Author: Jack Marshall

Ethics Case Study: “Old Blue Eyes” vs “The Godfather of Soul”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I’ve checked this story out to the extent that it is possible. It could be apocryphal; that “photo” above is clearly A.I. But the tale fits what is known about the characters of the two superstars, and it’s a useful parable whether the story is strictly true or not. “Print the legend,” as the old newspaperman says at the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

Frank Sinatra is a complex figure, to say the least. He had mob connections and used them (even though “The Godfather” horse-head-in-the-bed story is almost certainly fiction), and had a reputation for dropping loyal friends like hot rocks when they displeased him. He is also credited with integrating Las Vegas hotels, refusing to perform anywhere that relegated black performers to second class status.

James Brown was one of those black performers who benefited from Frank’s stand, and he was appearing at the Sands Hotel in 1968. Brown had a one-week engagement at the Sands, where Sinatra was always treated as its main attraction. Brown, like Frank a seasoned pro who kept tight control over all aspects of his act, had arrived to find requested dressing-room features like mirrors, lighting, space to warm up and more absent despite his making his needs clear to management. Brown threatened to pull the show unless he got what he expected, while the Sands told him he risked forfeiting his fee and being sued.

Brown ultimately agreed to perform, but said he would not cut his set to 60 minutes as management told him Sinatra had directed. Then Brown went on stage opening night like his hair was on fire, and had the audience cheering well past the supposed one hour deadline. The next day, management again relayed Sinatra’s orders: keep the performance to the contracted 60 minutes. Brown defiantly extended his set again.

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Unethical (But Informative!) Quote of the Month: Katie Porter

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“It’s the job of the California governor to protect every single Californian,” Porter said. “The sanctuary state policy is designed to make sure that our state resources, the taxpayer dollars, the public servants that we have, are focusing on doing their jobs, which is not cooperating with the federal immigration authorities. These are Californians. They contribute to our economy, they pay taxes, and they’re one of the only ways our state has been growing in recent years.”

  —Former California Congresswoman Katie Porter in this week’s gubernatorial debate  explaining why “sanctuary” states  are crucial to Democrats.      

I have chosen to write as little as possible about California Governor candidate Katie Porter, I think because her very existence embarrasses me and the fact that such an awful human being could be elected to Congress by California voters shows just how beyond redemption that rotting state is. Here was my only entry regarding Porter, from last October:

“In California, the leading candidate to replace Gavin Newsom as governor, Rep. Katie Porter, has been bedeviled by emerging videos of her abusing staffers, refusing to tolerate probing questions from interviewers, and generally acting like a witch on wheels (It’s Halloween!) Porter and her political allies insist that these clips don’t show “the real Katie,’ which is comforting, since that demon impersonating Porter just stops short of spewing green vomit.”

The good news is that Porter isn’t leading in the polls any more, and in fact has the same chances of being governor of the tarnished Golden State as Frosty the Snowman has of being elected Mayor of Hell. The other good news is that her statement above was a public admission of why Democrats are so keen on open borders. It’s not quite a confirmation of “The Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, but it is close enough for horseshoes.

Axis-dwellers are so engulfed by their bubble that they can’t imagine anyone being bothered by a statement like that in their own party. This means, as night follows day, that they can’t imagine any progressives or Democrats possessing an understanding of law, national security, fairness, honesty…oh, lots of things.

Her state has welcomed illegal aliens in the hundreds of thousands while an estimated 10 million California residents have fled the state in the last decade. Illegal immigrants are not Californians by definition. They cannot be, because they aren’t citizens, and California cannot make them so. California’s elected officials, she admits, are not cooperating with federal law enforcement to allow millions of law-breakers to continue breaking the law, in order to provide illicit political support to Democrats, and to artificially inflate census numbers so Democrats can cement their power in Congress.

Nice.

To her credit, Porter’s explanation was frank, honest and except for her misunderstanding of that citizenship thingy, ethical. It reminds me of bank robber Willie Sutton’s legendary response when he was asked why he kept bobbing banks.

