“bias makes you stupid”

Ethics Dunce (And Ethics Corrupter): John Pavlovitz

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Quotes by his guy, a defrocked Methodist pastor known for his social and political activism and “writings from a liberal Christian perspective,” (I’m quoting Wikipedia there) always start popping up on social media this time of year. He’s been quoted a lot on Facebook especially lately because he is a vocal advocate of the idiotic “Mary and Joseph were immigrants too” analogy used by nice, deluded people to justify open borders and illegal immigrants.

These memes are notable because their emotion-based, legally and ethically bonkers argument is even more absurd than the one that claims the U.S. should let everybody in because the Statue of Liberty says so. I think I banned a commenter this year for using that one, invoking the Ethics Alarms “Stupidity Rule.” I will do the same if someone makes the “we should let illegals in because all they want is better lives for their children just like Mary and Joseph” argument. The same logic justifies theft. This is how shoplifting became legal in California.

Pavolovitz, who has about 374,000 followers on Twitter/X, every one of them dumber than when they first encountered him, was at it again this holiday season, posting after the election last month, “It’s good the Christians excited about the mass deportation of immigrants weren’t in Egypt when Jesus’s family fled there, or we’d have a much shorter Bible.”

It’s unethical to use one’s influence and reputation to make people ignorant and stupid: that fatuous statement (and his many like it) marks Pavolovitz as an Ethics Corrupter. I’m assuming readers here don’t have to have explained to them the reasons why analogies between public policies today in the United States and those in the Middle East 2,000 years ago are completely invalid and useless.

When one X-user pointed out to Pavolovitz that his argument was flawed, this modern follower of Jesus replied, “You’re a Trump lapdog. Your opinion of me is irrelevant. Shove it.”

To be fair, that last part is a rough translation of what Jesus said to the Romans…

From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Headline For The Ages

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Where’s “A Friend” when you need him? The Ethics Alarms self-banned NYT defender who keeps trying to sneak into the comments anyway would have to get especially creative with this despicable headline in the print edition. I’d love to read how he would try to spin this one, but that would mean I’d have to read his unauthorized comment before spamming it, and I won’t.

This one is even worse than the typical “fake news” Times headlines, as the jury’s verdict in the Daniel Penny case makes the official facts of the case that Penny was not “choking a rider” but was restraining a dangerous and menacing lunatic in order to protect other riders. The headline is misleading, deceitful and an obvious attempt to cover for Manhattan’s unethical District Attorney, Alvin Bragg.

And this is the “best” newspaper in the United States. One of the main reasons I was rooting for a Trump win is that it would represent a rebuke of the biased mainstream media, which has debased itself, politics, and civic literacy with its complete commitment to progressive propaganda. The headline is a perfect example of what voters were symbolically spitting on with their votes for Donald Trump.

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Pointer: John Podhoretz

Unethical Wise-Ass Quote of the Week: Baseball Writer Keith Law

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Of course, the size and length of the deal look absurd, and I doubt anyone expects Soto to still be a $50-million-a-year player in 2039, when he’ll be 40 if we haven’t burned up the planet by then.”

—Baseball writer Keith Law, writing in The Athletic regarding the impact of the Mets signing outfielder Juan Soto to a 15 year, $765 million dollar contract as discussed on Ethics Alarms here.

I’ll start with a full disclosure: I’ve had some unpleasant personal interaction with Keith Law, who is a talented baseball analyst of long-standing but out of his depth in the field of business and sports ethics, where his nasty exchanges with me occurred more than a decade ago. This quote would be flagged by me as unethical if had been made by my sister in a national publication.

Experts have an obligation to not abuse their authority, influence, presumed wisdom and ability to persuade the public. Keith Law is a very qualified commentator on all aspects of baseball, from the business of the game to talent evaluation and statistics. Unlike a lot of sportswriters, he has an impressive educational background including an undergraduate degree with honors in sociology and economics from the same disgraced but unfortunately still prestigious college that I graduated from, as well as a Masters in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. He is not, however, a climate scientist, and as it appears that his every waking hour has been and is devoted to the wide, wonderful world of baseball, it is safe to presume that he has not acquired any special expertise in the area of climate change other than what he reads in the New York Times (which owns the Athletic) and other progressive propaganda media.

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From the Res Ispa Loquitur Files…Maddow’s Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865163195146477938

Althouse found this for me. Anyone who is surprised or disillusioned by Maddow’s blazing hypocrisy hasn’t been paying attention or doesn’t care that the propagandists they follow have no integrity.

