Last week’s forum was a dud, but it was a holiday week, so I have hopes that this one will be more lively. I’m counting on you, since the previous post was written with great difficulty after my head exploded from reading that Barack Obama told an audience that using the criminal justice system against political foes was “crossing a line.”
I’m still wiping blood, bits of skull and brain off my computer screen and keyboard…
Oh, shut up, Barack!
In a speech yesterday at his foundation’s Democracy Forum, Barack Obama demonstrated his abundance of gall by calling for an end to “divisiveness” and for Americans to embrace compromise while building coalitions, something he refused to do as President.
Obama, after pledging to be a President of all the people, “bringing black and white together,”also exacerbated racial divisions like no President before him since Woodrow Wilson, a big Jim Crow fan. He chose to avoid political compromise during his entire term, laying the foundations of the gridlock we have seen since with the enthusiastic assistance of Nancy Pelosi in the House and the now thankfully dead Harry Reid Senate. As a former President, Obama did not extend his successor the same courtesy George W. Bush extended to him, which was to stay on the sidelines and withhold public criticism. He vividly illustrated why the unwritten rule and “democratic norm” in the U.S. has been that former Presidents, as the New York Times stated in 2007, “should speak respectfully of their successors, or at least with some measure of restraint.”
Did you know that Donald Trump doesn’t respect “democratic norms”?
I’m going to send you over to Harry Litman’s substack to read his whole rant against Donald Trump and the LA Times: who knows, some of you may want to subscribe. As for me, “Why I Just Resigned From The Los Angeles Times” just fills me with sympathy for the poor guy, and hope he finds some help. He’s not an idiot, or wasn’t: he’s a lawyer with an impressive CV, and has all the markers of a normal, functioning citizen like you and me. This is what living in California, allowing yourself to be lobotomized by the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s Big Lies, and and being blind to the misconduct and flaws of your own party will do to you. Litman just metaphorically set himself on fire to protest Trump’s election and signs that his trade, which has completely disgraced itself over the past decade, might be slowly reforming.
The thing is more than 2000 words, almost all of them you have read or heard before from Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, The View, Charles M. Blow, Jonathan Capeheart, Van Jones, the Lincoln Group, among others, including…
…you know. Here are some choice excerpts:
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host and Army veteran told Megyn Kelly on her Sirius/XM radio show that he would stop drinking alcohol completely if confirmed as Doanld Trump’s Secretary of Defense. He referenced “general order number 1,” which prohibits military personnel from consuming alcohol during deployment, saying, “This is the biggest deployment of my life, and there won’t be a drop of alcohol on my lips while I’m doing it.” He continued, “That’s how I view this role as Secretary of Defense is, I’m not going to have a drink, at all. And it’s not hard for me because it’s not a problem for me.”
This is an issue because along with allegations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct in the past and the uncovered email in which his mother accused him of abusing women, CBS News has reported that when Hegseth accepted a six-figure severance payment and signed a non-disclosure agreement in his 2016 exit from Concerned Veterans of America, there had been reports (from unnamed sources, of course) that he was intoxicated on the job more than once.
I find Hegseth’s pledge more than a little strange. It is like a man being accused of beating his wife saying, “I have never beaten my wife and if you give me this job, I promise that I will never beat her again.”
“A drinking problem” typically suggests alcoholism, though there are non-alcoholic alcohol abusers. The latter can, in fact, just decide not to drink any more and do so successfully. Alcoholics, in contrast, have metabolic and psychological disorders that make sobriety a lifetime battle that they are likely to occasionally lose.
Above we see that there are now photographs of the face belonging to the man who assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson yesterday. Those images will doubtlessly be subjected to facial recognition software that will make use of Big Data containing the images of millions of Americans who have allowed photos of themselves to be posted on social media.
My wife loved British procedurals, and frequently expressed her opinion that it seemed creepy and Big Brotherish that everywhere and everyone in Great Britain seemed to be under surveillance by CCTV, which was the key to solving the crimes in those shows with boring consistency. It is evident that the United States is rapidly getting to the same point. In cases like yesterday’s brazen daylight hit job, this development seems like a means justified by the desired end, but what guarantees do we have that the government and law enforcement will stop at that end?
In “Minority Report,” the film version of Phillip K. Dick’s dystopian future (well, one of them) showed everyone’s retinas being scanned constantly for both government and commercial purposes as they walked along the streets of D.C. In the latter case, the technology allowed street advertising to speak directly to individuals as they passed by: “Mr Williams! You have a cold! Come on in, CVS has just what you need to make you comfortable!” If this is science fiction, it is just barely so.
Like my late wife, I find this creepy and ominous. So…
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
The incoming Trump administration has signaled that it will be giving some podcasters, bloggers and news commentary websites access to White House briefings. As the night follows day, the Axis media is freaking out. The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room only has a capacity of 49 seats (the room could be changed to a larger one, of course) and adding participants means that some legacy media reporters will have to go. Good.
