That’s the outspoken, racist, Dunning-Kruger suffering lawyer on “The View,” Sunny Hostin, saying out loud and on national TV that climate change causes eclipses (yes, also earthquakes, but we’ve already heard public figures make fools of themselves on that topic, like here and here…). This was so bad that even Whoopie felt compelled to correct her: Whoopie’s problem is that she’s uneducated, but she’s still easily the smartest lady on “The View,” which admittedly is faint praise.
We could have an entertaining debate over whose statement is more idiotic, Rep. Jackson Lee’s claim that the moon is “mostly gas,” of this head-exploder from Hostin. But that’s not the point of this post.
The point of this post is my realization that some people with law licenses are demonstrably too stupid to be trusted by clients. Hostin is screaming proof of the validity of this conclusion, yet there is nothing in the disciplinary rules governing the minimal ethics requirements of lawyers that mentions basic, personal intellectual competence as a mandatory component of professional, legal competence.
It should be. One would think that the challenge of graduating from law school and passing the bar exam would be sufficient to ensure that a lawyer is at least smart enough to come in out of the rain, but in extreme cases like Sunny, one would be wrong. The lawyer featured in this recent post is on the other side of the line (if barely), but believing that climate change causes solar eclipses is signature significance. You can’t come to such an idiotic conclusion and not be an idiot. This delusion isn’t merely the product of scientific ignorance, like Jackson Lee exhibited, but a crippling deficit in critical thinking skills. One cannot be a trustworthy lawyer without minimal critical thinking skills. When a lawyer demonstrates such a deficit beyond a shadow of a doubt, that ought to be considered a legitimate reason for disbarment.
Incredibly, Hostin is listed by ABC as a “senior legal analyst,” which tells us all we need to know about that network’s competence, integrity and seriousness, but then, so does ABC’s continued broadcasting of “The View.”
I am absolutely serious about this proposal. Ethics Alarms has a “Stupidity Rule” in the comment policies, which grants me the right to ban from the comment wars anyone who shows that they are “too ignorant or stupid to take part in the discussion here, and interfere with the orderly exchange of opinions and ideas.” I have only invoked the rule a few times, and in each case it was an easy call. I would immediately invoke the rule on an Ethics Alarms commenter who made the same statement in print that Hostin sent out to millions of vulnerable Americans.
Surely the legal profession should have higher standards for membership than my little ethics blog…
Ethics Alarms 
As should so-called institutions of higher learning for their professors and officials, but they don’t. This is not only an ethics nightmare but a clear indication that this official is not smart enough to avoid the kinds of actions that almost everyone with live grey matter now knows to assiduously avoid:
https://www.science.org/content/article/embattled-harvard-honesty-professor-accused-plagiarism
Wow. Plagiarism, by an ‘honesty researcher’ (whatever that is)?
Hmm, I think there’s a word for that. It’ll come to me, I’m sure.
Fired?
Nah, that can’t be it…….it’ll come to me.
This once more points out the societal toxicity of our celebrity culture. People like Hostin, who opine to millions of people, have an ethical duty not to spread insane, cognitively-deficient fiction represented as either informed opinion or fact to the vulnerable demographic which consumes the vacuous dreck spouted by The View.
This would not be possible if we, as a nation, were predisposed to skepticism about the pronouncements of our on-air talent as it relates to areas beyond their presumed competence — acting, singing, playing sports or instruments — or in Hostin’s case, some level of legal competence. However, given her vapid, risible statement even that must be presumed deficient.
But alas, we have a bunch of sheeple nodding their heads at her madness as if it were holy writ. Egad.
Does anyone think that the idea of giving plants Gatorade “it has electrolytes” originated from something said on the View?
There’s almost a decade of The View tapings before Idiocracy was filmed.
I’d say a really high likelihood, but good luck finding someone to determine for sure.