Month: November 2022

“What Color Is The Sky On Your Planet?” Unethical Tweet Of The Month: Andrew Wortman

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

You might well ask, “Who the hell is Andrew Wortman?” Fair enough, and I have no idea. He describes himself on Twitter as “Activist. Super-Followable. Gay AF. Dems are pro-U.S. The GOP despises America…. #BlackLivesMatter #ExpandTheCourt” which tells me all I need to know, but he has 186 THOUSAND followers on Twitter.

This is one of the realities that convinces me that I am a miserable failure.

This guy equates not getting a free lunch at one’s workplace with “starving.” He is an epitome of leftist delusion…and he has 186,000 followers. In addition to making me realize that I am a miserable failure, his tweet also reminds me that I never chose to work for  a properly ethical, humanitarian, generous, caring employer. Not one of them provided free lunches on a regular basis, and I just accepted it, like a submissive prole.

Even in my current job there’s no free lunch—and it’s my own company!

Ethics Quiz Addendum: NBC’s Deceitful Headline

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!”

NBC’s current headline on the story discussed in today’s Ethics Quiz:

Texas teacher fired after telling Black students his race is ‘superior’

As so many are beating on Donald Trump right now (and deservedly so), it is only fair to point out that his statement that the news media were “the enemy of the people” was and is spot on, and quite possibly the most important and correct observation he has ever made in public. Naturally, it is also one of the statement he is most criticized for, especially by…the enemies of the people.

That headline by NBC is a prime example. It is pure deceit; indeed, I might use it to illustrate deceit in an upcoming ethics seminar. The first line of the NBC story immediately reveals the lie (deceit is lying): “A middle school teacher in Texas has been fired after a video posted on social media showed him telling students his race is “superior.” Other ways to distort the story for the edification of people who only read headlines, or to “poison the well” for those who do read on:

“Texas teacher fired after telling white students their race is ‘superior'”

“Texas teacher fired after telling black student her race is inferior.”

“Texas teacher fired after telling black students he regards their parents race makes them inferior.”

This is a distorted, manipulated, evil headline designed to misrepresent a complex incident into a knee-jerk confirmation of systemic racism and persistent white supremacy.

Is anyone going to call it out for what it is—unethical, biased, unprofessional, and typical of today’s journalism” other than Ethics Alarms?

We shall see.

(Don’t hold your breath.)

Ethics Dunce: Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

…and aspiring First Lady, presumably.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a former actress and documentary filmmaker testified in the L.A. Harvey Weinstein trial yesterday. The wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (reportedly a possible 2024 Presidential candidate when the Democrats decide to kick Joe Biden to the curb from which he never should have escaped in the first place) told the court that the once powerful Hollywood producer and major Democratic Party donor raped her in a hotel room in 2005. She spoke of the devastating effect it had on her in the 17 years since…wait, what? Let’s go through that again 2005? And she never told the police or warned any of the other women who Harvey went on to sexually assault, rape and abuse? Why would that be?

“Because you don’t say no to Harvey Weinstein,” she ‘explained.’ “He could make or ruin your career,”

Oh.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Teacher’s Confession

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

An unnamed teacher at Bohls Middle School in Pflugerville, Texas, did some candid soul-searching about the nature of bias in front of his class. The discussion was recorded above. It’s fair to say that it did not go over well.

The topic was bias in general, and racial bias in particular. “Deep down in my heart, I’m ethnocentric,” the teacher said, “which means I think my race is the superior one…I think everybody thinks that.They’re just not honest about it.” Later he stated that “everybody is a racist at that level.”

The reaction was as you would predict, though why the teacher didn’t predict it is an interesting mystery on its own. Some students were disturbed, many told their parents about the discussion (or how they perceived it), parents complained, and the school administrators freaked out, as they are wont to do.

First Pflugerville ISD Superintendent Dr. Douglas Killian released a statement regarding the incident the same day, stating that the teacher had been summarily executed.

Just kidding! He had been placed on leave, he said:

“We are aware of an inappropriate conversation a teacher at Bohls Middle School had with students this week during an advisory class. This interaction does not align with our core beliefs as a district. The video of the conversation includes statements that we find wholly inappropriate. The teacher has been placed on administrative leave while Human Resources conducts an investigation. Pflugerville ISD and Bohls MS work together to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for our students. The advisory activity was inappropriate, inaccurate, and unacceptable. This type of interaction will not be tolerated in PfISD schools. Staff checked in with students today. Our counselors and administrators are always available if your student wants to discuss this situation further.We always do our best to ensure the safety of all students; we encourage them to be self-advocates and let an adult know when something is wrong, as they did in this situation; this could be to a parent, a teacher, or a counselor. If you see something, say something. We apologize for any undue stress or concern this has caused. As always, we appreciate the support of our families and community.”

