Around the World

Once Again, The Single “Fact-Checking” Source That I Once Thought Was Fair And Trustworthy Shows Its Partisan Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I can start this post with part of the opening section of a post from July, 2022:

For decades now, I had held on to the hopeful fiction that at least one factchecking organization, the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s FactCheck.Org, at least could be relied upon to make a good faith effort to do its job objectively. Oh, it has always had a left-leaning bias, make no mistake about that. Many years ago I was at a conference where the keynote speaker was the head of FactCheck.Org. She proudly proclaimed the organization’s “absolute objectivity and non-partisanship.” When it came to time for audience questions, I couldn’t restrain myself: by pure coincidence, I happened to have in my briefcase a recent “factcheck” by the group that outright misstated a fact to minimize negative characterizations of Bill Clinton. I read the relevant passage to the speaker, and asked, “How can you honestly describe that passage as anything other than partisan and biased?” Her response was, as I recall, “Huminahuminahumina...”

But still, I am a sap. I so wanted to believe that there was an exception to my conviction that factcheckers are all Democrat propagandists. And now FactCheck has engaged in an instance of flagrant (and inept) propaganda under the guise of factchecking…

Now fast-forward to the post-Hamas massacre progressive crisis. FactCheck.Org posted a factcheck titles, “Cruz Distorts Facts on Biden Support for Israel.” Writer Eugene Kiely concluded that there is “little support” for Senator Ted Cruz’s claim in a Fox News interview that “literally from within minutes of when this horrific attack began on Oct. 7, the Biden White House has been telling Israel, do not retaliate, cease-fire, stop, do not kill the terrorists.”

Heck, anyone who reads Ethics Alarms could have debunked the debunker. I wrote here,

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Post-Thanksgiving Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 11/24/2023: Who Expected Anti-Semitism And Trump-Derangement To Translate Into Anti-Thanksgiving Assaults?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

As usual now, much of the mainstream media spent Thanksgiving and the days leading up to the holiday exploiting the opportunity to bash the tradition, the holiday, and the United States. There was special urgency this time: the negative emphasis on the unique American holiday was galvanized by the anti-Jewish/anti-Israel/pro-Hamas narrative a disturbing proportion of the American Left has embraced in its opposition of Israel defending its right to exist.

“De-colonization” is the 2023 buzzword. “Native Americans=blacks, Palestinians, and other victims whites and the United States. And, again as usual, we were told that it was our duty to ruin a warm, family-oriented, non-partisan tradition by using it to harangue other family members about the evils of Israel, the Supreme Court, Republicans and Donald Trump.

The Left’s growing anti-Thanksgiving tradition also seemed to gain intensity because of the widespread panic over polls showing Trump increasing his lead in voter support over the President as the 2024 election gets closer. Here’s a nice, unbiased cartoon from the Boston Globe, for example, simultaneously equating Trump with those evil colonizing Pilgrims and the turkey with foolish Americans who don’t know enough to avoid voting for a dangerous leader:

It was called “the Last Thanksgiving.” I really question this strategy. The Left is gambling that being the party of anti-Americanism is a winning approach. In fact, they are somehow turning Donald Trump into Ronald Reagan, the leader who saw the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill.” That seems especially foolish framing when Biden’s weak Presidency is already reminiscent of Jimmy Carter’s, complete with American hostages being held by radical Islamist terrorists. Good plan!

Here are some highlights of the anti-Thanksgiving craziness:

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Comment Of The Day: “What Do You Conclude From This Woman’s Head-Exploding Rant?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Do you know what I am thankful for? I’m thankful for the engaged, wise,, articulate and loyal group of commenters Ethics Alarms has. Thank-you. You all make every day an adventure and a revelation. And you make me laugh.

For a vivid example, I awoke this morning to this Comment of the Day from Rob Thompson, who doesn’t weigh in here often—the last time was four years ago—but makes his contributions count. Here are his thoughts on this the likely roots of this horrifying and annoying video and its likely roots, which I apologize for having to post again but the discussion can’t be fully appreciated without it.