He said, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Comment of the Day: “The New York Times Is Shocked—SHOCKED!—That Anyone Would Think It Discriminates Against White Males!”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A short COTD for a change—Michael R., whose first comment was on this post in 2009, not long after Ethics Alarms was launched, has made a trenchant observation that seems obvious once you read it, but had never occurred to me in this degree of clarity.

His comment follows yesterday’s post about the New York Times being sued for discriminating against a white, male job applicant. The paper is denying it, of course, but as I asked in the post, “Does anyone believe that the woke, left-biased, victim-mongering, knee-jerk Democratic New York Times, after declaring that its staff was “too white” and “too male” has not been systematically discriminating against whites and men?”

Interestingly, Ann Althouse offered a poll to her readers on exactly that question…

…and here are the results as I write this:

Michael’s observation slapped me across my metaphorical face with the realization that approving of “good discrimination” is the result of the societal embrace of the Golden Rationalization, “Everybody does it,” in epidemic proportions. This is ironic, because the same unethical reasoning is what supported slavery and, after that, routine anti-black discrimination and prejudice for so long.

I worked in the administration of an institution that was all-in on “affirmative action”-–note that this is one of the great cover-phrases of all time, like “pro-choice,” allowing something that is unethical and illegal to be framed as something else—in the late Seventies when it took the culture by the throat. The institution was Georgetown Law Center, which is still committed to the self-contradictory policy Michael R.’s comment focuses upon: you may recall that its Dean essentially dismissed a new faculty member for daring to suggest that Justice Jackson, the DEI nomination of Joe Biden, was taking the place of more qualified candidates.

There was once a utilitarian argument for affirmative action; indeed I made it myself once upon a time. But a nation founded on equal justice and individual responsibility cannot maintain integrity while accepting any form of racial and gender discrimination without end. The fact that so many of our friends, relatives and colleagues can’t figure this out points to a widespread lack of ethical analytical skills. It is, I think, the same faulty and unethical reasoning that has spawned the rationalization of illegal immigration.

Here is Michael R’s Comment of the Day on the post, “The New York Times Is Shocked—SHOCKED!—That Anyone Would Think It Discriminates Against White Males!”

* * *

I have tried to explain why racially discriminatory programs are wrong to people at my institution, but it just doesn’t work. It is impossible to get them to understand that they can’t discriminate based on race. Most of them have grown up in a world where the courts have ruled that race-based discrimination is permissible. Explaining to them that it was illegal the whole time is just incomprehensible. I mean, it does seem implausible that every single federal and state court in the entire country ruled that the law that said you can’t discriminate based on race ruled that you could discriminate against SOME races. Explaining that they never made it legal, they just ruled it was permissible makes it worse. How can judges give people permission to violate the law for 60 years?

Remember, the Milgram experiment showed that as few as 10% of the population is capable of critical thinking. Most of those people are dismissed as troublemakers by society for their crime of critical thinking.

The New York Times Is Shocked—SHOCKED!—That Anyone Would Think It Discriminates Against White Males!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A white male New York ‘Times’ employee has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging the paper had discriminated against him by not giving him a promotion despite his superior qualifications, because he is a white male. Yesterday the EEOC filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the ‘Times’ arguing that the paper’s pledge to satisfy its DEI goals are being translated into “unlawful employment practices.”

Which, of course, they are, if the color of one’s skin and one’s pronouns are considered as crucial in determining promotions.

The Times was first to break the news of the suit but did not name the employee who made the complaint. “Reporters at the paper have been scrambling to figure out the employee’s identity, driven in part by bafflement that one of their own colleagues would sell out the paper to the administration, which has used tools of the federal government to attack the press,” says New York Magazine.

Really! So the Times feels that loyal Times workers should support “good discrimination” and allow the paper to skirt the law, even when they are the victims of illegal employment practices, because to do otherwise is to support the Evil Trump administration.

