Month: November 2022

Chaos Theory Day Ethics, 11/22/22: What Might Have Been, Or Not Have Been? [“Booby Orr” Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Few days in American history set the trillions of marbles on the boundary-less billiard table rolling quite as wildly as this one, in 1963, when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. If a butterfly fluttering its wings in the Amazon could start a chain reaction resulting in a rainstorm in Central Park, imagine what might be different today if the motorcade had taken a different route that sunny day in Dallas. The answer: anything and everything. It’s very likely that there would be no Ethics Alarms, for example, to pick a tiny example at random.

1. Continuing on that theme…a new study from the WeCount coalition, a pro-abortion organization, estimates that the number of abortions nationwide fell by 10,000 in the first two months following the Dobbs decision. According to The New York Times,WeCount found that 22,000 fewer induced abortions were performed in states with pro-life laws in July and August, compared with the baseline beginning in April, before Dobbs. In states where abortion-on-demand remained legal, abortions increased by roughly 12,000, leading to a net decline of 10,000. There were just under 7,400 fewer abortions in August than in June. Extrapolating that figure over 12 months, you nearly 90,000 fewer abortions per year.

What changes in our world, our lives and our future might those 90,000 human beings cause? A President could be among them, or several. A presidential assassin. The next Ted Bundy, Steve Jobs, Orson Welles, Thomas Edison, Tom Brady, Bobby Orr, Paul McCartney, Bill Russell or Martin Luther King. We don’t know, and will never know. [Pointer: The Federalist]

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Comment Of The Day: “More “Good” Segregation And Racial Discrimination On Progressive College Campuses”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I learn something almost every day from the comments on Ethics Alarms. This Comment of the Day, by the peerless Mrs. Q, enlightened me regarding a phenomenon that had never registered on my consciousness.

Here it is…an observation on the post,“More ‘Good’ Segregation And Racial Discrimination On Progressive College Campuses”:

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“When exactly did racial segregation pass from the agendas of racists, bigots, white supremacists, KKK members and Jim Crow enthusiasts to the playbook of progressive black activists?”

I suspect, in the US at least, the origins of this phenomenon began when black slaves hunted other black slaves to get the “runaways” back on a particular plantation.

It’s not fun to talk about among blacks, but there has been, for hundreds of years, what Burgess Owens might define as a “royalty black class.” That class is allowed to “show” other blacks how they should be and what they should clamor for.

Blacks who don’t fall in line and believe they don’t need the benevolence of whites to prosper are today called ironically “house negros” or “Uncle Toms,” when actually it’s the Stacey Abrams of the world (doing the dirty work of white bigots) telling black men they’re too dumb to know how to discern propaganda and misinformation. Continue reading →

I Just Signed An Open Letter. This is Why:

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Last week, professors, lecturers and academics across the country began signing the “Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration.” It is an open letter that calls on universities to restore free speech, academic freedom and institutional neutrality. The open letter asks universities and professors to adopt and implement the “Chicago Trifecta” — the Chicago Principles on unilateral free speech, the Kalven report that requires institutional neutrality on political and social topics, and the Shils report, making “academic contribution the sole basis for hiring and promotion.”  It is picking up metaphorical steam: several hundred new signatures have been entered since I first saw the document last night. One of them is mine: I qualify as a former adjunct professor of legal ethics.

Stanford economist and co-author John Cochrane is the first name on the list and presumably launched the letter. He told College Fix:

The larger hope is to bring back academic freedom on campus and in the academic enterprise more generally. Only with robust academic freedom, the ability to investigate ideas and bring out uncomfortable facts, does scholarship bring about new and reliable knowledge, especially on crucial issues to our society.

Who knows if this will have any impact or persuasive power? I am dubious about the use of such protest tools, but at least this one causes no harm even if it like the lonely tree falling in a forest. Trying to ensure that the letter has no effect is, of course, the mainstream media, which so far, at least, hasn’t deemed the effort newsworthy for a week. In the meantime, several news sources have devoted space to the fact that in China, a massive flock of sheep has been walking in a circle for 12 days straight. Priorities!

