“bias makes you stupid”

10 Ethics Observations on the White Judge’s Email

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Caroline Glennon-Goodman, a Cook County judge, shared a meme that depicts a smiling black boy and a black child’s leg with an electronic monitor on it, a fake ad for “My First Ankle Monitor.” The judge wrote “My husband’s idea of Christmas humor.” It was supposed to go to a friend, but she sent it to the wrong person, another judge ( #@!%^!& autofill!) Oopsie! That judge reported her and the post became public.

Glennon-Goodman has been reassigned by the Circuit Court’s Executive Committee, and ordered to undergo bias training and will face a state disciplinary investigation. The executive committee wrote that Glennon-Goodman’s alleged actions “may violate the Code of Judicial Conduct” and it said it was temporarily reassigning her and referring the matter to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board “to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

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On Trump’s Second Term Portrait

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I heard some talking-heads blather about the release of incoming President Donald Trump’s new official portrait on Fox, CNN and MSNBC, and quickly decided it was not worth my time. Then I looked at the thing and decided it was worth a little bit of my time after all.

It is a remarkable choice by Trump, since he obviously approved it, something we cannot say with certainly about the current President’s portrait, or anything he did or said, amazingly. On the Trump-Hating news outlets, they have been saying that it bears an uncanny resemblance to his immortal mug shot…

…which is only true in the sense that he isn’t smiling in either of them and both are images of Donald Trump.

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A Jumbo For Democrat Bitter-Enders and the Trump-Deranged

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This made me laugh out loud, and I have to do a quick post. I heard successive guests and hosts on MSNBC desperately try to give puppet President Joe Biden credit for today’s cease fire and negotiated release of the Hamas hostages, including the Americans. They denied that Donald Trump had anything to do with it. Trump, you may recall, promised that “all Hell would break loose” if the hostages were not released by the time he became President. Inaugeration Day is January 20. The cease-fire deal goes into effect on January 19.

That’s just a coincidence, you see. Sure it is. “Elephant? What elephant?”

Would it really be so difficult for even the worst Trump-phobics to give him credit for what to any non-deranged observer is so clearly the result of his thinly-veiled threat and the belief abroad that, unlike some “red line”- drawing Presidents of the recent past, it is risky to call this one’s bluff?

Apparently it is too difficult. They would rather lie when the lie is obvious and indefensible than show the integrity to admit that the man they hate so much did something that worked. How unprofessional. How petty. How self-indicting. How stupid.

But funny!

Unethical Quote of the Month: CNN’s Brian Stelter

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here is Brian Stelter, making a fool of himself, and CNN, and the Axis of Unethical Conduct, again:

This is the depth to which this cosmic hack will stoop to bolster his propaganda-spewing pals in the Axis. Censoring free speech is the equivalent of putting out deadly fires! Brilliant, but telling. This is CNN!

And this is CNN: CNN “factchecker” Daniel Dale rushed to try to defend the incompetence of L.A. and California Democrats, saying “There is no shortage of water in the LA area,” and babbling that reports of fire hydrants being dry were due to “technical logistical infrastructure,” whatever that means. You can’t check facts before the facts are known: a major investigation will be required to determine exactly what went wrong, what public officials were at fault, and what factors were in play regarding the devastating Palisades fires. Never mind, though: to those brave factcheckers, a lack of facts won’t dissuade them from rushing into debates and drowning opinions that might singe the Woke and Wonderful.

Janisse Quiñones, chief executive and chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said that the fire response put immense strain on the water system. That would seem to suggest a shortage of water, no? Or the fact that many fire hydrants were dry, according to the firefighters who tried to use them. The Santa Ynez Reservoir the Pacific Palisadeshas been out of commission since February 2024, meaning 117 million gallons of water was missing, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Meanwhile, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, desperately saying anything he could come up with to preserve his presumed status as the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s 2028 Presidential nomination, told NBC News that the state’s reservoirs are full. He also said, more accurately, there will be an independent investigation of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

It should come as no surprise that these essential public servants, the Axis factcheckers, didn’t choose to factcheck shameless Biden paid liar Jan Psaki, now a paid liar on MSNBC, who told viewers. completely without facts, that the California fires weren’t the fault of anyone in California at all, but Donald Trump for not doing enough to combat climate change. The Axis of Unethical Conduct (that’s the “resistance,” Democrats, and the left-biased mainstream media for those unfamiliar with the Ethics Alarms term) sense that accumulated incompetence and bad progressive policies on display as homes burn might be a tipping point for ridiculously woke California, causing millions of voters to suddenly slap their foreheads and exclaim, “Why have we been voting for these liars and idiots?” I have my doubts that anything short of mass deprogramming can achieve that result, but still what we are getting from Stelter, Psaki and others reeks of panic and desperation.