The proverbial other shoe dropped yesterday, after a weekend of perfunctory and objective (I jest) “investigation.” The teacher had been fired, Killian announced:

“Last Friday, Nov. 11, Pflugerville ISD officials were made aware of an inappropriate conversation a teacher at Bohls Middle School had with students during an advisory class. As of Monday morning, Nov. 14, the teacher in question is no longer employed by Pflugerville ISD and we are actively looking for a replacement.

“In addition to providing this video to our administrators, the video was shared to social media by some in the class and has prompted local and national media attention. We apologize to any parents whose students have been included in the video without their knowledge.

“We want to reiterate that this conversation does not align with our core beliefs and is not a reflection of our district or our culture at Bohls Middle School. Pflugerville ISD and Bohls MS staff work together to create an inclusive and welcoming environment for all of our students. The advisory discussion was inappropriate, inaccurate, and unacceptable; and this type of interaction will not be tolerated in any PfISD schools.

“We apologize to our students and families at Bohls Middle School for the undue stress or concern this has caused. We have counselors and administrators available for any of our students and families who want to discuss this situation further.

“We always do our best to ensure the safety of all students; we encourage them to be self-advocates and let an adult know when something is wrong, as they did in this situation. If you see something, say something.

“As always, we appreciate the support of our Bohls Middle School families and entire PfISD community.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Should the teacher have been fired?

I’m going to restrain myself for once: I could write several long posts about aspects of this incident. I think I’ll just jot down a few points, and leave the rest to you:

Continue reading →

Worst Idea Ever: Donald Trump As Speaker Of The House

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In “Jurassic Park II: The Lost World,” Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldberg) tells John Hammond’s ambitious and foolish nephew, “Taking dinosaurs off this island is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas.” Indeed, a T-Rex does run amuck in San Diego later thanks to the irresponsible scheme, eating several people in the process.

But taking a Tyrannosaurus Rex to the U.S. was still a better idea than the idea being floated by some deranged Republicans to make Donald Trump Speaker of the House. I’m not convinced that making a T-Rex Speaker of the House wouldn’t be a better idea.

Most Americans don’t know that the Speaker can be anyone—you, me—whether or not that individual is a member of House of Representatives. Every Speaker has been a member, however, for the obvious reason; bringing in an outsider is dangerous and an invitation to disaster. Making Trump Speaker would be infinitely worse. The chaos he would cause in beyond even my fertile imagination to consider. Any Republican that seriously suggests such a thing should be marked for shunning and political cancellation.

Here’s the scary thing: if Democrats want to destroy the Republican Party as surely as dropping them all in an acid bath, voting to give Trump the Speaker’s position would be the way to do it. Could they be that Machiavellian? Well, it’s the same party that spent millions winning primaries for the very same GOP “election deniers” they later declared to be clear and present dangers to democracy—and that cynical, hypocritical strategy worked.

I wouldn’t put it past them.

I wouldn’t put anything past them.

Iconic Movie Hero Ethics: The Humiliation Of Indiana Jones

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

One upon a time, Hollywood showed respect to its greatest movie heroes. They deserved it, after all. We never had to see what became of Rick Blaine as he battled the Nazis. We never had to watch Scarlet chase Rhett. Nobody made as watch the plucky Hickory High School basketball team try to hold on to its title the next year after its miracle triumph. Hollywood got greedy (greedier), though, as imaginations ran out and audiences looked elsewhere for their entertainment. And thus the sublime ending of “Rocky” (“There ain’t gonna be no rematch!” “Don’t want one!”) was eroded and superseded by endless inferior sequels. “Star Wars” ended with a jubilant celebration of victory over the Empire and the characters happy, safe, and young, but studio finances dictated that it all had to be diluted with inferior and derivative prequels and sequels, with audiences being tortured by aging husks of Leia, Luke and Han Solo, instead of allowing them to be preserved in our memories as immortal, like legends should.

Now it’s Indiana Jones’ turn. Spielberg and Lucas already set up the perfect farewell for Indy in the third of the original trilogy, flawed as it was. We saw him ride off with his father and Marcus Brody into the sunset after drinking from the Holy Grail, which should have conferred eternal youth. Perfect!