I’m grateful for the opportunity to do something proactive about this problem, which I view as an existential threat to American culture and society. Boycotting the recent class reunions of my college and law school was mandatory for me but also the equivalent of Grandpa Simpson shouting at clouds. My  Harvard reunion book essay explaining my position did attract a few kudos in the mail, all of which opined that there were many other class members who felt as I do but were afraid to make their views public.

Wow. Harvard apparently has graduated a lot of weenies. But I knew that.

I’ll be circulating the letter to my friends and associates who can sign it. It’s awfully open, which mean that if someone wanted to muck it up with fake names, gag names and other graffiti, they could. Right now, I’m the last name on the list, number 1,241. It will take about a hundred times that to make a ripple, I know.

It’s worth a shot.

Ethics Quiz: The Elizabeth Holmes Sentence

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

A Federal judge sentenced Theranos, Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes  to eleven years and three months in prison last week. Essentially the judge had limitless options, with only execution being off the table. Based on the maximum sentences for each the four crimes she was convicted of, she theoretically could have been given the equivalent of life in prison.  Prosecutors asked for a 15-year sentence, three years of supervised release, and more than $800 million damages. The layers for Holmes, now 38, had asked for home detainment, community service, and no more than 18 months in prison. (My son spent half that in jail for a reckless driving offense when he was 18. Just for perspective….)

What did Holmes do? Wikipedia has an excellent one-stop summary: the short version is that she invented a purported blood testing system that didn’t work, faked data, sucked in investors, doctors and patients, made billions, and engaged in all manner of lies, threats, manipulations and schemes to avoid the consequences of her actions. The government argued that Holmes deserved a severe punishment because “dozens of investors lost $700 million and numerous patients received unreliable or wholly inaccurate medical information from Theranos’ flawed tests, placing those patients’ health at serious risk.” This is undoubtedly true. Her defenders counter than “she didn’t kill anybody,”  she is a first time offender, and her crime was one of non-violence. This is also true.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Is Holmes’ 11 years+ sentence for her massive, 15-year fraud fair, just, proportionate and in the best interests of society—in short, ethical?

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Surely…SURELY…The American Public Will Eventually Stop Tolerating This. Right?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

RIGHT???

The increasingly unjust, unfair, harmful pandering to pseudo-transgender opportunists has got to eventually trigger a massive awakening in which Americans say, “Wait…what are we doing? This is crazy! Why have we allowed this to go on this long? Or at all?”

In the most recent debacle, Seattle Academy’s Aspen Hoffman, ranked 72nd in boys’ track as a freshman, transitioned to female, sort of, as a sophomore, was allowed to compete as girl, and suddenly started winning races.

Hoffman finished first in the 5,000 meter race, and broke Seattle Academy’s girls’ record with a time that would have achieved 48th place in the boys’ division. This is Barry Bonds-level cheating. It also shows how California derangement is infectious: both Washington and Oregon have lost their grip on reality, rationality, responsibility and ethics. When are their citizens going to stop being weenies and stop the madness? It’s their duty as citizens, after all.

Fifteen years ago, Washington state’s guidelines for transgender athletes held that male athletes had to undergo surgery and two years of hormone therapy before they could compete as females. Four years ago, the surgery mandate was lifted and only“documented testosterone suppression therapy” was required. Then, in 2021 as The Great Stupid raged, the state ruled that transgender athletes only had to “consistently express” a gender. Well, yes, that seems reasonable as far as it goes. You don’t want athletes saying, “I’m male!” “I’m female!” “I’m male!” “I’m female!” between races like Faye Dunaway between slaps in “Chinatown.” But then there’s the other matter—biological males have a huge advantage.

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And Yet, Against All Odds, Karine Jean-Pierre’s Was NOT The Most Outrageous Package of Deflections, Excuses And Rationalizations Concocted Last Week By A Prominent Public Figure To Avoid Accountability…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

No, the winner, and by a lot, was the blather spewed out by the head of the International Federation of Association Football, Gianni Infantino, to justify…well, to mitigate…well, to throw up so much dust that the general disgust at the World Cup being held in Qatar might be forgotten, or at least controlled.

