Month: February 2021

I’m Furious With A Fictional Character, Which Is Ridiculous.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

the-bay

It’s not even an American fictional character, but I can’t help myself. In the British procedural “The Bay,” now on BritBox, the first season tells the ugly story of a police detective investigating the death of a teenage twin and the disappearance of his sister. Like so many TV shows today here and ‘across the pond,’ everybody portrayed is corrupt or otherwise deplorable, even the show’s protagonist. She is a single mother who is so obsessed with her career that her neglected children are falling into crime and ethics rot. The opening scene shows her having drunken sex in an alley outside a pub, being slammed into the wall by a scruffy local. Later she discovers that her spontaneous sex partner of the moment is the brutish married father of the missing twins, and a prime suspect in his disappearance.

Does she immediately recuse herself from the case, since her liaison took place the night of their disappearance and during the crucial hour when he claims he was with his “mates” and couldn’t have been involved in his children’s fate? No, she just counts on the fact that he’ll never tell, erases the CCTV tape that shows her in the bar, and proves that he wasn’t involved, at least in that crime. (Later she arrests him for another.)

The detective isn’t even the fictional character I’m furious with. That distinction goes to the twins’ mother, who flies into fury or hysteria at every development. Like the key figures in all procedurals, she withholds crucial information “she didn’t think was important,” constantly accuses the police of not doing enough because her kids haven’t been found ( post hoc ergo propter hoc, or consequentialism) and demands that they promise her future results beyond their control: “Promise me that you’ll find them!” Yet even these exhibitions didn’t make me want to strangle her.

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Ethics Dunce (And Asshole): USA Today Sportswriter Nancy Armour

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

RSI NFL-DEFLATE/BRADY A EDU SPO FBN USA MA

I apologize for the vulgarity, but the only way for the obnoxious and unethical attitude highlighted in the op-ed by America’s most insubstantial paper’s smugly woke female sportswriter is to make it clear to all just how indefensible such positions are, and how irresponsible it is to keep publishing them. Let her go write a fringe blog that nobody will read.

You know, like this one.

In the excruciating op-ed for the paper, Armour begins,

Tom Brady was happy to talk politics until he wasn’t.The Make America Great Again hat in his locker, the flippant endorsement of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Only when those ties became inconvenient did Brady decide he wanted to “stick to sports,” and that he preferred to be a beacon of positivity rather than delve into society’s thorny ills. How mighty white of him. Brady’s ability to enter and exit the debate at his choosing, to shield himself from accountability, is the height of white privilege.

Asshole. I’m sorry, but no other word will do. Asshole, asshole, asshole:

1. Nobody has an obligation to talk about politics or their preferences ever. Ever. The less celebrities like Brady do it, the better.

2. Despite the AUC’s thirst for revenge and the sick need to “punish” those who had the audacity to support the elected President of the United States rather than to savage him daily and try to drive him from office, Tom Brady has no “accountability” for choosing to publicly support Trump while he was running for office or when he was under siege while in office. Unethical journalists like Armour, however, have a great deal of accountability for dividing the country and weakening our democratic institutions, including the press, out of sheer hatred and arrogance.

3. The “ties’ are only “inconvenient” because totalitarian-leaning creeps like Armour are determined to purge non-conforming Americans from society if they don’t fall into line with their progressive betters.

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Confession Of A Life Competence Failure

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

If you are going to be a competent member of society, it is important to follow the popular culture in addition to current events. I have always been a pop culture omnivore, watching TV shows I found barely interesting, listening to music I didn’t like, seeing as many movies as I could, and following sports I hated. I viewed with alarm my contemporaries who assiduously ignored what their children and their children’s friends were watching and who they cared about. This is how you become irrelevant, and also incompetent. A culture has many features, and affects everything: the analogy of an individual in a culture being like a fish in water is apt. All of these people, ideas and events surrounding us that we see as trivial and silly have a massive effect on the rest of our lives, and we ignore them at their peril.

Yet today I have to confess that despite what I thought were my best efforts to keep up with popular culture, it has whizzed by me. There are a lot of reasons, social media being a major one. Another is no longer having a teen in the house, but the reasons don’t matter. It is a citizen’s duty to make sufficient efforts to know and understand the culture of his or her nation, because without that understanding, a citizen is making decisions within that culture on outdated, partial, or just bad information. That is incompetent and irresponsible.

