1. I hate to take pleasure in anyone’s career setbacks, but...the word that CNN’s unethical media watchdog, Brian Stelter, is about to get dumped is good news for everyone but him. It also means that CNN will have rid itself of its two most flagrantly partisan and dishonest talking heads, the other being Chris Cuomo. Stelter took over “Reliable Sources” from the flawed but qualified Howard Kurtz, who had covered media conduct for the Washington Post, and at least tried to be objective (and still does at Fox.) Stelter immediately transformed the Sunday show into a CNN-fawning, Fox News-bashing epitome of what a news ethics show must not be. The last hack standing among CNN’s worst is now Don Lemon, who because he is black, gay and cute apparently is immune from his just desserts. As Meat Loaf memorably observed, however, two out of three ain’t bad.
2. Wait, what? Tim Allen isn’t the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the new Pixar film? The Buzz origin film, which has Chris Evans as the new voice of the popular character from “Toy Story” 1-4 is already creating controversy because it features a lesbian kiss. You know: that’s Disney’s way now. The movie’s director Angus MacLane “explained” that the recasting was necessary because the new animated film called for a more serious Buzz. Does anyone believe that? Allen was replaced because he’s an outspoken conservative, and Disney/Pixar wanted a star who would vigorously defend lesbian smooches in a kids movie, because that is apparently it’s priority these days. If the director wanted Buzz to sound more serious, he could direct the voice actor to voice him that way.
Market Hotel agreed to host a concert on July 8th featuring the musical stylings of attempted Reagan assassin John Hinckley, Jr., who has been released into the world on the theory that he was never technically guilty of a crime because he was insane at the time. Hinckley called the show the beginning of his “Redemption Tour,” during which he will play his songs (are those bad rip-offs of Dylan dedicated to Jodie Foster on the program?) to promote, he says, rehabilitation for formerly incarcerated criminals and the mentally ill. Continue reading →
Well that doesn’t leave much question about where CNN stands, does it? These health centers being targeted for violent attacks by the domestic terrorist group Jane’s Revenge (“If abortions aren’t safe, then neither are you”) are pregnancy clinics which help expectant mothers seek other solutions to their plight that don’t kill anything. “Anti-abortion” is an accurate and direct description of political efforts to limit abortions, but clinics are medical, not political, and are correctly called crisis pregnancy centers. CNN’s use of “anti-abortion” is a deliberate effort to rationalize the bombings. I don’t know why I’m surprised…. Continue reading →
Of course, we have seen this coming for a long time, and I will be surprised if the creeping, craven effort to erase George Washington and the legacy of the Founders from the school that now bears his name will stop; it may even accelerate.
The George Washington University Board of Trustees finally decided to discontinue the use of the school’s “Colonials” moniker based on the recommendation of —believe it or not—the “Special Committee on the Colonials Moniker.” In case you have the historical literacy of a horseshoe crab, before what is now the United States of America won its independence, it was made up of colonies, and its occupants fighting for their nascent nation were often called “colonials” because that’s what they were. These colonials were completely responsible today for the United States’ existence and everything it has achieved. The leader of the army of colonials was George Washington, and the first President of the radical new nation established by those colonials was that same great man. Thus to conclude that referring to various teams and groups associated with the educational institution named in his honor as Colonials is anything but descriptive, justified, and an honor is, to be blunt, bats.
However a gross majority of the people running the institutes of higher education in the U.S. are shallow, fearful, pandering fools, and GW’s leaders are clearly in that group. Here is the revolting statement by Board Chair Grace Speights: Continue reading →
Having begun today with a convoluted ethics quiz, I feel I owe you a straightforward one. The topic: gravestone etiquette!
The family of “Owens”—didn’t he have a first name?—coded his favorite retort “Fuck off” onto his gravestone. “It was a term he used a lot,” his daughter told a local radio station. “He was very direct: if he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t talk to you.” Wow, what a great guy! I don’t know how long it took for someone outside of the family to discover the clever <cough!> arrangement of initial letters that spelled out his cheery slogan, but the cemetery management says that it was always was against the placement of the vulgar marker. “There is no place for swearing in the place where people’s loved ones lie,” a spokesperson said. “Imagine lying next to this tombstone forever.”
Yeah, I’m lying dead in a coffin forever, but what really bothers me is “fuck off” being engraved on the headstone next door. What is this, stupid statement week? While we’re tallying up stupid, why are the letters crucial to the story blurred on that photo? If the story is about the use of “fuck,” why censor the same word in the photo?
Your SECOND Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Your head-exploding Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Should I have made Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s response when he was asked what he would tell the families of the Uvalde victims the Unethical Quote of the Week or an Ethics Quiz?
This is what Paxton said:
“I believe god always has a plan. Life is short, no matter what it is.”
