Author: Jack Marshall

The Curse Of The 10-Year-Old Rape Victim

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Democrats really are relying on the Dobbs decision and the substantial blood-lust among a large segment of their constituencies for maximizing dead fetuses to rescue the 2022 mid-term elections from what should be, by all measures, a catastrophe for the Woke. Wow. Running primarily on abortion as the #1 national issue would be bizarre under any circumstances—it is, after all, a matter that specifically involves the ending of innocent human lives—but doing so this year, when so many other problems concern American citizens more than making it as easy as possible to off living human beings in wombs, is particularly weird. But then, as EA has noted before, it’s all the Democrats have other than claiming that Republicans are fascists while they act and talk like…fascists.

The rest is deny, deny, deny: The economy is wonderful! The border is secure! Gas prices aren’t that high, and you should be buying electric cars anyway! Crime surge? What crime surge? “Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,” as the King of Siam would say.

The depressing thing is that for close to 50% of our under-educated, misinformed, gullible and dim population, this pathetic platform of rationalizations and lies will be enough, and their response will be, “Sound good to me!” It is the pro-abortion arguments, however, that are particularly outrageous. Yesterday Ethics Alarms noted an op-ed by a physician that called a procedure unrelated to ending a pregnancy “an abortion.” Yahoo! offered an article this week headlined, “America is facing a diaper crisis, and the anti-abortion movement is making it worse.” Such warped utilitarian logic is supposed to carry Democrats, if not to victory in November, at least to a less crushing defeat. Good luck with that. This is a party with no shame in 2022.

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Ethics Quiz: The Cartoon Quote

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

I would, left to my own instincts, categorize this as a “When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring” episode. But Legal Insurrection, a conservative commentary blog that I find to be usually reasonable, feels otherwise, so I’ll frame this as an ethics quiz.

Robert Ternansky, a lecturer at UC-San Diego, was interrupted by loud speaking  from the hallway outside his classroom. Ternansky walked into the hallway and seeing students he took to be Hispanic, immediately quoted the signature catch phrases of now politically incorrect Warner Bros. cartoon character Speedy Gonzalez, “The Fastest Mouse in All of Mexico”: “Sí, sí señor! Ándale, ándale! Arriba, arriba!”The video of the class also catches Ternansky  asking his students, “How do you say ‘quiet’ in Mexican?” One replies, it seems, “Caliente,” and the lecturer says,  “Caliente, huh? Help me. All I knew how to say was ‘Ándale, ándale, arriba, arriba.’ I don’t think that was — to be quiet? That’s like hurry up? Did I insult them?”

Apparently! Students complained, and the school responded with this statement:

UC San Diego officials were recently made aware of offensive and hurtful comments that a professor made in a chemistry class when video of the comments was posted to social media. At that time, the professor was engaged about his comments, and it was made clear to him that they do not reflect our community values of inclusivity and respect. The professor has since apologized to the students and will be doing so to others involved.

As a reminder to our community, and as was shared with media outlets who inquired, UC San Diego is committed to the highest standards of civility and decency toward all. We are committed to promoting and supporting a community where all people can work and learn together in an atmosphere free of abusive or demeaning treatment.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is, in the words of Legal Insurrection writer Mike LaChance…

“Does this strike anyone as a bit of an overreaction?”

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“1776” Actress Sara Porkalob Is An Ethics Dunce And Should Be Fired

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The new, non-traditionally cast, “diversity”-pandering revival of “1776” is about to open on Broadway. Ethics Alarms already discussed it here: the production seems like a cynical, misguided, truly terrible idea that is likely to crash and burn, but as I wrote last month, “I hope the result is brilliant and illuminating.” I also wrote, “What I see, however, is a cynical abortion of a classic musical motivated by arrogance, ignorance, and greed.” In other words, the thing has a lot of self-inflicted problems standing in the way of critical and financial success, nicely symbolized by the photo above of an Asian-American woman playing slaveholding Continental Congress member Edward Rutledge singing “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” in the musical’s most dramatic scene. As a stage director and American history fanatic, I don’t see how having that song performed by someone who can’t evoke Rutledge in any way does anything but undermine the best song in the show. But hey, you never know.

One thing the radical production doesn’t need, however, is for that same performer to trash the production publicly. Here is “Rutledge,” Sara Porkalob, in an interview with Vulture’s Jason P. Frank:

“To me, the play is a relic. It is a dusty, old thing… On the inside, I’m cringing… I’m like, It’s okay. I wouldn’t have wanted it this way, but I am doing my job….[The direction] is horrible. I hate it… What I want to do with my time is make new works with collaborators…I feel like I’m going to work.”