I give myself a pop culture test every six months or so. Today, I used WeSmirch, an online aggregator of celebrity news. It was horrifying. I never heard of most of these people. Those I have heard of seem completely irrelevant to me. Almost all of the important people in thse stories seem to be morons, famous for being famous, illiterate, notable mostly for being rich. The so-called “news,” breathless shouted from various headlines, seemed less than inconsequential. And yet this is what a rising generation cares about.

Here is a typical headline from this morning: “Vanessa Morgan’s son is called River.” Who is Vanessa Morgan? Who cares what her son is named? It turns out that she is an actress on “Riverdale,” a TV show based on the comic book whose appeal I never understood (but I read the damn thing so I knew what my friends were reading). Oddly, I do know something about River’s father, Michael Kopech, because he pitches for the Chicago White Sox, and once was a Red Sox pitching prospect.

Perusing the many articles and supposedly important celebrity news, I saw these names I could identify (unlike Ms. Morgan, who is, naturally, estranged from her newborn son’s father, as almost none of these celebrities think having a stable, two-parent marriage is a big deal because they are inexplicably rich, hence corrupting the values of their fans, who are not. Vanessa Morgan is also black, thus contributing in her own irresponsible way to the general mass shrug of the black community regarding two parent families):

  • Kopech
  • Tom Brady, the despicable NFL quarterback about to play in another Super Bowl
  • Rebel Wilson, the obese comic actress who lost a hundred pounds in 2020, which will prove good for her health but fatal to her career
  • Gigi Hadad, a model, and I have no idea why I know that.
  • Donald Trump
  • Actress Michelle Williams
  • Ryan Seacrest, the “American Idol” host
  • Rupert Grint, Ron Weasly in the “Harry Potter” films (saw every one, was bored stiff by the last five)
  • M. Night Shyamalan, the creepy movie director (he’s not creepy, just his films)
  • Chrissy Tiegen, another model
  • Kim Kardashian
  • Dustin Diamond, “Screech” on “Saved by the Bell,” who is now dead.
  • Queen Elizabeth and Prince Harry.
  • Cardi B, a rapper and social media star.

That’s fifteen. Now here are the supposedly important celebrities I couldn’t pick out of a line-up:

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Observations On Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s House Speech In Her Own Defense

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Watch the whole speech. It’s only ten minutes long. Do not rely on media characterizations of it. For example, here is the despicable CNBC web headline: “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene expresses some regret about conspiracy claims ahead of vote to punish her.” Tell me if you think that’s a fair characterization of what she said.

1. It is a well-delivered, seemingly sincere, sympathetic and appealing and effective speech for anyone with any objectivity at all, designed to appeal to strong conservatives, and to send a message to progressives that she is not ashamed of her values and will not be intimidated into backing down from them

Good for her in that respect.

2. Her practical and ethical problem, however, is that she did not make this speech before the prospect of losing her committee assignments began looming. Why didn’t she say than that she was not a believer in the QAnon garbage? Why did she attack the messengers that revealed her other conspiratorial social media posts, rather than admitting what she had advocated and retracting it, with an explanation? This calls into question her honesty now. Yes, we now know she possesses at least one major asset for a politician: the ability to defend herself in a political crisis—like Bill Clinton. The ability to lie under pressure is another talent she might have.

3. I am troubled by the shadow of possible deceit in her choices of words. She never claimed the 9-11 attacks didn’t happen; she seemed to agree that it was “an inside job.” Saying now that the disaster happened is a non-sequitur..or just rhetorical carelessness. Her comments about school shootings are similarly ambiguous.

4. The fact, if true, that she has not met any of her Democratic colleagues is a terrible reflection on House leadership, and Nancy Pelosi in particular. How can that be defended? Not even a meet and greet for the entire freshman class? That’s rank incompetence.If you want a divided and dysfunctional body, that’s how you get one.