This is Robert Thompson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “What Do You Conclude From This Woman’s Head-Exploding Rant?”…and have a wonderful, warm Thanksgiving, everyone.

***

Her video typifies what we see every day. Many high school students follow this mentality of “I wasn’t taught this” placing the onus on the educational system. And while this has merit, it isn’t the only problem.

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The Cognitive Dissonance Scale And Jobs Lost After Hamas-Israel War Outbursts On Social Media

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The scenario has been a theme this week. Someone shoots off his or her metaphorical mouth showing ignorance and probable anti-Semitic bias in a social media post designed for public consumption, and loses a job when the employer decides that it doesn’t want to lose business from those who might wonder, “Why do they hire people like that?”

It is not a First Amendment issue. It is a an irresponsible employee issue. Hollywood has been especially busy. Spyglass, the company that owns the “Scream” film franchise, fired actress Melissa Barrera from the upcoming “Scream VII” (There are going to be seven of these?) after she posted standard issue “genocide/innocent Gazans/ cruel Israel messages. “THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING,” she concluded.

1) No, it isn’t, and 2) You really don’t understand the Cognitive Dissonance Scale, do you?

It’s really quite simple, Melissa…

For the vast majority of Americans who pay attention and aren’t intersectional fanatics, supporting the Palestinian-Hamas “From the river to the sea” mission is at the bottom of the scale. People who want to see movies must regard the films and its stars above zero, ideally quite a bit above. If that film or its stars associate themselves with a deeply negative point of view or conduct, that connection (think of being tied to an anchor) drags the positive attitudes down, meaning fewer tickets sold, and in turn fewer profits.

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What Do You Conclude From This Woman’s Head-Exploding Rant?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Trust me, I know this thing painful to watch all the way through, but please do it, and then reflect with me upon what this ridiculous person’s monologue portends. Her name is Savrienna Abrre, and she is now residing in Canada, as she tells us repeatedly, compelling the response, “GOOD!” That’s one less vote for, oh, I don’t know, Robert Kennedy Jr, or maybe Woody Woodpecker.

Savrienna is the kind of person, apparently, who becomes a social media star, which is to say, she’s a narcissistic cretin. It does take some kind of talent to babble on like she does so assaultively and continuously, smiling like a zany and never thinking, “Wow, like, I’m sounding like a complete idiot!,” but I don’t know what that talent is called. I am willing to lay odds that she is courting the same fate at the hands of her husband as the subject of this limerick by the late, great Edward Gory:

There was a young woman whose stammer

Was atrocious, and so was her grammar.

But they were not improved

When her husband was moved

To bash in her teeth with a hammer…

Savrienna blames the American public school system. As I am a constant critic of that institution, aka, “smoldering ruin,” you might think that I sympathize with her, but I do not in the least. She is an incurious fool of stunning intellectual laziness, whose choice of friends and associates has reflected her shallowness.

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It’s Not Just Democrats And Progressives Showing Their Ignorance: Candace Owens Joins The Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I’m relieved to say that I have only mentioned Candace Owens here occasionally and in passing, so I’m not embarrassed by her being revealed as an ignoramus. Owens’ shtick is that she’s an attractive, black, female conservative pundit who has supports Donald Trump. Who knows what she really believes, but conservatives jumped at having her around to annoy progressives. (Owens’ biography shows many flip-flops to advance her career, and little to indicate she is more than a skilled hustler with charisma and a good agent.)

Now their cynical embrace of an opinionated college journalism-major drop-out is coming back to bite them, and it serves them right. Owens has been flapping her gums on various forums accusing Israel of “genocide,” which, among other things, shows that she doesn’t know what the word means. The David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative organization that was complicit in allowing Owens to become a case study in the pundit Peter Principle, today washed its virtual hands of her, and emphatically so, saying in part,

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An Ethics Alarms Mystery: What’s Going On Here?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It was kind of conservative pundit David Strom to let his head explode so mine didn’t have to, and he generously authored a rant so I could restrain myself.