All of the international sports organizations are corrupt, FIFA being among the worst. The soccer organization must have reaped quite a bonanza to take the World Cup to Qatar, which is a miserable human rights abuser, different but almost as despicable as China, where the Olympics allowed those champions of slavery, oppression and pandemic-launching to use the Games as a propaganda platform, just like Adolf in 1936. (The United States should have refused to “play” in both instances.) At a press conference last week, Infantino, defended Qatar against those condemning the Muslim nation for its treatment of immigrants, gays and women, with a flood of terrible analogies, excuses and rationalizations, saying in part:

Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker I feel this, all this, because what I’ve been seeing and what I’ve been told, since I don’t read, otherwise I would be depressed I think. Of course, I am not Qatari, Arab, gay or disabled. But I was the son of a migrant worker, saw their conditions. Not in Qatar, but Switzerland. What I’ve seen brings me back to my personal story. I am a son of migrant workers. My parents were working very very hard in difficult situations. I know what it means to be discriminated and bullied as a foreigner in a foreign country. As a child, I was bullied because I had red hair and freckles. I was bullied for that…. We need to invest in education, to give them a better future, to give them hope. We should all educate ourselves. Reform and change takes time. It took hundreds of years in our countries in Europe. It takes time everywhere, the only way to get results is by engaging […] not by shouting…For what we Europeans have been doing in the last 3,000 years around the world we should be apologizing for [the] next 3,000 years before starting to give moral lessons.

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Who Couldn’t Tell That The Chrisleys Were Crooks?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Gee what a surprise.

Since my sock drawer has been in desperate straits, I missed the news that Todd and Julie Chrisley, the oogy, greed-obsessed mater and pater in the family reality show “Chrisley Knows Best,” had been convicted of federal charges of financial fraud and tax evasion in June. They are going to be sentenced today, maybe for as much as 30 years each, while having to disgorge about 20 million bucks of ill-gotten gains.

I watched less than ten minutes of the USA series maybe five years ago, got nauseous, and never went back. I was immediately reminded of the marketing line for the slasher film “Black Christmas”, “If this movie doesn’t make your skin crawl, it’s on too tight!” It seemed screamingly obvious that this family that gorged on bad taste, conspicuous consumption and nouveau riche excess and smuggery was as corrupt and ethically inert as human beings could be. Even as accustomed as I was to really awful and/or sick people being the stars of these trashy shows—Danny Bonaduce, Scott Baio, Ryan O’Neal, the “Jersey Shore” cast, Anna Nicole Smith and so many others—the Chrisleys were special, so throbbingly vile that I would be tempted to investigate anyone who tuned in for more than one episode.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Karine Jean-Pierre

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

This is great huminahumina even for the President’s paid liar. Asked directly about growing evidence that President Biden and his family benefited financially from black sheep son Hunter’s influence peddling, Jean-Pierre blathered,

“So, look, uh, you know, um, there’s — there’s some — a little bit of, uh, interesting, uh, you know, kind of, on-brand, uh, thinking here, because, um, you know, congressional Republicans, uh, ran, uh, saying that they were going to fight inflation. Uh, they said they were gonna make that a priority. They were very clear about that these past, uh, several months, and instead, what they’re doing is they’re focusing, uh — you know, they’re focusing — they’re making their top, top priority — they get the majority, and their top priority is actually not focusing on the American families but focusing on the President’s family.”

Wow. It was such an obvious deflection that she might as well have begun by saying, “I’m now going to avoid this issue completely because I don’t have a good response for it.” It’s also an ineffective deflection. This is condign justice, and self-inflicted by Biden: the U.S. President who most desperately needed a competent, articulate, quick-thinking press secretary is burdened by the most inarticulate, dull-witted individual in the position ever. She was hired because she would be “historic”—first black, foreign-born lesbian, or something—but those features are completely irrelevant to the job. “Most flagrantly incompetent White House mouthpiece” is a genuine historic accomplishment, especially when one considers some of Karine’s predecessors like Sean Spicer and Joe Lockhart. I have a fertile imagination, but I cant conceive of how any press secretary could be worse than Karine. There are more articulate and persuasive mimes.

