Month: September 2023

Ethics Quiz: Miss Zimbabwe!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Guess which beauty won the Miss Zimbabwe title! It was 21-year-old Brooke Bruk-Jackson, the only white woman among the contestants.

Brooke was crowned Miss Universe Zimbabwe, and will represent the African nation at the next Miss Universe pageant. Reportedly fewer than 1% of the African nation’s population is white. Her victory has upset many residents of Zimbabwe. “All those beautiful melanated women, and you telling me the European woman won a contest for Black people?” one outraged X-user tweeted.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Was giving the prize to a white woman ethical?

This is a bit of a trick question. In a normal competition, the answer would be easy: if she won, she won. Beauty contests, however, are like dog shows: they are completely arbitrary and subjective contests pretending to be objective. It’s a Bizarro Wotld ethics problem: such competitions are phony (that is, unethical) anyway. They have no integrity; how can they have an ethical or unethical result?

Since any result is tainted by the inherent lie that it is based on objective criteria, isn’t this an ethics zugzwang situation? Choosing the only white woman in the competition has the appearance of bias and discrimination; so too does not choosing a competitor because she’s white, if her “objective” qualities would have made her Miss Zimbabwe if she were the “right” color.

If I were a judge, recognizing that beauty contests are absurd and that the criteria is hopelessly subjective, I would avoid choosing the only white contestant because it would raise all of these questions. If a black contestant were crowned Miss Zimbabwe, nobody would blink a metaphorical eye. Now Brooke is a target of hate mail and death threats, the pageant is under attack, the black population feels insulted, and everyone is miserable.

Good job, everybody!

Surveying The Left’s Three Desperate Reactions To The Biden Presidency Implosion

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

1. President Biden? Who’s that?

In order to go on covering other issues and stories in which aspects of the Biden mess would normally require a reference, the mainstream media instead just pretends there’s nothing there. Thus it can continue to run attacks on Donald Trump for “defying democratic norms,” being a threat to “lock up” his opposition if elected, and “lying” even when the current president, their client, continues to engage in all three.

Today the New York Times sent me a lament from columnist Amanda Taub headlined, “The Litany of #MeToo News Continues. Is Anything Really Changing? It can appear as though society is no closer to a future in which women can go about their ordinary lives without being harassed, assaulted and coerced into silence.” She begins with Russell Brand, but goes on to discuss how “each time a powerful man is held accountable for sexual misconduct, it seems like progress. And yet, when the allegations reveal a similar pattern of institutional actions that allowed the abuse to go on for years, and they provoke the same reactions of denial and victim-blaming, it can appear as though society is no closer to a future in which women can go about their ordinary lives without being harassed, assaulted and coerced into silence.”

Huh! I wonder why that’s happening? Could it be that the “fish rots from the head down”? Could it be that #MeToo has beclowned itself because by making it obvious that only conservatives and Republicans were in any peril of #MeToo consequences, and that powerful male Democrats could continue their harassing ways with either impunity or minor consequences? How can a serious analysts write about patterns “of institutional actions that allowed the abuse to go on for years,” and not mention any of this…

???? The President of the United States has been a serial and unapologetic groper, sniffer and cop-a-feel specialist for decades. Leaders set the standard for their organizations; Presidents set the standards for U.S. society. Biden was also accused of sexual assault by a former Senate staffer. If you want an explanation for why #MeToo has deteriorated, look no further than this White House.

But Biden’s enablers and agents want us to look away from there.

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Ethical Quote/Unethical Quote: Two Follow-Ups From Recent Posts

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

New York Times columnist David Brooks and powerful Democratic Senator Robert Menendez both thoroughly embarrassed themselves over the weekend. Brooks subsequently took the ethical approach and admitted that he had behaved badly. Menendez took the opposite approach, and topped his previous unethical response to a scandal with a response that was even worse.

Brooks had complained via Twitter that his $78 airport dinner highlighted the everyday struggles American families face amid ongoing inflation. omitting the fact that most of his charge was for whiskey. The tweet drew widespread mockery and this Ethics Alarms rebuke. Brooks didn’t hold back in his condemnation of his own actions, and said on PBS, “The problem with the tweet — which I wrote so stupidly — was that it made it seem like I was oblivious to something that is blindingly obvious: that an upper-middle-class journalist having a bourbon at an airport is a lot different than a family living paycheck to paycheck. I was insensitive. I screwed up. I should not have written that tweet. I probably should not write any tweets … I made a mistake. It was stupid.”

