Author: Jack Marshall

Epiphany: Ted Kaczynski Was Substantially Right, And I’m Beginning To Understand Sweeney Todd, Too

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The death of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski once again reminded me that his “manifesto” about how technology was progressively making life unbearable was, yes, crazy, but he had a valid point. [You may consider today’s post a second installment to this one, from 2017]. I have long believed that the up-tick in seemingly random mass shootings is the predictable result of those who inject technology into our lives just because they can, selfishly making just getting through the day brain-killingly complex for people somewhere in the lower third of the intelligence scale, and a lot of people who are better off than that too. At some point, the anger and frustration reaches the point where you want to grab a rifle, find a tower, and start shooting.

This is essentially what happens to Sweeney Todd in the Sondheim musical of the same name, as he explains in the show’s first act finale why serial killing is logical:

We all deserve to die
Tell you why, Mrs. Lovett
Tell you why
Because the lives of the wicked should be made brief
For the rest of us, death will be a relief
We all deserve to die!

I began reflecting on both Ted and Sweeney when I tried to register for the Massachusetts Bar before they suspended me for non-payment of my 2023 annual dues. You have to do it online, and one reason I was late was that I hate the Mass. Board of Bar Overseers website, which always breaks down.

First, the site makes you log in. It wouldn’t let me, even though the password was correct and supposedly filled in automatically. The BBO can’t be bothered to have the feature that lets you see the letters and numbers so only little black dots appear. I had to ask to “reset” my password. Since I couldn’t see the figures, it took two tries to match the the thing, and then I was transferred to a page informing me that I could not move on to filling out my dues sheet until I had completed a “demographic survey.” I’m tempted to put it up: you wouldn’t believe it. If you didn’t type in a date in the right format (I eventually realized that tiny print AFTER each question told you what was acceptable) the question would register as “incomplete” when you selected “Done” at the end. The survey asked me to choose my “preferred” race and ethnicity from umpteen options and also asked which “sex or gender” I “identified” as. (In the comments section, I wrote that who or what I chose to have sex with, or not, and how, was none of the BBO’s business whatsoever.) The survey form was clumsy as well as insulting, it kept flagging reasons a response wouldn’t be accepted, and it took so long to load when it finally passed muster that I thought the program had broken down.

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Comment Of The Day: “Res Ipsa Loquitur, But Here Are Some Ethics Observations Anyway”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I don’t typically re-post the graphic used in the original essay for Comments of the Day, but in this case I’m making an exception. I think this photo should be circulated far and wide. If I were a GOP strategist, I’d make sure that as many campaign ads and videos as possible included it, because the episode illustrates so clearly both the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party and the current Left’s lack of respect for the nation and its institutions. I might add the abject stupidity of those in charge at the White House. How hard could it be to know this might happen?

Here is Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Res Ipsa Loquitur, But Here Are Some Ethics Observations Anyway”…

***

What I found interesting about this was two left-leaning bubbles interacting here.

The centrist liberals are still in this bubble that likes to pretend that everyone on the right still shudders while clutching their bibles at the mere thought of someone committing the sin of sodomy. They don’t see the excesses, or they pretend they aren’t there, so they can continue pretending that none of the criticism sent the soup group’s way is legitimate. This episode dragged them kicking and screaming closer to reality, because something they could not ignore brushed against their bubble. This wasn’t some French feminist group protesting tit laws, this was a White House guest, on the White House lawn, posting unapologetically to social media.

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Ethics Role Model Of The Week: CBS Reporter Samantha Rivera

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I’m going to try out this new category after frequent protests here when Ethics Alarms designates someone an Ethics Hero for doing his or her job.

In a now viral moment, CBS News Miami reporter Samantha Rivera stiff-armed a fan who attempted to muscle into her shot during in a live broadcast after Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals. And she never stopped smiling or talking.

That’s my idea of feminism in action, and exactly what any professional should do. Finish the job, deal with unexpected challenges, persevere, and don’t be a weenie.

The main thrust of the news coverage of the incident is that Rivera has received death threats on social media for—what, exactly? Keeping an asshole from getting his drunken face on TV? I don’t get it, but concentrating on the social media reaction is giving undue importance to moral luck. Rivera’s sterling conduct was in the ethics books as soon as she did it.

Parents should show that clip to their daughters…heck, show it to sons, too.

