Month: August 2023

Oh-Oh, I May Have To Apologize To Michael Savage…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Michael Savage (real name: Michael Weiner) is in his eighties now, and his exposure is limited to out-of-print books (he wrote 40 of them) and podcast that can be easily avoided. I used to stumble across his syndicated rant show on the car radio in D.C. now and then, and I was repeatedly horrified, not just that enough Americans would listen to his mad white nationalism to provide him with a living wage, but that there were people who thought like him at all. Savage is a misogynist, mocks autism, wants to eliminate all immigration to keep the U.S. as white as possible, and generally represents the worst pathologies of conservatism, allowing the news media to use him a template to smear anyone to the right of Barack Obama. In the early 2000s his theme was that liberalism was a mental illness; he even published a book about that theory. Like so much of Savage’s bile, that position seemed especially ominous to me, an echo of both fascism and the Soviet treatment of dissidents. I alluded to this obsession of Savage’s in a 2009 essay on the old Ethics Scoreboard, writing,

Zealots on both the Left and the Right, rather than make an honest effort to challenge the views and assumptions of those on the other side, increasingly opt to smear their character with broad and crude generalizations. Democrats and liberals hate America, and want to destroy everything that is good and decent. Republicans and conservatives are fascists and hypocrites. Liberals are evil: they encourage the killing of babies and the destruction of the family. Conservatives are evil: they secretly lead lives of sexual excess and mad fetishes. This mode of public debate could be laughed off as self-evidently ridiculous, except that individuals held in high regard by millions engage in it routinely. Listen to conservatives Michael Savage (whose writings claims liberalism is a mental illness) or Marc Levin on your radio. Or read one of newly-seated Democratic Senator Al Franken’s books, before he realized that accusing all Republicans of being fat, venal and stupid was a serviceable road to power.

That was a correct assessment then and is correct now; the problem is (and calling it just a “problem” is, as Jonathan Turley would say, “problematic”) that the two polar extremes have largely now taken over national discourse. Their excesses are just as repulsive (or should be), but it is increasingly difficult to find anyone with influence who can act as a counterweight.

But I digress…the original inspiration for this post is that Michael Savage’s assertion that “liberalism is a mental disease” appears to be coming true. Witness Ryan Polly, whom , a hospital system of over 20,000 employees, MaineHealth, has chosen to place in a position of power in its organization. Polly is a vice president of DEI there” the fact that any organization actually spends money to create a bureaucracy around the latest leftest fad is itself evidence of a metastasizing cultural malady, but Polly is special. According to a Fox News report, he hosted an antiracist prayer service in which white attendees were made to apologize for their internalized racism, because, Polly teaches, all whites (like him) are racists.

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And As Long As We’re Talking About The Ethics Rot At The Washington Post…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

This headline: “In Trump cases, experts say defendant’s rhetoric will be hard to police.”
No news organization where the ethics alarms ring beyond the janatorial staff would allow that to go out into the world unless it was confident that a totalitarian regime would soom be handing out favors.

Wrote Ann Althouse, in one of her better distillations of an ethics issue: “Rhetoric should be hard to police.” Funny, that creature of the First Amendment, the Washington Post, think it’s a problem, writing, “Advisers say the Trump campaign sees a benefit in him testing boundaries by publicly attacking judges and prosecutors — either he gets away with it, or he gets to play the victim for being censored by the courts.”

Ann’s reaction, in my terms, is “Good!” She comments, “It’s a great free-speech safeguard that restrictions on free speech generate the argument that there’s a violation of free speech. Those whose freedom of speech is violated should “play the victim.” If you don’t like your opponents “playing the victim,” one option is not to victimize them.”

Whatever sadistic god decided to make a repulsive creep like Donald Trump the target of the most ominous and dangerous attack on the democratic system and the Constitution in our history has a lot of explaining to do. It is essentially impossible to feel sorry for Trump, but fair and civically responsible citizens must rally to his side while condemning the mob pursuing him, at least on principle. It literally doesn’t matter whether Trump is a jerk, a secret cannibal or Jack the Ripper come to the 21st Century in H.G. Wells’ time machine. If we let the corrupt Democratic totalitarians silence and punish him to clear the field for what’s left of Joe Biden, nobody is safe. There has to be some way to punish the Left without letting a vicious, unaccountable creep sit in the place of Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan.

Isn’t there? Please?

