I’d be interested in anyone’s anecdotes from yesterday about their confrontations over dinner with family on political matters. At the (fantastic) Shirlington Dog Park in Arlington, VA, I chatted with a freind with whom I have never discussed politics (and never will), who said she was spending the holiday alone because she wasn’t speaking to any of her relatives. They feel, she said with a voice dripping with contempt, that “the public should respect an elected President even if he did probably rape a 14-year-old.” Hey! Look at that beautiful Vizsla!
Michel Martin, the NPR host who had me dismissed as the network’s guest (unpaid) ethics commentator because I dared to point out during the #MeToo fad that late-hit sexual harassment accusers were often the victims of evolving perceptions over what once were welcome advances by young celebrities. I used Donald Trump as my example, and she reacted indignantly as a law prof pal of hers interrupted with “Oh come ON!” She thought I was defending Trump (I just as easily could have used George Clooney) and NPR certainly wasn’t going to allow that! [Notice of Correction: In the original post, I said that I used no names, but the record shows that indeed Trump was my example, as he is an excellent one. Thanks to Marissa for checking.]
Yesterday Martin published this fatuous self-own:
…when I think about Thanksgiving, I often think about something I heard former House Speaker Newt Gingrich say—Seriously … stay with me—Gingrich said this at an informal dinner with some young White House staff and reporters, of which I was one. It was a while ago. We did things like that then, to try to understand each other’s lives and responsibilities.
He said, “The test of any program or project should be: If you weren’t already doing it, would you start?”
Why do I think about this at Thanksgiving? Because if we weren’t already doing it, we should start. Yes, I know the origin story of the first Thanksgiving in 1621 is problematic. That symbol of gratitude and peaceful coexistence with the English colonists ended in grief for the Wampanoag people, without whom the colonists would not have survived. The Wampanoag soon lost their land and independence.
In more recent times, the way the day has become associated with too much — too much food, too much shopping, too many stores open too early — is also a bummer. But acknowledging all of that does not change a fundamental thing for me. It’s good to be thankful. It’s good to have a day to think about gratitude. It’s good to have a day to be together with whomever you want to be with, and to have a day that belongs to everybody — those already here with us and those who’ve just arrived.
If you aren’t already doing that? Maybe it’s a good day to start.
Happy Thanksgiving
Well.
- No bias there! Note that Michel assumes that anyone reading her missive will react with horror to her evoking the name of an evil Republican like Gingrich.
- There is nothing “problematic” about the the Thanksgiving origin story unless one believes in consequentialism, that is, unless one is an idiot. Reasoning that Thanksgiving is “problematic” because the Native American tribe involved came to grief afterwards is like arguing that the Wright Brother’s first flight at Kitty Hawk is “problematic” because of the Space Shuttle explosion.
- And, being biased and thus stupid, she evokes the “evil Europeans stole the land from the virtuous Indians” trope. The Wampanoag were nomadic, and owned land in only the most primitive sense. They also fought over territory with other tribes. Martin’s misleading generality that the tribe lost its “independence” refers to the fact that after the tribe took part in a bloody war against the colonists about 50 years years after that first Thanksgiving, some of the tribe’s defeated warriors were sold into slavery in the East Indies. The Native American tribes treated defeated rival tribes similarly. But never mind: all Martin is interested in is spreading standard progressive victim narratives.
- Whose business it it to decide what is “too much” of anything? Hers, I guess.
- Am I being unfair to assume that her allusion to welcoming “those who have just arrived” is an endorsement of illegal immigration? I don’t think so.
- But my favorite part is her evoking Gingrich’s question on NPR. If there ever were a program that would fail that test now, it’s National Public Radio!
It’s Ethics Time!
Ethics Alarms 
Isn’t Martin the person who mispronounces her first name the way Paul McCartney goofily mispronounces it in the dubiously rhyming line “Michel, my belle, these are words that go together well?” Who says, “MEE-shell” instead of “Meh-SHELL?” And who names their kid after a Beatles lyric?
She actually pronounces it “Michael.”
MEE-shell Norris?
I suppose McCartney was writing about trying to woo a French girl?
Michele Norris
Michelle is pronounced that way in French. Given that half the song is in French….
Yes, I stand corrected. Comment withdrawn.
However: Bing Videos
McCartney’s pronunciation is awful. Probably because he’s English and the English hate the French, but also because of the structure of the lyric and melody. It’s not MEE shell. It’s closer to the English than he makes sit sound and she pronounces her name not the way the French pronounce it, but the way McCartney pronounced it, which I think is silly. So, comment reinstated. Hah! I guess I have a thing about naming ethics: Don’t make up goofy names for your children.
