In a 20-0 vote, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA for short), the governing body for small colleges, ruled that it was unfair to allow transgender athletes to compete against biological women in women’s sports. The NAIA now becomes the first college sports organization to have the courage and integrity to make such an obvious and necessary rule to protect women’s advances in athletic, as the other groups, like the NCAA, waffle, stall, engage in double-talk and duck the issue while female athletes are hurt.
Yesterday the National Organization for Women, which has betrayed women in this controversy in order to keep its Far Left creds burnished, quietly took down its tweet of last week claiming that “White supremacist patriarchy”was behind objections to cheaters like Lia Thomas (above) dominating female competitors in college competitions. South Carolina’s women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, similarly bowing down to Woke World and making no sense in the process, blathered that “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play.” Wags on social media had fun musing about what “vice-versa” meant in that statement: “If you consider yourself a sport and want to play women”? (Staley’s an idiot.)
This is already shaping up as “Trump Derangement Monday,” and it isn’t even noon yet. Steve-O-in NJ has a Comment of the Day on the way after revealing a disturbing anti-Trump rant from a previously distinguished lawyer. The lawyer’s Trump-Deranged, Democratic National Committee-endorsed talking points may be slightly more disturbing than the crazed claims “Blackish” actress Jenifer Lewis made when she sat down with Zerlina Maxwell, host of the radio show ‘Mornings With Zerlina’ on SiriusXM, but only because lawyers are supposed to be more responsible and reliable than show business celebrities.
Thanks, Congresswoman! And I actually think you lapped Christina Khalilin the complete science ignoramus race, though you both are tied in the “if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” competition.
I want to know who in Georgia voted for this silly, embarrassing woman. I want names and explanations. Maybe DNA. It’s my Congress too…
After that puny 4.8 magnitude earthquake tickled the tri-state area (no injuries, no damage) Greene sent out a tweet claiming that God had sent the earthquake has a “sign” for the United State to “repent.” She also claimed today’s eclipse is another sign from God that the country needs to ask for forgiveness. Greene seems to be in tune with primitive societies that were terrified during eclipses, believing that the moon was eating the sun, or something. People like her allowed Bing Crosby to be declared a wizard in “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”
You should remember: it was less than a month ago when I posted this Ethics Quiz with the question, “Should the government protect historic structures and artifacts that relate to dark events and less than admirable figures (by today’s values) in local and American history?” Something stupid is in the air, and that air has clearly reached Canada. For there is another controversy there about a couple wanting to erase all references to their historic home’s “less than admirable figure” by today’s [woke] values.”
Dr. Arnold Mahesan, a wealthy fertility specialist of Sri Lankan descent, and his wife, entrepreneur and former “Real Housewives of Toronto” actressRoxanne Earle, whose family comes from Pakistan, bought a house for $5 million in 2022 with a Toronto heritage designation in an affluent midtown Toronto neighborhood. The couple is adamant that the city should remove the heritage restriction from their home because, in their view, the original owner held racist opinions. Opinions.
Stapleton Pitt Caldecott, a former Toronto Board of Trade president, built the two-and-a-half story, 9,000-square foot house in 1906. He was opposed to immigration—the current residents of the home the descendants of immigrants, you will note—and also he believed immigrants should assimilate into their new country’s society and culture. Imagine that!
Oh-oh. I agree with that aspect of Caldecott’s beliefs. Well, there goes the prospects of 2707 Westminster Place being designated the “Jack Marshall House”!
“Stapleton Caldecott would’ve been appalled by us living in the house he commissioned,” Mahesan told a meeting of the Toronto Preservation Board, using a variation of Rationalization #32, “The Unethical Role Model.” He also complained that he and his wife only discovered that their home was a designated heritage property last year, when they decided that they wanted to modify the house’s steep stairway from the sidewalk. That fact means that they must have the city’s permission before making any major changes to the property. To this, I say: “Tough noogies!” (and old Arlington, Mass. playground expression). “Let the buyer beware” has some unreasonable applications, but not this one. They paid millions for a house without checking its history and legal status. That’s their misfortune.
