That’s “Emily Pellegrini” above again, the famed digital model created with the assistance of an AI program. For some reason Emily was not entered in the World AI Creator Awards, a beauty pageant for imaginary women. Go figure.
So…whose victory is more justifiable in a female beauty pageant today? A morbidly obese woman? A biological male? Or a woman who doesn’t exist at all?
Never mind. Find some beauty in ethics. If you can. I’ll settle for even virtual beauty.
Politico and other outlets are flogging a new poll from Marquette Law School released Tuesday found that 40% of adults approve of the Supreme Court’s actions, while 60% disapprove. This really isn’t news; it’s fake news in “The Sun is hot!” category by now. Gallup, which has been tracking the trust levels in American institutions for decades, wrote last September that “the 41% of U.S. adults who currently approve of how the Supreme Court is handling its job is statistically similar to the 40% to 43% ratings over the past two years. The court’s approval rating first fell to the record-low 40% in September 2021.” A single percentage point, obviously, is well within the margin for error in any poll and is not significant, and not significant means “not newsworthy.”
So the #1 villain in the ongoing destruction of the Supreme Court’s level of trust and approval among the public is…no surprise—our unethical, despicable, democracy-undermining news media. Since Roe v. Wade was finally knocked down by the Dobbs decision but even before, our “advocacy journalists,” or “journalists,” have made it their mission to erode public support for SCOTUS as part of their goal of forcing the Court to the ideological left so it can advance progressive agenda items that the Democratic Party can’t accomplish the way democracies are supposed to—you know, by passing constitutional laws.
From the moment ABC made Bill Clinton’s media propaganda guy its supposedly objective host for the network’s Sunday public affairs, talking heads show, the jig was up, or should have been. George Stephanopoulos is and was a Democratic Party operative; that he was allowed to keep this job, which allowed him to, for example, interview his former de facto boss, Hillary Clinton, on more than one occasion, should have put to bed permanently the claims of the ethically blind that mainstream media news reporting was not disgracefully biased.
Now George is apparently more secure than ever that his displaying open partisanship will meet with no resistance from his management at Disney/ABC. Asked by CNN host Abby Phillip this week what the “most important question” for both candidates should be in the June 27 debate moderated by the CNN, Stephanopoulos recommended that CNN’s moderators should confront former President Trump with “Who won the last election?”
That’s a great way to try to duck the actual issues in the election. Then, I suppose, CNN’s moderators should start grilling Trump on the substance of his various prosecutions.
I know I’ve written about this before, but it drives me crazy. It also shows how incompetent and infantile our hallowed institution of journalism has become.
Pope Francis, we were told in stories across the web, “has again used a homophobic term after apologizing last month for saying gay men should not be admitted to church seminaries because ‘there’s already too much f*****ry….he used of the word ‘frociaggine’, a vulgar Italian term roughly translating as ‘f*****ness’, on May 20 during a closed-door meeting with Italian bishops.
Wait…what does the word mean again? Nobody would print it. Using the word was so newsworthy everyone was writing about it, but our public censors refused to reveal it. What is “f*****ness? Why should I have to play “Wheel of Fortune” to learn the key elements of a news story? The New York Times refused to translate “frociaggine” into English, but the Italian word means nothing to me and most Americans. It sounds like some kind of ragu. All the Times would reveal was that it was an “anti-gay slur,” a “homophobic slur,” or just a “slur.” If the Times prints all the news that’s fit to print, then why won’t it print the key element of such fit news? Personally, I couldn’t care less what the Pope says, but I do object to having to visit multiple web sites to find out what should have been revealed in every published report.
I use Mediaite to track down ethics stories occasionally, though not nearly as much as I did when the site tried to achieve some degree of balance. Now, as part of the site’s contribution to the Axis’s panic operation, Mediaite is almost all Trump or GOP-bashing, all the time.
Yesterday it featured this story: “Witness Tells Off Republican Senator in Hearing on Abortion: ‘Don’t Ask a Question If You Don’t Want to Know the Answer’” The Senator in question was Sen. John Kennedy (R-La), particularly reviled by progressives because of his skill at making unqualified Biden nominees, usually of the DEI variety, reveal themselves as the fools and hypocrites they are. One reading that headline is supposed to assume that a pro-abortion witness bested the Senator. Far from it.
The exchange began with Kennedy asking a witness regarding late-term abortions, “Should the mother at that juncture have the right – clearly a viable child – to abort the child?” The witness dodged the question by pronouncing the scenario “unlikely.”
I bailed on Netflix’s Baby Reindeer series mid-way through the second episode, and wish I had quit earlier. I found the sordid tale of a dim-witted would-be stand-up comic and the sociopathic woman who stalked him too unpleasant and infuriating to stomach. I think I’d rather watch cattle be slaughtered. For some reason the thing is popular, however, and now it’s the object of a lawsuit.
Fiona Harvey, who says she is the real life inspiration for the series villain, the stalker Martha, has filed a $170 million lawsuit against Netflix alleging defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, gross negligence and violations of her right of privacy.” [ NOT “right of publicity,” which is how I managed to type it first time around.]” The sum includes totals for damages, “loss of enjoyment and loss of business” plus “all profits from ‘Baby Reindeer’.”