As far as I can tell, Martin pronounces her first name the American way.
The French pronounce the name with a long “e”, however McCartney exagerates the first syllable.
I doubt that anybody ate Campbell Soup yesterday with Thanksgiving. The following story is in my opinion an ethics story. A Vice President was secretly recorded by another employee giving a disparaging rant about the product “Campbell Soup is s**t for poor people”. This VP is now put on leave pending an investigation, while employee who recorded the VP has been terminated for cause.
I just wonder who Campbell Soup vets candidates for such an important position as Vice President, and based on the following YouTube video I have a lot of doubts about the company culture.
If there was ever a good cause firing, that was it. Apropos of foreign cultures and their effects on American culture, I have to wonder whether the fired information security officer isn’t from India. His disdain for poor people stands out like a sore thumb.
Martin Bally. Apparently not Indian and does not have a high opinion of Indians. He said they don’t know anything and can’t think for themselves.
I wonder who he hires as programmers?
I thought about that rant this morning when I bought a can of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup for Sunday’s potato soup dinner. I still bought it.
AOC’s Holiday Bait and Switch:
https://nypost.com/2025/11/22/us-news/aoc-email-seeks-donations-for-turkey-giveaway-but-money-goes-straight-to-her-campaign-coffers/
-Jut (a/k/a Commenter Number 12 of 5)
I’m surprised she didn’t just print some money.
Here is a conversation I had with Poe assistant regarding vaccine mandates.
https://poe.com/s/bDab2ZvkC8lbeYuxPTOj
Here were points I made that made the mandates especially egregious.
– They enacted policies forbidding public establishments from serving
customers unless they had proof of having taken one vaccine. This was
never done with the swine flu vaccine nor any other vaccine.
– No pro-life politician ever even suggested prohibiting public
establishment from providing service to girls and women who could not
prove they have never had an abortion. By sharp contrast, so many
pro-choice politicians enacted the same regarding people who could not
prove they took one vaccine.
– Pro-choice politicians actually dragooned private businesses into
punishing people who refused one vaccine. Pro-lifers never proposed
dragooning private business, or individuals, into punishing girls and
women who have had abortions.
– Furthermore, the FJB administration used unprecedented means to
effectiuvely require people to take the COVID vaccine (suing an OSHA
temporary emergency standard). No pro-life politicians proposed using
emergency measures to restrict access to abortion.
– FJB delivered this message about people who refused the vaccine.”We’ve
been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has
cost all of us. So, please, do the right thing.,” he said. This sounds
like pro-lifers saying that, “you sluts keep spreading your legs and
killing babies”
– And it was aggravated by the method used to impose the employer
vaccine mandate, using an untested method instead of ordinary
procedures, let alone an act passed by Congress.
My main issue with the vax mandates (and, to wit, I did in fact have a Thanksgiving conversation about it with a left-leaning family member) was that the entire premise was based on a lie.
The lie was “If you take this shot, you won’t get infected by the disease and won’t transmit it to anyone else.” We know now (and we knew by then) that this was never true, even though it was being portrayed that way in the press (and even by my own doctor, whom I asked about it directly in the earliest days of its availability).
We knew that all this medicine did was mitigate the symptoms so that they were milder and so that one would recover more quickly. We learned later that the CDC knew this and redefined the term “vaccine” expressly so that they could keep calling this medicine a vaccine even though it clearly wasn’t a vaccine according the long-accepted definition.
That was the heart of my argument: Why are we making public policy based on information that is fundamentally not true, and can easily be demonstrated to not be true? Why am I the bad guy for pointing this out and insisting that it’s wrong?
(The irony was that this very family member had already gotten and recovered from the Wuhan Virus a second time after having been vaccinated, so there was no arguing that “It’s a vaccine!” was not a lie.)
–Dwayne
Another thing was that these mandates were targeted at young people. Old people were nearly univerasally vaccinated, while most young people were not.
Can’t say I didn’t see this coming: A Terrible and Avoidable Tragedy in D.C.
The National Guard soldiers were to blame for their being shot because they wouldn’t have been there if Trump hadn’t had them called up and placed there. They weren’t trained to be police. I’m sure if they’d been adequately trained in de-escalation techniques, they could have talked the guy out of shooting them and they could have escorted him to a waiting nearby psychologist for a forty-five-minute session and sent on his way back to Bellingham, Washington.
No political chat yesterday. Me, Mr. Golden and his mother sat down to eat to a boneless Butterball turkey (don’t judge), Stovetop Stuffing (instead of potatoes), mashed potatoes (made with chicken brother instead of water), brown gravy, baked yams with marshmallows on top, green beans, corn, Hawaiian rolls and two types of pie. Our son forgot to set his alarm. We waited for many minutes until, recognizing that he does not react well to being awakened, ate without him.
