Month: March 2023

Massachusetts On The Civility/Free Speech Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In my home state of Massachusetts, the town of Southborough’s comment policy at town meetings partially read: “All remarks and dialogue in public meetings must be respectful and courteous, free of rude, personal or slanderous remarks. Inappropriate language and/or shouting will not be tolerated.” Southborough resident Louise Barron was accused of violating the civility policy during a town meeting and was threatened with physical removal before she left on her own accord.

In her remarks to the board, Barron had said the town was “spending like drunken sailors” and that the town board had violated the state’s open meetings law. A town official warned Barron against slandering town officials, telling her that the public comment session would be stopped. Barron refused to back down. “Look, you need to stop being a Hitler.” Barron said. “You’re a Hitler. I can say what I want.”

The board called a recess, and told Barron that she would be escorted from the meeting if she didn’t leave, precipitating her exit. That action by the Southborough government, Justice Scott L. Kafker of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote, violated protections for freedom of assembly and freedom of speech in the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, according to the Court’s ruling handed down on March 7. His majority opinion held,

“Although civility, of course, is to be encouraged, it cannot be required regarding the content of what may be said in a public comment session of a governmental meeting. What can be required is that the public comment session be conducted in an ‘orderly and peaceable’ manner, including designating when public comment shall be allowed in the governmental meeting, the time limits for each person speaking, and rules preventing speakers from disrupting others and removing those speakers if they do.”

Continue reading →

Twitter Ethics: The Dilemma Of The Asshole Tweeter

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Behold the tweet sequence above from the Twitter user who calls himself “BullshitSquared,” who is all in a huff because Twitter’s bots flagged a content-free ad hominem joke tweet and he hasn’t had his privileges restored for a month. Now he’s quitting the platform. Good.

Musk has to somehow stop Twitter from becoming such a cesspool of obscenity, racism, sexism, homophobia, stupid comments and useless invective that nobody serious wants to hang out there. At the same time, he needs to avoid censoring content—actual opinions, facts, assertions and ideas. This sounds easy, but it is very hard. It might be impossible.

Continue reading →

The Revealing Resume

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Business.com performed an experiment by sending two identical fake resumes to “180 unique job postings that were explicitly open to entry-level candidates.” Both featured a gender-ambiguous name, “Taylor Williams.” The only difference between two resumes was the presence of preferred gender pronouns on the test version. The test resume included “they/them” pronouns under the name in the header.

The fake resume including preferred pronouns received 8% less interest than the one without them, and fewer interview and phone screening invitations.

The researchers found this “worrisome.”Ryan McGonagill, director of industry research at Business.com, told NBC,

“The law makes it clear that you cannot base any employment decision (hiring, terminating, or otherwise) based on their gender identity. It’s incredibly disappointing and unethical that many of the hiring managers in our study would disqualify a candidate for being authentic.”

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The King Kong Cartoon

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

As Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot faced a humiliating defeat (and blamed racism for her fate), the conservative Townhall Media political cartoonist used the iconic scene from “King Kong” to lampoon her.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the cartoon racist?

Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Stanford Students’ Abuse Of Judge Duncan [Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I suppose on the plus side the recent debacle at Stanford Law School might make graduates of Yale Law School, Harvard and Georgetown Law Center feel a bit better about the utter ethics rot that has infected their alma mater. That’s really extreme “glass half full” reasoning, however. This past week, the Stanford Law Federalist Society hosted Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at an event during which he was scheduled to speak about law and judging on the Fifth Circuit Appellate Court, discussing “controversial cases handled by the Fifth Circuit that present difficult issues because the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on them is in flux,” and taking questions from students afterwards. But mob of students set out to harass and insult him so that he could not speak. When Tirien Steinbach, Stanford’s Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, took the podium to supposedly urge the students to respect the right of speakers to represent views they object to and the right of fellow students to hear them, she sided with demonstrators.

It is undeniable that an increasing number of our most elite educational institutions seek to “educate’ students in the methods and ideology of anti-democracy, endorsing and encouraging the use of tactics that intimidate speakers and prevent the free advocacy of ideas as well as the unimpeded expression of thoughts and opinions. That this is occurring at elite law schools ought to set ethics alarms ringing, as well as liberal culture survival alarms.

