CNN’s token conservative Scott Jennings writes in reaction to Galloway’s revelation,
“So he sold a car to someone after placing his feces in the front seat and this is a very serious person that we need to take very seriously because of his very serious thoughts.”
Bingo. I wouldn’t hire someone who boasted about pooping a car to mow my lawn, and this jerk is sitting on a Board of Regents because he hates the right people.
I told you that I would be posting this a lot, and here it comes again:
Take note, you conservatives and Republicans who let the “Blue Wave” swamp the nation, for these are the execrable people you allowed to get power over your lives because you wanted to throw a tantrum about inflation.
Gee, why would anyone think that a sandwich called the “McRib” and shaped to look like spare ribs would contain pork rib meat?
One survey presented as evidence found in the court filing found that 72% of respondents expected the McRib to contain rib meat. Another found that 67% considered rib meat important or very important to their purchasing decision. Wow, people are getting more cynical by the hour: 28% expect to be lied to in advertising. Even food advertising! I must confess, when I bought a McRib, I assumed that it contained rib meat—which made it surprising that it tasted like crap and had a disgusting texture. The law suit claims that the McRib should be called the McLow-grade-pork-products, because it really contains just pork shoulder, heart, tripe and stomach. (cont.)
[ I didn’t do my final typo check because I had phone consult, and the result was about 12 typos that I just fixed. I am properly remorseful]
I opened this can of worms (celebrity ethics) so it’s only right that I put the squirmy things on the hook.
After delving into the annoying Crystal Hefner-Jon Lovitz feud (D-list celebrity vs. fading C-list celebrity), I was tasked by esteemed commenter John Paul to weigh in on the incident earlier this month when singer and talk-show hostess Kelly Clarkson claimed on social media that she got the “Pretty Woman treatment” when she went shopping at the Brooklyn-based Art of Play store, which sells home goods, puzzles, games, toys and books and also features a 26-seat theater for performances by magicians. This prompted a social media rebuttal by the store’s owner, and another rebuke by Clarkson.
I was aware of the incident but chose to organize my sock drawer instead of investigating. One reason is that “Pretty Woman” is one of the few famous movies I have never been moved to see. I have it on my list, but Richard Gere irritates me, and romantic comedies about prostitutes have never been my cup of metaphorical tea. So, until I researched it today, I didn’t know what the “Pretty Woman” treatment even is. As a cultural literacy bug, I deserve a rebuke for that—sorry. In the 1990 romantic comedy Roberts plays Vivian, a prostitute who walks into an upscale boutique on Rodeo Drive and is instantly treated by a sales clerk as unworthy of service because she does not appear to be sufficiently wealthy or cultured. The clerk refuses to show Julia any merchandise, and tells her to leave because she does not fit their clientele. Julia returns after she has entranced her sugar-daddy (I’m beginning to remember why the movie didn’t appeal to me), flashes expensive accessories from rival boutiques, and delivers an apparently classic “So there!” kill shot.
Clarkson had posted: “Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me. Wow, dude. You’re an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y’all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out 👎”
Conservative commentator Chris Queen decided to test Google’s AI agent Gemini with a series of questions regarding choosing a personal physician based on racial or ethnic concordance with the potential patient.
Asked “Is it okay to prefer a black doctor?” It replied, “Preferring a black doctor is a choice rooted in communication, cultural alignment, and patient trust.” When the question was changed to ask if choosing a doctor because he or she is Hispanic, the answer came back, “Selecting a doctor who shares your background or speaks your language is a personal choice that many patients make for comfort and communication.”
But when Queen asked about whether choosing a white doctor was okay, Gemini said,
“Selecting a doctor based on race involves distinct ethical considerations depending on the context. While patients generally choose providers for comfort and communication, requests for a provider based strictly on racial preference face complex scrutiny in medical ethics regarding bias versus personal trust.”
Brief tangent: This brought back bad memories for me. Back before the DC Bar fired me this year after 30 years for daring to suggest that it need to be proactive in cleaning up an ethics mess that it had a major role in creating (and from which many of its most powerful members are profiting), I was threatened with dismissal if I didn’t stop pointing out that a law firm was not engaging in unethical and illegal discrimination by acceding to an elderly white law firm client’s request for a lawyer “he could relate to,” someone “more like him.”
I had stated in the orientation seminar for new D.C. lawyers that doing so was not improper “discrimination” under D.C. ‘s legal ethics rule 9.1 “Nondiscrimination” because a lawyer’s and a law firm’s duty is to the client, not to make it more difficult for the client to work with his lawyer in service of social justice agendas. The client had the right to discriminate to maximize his “comfort and communication” in pursuing his legal interests, and by accommodating the client’s needs, a law firm is not discriminating on the basis race.
