Month: October 2020

The Steve Scully Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

c-span-scully_hacked_10-09-2020

As with so many other confirmations of the reality of the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, in which large segments of those entrusted with the integrity of our sacred American institutions decided to betray the nation by setting out to destroy a duly elected President by any means necessary, the Steve Scully scandal should not have been necessary to settle the point. That goal, plot, conspiracy, whatever term one chooses, has been a continuing fact from the beginning of Donald Trump’s term, and even before. The Democratic Party/”resistance”/mainstream news media alliance, what Ethics Alarms refers to as the Axis of Unethical Conduct, has continued its approach of the past four years, now even to the extreme of denying the President a level playing field in the Presidential debates.

It is indeed attempting to rig the election. President Trump was excoriated for describing the situation that way, and as with so much that he says, a greater facility with the nuances of the English language would serve him, and us, better. But he was not wrong, and no matter how the Axis howls with indignation, there is an ongoing effort to “rig” the election. No further proof was needed, but Scully’s conduct is that.

When CSPAN’s Steve Scully was chosen as the moderator of the second debate, it was in brazen defiance of the principles of fairness and an unforgivable example of creating the appearance of impropriety.  Scully had been an intern for Joe Biden. The debate commission wasn’t even trying to appear objective. How difficult would it have been to find a moderator with no past ties to either candidate? C-Span, if it had any integrity, should have vetoed the selection. Scully should have declined.

Then, incredibly and jaw-droppingly stupidly, Scully sent a tweet to notorious Trump associate turned enemy—the President has a lot of those—Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired as White House communications director after what seemed like a minute and a half. When the tweet was found, Scully claimed he had been hacked, and C-Span backed him, as you can see above. Today, C-SPAN announced that Scully has been suspended indefinitely, because he lied. There was no hack. Why he hasn’t been fired, I do not know.

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The Pre-Unethical Condition Of Planning A Public Memorial: The Maya Angelou Debacle [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
_maya_angelou_proposal

(The ghost family isn’t part of the design, in case you were wondering…)

I use the term “pre-unethical conditions” to describe situations which have a record of leading directly to ethical conflicts and misconduct. “Ethics Chess,” another Ethics Alarms term mandates that a participant think multiple moves ahead, and thus anticipate, plan for, and with luck and skill, even avoid the ethical perils ahead. The task of honoring a famous or accomplished public figure with a monument or memorial structure for the ages once was simple and straightforward: you put up a statue after a respected and credentialed artist designed it. Of course, if you picked a hack to do the job and got something like this…

Lucy statue

That’s supposed to be Lucille Ball, in a now-replaced statue in her home town.

..there would be trouble, but usually the standards for statues were reasonable and the public easy to satisfy. That was fortunate, because any committee decision involving art of any kind is bound to be contentious; as the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste. I’ve had to oversee the organizational acceptance of a new logo more than once, and it is impossible. When the board meeting reaches the point where members are scribbling their own crude designs on pads, you know you’re doomed. Public art is much, much worse, because it’s more visible, there are people who make their livings criticizing whatever the final result may be, and it’s expensive. Good luck.

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As The George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck Sends U.S. Race Relations, Principles, Students And The Nation Backwards Into The Abyss…

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

The Young America’s Foundation came into possession of the following email:

Copy-of-Copy-of-UK

You will note that the university separated Resident Assistants into two training groups, “one for RAs who identify as Black, Indigenous, Person of Color and one for RAs who identify as White.” This is known, I believe, as racial segregation, and the presumption that members of different races require different training and content is the essence of racism. So is the presumption that it is harmful for one race to be in the same space as another. That mindset favors apartheid.

At the “White Accountability Space,” the RA’s were given a document listing 41 “common racist behaviors and attitudes of white people.” Here is a section of the document; you can peruse the entire thing here.

Screen-Shot-racial behaviors

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Wednesday Ethics Wind-Down / Thursday Ethics Warm-Up, 10/14-15/2020: The Unmasking Of News Media And Social Media Bias Continues…[UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

phantom-of-the-opera

1. Notes from The Great Stupid. Here is a passage from a New York Times book review of “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality”:

“In examining the pressure to partner with the opposite gender we find the extortions of capitalism, the misogyny of violence against women, the racist and xenophobic erasure of nonwhite families, and the homophobic hatreds that pervade so much of everyday life.”

Well, that and the biological imperative to continue the species. This brilliance is the work of Haley Mlotek,  a senior editor for SSENSE. Imagine: this is the quality of thought among our intellectual class.

No wonder the political class is so idiotic.