I know this is no surprise, but the New York Times has not deemed the episode worthy of reporting to its readers.

Here is a nine-minute video that will give you a sense of what occurred. The flashing neon orange warning light is Steinbach. When she should have stepped in and made it clear that the conduct of the students was unconscionable, an embarrassment to Stanford, and breach of academic freedom and the principles of free speech, she chose instead to throw metaphorical kerosene on the fire. Over at Powerline, Stephen Hayward writes,

If Stanford law school genuinely cares about free speech, Tirien Steinbach should soon be looking for another job. … there were five law school administrators present who [also]did nothing. They should be summarily dismissed, too.

I concur. We shall see, but holding one’s breath in anticipation of this result would be perilous.

The most thorough description of what transpired is here, on David Lat’s substack, in a detailed essay titled “Yale Law Is No Longer #1—For Free-Speech Debacles: Congratulations, Stanford Law, you’re the new poster child for intolerance.” Lat’s reporting makes it very clear that this conclusion is warranted. Lat, incidentally, is a reliably progressive legal commentator who has been embarrassed by the mutation of his creation, “Above the Law,” into an anti-free expression, anti-American nest of far-Left propagandists like Elie Mystal. His condemnation of Stanford’s handling of the debacle is being widely quoted, and because he is far from a conservative shill, is having an impact.

Imagine if someone like Lat had been entrusted with the January 6 riot footage instead of established Fox News conservative ideologue Tucker Carlson. Yeah, yeah, I digress, but those defending McCarthy’s decision are suffering from tunnel vision.

Back to the topic at hand:

Continue reading →

Wait, What? I Want To Know How CBS Can Justify This Headline…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Interesting.

I don’t know about you, but I sure am sick of abortion advocates refusing to deal with the core issue of whether an unborn child is a human life and an individual with a right to that life no matter how much it may inconvenience the people who brought it into existence, or just “part of the mother’s body” that she has the right to choose to remove, like a tumor, wart or bad tooth. The mainstream news media has been four-square in favor of the latter convenient boot-strapping argument with all of its intellectual dishonesty.

So how does CBS explain referring to the death of an “unborn child” as a murder? If it is murder to kill an unborn child, all other murder statutes hold that it is murder no matter who does the killing, since the UBC cannot consent to its own death. One can’t use violence as the distinction, because to the aborted unborn child, abortion is violence. There is a legitimate distinction to be made regarding when it is fair, honest and just to regard an unborn child as a human being with the right to have a chance at life, but CBS has skipped over that issue completely.

I want to hear the CBS explanation for how it can support killing unborn children when Democrats, progressives and feminists call for it, but call the act murder when it’s done in a shooting in Germany.

Continue reading →

A Final (I Promise!) Academy Awards Note On The Topic Of Hilarious Incompetence With A Big Scoop Of “Bias Makes You Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This made my head explode. It’s still exploding.

The New York Times has a poignant article today headlined, “With Its Future at Stake, the Academy Tries to Fix the Oscars (Again).” It begins, “The awards telecast has been losing viewers for years. New leadership wants to reverse that starting Sunday, and ensure the financial well-being of the organization.” The article goes on to explain how new leadership at the Academy realizes that desperate measures need to be taken to regain the interest and trust of the audience. It goes on to say,

To secure a distribution contract of similar value when its deal with ABC expires, the academy must reverse viewership declines. A less lucrative deal could imperil some of the organization’s year-round activities, including film restoration. “This is so important to the livelihood and future of the organization that we better confront it,” Ms. Yang said….

The academy is hopeful that Nielsen’s ratings meters for the Oscars will tick upward on Sunday. Big musical stars, including Rihanna, are scheduled to perform their nominated songs; Lenny Kravitz will perform during the “In Memoriam” segment. Lady Gaga will be absent, though, with Oscars producers saying on Wednesday that she was too busy filming a movie to perform her nominated song from “Top Gun: Maverick.”

The nominee pool for best picture has never before included more than one billion-dollar ticket seller, according to box office databases, and this year there are two. “Top Gun: Maverick” collected $1.5 billion, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” took in $2.3 billion. The front-runner for best picture, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” generated $104 million in ticket sales. (Viewership tends to increase when popular films are nominated.)…“It should be about unity and celebrating this industry,” Mr. Kramer said. “People are still consuming movies. People love movies. Perhaps they’re doing it on streaming more than they did a few years ago. But our art form is as relevant as ever.”

