“bias makes you stupid”

Exhibit A On How Academia And The Public Sector Corrupt Each Other: The Berkeley-Chesa Boudin Affair

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

What is most amazing about this story is how transparent U. Cal at Berkeley is, even proud, about it. Amazing and alarming. The American far left is so confident now that it doesn’t attempt to disguise its most radical and destructive impulses.

Here’s the short version: the most radically progressive city in the country essentially fired its even more progressive district attorney for allowing the city to begin a death spiral into lawlessness. So despite that failure—indeed perhaps because of it— he was just named the founding executive director of the new Criminal Law and Justice Center at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law.

The city is San Francisco, and the former DA is Chesa Boudin. Boudin, who has been discussed here before, is really an antimatter prosecutor: he doesn’t believe in prosecution, law enforcement, or laws, really. The son of Sixties radicals, members of the violent Weathermen group, his mission in life is to “dismantle the system,” as they used to say (and are now saying again) on college campuses. Among all the so-called “Soros prosecutors” allowing cities to decline into urban hellscapes where shoplifting is considered a right and police are hesitant to police, Boudin was the worst by far. Imagine what it says about our elite educational institutions that one of them, after seeing him removed for placing his ideological delusions above his duty, said, “Hey! This is the perfect guy to head up our new criminal justice center in our law school!”

It boggles the mind, or would, if we had not already observed the rapid and so-far unimpeded ethics rot in academia. Here’s part of Berkeley’s announcement:

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Depressing Ethics Notes From The Education Apocalypse, Part I: Graduation Follies

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Let’s begin with the first of four troubling graduation tales, this one involving the rampant narcissism that social media and the popular culture imparts on our youth, aided and abetted by educational professionals.

Above is a newly-minted University of Arizona grad, known online as “Rachel Davenpole,” who donned a pair of see-through platform heels and a red thong to pose in a stripper-style split on a pole she had erected on campus for the task. Her erudite response to social media critics who found her photos inappropriate was was: “Graduated Magna Cum Laude (3.8 GPA) and received over $40,000 in scholarships … let’s get u a mirror so we can see who this tweets about babes.” Her non-sequitur defense was sufficient to inspire the New York Post—there are some good reasons why the rest of the media doubted you on Hunter’s laptop, guys—into giving Rachel even more of the publicity she craves with a news story.

Now watch Rachel be shocked when the employer who hires her for her first adult job thinks sexual harassment is appropriate…

Next, there is Marlin High School near Waco, Texas. According to a statement posted to Facebook, it has postponed its graduation after just five of 33 seniors could meet the requirements for graduation because of grades or attendance problems. The school says it will reschedule the graduation until June so students will have more time to qualify. But the problem isn’t the students, is it? Here’s a chance to re-post one of my favorite Charles Addams cartoons:

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Heather Mac Donald

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“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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Ethics Dunce: Target (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Morons.

Yesterday Target sent out a mass internal email (above) continuing the woke pandering that has already cost the company billions in stock losses. The posturing and now the doubling down makes no sense from a business perspective or an ethical perspective. The chain had to close over a hundred outlets last year: this is just management incompetence that endangers the jobs and livelihood of the same people the email is “thanking.”

Here’s the text, in case you have as bad reading vision as I do:

“Yesterday was a very hard day for Target, and as CEO Brian Cornell said, thank you for the care you’ve shown each other, our frontline teams, and the LGBTQIA+ community. Today brings more reflection, pain and the need for continued care as our team, hometown and world remember the murder of George Floyd. As you make space to take care of yourself and each other, know that you can always tap into these tools from Team Member LIfe Resources, and as Mental Health Awareness Month continues, turn to Take Five to Take Care hub for more wellbeing support.”

I wouldn’t personally boycott Target because it is promoting gonad-tucking bathing suits for mentally-ill men, but I might stop frequenting a store that wants to celebrate the George Floyd disaster as if it were the Alamo or The Maine. There was literally nothing good that came out of the Summer of Floyd. People died, communities set themselves up for more crime and violence by rejecting the police; rioting spread across the nation, the justice system was compromised by a jury allowed to deliberate despite prejudicial influences during the trial, and then apparently ignored the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to convict Derek Chauvin.

