1. Sydney Sweeney has been the source of dubious controversies several times this year, most notably when her ad for a jeans company played with the double entendre evident in saying she had great “genes.” Since she’s white and stacked, see that means she’s a white supremacist, or something. The silver see-though dress she wore on a recent “red carpet” launched a different controversy, though also one involving her extreme feminist charms. Conservative pundit Megyn Kelly, hardly one to hide her own curves, declared,
“So she was on the red carpet last night and she decided to show off her number one asset, which, contrary to the American Eagle jeans ad, is not really her jeans, it’s her enormous breasts, which are spectacular. No one would take that away from her. But, controversial opinion, I object to this. I disapprove of the dress she wore because it’s completely see-through. You can see her entire nipples. She reminded me of Kim Kardashian, who overshares and then takes away the thing that is the sexiest, which is every guy’s hope to be the one who actually sees them for real, and leaving little to the imagination.”
Gee, you can be more articulate than that, Megyn. Let me try to help out. It’s not a flattering look at all, and just coarsens the culture, potentially corrupting young women in the process. The grotesque display reduces a woman, a human being, to just a pair of mammary glands. It’s not just degrading to Sweeney, who has presumably consented to being so dehumanized, it degrades women in general and men who are frozen in the headlights. My verdict is that this is “Ick” more than ethics, but it’s a close call.
2. The Alito Rule raises its ugly head. Maryland Supreme Court Justice Peter Killough had a partisan Halloween display on the lawn of his Maryland home that arguably breaches judicial ethics rules by calling into question his impartiality and temperament. The display included an pro-environmentalist sign, raising ethical questions because Killough is currently presiding over a high-stakes environmental case. The signs in the lawn display are painted on fake gravestones and read, “Here lies the Constitution,” “RIP Freedom of Speech,” ‘RIP Food Aid,” “Beware Health Insurance Cuts,” “RIP Due Process” and “RIP Climate Science.” A spokesperson for the Maryland Judiciary, told Fox News Digital that the “the signs belong to Justice Killough’s wife” and that “Killough has no further comments.” Nice try, and probably a successful one, but this deliberate reliance on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s explanation for the two controversial flags flying over his home last summer is a stretch. EA wrote extensively on the Alito controversy, finding Alito’s explanation credible and the intended meanings of the flags ambiguous. Not so in this case. It seems clear that Maryland’s very left-leaning judiciary is taking the position, “If Alito can get away with it, so can we.” If they are lying about Killough’s wife being the Halloween politico, that is a substantial ethics breach.
3. Speaking of the Supreme Court, conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, a freind of Justice Clarence Thomas (to say the least) , funded a portrait of the Justice in 2018. The artist delivered it to Yale Law School, where Thomas got his law degree, in 2019. But the school refused to display the portrait, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon. In 2023, a College Fix editor attempted to look for the portrait at the school but was turned away. Suddenly, Thomas’s visage is on a wall in the Alumni Reading Room in the Sterling Law Library, according to “Yale Daily News.”It is refreshing to see Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ portrait finally take its place alongside other prominent Yale alumni after 6 years of neglect,” Buckley Institute Executive Director Lauren Noble said a media statement. “It is encouraging to see such an outstanding figure finally receive some recognition from his alma mater for all he has accomplished. Whoever made the decision to buck the orthodoxy at Yale Law School and at long last put the portrait up deserves credit for doing so.” In contrast, Saman Haddad the student body president, told the paper,“What lesson is YLS teaching by elevating Clarence Thomas in this political moment? The answer is clear,” Haddad said. “Our institutional values are defined by power, not principle.” No, dummy, the lesson is that Yale Law School exists to teach legal skills and legal history, not to endorse political viewpoints. The Trump administration’s efforts to identify and pressure reform in colleges and universities that see their role as leftist indoctrination rather than education is one of the most important elements of the MAGA agenda.
4. Another salute to the Unabomber’s wisdom: Last week I went to Walgreens to pick up a refill of a drug I have taken for a decade. I had just had my doctor send in a full slate of all of my prescriptions to the pharmacy, but I was told that the prescription for that drug had been “rejected” and my doctor refused to refill it. This meant that my upcoming labwork would be thrown off by my missing that drug, which I was forced to do for several days until I could get back in to see my doctor. He was annoyed, and said that he had never rejected the prescription, and handed me a boldly written paper prescription, saying, “Maybe this is clear enough for those idiots.” I presented the paper to the pharmacy, and was told, “You have one prescription ready.” It was for the missing drug! Puzzled, I asked how this was possible since I was told the request for that drug had been rejected, and the document I had just handed over was the needed authorization. Explanation: the new full panel of my drugs arrived as they were preparing to fill an earlier prescription for this one, and the computer cancelled the old order. That was what they reported as the prescription being “rejected.” Nothing in the resulting computer record reflected that the new order meant that I could indeed receive the drug.
“That’s a terrible system,” I said, “and it not only caused me to miss several doses, it wasted my time by costing me two trips here and one to my doctor’s office. And you had a valid prescription for the drug I needed all along!” “Yes, ” Walgreens Best said. “It is a bad system. This happens a lot.” Oh. WHY THE HELL DON’T YOU FIX IT THEN?
5. Finally, a baseball ethics note, Hall of Fame division. Hall revealed the eight names that will appear on the Contemporary Baseball Era ballot next month. The group includes players who were rejected in their first shot at the Hall and are deemed important enough to warrant another chance. They are uber-cheat Barry Bonds, almost as clearly a cheat, Roger Clemens, another steroid-involved slugger, Gary Sheffield, plus Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Jeff Kent, Carlos Delgado and briefly immortal Dodger ace Fernando Valenzuela. Of the group, only Kent deserves to be enshrined: the only reason he wasn’t elected the first time is that nobody likes him personally, but he was a great player.Carlos and Fernando were very, very good players who fell short of great, though Valenzuela was spectacular for his first few seasons. Mattingly and Murphy were extremely popular and, like Valenzuela, fizzled out before they amassed Hall credentials. Their big virtue was character: they were as almost as good for baseball as Barry Bonds and the other steroid cheats were bad for it.
