Author: Jack Marshall

No Good Guys Or Innocent Victims In The Tucker Carlson-New York Times Spat

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Carlson 3

Apparently the New York Times got tired of Tucker Carlson’s two faces, so media reporter Ben Smith did a hit piece on the Fox News star. He revealed that Tucker, despite his oft-expressed disdain for the mainstream media and its reporters, “spends his time when he’s not denouncing the liberal media trading gossip with them. He’s the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J. Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr. Carlson himself).” Smith adds, “I won’t talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him. But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, ‘a great source.’”

In other words, Carlson is a hypocritical double agent. condemning the mainstream media on his TV show and doing favors for them behind the scenes. One especially nauseating tale is how Tucker related a private conversation with President Trump that made Carlson look good and Trump look foolish for an coming book by the Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.” Since only two people were on the line, and Trump didn’t reveal it, Carlson is the only possible source. But the whole article is nauseating, including the casual way all the participants excuse such “double games” as business as usual. Everybody does it, you see, so it’s OK. “It’s so unknown in the general public how much he plays both sides,” one reporter for a prominent publication who gets dirt from Carlson regularly told Smith. Another Washington journalist explained how Carlson benefits by assisting the same reporters he says he “hates,” saying, “If you open yourself up as a resource to mainstream media reporters, you don’t even have to ask them to go soft on you.”

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“Systemic Racism” Review

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Triangle-Chart-Racism

[Many thanks to Steve Witherspoon for the chart above!]

These stories are proliferating at such a rate that they could easily take over the blog, or worse, explode my head permanently. I can’t begin to cover them all, but my plan is to periodically gather them up in one post, like this one. The claim of systemic racism” has been a handy dandy way to exploit a low point in public embarrassment over some recent distorted and misrepresented incidents as well the undeniable legacy of slavery and Jim Crow in America. Now it is being pushed as a wedge to justify anti-white racism, double standards, restrictions on expression and speech, various forms of discrimination to benefit minority groups, power grabs in multiple institutions across society based on “reckoning” rather than merit or logic, the transformation of the education system into a propaganda indoctrination machine, and tangentially related “social justice” reforms, including creeping Marxism.

There are signs that the purveyors of the systemic racism narrative, including Critical Race Theory, are pushing rapidly toward a tipping point where public sympathy and tolerance will collapse, as well as indications that the ranks of citizens with the courage and civic responsibility to oppose this madness are growing. In both cases, however, it needs to happen faster.

Here are some recent highlights:

  • A large portion of the “systemic racism” brigade is steeped in hypocrisy, much as the #MeToo movement proved itself only offended by sexual harassment by public figures who proved useful in other respects. The Washington Free Beacon asked all 50 Democratic members of the Senate, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP, for for reactions to the weekend’s revelation that R.I. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, last heard cheering on the adoption of the Juneteenth national holiday, was still a member of Bailey’s Beach Club in Newport, a whites-only private club. None of them responded.

Unlike so much of what Democrats attribute to systemic racism, segregated private clubs are relics of systemic racism. One would think the Democratic Party would speak with one voice on this matter. Nope.

I don’t know how anyone can take a party, an organization or an elected official seriously who refused to hold its members and allies to the same standards it purports to care so deeply about. Continue reading →

More Terrifying Tales Of The Great Stupid, Academic Division

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The predictable appeal of racist “antiracism” cant to the world of scholarship and academia in the wake of the fraudulent George Floyd Freakout is producing amusing or frightening results, depending on one’s regard for higher education and resistance to despair.

Today’s sample of Authentic Frontier Gibberish, for example, comes from “Confronting “White Feminism” in the Victorian Literature Classroom,” recently published in the scholarly journal, “Nineteenth Century Gender Studies.” The author is University of California Professor Lana Dalley, who complains that Victorian feminists are “problematic” [There’s that word again!] because they promote “white feminism.” In other words, social commentators and writers of over a hundred years ago don’t seem to reflect the current approved woke perspective of 2021. This is, apparently, a surprise. Here’s her first paragraph, an AFG classic:

“The transition to virtual learning in Spring and Fall 2020 intersected with international protests for racial justice and, more locally, Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, and Amy R. Wong’s call to “undiscipline Victorian Studies” by “interrogat[ing] and challeng[ing] our field’s marked resistance to centering racial logic” (370).(1) More specifically, they call for “illuminat[ing] how race and racial difference subtend our [Victorianists’] most cherished objects of study, our most familiar historical and theoretical frameworks, our most engrained scholarly protocols, and the very demographics of our field” (370). Since then, numerous virtual roundtables and panels have convened to discuss critical approaches to race within Victorian studies and to ponder the relevance of contemporary social justice movements to a field whose borders are historically drawn. This essay emerged from one such panel and offers practical suggestions for reframing pedagogical approaches to Victorian feminist discourses in order to “center[] racial logic” and “illuminate how race and racial difference subtend” those discourses.(2) Its suggestions are certainly not meant to be exhaustive, but simply to offer one set of practices for making the Victorian literature classroom more responsive to contemporary conversations about race and gender.”

