Author: Jack Marshall

Ethics Quiz (or “What the HELL Is Going On at Yale Divinity School?”): The Spell

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Who is Adrienne Brown (and why did she stick a Lifesaver in her nose?) is a far, far FAR left writer and facilitator, a supporter of almost every toxic Leftist delusion you can imagine, from Black Lives Matter to transformative justice, from defunding the police to abolishing prison. Her very existence is testimony to the power of the Great Stupid in 21st Century America, which naturally includes the embrace of DEI by previously respectable institutions.

College Fix has an account by a student at Yale’s Divinity School, included one of Brown’s writings in its Before the Fall Orientation. The three-day orientation included a series of discussions and activities preparing incoming students for the year ahead, followed by small group discussions. At one point, students were rquired to read aloud, line by line and one by one, from Adrienne Brown’s “Radical Gratitude Spell,” which is this:

you are a miracle walking
i greet you with wonder
in a world which seeks to own
your joy and your imagination
you have chosen to be free,
every day, as a practice.
i can never know
the struggles you went through to get here,
but i know you have swum upstream
and at times it has been lonely

i want you to know
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you

you are enough
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files, Scary But Funny Section: Nah, There’s No Big Tech Pro-Democrat Bias!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Brief reactions:

  • Why did it take so long for someone to try this?
  • Of course, only a moron would seriously ask Alexa who to vote for, but then morons are the pivotal voting bloc in any Presidential election.
  • One would think Amazon would be a bit more careful not to show its hand like this. One would be wrong.
  • This is how you fix an election and then deny later that the election was “stolen”: Millions of little slants, nudges, lies, smears and bits of propaganda, none them by themselves significant enough to point to as corrupting, but collectively very powerful.
  • Watch Amazon say that this was just an inadvertent “mistake.” Sure it was. What are you, a conspiracy theorist? Big Tech would never be so openly biased and manipulative before an election! This was a glitch, that’s all.  AI still has glitches! Be patient!
  • Hilariously, the best Alexa can come up with as a Harris “accomplishment” despite stating that there are so, so many is her DEI status. Perfect.

Ethics Villain: CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The announcement that the shamelessly biased and wildly incompetent “media expert” Brian Stelter is returning to CNN and that the network is resurrecting “Reliable Sources,” the once legitimate media watchdog show that Howard Kurtz ably and fairly hosted until it was corrupted by Stelter, proves one thing. CNN, after a brief (and only partial) attack of conscience, is fully committed to being a metaphorical whore for the Left again. After all, it has to help save democracy! Here’s Stelter’s announcement:

This revolting development means that Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, CNN’s most flaming propagandists and untrustworthy talking heads who were fired for disgracing even what is now laughingly called broadcast journalism, have found gainful employment, not at Hardee’s where they belong, but again in the field that they sullied by their presence. Continue reading →

A Manager’s Baseball Decision Has Lessons For The Non-Baseball World.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In a game over the weekend between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers, Red Sox starting pitcher Cooper Criswell was pitching the game of his life. In a 0-0 tie through four innings, the Tigers had no base-runners at all. Criswell, a rare breaking-ball and control specialist who serves as Boston’s fifth starter now that those above him on the depth chart have been injured, appeared to have perfect command of his pitches, as evidenced by the large number of strikeouts he was getting, and he is not a strike-out pitcher. Criswell also threw just 52 pitches in his four innings, and that is well-below any likely fatigue level.

Nonetheless, despite being literally perfect that far, Cooper Criswell did not come out to the mound for the fifth inning. Red Sox manager Alex Cora replaced him with lefty Rich Hill, because the Tigers had three tough lefties coming up to bat (left-handed batters typically hit right-handed pitchers like Criswell better than they hit lefties like Hill).

Hill walked one of the left-handed batters, and the first right-handed batter he faced as a result hit a two-run homer. The Red Sox never caught up.

After the game, Cora had no regrets, telling the press that pulling Criswell was part of a predetermined plan. “We drew it up, they had a bunch of lefties,” Cora said.. “He gave us enough. We went to Rich in that situation. We had a big pocket of lefties. Just the righty burned us.”

There are two ethics issues here.

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Come On, Prof. Turley: “Let’s Go Brandon!”= “Fuck Joe Biden!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A student known only as “D.A.” was told last spring by Assistant Principal Andrew Buikema and teacher Wendy Bradford at the Tri County (Michigan) Middle School to remove his “Let’s Go Brandon!” hoodie. The school’s dress code states that school officials can “determine [if] a student’s dress is in conflict with state policy, is a danger to the students’ health and safety, is obscene, [or] is disruptive to the teaching and/or learning environment by calling undue attention to oneself.” Western District of Michigan Judge Paul Maloney ruled that the teacher and the principle were within the standards articulated by SCOTUS in in Tinker v. Des Moines in banning the hoodie.

