Happy Day!
Just got home from a very well-received legal ethics seminar in time to get off a post, walk Rugby, pull on the ol’ Depends and settle in while the Boston Red Sox beat the Seattle Mariners in their first game defending their 2018 World Championship…
1. Humble Talent is back. Humble Talent, an Ethics Alarms Commenter of the Year a few years back and one of the all-time outstanding participants in the ethics wars here, just registered his first comment in almost four months. Mu joy and relief are unalloyed. Welcome home, my friend.
2. A Keith Olbermann note. If you’ll forgive me for mentioning one of the biggest jerks in captivity twice in a day, Olbermann managed to enhance his reputation with this display of mega-jerkness. A Mississippi hunter shot an unusual turkey completely legally, and KO decided that this was sufficient justification to ruin his life…
The editor of the paper had the proper bemused response, writing, “Keith Olbermann says Brian Broom should be fired for writing this story. What was I thinking? I guess I should have fired our outdoors writer for writing about a hunter killing an unusual turkey during turkey hunting season.” What kind of human being calls on the social media mob to make someone’s life a living hell because he engaged in a legal act harming no one that that human being disagrees with? A really bad one—arrogant, cruel, irresponsible, and unfair. The Washington Free Beacon got a statement from ESPN, which currently employs Keith (when he’s in the mood, he’s an unusually astute and amusing baseball reporter), and they responded, “We have spoken to him about not making personal attacks.” Gee, that doesn’t seem to be working, does it?
3. A Fick sighting! Almost as rare as a white turkey is an Ethics Alarms Fick, a special designation for the peculiar ( and disgusting) breed of unethical person who is unethical, knows it, and rubs it in everyone else’s face, without regret or shame.
The Fick is pop star Cardi B, whose old Instagram video that resurfaced recently features her saying that she used to drug and rob men. The video, which Cardi says was made three years ago, features the singer reminiscing about the time when she worked as a stripper — a time when, she said,
“I had to go strip, I had to go, ‘Oh yeah, you want to fuck me? Yeah, let’s go back to this hotel,'” she said an an Instagram Live broadcast filmed three years ago. “And I drugged niggas up and I robbed them. That’s what I used to do.”
When the immediate reaction was a series of attacks on Twitter, Cardi B doubled down, making it clear that she was perfectly at peace with her past crimes, tweeting to critics,
I never claim to be a angel I always been a street bitch Ya be glorifying this street rappers that talk and do that grimmey street shit but they can’t stand a street bitch!
and…
IM THAT BITCH THEY LOVE TO HATE,IM THAT BITCH THEY HATE TO LOVE
and I love it
Theeeeeen the criticism got a little too hot, and apparently the hip hop star’s publicist pointed out that defiance in this case might not be the smartest strategy. So then we got this:
Is that a wonderful parade of rationalizations and ethics rot, or what?
- Nobody has to drug men (or women)and rob them. That’s not an “option” for anyone with a conscience. No, she did not have to harm and rob men “to survive.” Millions of people in dire circumstances find legal ways to survive that don’t require harming others.
- The men she drugged and robbed were “conscious and aware” that they were going to be drugged and robbed? Does anyone believe that, including Cardi B?
- “Right or wrong”? “Whether they were poor choices”? Psst-–moron! It was wrong, and they were poor choices!
- “I never claim to be perfect” is an especially dumb variation of Rationalization #19. The Perfection Diversion, or “Nobody’s Perfect!” and “Everybody makes mistakes!” We’re supposed to applaud because someone who drugged and robbed men doesn’t make the bananas claim that she’s perfect? I bet she never said she was a walnut, either. So what?
- “I always speak my truth” means she wouldn’t know truth from a bag of gummi worms. “My truth” is signature significance for an adherent of ethical relativity: whatever she thinks is right, is. Cardi B. is a narcissist and a sociopath.