Oh…the article casually drops in this bit of information, almost as an afterthought:

Jimmy Kimmel will return as the host on Sunday…

KABOOM!

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce (yawn!): Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I know, I know…designating Donald Trump an Ethics Dunce again is in the “dog bites man”category. Nonetheless, I couldn’t let this pass.

Presumably as part of his advance PR as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination, thus ensuring the ugliest campaign since 1860 and maybe ever, the Once and Future POTUS is about to unveil “Letters to Trump,” a book revealing 150 private letters sent to him by celebrities and VIPs, among them Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan,  Princess Diana, Ted Kennedy,  Mario Cuomo, Arnold Palmer, Regis Philbin and more; those are the dead ones. Tradition and law holds that that they have no privacy rights now, so I can’t find fault with the inclusion of their letters in the book, which will also include Trump’s comments about the letters and their authors.

However, the book will also include letters from the living, like Bill and Hillary Clinton,  Jay Leno, Liza Minnelli and Oprah Winfrey. I think its fair to assume, since Hillary is on the list, that Trump did not ask for or receive permission to publish their letters. He doesn’t have to, of course: once they are mailed, they are his to do what he wants with them. Nonetheless, common respect and courtesy demands that sharing such communications presumed to be private at the time they were sent—you know, just like President Trump expected that communications he had with advisors, Cabinet members and others during his presidency would be treated as confidential. What about the Golden R..oh, never mind. Continue reading →

And The Award For “Most Ethical Decision Made For The Worst Possible Reason” Goes To…The Oscars!

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has intruded via satellite at the Cannes and Venice film festivals, the Berlin Film Festival last month, the Grammy Awards, the Golden Globes, and even the New York Stock Exchange’s Opening Bell. Yet the most overtly and tastelessly political of all the awards shows, the Academy Awards about to be broadcast on ABC this coming Sunday (sadly, I have sock drawer duties) rejected Zelenskyy’s overtures to appear for the second straight year.

Good. It is an award show about movies, and it is inappropriate and an abuse of trust to use the audience’s interest in films to lobby them for any political interests; Heaven knows Hollywood and its artists do too much of that as it is. I’m sure Sean Penn is disappointed; at the Golden Globes in January, the part-time actor/full-time activist Sean Penn introduced Zelenskyy, who again made a plea for public and financial support for his war against Russia.

Next they’ll be showing him on the Jumbotron during the seventh inning stretch at Fenway Park. To hell with that. I hope Ukraine beats Putin flat and that the Russians finally send him to Elba, but I don’t need to find the Ukrainian president’s hand in my pocket at every turn, and the Biden administration is tossing money away like its confetti as it is.

So the Oscars have done the ethical thing two years running, which might be a record. However, Ethics Alarms can only provide the acclaim of one hand clapping at best. The principle here is that ethical conduct is ethical conduct no matter how mixed, venal, stupid or the product of unethical reasoning the impetus for that conduct is. Still, when ethical conduct comes about in warped ways through the ethically-obtuse calculations of the ethically-handicapped, praise has to be restrained.

I’m presuming that the Oscars have rejected Zelenskyy this year for the same reason it did last year…do you know what that was?

Variety reports that its sources say that the show’s producers felt that Ukraine is too white, and that Hollywood has ignored many wars over the years that affected “people of color.”

Open Forum: Spring Cleaning Edition!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

It may be that Spring is officially ten days off, but here in Alexandria, Virginia, Dogwoods are blooming, the Bradford Pears have exploded with brilliant blossoms, the cherry trees have popped, and I’m worrying about the Red Sox (who are undefeated after eleven Spring Training games, meaning that they must be really bad). Damn climate change!

I thought it was a rather turbulent week ethics-wise, and I know that, as usual, a lot was missed here. It was another one of those weeks that I found myself full of self-loathing for not figuring out how to make ethics more profitable without making it unethical—ye olde “ethical vs non-ethical considerations dilemma.

That’s enough blather from me, though: You’re on!