I’m beset with ethics conflicts and difficult choices of late.
And you?
Month: July 2022
Why Must I Be A Blogging Ethicist In Ethics Zugzwang?
I was going to sing it, but it doesn’t fit the music…
Here is my problem…
Describing the ugly developments arising out of the Democratic Soviet-style show trial aimed at neutralizing Donald Trump by criminalizing his post election excesses, and, if possible, intimidating and harassing his supporters past and present, esteemed former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy writes in part, Continue reading
Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/28/2022, For All The Good It Will Do…
I’ve been intending to write about “Billions,” the Showtime ethics drama finally streaming on Amazon Prime, but an irritating moment in the third season has disrupted my thinking about the show. All the characters are pop culture trivia buffs, especially pre-90s movies. (It’s as if all the writers are over 70.) In a major scene in Season 3, Chuck Roades (Paul Giamatti), the Assistant US Attorney who is the show’s corrupted and conflicted protagonist, is trying to convince a target of his prosecution to plead guilty. Roades gives a long analogy that he says comes from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” which he claims he knows backwards and forwards.
He describes the last scene, as Butch and Sundance prepare to shoot their way out their final predicament in Bolivia, not knowing that the whole Bolivian army is outside and that they are doomed. Rhoades says they really think they will prevail as they always have before, so the two charge out, guns blazing, and thus “die with honor,” because they never realized that their courage would be futile and that the foe they faced was unbeatable.
Well, this is a flat out misinterpretation of the scene. I know that film well too: I’ve lectured on it. The great thing about the final scene is that Butch and Sundance know it’s all over for them. Both are badly wounded. Sundance has to tie a gun to Butch’s wounded hand. They engage in bravado about where they will go next, knowing that there is no “next;” they bicker like they always have, each keeping up the fantasy that there’s no reason to give up or to despair, faking hope so the other will remain strong. In this ritual they demonstrate their love for each other. (The scene chokes me up every time; it did just now, dammit!) When they charge out shooting, it is noble, but because they know there’s no hope, and they decide that they might as well go down fighting, since they are going down one way or the other. It’s the Alamo.
Why would a show that makes such a fetish about movies let a main character, a smart and literate character, a character who normally makes perceptive references to classic films, miss the point of a movie he purports to love? This is both a breach of the show’s integrity, but deliberate misinformation. I assume lots of younger viewers haven’t seen the George Roy Hill classic Western, and they have come to trust the show’s authority regarding old movies. Now they have been taught the wrong message of the ending….and it’s a great ending.
1. More on the media helping the Biden administration recession cover-up. Here’s how the New York Times begins its story on the fact that GDP fell for the second straight quarter, the long-standing traditional definition of a recession.
Gross domestic product fell by 0.2 percent in the second quarter, after a 0.4 percent decline in the first, fueling fears that a recession may have already begun.
Yes, that’s like saying, “The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor yesterday, fueling fears that Japan was now hostile to the United States.” And the media gets away with this. Sometimes, they even succeed in redefining something even when it makes no sense. My favorite: the Democratic Party allied media went all in arguing that Bill Clinton wasn’t lying when he said that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinsky, because oral sex isn’t really sex. That convenient (and absurd) rationalization was instantly adopted by teens across the country. Now there was a variety of sex that wasn’t “technically” sex. A President said so!
Ethics Observations On Justice Thomas’s Exit From George Washington University Law School
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the only prominent black public servant who is unable (and unwilling) to use an accusation of “racism” to shield himself from criticism, will not teach a Constitutional Law Seminar this fall, as was announced in an email addressed to students by Judge Gregory Maggs, who has co-taught the course with Thomas since 2011. Justice Thomas, Maggs wrote, is “unavailable” to co-teach the course in the fall. Now Thomas is no longer listed as a lecturer on GW Law’s course list.
