Month: February 2021

“Denial”: An Ethics Movie (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Denial,” a 2016 British film that I missed (along with most moviegoers in the U.S.), tells, reasonably accurately, the story of a 1996 libel suit brought by David Irving, an anti-Semite, Holocaust-denying British historian, against Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of the 1993 book “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.” After the suit, her account of the ordeal, “History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier,” formed the source of the screenplay.

Irving brought a lawsuit in Britain against Lipstadt (played by Rachel Weisz), and her publisher, Penguin Books, for calling him a Holocaust denier, a liar, and an anti-Jewish bigot. Irving is a long-time Hitler defender, and claimed there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. British libel laws, unlike those in the United States, place the burden of proof on the defendant to prove that what was written was justified. Thus Lipstadt’s legal team must focus on proving Irving’s evidence is false, and that he knows it is false. The stakes were suddenly high, for if a court ruled that Irving’s theories had legitimacy, the results would have been catastrophic. For this reason, at least according to the film, a group of Jewish leaders urged Lipstadt to settle the suit before trial.

The movie is now on Amazon Prime. It is not a flamboyant legal drama but an intelligent and clear one (I would love to put it on stage). It also raises important ethics and legal issues, among them:

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Ted Cruz “Scandal” Significance: Another Smoking Gun

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Screen-Shot-2021-02-19-at-9.26.42-AM-e1613750753297

I keep wondering: at what point do even the progressives and Democrats whose political interests the media dishonestly and unethically advance stop and say, “Wait a minute! This just isn’t right. How would I feel if journalists were warping facts and faking news to hurt progressives like me?”

You know, the Golden Rule? That thing? Hello?

The Ted Cruz kerfuffle over his ill-considered decision to flee freezing, energy-starved Texas was all outrage over symbols, not substance. As discussed here, Cruz made a dumb and careless decision that he ought to have known would have negative political consequences, but no one should mistake it for a decision with actual, tangible results. Nor did Cruz breach any ethical duties. Those who think a U.S. Senator has any power to address a state crisis like the one facing Texas just doesn’t know how the government really works.

Unfortunately, that’s about 90% of the public.

The real significance of the Cruz-Cancun “scandal” is how it provides one more smoking gun that the committed apologists for the biased news media can try to ignore, as in “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! It’s another wacko right-wing conspiracy theory.”

While Ted was getting hammered for taking a quickie vacation with his long-suffering family, a real scandal was emerging in New York, where Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, whom the media worked to absurd degrees to hold up as a hero of the pandemic, was accused of a particularly nasty cover-up. His own aide blew the whistle on him, revealing that the Cuomo administration had hidden the real death toll of the Governor’s disastrous and deadly decision to send Wuhan-infected seniors into nursing homes. Now there is an investigation, and even the possibility of impeachment. It’s a major story—except that it involves a prominent Democrat. Thus it was Republican Ted Cruz’s bad optics that dominated the news coverage last week rather than Cuomo’s genuine, serious, “alleged” misconduct.

Fox News was mean enough to prepare and broadcast the graphic above. It’s accurate; imagine the fun Rush Limbaugh could have had with that. Newsbusters adds some details:

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Ethics Hero: Jodi Shaw

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Jody Shaw

Instead of apologizing, instead of prostrating herself and her principles to remains in good graces within an oppressive culture, Jodi Shaw sounded an alarm instead. Now she needs our support, but more than that, she must be seen as a role model for anyone else, of any political stripe or ideological tilt, who believes in the values the United States was founded to nurture.

Shaw has courage. Courage is what is desperately needed, and as has been written here too often already, it is what has so far been lacking.

I first wrote about Shaw, then a Smith College administrator, last December. Shaw, had criticized the college’s critical race theory-based “sensitivity training” required of all staff members and posted her own YouTube videos on the issue. The president of Smith College, Kathleen McCartney, issued a formal statement against Shaw that said in part:

This past week, an employee of the college posted a personal video to express their concerns about the college’s programming to promote racial justice….This employee does not speak for the college or any part of the college. Further, we believe the video mischaracterizes the college’s important, ongoing efforts to build a more equitable and inclusive living, learning and working environment.

You should know that the employee has not violated any college policies by sharing their personal views on a personal channel. The National Labor Relations Act protects employees who engage in concerted activities, including speech, with respect to workplace conditions. All members of any workplace, including Smith College, have the freedom to criticize the policies and practices of their employer.

Nevertheless, I am writing to affirm that the President’s Cabinet and I believe we have a moral responsibility to promote racial justice, equity and inclusion at Smith College. To the people of color in our community, please know our commitment is steadfast. And especially to our students of color, please know we are here for you always.

