1. You knew there had to be a Jason Arday update…Ibram X. Kendi, the race hustler whom many universities took as a prophet of “anti-racism” in the rise of The Great Stupid, issued an essay titled: “The Media Lynched Jason Arday.” Of course he did. Here is what I wrote about him in November of 2020:

“Ibram X. Kendi, the proud author of this neon-bright example of Rationalization #64, Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is,” isn’t just some radical, mind-poisoning, far left ideologue pseudo-intellectual race-baiting wacko. He’s a radical, mind-poisoning, far left ideologue pseudo-intellectual race-baiting wacko who will soon have been twisting young American brains into un-American pretzels for a full decade, fueling the descent of the Democratic Party and the rest of the mutating Left into full Orwellian lunacy.”

That came after he issued this head-exploding tweet:

Yet colleges and universities took this race-hustler seriously. He had teaching positions at the University of Florida, American University in D.C., Boston University, and Harvard, all in various “America and white people are racist” departments. After his BU Center for Antiracist Research was criticized for missing donations and mismanagement—a Washington Post op-ed described it as a “grift”—Kendi finally retreated to Howard, which also employs “1619 Project” author Nicole Hannah-Jones as a tenured professor. You might call Kendi the U.S.’s version of Arday, except that Kendi doesn’t plagiarize his garbage, he comes up with it on his own.

In the Free Press, Douglas Murray rules Kendri’s “lynching” comparison “manifestly, sinisterly untrue,” writing that it was not reporters who failed Arday but the people who elevated him to a position for which he was unsuited.” This seems so obvious that it is disturbing that such a conclusion is the slightest bit controversial. Black conservative-ish pundit John McWhorter examined how Arday’s appointment was itself a form of racism in a culture biased in favor of black academics regardless of the quality of their character or scholarship.

2. The big celebrity tragedy we awoke to this morning is that Hayden Panettiere died at 36 years old. My friend and Ethics Alarms Ethics Hero Paul Petersen, a former child star himself, had written on Ethics Alarms about the issue he devoted his post-show biz life to, the industry abuse of child stars. For all his good work in his organization “A Minor Consideration,” Hollywood’s pederasty problem and the way it chews up its most vulnerable performers seem to have barely abated, if at all. As an adult Hayden suffered from substance addictions and alcoholism, lost custody of her children, and her autobiography was harrowing. Paul and I talked about holding a national convention to call attention to the issue of the exploitation of child performers which the news media continues to shrug off. It’s an ethics issue, and I still think such a convention is a good idea. Paul is dealing with some health issues, and I don’t have the time to organize it myself. Interested parties should email me at jamproethics@verizon.net.

3. On a related note, every news story about Panettiere’s death quickly notes how beautiful she was, as if this amplifies the tragedy. Last week we learned that Indian national Varun Batchigari was charged with first-degree murder in the death of 19-year-old U.S. college student Julissa Salazar. The accused killer entered the U.S. on an F-1 student visa and was arrested in Germany; now he’s fighting extradition. The reports on that story inevitably included interviews with friends and family emphasizing how beautiful Julissa was. The message: a beautiful young woman dying is sadder than a homely young woman dying. The TV magazines like “48 Hours” that are addicted to “true crime” tales also adopt the practice.

4. Virginia has so many insanely woke school districts that I can’t keep up with all of their antics, but this story, from July, is special. In 2024, a Spotsylvania County second-grade teacher overdosed on fentanyl in front of her students. In a classic Barn Door Principle phenomenon, the county school board took up the cause of requiring drug testing for teaching position applicants. It was rejected. Superintendent Clint Mitchell urged the board to vote no because it would put the district at a competitive disadvantage with neighboring counties; no one would want to work there if testing was required.

Exit question: why not?

5. And speaking of our rotting educational institutions, Prof .Zvezdelina Stankova of UC Berkeley, in an op-ed piece on Saturday for the San Francisco Standard, blew a whistle on her school, writing that large numbers of her students are are so untrained in basic math that she’s forced to teach middle-school algebra and fractions to college students. She described the Berkeley admissions process as “less like careful evaluation and more like chance.”

Yeah, but on the plus side, I’m sure a majority of her students graduate believing in DEI, open borders and income redistribution….

6…so they’ll applaud economics-challenged elected officials like New York State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, who feels shoplifting should be legalized. At a news conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court last week, Gallagher proclaimed, “Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap. And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them,” said Gallagher, who represents northern Brooklyn. “And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by,” she continued. ” So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need.”

I trust that I don’t have to explain to the readership here what’s logically, legally and ethically wrong with that argument…