Month: May 2025

Yes, Actors Who Refuse to Perform With Trump In The Audience Should Be Blacklisted

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Grennell is absolutely, 100% correct. For actors to withhold their talents and services from an entire audience because they may have ideological differences with a member of that audience (or many) is unforgivably unprofessional and a breach of ethics deserving punishment, condemantion and shunning.

Howard Sherman, an author and critic whose existence I had been blissfully unaware of before this day, issued an insufferable essay on Facebook that naturally my many show biz friends, Trump Deranged all, rushed to share and applaud. The post is as nauseating as it is overlong and unethical: I read it so you don’t have to, but here are some lowlights to “How the Blacklisting Starts.”

See, he’s saying that an industry deciding that members who are unethical and refuse to do their jobs is the same as an industry putting members on a blacklist for their political beliefs, as Hollywood did to Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy era, and asd Hollywood does now to conservatives (like, say, James Woods). That’s bonkers, and exactly backwards. It is the misguided artists linking their art to political views who are emulating those blacklisters of yore. I’ll pick out some of the more pernicious misrepresentations in Sherman’s post… Continue reading →

Today’s Unethical Political Cartoon Posted By A Trump Deranged Facebook Friend…

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Come on. Really?

There is no excuse for drawing this, paying someone to do it, publishing it, or treating the opinion it represents with anything but contempt. It is the epitome of the simple-minded, reductive, dishonesty that typifies the political cartooning genre, which deserved to die decades ago, as I’ve stated here for years. As for the once thoughtful, fair, analytical friend who posted it to get cheers from his fellow Trump Deranged, his loved ones have reason to worry.

So do those of another FBF, a retired lawyer of note, who posted today a question: “Can anyone recall Trump ever saying anything that was true?” In a sane world, I would have rocketed back, “Sure: ‘Journalists are the enemies of the people.'” Now I just shake my head in the privacy of my office.

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Bleeding Heart Test: Who Feels Sorry For These “Good Illegal Immigrants”? (I Don’t.)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

The New York Post has a tale that is guaranteed to make “Think of the Children!” fans and “They just want a better life!” defenders of illegal immigration swim in a lake of tears like shrunken Alice in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, was a Dalton State Community College ( in Dalton, Georgia) student driving without a driver’s license when she failed to obey to a “no turn on red” sign. After police pulled her vehicle over, she claimed to have an “international driver’s license” (Nice try, kid!). One thing led to another, and eventually it was determined that she was not a citizen, having been brought here illegally by her Mexican parents when she was four, that they were here illegally too and had been for 15 years.

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Ethics Observations on the Allied Law Group’s “Your Favorite Attorney” TV Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Ethics Observations:

1. Yecchh! It is both icky and unethical, indeed technically (under the Rules of Professional Conduct) so, and generally.

2. In case you couldn’t figure it out (I had to check myself), the spokesperson calling himself “Your Favorite Attorney” is an actor, indeed a stand-up comic named Shaun Jones. All of the jurisdictions prohibit lawyer advertising in any form that is misleading or that includes false information. A lawyer can’t call her firm a “law group,” for example, if she’s the only lawyer in the firm. Putting a non-lawyer in front of a camera and calling having him call himself an attorney is an undeniable violation, and an intentional one.

3. Another technical point: although I suppose it is (slightly) possible that the stand-up comic has a law license, he can’t call himself an attorney unless he has clients. Jones also says that if the client doesn’t make money, “I” don’t make money. That is deceit. The firm will argue that the actor is only saying that if the firm doesn’t win its cases, the actor won’t get paid. But his statement is intended to refer to contingent fees for attorneys, and he isn’t one.

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The Unethical Attack On SNAP Expenditures On Coca-Cola Products and Junk Food

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Back in my first year of law school we studied a case involving poor D.C. residents spending financial assistance checks on non-essentials like furniture thanks to a special deal offered by a local store. My contracts professor, the legendary Richard Alan Gordon, gave an impassioned speech decrying the court’s conclusion that the store’s promotion was wrong and the money was misused. “Why is sustenance for the soul less essential than sustenance for the body?” he asked in his famous stentorian tones.

