Author: Jack Marshall

A Curt “Bite Me” To the Ethics Alarms Trolls

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I’ve been getting snarky emails and proposed comments chiding me for frequently misspelling “Charlie,” as in Charlie Kirk, as “Charley.” “Why do you keep doing that?” asks one.

Why? I do it because…

1. I write the blog in my “spare time,” of which I have none, and try to cover as much of the ethics landscape as I can to advance the mission of this blog and my profession as an ethicist…

2. I am often rushed and pressed for time, as this pursuit takes me conservatively 3-4 hours every day for which I am not compensated, at least monetarily….

3. I’ve always made a lot of typos because I can’t type, though I do a better job proofing than I used to…

4. I grew up with an Uncle Charley, who not only spelled his name that way but who also objected to the “-ie” version, so “Charlie” has always looked wrong to me…

5. Names with multiple spellings bedevil me and always have. Don’t get me started on “Stephen/Steven,” “Sara/Sarah” or “Madeline/Madeleine/Madelyn/Madalyn/Madelynn/Madilyn” (if that’s your name and I spell it right, I assure you that it’s an accident).

I want to get these details right, but readers who nit-pick on the irrelevant “gotchas” are not being constructive, and as in the case of the #1 Ethics Alarms troll, often are simply assholes. When they try writing 2000-2500 words a day of original commentary for 15 years while trying to keep a challenging business running with a dead partner, no staff and an often troubled family healthy and happy, I’ll take their critiques of my typing more seriously.

Until then, my response is a vociferous “Bite me.”

Confronting My Biases: Episode 23: Anyone Who Would Post or Sign or “Like” This Social Media “No Kings” Screed

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This certifiably awful, annoying, hysterical, factually wrong, ignorant, stupid, smug and inarticulate thing turned up on my Facebook feed last night for the first time. Except for the nice, once intelligent friend who posted it, none of the signatories—there are hundreds—were known to me, but I’m sure that will change now.

I had to wrestle with myself longer than usual not to append a sharply worded comment to it: I would have been the first one. As we have established here in the many posts (too many, I suppose) I have written about the tragedy of Trump Derangement, it is futile to argue with these people, as they are beyond enlightening or reason.

But I know, I KNOW, that many wonderful people I respect, admire and care about will blindly sign on to this statement, manifesto, letter, whatever you want to call it, and that some of them would turn on me viciously if I ventured to point out the document’s undeniable flaws. So I want to treat this as I would a giant wart on a friend’s nose, a birthmark, a stutter, an annoying speech pattern or habitual bad breath, but boy, it’s hard.

So behold the monstrosity!

Continue reading →

Addendum: “And the Charlie Kirk Assassination Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On…”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I started writing this as a comment to the lively thread that has followed last night’s post, but decided to make it a separate post because the discussion raises its own ethical issues.

The Kirk denigration since the Turning Point USA founder’s death resembles that old kids game “telephone.” You would whisper a statement into the ear of the kid next to you who would pass it along down a line of ten or more and finally compare the original message to what the last one in the line heard. Hilarity usually ensued, as the vagaries of oral communication and the reception thereof resulted in “Mikey has a crush on Sue Brandeberry” turning into “Nike is suing someone who smeared crushed berries on its brand.” “Telephone” is a benign interpretation of a lot of the slander and libel against Kirk’s character and legacy; the non-benign interpretation is that people are just lying.

In the thread, a respected commenter here sparked some angry responses by answering my repeated question in the original post [“What did Kirk do or say that could possibly justify these freakouts?”] thusly: “At a guess, it might be his statement that passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake that might have been an issue. Or his highly uncomplimentary statements about Martin Luther King Jr and the approval of his assassination. Freedom of speech and all that.”

I have heard or read several equivalent versions of that answer since Kirk’s death, and they are worth clarifying and discussing.

Continue reading →

And the Charlie Kirk Assassination Ethics Train Wreck Rolls On…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

This surprises me. After all the negative publicity about various teachers, academics and entertainers making “I’m glad he’s dead, he deserved it” comments after the Turning Point USA founder was shot dead and their being cancelled, fired or otherwise shunned in the public square, I thought these vile people had at least the sense to keep their sick sentiments to themselves. But there were many outbreaks of vocal Kirk hate during the dumb No Kings protests over the weekend. Charlie Kirk was a “piece of garbage,” and “evil people” like Charlie Kirk have “no place in my world” one especially vocal demonstrator in D.C. said on video, as lawyer friends of mine I respect joined with her and others like her in n infantile primal scream against the results of an election. In Chicago, an elementary school abruptly took down its website after a teacher erupted in an anti-Kirk rant.

