Is this the date that marked the beginning of the slippery slope to total gender confusion in sports and American society generally? On September 20, 1973, in asuper-hyped “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match stunt, leading women’s pro Billie Jean King, 29 and in her prime, defeated retired tennis pro Bobby Riggs, 55, proving absolutely nothing. Riggs, essentially a hustler at that stage of his athletic career and an anomalous trick-shot artist and soft-hitter even when he was a competitive player, picked a hot period in the women’s rights movement to exploit by boasting that women were inferior and claiming that even at his age he could the best female players. After the #1 female pro at the time, Aussie Margaret Court, managed to lose to Riggs in their exhibition match, Billie Jean came to rescue the honor of her sex and her sport. Witnessed by over more spectators at the Houston Astrodome and 50 million TV viewers worldwide, King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. The reaction should have been “So what?”: any 29-year-old male pro would have mopped the Court with King, and she undoubtedly knew it. When a high school soccer team made up of boys easily defeated the women’s Olympic squad, which has been almost as obnoxious as Riggs, few called it a decisive rebuttal of women’s equality in sports. Decades after the Riggs-King sham, women’s pro tennis mega-champ Serena Williams admitted that she would have been an also-ran on the men’s tour. Yet now we have a woke-sanctioned political correctness myth that there’s nothing unfair about this…
…biological males thrashing female competitors in track, cycling, swimming, powerlifting and other sports where size, strength and being saturated with male hormones makes a difference. Thanks, Billie Jean! I’m sure Bobby Riggs is cackling in Hell.
Now let’s get some current ethics matters off the runway…
1. Remember this weird story [discussed here, #3] from 2021? Danish artist Jens Haaning, who was commissioned by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark to recreate two of his previous works, 2010’s “An Average Danish Annual Income” and “An Average Austrian Annual Income,” which used actual cash to show the average incomes of the two countries. Haaning was given $84,000 by the museum to use in the new art works. Instead, he sent them two blank canvasses he titled “Take the Money and Run,” raising unanswerable questions about the nature of art, and modern art particularly. Is a blank canvas “art” in the right context? Is a joke “art”? Unamused, a Copenhagen court this week ordered Haaning to refund the money, minus his fee for creating the two blank canvas masterpieces.
2. And it begins….Harvard is already trying out ways to discriminate on the basis of race in its admissions without violating the recent SCOTUS decision declaring affirmative action illegal. Harvard has changed its supplemental essay questions from one optional open-ended essay and two optional short essays to a series of five required short essays, each with a 200-word limit. The student newspaper, The Crimson, criticized the limit as inherently discriminatory, because “shortening the essays has a disparate impact that falls heaviest on those from marginalized backgrounds. Learning to package yourself within a shorter amount of space is a product of advanced education; longer essays more equitably allow applicants to discuss their experiences in full, particularly if they are from non-traditional backgrounds and require more space to elaborate on nuanced qualifications.” Really? I would think that a longer essay is more challenging than a short one. But I’m sure a minimum word limit would have been found to be racist too.
3. No matter what he meant, this cop is doomed. Daniel Auderer, vice-president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, responded to the scene of a January auto crash in which the vehicle of another Seattle police officer, Kevin Dave, had run into Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old graduate student, on a crosswalk, killing her. Kandula was thrown more than 100ft by the speeding car. Auderer, an expert on substance impairment, was called to evaluate Dave at the scene. He left his body camera on as he reported in a phone call that Dave was not “out of control” when he killed Kandula. He then said: “She is dead,” and laughed. The audio also recorded him saying in the call to the police union president, “No, it’s a regular person. Yeah. Just write a check. Eleven thousand dollars. She was 26 anyway. She had limited value.” The recording has been widely disseminated, outrage has ensued, and an investigation is underway.
Auderer swears that he was making a cynical observation about how the city’s attorneys would try to minimize the damaged owed to Kandula’s family. “I intended the comment as a mockery of lawyers,” Auderer says. “I laughed at the ridiculousness of how these incidents are litigated and the ridiculousness of how I watched these incidents play out as two parties bargain over a tragedy.” It may well be, but though police often get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to shooting a suspect in self-defense, he won’t get the benefit of the doubt here. He might have gotten away with his comment if the victim had been a white male. But a female student “of color” ? In Seattle? No chance.
