Bad decision, bad opinion, bad judge.
As regular readers here know, I strongly favor capital punishment, but only when there is no doubt whatsoever about the facts and the guilt of the convicted defendant, when the crime is so cruel, horrific and premeditated that normal murders seem tame in comparison, and when the procedural due process is followed to the letter.
Today is the anniversary of a heart-warming ethics story that seems especially bitter today. Worse, it had a terrible ending.
1983 on April 25, Russian leader Yuri Andropov released the letter he had written to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Maine. She had sent him a letter the previous December asking if the Soviet Union was planning to start a nuclear war. Andropov’s response assured her said that Russian people wanted to “live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on the globe, no matter how close or far away they are, and, certainly, with such a great country as the United States of America.” He added, “Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are endeavoring and doing everything so that there will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at all on earth.”
It was a propaganda and public relations stunt, of course. President Reagan had the Soviets on the defensive as the Cold War was at another peak; he had called the USSR an “evil empire,” and was increasing defense spending. Sending a kind, avuncular letter to a fearful child was a no-brainer. The adviser who came up with the idea probably got extra food rations.
Smith accepted Andropov’s invitation and flew to the Soviet Union with her parents. The episode turned her into an international celebrity and an adorable advocate for peace. Smith had natural charm and charisma, allowing her to be an appealing speaker and to begin an acting career, landing a role on TV series. She also wrote a children’s book, all of this before she was out of junior high.
In August 1985, Samantha Smith died in a plane crash at the age of 13.
1 Just bite me, Microsoft. Microsoft Word now has a “diversity” category in its document editing softwear. It just told me that I shouldn’t write “Mrs.” and that the “correct” word was “Ms.” I was writing about a domestic abuse lawsuit, and “Mrs.” was the appropriate title. Political correctness policing isn’t “proofreading.”
2. Speaking of masks...
…and the tweet, “I don’t give a damn what some grossly unqualified Donald Trump judge said, I’m double masked and wearing goggles on this Nashville to DC flight,” Martin tweeted. “I had COVID in December. Y’all can KISS MY ASS about me not wanting it again. And any fool saying they don’t matter is a damn liar.”
And the goggles, you ass? Meanwhile, social media sleuths quickly found another photo of Martin two weeks ago in a group where neither he nor anyone else was masked. As for U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, her credentials as a legal scholar are impeccable. Martin is an unethical journalist who knows nothing about the law, but he can brink Donald Trump into any subject.
3. Gee, can you think of any other reason, you lying, cowardly hack? In an interview on “60 Minutes” FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed that there was a 59% increase in the murders of police officers in 2021, with 73 officers killed. CBS News’ Scott Pelley asked what caused the surge of homicides, and Wray said, “Certainly the pandemic didn’t help. There’s a variety of ways in which that contributed to it.”
The fact that the mainstream media, the Democratic Party’s mayors and officials and BLM-bootlicking corporate lackeys spent months painting police as murderous racists had nothing to do with it, of course.
4. Aaaand one of the states that helped get some of those police killed just saw passed a law banning the word “marijuana” from official state law and documents. Democratic Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill into law in March. Why, you ask? Listen to the bill’s sponsor: “The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist,” Washington state Representative Melanie Morgan (D) said during testimony regarding the piece of legislation she sponsored. “As recreational marijuana use became more popular, it was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants,” she said. “Even though it seems simple because it’s just one word, the reality is we’re healing the wrongs that were committed against Black and Brown people around cannabis.” There is not now nor has there been in my lifetime any negative racial implications to the word “marijuana,” and I hereby pledge to never again uses any synonym for the corrupting and destructive drug. Marijuana it is, and nothing but. I request that all EA commenters observe this custom as well.
5. BREAKING! Elon Musk has taken over Twitter. Once that’s final, I will one again get on the platform, which I ditched in protest of its ham-handed, partisan double standards.
Musk is a weird guy whose ethics are suspect, but this is a positive development for free speech and social media accountability.
No “echo chamber” we, so it is appropriate to include as a Comment of the Day Curmie’s vigorous dissent on the current conflict between Disney and Florida, particularly its ambition conservative governor Ron De Santis.
So here it is…in response to the post, DeSantis Strikes Back: Ethics Dunce Disney Gets The Legal And Ethical Consequences It Deserved…
Unlike you, Jack, I am neither a lawyer not an ethicist. The closest I’ve ever been to the former was being unofficially “pre-law” for about the first two and a half years of undergrad; the closest I’ve ever been to the latter is that you’ve called me ethical a couple of times. So forgive me if I have trouble discerning the line between that which is legal and that which is ethical.
