I anticipate a whole bushel of these awards in the next two years, since the young, callow, naive and broadly ignorant “new face of the Democratic Party” possesses the unfortunate combination of a non-stop mouth, poor education, certitude of her own brilliance, a seal-clapping rookery of blindly fawning supporters who swoon at any of her doctrinaire pronouncements, and a Mainstream media that hasn’t yet figured out that publishing her every word is doing Ocasio-Cortez no favors.
This example could stand as a template for an Ethics Dunce- mandating performance. Showing that she has the back of her equally cocky and clueless colleague, freshman Congress woman Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, lately infamous for gleefully crowing, “We’re going to impeach the motherfucker!” to a “resistance” crowd after she was sworn in, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted,
“Republican hypocrisy at its finest: saying that Trump admitting to sexual assault on tape is just ‘locker room talk,’ but scandalizing themselves into faux-outrage when my sis says a curse word in a bar. GOP lost entitlement to policing women’s behavior a long time ago. Next.”
This is both unethical and cretinous. Let us count the ways:
- Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t know what hypocrisy means. There is nothing hypocritical about justly objecting to a member of Congress breaching all protocol and traditions of civility while referring to the President of the United states in a public statement, after questioning the fairness and propriety of using a surreptitiously taped non-public comment made while a candidate was a private citizen to impugn his character.
- Proving that she will be dealing in deceit in the years to come, Ocasio-Cortez falsely suggests that the objections to calling the President of the United States a “motherfucker” was merely an objection to the use of vulgar language. She knows better. The problems were 1) using such a disrespectful term to describe not only a political adversary but the President 2) breaching the duty of a high elected official to model the best behavior for the public, and not gutter vulgarity and hate. 3) Her proclamation of the objective of performing a political coup, which is what using impeachment the way she (and many other Democrats) is proposing would be.
- Employing the unethical technique of trying to rebut one part of an argument as if it is a rebuttal of the whole thing, Ocasio-Cortez’s words suggest that only Republicans objected to Tlaib’s ugly statement. As she knows well, many Democrats in the House and elsewhere were equally critical.
- Ironically, the Democrats were being hypocritical, because they really DO want to impeach the motherfucker; they just don’t want to be honest about it.
- Also hypocritical: Ocasio-Cortez. Trump’s “locker room talk” involved only one word, “pussy,” that is not regarded as acceptable in public discourse (but then, he has never used the word in public.) But Ocasio-Cortez supports the Women’s March which proudly featured “pussy hats,” and called them just that. “Motherfucker” would not be acceptable public discourse even from a non-Congress member, and even used to describe someone who is not President.
- Trump did not “admit sexual assault” on the tape. This is an old, false, Hillary Clinton campaign talking point. I have dealt with this before.
- “In a bar” is more dishonest spin and deceit. The locale of the public statement by Ocasio-Cortez’s “sister” (yechh!) is irrelevant. The point is that it was a public statement, in front of a crowd. The socialist New Yorker is intentionally misrepresenting the episode as if Tlaib was overheard while tossing back a couple of brewskis.
- And, of course, we have the obligatory gender-baiting, as if a male Representative calling the President a “motherfucker” would have been ignored. Her tweet is sexist.
Ocasio-Cortez is gift to Trump, Republicans, and conservatives. Just think: she’s said so many idiotic and unethical things, and her term has barely started. Ignorant, sexist and unjustifiably convinced of your own brilliance is no way to go through life, kid.
Addendum 1: CNN disgracefully attempted to whitewash Tlaib’s comment and bolster Ocasio-Cortez false spin by writing “New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is defending her fellow new Democratic congresswoman, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, for using profanity in referring to President Donald Trump.” The news media has an obligation to frame the story and issues accurately. The controversy over Tlaib’s remarks was not isolated to her use of “profanity,” which is also an intentionally ambiguous term chosen by CNN to mislead uninformed readers. The correct description would have been “obscenity” or “vulgarity.”
Addendum 2: The photogenic Rep also has an unusually expressive face, and has been caught by the camera in many moments where she appears frantic, crazed, or insane. Conservative websites and publications have been taking great joy in using these photos, much in the way they chose to use wacky photographs of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. The technique is unfair, misleading, a Golden Rule breach and unethical.