In World War Eleven such people were called “Good Germans.”

This is one sick culture at the New York Times.

Nikita Stewart — the Times’ then-real-estate editor who has since been promoted to metro editor — “deviated from normal hiring protocol” in January 2025 to hire someone without experience editing real-estate coverage to work as her deputy, the suit alleges. The white man who was bypassed had “considerable experience with real estate news,” a requirement included on the public job listing for the position.

Wow. A female editor named Nikita is at the center of his “to each according to their needs” tale! You can’t make this stuff up.

In 2021 the Times announced a “Call To Action,” which stated that “people of color—and particularly women of color—remain notably underrepresented in its leadership,” the suit claims. A company can address that perceived imbalance by recruitment efforts, but—and I speak from experience—placing a racial and gender thumbs on the metaphorical scales is virtually unavoidable.

Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha called the suit “politically motivated.” Gee, what a surprise. “Our employment practices are merit-based and focused on recruiting and promoting the best talent in the world,’’ Ha said in a statement. “We will defend ourselves vigorously.”

You know…like Harvard denied that admitting black students with lower grades and test scores than Asian applicants was discriminatory.

Does anyone believe that the woke, left-biased, victim-mongering, knee-jerk Democratic New York Times, after declaring that its staff was “too white” and “too male” has not been systematically discriminating against whites and men?

Fairness Test: “What’s Going On Here?”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The short video clip above shows Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar referring to World War II as “World War Eleven.” The clip has been reposted by numerous social media accounts and has collectively drawn millions of views. Some versions leave out the Congresswoman quickly correcting herself and smiling at her own gaffe.

Omar’s “speako” has also spawned many memes, like…

All in good fun…except that if Donald Trump made a gaffe like that my Trump Deranged Facebook friends would be screaming that it was time to invoke the 25th Amendment. I am willing to accept the protests of Democrats that Omar’s incident was a forgivable momentary botch with no greater significance and not proof that she misunderstands Roman numerals or lacks a basic knowledge of history…if they stop using Trump’s occassional verbal stumbles as evidence that he is demented.

And you know they won’t.

On the other hand…what the hell? How can someone who has read anything about World War II and seen the numbering as often as educated Americans do—what, hundreds of times? Thousands?—make that mistake? Several years ago, a local news hostess was fired after making the same error; the assumption was that she must be an idiot. Maybe because my sister and I were immersed in World War II history, lore and memorabilia from the time we could speak, this particular gaffe seems particularly weird to me. If Omar pronounced “USA” as “ussa,” would it be reasonable for us to shrug it off as a mistake any member of Congress could make? This is an elected official, after all, whose American bona fides are tad shaky.

Now, now, Jack. You have exonerated Obama for saying there were more than 50 states, and yourself for mixing up this guy…

….with this guy…

so let’s not jump to conclusions about Rep. Omar just because she has said her first duty is to Somalians.

From The Ethics Alarms “What An Idiot!” Files: Hope Walz

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Yes, she’s the 23-year-old daughter of Minnesota’s lawless, incompetent, anti-First Amendment governor, whom the Democratic Party tried to inflict on the nation as a Vice-President.

Here’s what Hope, who is, ironically, hopeless, posted yesterday:

“Gun control doesn’t just save Democrats’ lives, it also saves Republican lives. You’d think we’d be at a point now where we could call for some common-sense legislation, but, I don’t know. I don’t know.

“Also here to say that political violence is never okay. Duh. That’s the difference between us and them. It’s never okay. But there’s something we can do about it…common-sense gun legislation. … We should do something about that for everybody’s sake. For everybody’s sake. Yeah, happy Tuesday. Feeling a little anxious today, but we’re gonna get through it.”