I learned about the latest chapter in Shaw’s ordeal from another Ethics Hero, Bari Weiss. who resigned as the staff editor for the opinion section of the The New York Times with a searing letter revealing the cultural oppression faced by anyone on that staff who did not conform to the mandatory progressive cant. I wrote at the time, in July of last year, “Maybe Weiss’s bold and unquestionably true letter is the metaphorical slap in the face of the mainstream media that will make journalists realize that they have squandered their credibility.” Boy, I’m a gullible Pollyanna sometimes! The Times has, if anything, gotten worse, and the Left’s institutions have become, if anything, more brazen in their efforts to punish and crush dissenters. But Weiss, like other refugees from the ideological purges like Glenn Greenwald, now has a platform at substack, where you can subscribe to support the rebels. I think of it as the metaphorical hills of Greece, where my relatives waged guerilla war on the invading Nazis in WWII while trying to protect the cradle of Western thought and philosophy.

Weiss introduces Jodi and her moment of truth by writing in part,

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Ethics Observations On Neera Tanden’s Chickens Coming Home To Roost [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Chickens attack

On December 1, 2020, you were able to read here that not-quite-elected-yet President Biden had signaled that he intended to nominate Neera Tanden as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget. That’s an important position that heads a supposedly non-partisan department, and Biden knew that she was about as far from non-partisan as they come:

Tanden was one of numerous Democrats to join the plot in 2016 to encourage electors in the Electoral College to ignore their states’ votes and refuse to elect Trump as President. Tanden endorsed fanatic NeverTrump lawyer Richard Painter’s argument that Trump’s violations of the Emolument Clause disqualified him from being President.Tanden also spread the false but effective conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton lost because of Russian interference, claiming the “Russians did enough damage to affect more than 70k votes in 3 states.” Four days after the 2016 election, Tanden began implying that Russian hackers changed the vote totals.

“This,” I wrote, “is the nominee by an apparent President-elect whose allies are attacking Trump for challenging the current vote totals in court, rather than through rumors and contrived fantasy.”

Biden did in fact nominate Tardren, which rendered this pledge, the cynical, “I’m lying and there’s not a thing you can do about it!” tweet, null and void, as several other Presidential actions have:

Biden tweet4

Tanden is the president of The Center for American Progress, which is one of those public policy research institutes that lies to you in the first sentence of its description, saying it is “non-partisan.” It is a far-left advocacy organization, and if you could find a single Republican on its staff, I’d be gobsmacked. Tanden, however, the organization’s president, doesn’t even pretend to be non-partisan, being addicted to tweeting insults to the non-Democrats only, including Senators. But really, what’s the risk? After all, are Democrats in the Senate going to care that Biden’s nomination of a hyper-partisan to head OMB proves what a joke his pledge to end divisiveness is?

Doh! Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Friday he will not support Neera Tanden’s nomination for director of the Office of Management and Budget, citing her “overtly partisan statements.” Now THAT’s an understatement. Tanden deleted more than 1,000 insulting tweets ahead of her nomination, but the internet is forever, so Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) read some of the juicy ones on the Senate floor. “You wrote that Susan Collins is ‘the worst,’ that Tom Cotton is a fraud, that vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz, you called Leader McConnell ‘Moscow Mitch’ and Voldemort,” Portman said.

Manchin said in a statement that should doom Tanden, since the Democrats can’t afford any defections in the evenly divided Senate,

“I have carefully reviewed Neera Tanden’s public statements and tweets that were personally directed towards my colleagues on both sides of the aisle from Senator Sanders to Senator McConnell and others. I believe her overtly partisan statements will have a toxic and detrimental impact on the important working relationship between members of Congress and the next director of the Office of Management and Budget. For this reason, I cannot support her nomination.”

Observations:

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End Of Week Ethics, 12/19/21

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

jackheadexplosion

Much thanks and admiration to reader and commenter Steve Witherspoon, who created the Jack Kaboom! GIF above from my “Simpson’s” self-portrait. I promise not to over-use it, though the temptation will be great.

1. Some more thoughts on Rush Limbaugh...A. Upon reflection, I have been persuaded by readers Humble Talent and others that I was too dismissive of Limbaugh’s calculated cruelty. In particular, his infamous mocking of Chelsea Clinton’s appearance was signature significance, and the product of pure anti-Clinton hate. People with functioning ethics alarms don’t do that, not even once.