Now who can argue with that?

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A Non-Apology Apology From Ft. Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis That Is Such A Non-Apology That It Doesn’t Even Include “Apologize” Or “Sorry”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

-trantalis-gay-pride-stonewall-picture

The United States has a serious apology problem. People who should not be apologizing are doing so anyway, because they are intimidated by woke mobs and too cowardly to resist. Others, particularly elected officials, are refusing to apologize even when it is clear that an apology is owed. What’s going on here?

Weenies and assholes, essentially. “Townhall” political editor Guy Benson neatly summed up that dichotomy with a tweet:

Benson tweet

Ellie Kemper is an actress who did nothing wrong, but was forced into apologizing anyway (Ethics Alarms pronounced her a “prostrating weenie” here.) Whitehouse, the Democratic Rhode Island Senator and vocal “antiracism” shill, was exposed as a sickening hypocrite, and excused himself, apology-free, by explaining that the exclusive club he belongs to has remained white-only out of “long tradition.” Weenie, meet Asshole. Which of these invasive species does more damage is open to debate; personally, I vote for the weenies.

Ft. Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis is in the other category, and, like Whitehouse, spectacularly so.

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Ethics Hero And Ethics Quote Of The Week: Jason Whitlock

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
Floyd statue

The George Floyd statue outside the Newark, NJ. City Hall.

I was introduced to sportswriter Jason Whitlock 20 years ago, when he was the featured speaker at a Kansas City legal convention I was attending. He was a forceful and entertaining speaker, and quick and witty in his question and answer session after his remarks. Since then, I have followed his career with interest, especially his recent emergence as a black conservative with the courage to be direct unequivocal, and not only regarding sports.

Commenting on the epic rant by a black parent and radio pundit about Critical Race Theory I featured over the weekend, esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter Humble Talent opined,

“One of the worst trends to come out of conservative politics in the last couple of years is to put up on a pillar any minority person that will say things that conservatives agree with. I think it’s a reactionary measure; Progressives say we’re racist, sexist, or homophobic, so we go out of our way to find female/minority/gay people to platform in order to prove we aren’t…Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they’re bad people, I just don’t think they’re smart, funny, or talented enough to get space in conservative media absent these identity markers that conservatives seem especially hungry for….”

That point is legitimate, but it can’t be fairly applied to Jason Whitlock. Yes, I believe he has received special attention because he is a black man standing up to The Great Stupid, but he also deserves special attention because he is unusually astute, persuasive and eloquent. A white analyst, like, say, me, can be automatically squelched as biased when noting, for example, that George Floyd is an absurd and intellectually indefensible martyr for the Black Lives Matter movement since there was no evidence that his death was a product of racism, systemic or otherwise. When an astute, persuasive and eloquent black critic makes a similar argument, it demonstrates that my conclusion was not necessarily motivated by racial bias.

I know: people will say it anyway.

Whitlock has made a different argument regarding Floyd in his latest essay, but it is an excellent one. Indeed, if there were any integrity at the major newspapers, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, New York Magazine and the Usual Suspects that have destructively carried the banners of those who have, quite successfully, exploited that neatly symbolic manner of Floyd’s demise, he would not have had to seek publication in the relatively marginal Glenn Beck website, The Blaze, where he hosts a podcast called “Fearless.” The essay is titled, “The Veneration of George Floyd is racist and must be stopped.”

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Tuesday Ethics Titillations, 6/22/2021: Too Much MSNBC, I Know

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

tales

So close to Fathers Day I would be remiss in not remembering June 22, 1944, when President Roosevelt signed the ethical G.I. Bill, unprecedented legislation devised to compensate returning G.I.s for their gallantry, sacrifice, and service to their country in World War II. I owe my very existence to the law, as my father met the lovely Greek girl Eleanor Coulouris on the campus of the school that the G.I. Bill allowed him to attend. She was a secretary in the Office of the President of the College That Shall Not Be Named. Jack A. Marshall, Sr. would wave to her as he passed beneath her third floor window in Massachusetts Hall in “The Yard,” and she would smile and wave back. After several weeks, the retired Major gathered the courage to go up to meet her, and asked for a date. He proposed to her before their second one, and she said no. Things went better after that.

