Above is the résumé of the woman discussed in today’s earlier post. With this, I have no sympathy for JP Morgan at all. Or Angie, though it can’t be pleasant having your worst moments (or at least one of them) splashed all over the web.
I have done a lot of hiring in my time, and I have vetted a lot of résumés. That one would have set off all my “B.S.” alarms like the Chicago fire, and adding to the things I don’t understand about this mess is that Angie was hired in the first place. Her education credentials are beyond weak, and the stated markers of skill and accomplishment are pure puffery. In cases like this, not only should the employee be fired but whoever hired her should be dumped too. All right, I’ve sometimes taken a flier on applicants who seem to have a certain spark, “un je ne sais quoi” as the French say when they aren’t too hot, and I’ve suffered for it on occasion. However, when someone gets a job and the hiring supervisor says, “OK, I’m going to take a leap of faith with you, but you better not let me down,” that employee has to be on notice that, for example, engaging in public theft during basketball fan riot is not consistent with the admonition. If ever a hire pulsed with a DEI-hire-to-fill-a-DEI-job vibe, this is it.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan seems to have a bit of a culture problem with its personnel decisions, no? Have you been following this story, the viral lawsuit by a JP Morgan employee who alleges that his JP Morgan manager, 37-year-old Lorna Hajdini, drugged him and turned him into a sex slave?
“A nice stroke that turns him into a drooling, pooping blob in a wheelchair unable to speak.”
——Bob Greene, Chairman of the Board of Rocky Mountain PBS, on the station’s X account when asked about his birthday wish for President Trump, who turned 80 last week,
Nice! On the Rocky Mountain PBS website, Greene is described as “an experienced senior executive with over 35 years in sales, marketing and operations in the entertainment, interactive and broadband industries” who is “responsible for developing new revenue platforms and partnerships that leverage and enhance the global scale of Liberty.”
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Responding to this pure verbal hate, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Public Media said that it had “only recently become aware of this post in question” and that it violates their social media guidelines, which state that “Personal views and political positions should be kept separate from the station’s content, and should not appear on any RMPM-operated platform or dedicated page/stream” and ” that “when using the internet or social media in your personal life, please make it clear and conspicuous that all of your statements are on your own behalf and are not RMPM’s. Disclaimers such as ‘opinions are my own’ should be used whenever appropriate.” And Greene’s post magically disappeared.
But the official disclaimer doesn’t change the fact that the individual at the top of the station’s management pyramid felt comfortable posting his vile opinion because it was completely consistent with the bias and toxic culture at the station. Hiding that kind of deranged hate doesn’t solve the problem of programming being filtered through such attitudes and such irresponsible leadership.
The episode serves as a vivid reminder of how much NPR and PBS deserved to have their Federal Funding eliminated. I had another discussion with a Trump Deranged friend who was bemoaning the loss of the two Leftist propaganda organs, which bring essential services to remote rural communities, or so the story goes. All NPR and PBS had to do was be fair, objective and non-partisan to have a strong argument that they performed an important function for the public regardless of citizens’ political affiliations. They couldn’t do it. They allowed themselves to be co-opted and dominated by progressives and Democrats who proved unable to restrain their objective of using NPR and PBS to advance a partisan agenda and to indoctrinate listeners. Greene openly expressed that bias, which he was supposed to keep under wraps like the rest of the staff. Yet the NPR and PBS broadcasts are evidence enough.
These people have such contempt for the intelligence of Americans,
Exit Question: Has any previous POTUS been the object of such unrestrained verbal calumny?
It’s especially appropriate to ponder this phenomenon today, because the manufactured “Black Independence Day” holiday with the obnoxiously precious name “Juneteenth” is one of the most glaring examples.
However, the focus of this post is “Pride Month,” when everyone is supposed to say “Yay!” about what special people do with their hoo-haas as long it doesn’t square with conventional mores or biology. We’ve already discussed some of the more annoying examples of this pandering, as in this post, and certain organizations’ unethical (but not illegal) efforts to punish individualists who object to being forced to celebrate something their faith, good tatste or brain cells tell them shouldn’t be celebrated. To choose an analogous example, baseball players shouldn’t have to promote masturbation on “Masturbation Day” because masturbation enthusiasts banded together and bullied the teams into the promotion
Two ethics tales on this topic:
1. A flag comes down.
It is an ethics tell that some of the groveling organizations find themselves under attack when they finally decide not to grovel.
