Month: March 2025

“The Ethicist” Finally Gets a Difficult Question…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the philosophy professor who currently writes the New York Times “The Ethicist” advice column, went off the rails (like so may other people I could name) during the Presidential campaign and the post-election freakout, but there are small signs that he’s recovering his professional equilibrium. Boy, I sure hope so.

Last week he was asked by an “emotionally and physically abused” ex-wife, now happily married, if she has a moral (she means ethical) obligation to warn the woman her ex- is now dating about his proclivities as she experienced them. She’s not a friend, but the inquirer and the girlfriend “travel in the same professional circles,” whatever that means.

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The Merle Oberon Story, or “Sometimes Those ‘Historic’ Oscar Nominations Aren’t So Historic After All” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

In 1936, Merle Oberon, best known today because of her co-starring role opposite Laurence Olivier in “Wuthering Heights,” became the first Asian actress to get an Academy Award nomination, for her role in “The Dark Angel.” But in 2023, Michelle Yeoh was widely hailed as the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences’ first Asian Best Actress winner. That is because Oberon hid her ethnicity from journalists and the public for her entire career in order to have a career at all. It worked: in addition to getting the much-sought role of Kathy in “Wuthering Heights,” Oberon played Anne Boleyn (in the Charles Laughton classic, “The Private Life of Henry VIII”) at a time when non-traditional casting was unheard of.

Oberon died of a stroke in 1979; it wasn’t until four years later that it was revealed that she had been born in Bombay, India, the daughter of an Indian woman who had been raped by a white man. Written before the secret was revealed, the Times obituary seems naive in retrospect: “A diminutive 5 feet 2 inches tall, Miss Oberon was of an almost exotic beauty, with perfect skin, dark hair and a slight slant to her eyes that was further accentuated by makeup.” Almost!

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Why Having Donald Trump as POTUS Drives Me Crazy (a Continuing Series), Reasons 1-4

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This post is partially catch-up: I decided to make this a continuing series so that I can have an accurate record of the posts dealing with the ethical dilemmas and conflicts created by this most unique White House occupant.

Reason #1 I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago: Trump and the reaction to him by the Axis of Unethical Conduct creates so many ethics controversies that it throws the balance on Ethics Alarms out of whack. I resent it. I get sick of focusing on national affairs and politics, which, I swear, are not where my greatest interests lie. But I also am trying to cover the entire ethics landscape in the limited time available to me. Trump and the intense reactions to him make that all but impossible.

Reason #2 is the way Trump Derangement renders so many friends, relatives, colleagues and associates emotionally and intellectually dysfunctional. My brilliant younger sister, for example, has been angry at me as well as the world ever since November 5; I can hear it in her voice. On Facebook, one or more of my friends embarrass themselves every day with rants, reductive outbursts, or inexcusably ignorant declarations, and nobody challenges them because a) it’s futile and b) if you do, one or more friends will decide you’re a fascist. Here’s one that I just saw:

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Rationalization #71: Dick Wolf’s Mantra, or “They Only Want A Better Life”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

As with all of the more recent rationalizations added to the list, #71, the first non-sub rationalization in a while, and thus the highest number so far, should have been included years and years ago. Who hasn’t been hearing and reading “They only want a better life!’ from illegal immigrant enablers, apologists and accessories after the fact for decades? Jeb Bush said it during his mercifully short Presidential run in 2015. Axis media like the New York Times may not use the exact words, but that is the underlying argument in their routine reporting of “good illegal immigrant” stories.

Why am I dubbing this annoying rationalization after Dick Wolf, the prolific TV producer and writer responsible for about a third of the dramas on TV among the reality shows quiz shows and sitcoms? It is because he drops the line into his productions virtually every time an illegal immigrant appears in the story line. I was tempted to call #71 “Mariska’s Rationalization,” because the star of “Law and Order: SVU” mouths the sentiment repeatedly throughout the show’s apparently endless seasons (after Mariska Hargitay finally dies on the job, the show will probably have her mummified corpse leading the police unit, like El Cid).