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel, in my view, isn’t usually worth writing about on an ethics blog. He’s a despicable human being, and the fact that Kimmel is paid large amounts of money to be a media celebrity nicely illustrates the state of rot in our popular culture. Nevertheless, even the despicable have their uses. A recent outburst by Kimmel on his ABC show stands as throbbing evidence of just how estranged from logic and reality the Trump Deranged are. He also demonstrates just how meager the ethics decision-making skills are of many celebrities. (Very meager.)
Kimmel’s monologue three nights ago began with Jimmy expressing amazement that a poll showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in several crucial swing states ahead of the 2024 presidential election. “How could this be?” Kimmel asked, channeling Hillary Clinton’s absurd lament in 2016 that she should be leading in the polls by “50 points.” Kimmel’s grand proof that Trump’s lead in polls was inexplicable consisted of his observation that many ex-associates of the former president have spoken out against him, so Trump. “doesn’t even lead in a poll of people who worked for him.”
Good thinking there, Jimmy. In fact, close associates and even family members of many, perhaps most popular elected officials and other public figures, like entertainers, have vastly different views of them than the public. The list of prominent figures including successful leaders who have sterling reputations, but who had smelly feet of metaphorical clay or worse is too long to list. The public doesn’t know the candidates they support; they usually only know their carefully constructed images. Moreover, working for someone is completely different from having a stake in their decisions. Kimmel’s reasoning here is incompetent, as usual.
Yet it is still not as damning as believing that there is no reason why anyone would rather see Trump—or anyone—in the White House rather than Joe Biden. To begin with, Trump’s term, until the pandemic derailed everything with the heavy assistance of the Democratic Deep State, was undeniably more successful that Biden’s term so far. It’s not even close. When one asks a loyal, closed-minded Democrat what is so impressive about Biden’s policies and results, all they have is admiration for Joe’s fealty to the progressive agenda, and the gaslighting argument that the public doesn’t appreciate how good they have it.
Biden may have the most incompetent Cabinet in Presidential history. Foreign affairs are an expensive, feckless mess. His Justice Department has politicize law enforcement beyond anything Richard Nixon would have dreamed of. Due process, equal protection, the right to fair trials, the First and Second Amendment and the Constitution itself have been eroded under Biden’s watch. The nation is enduring a totalitarian-style alliance between the central government and the news media, which is dangerous. Major cities are becoming unlivable, border enforcement is out of control, anti-Semitism is epidemic, and the single thing that Biden promised to do, heal the division in the nation, not only hasn’t happened, but Biden set out to make it…
I miswrote a few weeks back when I stated that an assertion by a DEI pimp that “studies show that diversity” makes organizations more successful and effective was a Big Lie, one of those “facts” (like the alleged percentage of women who are sexually molested, or women only making 76 cents for every dollar earned by men for the same job) that have gained currency by repetition by activists without solid evidence to support them. There are studies that purported to support the DEI contention, all from the same management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, carving out a profitable little niche for itself. Aside:I have worked for and with consulting companies. Consulting is a business, not a profession, and such companies strongly tend to give clients what they want to hear, thus making such firms popular and wealthy. Sadly, this is also true of ethics consulting firms and ethics consultants. I won’t provide an expert opinion crafted to make a client happy, and that is why I’m about three months from living in a cardboard box.
Back when I accepted gigs to do training in “diversity” for bar associations, there were no such studies, and because the diversity virtue-signaling fad was already galloping along then, I carelessly assumed that some enterprising “researchers” hadn’t manufactured “science” to support what was already conventional wisdom in the years since I decided that I couldn’t in good faith keep accepting money to teach politically correct nonsense. The McKinsey & Company studies, all claiming to “prove” the value of “diversity,” were published in 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023, thus giving the private sector, government, the military, the professions and academia something to justify their woke crusades.