They couldn’t let it go, though, or the studio couldn’t, or Spielberg’s alimony, or something. So we had to watch, many years later, an over-the-hill Indy in a jumping-the-shark fourth film that George Lucas signaled would stretch out the franchise ad infinitum by symbolically passing The Hat on to Indiana’s newly discovered son, the then young and promising Shia LaBeouf.

Continue reading →

Speaking Of Democracy Being Saved, Why The Hell Is Sarah Huckabee Sanders Now Governor Of Arkansas?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

At least John Fetterman had been a mayor and served as Lieutenant Governor. True, he’s brain-damaged…but I’m still tempted to rule that the most outrageous abuse of the franchise by a majority of a state’s voting age citizens was in Arkansas, where Sarah Huckabee Sanders won the governorship by a landslide.

Why? What qualifications does she have to run a state government from the executive chair? I assumed that there were aspects of her curriculum vitae I didn’t know about that explained why she was even nominated. Nope. Since graduating from college, she has essentially been a serial campaign worker, first on her father’s campaigns, then others. She started a consulting firm that assists Republicans in running for office. She was the executive director of a PAC, which I suppose counts as some kind of executive experience.

But her most visible job, and the only one not related to campaigns of one sort or another, was as Donald Trump’s second paid liar. She was marginally better than the embarrassing Sean Spicer, as in more competent at lying, but far less effective than her successor, Kayleigh McEnany. Moreover, the single most basic requirement of the job is that you don’t admit to lying. Sanders couldn’t even manage this low bar,

In the first volume of Mueller Report, it was revealed that Sanders had admitted that she lied repeatedly regarding James Comey, the former FBI director, as well as the firing of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s connection to the Comey firing, and when she claimed that “countless” FBI agents had lost faith in FBI leadership and had contacted her to complain. She told investigators that she had made “a slip of the tongue” that was “not founded on anything”in “the heat of the moment.”

Oh.

Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/14/22: Our Ethics Is Going To The Dogs Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Good boy! Now that’s an Ethics Hero.

Random thoughts before we get into other stuff:

  • Ann Althouse, whose pop culture literacy has some massive holes, is obsessed with Bob Dylan’s weird, self-indulgent book analyzing 66 pop recordings. (Not a single Beatles song on the list, among its many quirks.) One of the songs analyzed is the original recording of “Volare,” a fluky hit sung in Italian that virtually nobody understood. Apparently it’s about being painted blue, or something. The English version sung by Dean Martin and Bobby Rydell, among others, didn’t mention this at all. So what’s the point of analyzing lyrics that had nothing to do with the song’s popularity in the U.S.? It’s navel-gazing at an invisible navel. If the song wasn’t a U.S. hit, Dylan wouldn’t be writing about it, and the lyrics were irrelevant to its success.
  • Follow-up: President Biden’s border chief Chris Magnus finally resigned after all, thus agreeing to be the designated scapegoat for the Department of Homeland Security’s failure to secure the Southern border. He had no choice, but at least by initially refusing he made it clear what was really going on.
  • Has there ever been a less  surprising scandal than the fall of billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, and his crypto exchange FTX? Why would anyone trust crypto currency, much less the people promoting it? Amusingly, writer/actor Larry David, the template for George Costanza, ducked accountability for hyping this garbage in his well-received Super Bowl ad, in which he was portrayed through history pooh-poohing major advances in culture and technology (like fire). Naturally, he also pronounced FTX as a bad idea. That really meant it was a good idea, but holding Larry responsible for aiding and abetting a con requires too many mental gymnastics.

1. If this election doesn’t kill the credibility of pollsters, nothing will. Virtually every poll predicted a “red wave,” and if not, they didn’t predict any House balance this close.  Most polls had Arizona Republican Kari Lake up double digits in the governor’s race, and it looks like she will lose. What good are they, other than to justify misleading news stories? Professional polling, as an industry, is officially unethical: untrustworthy, incompetent, and irresponsible. Naturally, 538 is now saying that the election validated the polls, because 538 is all about polling. “It isn’t what it is.” Continue reading →

If It’s Any Consolation, Pete, If Ethics Alarms Had An Ethics Dunce Hall Of Fame, You’d Be The First One In…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time career hit leader, is also one of the most outrageous creeps ever to play the game, which is just as remarkable an accomplishment when one considers competition like Cap Anson, Hal Chase, Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez. The amazing thing is that Pistol Pete keeps adding to his jerk resume even now, and he’s 81 years old.