I’m still trying to figure out what it was the Kirk did or said to justify this venom. The anti-Trump hysteria is irrational and un-American, but at least I can understand it because the President goes out of his way to enrage those who are already unbalanced.

And the aftermath of the earlier Kirk hate-fests hasn’t run its course. Judge Ted Berry, a municipal judge for Hamilton County, may be removed from the bench for his social media posts celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Observations on Another Progressive Academic Meltdown”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I have combined two related comments by prodigal son commenter jdkazoo123 to make one, big, bang-up Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Observations on Another Progressive Academic Meltdown.”

The “great column” jd references at the beginning was not mine (humph!) but his fellow D.C. area prof Jonathan Turley’s blog post which I referenced in mine. The result is an example of the very best EA commenters are capable of producing when they are civil, analytical, generous with their time and thoughts, and have direct experience with the subject matter, which fortunately is often.

And here it is…

***

It’s a great column. I agree that there is to my knowledge no comparable violence on the right on college campuses by faculty. I disagree that there is a systemic effort to exclude conservative voices from higher education. I coauthored a book in 2008, Closed Minds? about ideology and politics in higher education. We conducted a nationwide random sample survey of professors. We confirmed that profs are even more liberal than they were 20 years ago, and they’ve been on the left as an occupation since the first scientific polls of faculty in the 1930s. BUT–the causes of the initial and the intensifying tilt are not a conspiracy, or at least, Occam’s Razor would suggest several other better ones.

First, folks who are on the right are often believers in markets. Folks who believe in markets are often motivated by them. Academia has a very low ceiling for money. The big money on campus is in administration and in sports. Some superstar profs (usually in hard sciences, but sometimes business or econ or every now and then something else) gets north of 180K, but it’s rare. And there’s many tens of thousands scrapping by as adjuncts, who would risk that? It’s far more likely you end up teaching 8 adjunct courses a year for less than 50K with no benefits than that you get tenure at a high paid place and clear 170K at the end of your career. My friends who went into business, law, medicine…all make significantly more than me.

Second–most profs are at public universities. In 1950, both Ds and Rs were for spending on higher ed. Today…in most states…if an R wins the governorship, profs get no raises for a while. We are not shocked when oil and gas executives vote GOP because that makes them richer. Professors are not saints. We like money, too. Finally, and perhaps most importantly–campuses are places where the gay rights debate was over by about 1988. The rest of the nation was still having huge arguments about this in 2010. Similar thing happened in the 1950s with race–profs got their first on racial equality, on average. The GOP doubled down on anti-gay in elections like 2004, and also allowed figures who believe stuff like young earth creationism and the divine right of men to lead, to speak at their conventions. This was smart politically, because there are many more believers in creationism than there are college professors, but when you take those positions….you lose support on campuses.

Continue reading →

Red-Faced & Embarrassed Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/20/25

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I know I keep complaining about this, but I continue to be depressed and shocked at how many people I admire and respect are taking to social media to virtue-signal—as if sounding like an ignorant fool is ever virtuous—about participating in the weekend’s beyond moronic No Kings rallies. The ones who most disappoint me are the lawyers. If you boil down what little of substance there is in the bill of particulars offered by these lobotomized citizens, the residue at the bottom of the pan is “we think law enforcement is cruel.” Really? Gee, my definition of “cruel” is letting poor, desperate, ignorant people over the border in defiance of our laws while giving them the impression that it’s okay and there will never be any negative consequences as long as they keep their heads down, work for pathetic wages at menial jobs and don’t rape anyone (and heck, maybe even if they do.) These people were lied to when Joe Biden and the Democrats said, “Come on over! You’re welcome!” The Democrats really thought that with their weaponizing of the justice system against political opponents and undermining election integrity, there would never again be an administration that didn’t want the country flooded with illegals. They also thought, with some justification, that the gates had been flung open for so long that an illegal immigration crackdown and reckoning would be logistically and politically impossible. As for that miscalculation, I call on Nelson Muntz to say…

Assholes.

I did love the White House comment when asked about the demonstrations. “Who cares?” But I do care. I care that so many of my friends are leaking IQ points out their ears….

Meanwhile…

Continue reading →

Sic Transit Gloria: Lindsay Lohan’s Record For “Worst Excuse Ever” Drops to Third Place

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Back in 2007, when Lindsay was young, hot and seemingly had a long career of Hollywood stardom stretching out before her, I awarded the actress the championship for most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever. She had just been arrested for driving intoxicated and possession of cocaine, which had been found in the pocket of her jeans. Lindsay’s professions of innocence were that 1) she wasn’t driving her own car and 2) “These aren’t my pants!”

