The chair is empty.
I’m going to hand the blog over to you right now, since I am temporarily incapable of going two minutes without sneezing, coughing, gagging or sleeping. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up on posting some Comments of the Day as well, since that takes about a tenth as much time as a full post. Or maybe I’ll just crawl off into the snow and let nature take its course.
Yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself. Make me proud, ethics lovers…
Ethics Alarms 
https://variety.com/2019/film/news/bohemian-rhapsody-loses-glaad-award-nomination-bryan-singer-1203116481/
Pulling an entire film about a gay icon from consideration for a gay themed award because of accusations against the director. What do you think?
How old are the accusations?
Almost 20 years in some cases, but they involve minors.
There is no ethical problem allowing those raped or abused as minors to publish the accusation as late as their twenty-fifth birthday.
No ethical problem there, at all. But is there an ethical problem with removing a film for consideration for an award, thereby punishing the entire cast and crew, because of its association with a director who’s had accusations leveled against him?
Agreed, I thought we had settled the ethics of collective punishments a long time ago.
I would agree with the idea of people raped or abused making the accusations. However, what about people who are making accusations without being raped or abused? How do you distinguish between the two? In other words, I think making the accusation without any evidence is unethical. I am thinking about the case of Rosanne Barr accused her parents of molesting her as a child. How much less damage would have been done if someone had asked her what evidence she really had that her parents had molested her?
http://www.fmsfonline.org/index.php?news2018update=Roseanne%20Barr%20No%20Longer%20Alleging%20Sexual%20Abuse
Get better, sir.
I think I sent this to Jack in the past, nut I don’t think he ever posted it:
https://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2017/06/doing-the-right-thing-costs-marshall-golfer/
-Jut
Man, if all our sports had the integrity requirements of golf…
I nominate her for ethics hero, but I suspect things like this happen more frequently than those of us outside the sport see it. This is a good thing, as exemplary behavior from the veterans teaches the newcomers how it’s supposed to be.
My congressional representative (D, 2019) complains about military being used as the president sees fit, to secure the border, this statement is pretty incoherent to me:
“Never be used to advance a political agenda…” really? So now the military can only engage in altruistic missions that they democratically decide to take by making these insular decisions in a vacuum?
I can hardly think of a military mission in my lifetime that was not driven by a political agenda. Military decisions are driven by little else.
…but only if Democrats make the political decisions. Otherwise it ought to not be allowed.
/snark
So what are the ethics of “toxic masculinity?” Consider:
1 The American psychological Association has stated that:
“The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors. [my emphasis]”
2 The media along with educational institutions have conflated the terms “traditional masculinity” and “toxic masculinity” to represent the same idea, that males socialized in the way that has been considered “normal” for the entirety of the existence of the United States is, in fact, something to be treated as a social ill. For all intents and purposes, the APA, and those embracing their “findings,” have declared men not socialized in an approved manner to be dangerous to themselves and others. Further defining traditional behavior as “toxic” has placed most normal men outside the societal mainstream in the view of the APA and its adherents.
What does all this mean for traditional male roles, i.e. dangerous work like military and police force employment, construction work, factory and the mining sector work, and other similar dangerous jobs? The very behaviors that define the new “toxic masculinity” are the ones such jobs most benefit from. But are colleges now going to make it difficult for men expressing “toxic masculinity” to get in, or stay in? That seems to be the goal, unless they allow themselves to be re-socialized into the soft, squishy girly-men that the Left finds acceptable.
I am reminded of the Star Trek (original series) episode, “The Cloud Minders,” and to a lesser extent, the movie Elysium. The Left wants toxic males working in dangerous jobs far from them, while they admire each other in leisure and comfort.
Equality: It’s for everyone… well, mostly. Some are more equal than others, I guess.
When institutional psychologists, with all the attendant scientistic ideology, become aligned with the state and with the intentions and purposes of (what seems to me often to be) a perverse state; and when these people and these ideologies also run educational institutions; and when all these people and their ideologies operate to remold men and women to serve purposes about which I have profound suspicions, I admit to becoming inclined to image that we exist in a regime not un-similar to that of a Maoist sort. I am also thinking of when the Communists ran mental institutions and attempted engineering on people whose ideas or viewpoints they did not like: those who would not submit to their rule essentially.
Coercion, psychological manipulation, even propaganda and also advertising: these are part of manipulation-technology that is central to the system we live in and under. They simply seem to have become too powerful. It is a strange and I think dangerous time. The more that it comes into focus, the more dangerous it seems. Hard to say where it is all tending.
I agree with all this. Where it is trending is… not good.