If Clemens, Bonds or Sheffield get into the Cooperstown shrine, I expect a lot of players who were already admitted to withdraw their names and plaques from the Hall.
Ethics Alarms 
3.
“…The answer is clear,” Haddad said. “Our institutional values are defined by power, not principle.”
When someone says “the answer is clear,” nine times out of ten they’re trying to discourage people from thinking long enough to realize that either the answer is not clear, or it’s clearly not the one they’re being handed. For example, what “principle” governs the display of alumni portraits? By what “principle” would a Supreme Court justice not automatically warrant an inclusion?
“Naked” dresses have become popular lately. In the past, some daring dresses were constructed to give the illusion of skin showing but now there’s no “illusion” at all. Celebrities are wearing dresses that would have been closer to lingerie in the past. Sydney Sweeney’s isn’t even the most see-through example out there.
It does coarsen the culture and sends a message to young women that they need to display all to be considered attractive. It is a far cry from when “a glimpse of stocking” shocked society.
Sidney Sweeney is 5’3″ short. Kim Kardashian is 5’2″ short. These girls are midgets. How can anyone of that diminutive stature have a presence? And Hillary Clinton is 5’3″.
And with her hooded eyes, Sweeney always looks as if she’s been drugged into a trance and wants to be fucked. It’s really tiresome. That face and her top half make her look absolutely bovine, at least to me. All she needs to do to complete the look is chew gum.
All of which reminds me of Dick Cavitt recounting writing the opening line for Jack Parr’s interview of Jayne Mansfield: “And here they are, Jayne Mansfield.”
And by the way, Sweeney’s knockers look much more impressive in harness than running free range. I guess it’s an imagination thing.
Rachel Welsh was only 5’6″ and looked statuesque on screen. MM was the same height. Mae west was only 5 feet tall!
5’6″ or 5’7″ (Mrs. OB’s height) is fine by me. My erstwhile college girlfriend (at least I thought that’s what she was during our three years together) was only 5’3″. Just too short. At 6’1″ I looked goofy standing next to her, as if I’d been photo shopped into the Kodachromes from that long ago era.
“Sidney Sweeney is 5’3″ short. Kim is 5’2″ short.”
IMO, the two (2) are worlds apart; I find Kardashian disgusting on many different levels.
Sweeney? Not so much.
“And by the way, Sweeney’s knockers look much more impressive in harness than running free range.”
Hmm; perhaps we need more research…
PWS
There are more norms than ethical and moral norms; social norms, etiquette, beauty norms and norms of good taste as examples. In my opinion Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield dressed better than Sydney Sweeney (appealing to norms of beauty, taste, and class) but also in a way more attractive to men (sorry Sydney I do not like your dress, TMI).
How a young woman dresses is in most cases not a matter of ethical concern; however there is a place for dress codes in order to prevent unethical situations from arising (e.g. those that could lead to sexual harassment in the work place, o create uncomfortable situations at the gym). Wearing a bikini at the beach is totally acceptable; and I do not think there is anything unethical with designated nude beaches either.
There are also norms for men however; staring at women, and commenting on her assets may violate many types of norms, men old enough to comment at Ethics Alarms should pretend not to notice in order to prevent uncomfortable situations; we all know how a women looks like don’t we?
Ogling in the workplace has been found in some cases to constitute sexual harassment by creating a hostile work environment. Third party sexual harassment occurs when another woman sees a male co-worker ogling another woman in the office who has either intentionally dressed to encourage that reaction, or is so constructed that she can’t help it.
The question is whether “ogling” is an ethical problem that is for the full hundred percent male responsibility, or whether women may instigate or contribute to this by dressing a certain way. I am going to make this an Open Forum topic using the following video:
Kaczynski didn’t have wisdom. He was smart, sure, but not wise. His commentary about technology destroyed human relationships wasn’t original to him; neither was belief that things would get much worse in the transition to utopia. This would require a large amount of violence and death. His specific method of acceleration was original to him, sure, as was his hollow lament about how millions of people would die because the medicine they need to live wouldn’t be made anymore. It was an acceptable loss to him, though, since he felt their genes were too weak for the technology free utopia, and needed to be weeded out. Kaczynski wasn’t wise; he was a misanthrope who used his intelligence to attempt to justify his desires for violence.
Kaczynski certainly was unethical, and luddite attitudes in general are too. I’m sure the expression is done in jest.
The industry calls this application of technology CPOE, and the landscape of medication administration errors has shifted, but a much better level of accountability. If a handwritten script is interpreted incorrectly, who’s error is it? The physician or the pharmacist who read it? Additionally, computerized administration measurably drives down many other potentials of harm.
“Just fix it” is very much easier said than done. Let’s say that there’s an inventory system that makes specialized equipment available on inventory. People responsible for entering the equipment don’t always make it available properly, causing it to not appear in the right market. Compounding this further, if the equipment record is made available by the inventory tech in the local system, it’ll later disappear if it’s not also fixed in the main system, leading many inventory techs to a “edit battle” against the system, where they repeatedly “fix” the record improperly, or later rebuild it properly instead of fixing the old record.
A technician hypothetically recognizes the issue, and applies a fix to cause this equipment to now become visible.
This “fix” actually causes two more problems! Equipment that was never used and lost over the past decade will suddenly appear available, and equipment that had been built twice with one copy unintentionally hidden will now appear twice.