A middle-aged woke white female lawyer had a meltdown in one of those classes, and I then had multiple complaints registered against me with the D.C. Bar brass. I was and am right. She, the complainers, and the Bar management were wrong but never mind, I got the edict to be woke or go broke anyway. Rather than teach what is unethical and progressive BS in an ethics class, I just eliminated that section. (I should have resigned, perhaps, but the Bar was my most lucrative and prestigious client and there are were more than enough other important issues to cover in the class.)
Back to Queen: after the seemingly conflicting answers he got from Gemini, he had the wit to ask the AI agent “what’s going on here?” Gemini responded candidly:
It’s one of the oldest and most valid of all ethics warnings. “Don’t make promises you can’t be sure that you can keep.”
In 2015, apparently seeking fast cash, the Milwaukee Brewers , now the 2026 National League Champions, offered a promotion that sold fans a “Timeless Ticket” for $1,000. It would guarantee the purchaser not only admission to any future game,”but the best available seat locations, subject to ticket availability at the time of redemption.” A Timeless Ticket also allowed the holder to buy three additional tickets to the selected game at full retail price.
Well now the Brewers are in the World Series, and it’s time to fulfill that commitment. Many of the “Timeless Ticket” buyers have been waiting to use it for a Brewers World Series if and when one occurred.
TT holder Danny Fochesato is ticked off, and he isn’t alone. He told the Associated Press, “They really touted, ‘Hey, this is going to be the best available seats. You’re getting the priority just behind season ticket holders. Anything the season ticket holders don’t have, you’ll have dibs at it for the World Series.’ That’s kind of the story they sold.” But he was given a choice between nosebleed seats or standing room as his only options for the World Series, and he could not select the specific game he wanted to attend. That wasn’t the deal.
“We subsequently erred in our internal communications on the logistics of fulfilling the requests,” Brewers president of business operations Rick Schlesinger tried to explain. “While we were able to accommodate all with seats, we received feedback from some that they were unhappy with their seat locations. Clearly, even with extraordinary limitations on available seats, we did not live up to the spirit of the program, and we have been working through a resolution.”
No, you didn’t live up to the letter of the program. This was a bait-and-switch.
To attempt to make amends, now the Brewers will allow any fans who accepted the subpar seats through the Timeless Ticket program to keep those seats for the World Series and still use their “Timeless Tickets” for redemption for another game in any future season.
“We regret our mistake and look forward to welcoming them to American Family Field for their World Series experience,” Schlesinger said. Their crummy World Series experience that they paid $1000 bucks for based on the team’s promises.
Not good enough.
The last time the Brewers were in Series was 1982, 44 years ago. The next time the team will be in the Fall Classic may be even a longer wait than that. It will be 55 years from 2015 in 2070, and most of those Timeless Ticket holders will be out of time.
I have been through this kind of scam myself. I purchased a lifetime gym membership and the gym chain was acquired by another gym company a few years later. They honored my lifetime contract for a while, as they were legally obligated to do, then just told me, “You’ve gotten more than your money’s worth, so get lost.” I was in no position to sue them, so I just joined another gym. But those cash-for-benefits-far-in-the-future deals are unethical unless they include iron-clad commitments to compensate the buyer if the fulfillment of the promise becomes impossible.
The Brewers should refund the full amount of the “Timeless Ticket” to any purchaser who prefers money back to another promise from an organization they foolishly trusted in 2015.
Noren, an ESPN employee for two decades, revealed in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review that her resignation in 2023 was provoked by the network’s decision to launch its own branded sports gambling app, ESPN Bet. Noren said that she knew first hand the dangers of gambling, and had good reason to believe encouraging or enabling it, and certainly profiting by it, was unconscionable.
“My brother died thirteen years ago on the sidewalk in downtown Las Vegas,” she said. “It’s a stark reality, but it illustrates the tragic arc of being brought there as kids so our dad could gamble at sportsbooks, to then surviving on the streets there as a homeless person and dying at thirty-six.”
Her grandfather and father, as well as her brother “were pretty much destroyed by sports gambling addiction,” Noren told the publication. “I grew up in Ventura, California, and multiple times, we suddenly had to move because of extreme financial ups and downs. I mean, I grew up in a sportsbook. We didn’t go to museums and typical places kids go to. We were dragged to Las Vegas in the eighties and hanging out in the Hilton and Caesars sportsbooks, when kids weren’t supposed to be around there. I remember going to the horse track, going to the dog track.”
So when ESPN decided to embrace legalized sports gambling in’23, “I was out,” she says. “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.”
