Author: Jack Marshall

Why Doesn’t Ethics Alarms Trust Breitbart? This Is Why…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

banned

Here is a headline that popped up on Breitbart, the conservative propaganda and opinion website:

“CNN Poll: Democrats’ Hold over Congress Has Grown Increasingly Fragile”

What would you assume that a poll justifying such a headline would show? You would think that it polled likely voters, and that it showed a majority of them currently planning on voting Republican in the upcoming 2022 elections, right?

“By far-left CNN’s estimates, congressional Democrats are not in very good standing for the 2022 midterm elections,” the article begins. Then we learn that “When asked, ‘If the elections for Congress were being held today, which party’s candidate would you vote for in your Congressional district?’ 45 percent of registered voters chose a Democrat candidate and 44 percent chose a Republican candidate.” The current partisan divide on Capital Hill has both the House and the Senate divided almost 50-50, with Democrats and Republicans being evenly divided in the Senate, and only holding a margin of 10 in the House, which has 435 seats. That’s a margin of 2.2%.

You can play with the figures, but essentially the poll shows exactly the same partisan split that currently exists.

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Fick Sighting In Advice Column Land

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

leroy-fick

Leroy Fick died in June, but not before gaining a small measure of ethics immortality by giving his name to an Ethics Alarms term of art. In 2011, Leroy happily admitted that he had continued to collect public assistance after winning $2 million dollars in the Michigan lottery because a loophole in the law allowed him to do so. Thus his name was originally attached to those guilty of especially despicable, anti-social conduct. Eventually, the definition was refined to mean “unethical people who openly and blatantly violates social norms of responsibility, honesty or fairness without shame or remorse.”

That’s Leroy in the photo above. Ficks lack ethics alarms, so it will not surprise you to learn that many of them end up in jail. Leroy did.

Now comes Bennett Madison, writing on the repeatedly ethically inert site Gawker, boasting about deceiving advice columnists and their trusting reader in an article titled, “Help! I Couldn’t Stop Writing Fake Dear Prudence Letters That Got Published.” Fick.

He writes,

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9/11 Ethics Dunces: The Principal And The President

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Biden mask

No, the Ethics Dunce President of the headline isn’t Joe Biden, despite the photo above of him bizarrely lowering his mask to shout at someone during the 9-11 ceremony. Does Joe even know how masks are supposed to work? If he doesn’t understand that, what business does he have dictating how citizens need to protect themselves and others from the Wuhan virus

? Anyway, it’s not Joe, and it’s not Clinton or Obama either. No, it’s not even Donald Trump, though accepting cash to provide live commentary along with his son on a pay-per-view stunt fight between 58-year-old Evander Holyfield (retired for a decade) and a 44-year-old mixed martial artist, Vitor Belfort on the 20th anniversary of the attacks is about as undignified an activity by a former POTUS as I can imagine. It’s—drum-roll!— George W. Bush!

But I’ll get to him in a minute, first let’s identify the unethical principal.

That would be the principal of Eastlake High School in Sammamish, Washington—Oh! Washington! It all makes sense now!— Chris Bede, who cancelled a Patriot’s Day theme at the school’s football game the day before the 20th anniversary. Students wanted to do something to commemorate the tragedy, and were prepared to wear red, white and blue.

Oh NO! The colors of the AMERICAN FLAG!

After conferring with staff, however, Bede put the kibosh on the tribute. “Our leadership teachers made this decision and explained it to students,” Bede wrote. “I know tomorrow is 9/11 and understand the sacrifice and values our flag represents, but I think they just did not want to unintentionally cause offense to some who see it differently.”

You know, like all those students in the Al Qida and “1619” clubs.

The principal is a weenie and an idiot, and cannot be trusted to oversee koi pond feeding, much less education.

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Comment Of The Day: “Post-Labor Day Ethics Laments, 9/7/21” (Item #1, The Baseball Player’s Long Paternity Leave)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

alex-verdugo-girlfriend-2021-2-600x600

The Comment of the Day below is really two consecutive comments in the same thread, as Sarah B. argues that fathers are not only justified in leaving their jobs at critical times to be with their wives at childbirth and thereafter for as long as they deem necessary, but that this is the most ethical choice. My note prompting her response involved the case of Red Sox star Alex Verdugo, who left the team at a crucial time when the season hung in the balance, and stayed away for four days to be with his girlfriend and their new-born child: there is no indication that he provided anything but companionship and moral support.