“Maze’s” comment about her being an actress is, sadly, astute. The talking heads on MSNBC, to a significant extent on Fox News, and also on the other networks, are allowed and probably encouraged to telegraph their feelings (or the feelings the network’s want their audiences to think they have) about what they are reporting. Once upon a time, even the most biased of news anchors would announce the news with poker faces and neutral tones. That was considered professional then, and in fact that was and is professional for broadcast journalists: it has just become passe along with journalism ethics generally. Few mug as furiously and shamelessly as Maddow, but her bosses and clearly her audience appreciate her hamming it up: she is reported to have a salary of around $25 million.

A total contradiction like the one portrayed in the matching videos above should be signature significance for anyone paying attention: it means: “I am a partisan hack rather than the trustworthy analyst I pretend to be, and I express what I think my audience wants me to feel about what I am reporting.” People are fine with that, apparently. Fascinating.

If Trump Is Going To Take The U.S. Out Of ‘The Great Stupid’ He Has His Work Cut Out For Him: The Dangerous Cosmetology Student

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I find this story, a Great Stupid phenomenon if there ever was one, almost too stupid to believe.

Leigha Lemoine, a cosmetology student at Horry-Georgetown Technical College in South Carolina, was suspended and banned from the campus after she directed the phrase “get blasted” at someone in a SnapChat group discussion. The object of the term was not a student, but students were participants in the online chat. One of those students complained to the administration, which investigated and determined that Laigha had not seriously threatened anyone. Then an earlier social media post surfaced showing her firing a pistol. Using that as the “context” of her remark, the school suspended her….for a full year!

She is suing. Good.

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The Ethics Conflict In The Daniel Penny Case

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

With yesterday’s developments in the Daniel Penny trial, it is appropriate to ponder the various ethical issues involved.

Below I have reposted the 2023 essay titled “Ethics Quote Of The Month: Heather MacDonald.” Its main thrust was to highlight MacDonald’s excellent article about how his arrest and prosecution reflected another outbreak of the “Black Lives Matter” bias of presumed racism. Penny is white, the violent lunatic who was menacing NYC subway riders when Penny stepped in and, the prosecution claimed, murdered him in an act of vigilantism, was black. It is highly doubtful that any prosecution would have followed the incident if the races were reversed. For example, the colors were reversed in the Ashli Babbitt shooting by a Capitol cop on January 6, 2021, and the black officer was not only exonerated but given a promotion.

Yesterday, Judge Maxwell Wiley dismissed the second-degree manslaughter charge against ex-Marine Penny in the death of Jordan Neely at the request of prosecutors after jurors said they were deadlocked on the primary charge. He then told the jury to continue deliberating on  the lesser charge of whether Penny committed criminally negligent homicide when he put the black, disturbed, homeless man in a choke-hold resulting in his death. The dismissed second-degree manslaughter charge carried a maximum 15-year sentence; criminally negligent homicide carries a four-year maximum sentence. While this was happening, Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) told reporters that he was planning to introduce a resolution to award Daniel Penny the Congressional Gold Medal. “Daniel Penny’s actions exemplify what it means to stand against the grain to do right in a world that rewards moral cowardice,” said Crane, a retired Navy SEAL.  “Our system of ‘justice’ is fiercely corrupt, allowing degenerates to steamroll our laws and our sense of security, while punishing the righteous. Mr. Penny bravely stood in the gap to defy this corrupt system and protect his fellow Americans. I’m immensely proud to introduce this resolution to award him with the Congressional Gold Medal to recognize his heroism.”

You can hardly highlight an ethics conflict in brighter colors than that. Penny could be found guilty of a crime, and at the same time be officially recognized as a hero. An ethics conflict is when two equally valid ethical principles oppose each other and dictate a different result. That’s the situation here, and the answer to the starting point for ethical analysis, “What’s going on here?“

The racially biased motivation for charging Penny may be another example of authorities doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. If you listen to Fox News regarding the trial, you will hear laments that the prosecution sends the wrong message to Americans. One commentator cited the 60-year-old Kitty Genovese incident, which Ethics Alarms has frequently referenced. A woman was murdered as many residents of a nearby apartment complex heard her screams, but none of them called the police or sought to intervene. The prosecution of Penny validates their non-action, the commentator said. It encourages passive citizenship and rejects the duty to rescue.

No, that’s an analogy too far: the man threatening passengers on the subway was right in front of Penny; the people who ignored Genovese’s screams only had to pick up a phone. Nobody held them to blame for not running out to rescue the woman and fight off her attacker. They didn’t perform the minimum acts of good citizenship required in such a situation. Penny’s trial raises the legitimate question of when maximum intervention is justified, and what the consequences should be if something goes wrong.