Addendum 3: An amusing note critics of the young socialist have taken to calling her “Occasional-Cortex.” This is unethical, but WordPress, which has pretty hit and miss spellcheck program, flags her name and suggests I intended to type…you guessed it.
Ethics Alarms 
“seal clapping rookery of blindly fawning supporters who swoon”
Marvelously smithed!
Ocasio-Cortez probably thinks: “A 70% income tax rate isn’t so bad because you’d be allowed to keep the other 60%.” (H/T David Blaska)
Paul Krugman evidently thinks she’s right (from behind the NYT paywall).
You beat me to it Paul W. It is gorgeous, this “seal clapping rookery of blindly fawning supporters who swoon,” — a veritable post-modern artwork of a home for (old) crows, filled with sightless seals applauding the delicately fainting young deer. Or perhaps a Salvatore Dali . . . .
I can just see the battles to come between her and Pelosi, with the current crop of highly visible Democratic Party women if they can’t get thier shit together, I wonder when 2020 rolls around if the democrats will regret winning in 2018 and proving they are currently unfit to govern.
I suspect that Madame Speaker will bring AOC, Tlaib and the other more obstreperous freshmen to heel rather quickly. Whatever else you might say about Pelosi, she’s no dummy.
And AOC would be wise to remember that one of the first rules of being a public figure is not to take your own press releases as gospel.
AIM, I’m not so sure. Pelosi will be able to exercise much sway over AOC. AOC doesn’t seem to need money. Nancy controls people with money. AOC seems to be defying gravity. She gets all the free press she wants. I think the whackjob socialist caucus has people like Tom Steyer and George Soros doling money to them directly. And they can raise money via the interweb from other kids. I think they are a real problem for Pelosi.
Good points, OB. Which said… reality will come up hard on the ‘whackjob socialist caucus’ soon enough when Pelosi either spikes its initiatives or tugs the leashes of those who DO need the money.
You’re right, AIM. Nancy’s an operator. But I have to wonder whether forty years from now AOC will be the revered, veteran, Speaker of the House with as much hair dye and plastic surgery as Nancy has now, and the U.S. will be a social democracy, you know, like Venezuela is a social democracy.
Well, if that comes to pass, at least the actuarial tables suggest that I won’t be around to see it.
Don’t wonder. A better predication is that AOC will lead the way to an epic rejection of her party in 2020.
Please do explain that.
Sure. The nation is still overwhelmingly NOT socialist. They do not want huge tax increases. They are dubious about draconian climate change policies. They do not like political discourse among elected officials to be hateful and obscene. They do not like seeing men vilified. Pelosi and the older Democrats have neither the energy nor the integrity to fight the base, and allowing AOC and other extremists to define the party will guarantee Trump’s re-election and the loss of the House majority.
It would be nice and it’s plausible, near term. I just think over the next forty years as AOC and her contemporaries take over the country demographically, the appeal of free stuff will carry the day. Of course I’ll be long gone. Kids don’t seem to grow up as they get older any more. Of course, look at Bernie or Noam or Krugman (or Fidel) if you want to see perpetual adolescence in the flesh.
There is some hope on the horizon. I was reading just the other day that the next generation (the one after the Millennials that doesn’t seem to have a catchy name yet) are eschewing college at higher rates than the previous generation, and instead choosing skilled trades. This is important, because people who do actual sweaty work for a living tend to be a bit more protective of their income, and thus less likely to support huge government spending programs. It also means those kids won’t have their brains converted to high-quality fertilizer by agenda-driven college professors.
Will it be enough to reverse the troubling trends America is facing? I don’t know. But there’s at least a faint glimmer of hope.
Thanks, Jack. You hadn’t wrapped all that together in such a nice, neat (hopeful) package before.
Jeff, can’t find a “Reply” at the bottom of your post (this happens sometimes; don’t know why) so I don’t know if you’ll see this. You get full credit for steering me into the “trade school” news – it’s not the “faint glimmer of hope” you mentioned: it’s a full on turnaround. Here are some of the latest quotes:
From 2006 to 2007, revenue at trade schools saw collective growth of 5% to 6%. In the year between 2013 and 2014, that number was 12%. The U.S. Department of Education reports that while there were roughly 9.66 million students attending trade schools in 1999, an estimated 16 million were enrolled 2014. In other words, trade schools are adding students roughly as fast as colleges are losing them.
