It is nearly a year since Senator John Fetterman’s May 2022 stroke. Despite the stroke’s seriousness, the fact that his recovery was not merely incomplete but in question, and the risks to his health, Fetterman continued his campaign to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Elected over GOP challenger Mehmet Oz, Ftterman too office in January and quickly ended up in the hospital again, this time for clinical depression, a common aftereffect of a stroke as life-threatening as his was. Yesterday he returned to the Upper Chamber to chair the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
It did not go particularly well. Fetterman still has trouble speaking and reading; indications are that complete cognitive recovery from his health crisis may be unattainable. Naturally, the right-wing media is, as politely as it can, hurling “I told you sos.” Columnist Stephen Kruiser snarked this morning,
It is increasingly obvious that the progressive critics of Elon Musk’s efforts to make Twitter a neutral platform that encourages and facilitates communication and dialogue never wanted free speech. They wanted speech that they approved of and that advanced their agendas. The pre-Musk iteration of Twitter pleased them: conservatives breached the slanted rules and enforcement of them; those using ad hominem attacks against the “right” targets and “for the greater good” knew they had a free pass.
In the Bizarro World of “DEI,” fairness isn’t equitable, equal treatment isn’t fair, and free speech isn’t “safe.”
The latest example of this attitude came as Twitter modified its “Hateful Conduct Policy” this month. The prohibitions on “Slurs and Tropes” no longer includes “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” Deadnaming is when one intentionally (or unintentionally) uses a transgender individual’s pre-transitioning name, as in calling Caitlin Jenner “Bruce.”
This reasonable and ethical removal of a restriction ripe for abuse by speech censors and WrongThink police has now been labelled proof of Twitter’s approval of transphobia. In fact, it should mark the beginning of the elimination of the “Hateful Conduct Policy” entirely.
At the threshold, the very title of the section wounds free speech goals: it supports the Totalitarian Left’s position that mere speech is conduct that makes certain groups and individuals “unsafe,” and that the “hate speech” label, which cannot be defined sufficiently precisely not to be abused as a standard, describes expression that is not protected by the First Amendment.
Netflix is telling its subscribers that Cleopatra was black, but both Cleopatra and I come from Greek stock, so if she was black, I must be too. This is just the break I have been waiting for after seeing my legal ethics training business torn to pieces by the stupid Wuhan virus lockdown, and income reduced to trickle that cannot be restored to its previous whoosh! Now that I can market my services as one of the very few blacks in the field, whole new vistas are open to me. Thanks, Netflix!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Sorry, I’m just giddy.
A new Netflix new docu-series, “African Queens: Queen Cleopatra,” stars black British actress Adele James as the fabled Egyptian ruler. Producer Jada Pinkett Smith (yes, she’s the one her husband slapped Chis Rock over) has said that “she wanted to tell the story because ‘”we don’t often get to see or hear stories about black queens.” Somebody should tell Jada that one reason for that is that they prefer to tell the stories of white queens and pretend they are black, as when the very white second wife of King Henry the VIII was cast as being black in 2021 British mini-series. As I pointed out in the linked post, this kind of fantasy revisionism is considered benign—DEI, man!—-while casting a white women to play a black one would be “whitewashing” and racist. Similarly, casting a black actress to play the red-haired, fishy-white Little Mermaid in Disney’s life action version of the animated classic is hunky-dory, but using computer magic to make the black version of whitefish Ariel white again is racist. Clear?
Lots of bad stuff has happened on April 19, but at dawn on this date in 1776, just about 20 minutes from where I grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts, 700 British troops on the way to capture Sam Adams and John Hancock and snuff out the rebellion of the colonists, marched into Lexington. Just 77 minutemen were gathered on the town’s common, Lexington Green, to stop them, having been warned that night by Paul Revere and William Dawes. The Patriots lost the battle, of course, but the Revolution had begun, and the world should be grateful for it. The Green is still there, but it is in the middle of a traffic circle now; it’s hard to imagine that the great American experiment, a nation created to embody ethical values, started in such a place.
1. Madness! Rice is a main food source for about 3.5 billion people, but some of the climate change cultists want it banned. The AFP News Agency posted a video on Twitter that argued, “Rice is to blame for around 10 percent of global emissions of methane, a gas that over two decades, traps about 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide. Scientists say that if the world wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, rice cannot be ignored.” This is, of course, bonkers, though whether it is more or less bonkers than the climate change fanatics insisting that we stop eating meat and start learning to like bugs is a matter of, uh, taste. After Legal Insurrection flagged the video, those who thought it would be persuasive propaganda had second thoughts, and this is all that remains today:
Remember: this is a cult. Causing a famine and widespread death and suffering to “save the planet” is a necessary trade-off to such fanatics.
2. Someone needs to explain to Biden Administration “historic” and “diversity” hires that they still can’t get away with embarrassing the government. Well, they can’t count on it, anyway. Kayla Denker is a transgender activist who U.S. Forest Service and tweeted a video showing her with a gun accompanied by the message, “While advocating for trans people to ‘arm ourselves’ is not any kind of a solution to the genocide we are facing, I do want to say that if any of you transphobes do try to come for me I am taking a few of you with me.” Then a trans ex-student shot up a Nashville Christian grade school, and the tweet went “viral.”
