating in the smartphone era.”

I could concentrate on the statement itself, which does not bode well for Carter’s ethical decision-making in the future. It is, after all, an appeal to the biggest rationalization of them  all, #1 on the list, “Everybody does it,” as he is suggesting that if “everyone else” exposes their naughty bits inline, it’s a responsible thing to do. Carter also evokes #41 (I HATE #41),  The Evasive Tautology, or “It is what it is” as well as 1A, Ethics Surrender, or “We can’t stop it,” claiming that there is no choice other than to go full-Weiner to court the opposite sex.  In fact, there are other choices, like being modest and responsible, and not sending your crotch into cyber-space where it can get into all sorts of mischief.

While we are here, I also have to ask what “explicit images or video” means. Explicit how? Is Carter really saying that it doesn’t matter whether an explicit video shows him flexing in the mirror of going full Louis C.K.?

The statement itself suggest to me that Carter is neither especially ethical, trustworthy or bright, but then I don’t consider socialists ethical, trustworthy or bright. They want to constrain personal liberty and autonomy, and advocate increased government  incursions on our freedom based on their presumed superior priorities and values. They also are either unaware of how routinely socialism has failed, or dishonestly choose to pretend otherwise.

But I digress. The issue at hand is whether in this “smartphone era” an elected official should be able to maintain that his (or her) explicit photos or videos in no way reflect on fitness to serve. Continue reading →

BREAKING! Facebook Is Again Allowing Ethics Alarms Links! [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

After over a month of back and forth with Facebook, excuses, different messages, error messages (like the one above) and being told “It’s A Wonderful Life” commentary violates community standards, I can (which means YOU can) once again share Ethics Alarms posts on Facebook, at least today.

And believe me, I’m going to share the hell out of them.

Just thought I should let you know.

ADDENDUM: I just got back from walking Rugby…

…in the melting snow, and had a chance to muse further. This episode has angered me, and I will not trust Facebook (though I never have), and more importantly Facebook users, including my alleged friends. Someone tried to silence me online, and that was just an escalation of what I have witnessed from Facebook’s majority for more than two years. They have used their “likes” and “angry face” emojis to try to indoctrinate the public into ideological conformity, weaponizing what was once a friendly platform for civil conversation and the exchange of information into a hostile environment for anyone not inclined to toe the partisan line. In this new and oppressive echo chamber, the response to good faith efforts to correct media misrepresentation and civic or historical ignorance is to gang-swarm the intruder, and, as the old Chinese saying has it, beat down the nail that dares to stick out. For the most part, it works.

Well, not with me. I had the honor and luck to be raised by a man, the best, bravest most honest I have ever known, who was a lifelong iconoclast, rebel and contrarian, though he was also always pleasant about it and never blamed people for being less perspicacious than he was. (I’m working on it, Dad…) I saw him pay the price with a frequently interrupted employment record, few close friends, and a loss of some lucrative opportunities that would have required him to compromise his principles, which were never for sale. I also say him live his life without ever regretting his intellectual independence and courage under fire for a second.

I’m not forgetting what they tried to do to me and Ethic Alarms over the past two months. The gloves are off.