Month: July 2022

A Case Study In How The The Culture Gets Stupid: “Shark Week”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It’s Shark Week. If anyone needs more evidence that the corporate media has no scruples whatsoever and will use its ubiquity, influence and power to treat the public like guinea pigs and puppets, look no further.

The nonsense debuted in 1988 as a Discovery Channel marketing stunt, and has since metastasized into TV’s longest-running programming event. The idea was and is to scare people, because people like being scared, except that unlike Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers and the Alien, sharks are real. People being irrationally terrified of sharks has led to an alarming drop in some shark species populations; it has also made significant numbers of impressionable Americans phobic about the ocean.

The failure of our education system to teach critical thinking and probability also helps.

I personally witnessed a post-Shark Week panic on a Wellfleet, Mass. beach when a school of dolphins cruised by about 100 yards from shore. It’s amazing nobody was hurt: the screaming stampede out of the water looked exactly like the famous scene in “Jaws.” That movie, of course (Yes, that’s young Alex Kintner getting eaten alive above) was the inspiration for Shark Week, and the late Peter Benchley’s low-brow rip-off of “Moby-Dick” was the inspiration for Spielberg’s break-though movie. The film holds up almost 50 years later because of the performances and the direction, though, as Marty McFly sagely observed in “Back to the Future II,” the shark still looks fake.

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The Biden White House Trying Its Big Brother Thing To Avoid Being Held Responsible For A Recession Might Be Not Be So Suspicious If We Forgot About The Last 18 Months…Or Five Years [Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

As Ronald Reagan might say, “There they go again!” This White House and Democrats in general are addicted to the Orwellian technique of avoiding reality and gaslighting the public using the technique represented by Ethics Alarms Rationalization #64, Yoo’s Rationalization, or “It Isn’t What It Is.”

Orwell’s Big Brother reveled in mottos like “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery” and “Ignorance is Strength.” The Democratic way for some time now, and it is natural that the Biden Administration would employ it, is to deal with facts it doesn’t care for by denying them, altering unpleasant reality by offering an alternate one to the gullible public, or, as in the current case, just changing the meanings of words so things are too muddled and confusing for anyone to be sure what’s happening.

Democracy dies in befuddlement.

All my adult life, I have read that economists view two consecutive quarters in which the economy has contracted as signifying a recession. Well, you know…economists. Nonetheless, I have lived through a lot of them, and never before have I seen the unfortunate wretches caught “holding the bag” when this damning diagnosis attaches have the chutzpah to do what the Bidenites have. The Bureau of Economic Analysis is set to release the second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers this week, and they are widely expected to show those two consecutive quarters of economic decline. So what have the Democrats cooked up? A definition of “recession” that will allow them—they hope—to avoid the “R” word.

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“And I really wish Trump haters would move away from characterizing his criticisms of the 2020 election as “lies” and attempting to intimidate anyone who wants better election security — calling them a threat to “the legitimacy of American democracy.” Put your efforts into improving the accuracy of our elections, not denouncing the people who are telling you that they’re worried about the legitimacy of American democracy.”

That was blogger/lawyer/retired law professor Ann Althouse this morning on her esoteric blog.

Ethics Alarms has made this same point in various ways for many months. Of course, Ann is right.

Comment Of The Day: “Comment Of The Day: ‘Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem'”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I always learn something when legendary Ethics Alarms commenter Mrs. Q rejoins the fray. This Comment of the Day, sparked by Null Pointer’s COTD on the post, “Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem,” is especially enlightening and provocative.

I am also thrilled that the controversial T-Rex emoji, which Ethics Alarms discussed last week, has made it into a post!

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“You have one group of people using another group of people for likes and specialness without regard to the effects it has on the group being used.”

This is why more and more groups of gays are separating away from the whole LGBTQ+ industrial complex. For too long the T has been piggybacking on the struggles of the LGB’s when the two issues are totally different. Worse, now the same groups that once advocated for gay/bi equality, like the HRC and other pride groups, are redefining gay to mean “same-gender identity attraction” rather than same-sex attraction.” According to these new LBG groups, this is gay erasure because it takes biological sex out of the equation.