2. So this is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, is it? Nikole  Hannah-Jones, faced with a careful and accurate fisking of her fraudulent “1619 project” by Times columnist Bret Stephens (covered by Ethics Alarms here) did not try to rebut him, or make a civil, reasoned argument. She did what her entire generation of prominent African Americans have been conditioned to do, because it works so well. She accused Stephens and the Times of racism, with a dash of sexism for flavor. Hannah-Jones tweeted,

“In 1894, the NYT called Ida B. Wells a ‘slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress’ for daring to tell the truth about lynching. 100 years later she earned the Pulitzer Prize. These efforts to discredit my work simply put me in a long tradition of [black women] who failed to know their places.”

(It is satisfying to watch the Washington Post pounce on the Times over this fiasco. The rivalry between the papers is one of the few factors that ever pushed one of them into practicing actual journalism these days.)

As for Nikole Hannah-Jones, she is a child. Her tantrum was irresponsible and an embarrassment to the Times, and she should, by rights, be fired. She won’t be, because of black privilege, now enhanced in the wake of the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck. The embarrassment for the Times, however, will linger. This woman was given leave by the paper to create and promote a false historical narrative that was not designed to enlighten but to further a political agenda. In truth, the Times deserves the embarrassment even more than Hannah-Jones deserves to be fired.

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Sohrab Ahmari, New York Post Op-Ed Editor

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

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“This episode should alarm ­every American. A very few people can unaccountably shape what you read. This is how freedom dies.“

—–Sohrab Ahmar, New York Post op-ed editor, regarding the mainstream media’ and social media attempting to embargo the Post’s story today suggesting Joe Biden’s participation in his son’s Ukrainian influence peddling.

Ahmar was writing about the events described in this Ethics Alarms post.

You should read his entire column here.

Particularly striking is his list, though far from complete, of instances in which the mainstream media didn’t hesitate to report what Twitter termed in this case “the lack of authoritative reporting on the origins of the materials included” in the report. The Post editor begins by echoing what Ethics Alarms has been emphasizing regrading the news media’s descent into unprincipled partisan propaganda over journalism: “This is what totalitarianism looks like in our century…”

“Enemy of the people”? The President was correct, if impolitic, with his blunt assessment, and each succeeding month has made that more evident.

A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Spectacular, Featuring Biased Social Media!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Smoking gun2

I would call this the smoking gun, but when it comes to the news media and social media’s anti-democratic collusion with “the resistance” and the Democratic Party to defeat President Trump, the metaphorical floor is piled many feet high with smoking guns. This one, however, is especially smoky.

Today, the New York Post—watch out, it’s a conservative paper, out of the mainstream media Get Trump! Club!—published this story:

Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads. An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

The blockbuster correspondence — which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” — is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer….

The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Politico’s Jake Sherman, both certified Trump assassins, set out to debunk the story. No no! they were told. The proper procedure is to ignore it! It’s not news; it comes from their side.  Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden accused Haberman of promoting disinformation. Time op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg accused Sherman of helping to “launder this bullshit into the news cycle.” Democratic historian Kevin Kruse asked why such good, loyal, woke reporters were “amplifying” the story.

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Gotcha! Ethics: Senate Democrats’ Obnoxious “Preference” For Political Correctness Over Substance, As Miriam-Webster Reveals Its Integrity Deficit

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

And they’re coming around the turn in the 2020 Asshole of the Year Derby! Senator Hirono is making her move! Here she comes out of the pack! It’s going to be a photo finish!

At Tuesday’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D–Calif.) asked Barrett if she would roll back protections for LGBT citizens. Barrett responded that she “never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference.” Hawaii’s Senator Mazie Hirono then accused Barrett of using “outdated and offensive” terminology. (Later, so did Senator Cory Booker, who said Barrett was implying by the term that being gay was a choice and not an immutable characteristic.)

“Sexual preference … is used by anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice,” the Democratic scold intoned.  “It is not. Sexual orientation is a key part of a person’s identity. If it is your view that sexual orientation is merely a preference, as you noted, then the LGTBQ should be rightly concerned whether you would uphold their constitutional right to marry.”

Barrett was forced into apologizing, insisting  that this was not her intention. I say “forced,” because when you are in a confirmation hearing and the vote is going to be a squeaker, you can’t say, as she justifiably could have, “Really Senator? You’re dictating politically correct words and language now? It was quite clear what I meant, and that kind of phrase policing is a cheap shot. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

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Last Ethics Forum Before The Election!

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

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Ethics Alarms offers an Open Form approximately every three to four weeks, so it’s time. (It’s also time because a doctor’s appointment beckons.)