A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Over on last week’s Friday Open Forum, there is a discussion about “pet peeves.” Obviously one of mine is people who insist that there is no mainstream news media bias, despite the overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of news organizations, reporters, editors, broadcast news hosts and pundits are committed to “advocacy journalism” (that is, unethical journalism) and determined to advance the policies, ideology and major figures who reside on the left side of the political spectrum. I regard such people, which include a disturbing number of my friends and relatives, as one of four things: naive, dishonest, in denial, or not as bright as I thought they were due to bias, which, as we all know, makes us stupid.

I have felt this way for a long time (Hmmmm…I wonder when “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias” became a tag on Ethics Alarms?), but if 2024 didn’t make anyone who maintained that our news organizations and “journalists” were largely objective realize that they had been duped, there is no hope for them.

The New York Times, naturally, is usually Exhibit A here, not because it is the most left-biased news organization (MSNBC gets that title, easily) but because the paper is regarded, still, as the gold standard of American journalism. For the Times to be so flagrantly biased and so often in thrall to the radical Left (See: “The 1619 Project”) is a rank betrayal of the American public and our democracy as well as journalism, all of which need independent, objective news reporting from the so-called “legacy media.” If the best news source is partisan, biased, and devoted to propaganda, what course is there for the public but to be cynical, distrustful, and ultimately uninformed?

And indeed we are.

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Snow Day Ethics Warm-Up, 1/11/25

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It’s another snow day in Northern Virginia, but that isn’t stopping climate change hysterics and progressive public policy incompetence apologists from blaming California’s latest wildfire catastrophe on global warming—not L.A.’s incompetent mayor, not the inadequate fire department budget, not the arsonists who may have started the fires, and not LA’s DEI water head, who left a crucial reservoir disconnected, resulting in fire hydrants not functioning.

Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones was hired at a $750,000 salary in May, double that of her predecessor. To be fair, she had a background in California fires: she was previously a top executive at electricity company PG&E, a senior vice president at Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from 2021 to 2023. That’s the company with the power lines that sparked responsible for the second-largest wildfire in California history, Dixie, in 2021. Before that, the company’s involvement in the 2018 Camp Fire resulted in PG&E paying a $13.5 billion legal settlement, although its liability for causing fires was estimated at $30 billion when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2018. It exited bankruptcy in 2020, just in time to hire Quiñones. Hey, but it’s all climate change!….Meanwhile, the discussion over at the Friday Forum (again, sorry for posting it late) about pet peeves and my late wife’s particular objection to using “that” when “who” is correct reminded me of a brilliant limerick that I had almost forgotten.

My strange friends back in Arlington, Mass. used to play a limerick game in which one of us would come up with a first line, the next would add the second line, the third would complete the third and fourth lines that have to rhyme, and my dear, brilliant, witty friend Jay Sylva would always come up with the final line, because he was so good at it. I specialized in first lines, and this time offered, “The man who had eaten my face…” (it wouldn’t have scanned with “that’). The subsequent additions left us with…

The man who had eaten my face…”
Had the nerve to come back to my place.
I said, “Stay a while!
If you’ll cough up my smile…

To which Jay immediately added, to applause and his eternal glory,

I’ll forgive you for not saying grace!”