Christina Khalil is the Green Party candidate for U.S. Senator in New Jersey. Here is her campaign bio that sits on her website:
Christina Anna Khalil (she/her/hers) is a native of New Jersey, and she grew up in foster care where she overcame many trials and tribulations throughout her childhood and adult life. Christina has her B.A. in psychology and her Master’s in Social Work both from Ramapo College, which were both major accomplishments for her, and Christina believes that one of the true keys to freedom lies in education. In her free time Christina has avidly volunteered for community organizations doing important work, such as (BCLA) Bergen County LGBTQ+ Alliance.While obtaining her Master’s Degree, Christina worked on the front lines during the height of the pandemic at a medical detox facility and never quit school, while also volunteering at Hackensack High School. While working in the medical and substance abuse field, Christina noticed that our current elected leaders appeared detached from the reality of the current struggles that citizens of New Jersey face and made a vow to herself that when it washer time to step up and work towards change, she would do just that.
Christina’s leadership and resiliency are unmatched, and she is the leader that New Jersey needs to fight to make the New Jersey citizens’ quality of life better.
Impressive! What a pity she’s an idiot. Here’s proof, her tweet yesterday:
Yes, the Green Party has nominated someone who thinks climate change causes earthquakes. Her biography claims that “our current elected leaders appeared detached from the reality.” One can’t get much more detached from reality than believing the movement of tectonic plates in the Earth’s crust are affected by the climate. This woman has a Master’s Degree, and has the critical thinking skills of a pangolin. Score another one for America education.
She exemplifies the people advising Joe Biden, arguing for the banning of gas stoves, air conditioning and gasoline-powered cars while wasting billions of dollars in the process. Some New Jersey residents will vote for her, maybe thousands. How such people get through the day without stabbing themselves in the eye with forks is a mystery.
Here’s Christina…
…she looks nice enough, though I think I see the sky shining through her eyes from the back of her head. She is truly a dolt, and it is unethical for dolts to run for elective office.
Note: WordPress says I should tag this post “art,” “poetry” and “music.” So apparently their bot is affected by climate change too…
OK, maybe I just telegraphed my personal bias in reaction to this quiz, so I’ll keep my opinion to myself until the commentariat weighs in. I’ll try, anyway.
New York City has agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed in a 2018 class-action lawsuit by Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz, two Muslim women who claimed their rights were violated when police forced them to remove their hijabs for the police to take their “mug shots.”
The financial settlement requires approval by Judge Analisa Torres of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, and I fervently hope…never mind! My mouth is zipped!
Commenter Dr. Emilio Lizardo revealed this morning in the comments to “At Princeton, Students Feel “Unsafe” in the Company of a Conservative Professor” that the policy at issue had already been reversed by the time I wrote about it:
“By April 2, the policy was reversed after an intervention from the club’s Graduate Board. In the seven days in between, debate over the policy rose from the club’s private GroupMe to the headlines of national right-wing publications. Club leadership maintains that the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny.”
So Ethics Alarms can’t claim even a smidgen of credit for the reversal. Nonetheless, the lesson here, as we have already seen elsewhere, is that when organizations and institutions install discriminatory and self-evidently unethical procedures and policies in the name of wokeness, political correctness, aspiring fascism of the far left, DEI or other perversions of core American principles and are quickly exposed, assailed and embarrassed, they usually back down. (Usually.)
A further lesson is that the organizations and institutions know that what they are doing is indefensible except from the “by any means necessary” perspective driving the Left in its crusade to re-make America. They know it, but they try anyway, hoping that any single instance will fly under the metaphorical radar long enough to become institutionalized. When they get caught, their reaction is, “OK, too soon. We’ll hold off on this one for now.”
Their assumption, and it is, frighteningly, probably correct, that the current DEI, Black Lives Matter, open borders, climate change hysteria, anti-free speech…freedom of association…equal treatment under the law and due process wack-a-mole contest it has forced our society into playing will inevitably result in a slow, steady ratcheting-up of anti-democratic practices that become accepted as norms. This is how the public education system became an indoctrination process. It is how the initially admirable goals of affirmative action became the racist practice of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” It is how journalism in the US. became partisan propaganda.