Does society want to encourage and reward vigilantes? The “Death Wish” movies explored that issue, albeit at an infantile level. At very least, shouldn’t part of the message sent to citizens be that if you choose to intervene in a situation that would normally be handled by law enforcement, you had better be careful, prudent and effective or else you will be accountable for what goes wrong as a result of your initiative? After all, isn’t it certain that a police officer whose choke-hold killed Neely under the same circumstances would probably be tried, or at very least sued for damages (as Penny will be, if he is ultimately acquitted)? Indeed, based on the George Floyd fiasco, Neely’s death at the hands of an over-zealous cop might have sparked a new round of mostly peaceful protests and Neely’s elevation to martyr status.

As a society and one that encourages courage, compassion, and civic involvement, we should encourage citizens to intervene and “fix the problem” if they are in a position to do so and have the skills and judgment to do it effectively. Yet a society that encourages vigilantes is courting chaos and the collapse of the rule of law.  I absolutely regard Penny as a hero, but even heroes must be accountable for their actions. What is the most ethical message to send society about citizen rescuers?

I don’t think it is as easy a question as Penny’s supporters claim.

Now here’s the article from past year:

***

“When government abdicates its responsibility to maintain public safety, a few citizens, for now at least, will step into the breach. Penny was one of them. He restrained Neely not out of racism or malice but to protect his fellow passengers. He was showing classically male virtues: chivalry, courage and initiative. Male heroism threatens the entitlement state by providing an example of self-reliance apart from the professional helper class. And for that reason, he must be taken down.”

—Heather Mac Donald, in her scorching essay, “Daniel Penny is a scapegoat for a failed system”

That paragraph continues,

A homicide charge is the most efficient way to discourage such initiative in the future. Stigma is another. The mainstream media has characterized the millions of dollars in donations that have poured into Daniel Penny’s legal defense fund as the mark of ignorant bigots who support militaristic white vigilantes.

There is no way law enforcement can or should avoid at least exploring a manslaughter charge when an unarmed citizen is killed after a good Samaritan intervenes in a situation that he or she sees as potentially dangerous. Nevertheless, what appears to be the planned vilification of ex-Marine Daniel Penny by Democrats and the news media to put desperately-needed wind back in the metaphorical sails of Black Lives Matter and to goose racial division as the 2024 elections approach graphically illustrates just how unethical and ruthless the 21st Century American Left has become. (I know, I know, we don’t need any more evidence…). Mac Donald’s essay is superb, as many of hers often are. Do read it all, and them make your Facebook friends’ heads explode by sharing it.

Here are some other juicy and spot-on excerpts:

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Trump-Deranged Exploding Axis Head of the Week: LA Times Senior Legal Columnist Harry Litman

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m going to send you over to Harry Litman’s substack to read his whole rant against Donald Trump and the LA Times: who knows, some of you may want to subscribe. As for me, “Why I Just Resigned From The Los Angeles Times” just fills me with sympathy for the poor guy, and hope he finds some help. He’s not an idiot, or wasn’t: he’s a lawyer with an impressive CV, and has all the markers of a normal, functioning citizen like you and me. This is what living in California, allowing yourself to be lobotomized by the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s Big Lies, and and being blind to the misconduct and flaws of your own party will do to you. Litman just metaphorically set himself on fire to protest Trump’s election and signs that his trade, which has completely disgraced itself over the past decade, might be slowly reforming.

The thing is more than 2000 words, almost all of them you have read or heard before from Rachel Maddow, Joy Reid, The View, Charles M. Blow, Jonathan Capeheart, Van Jones, the Lincoln Group, among others, including…

…you know. Here are some choice excerpts:

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Unethical Tweet of the Week: “The View” DEI Hispanic, Ana Navarro-Cárdenas 

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Navarro, a fixture on ABC’s “The View,” has been an embarrassment to all of her media employers; they have just been too foolish to realize it. She’s a fake Republican/conservative, initially hired by CNN as a token so she could bash Donald Trump and claim objectivity. She isn’t witty, analytical or smart and has a speech impediment: if she were a white male, she would be defending DUI cases.

That tweet is special. She’s allegedly a lawyer, and she doesn’t know what a precedent is? The precedent is a President giving a suspiciously extensive pardon including crimes that haven’t been charged yet that the President might have directly benefited from to his son. That’s never happened before because it directly benefits the President and has the appearance of impropriety.

The whole tweet, moreover, is based on a passel of rationalizations falsely applied, like “Everybody does it” (#1) and “There are worse things” (#22). “Every President” doesn’t pardon their immediate family. The closest analog was Bill Clinton pardoning his half-brother for a cocaine conviction, but Roger’s crimes were neither as numerous nor as serious as Hunter’s, nor did anyone think Bill had any connection to them.

Saying that Trump also appointed his father-in-law as French ambassador is as relevant to Navarro’s argument as writing, “And he has bad breath, too!” That factoid has nothing to do with the pardon.