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The Unethical Mainstream New Media Isn’t Even Trying Any More…

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Witness the Washington Post’s announcement that they have hired Alexi McCammond to be an opinion editor. The Washington Post has been hemorrhaging credibility, integrity and subscribers for years, and one might think that it would be seeking some objective, serious, ethically competent old hands to right the metaphorical ship. One might, and one would be wrong. Heeeeeeere’s Alexi!

McCammond began her political reportage career covering Democrats for Axios. While following Biden’s presidential campaign, where she eventually began an intimate affair with Biden’s then campaign press secretary T.J. Ducklo. This is what is called in the days when journalists cared about things, a disqualifying conflict of interest but neither told their employers about their relationship until after the 2020 election. McCammond’s ability to be considered an objective commentator on the Biden campaign was, of course, corrupted, but never mind: Axios, hack outfit that it is, didn’t care, saying, “We stand behind her and her coverage”,” and because she was “a valued member of the Axios team.” Then, probably with the assistance of the White House, the love birds got their own feature in People magazine. Ducklo was quoted as saying, “We’re both really happy, and we wanted to do it the right way.” This the rough equivalent of Clarence Thomas saying the same thing about his relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow. There is no “right way” for a reporter to be in a romantic relationship with a key staffer of the politician she’s covering.

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The Canada-Meta Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Boy, who do you root for in a face-off like this?

Meta Platforms—that’s Facebook and Instagram— ended access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada earlier this month in opposition to a new law requiring internet companies to pay news publishers. The Online News Act was passed by the Canadian parliament to force platforms like Google parent Alphabet and Meta to negotiate commercial deals with Canadian news publishers (including the government) for news content. Part of a global trend to make tech firms pay for news, both Meta and Google told Canada in June they would block access to news on their platforms in the country if the law wasn’t changed.

“News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and help their bottom line,” Rachel Curran, Meta’s head of public policy in Canada, said in a public statement. But, she said, “people using our platforms don’t come to us for news.”

Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge responded,”This is irresponsible. They would rather block their users from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations. We’re going to keep standing our ground. After all, if the Government can’t stand up for Canadians against tech giants, who will?”

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Rolling Stone Proves You Can Find Ethics Enlightenment In The Strangest Places

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What could be a more unlikely locale for ethics lessons than a standard web click-bait list? Yet against all odds and defying all precedent, Rolling Stone has posted such a list that could sustain multiple courses in ethics: business ethics, popular culture ethics, media ethics, and ethical decision-making generally. It is called “The 50 Worst Decisions in TV History.”

Not all of the items on the list have ethical implications, and not all of the choices for the list belong there. Not only that, what I thought would be the #1 Worst Decision right up to the end in Rolling Stone’s countdown was missing entirely, presumably because of the generational bias (and ignorance) of the writers. Almost all of the TV network and production decisions listed occurred in the last thirty years: I assume this is why the list even missed ABC’s infamous decision to replace the ailing Dick York as Darren, the long-suffering hubby of Samantha the Witch on its hit sitcom “Bewitched,” with another, lookalike actor, the inferior Dick Sargent, without any explanation on the show, as if the audience wouldn’t notice. (Ethics lesson: Treating your customers/followers/fans/audience members like idiots is disrespectful, incompetent, and irresponsible: unethical.)

No, that wasn’t the missing #1. Be patient.

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Comment Of The Day: “How Can We ‘Trust The Science’ When It’s Distorted By Activist Scientists?” Audubon’s Bird Scam”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

On days like today, taken up by a frantic effort to prepare for an all-new seminar I’m teaching the usual unexpected crisis, plus wasting time dealing with a partisan troll whom I knew from the start was eventually going to get herself banned (and she did), I am especially grateful for thoughtful Comments of the Day in the inventory to keep the quality content coming. Such is Ryan Harkins’ comment on the post, “How Can We ‘Trust The Science’ When It’s Distorted By Activist Scientists?” —and here it is:

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I can certainly applaud the desire to mitigate damage to our native fauna that our cities create, but I would think there are several things that any advocacy group should keep in mind.

1. Sensationalism might spur the gullible, but it trashes credibility among anyone who bothers to investigate. Once you’ve lost credibility, it is an enormous uphill battle to regain trust.