(I just learned that he is not married to the mother (above). No, I don’t think that changes the ethics issue, though it raises others.)

I stated that this was a breach of his duty to the team, which he is paid handsomely to respect. I am quite certain that this is the correct ethical position, but my view represents the resolution of an ethics conflict, where two ethical principles oppose one another. I can’t say that how Sarah prioritizes these principles is wrong, only that I would prioritize them differently, and have in analogous situations.

Here is Sarah B’s Comment of the Day on #1 from the post, “Post-Labor Day Ethics Laments, 9/7/21.” I will have a few rebuttal points at the end…

***

“The priorities are linked, but still need to be ranked and four days is nothing. Heck, if my husband only got four days after the birth of our children, unless his absence from me would literally cause someone to die, I’d give him the choice of his job or his family. If we want men to step up and be good husbands and fathers (which would do amazing things for our society) we need to let them do that. Considering what a woman’s body goes through with the birth of a child and the incredible amount of healing she must do after the fact, four days barely lets a mom get home from the hospital (having had complication-free natural births has led to us getting to go home on day three at my hospital) and set up a good feeding schedule for the first kid (my best kid so far took two weeks before we got the bugs worked out enough for their health and mine). Subsequent kids require so much more because of the need to care for the older children too. The fact of being in high levels of pain for every action and dealing with incredible dizziness for days lead to a new mom being a literal danger to herself and the baby (not to mention any other kids) if left alone. According to my OBs, that condition is totally normal, even expected.

“Due to the danger, new moms are forbidden from lifting their own child or walking with the child in their arms in my hospital. My hospital also asks about the support a mother can expect for at least two weeks post baby before they will even let the child go home with the mother. Sure, a lot of us rely on other family members for that second (or third or fourth week), but the dad has to be there in the beginning if he wants to start himself off on a good foot of proper prioritization of responsibility. Most marriages I have seen where a dad does not give totally of himself for 1-2 weeks after a baby are at best strained. The mother needs support, and who is best able and most desired to give that support, but the father of the baby? If MLB cannot give new fathers a week away at minimum, they need to require that their players are celibate while on contract, so no babies come about. If a multimillion dollar contract is enough to abandon a wife and kid for at a time of great need, it should be enough to abandon sex for. Family is the primary responsibility, and all the more so at the birth of a baby.

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Trevor Bauer Is Guilty Until Proven Innocent, And His Punishment Will Be Complete Before Such Proof Can Occur

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Bauer

This is what #MeToo has wrought.

Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer, last year’s Cy Young winner as the best pitcher in the National League and currently the game’s highest paid player, hasn’t been able to pitch for his team since late June. The reason: he has been accused of domestic abuse. Accused.

Ethics Alarms first reported on his story here, writing,

“A restraining order was taken out against Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer, last year’s National League Cy Young winner. Bauer is a sportswriter favorite for his outspoken social media presence and progressive politics, so this will be a blow to the sportswriting woke. The woman making the allegations had what started as a consensual relationship with the pitcher, but in a 67-page document, alleges that Bauer assaulted her on two different occasions, punching her in the face, vagina, and buttocks, sticking his fingers down her throat, and strangling her to the point where she lost consciousness twice, an experience she said she did not consent to. After the second choking episode, the woman awoke to find Bauer punching her in the head and face, inflicting serious injuries. She contacted police, and there is now an active investigation of Bauer by the Pasadena, California police department. If any of her account is true, Bauer faces serious discipline from baseball, which has been (finally) cracking down on domestic abuse by players in recent years.”

I seriously miswrote, and should have known better. Baseball has a well-established tradition of taking action against players regardless of whether accusations have been proven. Indeed, the eight Chicago Black Sox who were accused of throwing the World Series in 1919 had been acquitted by a jury (They were guilty as sin, but then so was O.J.) were banned from baseball for life anyway. Pete Rose was banned for betting on baseball games before the evidence was definitive (Pete eventually confessed years later).

The next time I wrote about Bauer‘s case was a month later:

“Dodgers pitcher and reigning Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer, remains in limbo and under administrative, paid leave while baseball investigates the horrific allegations of abuse against him. Meanwhile, the Dodgers players have told reporters that they don’t want him back, though whether this is because he is an infamous pain in the neck or because he beats up women is unclear. Since the MLB policy appears to be based on “believe all women” and a “preponderance of the evidence” standard rather than “beyond a reasonable doubt,” I find it ethically troubling. (It resembles the way the Obama and Biden administrations want campus sexual abuse matters to be handled.) If, and I think this is doubtful, Bauer escapes charges and is still suspended, he is an excellent bet to challenge MLB’s “guilty until proven innocent” approach in the courts. Pains-in-the-necks have their uses.”