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Annals Of The Great Stupid; San Francisco Educators Shocked To Discover That Admitting Unqualified Students To A Academically Challenging School Results In Lower Average Grades

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

This tale is classic Great Stupid, and, as is the well-established the pattern, it arose from the increasingly deluded American Left. It isn’t bias to note this; it is only stating reality. Utopian progressives defund the police, and are shocked when crime rates soar. They eliminate bail, and are stunned when freed crime suspects commit more crimes. They restrict domestic production of oil, and are gobsmacked when gas prices spike. They decriminalize theft of items under $900, and are puzzled that mobs pick retail stores clean. These are just some of the more recent examples. The same cult mocked marriage, fidelity and social strictures that disapproved of promiscuous sex, and now two parent families are disappearing while the majority of African-Americans are born to couples with no commitment to each other. Who could have predicted such developments?

Oh, only anyone who thought objectively about causes and effects for more than five minutes, that’s all. But I digress. San Francisco is the current topic, arguably the beating heart of The Great Stupid.

San Francisco’s Lowell High school was regarded as one of the best public high schools in the nation. Admission to the school was based on a merit-based system, resting on  middle school grades and test scores. In 2020, however, not letting the pandemic crisis go to to waste, the San Francisco Board of Education members voted to base admissions to the school on a lottery for the 2021–22 school year, eliminating merit and achievement as criteria entirely. Diversity! Pleased with themselves, the school board voted in February 2021 to make the  change permanent.

What happened? Oh come on, guess. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Virginia Delegate Elizabeth Guzman (D)

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

It will be difficult to choose the most trans-propaganda-deranged progressive Democrat before The Great Stupid runs its wacky course, but Elizabeth Guzman will have to be in the finals. She is introducing a bill in the Virginia legislature based on the crackers theory that parents and guardians failing to support the gender identity declared by a minor child is child abuse and a crime. Brilliant!

Yes, it’s come to this. How many Democratic voters are that far gone? I’m almost afraid to ask.

The woman is, in technical terms, nuts. She wants it to be an arrestable offense for parents to tell children, “No, you are not a different sex than what your external organs suggest, but if you still feel this way after you are old enough to know your ass from your elbow and have had a chance to think for yourself instead of being indoctrinated by your irresponsible teachers the LGTBQ activist mob, we can talk about this.” She’s a menace.

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Baseball, The Play-Offs, And Integrity

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

If the New York Yankees lose to the Cleveland ‘What’s Their Names?’ —Oh, right, “Guardians”…I forgot—tonight, it will eliminate New York and mean that only one of the teams proven by the 162 game regular 2022 season to be the best in Major League Baseball will have survived the early rounds of the play-offs to have a chance at the World Series. Over the weekend the L.A. Dodgers, owners of a record-tying 111-51 record in winning the National League West, were eliminated by the San Diego Padres, who finished a distant second in that division, not even winning 90 games. It took just three defeats (out of four games played) to sink L.A. Before that, the Philadelphia Phillies, a team that had been so mediocre for the bulk of the season that its manager was fired, eliminated last year’s World Series Champions and the winner of the Phillies’ division (over a 100 game winning runner-up: Philadelphia was a distant third).

If the Yankees go down (I’m rooting for that to happen, but I shouldn’t be), only the Houston Astros of the five teams that were objectively baseball’s best will have a chance to make the World Series, and that’s an ethical disaster. The World Series was devised to decide the best baseball team in the game, and for about seven decades, that’s what it did. Unlike all the other professional sports teams that polluted their post-season with multiple play-off levels, baseball alone had integrity. The teams with the best records in the American and National Leagues met for the first and only time in a season at the very end, in a best of seven, winner take all series. The system was meaningful, it was exciting, and it had integrity. Continue reading →

Mayberry Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

A theme here at ethics alarms is that ethics, unlike morality, is fluid and dynamic. Society gains in ethical enlightenment over time with reflection and experience.

Since I have been severely limited in my activity of late, I found myself watching an episode of the classic sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show.” Many, indeed most, of the popular shows from the Fifties-Sixties era feel stilted and naive today, but not all of them: “The Andy Griffith Show” is one that holds up beautifully. Like many TV shows then (but few today), the continuing saga of Sheriff Andy Taylor’s challenges as a single dad and the center of sanity in a small town full of Southern eccentrics often focused on societal values and ethics lessons, though it never crossed into preachiness.

The episode I happened across, “One Punch Opie,” was about peer pressure and bullying. A new kid in town is bullying the other children to do things they shouldn’t, like raid Mr. Foley’s fruit and vegetable stands outside his store and steal apples and tomatoes. When Opie (the then-unbearably cute Ron Howard) refuses to follow the gang, the much larger kid threatens him. Opie ultimately confronts the boy who quickly proves that he is a coward, and backs down, ending his malign influence over the other boys.

The bullying theme was not what struck me about the episode, however. The new kid breaks a street lamp with an apple, and Sheriff Andy has Opie round up the other boys who witnessed the crime so he can have a chat with them. (The troublemaking new kid refuses to come along.) The boys all say they witnessed the act, but didn’t throw the fateful fruit. Andy tells them that he’ll let their error in judgment go this time, but the next time, he’ll tell their fathers. “And you know what that means,” Andy says. “It means you’ll get a whippin’!”