One of the most concerning things about this piggybacking is that now we see acceptance for gays dwindling because gays are being conflated with trans and it’s assumed gays are okay with transing kids or exposing them to kink and pervy drag queens, or letting men win in women’s sports. I’m already seeing articles about how gay marriage started all this and that if we get rid of marriage equality, somehow that will magically make the insanity of the radical trans activists go away.

Then you have those T radicals who say that gays who don’t want to be a part of the rainbow mafia are TERFS or “cisgender genital fetishists” or transphobes. Younger lesbians especially are getting the brunt of these assertions and are being pressured to sleep with men who claim to be lesbians, in a show of solidarity or overcoming their “sexual racism” and “unlearning their genital biases.” Any woman who dares to bring up this phenomenon is immediately labeled a TERF and the consequences aren’t always pretty. 🦖 Continue reading →

“Freefall” Ethics Reflections: “Is This It?”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

British novelist William Golding, whom you probably know best as the author of “Lord of the Flies,” wrote a disturbing novel the year I was born called “Freefall.” It was on the reading list of a literature course I took as a college junior, and though it was easily the least well-known of the novels we studied (and is one of Golding’s least-known books as well), “Freefall” is the one that has most echoed back to me at various times over the decades.

The first-person narrator is a miserable and depressed man, an artist, imprisoned in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II and awaiting torture in a small, dark store room. In fear and isolation, he finds his mind reviewing the minutiae of his life, as he searches for the exact moment when his life went horribly and irretrievably wrong and he lost control. In flashbacks, he constantly stops, sometimes after re-living what seems to be the most trivial event, and asks “Was this it? Was this the moment?’

I thought about “Freefall” once again this morning, as I tried to process a series of absurd and incomprehensible recent occurrences and statements. “Is this it?” I found myself wondering, like Golding’s pathetic hero, “Is this it? Is this the moment The Great Stupid completely obliterates all reason and leaves the United States public wandering around aimlessly moaning like the zombies in ‘The Walking Dead’?”

No, it’s not a particularly momentous chain of events, just one that can’t happen anywhere that has sturdy values, trustworthy leadership, and functioning ethics alarms.

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Sunday Ethics Notes of Note, 7/24/2022: More Transgender Games, The SCOTUS Leak, Cannibalism, Dispatches From The Great Stupid And More…

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

While watching Eddie Izzard’s most recent movie on Netflix, 2020’s “Six Minutes to Midnight,” I decided to check out the details of the stand-up comic/ actor’s career. Imagine my surprise to find that the Wikipedia biography of Izzard refers to Eddie as “she” and “her.” This, despite the fact that the performer is and has always been biologically male. By the au currant definition of “transgender,” Izzard would now qualify for the UPenn women’s swim team (if he or she could swim, that is.)

Wikipedia calls Eddie by female pronouns because at various times the versatile performer has said that he wanted to be referred to as “she,” that “he and she” were his preferred pronouns, that he is “genderfluid,” and that he is a heterosexual and transvestite. Izzard is prone to describing himself in such varying terms as “somewhat boy-ish and somewhat girl-ish,””a lesbian trapped in a man’s body,” “a complete boy plus half girl,” and says “she” uses “transgender” as an umbrella term, whatever that means. Izzard has “explained,” “If I am in boy mode, then ‘he’, or girl mode, ‘she'”. In 2020, when “she” played the serious role of a male British spy in “Six Minutes to Midnight,” which “she” wrote, Izzard said announced being “based in girl mode from now on”.

Either Eddie Izzard doesn’t know what he wants or is, or the whole thing is an extended put-on. Either way, this behavior does nothing for the transgender cause except make it appear silly and confused.