[While it’s true that] more American workers will continue to be replaced by robots, America is actually in the middle of a pretty serious skills shortage. . . . “So the upside is, If you know how to build, program, operate or repair those robots, the world is your oyster. . . . According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while 7.8 million Americans were listed as unemployed in the summer of 2016, there were also 5.8 million unfilled jobs. Employers simply couldn’t reconcile the gap between the skills needed to fill those jobs and the qualifications of most applicants.” . . . In other words, for every Bachelor of Arts out there driving an Uber, there’s a building project without a good welder. . . . “Common courses of study include mechanical, electrical, automotive, carpentry, plumbing and other “shop” skills. But trade schools may also include fields as diverse as culinary arts, music production, broadcasting, graphic design, computer programming, fashion design, cosmetology, and filmmaking. In the field of healthcare alone, from nursing to administration of an ever-growing array of medical technologies, trade skills are in demand.
The facts are that unless you already have the desire, the attainments and a scholarship to carry you four or six years or more in the lowest cost state university, with no guarantee of a job and debt over $30,000, you can walk out of your graduation from a vocational institute in two years into a job waiting for you, and a debt under one-third of the college grad that you can start paying off right away. It’s an attractive life alternative and getting more so every day. … now, how’s that for a good start in a right
direction?
AOC, Harris, Warren, Pelosi, Feinstein, Hillary and the rest of Democratic party women leaders are now in dominate position. President Obama, Clinton and Joe Biden are not invited to this next phase.
It seems to me that most of the current democratic women leaders are fatally flawed, it may not matter to democrats but I think it will to the rest of the country if these women continue to be the go to personalities for the media, and really who else is there now?
Also think of all the grandstanding that will start…….. anyday, to jockey for position to be the democratic party nominee for President.
Some are much more fatally flawed than others, but still…wow. What a crew.
The more I think about it I think the will have to destroy AOC, she can’t run for president so she will be free to feed the progressives and will inevitably put her at odds with those eying 2020, they will have to move left or have her sniping at them.
Is being much more fatally flawed like being very unique or being only a little pregnant?
Well, according to Pelosi’s daughter, “She’ll cut your head off, and you’ll never know your bleeding.”
You could also cut HER head off, and nobody would know the difference…
There’s that.
This from Mitch Albom:
… I feel compelled to write about Tlaib’s choice of words, because it’s a new low in a cesspool of human relations we call politics, and to not acknowledge that is to indirectly condone it, especially since Tlaib is from our backyard, Detroit, and more especially since she defended her comments by saying that’s how people in our city speak.
“We say colorful things in interesting ways,” she told WDIV-TV.
Uh, no. We don’t. Calling someone a “mother****er” isn’t colorful, it’s profane. It’s not interesting, it’s lazy. And it’s not really how many of us want the rest of the country to view our vocabulary here in the Motor City.
And since Tlaib’s title is “Representative,” I’m disappointed she didn’t know that.
And how’s that for a new variation on “Everybody does it?”
“Everybody in my home town [or Congressional district] does it.” Beauty, eh?
And can we reflect for a moment upon the term “motherfucker.”
Literally, “a person who engages in sex with their mother.” What exactly is that supposed to mean or say about a person? A person who likes incest? But isn’t incest usually pinned to the older person involved? Does it mean a person who despises their mother? A person who likes their mother too much? A person who has for a mother a person who wants to have sex with her children? Is it homophobic? Doesn’t it mean “mama’s boy?”
“Motherfucker” has always struck me as shocking and potent, but why exactly? Is it just cool because it’s black street argot? Does a Palestinian American even know what exactly it means? Is she entitled to appropriate African American street argot with impunity? I guess I’ve never used it as an insult because I don’t know what I’d really be saying. I’d use it carefully. It strikes me a being terribly freighted in black culture. Is saying you have sex with your mother the ultimate insult in an essentially matriarchal society? Is it a sneak attack on that society’s foundation? Some sort of admission of masculine powerlessness or emasculation?
Beuhler?
I think you’re overthinking this, OB . . . . It am what it am.
To the contrary, what the hell does it mean? People use it all the time? Why not say “Rumpelstilskin?” From wiki:
Motherfucker (sometimes abbreviated as mofo, mf, or mf’er) is an English-language vulgarism. While the word is usually considered highly offensive, it is rarely used in the literal sense of one who engages in sexual activity with another person’s mother, or his or her own mother. Rather, it refers to a mean, despicable, or vicious person, or any particularly difficult or frustrating situation. Alternatively, it can be a term of admiration, as in the phrase “bad ass motherfucker”, meaning a fearless and confident person.
