“bias makes you stupid”

Trans-Mania Loses Disney But Gains…Jaguar?

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

What’s going on here?

A couple of things, I think. The two ethics issues are trustworthiness and competence.

Apparently Jaguar has decided that it is within the mission of a car manufacturer to promote transsexuals and other forms of dubious sexuality. Or maybe clowns, based on the characters above that inhabit the company’s very strange ad. Have you seen it? No?

Here you go….

That’s right, no mention of driving, cars, or anything related to transportation. This is a cognitive dissonance scale maneuver for someone seeking a ridiculously narrow market. The ad says “being sexually ambiguous is cool.” Is it? I don’t think so; I think being sexually ambiguous is a problem. Like many minorities with problems, I understand the urge to insist that the problem is really an advantage and a badge of honor, something to take pride in, but why is Jaguar making that argument at the expense of promoting their product?

The ad is propaganda tinged with virtue-signalling for those who think extreme advocacy for marginal sexual identities is virtuous. I don’t regard it as virtuous. I regard this ad as a company abusing its influence by presuming to indoctrinate the public to achieve an interest group’s agenda. Meanwhile, the ad is incompetent advertising, since it doesn’t promote the product the company is supposed to be selling.

At least when Bud Light decided to promote transsexuals while marketing beer, the beer was somewhere in evidence. For all we know after watching that Jaguar ad, the new Jaguar looks like a Stanley Steamer.

And the Great Stupid is still rolling on…

Thanks, BlueSky!

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The self-proclaimed progressive onclave social media platform designed to isolate the Good people from unclean thoughts and their Nazi neighbors is proving to be a magnificent social experiment testing the proposition that the Mutated Left of the 21st Century can’t tolerate dissent or any ideas that don’t make them feel warm and cuddly.

As first noted here by commenter Michael R., “Apparently, all the liberals who left X went to BlueSky and immediately started reporting everyone else for not being ‘woke’ enough for their tastes. Their ‘hate speech’ and ‘misinformation’ reports have gone from 350,000 in all to 2023 to over 40,000/day since the election. Of course, some moderation requests probably can’t even get in because they are busy.” Yes, the experiment is working out just fine. These people, as they and their Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates demonstrated, don’t get that freedom of speech thingy. The funny part is that it was in great part the bubble progressives live in that led their party to its2024 disaster, and their solution is …..to construct a stronger bubble.

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It’s Time To Accept Reality: We Can’t Trust Science Writers, So We Can’t Trust What We Read About Science

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The ethics rot of “Scientific American” came to a climax last week with the firing of longtime editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth after she went on a social media tirade against Trump voters and tried to blame it on the demon Pazuzu (well, not explicitly, but that was what her “apology” amounted to). During her tenure she had politicized the once respected science magazine, using it to advance her own social justice agenda which dovetailed nicely with that of the extreme progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Weaponizing science for political advantage is more totalitarianism on the hoof, and one might think that Helmuth’s demise might slow down or even begin to terminate this dangerous trend, once rampant on the Reactionary Right, now characteristic of the Doctrinaire Left. Nope.

Based on the latest from esteemed (not by me, but still…) science writer John Horgan, who modestly calls himself “The Science Writer”—he’s a science writer—the political roots of the field’s ethics rot is already embedded too deeply to extract. Horgan has strong credentials, as he’d be the first to tell you. He’s been writing for Scientific American since 1986 with an eight year break in the middle, and also authors pieces on science issues for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Washington Post, Time and Newsweek. He has written several books; he’s has been interviewed on PBS, MSNBC, NPR, AP, BBC, and other broadcast media. He’s  lectured at Harvard, Yale, MIT, Caltech, Princeton, McGill and the London School of Economics, among other institutions.

Yet Horgan still thinks that scientists are correct to be driven by political bias and to let it affect their work. His recent essay in the wake of Hormuth’s oh-so-well-deserved demise is a flashing neon warning that science, as an objective, fact-driven, intellectual pursuit for the good of mankind (aka “a profession”) is as dead as Darwin, or mighty close to it. Horgan’s website piece is titled, “Scientific American Loses Its Bold Leader.” “Bold” is a terrific ambiguous cover word. In the case of Hormuth, it means courageous and reckless to the point of subverting her duties. From there, The Science Writer argues,