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Oh Great, Just What We Needed: “Nick Sandmann II: Citi Bike Karen”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Surely you recall the Nick Sandmann episode? That’s when a young Catholic school student visiting the Lincoln Memorial was confronted by a Native American activist who got in his face while the high school student’s group was trapped between protesters, and because a single photograph appeared to show Sandmann “smirking” (and because he was wearing a MAGA cap), he was called a racist by various pundits and reporters on NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN,The Guardian, Huffington Post, NPR, Slate, The Hill, Gannett News, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Several alleged comic, like Bill Maher, also tarred the boy as a racist. CNN, the Post, NBC and others ended up settling laws suits after Sandmann’s lawyer sued for defamation The full video showed conclusively that the Native American activist was the aggressor, and that.Sandmann’s “smirk” was simply a momentary expression of discomfort while he was placed in a difficult position.

As in the cases of the Mike Brown shooting, the George Floyd death, Kyle Rittenhouse, and now Daniel Penny, currently facing a possible manslaughter trial for killing a black, mentally-ill homeless man who was threatening subway passengers in New York City, the media’s reflex attitude in any ambiguous confrontation between a white American and a member of a currently sanctified minority group is to assume the white individual is at fault and indulging his or her racist beliefs. After all, as the late Leslie Gore might have sung if she were an anti-white racist, “That’s the Way Whites Are.”

Now we have another example, the Saga of “Citi Bike Karen.” The video above went viral on social media showing a pregnant woman named Sarah Comrie arguing with young man about a Citi Bike that he was trying to take away from her. As Comrie protested and cried for help, she is heckled and intimidated by a group of five blacks surrounding her. Finally, she gave up and rented another bike.

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Ethics Observations On The Shemy Schembechler Firing

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

What a mess.

Glenn ‘Shemy’ Schembechler, son of legendary Wolverines football coach Bo Schembechler, the winningest coach in Michigan football history who took the Wolverines to 10 Rose Bowls, was was hired as the University of Michigan’s assistant director of recruiting on May 17. Three says later he was fired (well, “forced to resign”). His demise was caused by his habit of “liking” controversial tweets on Twitter.

A statement from the school attributed Schembechler’s forced resignation to social media activity that “caused concern and pain for individuals in our community.” Here’s one of those “liked tweets,” in a Twitter tiff over a quote from Thomas Sowell:

Ethics Observations:

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So It’s Come To This…

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Now there’s a well-reasoned, articulate, rational, persuasive argument! My rule of thumb is that when advocates have to descend into chanting, shouting and sloganeering, they have no legitimacy, and neither do their positions. (If a position’s advocates can’t do better than that, their position is a fantasy.) They have also forfeited respect and the right to be taken seriously.

Another “Great Stupid” Milestone: Mayor Adams’ Plan To Stop Shoplifting

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

If you are not fully informed in Ethics Alarms lore, the term “The Great Stupid” for the ridiculous period Western Civilization is trying to survive came from a lucky conversation your host had many decades ago with futurist Herman Kahn, then generally regarded as the smartest man alive. One of the topics we discussed was the Sixties, and Herman observed that throughout history there have been periods where whole cultures suddenly forgot the lessons of the past. This resulted in what in retrospect looked like extended periods of stupidity, with people and governments engaging in destructive conduct and embracing wildly foolish policies until they re-learned what they had forgotten, usually after catastrophic results. I am quite confident that Mr Kahn would agree that this is just such a period.

New York City mayors have been major players in the most recent descent of stupidity across the land, and while Mayor Eric Adams couldn’t be a worse mayor than his predecessor if he just lay on his office rug twitching, he certainly tries. Recently, as his city (like so many Democrat-run metropolises) grapples with an exploding crime rate, Adams announced the following plan to deal with rampant shoplifting:

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“As [the WaPo’s Philip] Bump wrote when he was falsely accusing Barr, “it is the job of the media to tell the truth.” This would be a good time to start.”

—-Prof. Jonathan Turley in an epic defenestration of Washington Post Democratic Party propagandist Philip Bump

The Washington Post continuing to publish columnist Philip Bump’s “advocacy journalism (aka. lies) tells us as much about that once respectable paper as MSNBC continuing to provide a platform for Al Sharpton (and Joy Reid, and Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O’Donnell, and Joe Scarborough…). Bump distorts facts and sets out to disorient Post readers, which is, I was taught in journalism class, the opposite of what newspapers are supposed to do. “But he’s a pundit, not a reporter!” you protest? Fine: as the saying goes, he is entitled to his opinion, but not to his own facts.

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“Gee, What A Surprise: Pot Isn’t Good For Teenagers”…The Sequel

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the same vein as the rueful post from two days ago, Ethics Alarms offers this excerpt from today’s Sunday Times without further comment, because none should be necessary…

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