“bias makes you stupid”

Two Faint Cheers For the Colorado Supreme Court in “Jerk vs. Jerk”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It looks like the political correctness Furies who have been swarming around Jack Phillips, the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner whose refusal to bake, decorate and sell same-sex wedding cakes had him targeted for destruction have finally been foiled.The Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed the latest lawsuit against him, though not on the merits. Legal Insurrection has detailed coverage and a retrospective on this almost decade-long drama here.

Remember the old Mad Magazine series called “Spy vs. Spy”? This has been “Jerk vs. Jerk.” I sided with the baker in the original lawsuit over the same-sex wedding cake, though holding even then that the adversaries were being unreasonable. Ethics Alarms advised one, “Oh, bake the damn cake!” and the other, “So find another bakery!” That battle got all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the baker won on what non-lawyers call “a technicality.” Then Phillips was targeted again, as LGTBQ activists apparently considered it a matter of honor to bend him to their will.

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Ethics Dunce: The University of Kansas [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

No, what’s insane is for anyone to watch that video and misunderstand the clear meaning of what lecturer Phillip Lowcock said. I doubt anyone did misunderstand him. This manufactured scandal is conservatives acting like political correctness-addled progressives.

“[If you believe] guys are smarter than girls, you’ve got some serious problems. That’s what frustrates me,” Lowcock says in the video. “There are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don’t think females are smart enough to be president. We could line all those guys up and shoot them. They clearly don’t understand the way the world works.”

And he clearly doesn’t understand how university administrators work in age of The Great Stupid. They are weenies. They sacrifice common sense and principles to avoid conflict.

I have read conservative piranha claiming that he said that any man who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris should be shot. No, he said that thinking that women aren’t smart enough to be President is an idiotic reason not to vote for a woman, and they “should be shot” means that such ignorant bigots are useless and a blight on the culture, which isn’t that far off the mark. Now, thinking Kamala isn’t smart enough to be President is something else, and completely reasonable, but Lowcock didn’t say that.

As for “Did I say that? Scratch that from the recording. I don’t want the deans hearing that I said that,” it’s obviously a joke, not a serious cover-up. His tone is humorous. I’ve been a stage director long enough to know when a line is not intended to be taken seriously.

Any conservative social media troll or university administrator who seriously thinks Lowcock’s comment was anything but facetious exaggeration and completely benign should be shot.

I wish Lowcock would stand his ground and refuse to be sacrificed to the God of Perpetual Offense, but he’s already groveling. This is how the censors break you: it’s like Winston Smith having the hungry rats at his face. No job is worth surrendering one’s self respect to save.

“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Watch: The NYT Isn’t Even Pretending Any More

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I’m kind of ticked off: Ann Althouse mocked many of the same unethical items in the Sunday Times front page this morning that I noticed immediately, but Ann gets up earlier on Sundays than I do.

The Times has this:

If you bother to read the article, a “60 Minutes” interview apparently is the one that the Times thinks isn’t “friendly.” Anyone who believes that didn’t watch the Vice-Presidential debate. CBS is a card-carrying member of the Axis; not only that, but interviews on that show are edited before they air. Does the Times really expect us to believe that one of Harris’s attacks of Authentic Frontier gibberish won’t end up on the cutting room floor? As for the others: “The View”? “The View?”The  biased, race-baiting progressive ignoramuses on the dumbest new show on television (Remember: Sonny Hostin, the one lawyer on the show, implied that the eclipse was proof of climate change  doesn’t interview Democrats, they fawn over them. The ladies recenly let Biden lie almost non-stop in his “historic” appearance, and when he boasted about the “Violence Against Women Act,” nobody asked him about the rape accusation against him by a former Senate staffer—that would have been “unfriendly.” Colbert uses political guests, all Democrats, to set up Trump-bashing, his obsession.

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Why Is Someone Who Could Make This Argument An Opinion Writer For The New York Times?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Oh, wait, now I see. M. Gessen is trans or something, refers to whatever he/she is as “they,” and the fact that “her”their” gender identity is non-traditional means that “their” opinion on political matters must have value. No, of course it makes no sense, but never mind. That’s the Times these days. It still doesn’t excuse letting someone who thinks like this have a platform in the most read newspaper in the country.

The Times provided a transcript to the podcast called “The Real Loser of the V.P. Debate.” Here are some representative quotes (in my view, the podcast isn’t worth listening to):

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More VP Debate Ethics: Oh-Oh! Tim Walz Doesn’t Get That First Amendment Thingy…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Does this bother you? It should: It bothers me. And Walz has been saying the same illiterate crap about free speech for years. I don’t want Presidents who don’t understand the First Amendment. It means they are incompetent at least, and dangerous at worst. If I don’t want a President with these deficits, I don’t want a Vice President with them either.

I was late to this particular party because I can only find one transcript of the debate online, CBS’s, and the site demands that I dump my ad-blocker to read it. Bite me. This is public information, and CBS shouldn’t have a monopoly on it: that’s unethical. Journalism has no public interest at heart at all, at least not the outlets I usually deal with.