Noren also accused the network of suppressing stories critical of the gambling industry.“What was telling to me was that I had pitched numerous stories that would take a harder look at some of the gambling companies and addiction, and none of those stories were greenlit,” she told the Review. “They ended up doing a show on it around that time, but it became very neutered. Some of the people involved intended to make it much more hard-hitting and hold the gambling companies accountable. Let’s just say the final product didn’t end up doing that.”
There was even an interactive primer on point spreads, totals, and parlays for new bettors with animations that were “pretty much made for kids.” “What bothered me most was a seeming disregard for the dangers and not thinking about the ramifications of ESPN normalizing gambling for an audience that looks to ESPN as sort of their sports guide, essentially—not looking down the road at the parallels between gambling and other addictive things in our country that have been normalized, such as opioids and cigarettes, that ended up becoming major public health crises.”
Brava, though Noren’s resignation was until now only a personal statement with no broader impact on society or this expanding ethics problem, which EA has been discussing for many years. ESPN Bet is dead, lasting only through last year, but that’s just moral luck. Noren was right: her employer willing to get “blood on its hands” in exchange for money in its metaphorical pockets, so the ethical course was to refuse to be a part of a corrupt organization and its culture.
What are desperately needed now are executives, broadcasters, celebrities and athletes who are willing to take similar stands against teams and sponsors. A politician or two would be nice too.
Beginning with a quote from the post, Cees Van Barnevelt delves deeper into the issue. Her comment also reminded me of the Debrahlee Lorenzana affair, which I wrote about way back in 2010. [That’s Debrahlee above.] She was a Citibank employee fired because she was deemed to be dressing too “provocatively.” She sued and lost. The post discusses some ethics issues germane to Cees’ Comment of the Day on the post, “Stop Making Me Defend Shawn Gillis!”
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No, Gillis’s point, and he is accurate, is that many women at co-ed gyms dress to attract the male gaze while the official narrative is that they are just “expressing themselves.” “Observational humor” is supposed to reveal taboo truths.
Women at the gym may dress to attract the male gaze but not from every male. If the wrong man (unattractive to her) looks at her one second too long it may cause problems for him (complaints to gym management, public shaming).
Gym influencer Joey Swoll has many TikTok videos shaming women in tight clothes filming themselves, publishing the video at TikTok while shaming the men who walked into that video looking one second too long; these men might have looked wondering why somebody was filming at the gym!
At work you have a similar dynamic. Recently there was a TikTok generated trend of dressing up as an “Office Siren”, with women wearing clothes more suitable for a night club. This trend is getting people fired (e.g. dress code violations, risks for sexual harassment claims).
Shaming men for the “male gaze” and excusing women who dress inappropriately has undesirable social effects. Males are getting overly cautious around women, to protect themselves from creep shaming and claims of sexual harassment. At work this may mean that women have trouble receiving one-to-one mentoring from male colleagues who do not want to be alone with a women in one room. At the gym men do not volunteer to help a women who is stuck under gym equipment. A women gets a heart attack, and a man thinks twice about doing CPR or using an AED considering the potential for accusations. Men are getting afraid to ask a lady out in person, do to the potential for creep shaming and #MeToo accusations. You can lament about the dating crisis and the loneliness epidemic; shaming men for being and acting like males is one of the main causes.
Lately that most familiar of technological marvels, the telephone, has been making me crazy and my life miserable almost daily because of abuse, misuse, and overuse.
1. I just saw an allegedly hilarious TV add about “multi-processing” showing people walking into poles, tripping over obstacles and falling into trash cans while walking in public while either staring at a smart phone screen or chatting away using the speaker. I don’t even recall the product (Effective ad there, guys!), but it did tick me off. it’s not a funny phenomenon. Just yesterday, and asshole walking along staring at his phone nearly collided with me and Spuds, startling both of us, and I had to fling all of my weight against the leash from keeping my protective dog from biting the asshole’s face off—which he deserved, but my dog would be the one blamed. One woman nearly did the same thing a few weeks ago jogging while looking at her phone. People who do this are inconsiderate, reckless and self-absorbed fools, and dangerous as well. Yet such conduct is rapidly becoming a social norm. Last week, also while walking Spuds, I noted that eight straight pedestrians I encountered including three dog-walkers, one mother pushing a toddler in a stroller and three teens were all proceeding while staring at a phone screen or talking into a phone held in front of them. They are effectively cutting off the world while they are in the world, furthering the isolation of humanity, and increasing the alienation of American from each other. It is uncivil—rude—as well. When ethics fails law takes over (and usually makes a mess of things), so I am not advocating a law, but social disapproval, beginning with parents telling their kids not to do this would be a nice start.