“Common sense gun control” is, as EA has noted many times, a stand-in for “Do something!” as well as “I got nuthin.” It is amazing that anyone who resorts to such non-substantive cant is ever taken seriously. Idiots like Hope can’t articulate any measures short of banning all guns and confiscating them from lawful purchasers that would stop nuts like the guy who tried to shoot up the White House Correspondents Dinner…and even that wouldn’t stop law breakers—you know, criminals— from breaking the law to get guns.

Yet how many friends and associates do we all have who might read Hope’s nonsense and mutter, “How true, how true…”?

Take Mark Zuckerberg, Add A.I., and the Result…[Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Unethical conduct, of course!

Lawyer-novelist Scott Turow has joined publishers Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage in a class-action copyright infringement lawsuit against Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, its CEO and founder. The complaint, filed this week in in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, claims that Meta and Zuckerberg illegally appropriated millions of copyrighted works to train Meta’s A.I. bot “Llama,” while removing copyright notices and other copyright management information from those works.

The lawsuit is hardly the first of its kind. Writers have brought lawsuits against other tech companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI for the same illegal and unethical process. Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion last year to writers whose books it had used, without permission or payment, to train its A.I. program.

Amusingly, one star witness for the plaintiffs is Llama itself. Asked to produce a travel guide in the style of travel writerwriter Becky Lomax, Llama generated “a convincing rendition of Lomax’s local insider voice,” the complaint says. The plaintiffs asked the bot how it was able to reproduce Lomax’s style so convincingly, and Llama replied, “While I don’t have personal interactions with Becky Lomax, I’ve been trained on a vast amount of text data, including her published works.”

Well thank you for your candor, Llama. A whistleblower bot! What will they think of next?

A.I. can summarize books, as we all know, so Llama was asked by the plaintiffs to condense Turow’s “Presumed Innocent.” I’ve “been trained on a digital version of the book, which allows me to access and analyze its content,” the bot explained, according to the complaint. The suit alleges that “Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement.”

They should ask Llama about that too.

Maybe the bot should be re-named “Rat.”

“A.I. is powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and courts have rightly found that training A.I. on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use,” a Meta spokesman said. “We will fight this lawsuit aggressively.”

The plaintiffs say that Meta’s A.I. program threatens the livelihoods of writers and publishers. The technology can quickly produce A.I.-generated copycat books. Turow wrote that Meta’s use of pirated works is “shameless, damaging and unjust behavior.” “I find it distressing and infuriating that one of the top-10 richest corporations in the world knowingly used pirated copies of my books, and thousands of other authors, to train Llama, which can and has produced competing material, including works supposedly in my style,” Turow wrote.

Stay tuned.

Stop Making Me Defend Harvard!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Not that I find the latest controversial course offering at Harvard ennobling or likely to prompt me remove my diploma from its place of shame—front to the wall, on the floor— in the hallway to my office, but it is defensible, which is not the same as calling it “good.”

Harvard University hosted OnlyFans drool-object Ari Kytsya….

….(she’s another “influencer”) at a business class discussion on the adult entertainment industry. Kytsya spoke at Harvard about her career on the adult live porn site and the business of being an online peep show entrepreneur. During the lecture, Kytsya discussed the nuances of profiting from making “adult content” and shared anecdotes from her work. For example, once she was paid to “shit in a box for 10K.” Nice. She also emphasized how important it is to enjoy one’s work.

Harvard is being criticized for hosting the lecture, the complaint being that the school is debasing elite education by elevating sexually explicit content and adult entertainers to the status of legitimate topics for academic study.

The criticism is, I think, unfair. OnlyFans was a creative use of new technology when it was conceived; it is also a model that allows individuals to build a brand and a business. I can certainly see how there are valuable business lessons to be learned from the OnlyFans phenomenon that can be applied to other, more traditional businesses.

Nor are dubious courses anything new at Harvard. When I was at the college, there was an infamous “gut”—Harvardese for a shamelessly easy course—nicknamed “Ships.” The semester course, taught by an amiable and ancient professor, covered the history of sea vessels, and if you couldn’t get an A in that course, you were probably dead. There was nothing useful in “Ships” unless one was considering landing on Plymouth Rock. The OnlyFans discussion, in contrast, could have practical applications.