2. In the same vein, even accurate numbers need to be placed in context. A billion birds a year sounds like a frighteningly high number. But it gives no context for how severe the problem is. It could be an imminent threat to all bird populations, or it could be a very minor issue. Killing a billion humans would be devastating to the human race. Killing a billion ants doesn’t even make a dent in their overall population. I Googled around and found that estimates put the bird population in the US and Canada at about 7.2 billion. However, that doesn’t mean that in 8 years, there would be no more birds. Yes, since 1970, that number has declined from over 10 billion, but that means 3 billion overall over 50 years. However, even that doesn’t provide the full context, because people need to understand the various causes that impacted bird population loss (which is largely due to loss of habitat), and they need to understand that killing a billion birds a year doesn’t lead to an overall decline of a billion birds in the total population. Instead, many of those birds will have died of predators, disease, old age, or other accidents, and their deaths often mean resources made available to the remaining birds who will then survive and reproduce. The real question is how quickly the overall bird population is declining, and whether that decline is accelerating or leveling off.

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Ethics Quiz: The NFL Turns Compassionate

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This past Saturday night in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Isiah Bolden, a cornerback for the Ne England Patriots, collided with a teammate, lay motionless on the ground, and was put on a cart to be rolled off the field. Though there was little more than 10 minutes to play, the NFL canceled the rest of the game. Patriots coach Bill Belichick praised the NFL for acting quickly. Patriots players then praised Belichick. Bolden was released from the hospital the next morning and appeared to be in good health, but the Patriots canceled a pair scheduled of joint practices anyway.

Conservative political pundit and sports commentator Jason Whitlock wrote of the episode, “The enemies of football and masculinity have won. They killed football. They won the long war of convincing men that the key to happiness is choosing safety over freedom, safety over everything.” Whitlock is saying, in essence, that the incident has greater significance beyond football, that it demonstrates that the progressive weenification of the culture has reached a critical and dangerous level that has ominous implications for American society at large.

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“What’s Going On Here?” Glad You Asked, Miles….

/ Jack Marshall / 69 Comments

The full tweet:

“What happened to Lahaina is a tragedy. Thousands still missing, including children. Everything that could’ve gone wrong went wrong. Sirens didn’t go off, water that could’ve been used to put out the flames was restricted, and power lines kept operating despite the danger posed by hurricane winds. The governor of Hawaii can’t even maintain proper eye contact with the camera as he talks about the systemic failures that led to this avoidable catastrophe. Will anyone be held accountable? Given the relative media blackout, it looks like they’re trying to sweep the situation under the carpet like so much ash. When Hurricane Katrina happened, it’s all the media would talk about. What’s going on here?”

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Comment Of The Day: “In Maui, DEI Insanity Kills”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The key question is: “Will any mainstream media pundit have the courage to make the points esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter Sarah B makes below, in her Comment of the Day to the post, “In Maui, DEI Insanity Kills”?

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So I’m going to say something that , at first glance, may sound pretty unethical here, but let me defend it first, before telling me that I’m going all in on Rationalizations. That being said, my TL,DR is “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I do think that it is fair to argue that, for the most part, the people of Lahaina had it coming. This fire was the rather predictable consequence of years of bad judgement and voting practices. First, the sugar cane farming dissolution into non-native dry grassland came because “we couldn’t possibly grow sugar cane there, it was too insensitive to the natives”. Then they didn’t make any reasonable plans to replace the farms with native plants that could handle both the wetter times and the drier times, but instead just let the farms grow over, which led to imported grass and other vegetation taking root off of spreading seeds. This worked out for a bit when things were wet, but these grasses are unable to handle the drier times. That led to a high fire hazard with a high burn interval.

Then they decided that they would go all in on the green energy to the degree that there was a huge governmental push (which often starts with the residents) for green production over safe electric lines, AFTER there was already substantial documentation that the power lines were likely to cause significant fires. Of course, the electric company is nowhere near blameless, but neither are the voters.

The idea that we now have DIE standing in the way of appropriate water being used to put out a fire, because we find that DIE is more important than lives and property (after all, we are founded on the notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion right, not that old fashioned life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), well, that is a conscious choice by the Hawaii electorate too.

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Future Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Pennsylvania Congressional Candidate Salem Snow

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Salem Snow is a social worker running for Congress in Philadelphia as a Democrat. He’s a Black Lives Matter fan, and describes himself as a “Leftist” and “aggressively pro-worker.” Of course he includes his pronouns in his Twitter profile. That’s all dumb enough, but he also tweeted this:

You watch: he’ll probably get elected. Is this a great country, or what?

Incidentally, it’s unethical to look that smug in a photo when you write something as stupid as that tweet.