Thomas’ withdrawal from the course certainly appears to be a reaction to a protest petition signed by 11,000 GW students and community members demanding his removal from the university’s faculty in the wake of the Dobbs ruling and Thomas’ controversial concurring opinion. George Washington officials promptly rejected the demand, but Thomas faced likely protests and disruptions to his class if he stayed on.
Observations: Continue reading
Evening Ethics Cool-Off, 7/27/2022: “I Hate Being Right All The Time”
On this date in 1974, the last truly bi-partisan, Constitutionally solid Presidential impeachment was sought by the House of Representatives after bi-partisan House Judiciary Committee voted an impeachment resolution out for the entire House to consider. The first Article of Impeachment passed the House on the 27th; two more, one for abuse of power another for contempt of Congress, passed on July 29 and 30. When August 5 saw Nixon complying with a Supreme Court ruling requiring that he provide transcripts of crucial White House tapes, he was undeniably implicated him in the cover up of the Watergate break-in. Three days later, President Nixon announced his resignation.
That, of course, is how it’s supposed to work and how the Founders envisioned the process. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was turned, by Clinton, into a purely partisan process despite very valid charges against him. Then Democrats destroyed the procedure by all time in their fervor to crush President Donald Trump, essentially voting for two impeachments on flimsy pretenses, the second one without even sufficient hearings, because they had the votes to do so. This both debased the process and unethically transformed it from a rare and emergency fail-safe to remove criminal President, into an ideological weapon without credibility or teeth. Ironically, this short-sighted, unethical and undemocratic blunder, the result of Speaker Nancy Pelosi caving to the whims of her party’s most extreme elements, both strengthened the office of the Presidency (when his party has a majority in the House) and weakened it (when his party dominates the House and Senate.)
1. Now THAT’S Incompetence! “Leave It To Beaver” star Tony Dow’s representatives announced on his Facebook page yesterday that the sitcom star (he was “The Beev’s” older brother, and unlike Jerry Mathers, could act) had died after being so informed by Dow’s wife. This was immediately picked up by most media outlets, and obituaries appeared. Brother Wally, however, was still breathing. The representatives then posted an “URGENT UPDATE” on the Facebook page, writing, “This morning Tony’s wife Lauren, who was very distraught, had notified us that Tony had passed and asked that we notify all his fans. As we are sure you can understand, this has been a very trying time for her. We have since received a call from Tony’s daughter-in-law saying that while Tony is not doing well, he has not yet passed. Tony’s son Christopher and his daughter-in-law Melissa have also been by his side comforting him, and we will keep you posted on any future updates.”
I don’t care how distraught Mrs. Dow is: how hard is it to tell if her husband is dead or not? There’s the old mirror trick, for example. If she’s so “distraught,” why did Dow’s representatives not seek conformation of their client’s death before announcing it to the world? I recall many instances where the news media jumped the gun with a premature death announcement, but I’ve never heard of a celebrity’s family announcing the End by mistake.
Dispatches From The Great Stupid, Climate Change Grandstanding Edition
We owe this tale to the always mordantly amusing Manhattan Contrarian.
Like his counterpart in the White House, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, (D, of course), is addicted to completely useless climate change measures. Last week he signed the bipartisan Clean Air Act, and in the subsequent celebration of this epic moment, a State Senator spouted rhetoric about waiting for Washington, D.C. to “save the planet.” Anyone who actually understands anything about the vicissitudes of climate change and the wildly complex interaction of factors affecting it knows that Washington, D.C. can’t “save the planet,” but Lamont’s state really can’t save the planet. The Manhattan Contrarian explains that Connecticut…
…has a population of only about 3.6 million. Its greenhouse gas emissions are in the range of about 41 MMTCO2e per year, which is well less than 0.1% of total world annual emissions of about 49,000 MMTCO2e. You could zero out Connecticut’s emissions entirely, and it wouldn’t even amount to a rounding error in the world total. Indeed, the increase that occurs each year in China’s CO2 emissions is a multiple of Connecticut’s total emissions. (According to Our World in Data here, from 2019 to 2020, latest years given, China’s CO2 emissions went from 10.49 to 10.67 billion tons, a one-year increase of about 180 million tons, or well more than four times the total annual emissions of Connecticut.)