He was still a transformative figure, and on balance a positive one, except for those who think the United States would be better off having all of its news and commentary filtered through progressive biases, and for the public to be unaware of that was happening. Rush fixed the second problem, and reduced the power of mainstream media. The first problem’s solution is a work in progress. B. Another example of Rush’s “cruelty,” cited often yesterday, was his mockery of Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease spasms and tics while he testified before Congress in support of research for the disease. He was roundly condemned for implying that Fox exaggerated the symptoms of the disease for dramatic effect. Fox, however, eventually explained that he hadn’t taken his medication before testifying. The symptoms weren’t faked, he said, but the extreme exhibition of them were deliberate, for obvious reasons. Rush was correct. It was just considered politically incorrect to call attention to Fox’s (reasonable and smart) tactic. B. I just saw yesterday’s print version of the Times. I’s headline on Rush: “Agitator Who Made Talk Radio A Right-Wing Attack Machine.” No, mainstream media coverage was not “mostly positive.” The first sentence: “Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio megastar whose slashing, divisive style of mockery and grievance reshaped American conservatism, denigrating Democrats, environmentalists, “feminazis” (his term) and other liberals while presaging the rise of Donald J. Trump, died on Wednesday at his home in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 70.”

C. Ah yes, “feminazis.” They’ll never forgive him for that. It was catchier than “feminist fascists,” which was and is a real group, and an influential one. It is also a group, like the Nazis, that has targeted a group of human beings that they think should be exterminated without justice or compassion. The Left will never forgive Limbaugh for that label, because it rings true, and it burns. And should.

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Ethics Inquiry: Did Sen. Cruz Do Anything Wrong?

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Cruz trip

As Bill Clinton might say (and probably has, maybe more than once), it depends on what your definition of “wrong” is.

Millions of Texans were left without electricity this week in the middle of the state’s power crisis following a massive winter storm. The Senator’s wife Heidi sent text messages to friends and neighbors complaining that their home was “FREEZING,” and that she wanted the family to escape on the 17th to someplace warmer, at least until Sunday. The mission, if her husband chose to accept it: get to the luxury Ritz-Carlton in sunny Cancún, Mexico. The destination is apparently a family favorite. The GOP Senator did accept, and the Freezing Cruzes fled Houston, hopping an afternoon flight. The consensus of the news media, the commentariat and social media was that…

In fact, you would think Cruz had been caught having a secret romantic rendezvous with a goat. Incriminating photos of Cruz and his wife boarding the flight launched a full-fledged scandal. How dare he flee a crisis when his state was in misery? Ted responded by playing the Parent Card, explaining he had flown to Mexico “to be a good dad” and to chaperone his daughters and their friends, and he promised he was coming back yesterday, which he did.

When he returned, Cruz admitted that his family trip had been a mistake. That is undeniable.

But was it unethical? Was it wrong?

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From The “Bias Makes You Stupid”—But Funny!— Files, The Unethical Tweet Of The Week: Daily Beast Editor Justin Baragona

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

googly eyes

No, actually it appears that this editor of a progressive website is so steeped in confirmation bias that he made thatabsurd accusation without checking because Carlton is an eeeeevil conservative, and there is nothing he won’t stoop to in order to make the Right’s foes look bad. Literally.

You see, that’s Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s real face. Her eyes bug out all the time; it was one of the first things I noticed about her. Imagine, an editor in the journalism profession tweets out a completely false assertion without doing the minimal amount of verification, which would have been watching the woman in any interview, or perusing the photos on Google. If Baragona had the requisite amount of shame, fairness and decency, he would apologize to Tucker, apologize to AOC for saying she has googly eyes (she does, but it’s not polite to say so), and take a leave of absence without pay for making the Daily Beast look like the hack cyber-rag it is.

Nah, he couldn’t even manage the apology part. He pulled the tweet, and wrote,

lame retraction

And this, gentle reader, is how a website joins Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit, The Smoking Gun, and a couple of others on the Ethics Alarms Untrustworthy Sources List.

At least the Daily Beast gave me a good and hardy laugh on the way to oblivion.

Now the evil Toon played by Christopher Lloyd in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit/” REALLY had googly eyes.…

Googly eyes

_____________________

Pointer: Twitchy

Snow Day Ethics Warm-Up, 2/18/21: Dissing Shakespeare, Limbaugh, And Merit

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

statue-of-william-shakespeare-central-park-new-york-city

I like snow. I like looking at it and driving in it. My dog likes eating it (so did my sister). In Washington, D.C., they think it’s radioactive, or something. Poor, deluded fools!