When institutional psychologists, with all the attendant scientistic ideology, become aligned with the state and with the intentions and purposes of (what seems to me often to be) a perverse state; and when these people and these ideologies also run educational institutions; and when all these people and their ideologies operate to remold men and women to serve purposes about which I have profound suspicions, I admit to becoming inclined to image that we exist in a regime not un-similar to that of a Maoist sort. I am also thinking of when the Communists ran mental institutions and attempted engineering on people whose ideas or viewpoints they did not like: those who would not submit to their rule essentially.
Coercion, psychological manipulation, even propaganda and also advertising: these are part of manipulation-technology that is central to the system we live in and under. They simply seem to have become too powerful. It is a strange and I think dangerous time. The more that it comes into focus, the more dangerous it seems. Hard to say where it is all tending.
Plucky undocumented..oops, illegal immigrant with fake documents…will be special stunt casting guest at the State of the Union address…
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/undocumented-woman-worked-trump-golf-045522596.html
I hope ICE is ready for action.
Does she have an ethical right to complain if she were deported soon after….
No more so than a deserter being apprehended.
How does someone who is in the country illegally with fake documents get through security for the state of the union address? I know the answer is going to be ‘a member of Congress sponsors them.’ The question I want to know is “Can I get my Congressman to sponsor me and go to the SOTU address wearing a MAGA had and carrying a loaded AR-15′? I’m pretty sure the answer is ‘no’, which is why I haven’t actually asked. I wouldn’t seriously consider doing it, I just wanted to show the comparison.
Dear Secret Service, please read the sentence right before this one FIRST!
Many times, we are told to defer to ‘the experts’ on a variety of problems. However, I feel that this is often very, very dangerous. Just because you are an expert does not mean you are ethical or even a good person.
I posted the paragraph below on the abortion/infanticide post. Our medical establishment is composed of people with no more (and perhaps less) ethical standards than the general public. When the infanticide issue came up in the 1980’s, the cry was “this is a medical decision”. The insinuation was that all the hick Christian Republicans shouldn’t be allowed to have a say in what the hip Democratic, educated physicians did. I’m glad Reagan didn’t back down. Recent events have show that he wasn’t able to sop it, however, he just drove it underground.
Democracy may not be perfect, majority rule may not always get it right, but forbidding the public from having a say in these matters or suggesting they don’t have a right to determine them is much, much worse.
“The fact that people think that Democrats don’t support infanticide is a testament to the whitewashing of history done by our schools and the press. It was quite common for pediatricians to kill babies with birth defects. Usually they were ‘made comfortable’ and fluids were withheld. The babies die in a few days. From the remarks of the governor, it seems this practice has resumed (or it has always been done in quiet).
This practice was widespread and studies were done to see if you could kill the children of the poor, operate and treat the children of the rich, and do it without the poor parents finding out. It turns out you can and the doctors involved (at University of Oklahoma Children’s Hospital) published how to do it in the article “Early Treatment and Decision Making for the Treatment of Myelomeningocele”. Pediatrics, Vol 72, No. 4 Oct 1, 1983. Imagine, physicians decide who lives or who dies based on who their parents are. Sounds like a ‘death panel’, doesn’t it?
This practice came to light in the Baby Doe case in Indiana in 1982. Ronald Reagan issued executive orders against such infanticide, but the AMA and the Democrats were against it. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to forbid it.
So, the Democrats and Democrat physicians have been dedicated to infanticide for decades. Nothing has changed. The only thing new is that you know about it.”
Ruled it unconstitutional to block it by executive order? At the Federal level? Or in general? The Supreme Court often rules on the most narrow possible grounds….
They ruled he couldn’t withhold federal funds from hospitals that perform it. That is really the only discipline the federal government can use to enforce behavior by physicians. They can’t be denied as a Medicare provider just because they are killing babies through neglect.
Jack, in hopes of your complete recovery, I hope you are consenting to some close attention from one or more good and ethical physicians. I get the impression that you avoid doctors. Don’t do that. True, it’s easy to fall prey to the “practice” of medicine. I know that too well. But, at some point, you have to entrust your prospects for healing to someone who is supposed to facilitate and enhance the same. Sorry for preaching – I do trust that your judgment is better than my own. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be reading your blog.
No, I only avoid over-use of the system that is rampant and expensive and that distorts the system, especially among seniors, young at heart though I am. A bad cold is still a cold, and there’s not a thing a doctor can’t tell you that you don’t already know. Now, the second the stuff in my Kleenex starts looking like the creatures in “Green Slime,” THEN I need antibiotics, and I’ll be seeing my doc.