Author: Jack Marshall

Mid-Day Ethics Warm-Up, 11/29/18: Slime, Blather, Theft And Trolling

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Good Afternoon…

For me, anyway: I woke up feeling healthy for the first time in 17 days.  Now the day’s ethics stories will make both of us feel sick. I’m sorry.

1. The Sliming. The news media is determined, in the absence of any verified or verifiable evidence, to continue sliming Brett Kavanaugh. The Washington Post placed the story about his return to coaching  girls’ basketball in its “Public Safety” section. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

This below-the-belt innuendo that the Supreme Court Justice is a threat to the young women on his team was caught, criticized, and the Post claimed it was an accident. You know, if journalists played it straight, and  had any credibility as objective, fair commentators, such an explanation would be credible. But they don’t, and it’s not.

Then there was the Huffington Post and AOL, which ran this story, headlined “Ford Is Still Receiving Death Threats, Kavanaugh Is Back To Coaching Basketball.”

The innuendo here is that there is some kind of injustice that the accused gets to resume his life while the accuser’s life is still disrupted. No, one who is accused should always be able to return to his life if the accusation is unproven and unconvincing, though that’s often not the case, and not the case with Kavanaugh as his continued sliming by the Left-wing media demonstrates. As for Blasey-Ford, no one should endure death threats. This is, however, a false dichotomy. There is no evidence that Kavanaugh did anything wrong, much less that he is a sex offender. My view is that Blasey-Ford, for political reasons, raising a high school episode that she could not confirm and didn’t recall herself for 30 years in order to discredit an adult judge of sterling reputation and credentials was unethical, irresponsible, and unfair.

2. The Sliming, cont.: Mark Twain Prize Division. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, inexplicably awarded the Kennedy Center’s Mark Twain Prize as the individuals who has “had an impact on American society in ways similar to” Twain—Julia Louis-Dreyfus? Seriously?—-used her acceptance speech to display her Twain-like rapier wit and take cheap shots at Justice Kavanaugh. (They are too idiotic and unfunny to warrant repeating.) It takes a lot of gall for someone to be accusing a public figure of sexual assault at any event sponsored by the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Center, or with Kennedy anywhere in the name. Indeed, it took some gall for Dreyfus to even accept the award. I searched her resume to find any evidence that she ever wrote a funny line or witticism of her own, which should be the criterion and usually has been, even with wan selections like Tina Fey, a minor wit if there ever was one. The precedent for Louis-Dreyfus would be Carol Burnett, who also is just a comic actress whose wit comes from other artists, though she bestrides the like of Fey and Louis-Dreyfus like a Colossus. Sad and politically incorrect to admit, but comedy just isn’t a field where women seem to excel, so once again, the quest for diversity involves a compromise in values. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Sick-Bed Ethics Warm-Up, 11/14/18: Ethics Among the Sneezes” (Item #6)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m still catching up on Comments of the Day, and they won’t be arriving in strict chronological order. This one comes from Tim LeVier, one of the three longest-running commenters on my two ethics websites, the now off-line (but soon returning) Ethics Scoreboard and Ethics Alarms. Tim was bringing some perspective to the infamous Baraboo High School photo, used by various commentators and pundits to further all sorts of agendas while creating a perhaps permanent stain on the reputations of the participants.

Here is his Comment of the Day on Item #6 in the post, Sick-Bed Ethics Warm-Up, 11/14/18: Ethics Among the Sneezes:

What I wanted to do was give some hard numbers on this. I count 64 distinct individuals that can be seen. If one were to use this photo as an indictment, then you have to look at each person as an individual to see what they’re doing. 32 of the 64 could be said to be doing something that looks like a Hitler salute, but most of them are pretty poor. Some are spot on. Another 12 of the 64 are so poor or different that you couldn’t say they were a Nazi salute, such as fists in the air, bent arms, looks like they’re waving. 20 of the 64 simply can’t be seen, don’t have their arm up, or have the wrong arm up or have both arms up.