Okay, food stamp recipients spending them on Coca-Cola products is not quite in the same exalted territory as the life enhancements at the center of that case (I can’t recall it the case cite), but to me, the principle is the same. Conservatives are on the wrong side of this ethics debate. I don’t care if Coca-Cola makes a lot of money off of food stamps. People enjoy their products. They make people happy. Poor people deserve to be happy too now and then in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary, and Brooke Rollins, the Agriculture Secretary, both advocate stripping soft drinks and junk food from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. RFKJ has called for the government to stop allowing the nearly $113 billion program that serves about 42 million Americans to be spent on “ soda or processed foods.” “The one place that I would say that we need to really change policy is the SNAP program and food stamps and in school lunches,” Kennedy told Fox News. “There, the federal government in many cases is paying for it. And we shouldn’t be subsidizing people to eat poison.”

Well, one man’s poison is another man’s pudding. Rollins has said, “When a taxpayer is putting money into SNAP, are they OK with us using their tax dollars to feed really bad food and sugary drinks to children who perhaps need something more nutritious?” No, the correct question is whether Americans think that the poor and low of income should have taxpayers lightening their burden and allowing them to make the same choices regarding the pursuit of happiness that anyone else has, within practical limits.

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UPDATE: “Gee What a Surprise. Britney Griner’s Unethical…At Least” Is Based on a Hoax And Is Officially Retracted

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sorry.

The post about Britney Griner being caught betting on her own team’s games was improvidently posted. It was based on an entry on a suspicious website that I should have investigated further than I did.

I’ve been caught before, though not recently. This time it was confirmation bias that got me: I think Griner is a grifter and Ethics Villain, and was obviously (note the title) predisposed to believe the worst. As several commenter have noted, the report I was relying on didn’t make sense, but it was also, as web hoaxes often are, not sufficiently clever to tip me off that it was intended as satire. As Ethics Alarms has stated repeatedly, false stories on teh web should be flagged as such or are unethical. And despicable. I hate them to pieces.

So, here come the apologies: I apologize to Britney, readers here, the WNBA and anyone who was fooled by my carelessness and stupidity. I had an unusually busy morning, was distracted and tired from a bad night, and should have waited until I was in a more competent state of mind.

Let that be a lesson to me. And you. And everyone.

%$!@#$!

I‘m leaving the post up below, as, to quote Paul Newman (as Doug Roberts, the architect) at the end of “The Towering Inferno,” “kind of a shrine to all the bullshit in the world.”

***

Britney Griner, the anti-American WNBA star who made the Biden Administration give Russia an international criminal (an illegal arms dealer whose nickname is “The Merchant of Death”) in order to save her from her own stupidity and recklessness, is now accused of betting on her own team’s basketball games.

Griner placed “several sizable wagers” on Phoenix Mercury games over the past two seasons according to a Vegas sportsbook employee named Art Tubolls. He noticed “a suspicious number of bets placed by someone who looks suspiciously like Britney Griner, except wearing a mustache and calling herself ‘Rick Slamson.’”

WNBA Ethics Manager Josephine Barron todl the news media,“We’re looking into whether or not she purposely fixed the scores,” adding that Griner could be banned for life if the allegations are true. The bets were disturbing. One wager read, “Mercury will lose by 7 because I’m taking the night off and pretending to have a groin injury.” Another bet was for $1,000 on “Caitlin Clark to drop 30 and break ankles.”