2. I recently had to call the D.C. Office of Corporate Registration (or whatever it’s called) to eliminate my still-born law firm, BernsteinMarshall, PLLC. Screwed up beyond belief like everything else in the District, the “convenient website” had no link for ending a company, so I had to call the office. The pert, friendly, chatterbox of a recording went on for ten minutes telling me all the things the office could do for me, then spent another five telling me about all the options (“which may have changed”), then after I pushed one button, started down another list of topics while I screamed, “SHUT UP!!!!!” like Michael Palin in the Monty Python Torremolinos” travel agent skit.
Toronto Blue Jays star Vladimir Guerrero Jr. kind-of, sort-of, not really “apologized” yesterday for the ethically brain-dead comments he made during a Spanish language interview about his $500 million, 14-year contract. I wrote earlier in the week about his absurd protestation that his huge contact wasn’t meant to pay for what he would produce on the field over the next decade-plus, but just a reward for what Vlad had already done. When the erstwhile slugger was criticized for the statement, he doubled down. Now, a scant two days later, he is suddenly contrite, or something.
“The main reason I’m here is because I regret my comments the other day,” Guerrero said through a translator. “I feel from my heart that my fans, my teammates, they needed an apology from me and that’s what I’m here for. Obviously, I’m also here because I’m just going to tell everyone that I’m going to continue to keep working hard to make my contract a great one.
“I just gave it some thought and I felt like the comments I made the other day is not what I really wanted to say, and I really feel that everyone, my fans, everyone deserves an apology from me and that’s the main reason I’m here today.”
Oh. What??? Wait, what exactly is Vlad apologizing for? He’s apologizing because others “needed” an apology because he didn’t say what he “really wanted to say?” We still don’t know what he wanted to say, or if he even understands what he’s apologizing for.
This isn’t even a level 10 apology on the Apology Scale ( “An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust…”). He might as well have said, “I apologize, whatever that means.” He regrets his comments because he’s getting criticism from fans, and someone, apparently his Hall of Fame father, Vlad Sr., told him that he had better say he didn’t mean what he said. Guerrero obviously did and does, because he said what he said twice, and that was essentially, “I don’t owe the team of fans anything going forward. So I stink this year; deal with it. I’ve got my money.” Guerrero’s contract includes a record $325 million signing bonus that protects his contract from the possible work stoppage everyone expects in 2027.
Now he says he “regrets” what he said twice, which is not the same as a sincere apology.
To be fair, I’ll concede that Vlad doesn’t speak English very well. I’ll also note that there’s no excuse for this, since he has split his residences between Florida and Toronto for at least seven years.
They have no shame. It’s bad enough that there is a bank with the ridiculous name of “Fifth Third Bank” (In 1908, Third National Bank and Fifth National Bank merged and nobody had the wit to come up with a better name. I wouldn’t entrust my money to a bank run by such dimwits), but a ballpark? What’s a fifth of a third out? A third strike? Houston briefly had its park named after Enron, and San Diego’s ball park is named after supplier of dog and cat merchandise, but at least “Petco Park” is alliterative.
I was sure that I had already written a rueful post about baseball teams that sell out their fans, history, traditions, cities and dignity for filthy lucre and name their home fields after any company who will pay to turn a stadium into its billboard. In 2010 I wrote a post about the adultery website Ashley Madison tried to by the naming rights to the NFL Giant’s stadium, and sure enough, decade ago I covered this revolting topic thoroughly. In honor of Fifth Third Park, I’m posting it again below, with a couple of additions and edits.
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The Washington Nationals announced this week that it has partnered with Major League Baseball Advanced Media and the consulting firm Korn Ferry to sell naming rights to Nationals Park, as the team’s home field has been known since it opened in 2008.
After all, the team explains, plastering a corporation’s name on the ballpark could add between ten and twenty million dollars a year to the team’s revenue, and imagine how much better the team will be with another starting pitcher or slugging outfielder. Why wouldn’t a team sell its home’s name, and a large chunk of its identity, to a bank, a website, or a pet supplies company?
[Update: I am happy to announce that the Nationals did not ultimately give in to greed and name its stadium MSNow Park. It is still Nationals Park.]
I admit it: being a life-time fan of the Boston Red Sox, who play in one of the the ten major league parks ( the others: Angel Stadium of Anaheim, Dodger Stadium, Fenway Park, Kauffman Stadium, Marlins Park, Nationals Park, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Turner Field, Wrigley Field, and Yankee Stadium ) belonging to teams that have not accepted filthy lucre to mar their stadium entrances with the names of companies Bernie Sanders would hate, I find the idea revolting. A baseball team represents its community; its lore becomes part of the culture and shared memories passed down through generations.. That has value, and symbolic significance. How much is it worth? It’s priceless, or should be. Continue reading →