Last week, Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association agreed to extend the Bauer’s administrative leave (he’s still being paid) through the end of the World Series, which the Dodgers still have a fighting chance to be part of should they make the play-offs. There has been no new evidence since June; the accusations against Bauer remain just that. He denies them, saying that the rough sex he had with his accuser was entirely consensual, and that he is the victim of a shakedown.

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Weekend Ethics Wrap, 9/13/2021

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Wrap

1. Civil War progressive smugness is starting to get to me...Netflix is showing “Cold Mountain,” which I only saw in a redacted version on my flight home from Mongolia in 2003. This time, it struck me completely differently. The film adaptation of the novel about the suffering of ordinary Southerners during the Civil War reminded me how arrogant, ignorant and smugly cruel the social justice warriors are who want to topple all monuments to and memories of what half of this country endured, frequently with great courage, during a war that was infinitely more nuanced than “Pro-slavery vs Anti-slavery.”

Near the center of Old Town Alexandria, about 15 minutes from my home, was a statue of an unnamed Confederate soldier that stood at the intersection of two major streets. It was hauled away last summer at the peak of the George Floyd Freakout with nary a defender in the local media. The average soldier for the South, as “Cold Mountain” makes clear, wasn’t a supporter of slavery, didn’t own slaves, and was just following the decisions of state leaders who believed, quite correctly, that their states had every right to leave the U.S. when they felt it was in their best interests. Lincoln’s refusal to let them do so was legally wrong but ethically and pragmatically correct, but that doesn’t mean that the common man siding with states he regarded as his “country” were evil, traitors, or without character. The common Confederate soldiers, along with their families, were victims in many ways, and, as Mrs. Loman says, “Attention should be paid.” A statue commemorating their experiences, exploits and suffering is not only appropriate but valuable.

“Cold Mountain” made my mind flash back to this post, in which a social justice warrior baseball writer, Craig Calcaterra, mocked the opposition to Virginia tearing down Lee’s famous statue in Richmond by writing, “The only sad part of this is that, now that the statue is gone, how will we ever know what happened in the Civil War? I mean, that’s what those things were all about, right? At least according to a lot of people on the right who are so enthralled with monuments to racists and traitors.”

Calcaterra proved in that statement that HE doesn’t know what happened in the Civil War.

2. In case there is any doubt, pro-Trump “whataboutism” is exactly as obnoxious as anti-Trump “whataboutism.” A reader of Ethics Alarms sent me an email reacting to Sunday”s post about the “Fuck Biden” outbreak. She suggested that I was hypocritical, asking “Did you complain about the ‘Fuck Trump’ phenomenon?” and accusing me of a double standard. Nah, I never complained about the endless disrespect and calumny heaped on President Trump—I only wrote about it constantly from November, 2016 to the present! To use one of my Dad’s favorite expressions, the email made me “hit the roof,” so I wrote back in part,

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Tales Of The Great Stupid: Yes, San Francisco Really Is Going To Pay Potential Criminals Not To Shoot People

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Do I really have to explain again what’s wrong–as in unethical— with policies like this? Paying kids to do their homework, not to skip school, or not to use drugs; paying young women not to get pregnant, paying people to get vaccinated—all of these desperate plans undermine societal ethics, turning what must be taught as basic duties of responsible citizenship and life management into quid pro quo trade-offs. Such formulas reward the refusal to behave ethically by paying social miscreants to conform to ethical norms.

Ethics Alarms has written about these offensive programs many times. This one may be the worst of all. The only argument proponents can come up with is extreme utilitarianism: the ends justify the means. In such cases, however, the means involves rejecting ethics, duty and responsibility as essential motivations for good behavior and adopting habits of virtuous conduct.

Naturally, the latest pay-the-bad-guys scheme comes from San Francisco, where the District Attorney has solved the shop-lifting problem by making petty theft legal. I was preparing to write about this when I read that Governor Newsom’s test-marketed theme to win his recall election will be “It’s me or Trump.” This parody of a progressive governor has created a state culture where paying thugs not to kill is looked upon as reasonable, and he thinks implying that Trump, who isn’t running for anything in the Golden State, would be worse will attract votes. And he’s probably right!