I confess: after announcing last year that I would be boycotting all Wolf shows after a particularly disgusting woke lecture in one episode I was unfortunate enough to hear, I tuned-in to an SVU re-run last night when my pathetic options were that, “Two-and-a-Half Men,” “Smile 2” and even worse junk. Sure enough, Olivia Benson was tracking down a white monster who was trafficking poor teens from Mexico and who set one of them on fire when she balked at being forced into prostitution to pay for getting across the border. When one of the other girls told Benson that she was afraid of being sent back to Mexico if she cooperated with “policia” to shut down the operation, Mariska, her face full of sympathy and her voice oozing motherly concern, said, “I know. But you you’ve done nothing wrong: you just want a better life!” At least in this episode Mariska didn’t talk about ICE like it was the Gestapo.

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The Delusional Tim Walz

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

There is no better indicator of how far the Democratic Party has fallen into disarray than the fact that Knucklehead Tim Walz is being taken seriously as he tries to position himself as a viable option to run for President in 2028. Not only does Walz continue to display the incompetence that marked him as the most inept Vice-Presidential candidate in modern US political history, he appears to be completely unable to embrace reality.

I don’t know how clearly or directly I said it here at the time, but I instantly felt Walz’s awful performance in his debate with J.D. Vance was the tipping point for the 2024 election, the first time ever that the second slot debate had any significance or weight. Even with disgracefully biased debate moderators, Walz looked like the fool he is, and I could just sense undecided voters thinking, “This is the guy Kamala Harris picked to be a heartbeat from the Presidency? Oh-oh!” More substantively, Walz revealed his absence of respect for the First Amendment as well as his ignorance of what it means.

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They Make Such a Nice Couple! Ethics Dunce: Texas A&M University; Ethics Hero: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Texas A&M students started holding “Draggieland” (“drag” mixed with “Aggieland,” get it?) at the campus theater complex in 2020. Five years later, however, the tradition was slapped down as the school’s Board of Regents voted to ban all drag events on the 11 Texas A&M campuses.The board’s resolution reads in part,

“The board finds that it is inconsistent with the system’s mission and core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others, to allow special event venues of the universities to be used for drag shows [which are] offensive  [and] likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.”

I’d guess a pre-law student with a closed head injury could correctly explain what’s wrong with that silliness, but luckily the student body at Texas A&M will have a better champion than that, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, aka FIRE. FIRE moved in to fill the breach when the ACLU decided to be woke rather than defend free speech and expression regardless of which side of the partisan divide was attacking them, and this low-hanging fruitcake edict prompted the organization to file a federal lawsuit. It backs the Queer Empowerment Council, a coalition of student organizations at Texas A&M University-College Station and the organizers of the fifth annual “Draggieland” event that was scheduled to be held on campus on March 27, and aims at blocking the policy as a clear violation of the First Amendment. Which it is. FIRE asked a court in the Southern District of Texas to halt Texas A&M officials from enforcing the ban.

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About the “Appearance of Impropriety,” the Limits of “Deny, Deny, Deny,” and the Foolishness of Defying the Lessons of Michael Clayton

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Yes, ProPublica is generally a one-way-only ethics watchdog, but that way is still worth watching.

It is reporting that Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), had a romantic relationship with a legislative affairs official for the Navy. According to two sources with knowledge of an inspector general’s nvestigation, this was not the GOP combat veteran’s only inappropriate relationship with military personnel. Earlier this year, the Air Force revealed that Maj. Gen. Christopher Finerty, who oversaw its lobbying before Congress, had inappropriate romantic relationships with five women, including three who worked on Capitol Hill. One of those, though the names in the report were redacted, was allegedly Ernst. Because the Senator is an influential voice in Congress regarding the Pentagon and she sits on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee which has a crucial role in setting its annual budget, these are troubling accounts.

ProPublica says that neither Ernst nor the two military officers were married at the time. Current Senate rules do not bar lawmakers from entering into romantic relationships with lobbyists or other legislative advocates, although why I don’t know. Nonetheless, government employees and officials, like judges, are supposed to avoid appearances of impropriety.” “Ethics experts say such relationships can create a conflict of interest,” ProPublica tells us. “A former legislative affairs official for the military” tells ProPublica that “From an ethics standpoint, [these relationships] are severely problematic.”

