There are so many reasons for Michiganders regardless of party and ideological bent not to vote for Abdul El-Sayed that the revelation that he likes to fart in public seems trivial in comparison. He’s a Communist who lies about his beliefs; he has called for defunding the police and he is anti-Semitic, though to today’s Democrats that’s a good thing. He refused to disavow his pal Hasan Piker, who is a vocal America-hater. Naturally Bernie Sanders, AOC and Obama are supporting El-Sayed.
Now a longtime aid to the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan has quit and gone rogue, calling his former boss for whom he worked as a bodyguard and a staff assistant a “manufactured man” who has maturity more appropriate to a high school locker room. Jordan Domingue told the media that during El-Sayed’s gubernatorial and Senate campaigns, he realized that the candidate was a “30-year-old leapfrogging into a job he was inexperienced for and only got through connections.”
“Now I’m far from blameless, and will reflect for years how I let myself be captured by loyalty and personality,” Domingue added. “When he acted like an entitled mobster to elected officials in 2017-2018, I excused it as a justified outsider earning their place. When he would say one thing to one group and another thing to a different group hours later, I considered it just the norm or ‘strategic ambiguity’ as he calls it.”
What Domingue really found intolerable, however, was El-Sayed’s affection for openly passing gas in front of staffers. “He would openly do so without warning or embarrassment as his form of stand-up comedy,” Domingue wrote. “To this day for him, the act of farting is easily one of the funniest things a person can do.”
Is that a good reason to vote against him, along with, you know, the fact that El-Sayed is an anti-American lunatic, which doesn’t bother the Mad Left these days? Le Pétomane was the stage name of Joseph Pujol (1857 –1945) who was a professional “fartist.” Not only could he fart at will, he could fart tunes. The Governor in “Blazing Saddles,” played by Mel Brooks, is named in honor of Le Pétomane.
There are lots of reasons to be dubious about this story. For one thing, it has “disgruntled employee” written all over it. For another, it was first reported by The Gateway Pundit, which is on the EA blacklist. I will also point out that supporters of Donald Trump are ethically estopped from assailing a candidate for having a sophomoric sense of humor and running for an office “he was inexperienced for.”
I also note that the levels of dignity and decorum, not to mention maturity, that the public has a right to expect from its elected officials has already been reduced to high school and even elementary school level by such class acts as GOP Rep. Lauren Boberg, Senator Fetterman dressing like gym rat and this…
Nonetheless, thinking that farting intentionally at the workplace is acceptable conduct does raise serious questions about judgment and socialization, if not sanity. And wouldn’t you agree that a superior intentionally farting among staffers in the workplace constitutes creating a “hostile work environment”?
Did President Lyndon Johnson not conduct meetings while sitting on the toilet? This was a power play, designed to indicate who was in charge and above the rules, make his advisers vulnerable and uncomfortable. If advisers tried to look away LBJ asked them to step closer, so they could see and hear it better.
https://historyfacts.com/famous-figures/fact/lyndon-b-johnson-liked-to-conduct-meetings-in-the-bathroom/
Good reference! Of course, LBJ could have never been elected President if that habit came out while he was running for a first term in the White House; indeed LBJ could have never been nominated, much less elected, had he not become President by succession. Presidents are not normal. That’s why they become Presidents. (This was the subject of my honors thesis as an American Government major in college.)
I would say that the behavior of both LBJ and El-Sayed is gross and socially unacceptable. The question is whether behavior that is gross and triggers the “Ick” factor is by definition unethical.
Leon Kass coined the term “wisdom of repugnance”, the idea that deep seated visceral disgust or the “yuck” factor indicates a valid moral warning sign against practices we ought to condemn, even if we are unable to translate those feelings in a coherent logical argument against the practice. Kass used the “yuck” factor against cloning of sheep, but his arguments have also be used by those who object against certain expressions of sexuality.
This topic is also one of Jonathan Haidt’s favorites, extensively covered in the first chapters of his book “The Righteous Mind”, and the article below.
https://www.protevi.com/john/Morality/HaidtEmotionalDog.pdf
Haidt’s follows a social intuitionist model as an alternative to rational models by stating that moral reasoning does not cause moral judgment; rather, moral reasoning is usually a post hoc construction or rationalization, generated after a judgment has been reached.
Which, unfortunately, too often is reduced to and dismissed as prejudice.
Not entirely clear what you mean here; maybe you can elaborate.
My view is that the “Yuck” factor is not a reliable indicator; and relying on the “Yuck” factor or your sense of disgust can lead to blatantly unethical behavior. Two examples:
Prejudice is a bit different than the “yuck” factor as it is not based on disgust, but related to making judgments on a person based on group characteristics. Acting on prejudice may also lead to unfair and unethical results; however there is typically a stronger logical justification for acting prejudices due to incompleteness of relevant information.
Prejudice and disgust both carry evolutionary advantages. Disgust protects against contamination with vectors of disease (without knowledge of germs). Prejudice protects young animals against predators (without prior knowledge of predator behavior).
I read somewhere recently that Obama is going to campaign with El Sayed. Perfect. Two America hating Islamists playing American political culture like a fiddle.
And happy anniversary of October 7! A short while after the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11. The Islamists didn’t need to attack with airplanes or even assault rifles. All they had to do was run for office to take over the country. Bin Laden wanted the U.S. out of the Middle East. Now we will have Islamist American legislators implementing his policies from within, in plain sight. who needs martyrs?