1. No weenies in Randolph, New Jersey! The Randolph Board of Education voted 8-1 Monday to restore its school calendar that showed all New Jersey state and federal holidays, including Columbus Day. In May, the board had voted wokely to change Columbus Day to Indigenious Peoples’ Day, and when Italian Americans, among others, objected, the body voted to remove all holidays from the calendar, which would only read “Day Off” in the interests of “diversity and inclusion.” Morons. Conservative media “pounced,” as the mainstream media likes to say to deflect the blame when its team gets caught doing something really stupid. About 400 citizens showed up at a public session to object. USA Today reported that “some” people accused the board of being influenced by “woke” beliefs and “cancel culture.” Gee, ya think? There were calls for the school board to resign. State Sen. Anthony Bucco, who represents Randolph in the NJ legislature, said eliminating Columbus Day “was bad enough,” but the board’s decision to go even further allowed their “pursuit of diversity to spiral into division.” “I woke up and found out that my town had turned into a nationwide embarrassment,” said John Sharples, a Randolph resident. Few supporters of the board’s brain-dead decision showed up.

So the board backed down. There is a lesson in this. [Pointer: Steve-O-in NJ]

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Law vs. Ethics #2: The Supreme Court Unanimously Says Colleges Can Use Tuition To Run A Professional Sports Business

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In NCAA v. Alston, handed down yesterday, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) violated the rights of student athletes and the Sherman Antitrust Act by restraining colleges from compensating student athletes. Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion, upholding the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence.

The decision was a slam dunk for the players. Gorsuch vivisected the NCAA argument that its compensation rules should not be subject to a “rule of reason” analysis because it is a joint venture to offer consumers the unique product of intercollegiate athletic competition. The NCAA has monopoly power in the market, Gorsuch explained, so it deserves no such deference. The NCAA’s argument that it should be exempt because it offers societally important non-commercial benefits is ridiculous on its face, and Gorsuch explained why.

Justice Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion went further:

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From The Signature Significance Files: A Question For “The Ethicist” That Proves The Questioner Is Ethically Obtuse

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

GoFundMe for car

When I read the headlined question in an April installment of “The Ethicist” advice column in the New York Times Magazine, I would have done a spit-take if I had just taken a sip of something. It was “Is It OK to Use Money Raised for a Child’s Cancer Care on a Car?” What? No it’s not “OK,” you idiot! The questioner has to write to a professor of philosophy like Kwame Anthony Appiah, who is the current version of the Times’ ethics expert, to puzzle out that query? Why not ask a neighbor, a minister, a friend who isn’t in jail, a reasonably socialized junior in high school?

Then I started wondering what percentage of American think that question is a really tough one, and I got depressed.

Here was the whole question:

My grandchild is being treated for leukemia. A friend of the child’s parents set up a GoFundMe page for them. They’re both well loved and have siblings who know a ton of people. So the goal was surpassed in three hours, and donations totaled more than double that amount. They plan to donate anything over and above direct hospital-related expenses to leukemia research organizations.This couple have some needs that aren’t strictly related to the child’s care, like a new car. Am I rationalizing by saying they need to drive the child to the hospital and should use some of this money for a dependable car? Is there a strict line you would not cross? And is it germane that they’re not extravagant and extremely honest?

I don’t need to discuss Appiah’s answer; he got it right. If he hadn’t, he would need to have his column, his teaching position at NYU and his degree in philosophy taken away. My concern is how hopelessly inept our culture must be at installing the most basic ethical principles if someone grows to adulthood unable to figure out in a snap that if one receives charity to pay for a child’s medical expenses, it is unethical, indeed criminal, to use the money to buy a car.

This isn’t hard, or shouldn’t be. Why is it? If the GoFundMe raised more money than is needed for the purpose donors contributed, the ethical response is to send the now un-needed fund back, with a note of thanks. (Appiah, after far more explanation and analysis than should be necessary—but he does have a column to fill—-eventually points this out.) No, you do not give the extra contributions to “leukemia research organizations,” because the donors could have contributed to those on their own, and didn’t give the money after a general appeal for all leukemia sufferers. They gave money for this particular child’s treatment. Doing as the family plans is a classic bait-and-switch. The questioner doesn’t comprehend that, either.