__________

Pointer: Other Bill

Res Ipsa Loquitur, But Here Are Some Ethics Observations Anyway

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

TikTok influencer and transwoman Rose Montoya filmed herself topless in front of the White House during a Joe Biden’s pandering Pride event. Montoya was joined by two transmales who were also shirtless. Stay classy, trans activists! The White House was horrified, stating, “This behavior is inappropriate and disrespectful for any event at the White House. It is not reflective of the event we hosted to celebrate LGBTQI+ families or the other hundreds of guests who were in attendance… Individuals in the video will not be invited to future events.”

Awwww. The White House set itself up for this conduct, and got exactly what it deserved. Montoya responded by saying that she was not trying to be inappropriate but simply “living in joy.” “Why is my chest now deemed illegal when I show it off, however before I came out as trans, it was not,” she asked?

Yes, she is an idiot.

Further observations:

1. If the LGTBQ+ community wants to alienate a majority of the country, stunts like that will do the trick. It is astoundingly incompetent and irresponsible for the still vulnerable group to allow its most juvenile and narcissistic members to represent it in the news and in public forums.

2. The episode also demonstrates the kind of thing that will push the public to the Right. Whoever managed the President’s Pride Pander should be fired. Stupidly violating the flag-flying code was relatively trivial (though Republicans pounced), but allowing the White House to be used as a pro-trans exhibitionism prop was insane, especially in light of Biden’s posturing about bringing dignity back to the Presidency.

3. Now the White House is caught in the middle, like Bud Light and Target.

4. Good.

More Gallup: On The Transgender Fad, The Public Is Ethically, But Predictably, Confused, Mostly Because It Is Ignorant

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Gallup’s’ latest survey results are affirmatively strange, but then the topic is strange: American attitudes towards transgender issues. I believe the survey intersects with the one EA discussed yesterday, indicating that conservative self-identification was ticking up. It would have been stunning it it didn’t tick up, considering that the political and social Left has thrown all caution and moderation to the four winds and is openly advocating the most extreme and viscerally (as well as ethically) disgusting policies and beliefs imaginable, from 9 month abortions to legalizing theft. The unexpected Woke World obsession with transsexual “transitioning” is another example, though most Americans haven’t thought about it very carefully or thoroughly yet as Gallup’s polling makes clear.

The above survey, for example, is bizarre. I don’t see what morality has to do with an adult individual’s decision regarding transsexual surgery, non-surgical treatment, or “identification,” unless one is a Christian Scientist who opposes medical intervention, or someone who still subscribes to ancient religious taboos on all non-conforming sexuality and relationships. Obviously most American aren’t in either group. Those polled, and apparently those doing the polling, were seemingly using “moral” as a synonym for “ethical,” because most American are no longer taught what ethics is. They don’t know what “moral” means either.

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It’s The Wuhan Virus, And Attention Should Be Paid

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Boy, have I gotten a lot of grief for never capitulating to the thought-control demand that the contagion responsible for the pandemic, the lockdown, my business losing 45% of its income for two years (and counting), my sister wearing a mask in her car, seven-inning baseball games, an untrustworthy 2020 election and more be called the anodyne name “Covid 19,” or just “Covid” to its mask-obsessed friends. Here at Ethics Alarms, it is the Wuhan virus and always has been, because it was obvious from the start that China’s province is where this disaster (and its equally disastrous cover-up) started, but as usual of late, the mainstream media and progressives decided to use the adoption of a fair and informative name that ensures permanent responsibility, if not accountability, for millions of deaths and the savaging of the US economy for its favorite hobby of race-baiting. Yes, once again, the truth was racist, and censorship necessary because assholes incapable of rational thought would abuse facts to justify beating up and terrorizing anyone who looked Asian.

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And Another One Bites The Dust To Conform To The Woke Indoctrination Imperative…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA) chooses debate topics for high school competition and runs hundreds of high school tournaments including the annual national tournament, which started this week  in Arizona. Six thousand students from across the country will compete. The NSDA  rules are very clear that “Judges should decide the round as it is debated, not based on their personal beliefs.”