Perhaps the terms of the agreement between the state and the corporation are akin to trademark laws: that Florida must aggressively defend its prerogatives or be in danger of losing them. But this doesn’t seem like something any corporate CEO would agree to. And I think we can take as given that Governor DeSantis would not be criticizing any corporation that publicly supported his position because they didn’t stay in their lane, even though the level of interference in public policy would be the same. No, it would be the progressives who’d have their collective skivvies in a twist in that case.
More to the point, Disney began their dissent, at least, while the bill was still under consideration. They were, in fact, arguing in favor of the status quo—when there was no law—a position that can hardly be regarded as interfering with the state, only with one party’s agenda. That they didn’t suddenly change their position when the bill became law doesn’t seem very problematic.
Moreover, it strikes me that educational policy is literally everyone’s business. I’m semi-retired now and not currently scheduled to teach at all in the fall, so I have no direct personal interest in what’s being taught in 3rd grade—these will never be my students—but I hope to be around long enough to be affected by their ability to vote or even to run for office… or to become doctors, lawyers, artists, or whatever. Yeah, I care what happens in that 3rd grade classroom. Continue reading
That was the ethics week that was…
Here are five highlights from the previous 7 days’ commentary…
More evidence that Dr. Fauci is a blight on the government and the nation.
Ridiculous Congressman, complex issue…
The first of many posts related to this still-roiling controversy.
An epic instance of a bad and biased journalist and an unethical enabling newspaper
Come for the party, stay for the link to Part 2…
“Curmie,” whose lively and erudite blog has been a favorite of mine for many years, weighed in on Ethics Alarms with his usual force on several substantial issues last week. Here is his first of two Comments of the Day (the other will be along shortly), both involving Florida controversies. This one takes off from the post, “Ethics Verdict: Non-Math Propaganda Does Not Belong In Math Textbooks”…
Meh.
Certainly the injection of any kind of political agenda into elementary school math textbooks is a significant problem. Or at least it would be, if it actually happened on anything like a regular basis. What I find most interesting about this case is the fact that neither Governor DeSantis nor anyone on the Board of Education has (yet, as I write this) shown an example of the offending material from any of the books that have been sanctioned. I presumed that since the list of books has indeed been made public, numerous such examples will soon be forthcoming. Then we can make an informed judgment. Except, of course, now the governor is claiming the specifics are “proprietary information” as publishers weigh possible appeals to the rejections. Were I of a cynical disposition (perish the thought!), I might suggest that that delay ought to get him past the November elections. [JM Note: Subsequent to Curmie’s comment, some examples of varying persuasiveness (see above) were made public.]
What we have by way of example, at least that I can find, is an obviously absurd question that appeared on a homework sheet in a Missouri school. Back when I was blogging more regularly, I’d write about similarly stupid assignments several times a year. I’ve got to yield here to Florida State Representative Carlos Smith’s observation that “The best his [DeSantis’s] propaganda machine could do was deflect to a Missouri district that apologized for a homework assignment they didn’t approve.” Importantly, the worksheet was pulled from a website, not a textbook. So we can’t blame McGraw-Hill or Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt for that particular outrageousness. Continue reading
Sometimes it all seems too much to bear. When I stumble upon something like this, I feel like smashing my head with a croquet mallet enough times to reduce my brain function to that of Margorie Taylor Greene or Cori Bush, and spending the rest of my days watching “Three’s Company” re-runs. Then I decide to write a post, and realize that once again, the most appropriate graphic is the “Blazing Saddles” “You know: morons” video clip. I could use that clip on ten posts a day now. More. Why do I bother writing this blog if insane ideological extremism is making the culture, society and public dumber by the second?
But I digress.
Let me tell you a story…
The New York Time Book Review this week includes a review by novelist Mitchell S. Jackson of Elizabeth Alexander’s book “The Trayvon Generation.” I haven’t read the book itself, but it’s goals and orientation are clear from the review by Jackson. Jackson is, like Alexander, a Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory endorsing activist. If I were editing a book review supplement, I would think it mandatory to assign a reviewer to Alexander’s work who wasn’t so obviously predisposed to agree with her views and praise them, but that’s just not how the Times rolls these days. But this isn’t the point of my post.
This is: in the middle of his review, Alexander wrote—and the Times printed—
Never forget — on Feb. 26, 2012, a hella overzealous volunteer neighborhood watch captain named George Zimmerman stalked and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
Never forget — on July 13, 2013, a jury acquitted Zimmerman, an egregious verdict that fomented the Black Lives Matter movement into being.