3. I might consider boycotting New York City if this happens…The New York City Council reportedly is considering creating a reparations task force, and
one of the council’s committees proposed this week that fund should be allocated to remove artworks and statues that “depict a person who owned enslaved persons or directly benefited economically from slavery, or who participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity.” This would result in the elimination of several statues across the city, including those of George Washington and Christopher Columbus.
The United States of America would not exist in its current for, and perhaps any form, without the transformational accomplishments and brilliant leadership of George Washington. That he owned slaves during a period when slavery was legal and culturally accepted has no bearing on his historical significance or this nation’s eternal debt to him. Columbus’s contributions to knowledge, exploration and civilization also demand honor and permanent recognition. Those who minimize and denigrate figures like Washington and Columbus (actually there are no figures “like” either of them) are small, ignorant, petty people using hindsight bias to smear the giants of history.
4.Now YouTube is punishing people for things not involving YouTube. This is a pure abuse of power, and very ominous. It gives also added significance to this post, about YouTube’s parent, Google. YouTube has suspended the YouTube actor and comedian Russell Brand from “monetization” ( that is, making money on the platform) after several women accused him of past sexual assaults. The action comes “following serious allegations against the creator,” YouTube said.
What? So now social media and Big Tech platforms feel it is appropriate to censor and punish individuals because they have concluded that the users aren’t “good people”? And allegations are enough to justify it? I don’t even want to speculate on how this principle can be weaponized. Brand’s conduct, and especially unproved conduct, should not affect his ability to use a public communications platform in any way.
Ethics Alarms 
Re #2. I do struggle to find anything discriminatory about Harvard’s decision to move to shorter essays on admissions applications. I think it’s dumb, but that’s another matter.
I would suggest, however, that sometimes shorter essays are indeed harder to write. I remember that when I took the admission to candidacy exam for my PhD, the assigned essay I struggled with the most was the one I knew the most about: I could have written a dozen pages without any trouble, but writing five meant leaving out a lot of things I considered important. The one where I could write essentially everything knew in five pages was much easier. I still struggle with word counts for book reviews and the like. (And yes, my blog entries tend to be rather lengthy, too.)
It’s easy to take a topic and fluff away. The tough part is making decisions as to what to pass over to keep on topic and cohesive.
1. Once upon a time, Mr. Golden and I went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art to wander about the place and also see a temporary exhibit that interested us. We decided – foolishly, of course – to save the special exhibit for the end of the day. About 30 minutes before closing, we were headed in the direction of the exhibit and passed a gallery that appeared to be only a darkened room with nothing in it. A security guard thought we should know that there was an exhibit in there so we quickly walked in and found that the “exhibit” in question was a wall designed to look farther away than it was and that we bumped into. We chuckled quickly and diplomatically admitted that some art can be surprising. The security guard then corralled us for a discussion about the meaning of art and how one interprets art, etc and etc. This monologue took so long that the special exbibit stopped admitting patrons by the time she was finished.
To this day, I resent trick-art.
2. The goal posts are always moved. When your business is exposing so-called systemic racism, everything is racist. Soon, applications will be deemed racist.
3. Oh, yeah. He may have generally made a cynical remark but interpretations are the purview of the listener. If you are on camera and/or being recorded – regardless of what you do for a living: police officer, teacher, call center employee, bus driver or President of the United States – you must be absolutely sure your words convey the intended meaning.
4. I seem to recall former President Trump being mocked for suggesting that the Left wanted to tear down statues of Washington. Washington’s influence on the country should never be diminished. However, Columbus’ flaws are easy pickins these days.
I just finished a fabulous book by Dan Jones called “Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages”. In a chapter on Navigators, Jones addresses the Columbus controversy. I was already on alert because the author had made minor comparisons of the Black Death to COVID, as well as a snide comment about businesspeople that become politicians being an issue in modern times, too, with a footnote that simply noted the name Donald J. Trump with no further detail. However, to my delight – and utter surprise – the author did not limit himself to bashing Columbus:
Forgive the length:
“Yet despite all this, there is no doubting the scale of his achievement in 1492. Given the comparative standards of medieval technology, contact between the Americas and Europe was only ever going to come from one direction. And although it is certain that if Columbus had not made his voyage, someone else would have done so soon afterward, the fact remains it was he who had the nerve, the plan, and the sheer good fortune to go forth and prosper. History does not have to be made by nice people; in fact our tour of the Middle Ages to this point probably demonstrates that it very rarely is. So whatever Columbus’s failings, his flaws, and his prejudices, which are assuredly even more out of step with twenty-first-century pieties than they were with those of his own time, he was – and remains – one of the most important figures in the whole of the Middle Ages. And from the moment he returned from the Caribbean, it was clear he had opened up a new age in human history.” pg 534.
