Month: May 2022

SCOTUS Leak Freakout Update: The Times’ Unethical Editorial Of The Month

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

It’s rare that one sees blunt incivility in an old and revered political publication like the National Review, but here was the headline of Charles Cook’s column there yesterday:

The New York Times’ Editorial Board Is Apparently Extremely Stupid

I had read the editorial and my reaction had been the same, except that I would have been tempted to leave out “apparently.” I’d also categorize this as old news, at least to readers of Ethics Alarms. Then, for a nonce, I regretted the absence of self-exiled commenter “A Friend,” since his predictable efforts to defend the indefensible in the Times would have been particularly entertaining in this case.

Here’s the the paragraph Cooke was reacting to:

Imagine that every state were free to choose whether to allow Black people and white people to marry. Some states would permit such marriages; others probably wouldn’t. The laws would be a mishmash, and interracial couples would suffer, legally consigned to second-class status depending on where they lived.

This is the newspaper that is regarded as the flagship of the news media. This is the newspaper that holds itself up as a paragon of objective news analysis. This is a newspaper that claims that its perspective isn’t skewed by a progressive bias.

This is the newspaper I have been paying almost 90 bucks a month to have delivered every day for four years. Yes, I’m stupid too.

Here, in part, is what Cooke writes in his understandable disgust: Continue reading →

The New York Times Wordle Ethics Zugzwang

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Boy, did the Times deserve this.

The paper acquired the online game Wordle earlier this year after it became a viral hit. Answers to the puzzle game are assigned months in advance. In a pure coincidence reminiscent of the London crossword puzzle incident that almost derailed D-Day, yesterday’s Worldle answer happened to evoke the current freakout over the draft Supreme Court opinion that suggests that Roe v. Wade may finally be going down for the count. The answer was “fetus.”

Can’t have that! The Times moved quickly to de-trigger the game for sensitive (and virtuously woke) devotees, writing,

Continue reading →

Monday Ethics Madness, 5/9/2022: Villains! Leakers,The Paid Liar, The ABA, And More

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Major Clipton’s been AWOL lately. Good to have him back, since his commentary is especially germane.

To begin on an upbeat note: there is a house on the route I walk Spuds in the evening that has started having elaborate lawn and porch decorations all year round. The elaborate Halloween display began in late September and lasted until November, when a giant inflatable turkey took over as well as some horns of plenty. Right after Thanksgiving the outrageous Christmas decorations went up. January featured a 2022 display, which gave way to the family’s best yet, a Mardi Gras-themed salute complete with purple, green and orange lights, New Orleans street signs, and plastic beads hanging from the trees. That was up through March. During April, the yard was being landscaped, and I wondered what was in store for May.

There is a full-size inflated Jabba the Hutt on the porch.

I am tempted to knock on their door and tell the family what a boon their whimsy is to the neighborhood. It is such a welcome contrast with the many virtue-signalling scolds who subject us to Black Lives Matter endorsements and various rainbow lawns signs shouting such profound messages as “Love is Love” and “Ramalamadingdong.”

1. Ethics Villain: Jen Psaki, and President Biden is accountable. The demonstrations outside the homes of Supreme Court Justices continue, Justice Alito has been moved to a secure, undisclosed location, and Psaki muttered platitudes when asked if Biden condemns the [illegal!] harassment of the Justices. She also was asked if Biden condemned the leak, and she ignored the question.

But Donald Trump undermined democratic institutions. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Washington Post Herschel Walker Attack Piece

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Washington Post has published a full-on attack piece against Herschel Walker, the former college football star and pro player who has been endorsed by Donald Trump in his effort to become a Republican Senator in Georgia. Walker is running against Democrat Raphael Warnock, who probably only won his seat in the January 2021 special election because Trump wouldn’t shut up about how he really won the 2020 election, and then a mob of idiots triggered by those claims stormed the Capitol. The Post’s anti-Walker piece is unusually tough, but Walker is an unusually inviting target. I would be more charitable to the Post’s motives if I had ever seen the paper be similarly critical of a black Democrat.

There is a rebuttable presumption that the Post’s anti-Walker fervor is at least partially a product of Trump Derangement: if Trump has endorsed him, Walker must be…well, cue the Birds Lady:

However, as Ethics Alarms has already noted, Walker does show the signs of an untrustworthy candidate, Trump notwithstanding. Thus the Post’s examination of other disturbing aspects of his character, background and statements would be just good journalism—if it devoted similar efforts to Democrats and progressives. It doesn’t. The Post looked the other way when Warnock was running for the Senate and his wife made credible accusations of spousal abuse, for example. That doesn’t mean the the Post should ignore Walker’s unsavory side, but playing favorites is unethical journalism.