Several commentators claim that this junk shows that Cardi regrets her past. Boy, I wish I had more Brooklyn Bridges to sell. I doubt that she even wrote this herself. I also doubt that those sympathetic critics noticed what she tweeted before she was told to stop doubling down. Meanwhile, what would happen to a male singer who admitted that he needed to drug and rob women to survive?
Ethics Alarms 
Re: Red Sox
I was planning to go to the Mariners-Sox game tomorrow… stuff came up. I’m sad. 😦
Glad you had a good day.
My Opening Day was good:
Brewers 5, Cardinals 4
BTW, I think it will come down to a Brewers-Red Sox World Series this year…
I hope this doesn’t become an unethical comment of the week or something, but I am looking forward to finding out how sweet Fenway Haderade is in October…
Welcome back, Humble!
jvb
Thanks… When Jack said four months, I realized that was probably right, it had just felt longer… This last four months felt like a decade.
3. The fact that people like “Cardi B” are revered and paid attention to is one of the major disasters to have occurred during my lifetime, second only to the destruction of the American academy. So distressing. I saw her latest statement in the Daily Mail or somewhere and tried to read it but couldn’t make it through. Who are these people? Why don’t they just go away?
Call me a Philistine, but who is Cardi B?
Exactamundo, jvb. You have to wiki these people.
Is it that recent though? There have been artists without ethics who have been revered for their art probably since art began. Yes, they now have a louder voice and longer reach, but the problem isn’t new.
Bill Cosby comes immediately to mind.
2. I guess Keith doesn’t hunt.
Old Jeff Foxworthy joke: “My brother-in-law showed me his camouflage wallet. I asked him why he would want his wallet to be hard to find, to which he responded, ‘I hunt.'”
I’ve been told by a hunter that wild turkeys are very difficult to kill and getting one is a nearly once in a lifetime thrill. I’ll take him at his word.
It doesn’t seem to be that hard to harvest turkeys in my area. It really depends where you live. I know people who get one almost every year.
What aggravates me the most about this is that the critics of hunting can’t seem to express why they oppose hunting. What is wrong with killing a turkey and eating it? Do you criticize everyone who eats turkey? What is the difference between him killing a turkey and eating it and a coyote killing a turkey and eating it? Why is it better to raise turkeys in factory farms to kill and eat?
Another trope of the anti-hunting crowd is that it is unsportsmanlike to kill animals with modern weapons because it is too easy. Then, when someone tries to hunt in a more challenging manner, one that gives the animal a fighting change to ‘win’, they complain again.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/08/john-boch/armour-dumps-hunters-hunters-returning-favor/
I think everyone should be required to kill and eat their own food at least once, just to understand the process.
I know Jeffery Dahmer, for one, agreed with you…
EEEWWWWW!!!
I wasn’t specifically thinking more along the lines of chicken, not Soylent green.
STOP THAT! Laughing that hard might unglue my incisions.
The docs frown on reopening holes THEY made. Makes ‘em hypocrites to my mind…
He’s right, turkeys are very difficult animals to hunt. They have incredibly good eyesight that is tuned to spot the tiniest movement, and very sharp hearing. They’re also generally hunted with shotguns or bows, so it’s fairly close-range stuff. It takes a lot of patience and discipline, unless you happen to get very lucky.
They are not actually all that hard to hunt IF (and it is a very big if) you have the time and capability to do the pre-season work that is required to be successful. Most people just don’t have the time to spend scouting and locating adult male turkeys prior to hunting them. Once you know where they sleep, it is not all that hard to attract a bird that is bent on spreading its genetics where ever it can.
Grew up hunting, well, anything you can eat. Turkeys are smart and canny, but not that hard to kill once you know their habits. We used to kill them all the time on family land bordering the Colorado river. Just never move until ready to shoot…
Re: #2.
That seems to violate the Twitter terms of service…
What do you want to bet no one suspends his account for that? This is exaclty what they said was against the rules in the Joe Rogan podcast… but as we can see here this only applies to people with the wrong point of view.