1. Well, you just lost THAT subscription, Craig. As the baseball season approaches, I’ve been considering subscribing to the baseball newsletter of former NBC Sports baseball writer (and recovering lawyer) Craig Calcaterra, who is approximately 4X smarter and funnier than the average sportswriter, and more astute than all but the very best. Craig quit, or was fired or something from his job at NBC and is now with the rest of the exiles at substack. My willingness to forgive and forget baseball’s revolting pandering to Black Lives Matter last season is still in doubt, so Craig’s newsletter, which he sends out free now and then to those who have expressed an interest in subscribing, was a luxury whose viability was hanging by a thread already. Then today I got one of his free editions, and Craig indulged his worst instincts (he is social justice warrior of the smuggest sort) were given free reign. In a missive that is supposed to be about baseball, I had to read a screed like this (I’ll spare you most of it):

For the past couple of days I’ve written about how right wing media has poisoned political discourse, mainstreamed fringe beliefs, laundered lies, and radicalized a large swath of Americans. The man who is arguably most responsible for that died yesterday. Good fucking riddance to Rush fucking Limbaugh.Limbaugh was a berserker of hate, spinning off vile, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and xenophobic attacks faster than could be chronicled… He reveled in spreading lies, punching down, directing cruelty at the most vulnerable targets, and voicing support for criminals and conspiracy theorists. He elevated and normalized bigotry and ignorance and gave others license to do the same….To the extent you have parents, grandparents, neighbors, college buddies, or coworkers hopelessly lost in that malignant vortex of idiocy, to the extent you know people who believe in harmful and violence-inspiring conspiracy theories and who remain beyond the reach of fact or reason, and to the extent anyone you know takes pride in offensive and obnoxious behavior because, to them, it’s all about triggering the libs, Limbaugh and everything he stood for is very much to blame….

And so on. I don’t really care about the political views of sports writers and pundits who stick to their areas of expertise: one of the best and most enjoyable baseball analysts was Keith Olbermann. But Craig here displays poor judgment and out-of-control bias: that’s essentially 100% Left-wing anti-Rush propaganda by someone who obviously didn’t listen to him enough to make those kinds of pronouncements. Nor does it have anything to do with baseball.

I’ll defend to the death his right to write junk like that, but I’m sure not going to pay for it.

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Dead Canaries Of The Great Stupid: “The Bachelor” Becomes A Grovel Orgy

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Bachelor scandal

I have never watched “The Bachelor” other than to check in, stay for a few minutes, and decide, correctly, “This is more evidence of the decline of civilization and the uselessness of public education: Get thee to you sock drawer!” This has been the case with most reality shows since the invasive breed made network television unwatchable. I do follow accounts of shows like “Survivor” and, in its day, “The Apprentice,” to be aware when ethics issues surface.

To my horror, I realize this is the third mention of “The Bachelor” here in 2021, which does not bode well, but as is often the case, popular culture, even mind-numbingly stupid popular culture, is often where our cultural canaries go to die. This season of that idiotic show is supposedly a marker of racial progress because “The Bachelor” is black, or sort of black (he identifies as black, or Black). He (Matt James) is a hunk who, like every other “Bachelor” in the NINETEEN SEASONS of this blight on human evolution, has the IQ of a brick, and the exciting premise is that 25 beautiful women who might lose to him in Scrabble compete for his affections.

Dead Canary #1: As soon as a female or minority enters a system of environment in the time of The Great Stupid, large number of vile people who have nothing more promising in their lives but to concoct “gotchas!” that will make life difficult for others will find some evidence of politically incorrect bias, prejudice, or insufficient deference to justify crying “Racist!,” “Sexist!,” “Homophobe!,” “Ablest!,” “Anti-LGTBQ-ist!” or something. Increasingly, this is the price organizations pay for “diversity”: immediate conflict, presumed bigotry, and retribution. Nobody wants to be generous, reasonable, or presume good will or intentions. The whole idea is to grab power by putting others on the defensive. This, of course, makes racial harmony (as well as other varieties) less likely and less achievable, but never mind, the victim-hucksters don’t care. They have too much to gain, or think they do.

Thus, when conservative pundit Megan Fox, who regarded the show as a guilty pleasure, learned that this would be The Season Of the Black Bachelor, she opted out, explaining, “It’s the first time a black bachelor was cast on the show. So, if you thought there wouldn’t be any woke baloney to wade through, you’re nuts. It’s why I didn’t watch it this time. I figured that the woke police would be out in full force, and who needs that in their living room? Certainly, not I.“

Ah-HA! A privileged white woman stopped watching the show because it had a black “Bachelor” for the first time! Megan Fox is a racist!

See how it works?

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