So, “it is rarely used in its literal sense.” That’s absurd. I smell a cop out. Slang does not come out of thin air. Words have meaning. At least they used to have before the post modernists came along with “critical thinking,” which as near as I can tell means the exact opposite.
As in “son of a bitch”…
In the movie Don King: Only In America (Ving Rhames knocks the King role out of the park!) there’s a scene that takes the…um…reference somewhere it’d never been, and likely will never get to again.
Is this a great blog or what? Where else can you have the etymology of
“motherfucker” delivered to you on a video platter? Thanks Paul, yeah verily, you are indeed the man (to blatantly appropriate some more black guy argot).
”you are indeed the man”
You’re too kind, OB. I attribute that attribute to a niggling blend of full-a-$#!t-like-a-Christmas-Goose and randomly careening mental pathways.
If you’ve never seen the movie, IMO it’s a keeper.
Both attributes are admirable, Paulie. I think they can be combined to read: “You can’t kid a kidder.”
I really have to see that movie in its entirety. Maybe I’ll get my son to rent it on netflix and we can send the women and children out of the house and enjoy it together.
I once got into a fight with a drunk black man who called my wife a “M…F…”. Came very close to beating him to death. Cop pulled me off. Official judgement was that it was justified by provocation. I’d go along with ANY Trump response>
It’s “fighting words” exactly.
There are two examples of hypocrisy.
Many of Trump’s critics then defended Bill Clinton when he was accused of perjury. They said it was just sex. they said character did not matter. They said it was private. They said everybody does it. In fact, you created ther Ethics Scoreboard because of this event.
Had their arguments been rejected, had Clinton ended up resigning in disgrace, it would not have been hypocritical to criticize Trump for what was said on that tape. for there is no ethical obligation to continue using an argument that had already been rejected.
But that was not what happened.
their arguments worked, and set precedent for Trump.
Another hypocrisy regarding the tape is that many of the people who cheered the release of the tape to impugn Trump whine about Russians interfering and meddling in the election. all the Russians are alleged to have done was to simply release truthful information. if that is meddling and interference, so was the release of the Access Hollywood tape.
Can anyone demonstrate that NBC or the producers of Access Hollywood had a right to interfere with or meddle in the 2016 presidential election?
If such a right exists, why would not Russians have that same right?
Personally, I think Occasional-Cortex is pretty clever. She’s made herself fair game for this mockery.
In fairness, she looks crazed and frantic in videos too.
One of the more amazing things about AOC is that she graduated with a minor in economics from Boston University (which I’m embarrassed to admit was my alma mater. Never sent ’em a dime and don’t intend to, especially now). When I was there, the economics classes were pretty much straight up supply/demand and the economics/business students made no bones about wanting to make money.
That whirring sound you hear is John Silber spinning in his grave.
I HATE MEME’s
ANTI-MEME CRUSADE!
One thing that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t learned yet; she doesn’t have to speak like a ignorant fool to represent all the ignorant fools in her extremist wing of the political left. I’m pretty certain that she’ll never learn this because you can’t fix stupid.
Yes, how do an ignorant fools avoid talking like an ignorant fool, unless they just don’t talk? We saw the same problem during the GOP debates with both Carson and the President-to-be.
“…they open their mouths and remove all doubt”
Used to be the punchline to a proverb. Now SOP in politics.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/
… and the Ben Hur answer?
AOL is going to force Jack to come up with an “oak-leaf cluster” for his Ethic Dunce awards; no one’s “above left breast pocket” is large enough to collect what looks to be epic repetitions of the award.
And one should be careful in using any iteration of M-F in the presence of some you might think deserve it, just in case you think that a member of Congress using it as she did makes it OK. There are numerous examples nationwide of sudden, violent injury and death following such an utterance.
See my response, above.
The ‘Women’s March’ just cancelled a march in California because there were too many white women there. Currently, only 31% of women think abortion should be legal under all circumstances (the position of the Women’s March). About 60% of the US is white. About 1.5% is Jewish. The ‘Women’s March’ only represents about 18% of women in the US. Should they be allowed to be called the ‘Women’s March’ if they reject over 80% of women on ideological or racial grounds?