Nevertheless, Tabroom, a public database maintained by the NSDA, reveals that the organization does not enforce its rules, apparently in the interest of what progressives regard as “the greater good.” The database includes each judge’s “paradigm,” meaning what that judge regards as important in judging debating technique. (The use of jargon like “paradigm” is why I dropped out of debate club.) Does a debater speak too fast, look down when speaking, have an annoying voice, or say “uh” too much? Does he or she use too many anecdotes, rationalizations or appeals to authority? When debate competitors learn that a particular judge will be judging their performance, they need to pay heed to that judge’s priorities….which is why the presence of this judge’s “paradigm” in the database is disturbing:

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Perfect: My Legal Ethics Colleagues Want To Rig Donald Trump’s Trial…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

In a superb and spot-on essay, “Death of the Professions,” Laura Hollis writes,

The landscape of professional America should be a stalwart bastion of standards and commitment to truth. Instead, it is increasingly pockmarked by the impact craters of contemporary culture: the erosion of standards, the denial of truth, the capitulation to political pressure, and ideological lockstep borne of fear.

Ethics Alarms has tracked this accelerating phenomenon for quite a while now. Journalists and educators have been the most prominent examples, but may more are in almost as dire condition ethically: doctors, lawyers, historians, psychiatrists, and many others. I’m not including the ethics rot in pretend “professions” like acting, where, not untypically, a presenter in last night’s Tony Awards referred to Florida governor Ron DeSantis as a KKK “Grand Wizard” and got a huge ovation from the glitterati. (Morons.)

One would think that at least ethicists would be immune from this destructive malady, and, in so thinking, you would be dead wrong. I belong to an association of legal ethicists, and I estimate that at least 75% of them, probably more are Trump Deranged. Yesterday the groups’ listserv was alive with horror at the fact that Aileen M. Cannon, the federal judge assigned to the Justice Department’s criminal case against Trump, was appointed by Trump. This meant to many of my colleagues that she was unfit to preside, obviously biased, and had to be replaced. One of my favorite<cough!>participants wrote in part, “Unless I am wrong on the history, Judge Cannon is the first judge in the history of our country to be in a position to incarcerate the person who gave her her job….The fact that [Trump] appointed her is grounds for recusal. It creates an appearance of impropriety. That’s basic ethics.”

Most (again, not all) of the cyber-assembled dutifully accepted this as reasonable. It is worth recalling that the same group assailed Trump’s similarly silly complaint that a judge of Hispanic descent was unable to rule fairly on Trump’s illegal immigration policies, and my own belief that a judge in an undisclosed same sex domestic relationship should have recused himself in the case examining the Constitutionality of California’s same-sex marriage restrictions. Nobody mentioned the obvious hypocrisy, except me (they don’t like me very much), as I wrote in partial response that if a judge appointed by Trump was unethical to preside over Trump’s trial, it must also be “basic ethics” that “a judge who was appointed and confirmed by members of a party that has been openly trying to use questionable means to remove a President from first his office and later any position of political influence should not be permitted to decide whether that same individual can be in a position to take the White House from that party.”

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When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: How Could A Company Not Realize This Was Sexual Harassment?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The mind boggles; my mind, anyway. S&S Activewear, according to a lawsuit, proposed as a class action in 2020 by a group of former employees, pumped loud, “sexually graphic, violently misogynistic music” through at least five speakers across a large warehouse. Artists like Eminem and Lil Wayne were heard performing rap and hip-hop employing vulgar language, often with lyrics that described violence towards women.

One song cited was Eminem’s 2000 hit “Stan,” about an obsessed fan taking the rap star’s music so literally that he kills his pregnant girlfriend and himself by driving off a bridge. Well all righty then! Management shrugged off complaints about this junk being played in the Nevada warehouse according to the suit, in defiance of the company’s own sexual harassment policy. This fostered a hostile work environment environment where employees shared porn videos and made inappropriate remarks and gestures towards female employees. The suit claimed that the company’s HR manager told at least one woman to just ignore the music.

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OH NOOOO! Gallup Says Facism Is On The Rise In The US!!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Well, that may be a bit over-stated, though not in the parlance of the Democratic Party and its propaganda agents in the news media. What Gallup really found, in its annual survey of U.S. values and beliefs, is that social conservatism is on the rise, and has reached its highest level in a decade, since 2012. Gee…what…a…surprise…

Gallup, being, as much as it tries to fight it, also infected with partisan bias, doubletalks its explanation for charts like these:

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