It was kind of conservative pundit David Strom to let his head explode so mine didn’t have to, and he generously authored a rant so I could restrain myself.
What set him off was a legitimate provocation. Elizabeth Spiers, who is a frequent contributor to the New York Times op-ed pages, revealed in a social media spat with Noah Blum the Chief Technology Officer of Tablet, which focuses on Jewish issues, that she thinks Hamas doesn’t run Gaza:
To get you revved up to post on important or intriguing, ethics matters, here is an actual comment I just kicked out of moderation:
Hey everyone! Just stumbled upon an incredibly interesting blog about the potassium content in bananas! If you’ve ever wondered “how much potassium in a banana,” this article breaks it down in a simple and informative way. Check it out and enhance your knowledge on the benefits of this potassium-packed fruit!
You should see all of the sincere letters I get from people who will pay to have articles printed in Ethics Alarms on topics having no conceivable connection to the topic of the blog who have obviously never read a single post.
Never mind. Go crazy. Or rather, “Go bananas.”
The last time Ethics Alarms had anything positive to sat about Nikki Haley, who briefly emerged in the last few weeks as a ray of hope for those who regard avoiding the dreaded, ethics-free Trump-Biden contest next year as an existential necessity, was when she was ambassador to the U.N. The Ethics Alarms position on her since is “Haley has proven herself to be a hypocrite, a cynical opportunist, and devoid of integrity.” She has again validated that negative assessment, adding some Democrat-style First Amendment hostility to the mix.
During an interview on Fox News, Haley reiterated her pledge to make anonymous commenting on social media platforms illegal, arguing that “every person on social media should be verified by their name.” If she is elected president, Haley said, social media companies would be required to authenticate people’s identity before allowing them to comment.
“When you do that, all of a sudden people have to stand by what they say,” she said. “And it gets rid of the Russian bots, the Iranian bots, and the Chinese bots. And then you’re going to get some civility when people know their name is next to what they say, and they know their pastor and their family members are going to see it.”
—-CBS Morning co-host Gayle King, interviewing the father of eight-year-old Israeli hostage Emily Hand
I know I’m flogging this issue, but the talking heads and especially “Think of the children!” female wokesters just won’t shut up. In addition to that, the fact that Gayle King has her gig on CBS Mornings offends me: she is neither especially clever, watchable, intelligent or competent. She has the job because she’s Oprah Winfrey’s <cough> “galpal,” and has been hitched to Oprah’s star for more than 40 years. King is a passable talking head, but has risen far beyond what her ability would otherwise permit thanks to her powerful ally.
I could tolerate it if she didn’t constantly say such stupid things. This comment adds to the pressure being applied to Israel by U.S. media propagandists, because to the same people who want to “Do something!” about climate change and gun violence, “stop that” sounds like wisdom. Either King is cynically appealing to idiots deliberately, or she is one.
Those who have audiences of millions also have an obligation to choose what ideas they impart carefully and competently. King’s pivoting to the plight of children in Gaza while interviewing the father of an 8-year-old victim of Hamas terrorism is inexcusable. Naturally, CBS won’t do anything about it: her bosses probably see the issues with the same clarity she does.
Besides, they don’t want to make Oprah angry…
And ignore facts, history common sense and reality. Like so much of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Trian Wreck, this car has value unrelated to the war itself. Now we can understand why the Times op-eds are the way they are.
The Times just published a column by a recent edition to its stable of extreme woke pundits. Lydia Polgreen opines, in “This Photograph Demands an Answer,” that the news media should bombard the public with photographs that will flood readers’ minds with emotion, making rational, objective analysis difficult or impossible.
Many people may want to look away, to see the world as they prefer to see it. But what should we see when we see war? What should war demand all of us to see and understand? Given my experience in war zones, it is a rare thing for a violent image to stop me in my tracks. But I believe that this is an image that demands to be seen….And so I ask you to look at these children. They are not asleep. They are dead. They will not be part of the future. But know this: The children in the morgue photo could be any children. They could be Sudanese children caught in the crossfire between two feuding generals in Khartoum. They could be Syrian children crushed under Bashar al-Assad’s bombs. They could be Turkish children who died in their beds when a shoddily constructed apartment block collapsed upon them in an earthquake. They could be Ukrainian children slain by Russian shells. They could be Israeli children slaughtered in a kibbutz by Hamas. They could be American schoolchildren gunned down in a mass shooting. These children are ours.
Oh, fine, I’m an idiot. Just in time for what promises to be gloomy and lonely Thanksgiving, I learn that all these many moons I have thought yams and sweet potatoes are the same vegetable. It turns out that they are not; they aren’t even related. The reason is flat-out multi-continental language malpractice.