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Rita Moreno Thought She Was Justifying Hollywood and Broadway’s Woke Casting, But Instead Proved Its Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Last December, right before New Year’s Eve, there was a blow-out Broadway celebration of the 80th anniversary of the memorable Rodgers and Hammerstein musical partnership that produced the acclaimed musicals “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “The Sound of Music,” and a couple of clunkers. It was a manufactured event to say the least. Why the 80th anniversary, for example? The team’s first successful collaboration was “Oklahoma!” in 1943, but it opened on March 31 of that year, so they were celebrating the so-called anniversary a full nine months late. (Try THAT with your wife!) But the real anniversary of the team’s formation was when Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated on the 1920 Varsity Show, Fly With Me when the two were at Columbia University together. Nobody remembers that show, however, but Broadway could have celebrated the 100th Anniversary of R&H in 2020 right before the stupid pandemic lockdown almost killed live theater.

PBS has been showing the event on its “Great Performances” series, and it’s not that great. I was tipped off that the thing would drive me crazy when for some perverse reason the opening number, after the 40 piece symphony orchestra performed an overture that was a medley of well-known R&H tunes, featured a group of gay young men singing “There Is Nothing Like a Dame” from “South Pacific.” There might have been one straight guy among them, but my Gaydar meter almost blew up. Whose idea was that? If you’re going to have gays singing that lament supposedly belted out by horny, sex-deprived sailors in WWII, at least tell them to butch up, or better yet, pick a different song.

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An Arizona Judge Does The Right Thing And Recuses, But Not Until He Shows That Bias Has Made Him Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What does it say about a judge’s competence and judicial temperament when he can’t restrain himself from posting attacks on conservatives while presiding over a politically-charged trial? It says, I think, “Time to retire!” In the case at hand, it also said; “Your recusal light is flashing.”

Maricopa County Judge Bruce Cohen, the judge overseeing Arizona’s case against allies of Once and Future President Donald Trump based on their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, recused himself last week after it was revealed that he had emailed colleagues urging them to speak out against conservative attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign.

In an email sent to fellow judicial officers on August 29, Cohen criticized those who labeled Harris a “DEI hire” and said he was “sickened” when Fox News host Jesse Watters said on air that if she were elected, she would “get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”

“White men…must speak out,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by state Rep. Travis Grantham (R) and reported by local news media. Based on the email, one of the defendants’ lawyers called for his dismissal. Based on that email I conclude that the call for the judge’s recusal was a proper response. Even if the message didn’t prove that he would be biased against the pro-Trump defendants, it definitely proves he is incapable of processing information, either because bias has made him stupid, age has crippled his faculties, or because he was dumb to begin with.

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Why Doesn’t The New York Times Think Kamala Harris Paying For Al Sharpton and Oprah To Give Her Suck-Up Interviews Is “Fit To Print”?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Apparently the lessons of the past election are not sinking in for many as quickly as some thought.

Since the election, it has been confirmed that the Harris campaign paid Oprah Winfrey’s production company Harpo a million dollars for the elaborate event including Winfrey’s fawning interview of Harris on stage, and that it paid Al Sharpton’s National Action Network a half-million dollars before Sharpton did his Harrs interview. This is unethical. It is cheating. To the extent that the interviews were  journalism ( Winfrey used to be a journalist and is still accorded the credibility and status of one, Sharpton pretends to be a journalist rather than what he is, a race-hustler, on MNBC) accepting such payments create a conflict of interest and a breach of journalism ethics. Even if they are not technically unethical journalism, the lack of transparency is.

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Three Arrogant Pundits, One Crippling Delusion

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The delusion is that the American people are stupid.

I easily could have written “hundreds of pundits” instead of three, but these three, CNN’s Michael Smerconish, often said to be the most fair and objective of CNN’s talking heads, which tells you something, the New York Times’ David Brooks, once an arrogant, pseudo-intellectual neocon conservative and now a fully indoctrinated Stockholm Syndrome progressive rationalizer, and Times guest Trump-basher Roger Rosenblatt, a writer of some note.

I read about Smerconish last night, and his assertion irritated me the most of all. His theory about why Harris lost and Trump won was based on what he calls “The Boomerang Effect,” “I don’t want it all distilled into this one sound bite or conclusion, but at the top of my list, I’ll say it that way … It’s like a parenting lesson. The more that you tell people what they can’t do, what’s intolerable, you must not do this, you should not do this, the more they’re going to rebel,” Smerconish said. “Maybe they would have ultimately come to their own conclusion and rejected Donald Trump. I don’t know. But I think that the constant browbeating and the combination of the media influence and the four indictments, one conviction, and showing that god-awful joke from Madison Square Garden a week in advance of the election on a loop — and I felt it, and I said it.” He went on, “I can’t sit here, Aiden, telling you, well, this is the way I called the election, but I definitely felt the potential for a boomerang effect, and I think that came true. I really do.”