Then I took a nap. He got up during that and had to reheat his food. You snooze, you lose.
With not a bunch to do, we watched TV.
Also, Winchester ’73, starring Jimmy Stewart, is a great film.
Tomorrow will be the Thanksgiving challenge with my TDS-suffering sister and aunt combined with my MAGA brother attending the same gathering. I may put on armor ahead of time.
Also, Winchester ’73, starring Jimmy Stewart, is a great film.
On my list of greatest Westerns. All of Jimmy’s Anthony Mann Westerns are excellent, but that one’s the best. Boy, Dan Duryea was a repulsive bad guy! And he was reputed to be a real mensch off screen…
Duryea was the eponymous role in the Twilight Zone episode, “Mr. Denton on Doomsday”, one of the most moving of the early episodes.
I’m back. Everyone was on their best behavior, though there was a passionate debate about “Die Hard” being a Christmas movie.
Denver, Colorado – the south end of metro Denver is home to many municipalities. Centennial, Greenwood Village, Littleton, Parker, Lone Tree. In the past week, we’ve seen numerous serious accidents.
Semi-Truck barrels down off-ramp into a Light-Rail pillar: https://x.com/LPphotographs/status/1994208500214382955?s=20
Recent parolee steals car via carjacking – dies in accident, kills a father and 3 kids – 2 more kids survive after airlifted to hospital. Since it was a blended family, 1 of the surviving kids was the father’s with his ex-wife, 1 of the surviving kids is his fiance’s kid. https://x.com/dobetterdnvr/status/1994075222157222069?s=20
Colorado State Senator Faith Winters (D) killed in a 5-vehicle accident on I-25 the evening before Thanksgiving. No word yet on the cause of the accident – but the state senator’s drunk driving history has been brought up unrelated to this accident: https://x.com/ABC/status/1994201926502592670?s=20
Now – I must pay my penance and recognize that this post won’t get through the filters because I’ve included 3 links. So hopefully Jack can save this and fish it out of the wastebasket!
I had to go listen to this since I hate NPR but you did say:
I have a hypothetical that I’m sure has happened where someone is grabbed by Donald Trump back when he’s a celebrity, and she comes home. And she’s kissed, and she tells her roommate that was cool. Donald Trump kissed me. And then when everybody she knows detests Donald Trump, she suddenly says that not – you know, I was harassed.
That’s interesting: I remembered it as a generic celebrity, like George Clooney. Not that it changes the validity of the point, which is 100% accurate. Thanks. I’ll fix that. (Was it a genuine correction, or a “Gotcha!”?)
I think it was Mel Gibson.
I’d give her the benefit of the doubt for right now. Whether intended as a gotcha or a helpful reminder, it did serve useful as you now know you did mention Trump’s name. Your future references to the panel incident won’t include that mistake and give trolls the opening to critique your argument.
I follow this blog a lot and often wish I had something to contribute. Finally, this Friday Open Forum, I do! While this is a mere personal matter, it does concern ethical standards, and I seek the insight of the Ethics Alarms commentariat.
My stepkids having been meeting with a counselor (a social worker, LMSW) for about 6 months. As far as I have known secondhand from my wife, their biological mother, things had been going well. Therefore I had not yet reached out to the social worker to provide any of my observations and experiences. Recently I learned of some concerning developments. Though the counselor had not solicited any information from me, we shared with him 10 pages worth of selections from my journal. Not being privy to everything that has been discussed so far, I assumed that much of the journal would not be particularly relevant since it documents many events going back for six years (about half of my stepkids’ lives) but reasoned that some of it would provide perspective for the counselor.
An hour after he was sent my journal entries, I sent him an email stating “I do not give permission for any electronic or hard copies & excerpts of my journal to be shared with anyone else! You can read parts of it aloud to others if you need to.”
I was informed by my wife two days later (and after I’d had a little email back and forth with the counselor) that he had shared the entirety of the journal entries with my stepkids and their biological father. Their biological father has exhibited much animosity toward my wife and me over the years. My wife was also in this journal email chain, and she told me that she had missed my email explicitly asking him not to share my journal selections, so perhaps he also missed an alert that he’d receive the email to his inbox too and did not read it.
I am curious what y’all make of this situation!
Two different people missing the notification seems a bit of a stretch.
Assuming you have verified that the email addresses were correct and that your provider actually sent the follow-up message, I suppose it’s possible that the message went into spam ( but, again, hard to believe it happened to everyone on the recipient list).
Unless you can demonstrate that the message was, in fact, received and deliberately ignored, I don’t know what you can do at this point besides: