I’m really and truly searching for good ethics topics that haven’t been raised by politics, and its hard right now. This entry in the Ethics Alarms Hollywood clip archive is appropriate…
This time, I was pulled back in by an alleged news analysis story in the New York Times. If it had been an op-ed column, then its thrust would have been slightly more excusable. This was supposedly fact analysis, not opinion, and the article could do nothing but make its readers dumber and more resistant to harsh truths. The piece was headlined, “Will the U.S. Ever Be Ready for a Female President?”[Gift link!]
Morons. The question itself is dunderheaded and insulting in a vacuum, but as analysis of Kamala Harris’s well-deserved defeat, it is a throbbing neon example of “my mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts” as well as how rationalizations are lies that we tell ourselves when we want to be deluded. Of course the U.S. will be ready for a female President, as soon as one of the parties nominates a woman who is a strong candidate and who doesn’t run a terrible campaign. Imagine writing this garbage without giggling…
I confess, I don’t know what to call this post, how to define NY Gov. Kathy Hochul at this point, or how to explain American citizens who would put up with her.
She’s had quite an exciting December. On the same day and just two hours after a psychopathic illegal immigrant set a sleeping woman on fire in a New York City subway train, Hochel sent out this…
There are still a lot of Harris-Walz lawn signs up in my neighborhood. I find the one above, the “obviously” sign, especially obnoxious, and I know the nice people who have been displaying that thing now for almost four months. I am trying mightily not to think, “What jerks these people are,” even though they brought me some leftover taco fixings right after my wife died.
I remember a lot of bitter-enders keeping their Gore-Lieberman lawn signs and bumper stickers displayed in 2000 after the Great Hanging Chad Recount and Gore’s appropriate (if short-lived) concession. That was also obnoxious, though at least somewhat understandable given the false narrative being hammered at by the biased left wing news media that Gore had really won the popular vote in Florida and that a partisan Supreme Court had unethically handed the Republicans the Presidency. But today’s out-of-date signs, apparently aiming at virtue-signaling to like-minded deluded progressives, have no plausible justification whatsoever. And what virtues do they think a sign like that signals?
When I saw the one above this morning walking Spuds around my mostly “blue” Alexandria, Virginia neighborhood, my mind immediately flashed to an entry yesterday on The New Neo’s blog, “What was Kamala thinking?” The post began by quoting this story:
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien….discussed his union’s historic decision not to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in nearly 30 years. O’Brien said Harris finally agreed to sit with the Teasmsters for a roundtable after President Biden dropped out of the race, just to only answer a quarter of their 16 questions. Other candidates, including Trump, answered them all. “On the fourth question, one of her operatives or one of her staff slips anote in front of me — ‘This will be the last question.’ And it was 20 minutes earlier than the time it was going to end,” O’Brien told [Tucker] Carlson. “And her declaration on the way out was, ‘I’m going to win with you or without you,’’ he recalled.”
“So imagine, instead of embracing the Great Satan narrative, we covered Trump—warts and all—as an extraordinary American political phenomenon perhaps not seen since the populist presidency of Andrew Jackson. Do not mistake this as a call to absolve Trump of any actual wrongdoing or to go soft on the reporting. Instead it is a plea to instill some sense of balance and fairness in thecoverage. Surely, I’m not alone in believing this approach would have given readers and listeners a far more nuanced and valuable view of the American mood and Trump’s appeal and staying power—and perhaps helped to stanch the public’s corrosive loss of trust in our craft. And at any rate, if the lopsided coverage of Trump was, in fact, a strategy to destroy him, well, it’s proved a huge flop. Trump won. Much of the media was or should be embarrassed.”
The “retro proposal”? Journalists have become “blinded by their inability—or worse, unwillingness—to see past their biases. This is not journalism. It’s propagandism.” Therefore, he says, “I invite journalists to re-embrace our agnostic roots. We need to return to being the adults in the room, unabashedly reaffirm our role as the honest broker. No political party, business interest, government entity or activist group owns the truth. Everybody has a motive and an agenda, sources and leakers especially. Truth-tellers can sometimes lie and liars can sometimes tell the truth. Our job is to sort through the noise and bickering, the claims and counter-claims, the data and the chaff, to parse issues honestly without regard to whom it may offend or please or what the dominant narrative insists upon.”
I think Wells means what used to be called ethical, responsible journalism. Gee, what a concept!
Read it all, but here are a few more excerpts from an excellent essay:
“I am sure someone will do research into who the order has spared, and we will see other multiple murderers, people who killed without remorse and with extreme cruelty, vicious psychopaths who killed for the fun of it, or who murdered children, or who slaughtered their victims after rape or torture. These don’t warrant executions, Biden says on behalf of the Wonderful Woke who refuse to acknowledge that there is a point where an individual has forfeited the benefits of civilization, but the single factor of “hate” elevates murder from really, really bad to intolerable.”
No sooner had I posted than Not The Bee posted exactly what I expected; it popped up in my email, in fact. Among those the President’s mass commutation today saves from the fate they all richly deserve:
Sarah B.’s perceptive and eloquent Comment of the Day about the inquirer to the NYT’s “The Ethicist” advice column who asked whether the threat of various catastrophes ahead (as she saw them) concluded with a sentence that reminded me of this famous speech from the film “Parenthood.” I’ve been looking for an opportunity to post it. Thanks Sarah B.
It is very easy to mock and deride someone who is silly enough to believe the mainstream media and all the horror stories the left has subscribed to. I like feeling superior for not believing in this version of fantasy land. I felt superior when I was not one of the wackos who declared themselves part of the Navi in Avatar, and I’m feeling the same general happiness when recognizing that I’m not so far gone as to believe this current set of beliefs. Indeed, it is tempting to feel even more so, because so many of my contemporaries follow this insane set of beliefs.
However, I think we need to dig deeper than the mocking laughter this letter so easily inspires. What is this woman really saying? First, she is discussing a desire to have children. This is a desire that fewer and fewer women are subscribing to, usually to their and to societies eventual sadness. Therefore, this desire should be encouraged. Second, she is fearing that we are entering a time of tribulation. Before addressing this in any depth, we should consider what she is probably meaning with these two concerns. The first worry is likely that she feels that bringing a child into this world in a time of trouble means that her child may suffer. The second worry is that in bring a child into this world in a time of trouble would cause this woman to suffer.
The concern of bringing a child into a world in a less than perfect time causing the child to suffer is not a valid one for several reasons. First, the USA, under Trump or not, is better than many if not most places in the world. In addition, the world in 2024 is a better place than nearly all of human history. Less people suffer, and they suffer less than in the past. The human misery index is very low. Children are a joy to the human race, and the hope for the future. Man has always had children, even in tougher times than any we can illogically expect to come about today. The idea that the child MIGHT suffer in the perfect storm is still less likely than the child having a normal life and enjoying every moment his parents lovingly gifted him. Besides, in the best of times, a child will get illnesses and injuries. That is part of growing up. To quote Calvin, quoting his dad, “being miserable builds character.” As some say, if it were not for the heat or the hammer, the steel could not be honed. Adversity is what helps us become the best version of ourselves.
The concern of a parent suffering because they brought a child into a troubled world is ridiculous, because parents will always suffer for their children. Labor is no picnic. Sleepless nights when breastfeeding are a form of suffering. Staying up with a sick kid, or sitting by a kid’s bedside when they are in the hospital for a tonsillectomy, appendectomy, or croup is not exactly enjoyable. Holding them still so a doctor can give them stitches is incredibly painful, even before they kick you. I certainly feel greater pain than my children when they are sick and in misery and I wish I could take their suffering from them, even if it is a good suffering. Heck, it really does hurt me more than my child when I have to discipline them. And again, in the perfect utopia of a Democratic paradise, a child will still cause their parents suffering. Children will be born with special needs. Children will slip past an exhausted or distracted parent and fall into a pool or run into traffic. Accidents will happen, no matter what we do. Also, children will grow up and make poor decisions that cause parents all kinds of heartbreak. (I could mention that many democratic policies make some of those decisions more likely, but that would be of little use talking with this woman.) In short, being a parent is accepting suffering in the course of bring joy to ourselves and others.
My final thoughts on this involve a song by Garth Brooks. “Our lives are better left to chance. I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.” Today, too many people have become convinced that no dance is worth the pain we may have to suffer, especially if we only imagine what the pain may be. I choose the dance.
As frequent readers here know, Ethics Alarms has been referring to the Axis of Unethical Conduct (an Ethics Alarms term, and a fair one) as a totalitarianism-leaning, anti-American phenomenon for years now, as I have tracked the frightening progress on the 2016 Ethics Train Wreck and all of its many offshoots. I have used made this point frequently and, I recognize, emphatically to the point that many object to those and related labels as inflammatory and biased, which they are not because my assessment is objective and accurate. I could also say, with justification, “If the show fits, wear it,” and even “If the shoe fits wear it, you assholes.”
Today I was sent promotional spam by my old hometown newspaper, the lone surviving conservative #2 paper in Boston (The Dominating Axis representative is the always Democratic Boston Globe) after the slow amalgam of four newspapers with long histories of service to the people of New England: The Boston Herald, the Boston Traveler, the Boston Record and the Boston American. That headline above was all I needed to spark a head explosion with several subsequent explosions that left bits of brain and bone on my keyboard and computer screen after I read the entire report.
Really, that Washington Post headline from yesterday is impressive. It has just 13 words, and yet there are six separate pieces of misinformation in it. Bravo!
1. and 2. Elon Musk didn’t “force” anything.
3. The Trump Presidency hasn’t started yet. If it had started, that would be a Constitutional crisis, and Milloy as well as the Washington Post are among those responsible for it, since they deliberately ignored the scandal of a diminished capacity White House resident for almost four years.
4. Uh, there was no shutdown, and only an idiot would have thought there would be.
5. A Presidency that hasn’t begun can’t collapse by definition.
6. Chaos is what the Biden Presidency is in now.
Details aside, it is also an excellent example of the fake news category I call “future news.” When what is happening doesn’t supply sufficient fodder for reports and pundits to attack Republicans and their favorite ideology’s opponents, attack those you want to hold responsible for what might happen.
It is hard to choose among Milbank, the despicable Phillip Bump, the deluded E.J. Dionne, dim bulb Ruth Marcus, old hack Eugene Robinson, boringly predictable Kathleen Parker and the certifiably bonkers Jennifer Rubin (all of whom have damning EA dossiers) as the most egregious partisan propaganda agent on this rapidly declining newspaper. Milbank would certainly be a worthy choice. Despite Jeff Bezos’s intermittent efforts to drag the once esteemed paper back from the brink, its staff is obviously so biased and lacking diversity of thought that the task seems impossible.
I keep my digital subscription to the Post because I need to check it for Ethics Alarms issues, because it’s my local paper, and mostly because it reminds me that the New York Times could be worse. But I do believe that bias has made the Post too stupid to survive: I wonder if it will last the next four years.
Why wouldn’t any sane and ethical editor tell Milbank, “Dana, I love ya, but that column makes you look like an apoplectic old fool and this paper look ridiculous. Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, go write something that won’t cause spit-takes all over America”?
Wouldn’t you think an alleged ”’factchecking” organization would understand what a lie is? Well, the organization is Politifact, so it’s a trick question. It’s a Democratic Party/progressive propaganda outfit and facts are the last thing it cares about: that group of hacks is easily the most dishonest and unethical of all of these thing, much less trustworthy than second in line from the bottom, which might be Glenn Kessler and the Washington Post’s intermittently fair “The Factchecker” feature. And so it was that as the end of 2024 approaches, Politifact announced that this was its “Lie of the Year,”what Trump said on September 10:
“‘In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs.The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
“With this claim, amplified before 67 million television viewers in his debate against Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump took his anti-migrant, the U.S. border-is-out-of-control campaign agenda to a new level,” Politifact moaned.
But even if the “Their eating pets and wildlife from the parks!” story had been a deliberate lie, it obviously was neither the “Lie of the Year” in either of the two categories relevant to the choice: it wasn’t the most destructive lie, and it wasn’t the most indefensible lie. This was:Continue reading →
On May 24, 2024, while Supreme Court Justice Jackson was dreaming of playing “Medea,” The New York Timespublished an op-ed entitled, “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” by Senior Judge Michael A. Ponsor of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Judge Ponsor addressed the flying of an upside-down American flag and the “Appeal to Heaven” flags outside homes owned by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a controversy covered thoroughly on Ethics Alarms.
The ethics verdict here was that the controversy was contrived, and that the attack on Alito was politically motivated, biased, and wrong. Judge Ponsor, however, opined that “any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have” recognized that the flag displays were improper because they could be perceived as “a banner of allegiance on partisan issues that are or could be before the court.”
Let me inject here, “Sure, by an idiot!” “The appearance of impropriety is a reason-based standard. “Hey, this SCOTUS judge’s wife flew the same flag that began the HBO John Adams series: that must mean that her husband is in the bag for President Trump!” is not a reasonable perception.