Got it. It was stupid. Now explain your columns over the last few years…

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Reactions To Being Confronted With A Racist T-Shirt [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This ticked me off.

I was leaving a rehab clinic office after dropping off my wife and got onto the elevator with an African-American mother and her son, who appeared to be 12 or 13. He was wearing the t-shirt pictured above.

That’s a racist message. If I were to wear a shirt or a cap saying “White is my happy color,” it would be viewed by any non-whites I encountered as a veiled insult, and correctly so. This is no different. Thanks to Barack Obama and George Floyd, anti-white racism is considered sufficiently justifiable, indeed deserved, that blacks can wear this shirt with impunity. Google even covers for them: “What does black is my happy color mean?” it asks. “This is the color you are most comfortable and most confident in and the one that reflects your character. I wear black a lot and experts say that wearing black means that you are confident, powerful and success driven. I’ll take that. Black is also perceived as the most attractive color,” Google says in answering it’s own question (bolding theirs).” Riiiiight. The kid was making a fashion statement.

To state the obvious, if I had worn a “White is my happy color” shirt, it would be regarded as a white supremacy boast, and properly so. (Notice of Correction: I had written “There are no ‘White is my happy color’ shirts for sale.” Commenter Steve-O helpfully informs me that there are indeed. I dare him to wear one in my neighborhood…) I came within a filament of saying something to the mother. This is how you raise a racist. This is how you guarantee racial divisions and tensions forever. This is how American blacks lose potential political and social allies who are not going to be sympathetic to complaints about “microagressions” from the same people who make me read racial insults on their shirts.

Sure, it’s another “black lives matter” rhetorical trick: “Hey, saying black (skin) makes me happy doesn’t mean that I have anything against white people!”

Now you’re insulting my intelligence too.

An Ethics And Integrity Dilemma: When Is A Personal Boycott Of A Company Ethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Some lines need to be established, and the sooner the better, but boy, I am having trouble drawing them.

Ethics Alarms has consistently taken the position that it is wrong to discriminate against people for their beliefs and opinions. The idea that business establishments would refuse service to customer based on their political affiliations (or because they wear a MAGA hat) is repugnant to the the value of pluralism and individual liberty, both central to the founding principles of the United States. Similarly, EA has taken the position that corporations should be judged solely on the basis of how well they deliver the services they render and the quality of the products they introduce. How those companies or their owners use their profits, as long as what they do is legal, should not be the consumer’s concern. Investors have a different perspective: investing in a company makes the investor a participant in that company’s activities beyond producing products and services.

Starting with these basic principles, Ethics Alarms opposed the efforts in several cities to punish Chic-Fil-A because its owner was a prominent supporter of groups that opposed gay marriage. I regard this as economic extortion to bend an individual (or his/her company) to the majority’s will, and dangerous to democracy.

The key distinction is whether the company itself, in delivering good and services, connects its business to political and social advocacy. Nothing in the Chic-Fil-A restaurants hinted at any position regarding gays or same-sex marriage, and the company’s owners (or its foundation) should be allowed to support whatever groups and political positions they choose, just like anyone else. But what if a company starts using its products and services, marketing and public visibility to promote political positions, public division, and questionable social engineering?

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A Poll, More Headline Deceit, And “What’s Going On Here?”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

It begins with the prototypical “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” decision by ABC News to bury the lede with a deceptive headline in an effort to minimize Joe Biden’s botching of his White House tenure. The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll had resulted in a stunning move away from Biden to Trump, showing the latter with a landslide level 51-42 lead if the 2024 election were held today. ABC’s headline: “Troubles for Biden not just his age in reelection campaign: POLL.”

This is a now common tool of the fake news game for those with the integrity to call it what it is: deceitful headlining to hide news that the media wants as little noticed as possible. The defensive rejoinder is always, “Oh, but that’s just the headline!”, but much of the public only skims the news and thus never sees more than the headlines of most stories. ABC News knows it, and when there have been stories that it (or other MSM propagandists for the Democrats) deems unhelpful to the cause, it uses this trick if not one of the other ones, like not reporting the story at all. Since this was ABC’s own poll, that one wasn’t an option.