Rose was my very first American Ethics Dunce when the now inactive Ethics Scoreboard debuted in January of 2004. I wrote then,

Pete Rose now admits he bet on baseball (after ten years of lying about it) but says that his bets (always in favor of his team, never against it, he says) as manager of the Cincinnati Reds never effected his management decisions, and thus he did not harm the integrity of the game. He feels he should be let back into the game as a manager.

A couple of things, Pete:

1) Even if this were true, fans of the game cannot put their faith in the outcome of games when they know that those who help determine the outcome might be motivated by their wagers. This is the reason that we call “the appearance of impropriety” an ethical problem.

2) Presumably you did not bet on the Reds when a key player was sitting out, or when your starting pitcher wasn’t feeling good. Right? Or are we supposed to believe that you bet large amounts of money while already in debt to bookies in circumstances when you thought you would lose? So every time you didn’t bet on the Reds, you were sending information to the bookies, and it affected their odds on the game. Got it?

3) You say you never bet against the Reds. You used to say you never bet on baseball. You’re a liar. Why should anyone believe you now?

Later, the Scoreboard made Pete the first (and so far only) Ethics Dunce Emeritus after he admitted that in fact he did bet on every Reds game as a manager. (I really need to add Bill Clinton to the Ethics Dunce Emeritus ranks, among others. Remind me.) Continue reading →

Latest Development In The Search For The Greatest Stupid During The Age Of The Great Stupid: On Broadway, A “Good Racism” Classic!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I have come to the realization that those apathetic, half-awake Americans who shrug off the creeping fanaticism of the antiracism, “diversity, equity and inclusion” mob must not follow developments in the show business and entertainment world, for there the most throbbingly stupid and hypocritical outbreaks of The Great Stupid inevitably occur.

Last month, the ridiculous non-traditional casting version of “1776” opened. Ethics Alarms has discussed it a couple of times: the conceit of casting the Founding Fathers as female, non-binary, trans colonials of color is a naked “Hamilton” rip-off that mocks the show and our history for political grandstanding. As anyone could have predicted, it stinks, though the naturally sympathetic and woke theatrical critic community didn’t have the guts or integrity to say so outright. No, most of them just issued mealy-mouthed deflections like the Times critic, who wrote in part after delivering the mandatory “what a good idea!” virtue-signaling about what was always, absent a miracle, a wretched idea…

….the performances are so vastly histrionic and unchecked by the social situation (this is Congress, after all) that they seem inside-out….It does not help that the new arrangements and orchestrations, aiming to refresh the songs’ profiles in the way the casting is meant to refresh the story, merely make them muddy — and make many of the lyrics unintelligible….

When performers mime the emotions we should be having, the storytelling contract has been broken….What a wasted opportunity!…Instead we get subtracted value. I don’t mean for the cast, who deserve the opportunity, or even for the theater as an industry and an ecosystem….But underlining one’s progressiveness a thousand times, as this “1776” does, will not actually convey it better; rather it turns characters into cutouts and distracts from the ideas it means to promote…. theater makers should have enough faith in the principles of equity and diversity to let them speak for themselves. Are they not, as someone once put it, self-evident?

But of course equity and diversity are not self-evident, and the complete confusion over casting ethics demonstrates this fact beautifully. Let’s see: BIPOC performers can be cast as anyone, regardless of color, ethnicity, gender or race, but white performers can only play white characters. Turning a white fictional character black is to be desired whenever possible (Tangent: My CVS is filled with black Santa dolls and images. Where are the Hispanic and Asian Santas?) but making a fictional character of color (a FCOC) white is “white-washing,” and racist. “The Simpsons” won’t allow white vocal actors to do the voices of a black doctor or an Indian 7-11 owner, but Will Smith can voice a Middle Eastern genie without controversy. Ariel the Little Mermaid will be sung by a black actress; true, they turned Arial black first, but don’t think the same actress wouldn’t  have voiced her if they hadn’t: Diversity! Inclusion! Meanwhile, Tom Hanks said it was wrong for him to be cast as a gay man, though gay men portray about 50% of all the heterosexuals you see on screen and stage.

Clear? Of course not! These aren’t rules or principles: this is racially motivated Calvinball, compensatory racism and related discrimination under the cloak of imaginary virtue.

And yet we hadn’t reached peak stupid yet. Is this latest episode it? Probably not, but behold: Continue reading →