So, overall, it’s a 50% gotcha of the 64 boys. Continue reading →

From The Ethics Alarms Moral Luck And Butterfly Effect Files: Geoffrey Tandy And The False But Fun Story Of How An Ignorant Typo Won World War II

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Some pretty cryptogams…

Bear with me: This is a fascinating story, but not exactly the story I thought it was.

Yesterday my wife and I watched an episode of the Travel Channel’s Mysteries of the Museum, a historical oddities and trivia show that explores the stories behind museum exhibits around the world. Grace is a student of World War II history and is especially interested in the work at Bletchley Park, where the top secret work on breaking German codes went on, including the exploits of Alan Turing, the eccentric genius who broke the Enigma Code and managed to invent the computer in the process. The episode was advertised as the amazing and little-known tale of how a typographical error won World War II.

The story: Geoffrey Tandy was the British Museum’s “seaweed man,” and a certifiable eccentric. For one thing, he was a bigamist, heading two families that were not aware of each other.  Tandy was also pals with poet T.S. Elliot, and more fond of writing esoterica than scholarly papers. Some typist somewhere along the line in his personnel paper work had misconstrued Tandy’s area of expertise, which was cryptogams,  primitive seedless plants such as algae and lichens, as cryptograms, which are ciphers and codes. Thus papers circulated the wartime bureaucracy stating the marine biologist was really an ace code breaker. This got the puzzled algae specialist mistakenly assigned to Bletchley, where he was a fish out of water, or a lichen out of his element, or something. The real code-breakers quickly figured out that Tandy was useless, but since nobody was supposed to know what was going on in the old building, he was stuck. Tandy spent two years filing papers and making tea.

Then, just like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, unforeseen events conspired to make his special abilities crucial. Several sodden notebooks holding vital clues, including Bigram Tables, to the mysteries of the German Enigma code were recovered from a sunken U-boat.  Unfortunately but understandably, they were soaked through with sea water, and apparently damaged beyond repairing. Tandy, however, knew an old cryptogam trick he had used to preserve tiny marine algae! Obtaining special absorbent papers from the museum, Tandy was able to carefully blot and dry the sodden pages, making them readable. As hoped, they yielded the crucial missing information Turing needed to break Enigma, acknowledged by all as a turning point in the war, as well as a Turing point. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Ca)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is rich. Ethics Alarms has previously flagged the apparently uncontrollable race-baiting by Democratic Congresswoman and Congressional Black Caucus member Barbara Lee, But I did not see this coming. After she lost her bid today to become the first black woman elected to a House leadership position when she lost the vote to lead the Caucus to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Lee blamed ageism and sexism, since, of course, blaming race would have been ridiculous.

“I’m a black woman and the institutional barriers are still there, so we just keep fighting,” Lee said.

It would do well for our rising generations, especially in the black community, for their elected leaders to model personal accountability rather than establishing the perpetual Get Out Of Responsibility Free card of “Everybody is biased against me because I’m ____________,” which is how Lee, and to be fair, most of the Congressional Black Caucus handles virtually every defeat, every argument, and every piece of criticism.

The real reason Lee didn’t have the votes is that victim-mongering is just about the only tool in her box: she isn’t very bright, and has uttered some of the most laughable statements on any member of Congress, which is quite an accomplishment. My personal favorite was when she opposed any military opposition to ISIS, saying, “I support strictly humanitarian efforts to prevent genocide in Iraq.” In 2014, I wrote, “An elected official who would utter such intellectually and morally bankrupt gibberish in public has disqualified herself for responsible office, as it makes almost everything about her qualifications suspect—her intelligence, her honesty, her judgment, her education, her sanity.” I strongly suspect that no one who works with Lee in or out of the Democratic Party has any illusions about her abilities.

No, Congresswoman. It’s not racism, sexism or ageism. It’s you.

And I’m Asking PETA To Change Its Name To “Grandstanding Cretins…”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

From the New York Times, and not, sadly, “The Onion”:

How is this unethical, as opposed to stupid and the epitome of self-parody? Well..