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The “Fuck Biden” Chants And Signs Are Unethical And Destructive, But That’s The Legacy Of “The Resistance”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

fuck-biden-flag

Yesterday, on the anniversary of the Twin Towers’ fall, President Biden was heckled by vocal members of a crowd, and “Fuck Biden” chants broke out at various football games across the nation. As an American and a scholar of the Presidency, I view this development with sadness and worry. As an ethicist, I look upon it as a confirmation of much of my analysis during the Trump administration, and what was tagged on Ethics Alarms as the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck. As a critic of what the nation’s progressives and the Democratic Party have devolved into, my reaction is anger tinged with satisfaction. This is what they did to the Presidency. I warned them, as did others with a lot more authority and influence than I, that the harm they were inflicting on the office, the nation and the government might be irreversible and ruinous. They didn’t listen, or, more likely, they didn’t care. All that mattered was their hatred for Donald Trump. Now their President is inheriting the inevitable results of the wreckage from their recklessness.

No, I won’t say “Good!,” but they deserve it.

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I’m Not Certain What The Proper Ethics Description Of The State Department Expressing “Concerns” Over The All Male Taliban Government, But “Oh, Shut The Hell Up!” Might Cover It…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In a statement that would be right at home in a satire of U.S. government cretinism like “Lil’ Abner” or “Mars Attacks!,” the Biden State Department expressed “concerns” over the composition of the new interim Afghan government announced by the Taliban. There’s just not sufficient diversity, you see.

The statement noted that the list of names announced by the Taliban earlier in the week“consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban or their close associates and no women.”

In a related statement, the State Department also expressed its shock and dismay that all the members of the interim government appeared to be Muslims, and no African-Americans were included.

OK, I’m kidding about that. But it would be no more ridiculous than the real statement. Maybe the diabolical strategy of the Biden Administration is to cause the Taliban to perish from laughing so hard their hearts explode, or something, like in Monty Pythons’ “Killer Joke” sketch. If the U.S. government has ever made an official statement that more embarrassing weak and pathetic than this one, I’d like to see it. Did the Hayes administration, after the corrupt deal in 1876 giving Rutherford B. Hayes the Presidency in exchange for pulling Federal troops out of the former Confederate states express its concern that former slaves were not being accorded the full rights of American citizens? That would be close.

This is one of the best examples of where ethics estoppel applies, easily surpassing Hillary Clinton condemning sexual harassment and demanding the female accusers of powerful men must be believed. When the U.S. abandoned the people of Afghanistan in a manner that evoked another Python classic moment…

…it forfeited all rights not to be mocked mercilessly if it dared to make any demands or express any “concerns” about what the known radical, brutal Islamists it left in power to do whatever they wanted did, which everyone knew would include treating women like a lesser species.

The Taliban talibanned women from participating in sports yesterday, and the Biden State Department thinks it is going to react to the expressed “concern” that it won’t allow women to participate in its government with anything but hilarity and derision? Who ARE these people? Does diversity and inclusion mean that our State Department has to be run by alumni of Madam Louise’s Home for the Bewildered?

What is this? Could the Biden experts we now have running our foreign policy really be this stupid and tone deaf? Or is it the public the Biden hacks think is so gullible that such hollow virtue signaling will prompt Americans to respond, “Good for us; that’s telling ’em!”? Is it women and feminists this bunch of desperate incompetents have such contempt for?

I don’t understand. What are they doing? What do they think they’re doing? What’s going on here?

The Biden Presidency is now officially an Ethics Train Wreck.

And Another Distinguished Liberal Finally Realizes What Progressivism Has Become: Philosophy Professor And Ethicist Peter Boghossian

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Prof resigns

Peter Boghossian, who has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade, resigned last week in a letter to the university’s provost. His letter was published at Bari Weiss’s website at substack, where so many progressives and other commentators of integrity and principle have fled. What he describes sounds typical of what is going on a the vast majority of colleges and universities. If the academic profession had any integrity as a whole, it would have halted this rot before it corrupted the young and damaged society as much as it already has.

In Boghossian’s case, late is better than never, but it is still damning. I was considering designating him an ethics hero, but I am uncertain that one who tolerates the intolerable in his own organization while it becomes part of a national movement to crush free thought deserves too many accolades for finally doing what he should have done years before. I am open to debate on this point.

His letter is long and excellent, so please read it yourself. I will post, with only a few comments, some illustrative and especially notable excerpts below.

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