“Ignorant, Stupid And With Dead Ethics Alarms Is No Way To Stay In Business, Atlantic Sports Bar & Restaurant…”
And now for something completely appalling! The Tiverton, Rhode Island eatery posted this meme to Facebook:
Now what?
What occurred after the meme went up was that a local talk radio host called to investigate. She says the restaurant owner told her that he thought the meme was funny and then cut off the call. The employee who posted the gag alleged that he didn’t know who the girl in the photo was.
After the post had been taken down by the restaurant, a contrite apology went up in its place:
Ethics Villain: Surprise! (Not Really…) It’s Cassidy Hutchinson!
Even for the rarefied, rank air of Ethics Villains, Cassidy Hutchinson, the January 6 Witch Hunt “star witness,” reeks.
Hutchinson became a goddess of the Trump Deranged when she testified in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s prime time TV show-trial in June. The former White House aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows dramatically claimed that she “still struggle[s] to work through the emotions” of that admittedly ugly day. “As an American, I was disgusted. It was unpatriotic,” Hutchinson said. “We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie, and it was something that was really hard in that moment to digest.”
Sure, Cassidy.
You’re busted. Continue reading
From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files: Now THIS Is Incompetence!
Behold the newly painted traffic lines on a highway in Hollister, California.
No, there is no catch, excuse or hidden explanation. Just…morons.
Hollister Mayor Igancio Velzaquez was blunt, if not quite blunt enough, saying, “It just comes down to the contractor. Somebody didn’t read the plans correctly. It was not designed to look very odd.”
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Pointer: Boing-Boing
Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/26/2022: “Cheer Up! Things Could Be Worse…”
Time for my favorite way to greet the morning: it’s been a while...
My father had small cards that he handed out, sparingly, that read,
“One day as I sat musing, sad and lonely without a friend, a voice came to me from out of the gloom saying, ‘Cheer up. Things could be worse.’ So I cheered up and sure enough—things got worse.”
On the web, this quote is attributed to the author of a 1988 book, which is obviously wrong: my father had those cards in the Fifties. He liked the quote, first, because he liked the joke, but also because it expressed his philosophy of life in a sly way. He did not believe in feeling sorry for himself, and my father lived what was in many ways a traumatic life. Because he knew that things could always be worse than they were for him at the time—surviving battles in WWII will drive that point home forever– he never despaired, adopted the belief that it was great to be alive, and advised his son and daughter, when they faced setbacks and disappointments, not to wallow, weep or regret, but to move on, look ahead, and, as Winston Churchill, a depressive, would say, “Keep buggering on” without fear or hesitation.
There is always plenty to feel good about, even if, as it is for me today, all that comes to mind is a glorious moment in a movie musical when Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynold and Gene Kelly were all young, at the peak of their talents, and given the perfect vehicle to express in dance and song, for all time, what it feels like to be happy just to be alive.
1. “Linked” and our nasty, untrustworthy journalists. This headline—“Napping regularly linked to high blood pressure and stroke, study finds”-–was quickly picked up by other news sources that reported research showing that naps might kill you. That’s not what the study concluded. The study found that people who had various health maladies needed to nap because in many cases their issues caused them not to get enough sleep at night. “Although taking a nap itself is not harmful, many people who take naps may do so because of poor sleep at night. Poor sleep at night is associated with poorer health, and naps are not enough to make up for that,” one of the researchers, Michael Grandner, said in a statement.
Ah, yes, “linked.” Guilt by association. Our corrupt journalists gave “linked” a workout when it was trying every day to show that Donald Trump and his associates had conspired with Putin and Russia to steal the 2016 election. Any time you see “linked” in a headline about anything, your ethics alarms should start pinging.
Ethics Alarms 