History does not have to be made by nice people. Indeed.
5. Hardly surprising at all given what we know about the pressures on Big Tech to conform to one side of the political spectrum. It’s been the position of extremists on the Left for years that an accusation is as good as a conviction and requires complete social ostracism and demonetization.
Really? I would think that a longer essay is more challenging than a short one. But I’m sure a minimum word limit would have been found to be racist too.
I’m not sure. There is a saying in my profession, “Want a thirty minute sermon, give me five minutes, want a five minute sermon, give me thirty minutes.” I largely agree with it. It’s a lot harder to say something meaningful over a short amount of time, then to topically talk about something just to fill time.
The Crimson, criticized the limit as inherently discriminatory, because “shortening the essays has a disparate impact that falls heaviest on those from marginalized backgrounds. Learning to package yourself within a shorter amount of space is a product of advanced education; longer essays more equitably allow applicants to discuss their experiences in full, particularly if they are from non-traditional backgrounds and require more space to elaborate on nuanced qualifications
Well, its not like they are applying to Harvard or anything. Getting into whatever this McDonald’s factory is, should be easier.
Re #2: https://seeblab.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/im-sorry-i-wrote-you-such-a-long-letter-i-didnt-have-time-to-write-you-a-short-one-blaise-pascal/
Exactly.
3. PI litigation is a tough business. When asked what he was doing, a litigation associate at my big firm (then thirty-five lawyers — hah — now something like four hundred and fifty) answered, “Going to find out what a dead Indian’s worth in Flagstaff.” When asked by the litigation partners what they could do for the litigation associates, one associate said, “Could we have cases with better facts?” When defending a helicopter operator whose employee had walked into a rotating main rotor, the associate suggested they pitch the matter as a (beneficial) “roto-lobotomy.” Gallows humor is a thing. I can’t help thinking it’s rampant among rank-and-file police as well. This guy will find a job somewhere in eastern Washington State and be happier.
2. Man, these lefties are relentless. And they’re blatant scofflaws. Nothing more than common criminals. They should all be prosecuted for conspiracy.
Minor correction, the women’s team that a high school soccer team made up of boys (15u in Dallas, TX) easily defeated was not merely “the women’s Olympic squad;” rather, it was the USWNT that had just won the women FIFA World Cup, and did so in dominant fashion.
Am I the only one who noticed the LPGA golfers could just barely play Pebble Beach during the Women’s U.S. Open? It was pathetic. I’d never realized what a joke women’s golf is.
Item 2- Mr., Scala, my 7th grade Social Studies teacher at JHS 218. required that we answer his homework questions with “three well-constructed sentences.” No more, no less. He exhorted us that if we could not produce three sentences we were not thinking deeply enough If we needed more than three sentences we were not thinking concisely or critically enough.
Item 3- If the statue of Christopher Columbus is removed from Columbus Circle I predict “the families” would be involved.
Remember this?
https://reason.com/2008/11/20/eharmony-forced-to-create-a-da/
If eHarmony can be forced by law to provide same-sex pairings, then YouTube can certainly be forced to provide monetization.
They should be forced to do so or face execution.
Yeah, my thought when I read that was how long before they get sued over this. Unless their TOS allows for completely arbitrary decisions, I’d bet they are in violation.
Youtube has been punishing users for off site content for years now. They’ve threatened to remove monetization from users for off site merchandise relating to the person’s brand. Twitch, another site similar to Youtube, doesn’t allow people to livestream to multiple sites at the same time. Streaming sites punishing people for off site content has been an issue for years.
#1: No sympathy for the museum from me. The pretensions twits who encourage this sort of “art” deserve whatever the “artists” decide to give them. If it had been me, though, I might at least have given them a canvas with a few euros and change glued on and called it <i." An Average Danish Annual Income After Taxes". Wouldn’t have been any worse than a Koons.