Personally, that response infuriated me. I have no idea how it would strike someone who is religious, which I am not, nor can I be certain how a parent of child who had died in the shooting would react to it. In my estimation, it is a stunningly unethical quote: facile, lazy, dismissive and incompetent.
Paxton is an elected law enforcement officer, the highest ranking in the state. The massacre was, among other horrible things, a massive failure of law enforcement. Paxton’s response, if he had the wit, wisdom and courage to deliver one at all, had to address that aspect of the tragedy, because that’s his job and alleged area of expertise. He wasn’t being asked about the shooting as a spiritual advisor, though I find the “God works in mysterious ways” reflex balm for every tragedy insulting when it comes from the Pope, never mind anyone else. Continue reading →
I don’t care about Amber Heard and I don’t care about Johnny Depp. However, when a celebrity says something this stunningly stupid, attention must be paid.
During an “exclusive interview” on NBC regarding her humiliating loss in her defamation trial versus her ex-spouse Johnny Depp, Heard was asked to comment on the fact that Depp’s lawyer said in his closing argument that Heard was “acting” and gave “a performance of a lifetime.” “What do you say to that?”
Heard’s response: “Said the lawyer of a man who convinced the world that he had scissors for fingers.”
Wait, what? Was anyone over the age of six convinced that Depp really had scissors for fingers, much less “the world”? This is the woman whose allegations “must be believed” and that #MeToo warriors found credible? What kind of thought process would permit someone to think that was a reasonable response to utter on television? If that’s how she thinks, then nothing, literally no fantasy, delusion or distortion is beyond her reach.
I just had to get this out of my brain or, like Louis Black’s story about an over-heard inexplicable comment at a restaurant triggering a fatal aneurysm, it might have festered and killed me.
The January 6 Commission, as many have pointed out, branded itself as nothing more than an extension of all the “Get Trump and Punish His Allies!” plots, lies an and conspiracies that began almost from the moment he was elected. The mark was indelible as soon as Nancy Pelosi refused to allow any Republican to participate who had not already proved to be a NeverTrumper, eager to pin something on the ex-President. Lots of investigations are called witch hunts in Washington, D.C., but this really is one: the goal is to keep digging until the commission finds something new to use as a metaphorical stake to thrust into Trump’s political heart. This is, of course, unethical. deciding that someone must be guilty of something and spending more than a year and millions of dollars to figure out what is the essence of unethical prosecution as well as totalitarian instincts.
I keep wondering when the public will figure out just how rotten the exercise is. Televising the fiasco in prime time may well be a major blunder.
I missed a couple of major ethics landmarks by skipping the ethics round-ups the past few days, so let’s catch up, beginning with today. The Ethics Alarms UK contingent has been AWOL from the comment wars of late, but this one’s for them: In 1215, after England’s rotten King John (you know, Robin Hood and all that) had been breaching tradition and law across the land, the barons rose up in rebellion. John, preferring to compromise rather than fight, agreed to sign a document requiring the king to guarantee rights and privileges as well as the freedom of the church. On June 15, 1215, at Runnymede on the Thames, King John set his seal to the Articles of the Barons, which was formally issued as the Magna Carta. It actually did little to restrain John and other British tyrants, but by standing for the principle that a king’s power could be limited by law, it laid the foundation for our own Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Clause 39, for example, stated that “no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or [dispossessed] or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimised…except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”
On June 13,1966, the Warren Court announced its landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. This was important, but the Supreme Court should not have been the body to compose the now iconic warning, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you.” A clearer example of legislating from the bench would be hard to find, and though the words were clear and well-conceived, they represent an abuse of power and role.
TV writers will be eternally grateful, however.
1. Well, she’s good at grandstanding, we knew that…Yesterday, Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a permanent member of the Ethics Alarms Hall of Unethical Officials since she directed that “Black Lives Matter” be painted on a D.C. street, hadg 51-star flags hung along Pennsylvania Avenue. She thus violated the United States flag code passed in 1947, which states, “The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.”
“Ahead of Flag Day, I directed our team to hang 51-star flags along Pennsylvania Avenue as a reminder to Congress and the nation that the 700,000 tax-paying American citizens living in Washington, DC demand to be recognized,” she wrote in a statement. “On Flag Day, we celebrate American ideals, American history, and American liberty. But the very foundation of those ideals, and the basis for our liberty, is representation.” Bowser is correct that the residents of D.C. deserve representation in Congress, but this is not ancient Greece, and city-states don’t belong here. The reasonable solution has always been either for the District to get a voting member or more in the House of Representatives, or, better yet, to become part of Maryland. If DC politicians would drop the non-starting demand to be the 51st state, there might be a workable compromise. DC mayors, however, especially this one, like grandstanding better.