On to today’s early list…

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Funeral Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Jimmy Carter’s funeral was revealing regarding the character and professionalism of the various guests, which included all of the living former and current Presidents, First Ladies and VPs. I wish I could embed videos of all of the interesting interactions among these figures, but WordPress won’t let me. I also wish a single video had the right angles and sufficient length to capture what went on, but if there is such a video, I can’t find it. I will have to make do with links. The revelations…

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“Too White A Christmas”: Additional Ethics Observations

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

As promised, I am adding some of my own concerns to Curmie’s post two days ago on the controversy regarding the lack of “diversity” among the ensemble in a Sacramento production of the meh Broadway musical, “Elf.” I know many out there in EA Reader Land don’t give a rip about casting ethics. Ethics Alarms has posted on it often, because I believe, as with a lot of ethics issues in particular industries and areas of the culture, it has larger significance than only where the controversy arose.

Curmie covered most of the ethical issues in this kerfuffle well, as he always does, but I have some pointed conclusions that I think bear emphasis.

The whole episode illustrates what’s fatally wrong with DEI in general and the Left’s obsession with it. It has become an ideology unmoored to the real world. The mission of a theater director or producer must be, first and beyond all else, to put on the best production possible. We can argue about other priorities, but not that. Putting on the best production possible means, without exception, casting and staffing the production with the most talented, experienced, reliable professionals the production can afford. The entire discussion Curmie explores among four theater professional reveals the crippling mission confusion and ideological fanaticism that has infected if not most of the entertainment business, far too much of it.

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The New York Times Unveils (and Retracts) An Early Contender For ‘Headline of the Year’

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This is wonderful in so, so many ways

The headline went up on the Times website around 3:30 pm yesterday as a follow-up to this story, and, if I had seen it, be assured that I would have posted on it then. I would have seen it too, if I hung out on Twitter/”X” all day, which is apparently what amazing numbers of supposedly busy people do.

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Curmie’s Conjectures: Too White A Christmas?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

by Curmie

[Curmie raises so many casting ethics issues that fascinate me in this post that I’m going to announce right now that I’ll post a veritable “Part II” tomorrow, although it will be “Jack’s Conjectures”, or something. Not that I disagree with anything the esteemed Ethics Alarms featured columnist writes here, because I don’t. Here’s a clue about one issue I’ll be covering which Curmie only hints at: for a cast to be sufficiently “diverse,” do the BIPOC members have to obviously LOOK like they are “of color”? I’m thinking of performers like Jennifer Beals, the late Olivia Hussey, and Jessica Alba—JM]

Jack and I exchanged a couple of emails about this story, which I first saw on the OnStageBlog back around Thanksgiving, when this was still news.  I’m pretty sure both of us wanted the other to write about it.  So, a little late, here we go…

The case involves the casting of the Christmas-themed musical Elf at Broadway at Music Circus in Sacramento.  OnStageBlog’s founder Chris Peterson often gets what Curmie’s grad school mentor would call “foam-flecked,” and his editorial here is no exception.  But he does have a point.  Sort of.

The company came under criticism when they announced the cast list for Elf; although a number of the leads were non-white, the entire chorus (seen above) looks pretty vanilla, white-passing if not literally white. Actress (or is she a “social media manager for major hotel brands”?) Victoria Price is one of those who led the charge, pointing to the difference between the Broadway ensemble and the one in Sacramento, and noting that any comments critical of the casting were being deleted.  (I assume she’s telling the truth about this.)

Tony nominee Amber Imam joined the fray, writing that Price’s criticism of both the casting and the removal of negative comments was “absolutely right.  A show that takes place in NEW YORK CITY cannot… CAN NOT have an ensemble that LOOKS LIKE THIS!!!  Do better.  Have you learned nothing?????”

The company’s CEO Scott Klier issued a response that made the situation much, much worse: “cover-up worse than the crime” worse.  Here’s part of it:

“Inclusivity has been and remains my casting and staffing goal for every production. I fell short of that goal for ELF. There is an uncomfortable truth here: Our industry as a whole has largely failed to attract, train and foster the artists necessary to meet today’s demand, and I fear this conversation will continue until it does. It will unfortunately take time. The painful reality of ELF’s casting process was that both the casting submissions and audition attendance revealed few candidates of color and, while those few were undoubtedly talented, they did not meet the dance, music and acting criteria set by our team.”

Hoo boy… Claiming inclusivity as a “goal” and then going 0-for-15 at fulfilling it?  Blaming other people while admitting the decision was yours?  Admitting there’s a “demand” and then ignoring it? 

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