Month: July 2024

Monday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 7/29/24

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

That sappy John Denver song is just one of the ones that has choked me up when I’ve stumbled across it while listening to the radio in my car. I feel like I’ve let all of my friends and colleagues down; everyone has been so caring and supportive, I’ve been taken out for dinner, friends I haven’t heard from for years have called me just to see how I am. Yet I can’t say that I’m one bit better today than I was March first, a day after finding my body wife and the love of my life dead and staring on our sofa. I had a terrible nightmare about Grace two days ago. And the songs are the worst: songs I remember from our wedding, our first dance at the reception (“Wonderland by Night”), the song I sang for Grace that night (“Let a Woman in Your Life” from “My Fair Lady”) songs I recall from when we were dating, “Another You,” which moved me to end our six month separation, even “The Way We Were.” I’m literally afraid to turn on the radio. Meanwhile, I can’t imagine anything more boring and tedious than having someone constantly expressing their pain at something that happened almost half a year ago, so I don’t want to talk about how miserable I am, and yet talking would help. A little.

Please excuse that self-indulgent introduction.

1. Is Google really burying Trump searches? That’s the latest conspiracy theory. I don’t trust Google, and I have no doubt that Big Tech is mostly all-in concerning forcing Kamala Harris down the nation’s metaphorical throat. Still, this seems like a software glitch to me. So “assassination attempt on Tru…” doesn’t produce “Trump” in the autofill, but Truman. (Was there an assassination attempt on Truman? I missed that.) Why is anyone paying attention to autofill? Learn to search better: “Trump assassination” immediately pulls up all the news stories. There is so much genuinely sinister manipulation of information going on, it’s foolish to try to manufacture any.

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Revisiting the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

My sister recorded the whole thing, and invited me over to view it. I would say it’s unwatchable—she agrees—but we did do our best, focusing on the main features of the opening that have caused controversy. This was in the wake of yesterday’s obviously PR-generated non-apology apology from Paris Olympics “organizer” Anne Descamps (whatever that’s supposed to mean):

“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. On the contrary, I think Thomas Jolly did try to intend to celebrate community tolerance. We believe this ambition was achieved, if people have taken any offense, we of course are really sorry.”

Should I add that to the Apology Scale as a perfect example of Apology #9? That’s “Deceitful apologies, in which the wording of the apology is crafted to appear apologetic when it is not (“if my words offended, I am sorry”). But I’m not even sure the statement appears apologetic. “Clearly there was never an intention”— that’s a lie, since clearly many, many people believe that was the intention. The “apology” begins by insulting those who were offended. Then again we have the risible “community intolerance” claim. If someone could show me how that mess possibly communicated anything coherent, much less “community tolerance,” I will be eternally grateful.

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Ethics Villain: Ex-J.D. Vance Friend Sofia Nelson

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Villain” is the best I can muster right now. I really can’t find the right word for someone who would do what Sofia Nelson did, or who would be able to look at themselves in the mirror after she did it.

Nelson, a close friend of J.D. Vance’s in law school and for many years thereafter, sent about 90 of the emails and text messages they exchanged from 2014 through 2017 to The New York Times. Nelson is gay or a trans-male or a trans-female, or something, I couldn’t possibly care less. Nor will I read the Times’ article about what its partisan “Slime Trump and Vance!” posse found in the emails thus far. All that matters from an ethics perspective is the throbbing betrayal of trust represented by anyone the sharing past private communications with a media outlet without obtaining consent and permission from the other party to the exchanges. It’s revolting that the Times would accept such stuff: this is a National Enquirer level story. Trump’s running mate once wrote “Love you” to a guy who is now a chick! Ew! Does that mean Vance is gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that?

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Curmie’s Conjectures: “Curse You, Red Baron!”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

by Curmie

[This is Jack: Almost as if in response to my secret wish, Curmie has submitted a column designed to turn our attention away from politics, division, culture wars and the rest, instead focusing his analysis on pizza ads. Makes me hungry for more…but not more Red Baron pizza. I’ve been eating a lot of frozen pizza since Grace died, and have placed Red Baron on my blacklist. Yechh. DiGiorno, Frescetta and Trader Joe’s offerings are far superior. ]

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m a little starved for something, anything, other than politics.  The thought that anyone would vote for either of the likely contenders for the presidency (as opposed to against the alternative) is chilling.  So I’ve been casting about, looking for something else to write about.  This may not be much, but at least it’s something.  And I did sort of open the door for this kind of post last Christmas season with an analysis of ads for Monopoly.

Red Baron (the pizza company, not Snoopy’s antagonist, but why pass up an opportunity like this?) has released a trio of new commercials, all connected to the joys of sharing.  They’re not going to convince my wife and me to buy their product—we’ve tried it and found the gustatory difference between it and cardboard to be insignificant (your mileage may vary), but that doesn’t mean their commercials are similarly boring.

Indeed, “Baddie Librarians,” in which two stereotypically bespectacled (complete with glasses chains) older women naughtily share a pizza intended for a single person, is trite but at least reasonably cute.  “Hipsters” is even more fun, as sharing a delicious pizza leads to sharing of a different sort: one character “shares” that he’s tired of being hip, another (her name is Willow, of course) admits that she doesn’t even know what her neck tattoo means, the pizza is described as “way better than kale” (I’ll grant that much), and kombucha is called “garbage water.”  It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but at least it brings a smile.