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Comment Of The Day: “Oppressing The Twitter Troll”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

censorship cartoon

This is Glenn Logan’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Oppressing The Twitter Troll”:

I always like to look at the law, and at the charges, to see if they are particularized and actually allege a violation.It seems to me the particular law at issue is 18 U.S. Code § 241 – Conspiracy against rights. The relevant text would seem to be paragraph 1:

“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; orIf two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—“

What the government is alleging here, apparently, is essentially a conspiracy to cyber-bully. Attempting to convince others to vote a certain way or not to vote at all is called “electioneering” and is not only legal in the United States, but protected speech under the First Amendment, as well as widely practiced by all political parties 24-7-365, legally and peacefully. The law criminalizing conspiracies to deprive persons of rights was passed during the civil rights era and was plainly directed at the Klu Klux Klan and similar organizations.

As we all know, those groups would intimidate voters of all races, but primarily black people and their sympathizers, by burning crosses, lynchings, threats, and other violent actions to suppress or affect voting against the groups’ interests. Most of their methods were illegal under state and federal law to begin with, but the law in this case provided an additional tool to attack those who plannedlawless actions against the rights of others as well as those who carried them out. It is a bit like the Civil RICO laws, which were primarily aimed at those who directed corrupt mob actions but almost never participated in overt criminal activity.

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/4/21: Hey! I Have Enemies!Charles Mackay Says That’s Great!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Enemies2

My brief post about “You Have No Enemies, the Charles Mackay poem that was a source of solace and inspiration for Margaret Thatcher, was the top Ethics Alarms article of 2020. It’s a good thing I learned about it, because Ethics Alarms Derangement Syndrome seems to be catching on. One self-banned commenter is now writing hate mail to my personal email spam account. Mark Draughn, who blogs at Windy Pundit and was once named an Ethics Alarms Commenter of the Year, now routinely posts “Jack Marshall is evil” screeds. There are others. Part of this, though not all, seems to stem from my adamant refusal to join the mob seeking to drive Donald Trump from office, and to insist that such ethical niceties like fairness, due process, objectivity, avoidance of bias and consistent standards should apply to him the way they had always applied to previous White House occupants.

For all I know, the would-be censors, vendetta-mongers and Trump Hate Posse is behind the otherwise inexplicable dive in traffic here since Christmas. Well, to quote my late, tragic college roommate Andy Kinkaid, a traumatized Viet Nam veteran whose response to problems great and small was always the same: “Fuck it, right?” One of the many invaluable lessons my father taught me early was never to back down when you believe you are right. He didn’t, and I don’t.

1. Feb. 4 is a major day for ethics, good and bad:

  • In 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst,was kidnapped by a real domestic terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and subsequently brainwashed into joining their cause, even to the extent of participating in an armed bank robbery. This was the first instance of the term “Stockholm Syndrome” being widely publicized, but the defense didn’t work. Good. “Tania,” as she called herself, was sentenced to seven years in prison and served 21 months before her sentence was commuted by President Carter. She later married her bodyguard, and ended up acting in John Waters films. She was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001. Poor little, dumb little,  rich girl…
  • In 2004, Facebook launched—a day that will live in infamy.
  • Rosa Parks was born on this date in 1913.
  • In 1861, the slave-holding states met to form the Confederacy. Now THAT was an insurrection…
  • In 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected (by 69 Presidential electors) as the first President of the United States. Washington was a natural leader, wary of executive power, and a ethical to his bones. A worse choice could have sunk the fledgling nation. That Washington was so able was largely moral luck, but until recently, the United States had been extraordinarily lucky.
  • Feb. 4, 1945 saw the Yalta Conference, in which President Roosevelt and Churchill sold out Poland and laid the groundwork for the Iron Curtain in exchange for Stalin agreeing to join in the war against Japan.
  • And in 1983, singer Karen Carpenter died, the victim of an eating disorder brought on by the cruelty of conventions regarding women’s appearances in both the entertainment business and American society. She was 32.

2. Today the House will vote on whether to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments because she is an unapologetic, conspiracy theory espousing embarrassment. Headline News this morning termed the vote a “struggle for the soul of the Republican Party.” That’s typical, and false. There are legitimate arguments for not punishing Greene. Most of the statements prompting her attempted censoring occurred before her election, and that’s a dangerous precedent to set. The Democrats’ motives are also suspect, since she has filed impeachment articles against President Biden, and is a vocal Trump supporter. The problem could have been mitigated if Minority House Leader Kevin McCarthy handled Greene as a matter of party discipline. He is a weenie, however, and a coward, terrified of a backlash from pro-Trump fanatics. Thus he will permit the entire House to demote an elected representative based on conduct the voters had a chance to consider.