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Regarding Those “Adults in the Room”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Boy, THAT quote didn’t age well…

House Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (MA) joined Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA), and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (CA) for a press conference in May of 2023 that began with Clark declaring, “It is Democrats who’ve been the adults in the room. It is Democrats who’ve prioritized Americans over political gamesmanship.”

Last night I rewatched “All the President’s Men.” I was struck by how similar Nixon’s attempts to cripple potential Democratic Party challengers resembled the various unethical measures taken by President Obama’s minions and President Biden’s puppeteers to bury Donald Trump, but that’s a different topic. What I was immediately impressed with was how an archival film of Nixon’s State of the Union Address in 1972 showed the entire audience consisting of both parties of both houses of Congress rising and applauding the President as he entered the chamber. They did this because Nixon, as divisive and loathed as he was by the American Left, was the goddamn President of the United States, had been elected by the American people, and it was every member of Congress’s duty to show the office due respect.

And it still is. Today’s Democrats (and, tragically, their Trump Deranged supporters), however, choose to behave like spit-ball shooting grade-schoolers, debasing the nation and its institutions in the process. Jonathan Turley said yesterday that when he was a House leadership page, every member of the House of Representatives would have voted to censure a Congressman who behaved like Al Green, because, quite simply, his disgusting conduct deserved condemnation and it was crucial for Congress to insist of standards of decorum. Today’s Democratic House members saluted Green as a martyr, and behaved like the student protesters of the Sixties. You know, adults.

Here are a few other notable examples of Democrats and their anti-Trump cult followers behaving like adults in the past few days:

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Ethics Dunce (Again): Georgetown Law Center Dean William Treanor

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[Psst! It’s Georgetown University Law Center, not “school.” The Hill and other lazy publications keep calling it the law school, which was what the institution’s name was before it moved from the Georgetown campus (in Georgetown, a picturesque section of D.C.) to Capitol Hill near all the courts, including the Supreme Court. If you saw the place, you would know that “center” is an appropriate description. The name was the inspiration of then Dean Paul Dean, visionary, a respected lawyer and talented fund-raiser. He was also a good friend of mine as well as a cherished mentor]

William Trainor has been criticized on Ethics Alarms before notably during this fiasco, when he punished an incoming faculty member, Illya Shapiro, for daring to question Joe Biden’s wisdom of narrowing his choice of Supreme Court nominees to fill a vacancy to women of color, the same criteria that worked out so, so well with Kamala Harris. Following the lead of his radically indoctrinated students (it’s supposed to be the other way around), the GULC dean suspended Shapiro pending…well, something, and then after letting him twist slowly in the wind for months, finally let him back into the fold whereupon Shapiro quite properly told him to take his job and shove it, as I would have under like circumstances.

There were other instances when Trainer allowed his institution to be more woke than responsible; he is largely the reason my Law Center diploma is turned face to the wall in my ProEthics office. Here is an episode that didn’t directly involve the Dean but that occurred on his watch.

Now comes another skirmish. Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent a letter to GULC last month asking if the Law Center had eliminated its commitment to DEI. “At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered,” Martin wrote.

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House Democrats Emulate Al Green En Masse Just So There Is No Mistaking The Party’s Descent Into…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Early during President Trump’s State of the Union Message [See footnote below], Texas Representative Al Green, who already filed articles of impeachment against the President, shook his cane and shouted, refusing to stop disrupting the speech until Speaker Mike Johnson had the House Sergeant of Arms escort him out of the chamber. Green then went to the first camera he saw and declared, “I’ll accept my punishment! It was worth it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson had issued several warnings. “Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” he said. Then, “That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum. And the Chair is prepared to direct the Sergeant at arms to restore order to the joint session. Take your seat,” Johnson said. Finally, “The members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum. The chair now directs the Sergeant at Arms to restore order. Remove this gentleman from the chamber.”

Green’s official censure was assumed to be a certainty, and sure enough, Green was censured the next day. The vote was 224-198, with 10 Democrats joining all Republicans, so we know that at least ten Democrats have a shred of dignity and respect for the institution of Congress. (Green and freshman Rep. Shomari Figures, D-Ala., voted “present”) As the vote proceeded, Green sat by himself along the center aisle as tradition dictates.

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