No wonder nobody seems to know this: here’s the explanation that Food Channel expert Alton Brown unearthed in a video posted here. Let me try to summarize:
Sweet potatoes are not merely potatoes that happen to be sweet. They are actually the root of a vine in the morning glory family, and morning glories are a kind of lily. Christopher Columbus brought some back to Spain in 1493; they were called “batatas” by the Indians who lived in the Greater Antilles Islands. The Spanish called them “patatas.” Here’s Fred and Ginger performing a Gershwin song about such matters…
Where was I? Oh, right, sweet potatoes…The Spanish king served a sweet potato pie to King Henry VIII at some royal event and he loved it (of course, he loved just about anything he could put in his mouth) , he took some vines back to England. There patatas became “potatoes.” (Cue that song again…). Continue reading
Pulling fire alarms? Child’s play. Challenging a Senate hearing witness to a rumble? Peanuts!
Felicia Franklin was relieved of her job as Clayton County (Georgia) Board of Commissioners vice chair after the September incident above, recorded on police body cameras. Her condition was apparently caused by downing three 40-proof Hennessy and Grand Marnier drinks, a glass of wine and some beer, along with cannabis oil.
Franklin is suing the county, claiming that she was drugged with GHB, but, as you can hear in the video, there was no evidence of that. She’s a class act, to be sure: after she was roused from her unconscious state on the sidewalk, lying in her own urine, Franklin began screaming, crying, cursing at and pushing away the first responders.
“The Clayton County Board of Commissioners deemed the removal of Franklin as vice chair and additional sanctions in the best interest of the county, citing behavior unbecoming of the position,” county officials said in a statement. Ya think? “The Board finds its citizens expect its elected officials to behave in a manner which brings a positive reflection on the citizens, businesses, and employees of the county,” it went on to say.
Do citizens still expect that? If so, how do people like Franklin, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, and Senator Markwayne Mullin get elected? Margaret Bryant, a county resident and Franklin supporter, shows how: she told reporters the board should have been more forgiving.
“I think it was a bad move and an unfair move,” Bryant said. “Who hasn’t done something they are ashamed of?”
Good point. What elected official hasn’t gotten roaring drunk, passed out on the sidewalk, fought with EMTs as they were taken to the hospital, then lied about it? Come on! Be fair!
Well, at least the troll presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has some uses. His hectoring pulled an “A Few Good Men”- style “You’re goddamn right I did!” confession from ex-CNN pretty boy hack Chris Cuomo. Fredo wasn’t admitting that he ordered a “Code Red,” though/ Instead, Cuomo spat out proof not just of his own lack of journalistic ethics but also of the ethics void in U.S. journalism as a whole.
At one point in his contentious interview on Cuomo’s NewsNation cable show, Ramaswamy challenged the host to “Look the audience in the eye and tell them how you covered for your brother.” Cuomo immediately shot back, “You don’t want to take care of your family, that’s fine. Of course I covered for my brother. Of course I help my brother. Of course I do.”
From this we can conclude that:
It is depressing to me that I feel it necessary to write anything here at all, other than to post the video above.
Mullins decided to make a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing about personal animus between him and Teamsters chief Sean O’Brien. He read into the record tweeted insults by O’Brien, who had called the Oklahoma Republican a “moron” and “full of shit” among other juicy descriptors. This precipitated the disgusting display above, with Mullin daring O’Brien to a fistfight, “right here, right now,” and both men apparently preparing to due battle in the U.S. Capitol. “If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here,” Mullins said.
Luckily committee chair Bernie Sanders appeared to have some sense of honor and decorum, and ordered Mullin to stand down, saying, “You are a United States Senator! Sit down!” Mullin is a former professional MMA fighter, and apparently needed reminding.
“Gaza reports more than 11,100 killed. That’s one out of every 200 people,” screamed a Washington Post headline yesterday. Today, the featured propaganda piece is “In Gaza, the dead go uncounted as medical infrastructure disintegrates.”
It is obvious that the Post has thrown in with the war crimes/genocide/ innocent civilians/humanitarian crisis that Hamas was counting on to make Israel the villain in an episode where reality is exactly the opposite, and the ethics are remarkably clear. The lessons, which Israel is now determined to teach Hamas, its sadly brain-washed Palestinian supporters, and others is this: Don’t start wars. If you do, you have no standing to complain about what happens to you. When you find that what is happening is unsustainable and intolerable, surrender, and accept the consequences of your actions.
Another lesson that the “Imagine” crowd, the best of the propagandists, and the anti-Semitic crowd, the worst of them also need to understand is that objective in any war is, or should be, to end it as quickly as possible. Regardless of what some toothless international body might claim, the way one ends wars quickly is to make them as costly and painful as possible as quickly as possible.
That’s what Israel is doing. Good.
Ethics Alarms 