Then the rationalizations for theft start. “This couple have some needs that aren’t strictly related to the child’s care, like a new car.” “Strictly” is such a wonderful weasel word; it greases slippery slopes so well. Again, “The Ethicist” is forced to explain the obvious: the donors weren’t contributing to a needed car, they were giving to support leukemia treatment. If the family wants a new car, let’s see what that GoFundMe will bring in.

Which of the family’s needs couldn’t be sufficiently linked to the child’s welfare to support a rationalization for using the funds? “Am I rationalizing…?” Of course you’re rationalizing; in fact, I think even this ethically illiterate correspondent knows this is rationalizing, and is just hoping that an ethics authority will validate an unethical calculation. The tell is that she feels it necessary to add that they are only seeking a reliable car, not a Lexus. But come on. “Think of the children!”(Rationalization #58) Isn’t this desperately ill child worth, not just a reliable car, but the most reliable car?

As if any further evidence was needed that this reader of “The Ethicist”—and wouldn’t you think that if she did read the column, she might have picked up just a teeny smidgen of ethical thinking over time?—has no clue at all, we get, “[I]s it germane that they’re not extravagant and extremely honest?”

What is that, some kind of cut-rate version of the King’s Pass? Actually, it is: this is a blatant Rationalization #11A, ”I deserve this!“ or “Just this once!” (The King’s Pass is #11.) The theory is that ordinary, greedy, sneaky people shouldn’t use money intended to save the life of a child to get a new set of wheels, but thrifty, honest, good people deserve a little leeway.

What percentage of the population thinks like this? 25% 50%? 90%?

In his answer, “The Ethicist” does provide an unintended hint regarding how Americans end up thinking this way. Like most academics, he’s a socialist, so he writes, “It is immoral that anyone here has to borrow large sums of money for essential medical treatment, especially for a child….we need to expand the pinpoints of empathy to … light the way toward a country where health care is treated not as a privilege but as a right.” Bad Ethicist. Bad! That’s a false dichotomy, and he knows it, but he’s spouting progressive cant now. Health care is like many other human needs that we have to work and plan for as individuals, and recognize that the vicissitudes of fate sometimes turn against us. If health care is a right, surely a home, sufficient food, an education—heck, why not a graduate-level education?—a satisfying job, guaranteed income, having as many children as one’s fertility allows, child care and transportation also should be “rights.”

Why shouldn’t it be ethical to use other people’s money to get a reliable “reliable” car?

Law vs. Ethics #1: Harvard Screws Over Its Students, But It’s All Legal, So There

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Harvard welsome

Two rueful thoughts before I begin:

  • One of my college graduating class’s big reunions is next year. Harvard always does an amazing job of throwing a party (having a bank account larger than the treasuries of some countries let you do that , I have many friends and room mates I yearn to see again, and I haven’t been back home to Boston in 17 years. But I’ll be damned if I’ll honor Harvard with my presence. It has been an ethics disgrace consistently for several years, and I am ashamed of my association with the institution, as well as my family’s association (my father and sister graduated from the college, and my mother worked there for over 20 years, culminating in her becoming an assistant dean.)
  • I could really enlighten NPR’s listeners about the difference between law and ethics in this case, if I hadn’t been blackballed for daring to explain how accusations of sexual harassment against public figures like Donald Trump were not necessarily fair even if they were sincere. Oh, well—NPR can bite me.

With that introduction, be it known that in the case of Barkhordar et al v. President and Fellows of Harvard College,  Harvard University won a dismissal today of a lawsuit by students over its decision not to partially refund tuition when it evicted students from dorms and moved classes online early in the Wuhan virus pandemic. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: American Bar Association President Patricia Lee Rufo

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Rufo

 

“The American Bar Association is deeply troubled by the recent proliferation of hate speech directed against members of the Jewish faith and at LGBTQ, Asian American and Muslim communities. Such hateful behavior, coming in the wake of attacks on African Americans and other groups, have serious consequences as studies show a correlation between exposure to hate speech and the increase in hate crimes. Hate speech also serves to legitimize intolerance, reinforce stereotypes and further discrimination. We must not let any messages of hatred be normalized if we hope to advance the rule of law to achieve an inclusive society.“

Patricia Lee Rufo, the 2021 president of the American Bar Association, in an official statement last week.

This is disgraceful, and in so many ways. Imagine: the head of the largest lawyers’ association in the country authored that collection of vagaries, buzz words and wokisms in a naked virtue-signaling exercise with no substantive value at all, but with significant sinister potential. Worse, nobody at the ABA had the guts or integrity to tell her, “Uh, Patricia, that’s just plain embarrassing. We can’t put our name on that!” Also…

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