24 Hour Fitness, a relatively recent entry into the gym wars, issued this memo to its staff about appropriate attire:
You can’t possibly read that, so here is the good stuff in the May 2023 internal document:
“We’ve committed to creating a more inclusive environment at 24 Hour Fitness, recognizing that we have work to do to become stronger allies in support of those who are impacted by systemic oppression and inequality…
…Currently approved movements and/or social causes, along with approved expressions are:
- “Black Lives Matter”/”BLM” (words)
- “Pride” and or pride rainbow logo
- Juneteenth logo symbol, or date – on Juneteenth (June 19th)
- Flag or United States logo – on holidays such as Memorial Day, Flag Day, July 4th, Veteran’s Day, Patriots Day, etc.
Now various organizations are calling for the chain to be boycotted. It asked for this. The place is managed by morons.
Businesses that have nothing to do with politics should keep politics out of their business, advertising and workplace policies. This is especially true if those running the business have only rudimentary understanding of basic principles of democracy and the English language. You cannot tell employees what “movements” are “approved” and claim to be “inclusive.” Having “approved expressions” is also offensive to democratic principles and values.
Worst of all is the head-exploding policy of approving symbols promoting anointed sexual orientations and a racist, Marxist scam year’ round, but limiting attire sporting the American flag to holidays. Hey, can I whistle “God Bless America” while I’m doing curls if it isn’t the Fourth of July, or only “Lift Every Voice and Sing”?
And The Great Stupid rolls on…..
For some reason, the debate in the comments to the recent post about the proper use of “ad hominem” ended up about Rush Limbaugh, who has been dead for a while now. The issue was whether Rush’s referring to then-Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke, briefly a media star for her argument that birth control should be free, paid for by taxpayers, as a “slut” was an ad hominem attack or not. Ryan Harkins, in his Comment of the Day, decided to arbitrate the dispute, and did so with his usual logic and objectivity.
I do have a couple of points I want to make in this introduction to Ryan’s COTD. He admits that he never listened to Rush, and that’s a problem. As I kept emphasizing in the discussion in the comments, Rush Limbaugh was primarily an entertainer, though he was one with a political agenda and clear ideological orientation. (He was also was master of the slippery “clown nose on/clown nose off” device, like Jon Stewart.) I don’t think he can be fairly analyzed without that context. Ryan says that the use of slut has no place in “honest argumentation,” but Rush Limbaugh’s routines were no more intended as honest argumentation than a Lewis Black set or a Louie CK rant.
Nor can his work be fairly assessed second or third hand. There are several posts about Rush on Ethics Alarms; my wrap-up on his career and legacy is here.
I also neglected to mention in my lengthy exchange with jdkazoo123 that I did designate Rush’s “slut” comment about Fluke as “the worst of Rush.” That still doesn’t make it “ad hominem.” Limbaugh also apologized for that insult, something he didn’t often do, but it was pretty clearly a forced apology, though he said it was sincere. His show was losing sponsors over the controversy. Fluke refused to accept the apology.
Here is Ryan’s Comment of the Day on the post, actually the comments on the post, “I Guess It’s Time For Another “Ad Hominem” Lesson.”
***
Watching this exchange, I’ve had to consider a couple of things. First, I never listened to Rush, so I don’t know how his monologue progressed. But I would have to agree that throwing out the term “slut” would poison the well. Compare the following statements:
Stories like this one remind me just how deep and complex the ethics void is becoming in our society and institutions. The hackneyed way of describing it would be “Why we can’t have nice things.” It is an ethics mess, rather than an ethics train wreck, just an icky, stinky, pile of unethical goo emanating from people and places that can’t be trusted.
Let’s pick our way through it. Get your gloves and Lysol, and put a clothespin on your nose…
News Item: “Fast food outlets in California…have slashed almost 10,000 jobs in response to the state’s newly implemented $20 minimum wage. The figure was released by the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank affiliated with Stanford University…The law, first introduced in September 2023 [which came into effect on April 1, 2024. requires restaurant chains with 60 or more locations nationwide to raise their hourly wages from $16.21 to $20. Major chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King and In-N-Out Burger have increased their prices to compensate for the wage hike…. Many have reduced employee hours, and others are accelerating the transition to automation.”
I wrestled over which of the clips from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive best fit this infuriating story. I settled on Major Clipton’s final words that end “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” reserved for “when an incident or argument makes no sense whatsoever, or that drives me to the edge of insanity,” but was also tempted to use the old knight’s “He chose poorly” from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (“Commenting on a particularly incompetent, irresponsible, or otherwise unethical decision with disastrous consequences“), or that Ethics Alarms standby, Sheriff Bart’s eloquent description of the good citizens of Rock Ridge from “Blazing Saddles,” “You know…morons!”
Mistake, stupidity, or insanity? I finally chose the latter, because there is no question that the progressive Democrats who voted for this irresponsible law and the governor who signed it knew exactly what the results would be, knew that it would be a disaster, and did it anyway.