Translation: “The American people are like children, and we superior intellects in the news media must lead them in such a way that the poor, ignorant, foolish dears think they are coming to their own conclusions.”

I was immediately reminded of song from the musical “The Fantastiks,” in which two father muse about the complexities of parenting. It’s called “Don’t Say No.” Sample lyrics:

“Why did the kids put beans in their ears?
No one can hear with beans in their ears.
After a while the reason appears.
They did it cause we said no.”

It never occurred to Smerconish, or any of the myriad other pundits who bias has made so stupid that they are useless, that the public, or enough of them to prove Abe right again, voted after correctly evaluating the issues, the choices offered to them and alternative courses for the nation going forward. No, they only voted for Trump because the Axis propaganda was too aggressive. After all, voting for Hitler is like putting beans in your ears.

Next up we have David Brooks. I’m sick of reading Brooks, who masks a simplistic view of politics with psychobabble that some might take and complex analysis. I have to give Ann Althouse a pointer for flagging his column titled ““Why We Got It So Wrong.” Ann writes, “If you were “so wrong” before, why would I look to you for right answers now?” Heh. She says she just skimmed it. I read the whole thing.

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Dear Ashli: You Do Know That What You Are Advocating Is Pure Bigotry, Right?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The self-indicting that is arising from the 2024 Election Freakout has nicely exposed the hypocrisy behind the progressive masks of decency and virtue. Let’s listen to Ashli, the lovely young thing above, who has enthusiastically embraced the South Korean “4B Movement.”  The name ‘4B’ comes from the Korean words for four ‘Nos’: no heterosexual sex, no marriage, no children, and no relationships, all starting with the letter ‘b.’ Her journey is described in a revealing piece in the Daily Mail.

The brutal murder of a woman in a subway station by a man who reportedly said he was ‘sick of being ignored by women.’ sparked the ptotest by many Korean women against all men. That seems fair and logical. No, in fact it makes no sense at all, but it does to Ashli.  “Out of this tragedy, a wave of female anger turned into action. Women took control of their lives,” she writes. I’ve come to the conclusion that men can be dangerous. That’s why, two years ago at the age of 34, I chose to disengage from men entirely.

She gives her reasons. “I knew so many women who were hurt by the men they loved and trusted. Men they vowed to love and who vowed to love them. Men they slept next to at night.” Then, “the overturning of Roe cemented everything I already knew. Five justices—four of them men—decided we didn’t deserve control over our own bodies. The new MAGA Republican Party, with its hyper-masculine, power-hungry grip, cheered it on.”

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Most Insincere Apology Of The Month: “Snow White” Star Rachel Zegler

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This over-opinionated actress even looks like a smug jerk, doesn’t she? And she is! But not so smug that she is willing to accept the consequences of what she says when it jeopardizes her career. Like so many jerks on the Left, Zegler had to vent her poisoned spleen at everyone who didn’t vote her way—guess which!—on November 5. She took to Instagram and wrote,

“I find myself speechless in the midst of this. another four years of hatred, leaning us towards a world i do not want to live in. I shouldn’t be this shocked. but i am. i am heartbroken for my friends who awoke [in] fear this morning. and i am here with you. to cry, to yell, to hug. to wax poetic on how the left continues to fail us in forging a new path forward. this loss should not have been. and it certainly should not have been by so many votes. May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace. Another four years of hatred, leaning us towards a world I do not want to live in. Leaning us towards a world that will be hard to raise my daughter in.”

She didn’t stop there. In subsequent Instagram posts, she added that added there is a “deep, deep sickness” in the United States because so many citizens voted for a “man who threatens our democracy.” Harris’s loss, the keen political analyst wrote, was “one that should not have been… and it certainly should not have been by so many votes,”  Later she wrote, “It is terrifying the number of people who stand behind what this man preaches. it is a foolish subscription to a false sense of security, of masculinity, of intelligence, of patriotism, and of humanity. there is no help, no counsel, in any of them. i could go on. i won’t. i feel sad. you probably do, too. fuck this.”

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