Ethics Alarms recently relayed the news that has-been B list actress Shannon Elizabeth, well past her wet T-shirt pull date, was displaying her wares on the site. It was reported last month that the 52-year-old earned $1 million in her first week. Now, business courses are not the only academic settings where the porn site is worthy of study; sociology, American culture and psychology students, as well as technology scholars, should heed the phenomenon. Back in 2021, law professor Catherine McKinnon called out OnlyFans as a toxic influence on the culture, contributing to societal approval of pornography and sex work, and described the platform as a cyber-pimp.

She may be right. But that would make the case that OnlyFans is a valid topic for academic inquiry stronger.

Meanwhile, The Left Is Still Concocting Reasons To Discredit The Non-Incompetent SCOTUS Justices…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Stipulated: Clarence Thomas’s extensive conflicts involving his right-wing billionaire pals mandate his resignation or removal. The fact that his wife is a conservative activist does not. No, the flags that Samuel Alito’s wife likes flying over the couple’s domiciles are not a reason for him to recuse himself from anything. Somewhere between these two extremes, but closer to the flags than Thomas’ goody bag, is the new assault on Justice Roberts.

Christopher Armitage, a far Left scholar whose anti-GOP, anti-Trump positions are cloaked in respectability, came up with this one. He describes himself as “independent.” Strangely, his work “has been cited by the Brookings Institution and covered by NPR, PBS, Mother Jones, and The Nation.” Those are all infamous Leftist propaganda organs, with Mother Jones and The Nation on the extreme end of the spectrum.

Now he is getting cheered by those sources for a Medium post that asserts,

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Unethical Judge Day Continues: Apologizing To A Failed Presidential Assassin

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Judge Zia Faruqui, a D.C. magistrate, apologized to White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter Cole Tomas Allen. Allen is the “alleged” would-be assassin of President Trump and other officials. This is one of the more ridiculous use of “alleged”: technically appropriate because he is “presumed innocent,” ridiculous because he was caught on camera, apprehended at the scene, and wrote a message describing what he intended to do and why.

Judge Faruqui apologized for what he called the “legally deficient” treatment Allen received in jail, where the shooter was placed on suicide watch, separated from other inmates, and denied access to a Bible.

“Whatever ​you’ve been through, I apologize,” the judge said, adding, “Right now, it’s not working. It’s insufficient. I think it’s legally deficient.”

Jeanine Pirro, United States attorney for the District of Columbia, wrote on X, “Welcome to Washington, DC, where U.S. Magistrate Judge Faruqui believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the President is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant.” Faruqui compared Allen’s treatment with that of the January 6, 2021 rioters at the US Capitol, as he claimed they were treated more fairly despite displaying what the judge called comparable conduct. “I’m fascinated ​and disturbed,” he said.

So am I. That anyone could compare a failed Presidential assassin to those drunken fools who stormed the Capitol is indeed disturbing. The suggestion reeks of the false Axis “insurrection” narrative. There is no valid comparison to be made. As many have pointed out, Allen’s pre-attack message made it clear that he was expecting to die in his planned assault. Suicide watch was an obvious precaution, and so was keeping him isolated. Actual and would-be Presidential assassins who died before trial have caused confusion, conspiracy theories and chaos.

Suggesting an equivalency between angry MAGA boobs who thought they were trying to stop a corrupted election result and someone out to murder the President is smoking gun evidence of wild partisan bias. “You right-wingers trespassed and fought with the police, and we Trump Deranged tried to murder the President and his Cabinet. What’s the difference?” Ask Abe Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and Jack Kennedy, jerk.

We have a frightening level of incompetent, biased, unethical judges in the U.S. Surveys show that public trust in the judiciary is cratering. That’s a dangerous trend, but based on how judges have been behaving lately, it is a justified one.