It’s wonderful, don’t you think, that the President can’t possibly fire her? Continue reading →

Sunday Afternoon Ethics Reflections, 11/20/2022, Part 2: The Rest Of The Stories…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

[Part I, consisting of the introduction to today’s random collection and a related selection from the EA archives, is here…]

1. This marks the official beginning of the yearly holiday runaway emotions train wreck for me, with which I have permanent love-hate relationship that grows more intense each year. I inherited from my mother an immediate nostalgia, regret and sense of loss with this season, typically kicking in with the first Christmas song, which Sirius was cruel enough to offer weeks ago. I think that’s why I gravitate to the Karen Carpenter version of “Home for the Holidays,” because her early loss was so tragic, and her unique voice was so emotionally expressive. This coming week is our 42nd anniversary, of which I am proud from a perseverance and integrity standpoint, since almost nobody among our contemporaries are still on their first marriage, Thanksgiving, which will have fewer people around the table than ever before, then the anniversary of my finding my father dead in his easy chair on my birthday, followed by the annual hell of getting 2000 lights on a live 8 foot tree, a task that falls entirely on me now, and then Christmas madness. What fun. And yet I love the memories, the lights, the music, the spirit and the values the season represents.

Rats. Here we go again…

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Sunday Afternoon Ethics Reflections, 11/20/2022, Part I: The Nuremberg Trials And Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This time I’m separating the usual intro to these ethics potpourris with the enumerated stories. I began by noting that this is the anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials in 1945, as notable an ethics milestone as one could imagine, from several perspectives. The trials were an admirable effort to make grand statement about the line of inhuman evil that even war could not justify and that a world would not countenance. They were also significantly hypocritical, just as the post-Civil War trial of Andersonville Prison commander Henry Wirz, the sole judicial precedent for Nuremberg, was hypocritical, punishment inflicted on the losers of a terrible war that could easily have been brought against the war’s victors if the results had been reversed.

There really was no enforceable international law to base the Nuremberg Trials on, making the trials illegal if not unethical. Did they stop genocide? No, and one could argue that the show trails didn’t even slow genocide down. They did, I guess, make people think; one important result of the trials was that the films of liberated death camps, made by U.S. troops and supervised by the great Hollywood director George Stevens, were finally shown. How much the trials made people think is much open to debate. I have always been fascinated by the issues raised by the Nuremberg Trials, and Abby Mann’s 2001 stage version of “Judgment at Nuremberg” was one of the productions I oversaw at The American Century Theater. Directed by Joe Banno, it included post show discussions after every performance, some with D.C. area historians, lawyers and judges as guests. Incredibly, I felt, the show had never been produced in the Washington D.C. area, professionally or professionally. Disgracefully is perhaps the better word. TACT’s was a professional, thoughtful and excellent production, yet the Washington Post refused to review it. “Dated,” was their verdict on most of my theater’s productions. The apathy about “Judgment at Nuremberg” was a major factor in persuading me to end my theater’s 20 year-long mission of presenting neglected American stage works of historical, cultural, theatrical or ethical significance.

But I digress. While I was checking to see whether I had noted this anniversary before (I had not), I found the following post, which was the earliest Ethics Alarms entry featuring a reference to the Nuremberg Trials. Written in 2012, it makes fascinating reading today, so here it is. One nostalgic note: Among the commenters on that post more than a decade ago were Michael Boyd (last heard from on this date ten years ago), Brook Styler (final comment), Chase Martinez ( left in 2015), Julian Hung (last heard from in August of last year), Danielle (who wished me a Merry Christmas in 2016, and vanished), Modern Knight ( final comment in 2017), and several one-time commenters who never returned. But Michael Ejercito was among them, speaking of loyalty. The good kind.

The Donald’s Dangerous Ethics: Loyalty Trumps Honesty On “Celebrity Apprentice”

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