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Cancelled For A Single Word

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

And spoken outside his home, to friends.

Country music superstar Morgan Wallen was suspended indefinitely by his record label and removed from hundreds of radio stations across the country yesterday. The reason? He was captured on camera saying “nigger.” TMZ posted a video this week showing Wallen loudly returning home with friends. A neighbor started recording the scene and the video included Wallen using the word. If you can tell the context of his words, please explain it to me. Was “nigger” meant as an insult, or was it used playfully? Was the target white or black? There is no evidence that he “hurled” the word, because that suggest that it was hurled at someone.

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The Ethics Alarms Rationalizations List Welcomes The Know-It-All’s Dodge, Or “I Knew This Would Happen”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Obama

The Know-It-All’s Dodge has been hanging around waiting for me to add it to the Rationalizations List for a long time. I should have added it when President Barack Obama exploded my head with this exchange, in 2015, regarding his pathetic and disastrous handling of the Syrian civil war.

In an interview with CBS’s Steve Kroft, who had earlier in Obama’s administration stated outright that his questions to the President would not be confrontational ones, there was this:

KROFT: You have been talking a lot about the moderate opposition in Syria. It seems very hard to identify. And you talked about the frustrations of trying to find some and train them. You had a half-a-billion dollars from congress to train and equip 5,000, and at the end, according to the commander of CENTCOM, you got 50 people, most of whom are, are dead or deserted. He said you’ve got four or five left.

OBAMA: Steve, this is why I’ve been skeptical from the get-go about the notion that we were going to effectively create this proxy army inside of Syria.

KABOOM!

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From The Ethics Alarms Sarcasm Dept., Cross-Filed in “Unethical…But Funny!”: Yeah, THIS Sure Engenders Trust In The Competence Of State Law Enforcement

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Chucky

The Texas public safety department sent out an Amber Alert asking citizens to keep an eye out for Chucky, the homicidal possessed doll from the Child’s Play movies, who, it said, was a suspect in a kidnapping. The nonsensical message was blasted to people’s mobile phones three times.

It described the suspect as being called “Chucky” and described him as a 28-year-old with red, auburn hair, band blue eyes who stood at 3ft 1in tall and weighed 16lbs. He was wearing blue denim overalls, alarmed Texans were told with a multi-colored striped long sleeve shirt and was presumed armed with a large knife – matching his appearance in the films.

His race was listed as “Other: Doll.”

The department issued a statement saying: “This alert is a result of a test malfunction. We apologize for the confusion this may have caused and are diligently working to ensure this does not happen again.”

Oh, it’s a TEST malfunction! That’s OK then. “May have caused”? There’s no confusion: the Texas Safety Department is run by utter boobs. When a state department starts warning the public about fictional serial killers from horror movies, the best way to ensure it doesn’t happen again is to clean house.

I feel it necessary to post this song, from “Lil’ Abner”…

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/3/21: Cold Day Reflections [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Shining Frozen

1. Wait, what? Ann Althouse revealed this week that she doesn’t read all of the paragraphs in articles she blogs about. She was caught doing this is a post I didn’t read, since it involved her weird concern about the sounds ice makes in a glass. The law professor had asked a question that was answered in the article, but Ann didn’t read that far.

I have found that blogging inherently requires doing opinion and analysis with less than all the facts, or, in the alternative, writing only an article a day. The Ethics Scoreboard, now online, was an ethics website, not a blog, and I spent easily three times the research and consideration on each post that I do now on Ethics Alarms. I also had a webmaster who caught most typos. I eventually decided to switch to blog, because I couldn’t come close to covering the field in only a post a day (if even that), and because I wanted to have an ethics forum with participation from commenters. I sympathize with Ann: blogging is time consuming even if you write as quickly as I do. Then you have the proofing, tagging and administrative stuff. I can see why she would get in the habit of skimming articles.

But it’s still reckless, and guarantees mistakes and an erosion of trust. To her credit, she admitted that she does this in her post, but didn’t seem to say that she was about to change.

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