Today is Easter in the Greek Orthodox Church. Different calendar, you know. Our family, with my mother a member of that church and my father a Methodist, celebrated Easter on the Roman Catholic date (unless the two Easters converged, which sometimes happens), presumably to allow my sister and I to be in sync with the wider culture’s Easter celebrations, and also because dying eggs many colors was a lot more fun than dying them all deep, dark red, which is the Greek custom. The Easter egg is symbolic of the tomb Jesus was in before the Resurrection; dyeing eggs red symbolizes Christ’s blood. Cracking a dyed egg is supposed to symbolize Jesus emerging from the tomb. On Greek Easter, everyone plays tsougrima (“clinking together)”with the red-dyed eggs. One player holds a red egg and taps it against another player’s egg, and the loser is the one whose egg cracks. Then the Easter egg warrior with the unbroken egg uses the same end of his or her egg to try to crack the other end of their opponent’s egg. While the participants do this, one says “Christos Anesti!” (“Christ has risen!”) and the other celebrant responds “Alithos Anesti!” (“Indeed He has risen!”). The Marshalls played the egg game with the regular multi-colored Easter eggs, and on non-Greek Easter. My mother never explained the symbolism of it all to us; she just liked cracking eggs. I assumed everyone did it, Greek or not. As in all competitions, Mom was ruthless at tsougrima.
Incidentally, it was considered unethical to strike an opponent’s egg in the side rather than the end, and doing so meant you forfeited the game.
1. “Go woke, go broke,” or at least become irrelevant. The stock plunges of both Disney and Netflix are at least substantially related to their imposing progressive and partisan propaganda on the substantial percentage of their market that doesn’t want to have such positions rammed down their metaphorical throats. Honors-bestowing organizations like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Nobel Prize have seen the perception of their credibility and integrity fall mightily after attaching political requirements to their awards. Now an open letter signed by dozens of professional journalism organizations, nonprofits, and labor unions asks the Pulitzer Prizes to require newsrooms to participate in the News Leaders Association’s annual diversity survey (or similar) by 2024 in order to be considered for their journalism awards. I have no doubt that the Pulitzers will capitulate to this plan to make only left-driven organizations eligible for honors in journalism, for the prizes are already heavily tilted ideologically: recall that the New York Times and its racist reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones were rewarded for the fake history-spreading “1619” project. On the other hand, because of that and similar fiascos, the Pulitzers have lost much of their sheen already.
Yikes.
Weatherford College pitcher Owen Woodward was kicked off the team after he attacked the opposing player who had just hit a home run off him.
Weatherford College said in a statement, “The WC student in question will face potential disciplinary action from the Office of Student Services up to and possibly including expulsion. The Weatherford College Police Department is also investigating the incident and has taken statements.”
We are shocked and disappointed at what happened in our game today,” the team’s coach said in a statement. “We do not condone this type of behavior. We have worked hard to build a program with the highest of standards. We are completely embarrassed by this incident, and we apologize to North Central Texas College and the fans of WC baseball. This type of behavior cannot be tolerated.”
Why yes, tackle baseball has never really caught on.
Even Ralph Branca, who was the pitcher in this most crushing of all home runs, didn’t stoop to that…
1. NPR reported that “DeSantis wanted to punish Disney. Repealing its tax status may hurt taxpayers instead. The bill will undercut Disney’s autonomy, but it could impose a steep cost on Orange and Osceola counties, where the theme park is located. The two counties would inherit the Disney district’s debts, which officials say would result in higher taxes.” This theme was echoed—talk about echo chambers!–all over the mainstream media, and it appears to be nonsense, an attempt to undermine the decision and to mislead the public. “Officials” turned out to be a single Orange County Democrat, so the plural was fake news as well as a dishonest appeal to authority. In addition, the only entity certain to see a tax hike as a result of the loss of Disney’s special status will be Disney because its tax break is gone. And why would Florida be on the hook for Disney’s debts? Disney borrowed the money, and Disney still has the cash to pay them off. [Source: Don Surber]
2. On the incompetence and irresponsible conduct front, Disney’s action’s mandate this standard Ethics Alarms clip in reference to the company’s woke CEO…
Since it impetuously shot off its public declaration of opposition to the Florida Parental Rights Law, Disney’s stock has dropped precipitously, costing the company nearly $50 billion in value. This hurts stockholders obviously, and constitutes a needless self-inflicted wound. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 