Month: September 2022

Attack Of The Super-Weenies!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The original story seemed so, so stupid to me that I didn’t deem it worth commenting on. Podcast Movement, the podcast industry’s biggest conference, took place in Dallas two weeks ago. Most major audio companies were represented there, including The Daily Wire, conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s media company. The Wire paid for a booth at the exhibition hall, and Shapiro showed up at the conference to visit his own company’s booth, which is not abnormal in any way.  Never mind: some of the usual Censorious Creeps from the Bitter Left complained like Shapiro was a leper or a contagion or Donald Trump or something: many complained that Shapiro made them feel uncomfortable and “unsafe” as women, people of color, and transgenders… because of his opinions. That was enough for Podcast Movement’s organizers to issue a groveling Twitter apology: Continue reading →

KABOOM! My Head Exploded Because I Underestimated Just How Bonkers The Values Of The Biden Administration Are. Again.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Talk about a flat learning curve. In my defense, I continue to bend over backwards (metaphorically) to believe that the people who work for Joe Biden are really trying to do the right thing, they just don’t have a clue what the right things are. Then they do something like putting corrupt Clinton operative John Podesta (remember his emails detailing the ways Hillary cheated during her campaign?) in charge of $370 billion for anti-climate change measures. Sure, put someone dishonest in control of $370 billion…what could go wrong? But hey, I think: it’s just a mistake. Joe is addled. Let’s not be too judgmental.

Then Biden puts the guy above as the White House monkeypox coordinator. That’s not a gag photo, and I’m not kidding. That’s Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, formerly the director of the CDC Division of HIV prevention. Okay, he’s flamboyantly gay: I have no problem with that, I guess. I’m old fashioned: I think government officials who represent the whole nation’s interests should avoid unprofessional demeanor and open exhibitions of fealty to particular groups, but I’ll keep an open mind.

Continue reading →

Weekend Ethics Kick-Off, 9/10/2022: Aftermaths: Dinosaurs, Chess, And Oberlin

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

How’s this for an aftermath: thanks to the U.S.’s full embrace of alcohol, its social value and its offsetting pathologies, it is the leading cause of traffic fatalities. Indeed, drinking combined with driving kills about one person every 52 minutes here according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, leading to more than 10,000 lives lost each year. Of course, that doesn’t include that many thousands of lives negatively affected by these avoidable accidents, or those scarred, maimed and crippled despite having survived. September 10, 1897 marks the first arrest for drunk driving. London taxi driver George Smith was charged after crashing his cab into a building. Smith  pleaded guilty and was fined 25 shillings. Nobody was harmed. The first U.S.  laws alcohol-impaired driving went into effect in 1910. A professor of biochemistry and toxicology,patented the “Drunkometer” in 1936, and in 1953, Robert Borkenstein invented the Breathalyzer, an improved version that we still use today. Almost everyone I know has driven under the influence of alcohol at one time or another. Most never consider that the only reason they didn’t hurt or kill someone is that intervention of moral luck.

1. “Jurassic World: Dominion” ethics. I mentioned the latest in the “Jurassic Park” franchise in a negative context here, but the fact is that I saw the movie and enjoyed it very much. The film is now considered a conundrum wrapped in an enigma: it is going to soon pass a billion dollars in box office worldwide, and it has the worst reviews and most negative audience reactions of any of the six films in the line. There is a good reason for that: the plot is ridiculous, the sub-plots are even more ridiculous, and the dialogue is hackneyed and moronic. Continue reading →

Dear Twitter: How Exactly Is Protecting Hateful Assholes From Being Exposed Ethically Justified?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I was unaware, and likely to remain unaware, of this now viral tweet before reading the Ethics Alarms Open Forum today. The tweeter, Uju Anya, is a linguistics professor who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She tweeted the above as news broke that Elizabeth, 96, was “under medical supervision.”

Nice. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: On Queen Elizabeth’s Death (“Friday Open Forum)”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Steve-O-in NJ has some time on his hands, and he made Ethics Alarms the beneficiaries with this Comment of the Day, an excellent overview of the late Queen Elizabeth’s life, reign, and service to her nation.

I enthusiastically second virtually all of it, though I would have liked to see him mention Princess Anne in a positive light. She has been a tireless working royal for her entire adult life, and she has managed to avoid the scandals that tarnished the Royal Family at the hands of her siblings and aunt.

I also agree with Steve that the Queen earned a place in the The Ethics Alarms Heroes’ Hall Of Honor, which hasn’t had a new inductee in a while. I will add his essay to that page as soon as I can.

Here is Steve-O’s Comment of the Day on the life of Queen Elizabeth 1, in today’s Open Forum.

***

Elizabeth II wasn’t born to be queen. She was the elder daughter of Albert, the Duke of York, second son of the formidable (although no brain-trust) George V, who led the United Kingdom through the Great War and the beginning of the end of empire. His eldest son, known as “David” among his friends, but whose name has gone down in history rarely as Edward VIII, more often as the Duke of Windsor, almost always as the Edward of “Edward and Mrs. Simpson” and without exception as a failure (sometimes even as a potential traitor) lasted no more than a year before he let an unprincipled whore pull him down from his throne and into the shadow of disapproval. Hearing the announcement, the precocious princess, barely 10 years old, remarked to her younger sister Margaret that “Papa is to be king.” Supposedly Margaret said something to the effect of “then you’ll be queen? Poor you.” Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

“My experience here has given me a front-row seat to how deeply and unconsciously, as well as consciously, so many people in this country hate women…”

—The always entertaining AOC in a fawning puff-piece in GQ, which never felt that putting Mrs. Trump on its cover was appropriate, but now features the supposed working class heroine in a series of glamor shots in the current issue.