Right now Griner’s fans and allies are in the spin and denial stage, but it doesn’t look good for her, and anyone who is shocked—shocked!—hasn’t been paying attention. On the way to creating an international incident, she knowingly defied a State Department warning not to travel to Russia, doing so for money, although she was hardly destitute. She carried with her substances that she knew were illegal in Russia, and that she knew carried serious criminal penalties. Her explanations and excuses after she was caught breaking the law in Russia strained credulity: for example, a U.S. doctor has no authority to waive Russian drug laws, but Griner tried to use a letter from her physician justifying medical marijuana use by the athlete to get around her illegal possession charges. Then she sought diplomatic rescue from the nation she had condemned a racist while serving as a Black Lives Matter advocate. Griner is just not very bright, and there is a strong link between inadequate intelligence and unethical conduct. The link becomes stronger with wealth and celebrity.

Griner is, in short, a proven jerk, much like Pete Rose, baseball’s poster boy for forbidden gambling. The gambling allegations regarding the WNBA star, if true, just prove that she’s an even bigger jerk than I originally thought.

__________________

Pointer: JutGory

Gee What a Surprise. Britney Griner’s Unethical…At Least

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

This post is officially retracted.

Here.

[From the retraction: “I’m leaving the post up below, as, to quote Paul Newman (as Doug Roberts, the architect) at the end of “The Towering Inferno,” ‘“‘kind of a shrine to all the bullshit in the world.'”]

***

Britney Griner, the anti-American WNBA star who made the Biden Administration give Russia an international criminal (an illegal arms dealer whose nickname is “The Merchant of Death”) in order to save her from her own stupidity and recklessness, is now accused of betting on her own team’s basketball games.

Griner placed “several sizable wagers” on Phoenix Mercury games over the past two seasons according to a Vegas sportsbook employee named Art Tubolls. He noticed “a suspicious number of bets placed by someone who looks suspiciously like Britney Griner, except wearing a mustache and calling herself ‘Rick Slamson.’”

WNBA Ethics Manager Josephine Barron todl the news media,“We’re looking into whether or not she purposely fixed the scores,” adding that Griner could be banned for life if the allegations are true. The bets were disturbing. One wager read, “Mercury will lose by 7 because I’m taking the night off and pretending to have a groin injury.” Another bet was for $1,000 on “Caitlin Clark to drop 30 and break ankles.”

Right now Griner’s fans and allies are in the spin and denial stage, but it doesn’t look good for her, and anyone who is shocked—shocked!—hasn’t been paying attention. On the way to creating an international incident, she knowingly defied a State Department warning not to travel to Russia, doing so for money, although she was hardly destitute. She carried with her substances that she knew were illegal in Russia, and that she knew carried serious criminal penalties. Her explanations and excuses after she was caught breaking the law in Russia strained credulity: for example, a U.S. doctor has no authority to waive Russian drug laws, but Griner tried to use a letter from her physician justifying medical marijuana use by the athlete to get around her illegal possession charges. Then she sought diplomatic rescue from the nation she had condemned a racist while serving as a Black Lives Matter advocate. Griner is just not very bright, and there is a strong link between inadequate intelligence and unethical conduct. The link becomes stronger with wealth and celebrity.

Griner is, in short, a proven jerk, much like Pete Rose, baseball’s poster boy for forbidden gambling. The gambling allegations regarding the WNBA star, if true, just prove that she’s an even bigger jerk than I originally thought.

__________________

Pointer: JutGory

Comment of the Day: “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Here is Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Oh Yeah, THIS Will Work Out Well: Minnesota Rules That Women Going Bare-Breasted in Public Isn’t Illegal.” There isn’t a thing I could say as an introduction that would improve on it….

***

For most of history, the idea of modesty had nothing to do with the idea that the human body or sex was evil.  The idea was that the penis and vagina, as well as the female breasts (the focus of which is the feeding of babies) were indeed focused on reproduction, life giving, holy, and thus reserved from public consumption.  Avoiding public showmanship of the reserved and holy has been a common theme throughout most cultures, religions, and peoples throughout history.  We have a time, place, and occasion for every action in our lives.  Why do we not urinate/defecate in public?  I don’t want to see you do so, and frankly, nor do I want to see your sexual characteristics.