Both Althouse and Instapundit do this every day, and accumulate literally hundreds of comments, but to be fair, Althouse allows comments about anything at all, and Prof. Reynolds’ free-for-all has evolved into a political gag-fest where substance is rare (and poor taste runs rampant). The topic here is ethics, and I assume a high standard will be be maintained.

Comment Of The Day: “Tuesday That Feels Like A Monday Ethics Catch-Up, 10/13/2020”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I am jumping Mrs. Q’s (characteristically concise, wise, eloquent) Comment of the Day past some others on the runway because it’s object will not have a long shelf-life. She has expressed her reaction to the blog’s unofficial resident contrarian’s recent voluntary exit from the commentariat of Ethics Alarms in a manner that beautifully frames what the ethical values of openness, acceptance, tolerance, empathy, respect and kindness look like in practice. (Let me take this opportunity to nudge Mrs. Q into reconsidering her own decision to suspend the column she has here. Her ratio of commenting excellence remains unmatched, and that forum remains open whenever her other priorities allow her the time to access it.)

For reference purposes, here is Alizia’s own Comment of the Day from last November, which provides a relatively mild sample of her contributions here.

And here is Mrs. Q’s, on item #1 from yesterday’s “Tuesday That Feels Like A Monday Ethics Catch-Up, 10/13/2020.”

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Tuesday That Feels Like A Monday Ethics Catch-Up, 10/13/2020.

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments
Antifa arrests

Every one of the antifa rioters arrested in Portland a couple nights ago!

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I have what I believe is an important ethics essay completed in my head—that’s the weird way I write, and nobody knows why—and I just haven’t had the time or the energy to get it done. I’m sorry. Today, actual ethics work intervened. It’s not that there wasn’t time to finish that post (and two others that are almost written), but that the long posts really need my complete attention, and that was impossible today, as it has been increasingly frequently of late.

1. Goodbye Alizia. One of Ethics Alarms more controversial and prolific contributors informed me that she was leaving the comment wars, presumably permanently. I agreed with virtually nothing she wrote, and found her characterization of the approach to ethics here ranging from bizarre to infuriating to hilarious. I also, I must confess, often failed to do more than skim many of her epic screeds, which I found about as forbidding as Finnegan’s Wake. She has been, however, a unique voice here, a sincere and serious one, and virtually always civil. I also admire her resilience, since few participants here have been battered as intensely and personally as she was.

Or accused of being a robot.

Recently there had been suggestions that my failure to ban her from commenting—she is a white supremacist, after all, as well as anti-Semitic—has cost Ethics Alarms readers. Any potential readers who would reject this ethics blog because he or she objects to the opinion of another reader can go piss in their hats, to be blunt. I reject the entire attitude behind such a reaction. There have been commenters who have made me wince when I saw they had weighed in, since I had a pretty good idea what I was in for; indeed Alizia was one of them. But I have to read the comments here—the format includes my actively engaging with those bold enough to speak up. EA recently passed the 12,000 post mark, and I lead all commenters with over 50,000 replies. Nobody, however, has to read any particular commenter, or any of them. Nor am I responsible for the opinions offered here by others. I have Comment Policies, and generally stick to them. Veteran commenters receive a lot of leeway, because they do contribute content to the blog, like it or not. Yes, there is a provision that says a commenter can be banned for “…Exhibiting racism or other bias.” I interpret that narrowly, in part because a theme here has been the effort by progressives to demonize and suppress speech they find inconvenient or upsetting, and to abuse the label of “racist” to do it. I have chosen to err on the side of free expression, especially when it is under assault, and when the party that signals an intent to metaphorically kneel on liberty’s throat seems poised to take power.

But I digress.

Alizia informed me of her decision in a graceful and uncharacteristically brief note. I told her that she would be missed, at least by me.

2. Ah, Portland… Yesterday, after promoting the event on social media as an “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage,” protesters toppled statues Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, then went on to ruin the entrance to the Oregon Historical Society before moving into other areas of downtown, smashing storefronts and engaging in a full-fledged riot. Police ordered the rioters moving  through the city’s streets to disperse but this being Portland, but did not directly intervene until nearly an hour after the first statue fell.

The organizers had called for “direct action” and demanded that onlooker who happened upon the group were ordered to stop filming or delete photographs. An apartment resident who tried to shoot a video from his terrace had lasers aimed at his eyes and a liquid thrown in his face. There were about 200 in the group dressed in black, some with body armor, shields, and weapons.

These are the people Americans are voting for when they support the Democratic party in 2020. Joe Biden has passively supported them and their violence with his weasel words, and his VP has directly endorsed them.

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