1. Is it unethical for a publication to pretend that something is in doubt when it obviously isn’t? Here’s a feature headline from the Boston Globe Magazine: “Can poetry possibly matter in a time like this?” The writer consults a former U.S. poet laureate, whose response is as predictable as it is useless. Of course the answer is “no” regardless of what you think “like this” means,  and the answer has been no for at least 80 years. Poetry has negligible influence of the culture.

Quick: what’s the most recent poem that you can quote a substantial part of from memory? (Lyrics don’t count.) Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Before I present Tom P.’s Comment of the Day, one of several excellent reader reactions to the post, indulge me as I respond in detail to a slur on me by the now-banned commenter who claimed that associating transgender individuals with a “problem” evoked a fascist mindset and the genocidal intent of Hitler’s “final solution.” It was this repeatedly nasty commenter’s doubling down on his accusation that finally moved me to ban him after multiple warnings from me and his repeated defiance of appropriate discourse here.

The guy was a relentless progressive troll, though a relatively smart one, and fair debate was not on his agenda. What has become a routine tactic among such partisans here and elsewhere is to attempt to constrain language in order to make coherent arguments against Leftist cant more difficult, and also to play cognitive dissonance games by attaching sinister and discredited figures, positions and rhetoric to legitimate discourse that the ideologues don’t want to deal with fairly, or can’t.

Of course I wasn’t thinking of “the Jewish Problem,” as it was characterized by Hitler and his minions when I titled the post “Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem,” but even if that abuse of the term “problem” had popped into my mind, it wouldn’t have dissuaded me. One dishonest and dastardly use of language for propaganda purposes cannot and should not restrict the legitimate use of the same words by others.

Germany had no “Jewish problem.” Germany’s Jewish community was among the most productive, loyal and successful ethnic groups in the nation. Hitler slandered these innocent citizens with the false claim that their religion, race and culture made them a threat to civilization, and did so with the specific goal of creating popular supports tor exterminating them. This history, I was told, meant that anyone assessing any group of any kind as a “problem” is unethical.

This is all part of the now familiar race-baiting, dog-whistling, political correctness “gotcha!” strategy used by various interest groups on the left to stifle legitimate discussion and to brand adversaries as unfit for the public square. I won’t play. If I was going to criticize the title of that post, it would be on the basis that the headline suggested that the problem discussed in the essay, the difficulty of determining whether trangenderism should be regarded as abnormal, was the only “transgender problem.” There are, of course, many. Problem: How do we ethically integrate true transgender individuals into gender-segregated sports? Problem: How does society simultaneously eliminate the stigma attached to individuals coping with serious gender identity issues without encouraging gender confusion among the young? There are others.

As for the blanket assertion that it is unethical to designate any group as a problem as far as public policy and ethical treatment goes, I reject it completely. Too many groups pose serious and difficult problems for society to mention them all, but some that come to my mind immediately, remembering that even problematic groups have members who present possible solutions to the problems or who may make valuable contributions to it, are:

  • Illegal immigrants.
  • Corporations
  • Koran-obeying Muslims
  • Unmarried parents
  • Black Lives Matters members and supporters
  • Trump supporters
  • Ideologues
  • Racists
  • Billionaires
  • The homeless
  • Alcoholics
  • Drug addicts, users and peddlers
  • Ignorant citizens
  • Stupid people.
  • Sexual predators
  • Incels
  • White supremacists
  • Journalists
  • Teachers, professors and school administrators…

I could go on and on. The fact that I regard these and other groups as creating problems (perhaps it would have been better have used “challenge” rather than “problem”….but it was only a headline) for American society today does not mean that I advocate wiping them off the face of the earth.