Though this is not a phrase thought well of on this site, we do need to think of children.  There is measurable harm that occurs to children who are exposed to the sexual before puberty.  Modesty, such as not going around bare breasted, is a protection for the children.  We don’t expose sexual characteristics to protect children’s innocence.  Sure, kids know they have these parts, but for the most part, what is not in sight is not emphasized.  We focus on teaching kids about their private parts and how to avoid excess attention focused on them for their safety.  We don’t want more teen pregnancies, child sexual abuse (which includes inappropriate exposure), or normalizing sexual attraction to minors, especially in the form of pederasty, which focuses on the fully developed sexual characteristics, like breasts, that the judges seem to be suggesting we should allow to be in full display. 

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If Only MSNBC Hosts Could Be Explained This Way…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Last year, Australian Radio Network’s CADA station, broadcasting from Sydney, introduced a perky young female host (above) who called herself “Thy.” Her popular show called “Workdays with Thy” featured music for four hours a day from Monday to Friday with the pleasant-sounding young woman chattering away between songs and ads.

It took about six months for inquiring minds to started asking questions about who Thy was and where she came from, since she never gave her last name and no biographical information seemed to exist on her anywhere. Some listeners also claimed on social media that certain phrases she liked to use sounded identical every time. CADA eventually had to admit that Thy didn’t exist: “she” was an “it,” a direct kin of Siri, a bot whose AI-generated software had been developed by the voice-cloning firm ElevenLabs. This was a six month “experiment.”

The network issued a statement, saying, “This is a space being explored by broadcasters globally, and while the trial has offered valuable insights, it’s also reinforced the unique value that personalities bring to creating truly compelling content.” Why would anyone believe that? Sirius-XM had Wolfman Jack hosting a Sixties radio show for years using his old tapes and remastered versions of the songs he played even though he died a decade before without the satellite network ever telling listeners that this Wolfman was just a recording. It has been doing the same thing recently on its Seventies channel with Casey Kasem’s old “Top 40” show, without bothering reveal that Casey died with dementia in 2014 after retiring in 2009.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find AI disc jockeys less creepy than dead ones, and a station using either without letting listeners know is unethical.

Not as unethical, however, as featuring live hosts like Simone Sanders and even arguably live ones like Chris Matthews.

Reviewing a Book You Haven’t Read? Ethics Verdict: Ethics Villain. Response: “Run Away!”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Boy do I hate this. When I was engrossed in local theater, a reviewer for one of the papers her in Northern Virginia gave a negative review to a show I directed when I had seen her leave at intermission…yet she still “critiqued” the second act. I got her fired, and enjoyed every minute of it. I once read a piece by the founding editor of Slate magazine and long-time “Crossfire” star Michael Kinsey in which he admitted that he had approved book-jacket quotes in his name for books he never read. That was the last time I paid any attention to Michael Kinsey.

New York Magazine has a feature called “Favorite Things” where various people of some stature (that I often have never heard of) write about what they like. A current entry is by Jane Pratt, once a frequent news topic for her Magazine ventures like “Jane.” Pratt’s ‘favorite things” include “The Great Pretender” by Susannah Cahalan, a tome that I haven’t read but might, since it’s about a research ethics scandal, the infamous Rosenhan experiments.

These were the studies supposedly run in the 1970s by Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan: Rosenhan and seven graduate students presented various (fake) symptoms to psychiatrists, supposedly got committed to psychiatric hospitals, and were then stuck in them despite the fact that none of them actually suffered from mental illnesses. The episodes were recounted and published, causing an uproar and sending the reputation of psychiatry even lower than it already deserved to go. Cahalan debunks the episode, for the “experiments” never actually took place; the whole thing was a hoax.

But Jane Pratt wrote in New York Magazine,

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