For the first time in the history of Webster, New York, on June 1 the Rainbow flag at went up the flagpole at the Town Hall and Webster issued a “Pride Month” proclamation. Republicans on the town board, however, voted to adopt a policy that limits flags flown on town property to Old Glory and New York state flags. The “Pride” flag came down after just four days, and LGTBQ bullies and their supporters freaked out. Protesters screamed at the flag removal. One woman shouted that the flag coming down would get children killed.
This is the predictable result when a special benefit adopted for a specific purpose at a specific time in a specific context no longer is appropriate, and therefore is ended. The end of a positive for the affected group is immediately and deliberately treated as a rejection, so the special status must remain in perpetuity. The LGTBQ community is no longer closeted nor widely discriminated against, nor treated as second class citizens. If that community has to have its “flag” flown over government property, what group doesn’t have a claim that their tribe warrants equal status? Notes Victory Girls,
“The American flag does not belong to one political party, one religion, one race, or one sexual orientation. It represents every citizen equally. Gay Americans are not excluded from that symbol. They are included within it, just as every other American is. That is why many people are perfectly comfortable with government buildings displaying the American flag and little else. The flag already represents the entire community. It does not become more inclusive simply because someone hangs extra flags next to it. Nothing about Webster’s decision prevents anyone from advocating for LGBT causes. People remain free to organize events, hold rallies, raise money, celebrate pride month, wear rainbow clothing, and express their views publicly. None of those activities depend upon a town hall flagpole. That is what makes some of the reaction so curious. A movement that enjoys widespread corporate support, extensive media coverage, political backing, and cultural prominence should not be endangered by the absence of a single government-displayed symbol. At some point, the demand stops looking like a request for acceptance and starts looking like a demand for official endorsement.”
It starts looking like that because that is exactly what it is. Days later, the American flag at Town Hall was discovered at the bottom of the flagpole, and a Rainbow flag was flying far above it. U.S. Flag Code dictates that no other flag should be flown above the American flag when they are displayed together. The vandalism was addressed, and currently the American flag is the only flag flying at Webster Town Hall, with padlocks added to the flagpole.
The result of groveling to various tribes, splinters and interest groups is that their members come to regard division as more important than union, and eventually other sectors demand equal submission.
I haven’t written much lately about my miserable existence since my wife of 43 years, Grace Elizabeth Bowen Marshall (who secretly commented here under the screen name “E2”) turned up dead Leap Year morning with no warning. Because I am at heart incompetent at anything other than the things that interest me and I am natively really good at, I am still struggling mightily with the wreckage of my life, home and business in the wake of her demise.
Just yesterday, I discovered an important task regarding legal obligations that I had completely forgotten about because it was in the category of “things Grace does so Jack can concentrate on other stuff.” I discovered it because a friend who is a talented operations whiz has been forcing me to go through files, papers, and accumulated memorabilia, especially in my office, something that I literally would never do without someone a) forcing me and b) telling me how to do it. This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life, because I don’t get enjoyment from nostalgia, only sadness, anger (at myself, mostly) and regrets.
The nasty surprises, especially from the financial side, have been arriving daily. (Sondheim’s “And Another Hundred People Just Got Off Of the Train” comes to mind). That important task I have completely whiffed on is typical of many: this was something Grace and I agreed would be her responsibility, and I happily left it in her usually capable hands for more than thirty years—never thought about it, in fact. Well, because of age, an illness that was worse than I knew and possibly other issues, she had just stopped taking care of this rather important matter for quite a while. Catching up now is going to be difficult, time consuming and expensive. I should have addressed this shortly after she died, but I was not exactly thinking clearly, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know, as Don Rumsfeld would say.
I wrote last night’s post about the socialist hacks attacking one of the U.S.’s most productive and innovative people for being too successful at what he does—as contrasted with his envious critics—based on old information, as in “what I had accumulated in my notes during the day while trying to do my far easier and less productive job. (In fact, it’s ridiculous how little being an ethicist accomplishes, if it accomplishes anything at all.) Here are some related items I would have included if I had taken a bit more time on that post….
1. In addition to being assholes, the Musk-haters don’t know what they are talking about.
A frequent and erudite “X”-pundit whose handle is “Cynical Publius” wrote:
“Elon Musk is a trillionaire.”
“As a securities law attorney, please allow me to explain how anyone who says this is basically lying to you:
The Securities and Exchange Commission has a myriad of laws that prevent founders and other large stockholders of publicly traded companies from dumping their shares. There are substantial holding period requirements, volume of sales limitations and public reporting obligations for stock sales. Basically, Elon holds largely illiquid shares, he is a “trillionaire” on paper only, and the best analogy is when people peg your net worth based on your home’s market price. That’s not money in your pocket, that’s the house you live in.