So let’s see: in the past seven days, the President has called half the public a “clear and present danger”s” to democracy and “semi-fascists,” and one of his party’s shining stars called a different half “misogynists.”

Did you know that Republicans are hateful and divisive?

AOC goes on to say,

And they hate women of color. People ask me questions about the future. And realistically, I can’t even tell you if I’m going to be alive in September. And that weighs very heavily on me. And it’s not just the right wing. Misogyny transcends political ideology: left, right, center.

Racist, bigoted and sexist—that’s AOC’s view of the United States of America. This is why, she tells GQ, she will probably never be President: “I admit to sometimes believing that I live in a country that would never let that happen.”

Right. That’s why she will never be President.

Continue reading →

Observations On “Flight/Risk”…And Related Matters

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Flight/Risk,” an Amazon production, was released on the streaming service today. The documentary is the most recent examination of the tragedy and scandals surrounding the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max planes within a five month period in late 2018 and early 2019. The horrible and disturbing story  is narrated by Pulitzer-winning Seattle Times journalist Dominic Gates, and revealed from the perspective of the deceased passengers family members, their lawyers, and whistleblowers.

Amazon’s fatuous description of its own product, primarily designed to be a “trigger warning,” explains that the movie may be too traumatic to watch for “some” and says the planes crashed “without anyone really understanding why.” That is, to be blunt and vulgar, bullshit. Lots of people understood why, including Boeing engineers, Boeing executives, FAA officials, and anyone (like me) who knows why large organizations are almost always incompetent, unethical and untrustworthy. {Ethics Alarms has several posts about the 737 Max scandal.]

What is so infuriating about the story is that it is so familiar. This is the Challenger disaster all over again, even to the detail of a whistle-blowing engineer being punished for having the courage to speak up, and eventually killing himself. In other ways, it is like the recent Ernst and Young cheating scandal, which Ethics Alarms discussed here.

Continue reading →

It’s Open Forum Friday!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

As always, you get to decide what ethics matters to raise, analyze and discuss. I am hoping someone delves into the many ethics implications, abstract, direct and otherwise of the now-ended reign of Queen Elizabeth II, especially since I have less than my usual control over my schedule today, and am unlikely to be able to examine this myself.

It’s been a bit of a dead week here traffic-wise, as the week after Labor Day usually is, and yet we have seen some superb comments and debates on many topics.

Keep up the good work!

Afternoon Panic Ethics Rundown, 9/8/2022: Ford’s Courage, Age Limits, Pregnant Men, And Checkmate For Netflix [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The panic is all mine: this really had to be a productive and efficient day, and it wasn’t: life, clients and chaos all got in the way. Now I’m facing down a serious deadline and running out of time.

Nonetheless, Ethics Alarms will not be denied.

This is an unusually relevant  landmark ethics date: On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford infuriated Richard Nixon’s many enemies and pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed or participated in while President. It was a uniquely courageous act that defined (and probably doomed) Ford’s Presidency. In my view, it was also the right and and wise thing to do. Ford, like Joe Biden, was an undistinguished career politician and hardly a towering intellect, but unlike Biden, he understood what was in the best long-term interests  of the nation.  Democrats made him defend this controversial action before the House Judiciary Committee, and Ford said he wanted to end the national divisions created by the Watergate scandal. To this day, there are still those who believe that he cut a corrupt deal with Nixon when he was appointed. Ford was well aware that the pardon would place his leadership under a permanent shadow. “Mister we could use a man like Gerald Ford again!”

1. Since you mention it...I was going to ignore D-list celeb Kathy Griffin’s comment yesterday that “If you don’t want a Civil War, vote for Democrats in November. If you do want Civil War, vote Republican,” mainly because, like Alyssa Milano, Bette Midler, Rob Reiner and so many others, nobody should care what Kathy Griffin says, tweets or thinks. But commenter Willem Reese wrote,  “Were she a sentient creature, she might have realized that her statement was an admission that it is democrats who are prone to violence when they don’t get what they want.” I can’t let that pass. I think Griffin said what she meant, and that it was a threat. She was also correct: Democrats have proven that their current breed believes in violence as the appropriate reaction to events, elections and decisions they disagree with. I fully expect riots if the GOP takes Congress. Griffin is vile and revolting, but she’s not stupid.

Continue reading →

Biden Semi-Fascist Speech Aftermath: Two Pundits, Two Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

One of which is busted beyond repair; the other is just malfunctioning.

Two of the New York Times’ more prominent opinion columnists reacted to President Biden’s “Half the Nation is an Existential Menace” speech, one of the greatest blunders in U.S. political history. One of them, Bret Stephens, is perhaps the closest thing to a conservative in the Times stable (though he has advocated the repeal of the Second Amendment); the other pundit was Charles M. Blow, who is not only an unshakeable progressive but an anti-white bigot and a sufferer from extreme Trump Derangement.

Guess which one loved the speech…

Here’s Blow in “Biden Shouldn’t Apologize to Republicans”:

Republicans who voted for Donald Trump deserve to be called out for their actions. Trump has consistently exhibited fascist tendencies and espoused racism, misogyny and white nationalism. Republicans supported him, defended him and voted for him. They’ve been actively courting this condemnation.

Note that Blow doesn’t bother to give any specifics; he’s writing to Times readers who just accept “resistance”/Democrat/mainstream media narratives dating back sic years or more. What racism? What white nationalism? (If pressed, I assume Blow would use the deceitful “very fine people” quote…or perhaps cite wanting to enforce immigration laws). Trump is a sexist (like Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy and Biden, among others), but what policy of his could be called “misogynist”? Oh, right! I forgot: not believing that women should have carte blanch to kill nascent human life whenever they feel like it is misogyny. Continue reading →