But like so many records, this one was short-lived. In 2012, The Smoking Gun reported that in Wisconsin police responded to a domestic abuse call to find Mrs. Michael West [Note: NOT the spouse of the Ethics Alarms commenter] bleeding from her face and saying that her husband Michael beat and tried to strangle her. Confronted by the officers, Mr. West (above, next to Lindsay) explained that he was innocent. A ghost did it.

That pushed Lindsay to second place, and those standings held for another 13 years…until this month. Brian and Sara Wilks [above] of Houston, Texas were at Miramar Beach with their four children on October 11when they left their baby alone under a tent for about an hour as they walked up the beach with their more mobile offspring. Officers responded to reports of an unattended infant on the beach, and witnesses told police that the baby had been left alone while the family wandered off. When Brian, 40, and Sara, 37, returned to the scene they found police waiting as some charitable bystanders took care of the infant. Mom and Dad admitted to placing the child under the tent for a nap before leaving with their other children.

Their explanation of how an infant ended up alone on a public beach for more than an hour?

They “lost track of time.”

You know: it can happen to anyone! And up go the Wilkses to the top of the “Worst Excuse Ever” rankings. Sorry Lindsay.

Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Day: Comic/Pundit Jon Stewart

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Fuck You, James Madison!”

—“Clown nose on/clown nose off” Comedy Central comic Jon Stewart, in the course of blaming the Founders for the current Democrat Party shutdown of the Federal government.

Imagine: a large proportion of young Americans look to this fake authority for their news and political analysis. True, they could do even worse: Kimmel or Colbert; MSNBC, NPR, you know, what Capt. Renault in “Casablanca” would call “the usual suspects.” This latest outburst from the smug, intermittently witty know-it-all, failed actor (like Bill Maher), however, may represent his absolute low point, and he has had many previous stinkers.

But with his latest rant, we can see just how useless, ignorant and incompetent Stewart is when he isn’t mugging or being funny. At the end of the latest “The Weekly Show” podcast, Stewart was asked who to blame for the government shutdown. Of course he wouldn’t say “The Democrats, dummy!” though that is the only factual answer. Instead he blamed the Founders. Here’s his “hilarious” answer:

“Who is responsible for the government shutdown? I’m gonna go with the Founders, who came up with this fucking fakakta, overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense that it takes to get anything done, and I think it’s very difficult when one political party that represents 75 million voters has zero say, authority, heft, and in a functioning political environment that isn’t a zero-sum game, there would have been conversations up until now that took some consideration. Some, I’m not saying a lot.”

Oh, stop, stop, Jon, my sides are splitting! The funny man went on,

Continue reading →

Inspired By “No Kings,” Sasha Stone Authors the Substack Essay of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

You’re damn right he is. Because you deserve to be mocked….as Sasha Stone devastatingly explains in the sharpest defenestration of the Axis of Unethical Conduct that I have read this year (current company excepted, of course.) 

You can read it all here. I have been burned all three times I subscribed to a substack, but Sasha Stone’s essay on the implications of the “No Kings” tantrum yesterday was so superb that I may subscribe just to reward her, even if she takes a multi-months long posting vacation like Glenn Greenwald did, or go nuts, like Ken White. Not only was her piece virtually exactly what I would write today, I almost thought I did write it.

Stone is a film industry blogger who has lived and worked in the Hollywood progressive bubble. Naturally she was a Democrat, but was red-pilled in 2020, as rational citizens should have been, and increasingly become a critic of her former party and fellow travelers.

These are some highlights from “No Kings: The Lunatics Are Running The Asylum,” but again, read it all…

Continue reading →

The Last Ethics Alarms Word on George Santos, and Let Us Never Speak of Him Again [Clarified]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Frequent commenter JutGory suggested the George Santos commutation as an Ethics Quiz. I don’t think that should be necessary. Yes, Trump pardoned—technically commuted the sentence of— Santos, who was slated to serve 7 years in prison, and the Trump Deranged are freaking out. As usual, they are embarrassing themselves. You may have missed it because my Santos comment was appended late to yesterday’s ‘No Kings’ is Desperate and Stupid post: “This morning one of my once astute Facebook friends, a Harvard grad, was moaning about how Trump pardoning George Santos proves he’s a king. George Santos! The pardon power, which includes commutation, is 100% Presidential, legal and traditional: EVERY President who pardons anyone is acting like a king. (Biden, or his autopen, pardoned his criminal son.) Santos is a petty crook, but he’s not a threat to society, like say, the killers, rapists and drug dealers my friend’s party let into the United States over the previous four years.”

Over to you, Portia:

Continue reading →