One of the Walker statements quoted by the Post is enough for me: I wouldn’t need more to decide to write in the Easter Bunny rather than vote for him. At a Sugar Hill, Georgia church Walker said in March, “At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not? Well, this is what’s interesting, though. If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”

Yikes. I have thought about it, and anyone who would say or think something like that has the critical thinking skills of a sea sponge and is brick-ignorant to boot. That’s signature significance for a candidate who shouldn’t get into the Senate without a ticket. Everything else the Post reveals, including disturbing stories about Walker’s emotional stability, is piling on after that.

Additional Observations:

Continue reading →

Saturday Night Live Lies And The Biased Mainstream Media Cheers: Propaganda Mission Accomplished

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

That cold open from last week’s Saturday Night Live was a perfect illustration of the maxim, best articulated by the late, great, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” Satire must be granted considerable license, but basing nasty mockery on a deliberate misrepresentation is unethical even if it is funny. The SNL skit above isn’t funny, unless one finds deliberate misrepresentation and outrageous laziness funny. I don’t.

The opening narration essentially takes the skit out of the realm of humor into the murky world of propaganda and public disinformation. Alito’s draft only states that “no woman has a right to an abortion” in the context of Roe v. Wade’s legally flawed and factually sloppy argument that the U.S. Constitution guarantees such a right through the unenumerated right of privacy. The SNL phrasing is deceitful, technically accurate but misleading. The draft does not state that no woman should have an abortion, and specifically states that the opinion takes no position on whether abortion should be legal or not.

Continue reading →

The Dishonesty And Desperation Of “Pro-Choice” Advocates In The Wake Of The Dobbs Leak, Part 2: Reason Should Be Ashamed Of Itself

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

It is not a great surprise to see that the libertarian magazine Reason opposes abortion restrictions; one would assume so, given the libertarian creed. (Libertarians Ron Paul, a former House member, and his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky), however, both oppose abortion, and take the position that life begins at conception.) However, if the publication is going to declare that Justice Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs is badly reasoned (and a publication named “Reason” should be careful when it makes such a claim if it wants to maintain a reputation for integrity) it has an obligation to rebut that reasoning competently and fairly.

Thus when I saw the headline on Reason’s website, “Alito’s Draft Opinion That Would Overturn Roe Is a Disaster of Legal Reasoning,” I clicked on it eagerly. Legitimate legal analyses of the draft have been in short supply, with even supposedly respectable legal scholars from the pro-abortion camp resorting to hysterical pronouncements rather than dispassionate argument.

Inexcusably, the author of the article under the clickbait headline doesn’t come close to making the case that the Justice’s draft fits that hyperbolic description. Worse, it is quickly apparent that she wouldn’t know a “disaster of legal reasoning” if, to quote Matt Hooper in “Jaws,” one swam up “and bit [her] in the ass.” As I read her mess, I thought, “Elizabeth Nolan Brown can’t possibly be a lawyer.” Indeed she isn’t. Her graduate degree is in theater.

Oh. One of those.

Continue reading →

More Strange Tales Of The Great Stupid: Calling All Hunchbacks!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I’ve written about this nonsense before, maybe too much, but I’m a stage director, dammit, and its important to me. Not unlike other realms I travel in, theater and show business generally is polluted by a lot of terrible ideas advocated by a lot of influential people whose intellect and breadth of experience is not sufficient for the amount of credibility they carry.

These are artists whose mission is creating entertaining and compelling theater, yet their craving for acceptance in the knee-jerk wokeness-obsessed bubble in which they work causes them to undermine their art for approval from fanatics who couldn’t care less about drama.

So now The Great Stupid has produced this: Gregory Doran, the outgoing head of the Royal Shakespeare Company, has decided that only disabled actors should now be cast as Richard III. Casting able-bodied actors for the role, which was written by Shakespeare as a deformed, twisted man traditionally portrayed as a hunchback, “would probably not be acceptable.”