Additionally, citing Wilson, Clinton and Trump as Presidential role models in a matter of ethics is idiotic strategy. They are three of the most ethically-inert of all our Chief Executives, and those pardons match their proclivities. Defending Biden by comparing him to that trio is desperate.

I saved the best for last, though: Navarro-Cárdenas is making Americans dumber by spreading Presidential fiction. Woodrow Wilson had no brother-in-law named “Hunter DeButts,” so he couldn’t have pardoned him.

This pure fiction, the results of Navarro being hoaxed or the victim of an AI “hallucination”: either way, it’s irresponsible journalism. She obviously didn’t check her facts before making a false statement, one that impugned a President (though one who earned a lot of impugning).

Regarding Whether Canadians Are “More Free” Than Americans…

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, a government agency, decreed that the township of Emo must pay damages to Borderland Pride, a Canadian LGBTQ+ activist group, for refusing to proclaim “Pride Month” in 2020. Borderland Pride had “requested” that Emo declare June of that year as Pride Month—now it is clear that this was no mere request— and display a rainbow flag for one week. The township refused, the bigots. How dare they! Now it must pay the organization $10,000 with the other $5,000 coming from Emo mayor Harold McQuaker. The tribunal also ordered McQuaker and the Chief Administrative Officer of the municipality to complete a “Human Rights 101” training course offered by the Ontario Human Rights Commission within 30 days.

In case you missed a class or two, the damages are called “compelled speech,” a cornerstone of totalitarianism. The “Human Rights 101” training course is called “re-education,” or “brain-washing.” In the United States, such a result would be unimaginable, or at least is right now, since Kamala Harris wasn’t elected.

Whew! Close call, eh?

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“Wicked”: A Review (Part 2: Politics and Propaganda)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Gregory Maguire’s “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” became a critical and financial success by merging the Frank L. Baum children’s series with contemporary issues and values, notably discrimination, prejudice, the abuse of power, and corruption. The still-running Broadway musical “Wicked” softened the preaching and propaganda a bit, but it has come back with full force in the movie adaptation now playing at inflated prices in theater near you. (I purchased a box of Junior Mints and regular size coke. They cost 15 bucks.)

In the novel and the musical, the witch-to-be is born green, leading to a life of being the victim of hate and discrimination. The movie cast not just a black woman in the role, but one with pronounced African features (in contrast to, say, Halle Berry) making it nearly impossible not to experience the plot as a thinly veiled Critical Race Theory brief. Though there are black actors and actresses in Oz here and there, only the white characters are seen to be repulsed or frightened by Elphaba (Maguire gave her a name), because the director correctly calculated that in his film, the character is as much black as green. We see her rejected and cast aside (to be raised by a bear) by her father the moment he sees her skin shade, so it is clear where this is going: Elphaba is going to be forced to fight against the cruel culture that rejected her. Thus we know that she is a personification of the Black Lives Matter riots within the first ten minutes of the movie.

Just as early in the movie we know we are in the grip of sensitive wokism obsessions when we we find ourselves in Munchkinland and the Munchkins pretty much look like anyone you know. The movie “Wicked” is obsessed with, the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz,” had the Munchkins played by the Singer Midgets, a little people performing group. In the Baum book that started it all, they are described as being about the same size as Dorothy, who is about 10, but one way or the other, we know the Munchkins are small. Ah, but Disney’s endlessly delayed “Snow White” movie got into trouble after the most famous acting dwarf, Peter Dinklage, declared that the whole idea of portraying the Little People of the familiar fairy tale was offensive, so Disney eliminated the dwarfs entirely. That was also attacked by Little People activists—erasing them, you know. Similarly, Peter Jackson got in trouble for using computer magic to make a full size actor look like he was a a yard or so tall in the “Lord of the Rings series.” So “Wicked” director Jon M. Chu punted and just made the Muchkins normal size and boring. And that wasn’t all: to make sure Dinklage didn’t find some reason to take shots at his movie, the Little Actor was hired to provide the voice of a talking goat.

This is DEI at its silliest. The film gets credit for hiring an “under-represented minority” who was personally responsible for the film not hiring many more members of the same minority. Furthermore, while I like Dinklage (who became famous in “Game of Thrones”) as much as anybody, the only reason he’s a star is because he’s so short. Sure, he plays lawyers, doctors, gangsters, but no matter what he plays, he plays it as a dwarf. That’s the only thing that distinguishes him from hundreds of other equally able actors. It makes no sense at all to hire Peter Dinklage as a voice actor. His unique feature can add nothing to such a gig. The film took away another talented vocal actor’s job so it could be “inclusive” and hire a dwarf for his voice alone.

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