Yes, in 1962, a wise and reliably benign TV authority figure casually referenced corporal punishment—probably with a belt, no less, as Andy didn’t say “spanking”—- as a fact of childhood and responsible parenting. Nobody blinked. Sixty years later, such a statement would cause an uproar, and be considered an endorsement of child abuse.

What accepted conduct today will seem equally wrongful in sixty years?

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/17/22: “It Isn’t What It Is” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I want to thank everyone who sent good wishes and good advice last week, which was a multi-level disaster here on all fronts. It drives me crazy, but I’m just going to resign myself to the reality that there will be no catching up on all the issues I wanted to write about and should have posted on here. Ethics stories and their related issues are relentless, and I’m still limited in the amount of time and energy I can devote to Ethics Alarms while sitting, typing and thinking are still painful. And I’m just going to try to stop obsessing about blog traffic. To hell with it…if a week of lighter than usual content chases readers away, that’s their problem.

1. On polls and manipulation The New York Times thinks it’s headline-worthy that their latest poll shows Republicans with an edge going into next month’s mid-term elections. This is because the overwhelmingly Democratic Party-allied pollsters have been desperately trying to convince their client’s supporters that all is well with obviously rigged, incompetent and biased surveys. There would literally be no historical precedent for Democrats not getting slaughtered in the upcoming elections. We have been watching a year-long disinformation campaign and an epic example of the Left’s “It isn’t what it is” gaslighting addiction on a grand scale. It’s more than just unethical: it is Orwellian, and that’s another reason the Democrats deserve to lose, and lose big.

Of the Times, Ann Althouse writes (so I don’t have to):

I’ve seen so many articles in the NYT that seem designed to enthuse Democrats. I’m heartily sick of them, and the efforts are ludicrous. They’re not even effective at doing this thing I don’t think the NYT should be doing.

Do you think the Times will ever figure out that they shouldn’t be doing this because it’s not journalism?

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Addendum…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This post should be seen as a footnote to the previous one, expressing gratitude that the Axis of Unethical Conduct (that’s the “resistance”, Democrats and the mainstream media alliance we have been watching attempting to strangle the democratic process since 2015, if not earlier) is now not even trying to disguise its methods and motives. The Wisconsin Senate race is another close one, and the media is as desperate as Democrats to keep the Senate in Democratic hands, making the defeat of incumbent Republican Ron Johnson Ron Johnson greatly to be wished. And thus, for the Greater Good and because the ends justifies the means, the august New York Times threw all standards of reporting objectivity to the winds and simply announced that Johnson is a poopy-head and his opponent is, as Lina Lamont would say, “a shimmering, glowing star in the political firmament.”

That’s not journalism. That’s campaigning, and cheap campaigning at that. “Leading peddler of disinformation” according to whom? Does Johnson lead Joe Biden? Adam Schiff? Donald Trump? AOC? Facts please! Evidence! Nah, none of that is forthcoming: this is just a “Vote Democrat” tweet, devoid of anything but naked partisan loyalty. NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham responded that “The New York Times is a leading peddler of misinformation.”

Indeed,

What’s going on here? Well, the Times assumes most of its Twitter followers are progressive partisans who won’t mind the paper exposing its increasingly obvious and destructive bias. They are probably right about that, but fairer Americans are paying attention. Why would anyone trust a news source that would allow something like that tweet to go out under its banner?

The self-banned commenter who hung out here for a while making excuses for the Times would doubtlessly say, “Oh, come on. So some low-level intern or someone similar screwed up. It doesn’t prove the Times is biased.” It proves that the Times doesn’t respect it readers, the public, its profession or its mission enough to take proper care regarding how its power and influence are wielded and who wields it. The fact that the Times hasn’t publicly rebuked whoever was responsible for that tweet and apologized to all, including Sen. Johnson tells us all we need to know, not that those of us who have been paying attention didn’t know it long ago.

A MSM Reporter Who Delivered Objective, Ethical Journalism Is Openly Attacked For It

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Good!

Almost as infuriating as the unholy alliance between a totalitarianism-aspiring political party and the large majority of the news media determined to play Pravda is the persistent denial that such an alliance exists despite mountains of daily evidence. (It’s a right wing conspiracy theory, you know.) This episode, small as it might seem, shows both reporters and Democrats outing themselves.

NBC reporter Dasha Burns commented on the air that Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman appeared to have trouble understanding their conversation prior to their interview, because his closed caption device allowing him to read questions in text while she was asking them wasn’t on yet.

This kind of information used to be known as “reporting,” back when journalists saw their jobs as informing the public about objective facts they needed to know. But Fetterman, who is still recovering from the effects of a major stroke that would have prompted an ethical candidate to withdraw from a Senate race is going to great lengths to avoid letting the public know how serious his comprehension and communications problems are. Naturally, his party, desperate to hold on to control of the Senate, wants to keep Pennsylvania voters in the dark as well. Also naturally, the mainstream progressive media, of which NBC is a card-carrying member, is expected to assist in this deception, and certainly not undermine it with that old-fashioned “reporting” stuff.

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