It is disrespectful to the town to presume it would agree to be exploited as a billboard for a fanatic advocacy organization.

It is demeaning to assume that residents of a municipality would allow non-residents from a deranged organization to change their town’s name in exchange for “a cozy, cruelty-free blanket.”

It unfairly implies that there is anything unethical about the name “Wool.”

It undermines the important cause of the ethical treatment of animals by associating the cause with wacko extremists who cannot distinguish between real issues and ridiculous ones.

It wastes the contributions of serious donors on self-defeating nonsense.

For a refresher course on just how embarrassing PETA is to the legitimate cause of preventing animal cruelty, go here.

Mid-day Ethics Warm-Up, 11/28/18: Thanks, Twitter, A Properly Derisive Label Needed, And More Mainstream Media Bias That Is All In My Mind

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Having a nice day?

1. A tardy recognition of things to be thankful for. Several of the regular readers here, notably Other Bill, valkygirrl, Pennagain, Michael West, Neil Dorr and Zoltar, but also others, have been flagging ethics stories for possible Ethics Alarms coverage. This has been especially helpful during my recent bronchitis battle, but I can always use tips, especially since my amazingly productive ethics scout of many years, Fred, had to take his talents elsewhere. The best way to send me your links and recommendation is at jamproethics@verizon.net.

2. This explains a lot. Pollster Frank Luntz says that 67% of Democrats believe it is “definitely true” or “probably true” that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected.” There is no evidence, none, that Russia tampered with vote tallies. There isn’t even evidence that Russian-planted “fake news” in social media and other meddling had any measurable effect on the election. Never mind: two-thirds of Democrats are convinced that Hillary Clinton couldn’t possibly have lost to a creep/Nazi/ lunatic/ moron/racist  like  Donald Trump without sinister forces making it so.

This delusion does explain a lot. As a foundation for false beliefs, it is strong impetus to confirmation bias, which Democratic officials and the news media have aggressively and cynically—and successfully—courted. I thought Republicans should hide their heads in bags after polls showed that about 40% of them as recently as 2016 believe that Barack Obama probably wasn’t born in the U.S. Two-thirds of Democrats believing Russians hijacked the election is, if possible, worse. Of course, Republicans didn’t force an endless investigation over Obama’s qualifications to be elected President, so that’s in their favor.

We do need a name for the Left’s conspiracy theorists regarding the 2016 election, though, since the group appears to comprise the majority of Democrats. “Truthers”…”Birthers”…and?

Submissions welcome. Here’s the poll data (more here): Continue reading →

Mississippi Stinking

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Gee, I wonder why feminists aren’t cheering the Cindy Hyde-Smith victory in the Senate run-off in Mississippi yesterday.  After all, she is the first female U.S. Senator in the state. And she’s a woman, and weren’t we told in the 2016 election that this alone mandated voting for a candidate, and nothing else should matter?  Admittedly, Hyde-Smith was an especially stinky candidate—inept, unqualified, addicted to sticking her foot in her mouth—but then so was Hillary Clinton. Why does being a woman outweigh all that baggage when the candidate is a Democrat but not when she’s a Republican? Or is the theory that electing a black Senator cancels out the “vote for any woman over any man”  rule?

I need this written down, I guess.

Of course, the losing Democratic candidate, Mike Espy, was pretty stinky himself, corrupt and dishonest, as well as addicted to race-baiting when the opportunity arose. He was required to quit Bill Clinton’s Cabinet after multiple accusations of corrupt dealings and illegal gift-accepting, then accepted a $750,000 consulting deal from former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo’s government in 2011. Espy’s former client is now standing trial for “crimes against humanity.” After Espy came under scrutiny for lobbying for Gbagbo, he claimed he had dropped the  contract once he learned that Gbagbo was a “bad guy.”  Continue reading →

The Vagina Epilogues [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

The progress of ethics and wisdom in  civilization generally gets better over time, though it may take some screwy routes to get there. I presume gender ethics will eventually get better too, but right now, it’s hard to be optimistic. Take the vagina, and the absence thereof:

  • According to blogger Amy Dyess, lead singer for Big Dyke Energy, there is a movement to condemn lesbians who aren’t sexually attracted to trans women, the kind without vaginas. She writes on Medium, “Lesbians have the right to a word that defines who we are. We have a right to exist and take pride in our boundaries. Our existence doesn’t invalidate trans people. Plenty of pansexual and queer folks are attracted to trans people, and that’s awesome. There’s nothing hateful about being a homosexual, yet extremists don’t want homosexuality to exist.” Here’s an example of the argument that holds that one’s sexual orientations are a form of bigotry:

 

Writes Dyess, “Being a trans ally doesn’t mean you have to tolerate or promote homophobia. Being a homosexual isn’t anti-trans. It’s unreasonable to expect lesbians to be pansexual. Sexual orientation is sex-based for homosexuals, bisexuals, and heterosexuals. Extremists can’t handle that words have meaning. Boundaries aren’t being respected.”

Well, welcome to the Extreme Left Planet, Amy. It isn’t enough to ensure that people have rights regardless of their differences, its is officially unacceptable to acknowledge that those differences exist of involve any real world handicaps at all. However, special privileges that only those with the special qualifies are always just.

Conservative and liberal are rapidly diverging into two distant corners labelled: REALITY and FANTASY, with the FANTAST side taking no prisoners….or as Amy Alkon says, “Yes, sexual preference has become a form of bigotry in Social Justice Crazytown.”

  • The furied elevation of Women Without Vaginas as a special class continued at Eastern Michigan University, where a scheduled performance of “The Vagina Monologues”was  cancelled because, according to the university’s release, “not all women have vaginas.”  The Women’s Resource Center EMU halted production of Eve Ensler’s iconic 1994 play because of its “lack of trans-sensitivity”, and “overall lack of diversity and inclusion.” According to Ann Arbor News, survey respondents opposed to the production consistently cited that “the play centers on cisgender women, that the play’s version of feminism excludes some women, including trans women, and that overall, “The Vagina Monologues” lacks diversity and inclusion.”

Notice how the extreme Left inevitably arrives at censorship and the suppression of free speech.. It is the totalitarian tilt of the entire ideology: the nail that sticks out must be pounded down. Nah, there’s no difference at all between women with vaginas and women without them, and, I assume the logic goes, women with penises instead. They are as like other women as two blades of grass, and since they are, any opinion or artistic expression that says otherwise, hint otherwise, or in any way supports one who believes otherwise is not merely a lie, but a form of hate speech that should not be permitted in a woke society anyway.

Have I got that about right? I think so.

Many surveyed  wanted to see the play modified to reflect better diversity and inclusion, particularly related to transgenderism. That’s part of the pattern too. You can’t indoctrinate a population if old ideas and opinions are still available. Ban those books, plays, artwork and movies, or cut and paste them into Truth. The past not only has to be ignored and forgotten, it needs to be edited so all of the poison—because SJW’s now KNOW what is right, and the arguments are settled–can’t confuse anyone else.

In the new Broadway musical based on “King Kong,” the female lead doesn’t scream when menaced by a 30 foot gorilla, because we all know a woman would never scream in such a situation. (I might, however…)

EMU is not the first campus to cancel a  production of “The Vagina Monologues.” American University substituted an event called the  “Breaking Ground Monologues”, in order to “broaden the focus from specifically female genitalia to multiple identities and bodies.” In 2015 ,a student group at the women’s university Mount Holyoke College ended its tradition of presenting an annual performance of the play, claiming the play is exclusive of the experiences of transgender women who don’t have a vagina. According to an email sent to students from the group Project: Theater, “At its core, the show offers an extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman.”

It’s funny: I was always excluded by the original  version of the play, but I always had the old-fashioned idea that screenwriters and playwrights should be able to write for all audiences and all points of view. No, now the Left has decided that old way was best: works of thought and art should be banned if authorities conclude that they’re not good for us, just like the censors once banned Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence, and “Huckleberry Finn.” The key thing they’ve learned is that this only works if the right people are “the authorities.”