The fact that only conservative publications and news sources treated the Princeton story as “fit to print” and necessary illumination to stop democracy from “dying in darkness” is also significant. This doesn’t mean that the story wasn’t important or objectively worth reporting on. The conduct of the mainstream media in ignoring it proves that its purpose is not to keep the public informed, but to assist the Far Left in laying waste to America’s traditional interpretation of democracy. The Princeton story is important, and the fact that only conservative sources publicized it (only Fox News among the news networks picked it up) doesn’t prove their bias. It proves the sinister, deliberate complicity of the mainstream media as it attempts to keep Americans from realizing what is going on right under their noses until it is too late.
The Princetonian wrote that a debate over the policy arose only after “headlines of national right-wing publications” exposed it. If the story sparked a debate, it means it was a story worth reporting. The MSM didn’t report on the story because the Far Left doesn’t want any debate. In an honest debate they lose, just as they lose on abortion, illegal immigration, and so many other issues. If they felt they could win on the merits, then they would want debate. Instead, their media tries to bury the facts. This isn’t a conservative “conspiracy theory.” It is reality.
Finally, the club’s claim that “the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny” is another damning piece of evidence. Gaslighting, denial, “Jumbo”-ism and “It isn’t what it is” (Yoo’s Rationalization,” #64) mania have become such reflex tools of the Left that comparisons with “1984” are unavoidable. The border is secure. Bidenomics is a success. Inflation isn’t a problem. The President didn’t extol the “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter. He’s as sharp as a tack. The Trump prosecutions aren’t political. January 6 was an insurrection. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
The Princeton student club episode is an important one for American to understand. They can only understand it if they know about it.
Boy I wish I knew how to get the readership here back on the rising curve it seemed to be on in 2016...
For the second time today, I nearly duplicated a post I had already written. Princeton hasn’t been in the “Great Stupid” news lately as much as its Ivy League competitors, so my first headline was almost identical to this one from three years ago. Cornell, as we now know, has lost its collective mind. Columbia has been beyond redemption for a while now. The University of Pennsylvania’s president said essentially the same stuff before the Senate about whether anti-Semitsim on campus was acceptable depending on “context” as Harvard’s president, and was fired before Claudine Gay was. Yale, you will recall, has so disgraced itself that some judges announced last year that they will no longer accept clerks from Yale’s law school. (I don’t know what’s wrong with Dartmouth: apparently they just study and drink up there in the New Hampshire boondocks.)
Princeton, however, is apparently graduating complete weenies, a true embarrassment for a school whose mascot is a tiger. Princeton student Matthew Wilson revealed in an op-ed published in The Daily Princetonian, that after he brought a professor as a guest to lunch at one of Princeton’s social clubs, the club changed its visitors rule. Now, any student guests who aren’t relatives or friends will “henceforth not be permitted to enter the club during its ‘hours of food service operations’ without prior approval from undergraduate officers, club staff, and the alumni Board of Governors.”
Why the change, you may ask, as Wilson did. The policy was changed because the presence of the prof, who is one of Princeton’s lone conservatives, “made members feel unsafe.” Wait, is the professor rabid, a known serial killer, infected with ebola or prone to attack strangers? No, it’s just that his beliefs make the students feel unsafe. At an institution that once was dediacted to exposing young minds to a whole range of ideas and theories.
I confess, though this is not the first time I have encountered the fatuous “safe spaces” argument, I don’t understand it at all. This is not what “safe” means. Nobody is harmed or endangered by hearing opinions one disagrees with, so one can’t possibly be threatened by someone who is merely in the same room who isn’t saying anything directed you at all.
“The simple fact that they had to eat lunch in the same building as him — a respected professor at this university who many Charter students have taken classes with and even praised — was too much to handle,” Wilson wrote. “It was a grave error for [the club’s] leadership to bend to the demands of a few students who couldn’t stomach the possibility of being within shouting distance of someone whose views challenge their own,” Wilson continued.
Why should he, or anyone, even have to write this?
Ethics Alarms 