Here is Tom P.’s Comment of the Day on the post “Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem”…

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The whole furor surrounding transgenderism is multifaceted. This is true of virtually all polarizing issues. Pick any polarizing issue and within the pro and con camps, you will find the following subcamps: radical activists, passionate true believers, opportunists, virtue signaling supporters, go-a-longs to get-a-longs, and casual non-vocal supporters. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (And Unethical Quote Of The Month Too!): Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Really…what an idiot. There is no excuse for a political party allowing someone this obnoxious and stupid to run under its banner for Congress. After all, stupid people have a strong majority in many districts, and parties have an obligation to mitigate this democracy-mocking problem by at least trying not to nominate candidates like Matt Gaetz. Ethics Alarms didn’t need his latest embarrassment to make this observation about Gaetz: he already earned it several times over. Just peruse his EA dossier. Gaetz’s most recent mention here for being like he is was in April, and a year earlier I expounded on his creepiness at length, concluding in part,

I have seen enough to conclude that Rep. Gaetz is a creep. I don’t like creeps, and as a general proposition I don’t think creeps should be in positions of influence and power, because you can’t trust creeps. They are ethically “bent”….I know that Gaetz is a creep because he screams creepiness, like his stunt of wearing a gas mask on the floor of the House of Representatives during debate over the first pandemic aid bill, and joining a group of Republicans who forced their way into a closed congressional witness deposition during the run-up to Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. ...Then there’s his revelation last year that he has been living with a 19-year-old non-biological male, un-adopted “son”, Cuban immigrant Nestor Galban, whom he met when Galban was 12 and Gaetz was dating his older sister.

Or just listen to the guy.

As in so many other cases, the fact that someone like him could be elected speaks horribly about the voters in his district, the party that nominated him, and the state of democracy generally. His various statements show him to have a scarlet “C” on his forehead.

All of which is a prelude to his most recent episode: saying this to a crowd of Turning Point conservatives yesterday:

“Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

But that’s Matt!

Observations:

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In An Unethical NYT Feature Designed For Scaremongering And To Make Readers Feel Miserable, One Unethical Statement Shines With Special Glare…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

…and it’s this one, from an Arizona 25-year-old who had been looking forward to a “hot girl” summer:

“I feel like women have to be more careful and more selective now in who they have intercourse with. If something happens with your birth control or your condom breaks, this potentially could be a partner stuck in your life forever because now you have to raise a child together.” 

Amazingly, this isn’t the dumbest or even necessarily most offensive of  the quotes from those interviewed in “Sorry, Summer,” an outrageously contrived lament authored by Times reporter Alyson Krueger. What Krueger must have done is to search for paranoids, weenies, Wuhan-phobics and others of faint hearts and loose reasoning skills to advance an “Everything is terrible!” narrative. I’ll discuss the rest, but that quote above from “newly single” Sarah Molina, 25, an event planner from Phoenix. It is such an irresponsible statement in oh so many ways, Let’s count them:
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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This provocative Comment of the Day by Null Pointer is at least three distinct discourses in one. I will eschew me usual introductory framing attempts and leave what will, I hope, be a rich and diverse discussion to the comments to the Comment, on the post, “Ethics Musings On The Transgender Problem”…

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I would refer to homosexuality as normal but atypical. Before the LGBTQ+ activist brigade went bat guano crazy, I considered transgenderism to be the same, biologically based but extremely atypical, even more so than homosexuality. Then the crazy people started screaming from the roof tops about gender being a social construct, completely divorced from biology, and began preaching the merits of gender fluidity along with a host of other “genders” for which the definitions sound like the were written by someone experiencing an LSD induced hallucinogen state.

I still think there are a small minority of people with atypical brain biology who are legitimately transgender. I think there is a much larger cohort of people with personality disorders who need Jesus. Those people have appointed themselves spokespeople for the transgender community. It is never a good idea to let obnoxious, crazy people be your the face of your community. Narcissistic personality disorder is not endearing. Histrionic personality disorder does not lend itself to coherent argument. Brainwashing people’s children into “changing” their gender against the parents’ will or sparking mass hysteria events in teenage girls and autistic young people is not beneficial to society in the slightest. Anarchists and authoritarians are the only communities benefiting from this mess. Continue reading →