I had a really punchy but uncivil, vulgar, sexist and totally deserved ending for this post, and this story makes me angry enough to use it. I won’t, though.

 

Ethics Addendum: Bill Robinson, Fred Astaire, And The Good “Blackface,” The John Bubbles Connection

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The post about Fred Astaire’s dark-make-up-assisted homage to tap-dancing legend Bill Robinson in “Swing Time” was incomplete, both historically and ethically. This post should remedy that.

The dance number in question, “Bojangles of Harlem,” was, as I wrote in the introduction, Fred’s homage to two great black tap dancers who were teachers and inspirations for him, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and John Bubbles.  The post explained why the salute to Robinson was important, but did not elaborate more on Bubbles. He was not as big a star as Robinson nor as well known, either at the time of the film or ever, and is less remembered today. Nevertheless he was an important cultural figure, and it can be argued that Astaire’s number was really more of a tribute to Bubbles than Robinson, not that many noticed.

First, you need to know about Bubbles. Born John Sublett (1902-1986), he teamed at the age of ten  with the six-year-old Ford Lee “Buck” Washington in a decades-lasting act, “Buck and Bubbles.” in which Buck stood and played piano and Bubbles sang and danced.  As adults, “Buck and Bubbles” ultimately  played at New York’s Palace Theatre, the London Palladium, the Ziegfeld Follies, the Cotton Club, the Apollo, and became the first blacks to perform at Radio City Music Hall. Their popularity allowed them to break the color barriers in theaters across the country. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 11/27/18: Unethical Perry Mason, Icky Science, Race Card-Playing Democrats, Intrusive Bosses And Slanted History

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Good morning…

1. They are showing “Perry Mason” reruns again on cable TV. That was the show that made my generation want to be lawyers, under the delusion that a defense attorney could regularly prove a criminal defendant innocent. (Pssst! They are almost all guilty.) The show holds up, but boy, Perry was sleazy. In an episode I watched while I was sick, he had his investigator tell the hapless prosecutor, Hamilton Burger (Ham Burger to his friends) that he had found an incriminating piece of evidence that proved someone other than Perry’s client had committed murder. Ham relied on the information and got the killer to confess once he was faced with the production of the “smoking gun.” But Perry’s investigator hadn’t really found anything.

Having one’s agent lie to the state prosecutor is a serious ethics breach. Perry also caused the DA to tell a falsehood to get the confession, though Burger wasn’t lying, since he believed Perry’s contrivance. Prosecutors are no more allowed to lie than other lawyers, but when they do lie “in the public interest,” they seldom get more than a slap on the wrist from courts and bar ethics committees, if that. Burger didn’t seem very upset that Perry conned him, because the real killer was caught. The ends justifies the means, or did in “Perry Mason.”

2. Ick or ethics? A Chinese scientist claims that he had successfully employed embryonic gene editing to help protect twin baby girls from infection with HIV. We are told that bioethicists in China and elsewhere are reacting with “horror.” Writes the Times,

“Ever since scientists created the powerful gene editing technique Crispr, they have braced apprehensively for the day when it would be used to create a genetically altered human being. Many nations banned such work, fearing it could be misused to alter everything from eye color to I.Q….If human embryos can be routinely edited, many scientists, ethicists and policymakers fear a slippery slope to a future in which babies are genetically engineered for traits — like athletic or intellectual prowess — that have nothing to do with preventing devastating medical conditions.”

As with cloning, my view on this controversy is that a new technology does not become unethical because of how it might be used. That unethical use will be unethical, and that is what needs to be addressed when and if the problem arises. (Airplanes could be used to drop atom bombs!) The fear of “designer babies” also seems to be an example of “ick”—it’s strange and creepy!—being mistaken for unethical. Making stronger, smarter, more talented and healthier human beings is not in itself unethical, even if it is the stuff of science fiction horror novels and Josef Mengele’s dreams. Continue reading →