“Republicans pounced” on the discovery that aging juvenile climate scold Greta Thunberg had deleted the above tweet since, you may have noticed, either humanity has not been wiped out five years after her warning, or, if doom is imminent, we might as well be comfy and have fun while we wait for the inevitable. No, it’s not a “gotcha!”; it’s a mandatory “you’re a demagogue, a fake dealing, you traffic in fraudulent science and hysteria, and we’re on to you” statement that is long overdue.

This is an example of the kind of ethics-related items that get lost when I go too long without warm-ups and similar collection posts. Last week I inadvertently deleted a file of topics on the metaphorical Ethics Alarms runway, and I’ve been trying to reconstitute the file since.

Jane Fonda, who now sports pink hair as befits her finally unmasked little old lady status, provided another nearly-missed item, when she told the fawning idiots of “The View” that her solution to the proliferation of anti-abortion laws around the country”, the communist, anti-American activist declared that “does involve murder,” in addition to “marching and protesting.” After it appeared that some people, even from the progressive camps, had a problem with this, Jane resorted to Rationalization #55,The Joke Excuse, or “I was only kidding!” Whether she was kidding or not (the women on “The View’s” panel weren’t laughing) similar “jokes” aimed at progressive policy-makers have been used to justify censorship and even criminal investigations. I think her earlier comment in the segment was even more telling, when she said,

“We have experienced many decades now of having agency over our body, of being able to determine when and how many children to have. We know what that feels like. We know what that’s done for our lives. We’re not going back. I don’t care what the laws are. We’re not going back. It’s true. It’s the truth. We’re not going to do it. We’re going to fight.”

Talk about insurrections! When hard-liners on gay marriage like Mike Huckabee suggested that “God’s law” dictated defiance of the Supreme Court, critics (like me) correctly condemned that approach. On “The View,” Fonda’s unethical rejection of  the judicial system prompted Sunny Hostin to say that Fonda was set to “get a Nobel Prize very, very soon.” The frightening thing is that the way the Nobel Peace Prize is deteriorating, she could be right.

If “The View” was a legitimate public interest news show and not a coven of biased dim-bulbs, someone should have asked Fonda to clarify her position. Is she saying that “agency” over her body justified taking an innocent human life? If not, is it that she regards unborn children as not human, or not lives? Or does her advocacy of “murder” to reinstate that “agency”apply to the unborn? Anyone making extreme statements like Fonda’s must be required to defend them, but they seldom are.

1. While we are on the topic of “insurrections”: I noted yesterday that the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences choosing smug leftist asshole Jimmy Kimmel as the Oscars host contradicted the stated goal of avoiding political polarization and luring the alienated half of the country back to the broadcast after years of insulting it. I read that Kimmel had been sternly instructed to go light on politics—you know, because he’s such a trustworthy guy. Predictably, this ass went ahead and snarked anyway, in his introduction to the Best Editing category, “Anyone who has ever received a text message from their father knows how important editing is.  Editors do amazing things. Editors can turn 44,000 hours of violent insurrection footage into a respectful sight-seeing tour of the Capitol. Their work is underappreciated.” Not to belabor the obvious, but in an actual insurrection, the man designated by the judge at sentencing as its symbol won’t be found in any footage being led around by police.

2. More Oscars ethics. I used to do a separate post every year on the important film figures the Oscars disrespectfully left out of its “In Memoriam” segment. It’s not worth my time any more, especially since Academy has apparently decided to base its snubs on selective disapproval of some of the deseased’s off-screen conduct and comments. Imagine: Hollywood denizens daring to make critical judgments on anyone in their ethics-free world! First, Kimmel decided it would be classy to mock Robert Blake, who had died just three days before, saying, “If you think Robert Blake should be part of the In Memoriam montage, text ‘GIMME-A-Blake’ to the number on your screen.”  Blake had stood trial for the murder of his wife and was acquitted. He also had a distinguished acting career dating from his time as child in the “Our Gang” comedies. He certainly belonged in the montage more than Olivia Newton-John, a recording star who could only be called an actress with generous hyperbole but who somehow was deemed worthy of a special tribute by “Grease” co-star John Travolta. Others who appear to have been cut from the tribute for transgressions real or imagined:

• Ann Heche, who had the poor taste to die in a drunk-driving episode
• Tom Sizemore, the effective tough-gut character actor (“Saving Private Ryan”) whose career cratered because of drug and alcohol addictions
• Paul Sorvino, a prominent cast member in “Goodfellas,” and “The Firm” as well as in many TV dramas, had been undiplomatic in his condemnation of Harvey Weinstein and the Hollywood community that enabled him
• Marsha Hunt, whose career was effectively ruined by the Hollywood blacklist.
• Stella Stevens (a personal favorite), who had been publically critical of the industry’s refusal to give her an opportunity to break out of her sex-symbol type-casting to do serious roles and direct.
• Comic Gilbert Gottfried had roles in dozens of films, notably as the voice of the Iago the evil parrot in “Aladin,” but became persona non-grata by making jokes about the Japan tsunami (which also lost him his job as the AFLAC duck)

And speaking of ducks, the Academy ducks responsibility for snubbing such performers by saying that they are listed on the Oscars website.

3. Since I’ve been so critical of Georgetown Law Center dean William Treanor, It is only far to highlight his statement regarding why the school has opted out of the U.S. News and World Report law school rankings [Pointer: MM]:

“Georgetown Law is one of 40 law schools that have “dropped out” of U.S. News & World Report rankings because we believe its analysis is deeply flawed. U.S. News has since engaged in an aggressive PR blitz, including claiming in “Why Elite Schools Can’t Stand U.S. News” (op-ed by Eric Gertler, March 1) that law schools have withdrawn because they want to ignore or hide grades and standardized test scores. This simply isn’t true; in fact, this decision has been a long time coming.

I have been communicating for a decade with the U.S. News staff about their methodology, with which I have two principal issues. First, its algorithm wasn’t designed by anyone who is familiar with law schools. You can’t be an umpire if you don’t know baseball. Second, the algorithm is a closely guarded secret. The primary purpose of rankings is to help students make wise choices. But if they don’t know what U.S. News is basing its ranking on, they can’t make well-informed decisions.

We aren’t trying to hide anything. The median LSAT score of our current first-year class is 171 and the GPA is 3.86. We could cause our median to increase, which would push us up the rankings, but numbers don’t tell us anything about a student’s potential. We look for qualities that will enable our graduates to contribute meaningfully to the world.

The solution to the rankings problem isn’t to eliminate rankings but to encourage them. U.S. News shouldn’t be the only one in the market. Many prominent U.S. publications put out business-school rankings. I urge them to create their own law-school rankings, with transparent methodologies, so students can easily determine which schools emphasize the factors that are most important to them.”