Here’s the objective, fair, unbiased headline at NewsCastStudio, the trade publication for broadcast news media: “Report: Trump officials may meddle in White House briefing room seating, add pro-MAGA outlets.” Allow me to translate: “pro-MAGA outlets” means non-Axis propagandists, those who may not see it as their duty as ‘advocacy journalists’ to undermine Republicans in general and Trump in particular.
The White House Correspondents’ Association is technically in charge of deciding seating access and assignments, but the White House controls who gets access to the building and room. Having the White House Correspondents Association decide who can be part of the the press corps questioning the White House spokespeople in daily briefings is a classic “fox in the hen house” system. Still, the White House has the power to block the access of a particular reporter or an entire network (Bye-bye, MSNBC!) by denying security passes. This would, of course, be condemned as undemocratic and something Hitler would do, but the Biden team kicked the conservative Daily Signal out of the briefings because it was inadequately supportive of Joe.
Since the election, the New York Times ethics advice columnist “The Ethicist” has been featuring a series of hopelessly dunderheaded questions from Trump-Deranged New York Democrats. “Should I cut off my Trump-supporting mother?” was one that Ethics Alarms discussed recently. I have to assume Kwame Appiah is getting a lot of these questions and thinks they really need more of an answer than “Grow up” or “Here’s the number of an affordable therapist.”
They don’t.
There were two more of this ilk today: “Is It Fair to Assume a Best Friend Is Bad and Selfish if She Supported Trump?” and a woman who felt her husband divulged a damning confidence by telling his adult children that her grandson had voted for Trump, as if he had informed them that the kid was a member of the Klan. Nobody who voted for either candidate should feel ashamed of their vote or feel they have to defend it.
Since The Ethicist’s employer is significantly responsible for these people’s current disability, being one of main purveyors of the “Trump is a fascist” fearmongering, I hold that Prof. Appiah has an obligation to give tough-love to these fools. Tell them that bias has made them stupid, that it is no more “selfish” or “ignorant” to vote for one candidate over another, and that the toxic delusion that those who reach a different conclusion than you regarding society, the culture, national policy and leadership are evil as opposed to merely having a different opinion.
I’ve received several inquiries about how to send gifts, or donations, or whatever they would be called, to Ethics Alarms. I was going to respond yesterday, but “Giving Tuesday” annoys me, so I put it off a day.
I’m enrolled in both Zelle and BILL, though I must say I’m unimpressed with both so far, and my bank loused up my attempts to set up Stripe. Obviously, I appreciate any expressions of appreciation: I don’t work on Ethics Alarms for money, but I have to do something for money. I know many of you have sent suggestions for monetizing the blog, but it is more important to me to have readers than to make this a profit center. I think, all things considered, EA had a good year even if I personally did not.
I also appreciate feedback, on the blog or off: my email is jamproethics@verizon.net, my phone in the office is 703-548-5229, and my address, should you be moved to engage in holiday charity (but I’m not a non-profit!) is
Jack Marshall, 2707 Westminster Place, Alexandria, VA, 22305.
President-elect Trump today nominated Monica Crowley to be “Ambassador, Assistant Secretary of State, and Chief of Protocol,” a position that will coordinate and oversee U.S.-hosted events of note such as America’s 250th Independence Day anniversary in 2026; the FIFA World Cup in 2026 and the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028. The position requires Senate confirmation. In reporting the nomination, The Hill described Crowley as “a former Fox News contributor,” which is deceitful and a cheap shot: she was that, but her experience is much more varied than that would suggest, and Crowley has legitimate credentials for that job—more, in fact, than many other recent nominations announced by Trump.
Crowley also, however, is a serial plagiarist, and her latest assignment from Trump—the previous one was in 2019, when then-President Trump announced Crowley’s appointment as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Treasury Department—is another canary dying in the ethics mine.
I have long believed that baseball’s Commissioner Rob Manfred doesn’t understand the game he oversees and maybe even doesn’t like it much. My assessment (I’ve been proven right a lot lately, have you noticed?) has been confirmed in a recent baseball podcast in which Manfred was the guest. He expressed enthusiasm for the proposed rule change being called “The Golden At-Bat.” If enacted, this gimmick would allow a team to send its best hitter up to the plate in any situation whether it was his turn in the lineup or not, but only once a game.
This disgusting device is what one might expect from a leader who inflicted the “zombie runner” on the game because people who weren’t baseball fans don’t appreciate extra-inning games and the players don’t like having to play overtime without compensation.
The Athletic’s Jason Stark, who tried to write a neutral report on this monstrosity, asked former manager of the Rays, Cubs and Angels, Joe Maddon, what he thought. Maddon is as close to an intellectual as one is likely to find in baseball (which is not all that close), and he found the concept repulsive.
Ethics Alarms 