“If schools can prohibit students from wearing apparel that contains profanity, schools can also prohibit students from wearing apparel that can reasonably be interpreted as profane,” Maloney wrote. (The district had banned shirts with the phrases “Fet’s Luck” and “Uranus Liquor” on them.) Maloney added that administrators and teachers could prohibit apparel that said“F#%* Joe Biden,” for example.

“Because Defendants reasonably interpreted the phrase as having a profane meaning,” Maloney said, “the School District can regulate wearing of Let’s Go Brandon apparel during school without showing interference or disruption at the school….”

The judge is right. Prof. Turley, whose analysis Ethics Alarms usually concurs, is wrong this time, and so is FIRE. He argues in part,

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Ethics Dunce: Edmond Public Schools (Oklahoma)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Caleb Horst, a senior at Edmond North High School in Oklahoma, was suddenly ordered by by his school to stop flying an American flag on his pickup even though he had been “flying it for quite a while.” This provoked a flag-flying protest at the school by students who supported Horst (How could the school not see that coming?) as well as objections from parents. Then State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters issued a statement on Twitter/X stating, “No school in Oklahoma should tell students they can’t wave an American flag.”

“We’ve had Americans die for that flag, die for students to have the right to carry the flag, to wave the flag, to be proud of that American flag,” Walters wrote. “My department right now is working on guidelines that we will be issuing to districts to ensure that no student is ever targeted for having an American flag and also that our schools will promote patriotism.” 

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The Nauseating Arlington National Cemetery “Get Trump!” Fake News Episode [Corrected and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 73 Comments

A few preliminary comments to frame this story:

  • Again, this is how the news media sets out to fix a Presidential election.
  • Like so many of these incidents, by the time it has been spun, distorted and manipulated, the typical voter has no idea what really happened and lacks the time or interest to find out.
  • The double-standards applied to smear Donald Trump in service of the Democratic party can only be described as nauseating, because it goes beyond unethical and beyond corrupt to truly sickening. This sort of thing has been going on for most of a decade.
  • Because Ethics Alarms has to cover this [insert word for disgusting substance here] this blog and its author have to put up with constant accusations of “supporting Trump” and pushing right-wing narratives. I resent that, and I resent having to take time to discuss stories like this. I, along with everyone else (except that many of those everyones like the Left’s trashing of democracy) have been watching the mutated Left, also called the Axis of Unethical Conduct here, breach all previous standards of fair politics and journalism ethics in its determination to destroy and defeat Donald Trump. After all,  he is, due to some warped cosmic sense of humor, the major obstacle to its ultimate triumph. This assault on the public’s ability to know what is happening around it is, as I have said repeatedly, the worst, most dangerous and most important national ethics scandal since Jim Crow, or maybe McCarthyism.
  • I don’t want to write about this crap; I don’t have time for it, and doing so confers no benefits on me whatsoever.

With that off my metaphorical chest, here are the key points in the story. Characterizations may differ, but I am confident that what follows is accurate:

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Well, I Guess I Feel a LITTLE Better Now That It’s Clear That a Lot of Israelis Are As Ethically Clueless As So Many Americans…[Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Over night, Israel’s largest labor union called for nationwide strike to push for a hostage deal, threatening to shut down “the entire Israeli economy” Tel Aviv’s international airport announced that it would halt departures and arrivals of flights for two hours, and intense protests have broken out in response to Israel’s military recovering the bodies of six hostages killed in Gaza. The protesters say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not done enough to protect the hostages. To be blunt, the protesters are ethics dunces and morons….much like the American students, Democrats, pundits and the Biden administration trying to pressure Israel into a ruinous cease-fire with Hamas.

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Ethics Hero: Pro Golfer Sahith Theegala

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Clearly, I don’t follow pro golf like I once did: I never heard of this guy (at first I thought his name was the second row on my keyboard). Now I think I may write in his name for President.

Playing in the PGA’s $100 million Tour Championship, (never heard of that tournament, either) at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Sahith Reddy Theegala, an American professional golfer from Orange, California, called a rules infraction on himself, costing him two strokes. The self-reporting ended up preventing Theegala from tying for third place, and may have cost him five million dollars.

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

That’s how VP nominee Tim Walz responded when asked about the American hostage found murdered by Hamas.

Nice! So sensitive, caring, and…courageous.

Sarcasm aside, can anyone think of a positive way to interpret that reaction? “No comment” would be cowardly enough, but turning tail and escaping…wow.

My translation? “I’m sorry, but our handlers haven’t briefed us on how to maneuver around the difficult issue of Palestinian atrocities, and our campaign strategy is to reveal as little of our real opinions as possible, because its our only chance. See ya!”

How hard would it be to do a Clinton, and at least say, “I feel the family’s pain.” It’s phony, of course, but it least that response would show Walz as someone who is smart enough to pretend to care.

What a dumbass.