Oh, “not acceptable” to who, you pathetic, grovelling fool? Audiences? I doubt it. The Wicked Woke are overwhelmingly from recent generations who are as likely to go to live theater, especially Shakespeare, as they would a Gregorian Chant concert. The playwright, one of the most freakishly perceptive human beings ever birthed? No, he would recognize your silly prejudice as the anti-artistic rot it is, and mock it with eloquence I can’t possibly approach. Continue reading →

A Mother’s Day Ethics Bouquet, 5/8/2022: For You, Mom, Even Though Ethics Wasn’t Your Long Suit…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

  • Don’t you think it’s odd that there isn’t a single really great song about mothers? There are lots of great father songs.
  • My mom, whom I think about every day and miss terribly, was wonderful in so many ways, but was almost as unethical as my father was ethical. It’s a tribute to his parenting that he communicated to my sister and me early on that this was just a quirk, and while mom had much to teach about love, loyalty and compassion, hers was not the ethical or moral compass to follow.
  • I just saw a man riding a real, honest-to-goodness velocipede in the church parking lot across from our house! I have never seen that in real life, only in photos and old movies.
  • The eighth of May, 1945, was  the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms, and World War II, the worst catastrophe the modern world has ever suffered through, featuring the most unethical and cruel aggressors imaginable, finally came to an end. Evil easily could have triumphed; that it did not was as much a function of luck as anything else. This is always a day on which to draw a collective breath. Whew! That was a close one…

1. Funny, but stupid. This meme is fascinating.

It could easily be intended to mock the kind of hysterical distortions from the Left’s Supreme Court leak freakout—on that basis, I laughed when I saw it. However, it almost certainly IS one of those hysterical distortions, which reduce debate to an infantile level. I’m sure many progressives think it’s profound. [Pointer: Arthur in Maine] Continue reading →

The Dishonesty And Desperation Of “Pro-Choice” Advocates In The Wake Of The Dobbs Leak, Part I: Anything But The Issues

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Another one of the ironic boons from the despicable Supreme Court leak of Justice Alito’s draft majority opinion portending that Roe v. Wade is about to be overruled is how vividly it has exposed the intellectually dishonest and unethical nature of “pro choice” arguments. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has been following the abortion debate diligently, but in their fury and panic, abortion advocates are revealing just how weak their case is. They are also revealing that those who are willing to sacrifice nascent human lives for other objectives tend to have no compunction about using rationalizations, ad hominem attacks, classic logical fallacies and fearmongering as well as outright lies, when they finally have to defend their positions.

The reappearance of the costumes from “The Handmaiden’s Tale” is a neat symbol of the whole phenomenon. (How many of such protesters haven’t read Roe, the Alito draft, or Margaret Atwood’s novel? My guess: most of them.) To be fair, prominent Democrats like this guy endorsed the hysteria:

That delusion was apiece with the suggestion that women could force men to support abortion on demand by going on a sex strike. Similarly ducking the issues are the illegal demonstrations at the homes of Justices before it is even known who voted to end Roe, and President Biden’s moronic declaration in response to the leak that “this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history—-in recent American history.”

Since Roe v. Wade has been almost unanimously regarded in legal and academic circles as a badly reasoned opinion (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg conceded it was a botch), the epitome of flagrant judicial activism and legislation by judges, those trying to defend the decision now have had to resort to distractions, diversions, straw men and fictional slippery slopes. “Next those fascists will ban inter-racial marriage and Brown v. Board of Education!” more than a few Democratic officials and pundits have proclaimed, apparently forgetting that just a few weeks ago they were demanding that Justice Thomas, the dean of the Court’s conservatives, recuse himself because of the activities of his very white wife.

Continue reading →

Details And Nuance In The Dartmouth/FIRE/College Republicans Collision

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The contretemps between the campus Republican group at Dartmouth, the college, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education was discussed here a couple of days ago, using sources I thought sufficiently thorough. They weren’t nearly as thorough, however, as Ethics Alarms commenter Curmie, who performed a superb deep dive into the facts and competing narratives.

As you would expect with such careful research, his analysis is consequently more nuanced and fair than mine, though it reaches a conclusion regarding Dartmouth that is close enough to the Ethics Alarms version for horseshoes. I wish I had written the equivalent of Curmie’s analysis at the outset, but at least we have the fuller story now.

It’s too long for me to justify posting, but I’d rather send you to Curmie’s blog anyway: just click on this link: “Dartmouth Wins Three-Way Battle for Looking the Worst”

If you post your comments here, I promise to cross-post them on Curmie’s blog.