What set him off was a legitimate provocation. Elizabeth Spiers, who is a frequent contributor to the New York Times op-ed pages, revealed in a social media spat with Noah Blum the Chief Technology Officer of Tablet, which focuses on Jewish issues, that she thinks Hamas doesn’t run Gaza:

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Unethical Quote Of The Week: CBS’s Gayle King

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“But now, this seems to be all about politics. What do you say about that? You know, you have innocent children — Palestinians who are dying, innocent Israeli children who are dying, and no one seems to be able to say enough, stop that.”

—-CBS Morning co-host Gayle King, interviewing the father of eight-year-old Israeli hostage Emily Hand

I know I’m flogging this issue, but the talking heads and especially “Think of the children!” female wokesters just won’t shut up. In addition to that, the fact that Gayle King has her gig on CBS Mornings offends me: she is neither especially clever, watchable, intelligent or competent. She has the job because she’s Oprah Winfrey’s <cough> “galpal,” and has been hitched to Oprah’s star for more than 40 years. King is a passable talking head, but has risen far beyond what her ability would otherwise permit thanks to her powerful ally.

I could tolerate it if she didn’t constantly say such stupid things. This comment adds to the pressure being applied to Israel by U.S. media propagandists, because to the same people who want to “Do something!” about climate change and gun violence, “stop that” sounds like wisdom. Either King is cynically appealing to idiots deliberately, or she is one.

Those who have audiences of millions also have an obligation to choose what ideas they impart carefully and competently. King’s pivoting to the plight of children in Gaza while interviewing the father of an 8-year-old victim of Hamas terrorism is inexcusable. Naturally, CBS won’t do anything about it: her bosses probably see the issues with the same clarity she does.

Besides, they don’t want to make Oprah angry…

The New York Times Opinion Editor Sympathizes With This Formula For Analyzing The Issues In the Hamas-Israel War: Emotion, Emotion, Emotion

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

And ignore facts, history common sense and reality. Like so much of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Trian Wreck, this car has value unrelated to the war itself. Now we can understand why the Times op-eds are the way they are.

The Times just published a column by a recent edition to its stable of extreme woke pundits. Lydia Polgreen opines, in “This Photograph Demands an Answer,” that the news media should bombard the public with photographs that will flood readers’ minds with emotion, making rational, objective analysis difficult or impossible.

Many people may want to look away, to see the world as they prefer to see it. But what should we see when we see war? What should war demand all of us to see and understand? Given my experience in war zones, it is a rare thing for a violent image to stop me in my tracks. But I believe that this is an image that demands to be seen….And so I ask you to look at these children. They are not asleep. They are dead. They will not be part of the future. But know this: The children in the morgue photo could be any children. They could be Sudanese children caught in the crossfire between two feuding generals in Khartoum. They could be Syrian children crushed under Bashar al-Assad’s bombs. They could be Turkish children who died in their beds when a shoddily constructed apartment block collapsed upon them in an earthquake. They could be Ukrainian children slain by Russian shells. They could be Israeli children slaughtered in a kibbutz by Hamas. They could be American schoolchildren gunned down in a mass shooting. These children are ours.

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Food Ethics, Pre-Thanksgiving Installment: Sweet Potatoes and Yams

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Oh, fine, I’m an idiot. Just in time for what promises to be gloomy and lonely Thanksgiving, I learn that all these many moons I have thought yams and sweet potatoes are the same vegetable. It turns out that they are not; they aren’t even related. The reason is flat-out multi-continental language malpractice.

No wonder nobody seems to know this: here’s the explanation that Food Channel expert Alton Brown unearthed in a video posted here. Let me try to summarize:

Sweet potatoes are not merely potatoes that happen to be sweet. They are actually the root of a vine in the morning glory family, and morning glories are a kind of lily.  Christopher Columbus brought some back to Spain in 1493; they were called “batatas” by the Indians who lived in the Greater Antilles Islands. The Spanish called them “patatas.” Here’s Fred and Ginger performing a Gershwin song  about such matters…

Where was I? Oh, right, sweet potatoes…The Spanish king served a sweet potato pie to King Henry VIII at some royal event and he loved it (of course, he loved just about anything he could put in his mouth) , he took some vines back to England. There patatas became “potatoes.” (Cue that song again…). Continue reading →