Sure, the poll spelled “troubles” for Biden rather than just his age, as if anyone paying attention thought being old was the main problem with President Biden. But that’s not what the poll results indicate: they indicate that the public realizes that Biden has been a disaster as POTUS, and are pulling away from him at an accelerating rate. Bad polls affect party confidence, enthusiasm, morale and donations: that’s why most pollsters, who tend to be biased toward the Left like the media organizations that hire them, tend to skew poll results against Republicans. The honest headline for this poll would have been what was significant about it: “HOLY CRAP, A POLL RUN BY ABA AND THE POST STILL SHOWED TRUMP CLOBBERING BIDEN IN 2024! ARRRGH!!!” except that ABC’s partisan hacks didn’t want that to be the reaction in Trump Derangement Land.

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It Seems A Bit Late, But Perhaps It’s Time To Define “Higher Learning”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Colleges justify their outrageously inflated tuition and the absurd national tradition that their increasingly meaningless degrees are essential credentials for career success by promoting themselves as fonts of “higher learning.”

Hmmmm. Last week, “Queering Menstruation” was offered at Colgate University as part of the programming offered by the Center for Women’s Studies Brown Bag Series. “Menstruation can be exceptionally difficult for nonbinary and trans-masculine individuals because it’s a biological process that is often times associated with womanhood,” the website for the program stated. “…Queering menstruation an hopefully aid the building of more positive relationships between periods and trans and/or nonbinary people.”

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Ethics Observations On A Thoroughly Depressing News Story

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is a lousy way to start a Sunday morning, but so be it…

From Law and Crime regarding an incident in Indiana:

…According to a probable cause affidavit, officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department shortly before 11 p.m. on Tuesday responded to a call regarding an injured toddler at the Days Inn located in the 8300 block of Craig Street. Upon arriving at the scene, first responders said they immediately located a 1-year-old girl who was suffering from what appeared to be a stab wound to the neck.

Emergency medical personnel rushed the child to the Riley Hospital for Children… the child was initially admitted to the facility in critical condition but was later upgraded to stable condition.

The child’s mother…told investigators that [her 32-year-old sister, Sharon Key] called her at about 10 a.m. that morning and asked if she could stay with her at the Days Inn. Key was dropped off at the hotel later that morning and drank alcohol for “most of the day.” At about 10:30 p.m. that evening, the sisters went to Burger King and arrived back at the hotel…

The mother said she laid her daughter down on her stomach atop the bed closest to the window and went into the bathroom to give her son a bath. A short while later, the mother said she heard “loud noises from the bedroom so she walked out and saw that [Key] was holding a knife in her hand and [her daughter] was bloody and screaming on the bed.” Key [said] “it was an accident” as the mother grabbed a towel and wrapped it around the wound on the back left side of her daughter’s head and applied pressure before calling 911. …after she called 911,[the mother] turned around and saw [her sister] “walking down the hallway towards the exit.” ….Officers found Sharon Key hiding in some bushes near the hotel and placed her under arrest…[She] allegedly said that her pit bull had taken the chicken sandwich she got at Burger King and eaten it. Key then became “mad” and…went after the dog with her knife. The dog… jumped on the bed where the [baby] was [lying]…In an attempt to stab the dog, Key allegedly said that she missed, accidentally hitting her niece instead of the animal.

Observations…

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A “Ripley” For The New Republic! The Great Stupid Meets Trump Derangement!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Incredibly, amazingly, this appeal by the New Republic is not a joke or a Babylon Bee parody. I checked. I couldn’t believe it myself.

Ready?

Wow, what an all-star team! Trump’s really in trouble now!

And Speaking Of Not Being Able To Trust Public Schools …KABOOM!!!!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In Fairfield, Maine, Eric Sack father discovered a plastic baggie containing doses of prescription anti-depressants in the possession of his daughter. His daughter told him that the pills had been provided to her by the Bulldog Health Center, a School Based Health Center (SBHC) at Lawrence High School, where she is a student.

Yeah, right. I thought she was lying too, but the daughter wasn’t wasn’t. The federally funded health clinic that operates within the school gave the pills to her without his knowledge or consent.

How could this happen?

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