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Ethics Observations on J.D. Vance’s “Childless Cat Ladies” Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The Axis of Unethical Conduct “pounced” on newly nominated Trump running mate J.D. Vance this week over a “re-surfaced” video in which Vance said that the country is being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.” The comment was made in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was beginning his ultimately successful campaign for the Senate.

Observations:

1. Gee, just the GOP needs—TWO candidates who lack functioning filters between their brains and their mouths.

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Meet Sara Morris, the Running Fick [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I referred to someone as a fick last week, and realized Ethics Alarms hadn’t exposed any of that particularly loathsome breed recently. Upon checking, I discovered that the last official Ethics Alarms fick was designated way back in 2021. It was Bennett Madison, a columnist at the now (thankfully) defunct Gawker site. He had openly boasted about deceiving advice columnists and their trusting readers in his article titled, “Help! I Couldn’t Stop Writing Fake Dear Prudence Letters That Got Published.”

Sara Morris says, “Hold my beer!”

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Great: Trump Makes Another Stupidly Phrased Comment That The News Media Will Use To Dishonestly Claim He’s Planning On Being a Dictator

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Boy, I’m sick of Trump being so reckless in his ad-libs and of the mainstream media’s deceit and disgusting double standards. The second I read Trump’s quote to a gathering of religious conservatives at The Believers’ Summit, an event hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action in West Palm Beach —“Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians!”—I knew exactly how the Axis would spin it, and I was right. Harris pounced, the Times pounced (then they changed the heading to provide the context after the initial story ran), CNN pounced, they all pounced. See? There will never be another election if Trump wins! He just admitted it!

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About That Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony…

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

A bizarre sequence in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony has created instant anger, controversy and, of course, social media controversy. At one point, a group of drag performers, transsexuals performers costumes to look like something in that range created a tableau that seemed to evoke a very weird version of the Last Supper. Many critics, including Elon Musk, declared the number blasphemous and an intentional insult to Christians. The organizers, cowards and liars as such functionaries tend to be when controversy strikes, claimed that any resemblance to The Last Supper was unintentional, and this was supposed to comment on “the absurdity of violence against human beings” because a giant platter with a representation of the Greek God Dionysus had the drag Last Supper as its backdrop, or perhaps representing the menu at the Last Supper. See?

Oh.

Okaaaay.

You got that? Do you believe it?

Was it ethical to include this spectacle in televised, live entertainment seen all over the world? This seems like a good opportunity to use one of the ethics decision-making models. Let’s roll out the “TWELVE QUESTIONS TOWARD ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING,” adapted from Harvard Business School Professor Laura Nash’ s 1981 Harvard Business Review article, “Ethics without the Sermon.” (The ceremony also included this…

…an image of a famous French queen holding her own severed head. Someone else can figure that one out. At least it wasn’t Kathy Griffin).

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Incompetent Elected Official and Ethics Dunce: VP Kamala Harris (Surprise!)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This shouldn’t be hard to grasp: incompetence really does matter in a President, as does trust.

Kamala Harris had a private discussion with Benjamin Netanyahu, a head of state. Diplomacy 101 dictates that when sensitive matters are discussed, neither party to such discussion reveals the details of what is said, nor does either party make statements after the meeting that undermine either the relationship between the two individuals, nor their respective nations, nor the interests and objectives of those nations.

This isn’t hard, nor should it be.

But for Kamala Harris, it is. This is a problem.

Having met with the Israel Prime Minister, Harris initially said that the U.S. has an “unwavering commitment” to Israel, its right to exist and its security. She called Hamas a “brutal terrorist organization.” Then she said,

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The Ethics Mission, If You Choose To Accept It: Don’t Let The News Media Deceive The Public About Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I don’t think the Citizen Free Press is being dishonest or misleading in its characterization of the compilation above. Kamala Harris has, many times, expressed her support for basic Marxism, as indeed the “equity” component of the Left’s current obsession (and cover-phrase for “good” racial and gender discrimination) is a Marxist buzzword. Harris’s assertion that fairness demands that “everybody ends up in the same place” is both alien to American values and Communism exemplified (or what Communists claim to seek, snce the real goals of political leaders under Communism is to dominate and dictate to the public).

That’s a valuable set of clips for many reasons, prime among them is that it shows who and what Harris is just as the news media—the Enemy of the People, as Donald Trump correctly said in one of his most perceptive moments—is trying mightily to re-introduce Harris to the public as something she isn’t. Many things, in fact. Moderate. Competent. Trustworthy. Genuine. “Exciting.” Likable. Honest. Smart. Harris is none of these things.

In the one of the clips above, Harris actually says that equality means “everyone should get the same thing.” That’s NOT what equality means; it has especially doesn’t mean that in this country. Equality means that everyone has the same rights under the law, among them the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It does not mean that everyone has some right to “get” the same thing regardless of their ability, talent, willingness to take risks, work ethic, determination, diligence, virtue and skill. Kamala Harris is either ignorant, not very bright, confused, or lying: personally, I think she’s all four, which makes her smug demeanor while spouting this garbage particularly infuriating.

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