Just remember, the Ethics Alarms position is to strive as much as possible to remain unbiased regarding a performer’s art regardless of his or her demonstrated political orientation or revealed personal character flaws. I enjoy Bradley Whitford as an actor.
But only an unethical, bullying asshole would write a tweet like that.
Actress Cheryl Hines is married to Robert Kennedy, Jr. That does not make her responsible for RFKJ’s political positions, statements or conduct, like endorsing Donald Trump. No wife is obligated to publicly oppose her spouse, and I would rule any wife (or husband) who did so as an ethics villain, unless the conduct being opposed is criminal in nature. Unconditional love necessarily involves loyalty, sacrifice, and “having your partner’s back.”
Bradford doesn’t get this principle, because the increasingly Sovietified Democratic Party of which he is a loyal soldier wants children to betray parents, neighbors to betray neighbors, and spouses to betray spouses for not following the One True Way, which is, right now, single-party, anti-Bill of Rights, Trump Derangement mania.
Whitford is transparently leading a charge to have Hines’ cancelled and her career as an actress permanently derailed for refusing to follow the progressive Hollywood herd, even when doing so would mean knifing her husband in his metaphorical back. Guilt by association is a prominent weapon in the current leftist arsenal, as is blacklisting, which once liberals, especially Hollywood liberals, cited as a conservative evil. Today’s Hollywood liberals are progressive fascists.
That tweet is full of familiar slime. “Adjudicated rapist” is a popular deceit now, referring to a lawfare suit against Trump designed to undermine his campaign, advanced by the obvious device of extending an expired statute of limitations so he could be sued, ending in not a criminal conviction but a civil verdict that did not, in fact, include rape. But Democrats had a new and shiny smear to weaponize, and that was the point.
Meanwhile, what opponents of abortion concern themselves with is the “right” of women to kill inborn human beings who have rights themselves, far more basic rights than the contrived right to kill helpless human beings who inconvenience you. It is and has always been an ethics conflict that was not mentioned or alluded to in the Constitution, meaning that the Supreme Court should have stayed out it. A weak justice on an over-reaching, legislating Court created a “fundamental right” to abortion out of smoke and mirrors, and Trump’s thanks to the Dobbs majority for fixing a misbegotten precedent was appropriate.
Not placing politics and the desire to yield to peer pressure above loyalty to and support of those we vow to love and honor “for better or worse” is a great example for children, and Hines’ willingness to face the wrath of the snakes in the snake pit she works in is also a profile in courage.
Ethics Alarms 
Egads. And we literally just finished an episode of “The West Wing”.
That tweet is full of familiar slime. “Adjudicated rapist” is a popular deceit now, referring to a lawfare suit against Trump designed to undermine his campaign, advanced by the obvious device of extending an expired statute of limitations so he could be sued, ending in not a criminal conviction but a civil verdict that did not, in fact, include rape.
Here is something that even Jacob Sullum noted.
https://reason.com/2023/05/10/8-reasons-why-e-jean-carroll-won-her-sexual-abuse-and-defamation-lawsuit-against-trump/
Four years ago, when former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll first publicly claimed that Donald Trump had raped her in a department store dressing room, she was not sure of the exact date or even the year when that happened. Her account, which described an assault that she said she had suffered more than two decades before, was not supported by direct evidence, eyewitnesses, or a police report.
You forgot that part about E. Jean Carroll’s interviews where she claimed that all women have fantasies about being raped by a powerful man and her accounts of the incident that seem like she was saying that the rape wasn’t even unpleasant, just unwanted. This makes me wonder if this is another Christine Blasey Ford incident. I think the most reasonable explanation for Ford’s accusations are implanted memories by the therapist. That explains the lack of awareness of the date, the anachronistic elements like the cell phone, etc. These are semi-dreams the therapist is bringing out under hypnosis and then relaying to the ‘patient’. As Ford said, she had no memory of the incident, she only knew what the therapist told her. In Ford’s case, I think the theRAPIST was the RAPIST.
Who is Bradley Whitford and why am i required to what thinks?
jvb
Oh, “West Wing” Bradley Whitford. Still, why am I required to care? His opinion is just a relevant as the guy down the street, which is nothing.
jvb
Second. Fuck all these obscure assholes who look good reading a script. “You know, morons.”
This is correct. The weight we give the opinions of people who are famous for reading scripts and throwing balls is insane.
OK, I had to Google both of them. I recognize Cheryl Hines. I don’t recognize Bradley Whitford. I think the only ‘West Wing’ that I saw was the one when the president tears into a minister for his ‘hypocrisy’ in obeying the Porneia laws in the Old Testament while not obeying all of the Levitical law. I vowed never to watch that show again.
I taught a group of church high-schoolers about good Biblical interpretation and the importance of context using that same episode of “West Wing.”
He’s great in “Cabin in the Woods,” Joss Whedon’s tongue-in-cheek horror movie, which has one of my top ten favorite violent scenes of all time.
I believe the time has come to eliminate the public figure defense for liable and slander.
While I am an absolutist when it comes to free speech, when an explicit false statement defames another financial consequences should be available to the person defamed. I see no reason that one’s public notoriety should require malice for consequence. In fact, it would seem that being a public figure would impart greater damage despite having greater ability to offer countervailing speech.
How would that apply to Bradley Whitford’s tweet? It would not be defamation even if RFK and Trump were not public figures. “Lunatic husband” is opinion. “Adjudicated rapist” is technically incorrect—Trump is actually an adjudicated sexual assaulter—but defamation suits have failed when the allegation is “substantially true,” and the sexual assault in question was close enough to rape for the judge to publicly call it that after the trial. “Stripping women of their rights” is opinion.
It’s not defamation. It’s just a dick move.
First leaked item from Kamala’s secret policies platform:
“In new Democrat People’s State, spouse and children have duty to denounce citizen who exhibits deviationist tendencies, and report them to authorities for proper reeducation.”
”Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
it seems appropriately illustrative that Whitford’s criticism of Hines is that she remained silent.
-Jut