When J.D. Vance pointed out that Walz had said there is no First Amendment right to misinformation,” Walz interjected “or threatening, or hate speech.”  Why do woke fools like Walz keep saying this? While “True threats”—meaning threats that are accompanied by the means and circumstances to carry them out—aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Misinformation that falls short of fraud or defamation definitely is, indeed outright lies are protected.

“Hate speech” also has full First Amendment protection. Walz, a high ranking member of the Democratic Party, the pro-censorship party, naturally is in favor of gutting free speech, or he doesn’t know what it is. I’m guessing both.

That’s particularly troubling in someone who taught school.

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Ethics Dunce: The AARP

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

My mother, who resented aging and refused to “accept” it, constantly complained that younger people treated seniors like children or idiots. I would not expect the AARP to prove her point, but then, at a loss for bathroom reading material, I looked at the AARP’s “bulletin” tabloid. On the back page, I discovered, is a feature called “Wit and Wisdom.” Here is this month’s entire content of witty and wise repartee:

  • Ken: “I hear you quit your job digging wells. Ben: “Yeah, I got fed up with the hole business.’
  • Colin: “How would you describe a dry-erase board?” Caitlin: “Remarkable.”
  • John: “Are waterbeds bouncy?” Jan: “Yes, if you use spring water.”
  • Patient: “I need a cure for my paranoia.” Doctor: “We’ve been expecting you!”
  • Molly: “How do cats settle an argument?” Wally: “They hiss and make up.”
  • Customer: “I’d like a pizza delivered,. Will it be long?” Clerk: “No, it will be round.”
  • Student: “Do chemists tell dad jokes?” Professor: “Yes, periodically.”

There isn’t anything vaguely wise or witty in any of those moldy puns. When I was a cub scout,  I had a subscription to “Boy’s Life.” The back page had a feature called “Think and Grin,” and the jokes there were generally of a higher quality that that crap. There are so many legitimately clever jokes, one-liners and anecdotes out there, some of them true, that a little research and taste would uncover. Instead, the AARP infantalizes its member and view them as old geezers sitting around the radio cackling at “Lum and Abner” —which was also generally more clever than “No, round.” Heck, “Hee-Haw” had more wit and wisdom.

My dad, like me, had a sophomoric sense of humor. He also could quote Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse, S.J. Perelman, and Will Rogers—okay, also Henny Youngman— right up until the day I found him dead in his favorite chair. That AARP feature is disrespectful, lazy, and insulting.

Observations on “Blizzard of Lies, Trump Edition”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I missed this when it came out in 2020…

Yesterday the video was brought to my attention by one of the jazz musicians who created it and who is recycling the thing again in anticipation of the 2024 election. I am long-time friends with a couple of the people involved in the video. They are kind, smart and rational about most things.

Observations:

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About That Most Dishonest, Cynical Presidential Campaign Ever…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

One might be tempted to add “incompetent,” but we shall see.

That ridiculous photo above of Harris supposedly on the FEMA briefing is signature significance. Witness the serious, troubled look on her face, the pen, the pad of paper, as she listens intently while flying over the hurricane destruction.

Except she isn’t listening, because the earbud dangling from her ear isn’t attached to the phone. Well, but maybe she has the phone on speaker….but what kind of inept staff allows a staged photo like this to be so messed up? And what kind of qualified national leader isn’t alert enough to know it’s going to make her look like a dufus?

“I was just briefed by @FEMA_Deanne Criswell on the latest developments about the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene, Harris captioned this photo. “We also discussed our Administration’s continued actions to support emergency response and recovery.   I also spoke with @NC_Governor Cooper about the ongoing rescue and recovery efforts in North Carolina.   Our Administration will continue to stay in constant contact with state and local officials to ensure communities have the support and resources they need.” Oh, I don’t doubt she had those conversations. But that’s not a photo of her doing so, and she’s telling the public that it is while the evidence that it isn’t is there for anyone alert to see.

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Believe It or Not! The Left’s Reaction To Trump Winning This Time Promises To Be Even More Hysterical Than In 2016, and That Tore The Country Apart…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Scary. Newsbusters walked down a dark memory lane with this collection of the vitriol aimed at Trump and the prospect of Trump victory eight years ago:

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The News Media Has Sunk To Its Lowest Level of Journalism Ethics Yet During This Year [Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

…which is not to say that it won’t sink even lower. The slobbering Kamala Harris coverage by MSNBC may be the nadir so far: Is the network’s openly biased MSNBC host Stephanie Rule the symbol of the pre-2024 elections news media corruption, or is it ABC’s anti-Trump hacks Lindsey Davis and David Muir, who made the Harris-Trump debate a three-against-one affair?

Before being Harris’s choice for a friendly, softball interview, Harris said on “Real Time With Bill Maher” that it didn’t matter to her if Harris evaded questions and refused to clearly delineate her policy positions. Why? “Kamala Harris is not running for perfect, she’s running against Trump.”

Ruhle further rationalized, “We have two choices, so there are some things you might not know her answer to. And in 2024 — unlike 2016, for a lot of the American people –we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.”

That’s journalistic objectivity in 2024. She “knows” what Trump will do? What, like letting mobs of illegals cross the borders? Prosecute political opponents? Explode the national debt? Appoint people for their ethnicity, sexual orientation and skin color rather than their ability to do the job? Refuse to fire even the most flagrantly incompetent? What is she talking about?

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