Fox News settled Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit over the network’s false claim that its voting machines at rigged votes in the 2020 election for $787.5 million. It was clear that Fox knowingly misrepresented facts for ratings and to pander to Trump fans, and the lawsuit already had thoroughly embarrassed the company: all it could do in its defense is argue that the deliberate misrepresentations weren’t malicious. That was a tough assignment; the settlement was prudent. In this op-ed, Washington Post’s media watchdog hack Eric Wemple gives vent to his hatred of the network that declines to join the Post and the rest of the mainstream media in its mission to install a permanent Leftist dictatorship, writing in part,
In its statement, Fox News demonstrated that not even a court record bulging with evidence of perfidy is enough to shame the organization into genuine contrition. “We are pleased to have reached a settlement of our dispute with Dominion Voting Systems. We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false.This settlementreflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”
(Boldface added to highlight the network’s minimization of the fact that the discovery materials exposed not just falsehoods but lies. Boldface italics added to highlight an unthinkable proposition — firm evidence that the network refuses to learn from any experience.)…the resolution requires a great deal of something that Fox News has in wheelbarrows (money) and very little of something it has in teaspoons (editorial integrity).
“How does banning something nobody can define when banning it once before didn’t accomplish anything constitute ‘doing something’?”
We are discussing, of course, “assault rifles.”
The mantra from Democrats, social media hysterics, tearful community members and President Biden is that a ban on “assault weapons” (you know: “weapons of war”) is an obvious, “common sense” measure that would save lives. One would think, would one not, that if that is really a serious proposal, one backed by statistics and facts, that its advocates would be able to clearly define what an “assault weapon” is.
Uh, no. On the Hill yesterday, Steve Dettelbach, President Biden’s hand-picked head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, was asked by Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-TX) to give a brief definition of the term “assault weapon” during his testimony in the House Appropriations Committee’s hearing focused on the ATF’s FY2024 budget. This wasn’t a “gotcha!” question: the guy heads the agency that oversees gun law enforcement, and he’s a members of the party that blathers on about deadly “assault weapons” at every opportunity. Nevertheless, Dettelbach couldn’t answer the question, instead huminahumina-ing,
“I’ll go shorter than that because I, honestly, if Congress wishes to take that up, I think Congress would have to do the work, but we would be there to provide technical assistance. I, unlike you, am not a firearms expert, to the same extent as you maybe, but we have people at ATF who can talk about velocity of firearms, what damage different kinds of firearms cause, so that whatever determination you chose to make would be an informed one.”
That photo above makes me laugh. It shows 25-year-old Stanley Omondi dressed in a burka as he attempted to win the $3,000 grand prize in a Kenyan women’s chess tournament by posing as female. He looks like Cousin It from “The Addams Family.” See?
Stanley’s black burka left only his feet visible, and he registered under the fake name of “Millicent Awour.” Nobody suspected anything, and the organizers didn’t want to challenge a player for wearing Muslim garb. But his victories against notable female players eventually raised suspicions. “It would be unlikely to have a new person who has never played a tournament to be this strong,” an official told reporters. It also seemed odd that “Millicent” never spoke, either to members of the tournament staff or other players. Eventually, after beating a very strong opponent in the fourth round, Stanley was confronted by officials. He quickly admitted his deception, saying that he was just trying to solve his financial woes.
Local leaders are outside of Chatham’s Walmart demanding the store remains open 2 days after corporate officials announced they’d close the store this weekend. A pharmacy at the location will close May 12. Neighbors received a 5-day notice. @BlockClubCHIpic.twitter.com/oGHkwEPk7p
The impetus for this indignant and ignorant rant is Walmart’s announcement that it is closing 4 of their 8 stores in Chicago, including the one at issue. In announcing the move, Walmart explained,
The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years. The remaining four Chicago stores continue to face the same business difficulties, but we think this decision gives us the best chance to help keep them open and serving the community.
Ethics Heroes have been far and few between so far this year, but this one is not only an easy call, it’s from the world of Major League Baseball.
Andrew Toles played 96 games as a member of the Dodgers from 2016 to 2018. The speedy outfielder did well in limited playing time, but he did not report to spring training in 2019 and was subsequently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia. A year later, Toles was arrested and charged with trespassing after he was found sleeping behind a FedEx building at Key West International Airport. He has been in and out of mental health hospitals ever since. But the Dodgers signed the now 30-year-old Toles to a contract in March, and revealed that the team has signed him to a contract every year since the 2019 season so he would be eligible for the organization’s health insurance.
The good news is, as we are periodically reminded, this isn’t the U.K. (Thank-you, George, Tom, John, Paul and Ben!). The bad news is that the totalitarian virus embedded in The Great Stupid is contagious, and far greater threat to civilization than any pandemic. Great Britain has reached a level of unethical literary censorship—for the greater good, to eradicate “WrongThink,” you know—that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
I thought the effort by British publishers to re-write the works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming was just a temporary outbreak, and that the miscreants had received so much ridicule and criticism that the madness had been contained. As is so often the case, I was tragically wrong. Now these ethics villains have come for…I can’t believe I am writing this…P.G. Wodehouse.
Ethics Alarms 