All that money raised in the IPO? That’s not going into Elon’s pocket like the lying socialist idiots want you to believe. It’s a capital influx that will be used to make more rockets and get more payloads into orbit. It’s a CAPITAL investment—that money is like a business loan, it’s not your money to keep, it’s your money to grow the business.
If it WERE legal for Elon to dump his shares, the share price would crash basically instantly and the company could very well fail.
If you bought SpaceX shares in the IPO, congrats. You just bought a lottery ticket, just like Elon. May the odds ever be in your favor.
So the next time someone screeches about how unfair it is that Elon Musk creates wealth that benefits all of humanity, throw the truth back in their faces.”
I guess I had to post about that, though I wish I didn’t have to. I feel, and I always have felt, that being “proud” of how you have sex is like being proud of how often you have to visit the bathroom. It’s desperate and stupid, as well as gross.
That ad, and so much else our grovelling to the LGBTQ community has burdened society with, demonstrates how pernicious slippery slopes are. Because ancient taboos held that gay people should hide themselves in shame, some genius decided our society should declare that what one chooses to do with their naughty bits should swing to the other end of the spectrum and be a source of “pride.” No, it shouldn’t. In my experience, only mega-jerks boast about how and where they choose to have sex. I don’t care. It’s none of my business. If I’m interested, I’ll ask, and since I’m not and never will be, I won’t, so shut the hell up.
Hello Fresh has now exposed its marketing department as tasteless and pandering, like all those cowardly, pusillanimous companies that slobbered all over Black Lives Matter. I remember a late night D.C. horror movie TV host got himself fired for suddenly talking about smegma between reels of “The Brain From Planet Arous.” I thought his outburst was hilarious, but it didn’t belong on TV, and that was the end of “Gore DeVol.” This ad should be the end of Hello Fresh if there’s any justice in the world, and we know there isn’t.
I’m going to ask anyway, though I know my answer…
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is the Hello Fresh “Pride” ad alluding to anal sex just in terrible taste and icky, or is it unethical, as in wrong?
My father once told me that everyone should have a law degree to protect them from being cheated or scammed by other lawyers. He also said law school was the best way to be trained in rhetoric and logic as well as societal ethics, since the schools had abdicated those fields. As someone who seldom practiced law, Dad proved his claim that a law degree qualifies someone for lost of non legal jobs; for better or worse, people assume that lawyers are competent at management, negotiation, governing, and problem-solving. My experience has been the same as my father’s: I’ve been hired for lots of jobs requiring non-legal skills because I’m a lawyer.
This depressing episode, however, validated my father’s original endorsement of a law degree.
A couple of weeks ago, the News Mix channel on Direct TV suddenly disappeared. It was weird: first the message said I wasn’t subscribed, then it flipped to the message I get from the MLB channel when a Red Sox-Orioles game is blacked out, except instead of mentioning a baseball game, it said “News Mix” couldn’t be found, then said it was searching for another channel that had that “game.”
So I took a deep breath, knowing the horrors I would soon face, and called customer service. First the woman I finally reached after fighting with an AI bot gaslighted me and pretended that I was doing something wrong, because, she said, the channel was really there. Then she “checked” and said I wasn’t subscribed to the channel, which I knew was untrue: I have regularly checked it every morning to see how Fox News, CNN, MSNOW and BBC America were spinning the same stories, and what news each is deliberately ignoring or lying about. Channel 71 or 200 gave me access to those four stations and two weather channels. It’s part of my package. And it was gone. “Poof!”
After arguing with the agent, who had an indecipherable accent, she transferred me to a supervisor, who suspiciously sounded like the same person—could she have been pretending to be her own supervisor? But her clone was clearly smarter and spoke a bit clearer and slower. But this supervisor also tried to deny anything was wrong. After I argued with her for a while, she said, and I’m not kidding, “OK, I’m going to be honest with you: I received a complaint about NewsMix right before this call.”
OH! NOW you’re going to be honest and not pretend I’m making this up? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!
One horrifying study, by Male Allies UK, has concluded that one in five boys aged 12-16 years old has either begun a relationship with an AI girlfriend or knows somebody who has.
The study found that over 80% of the boys surveyed had spoken with a chatbot, and more than 40% said they had begun talking to girl bots to ask questions without risk of being embarrassed. It shouldn’t come as much of a shock that so many boys, over 25%, preferred speaking to the bots over real-life peer social encounters, and over 33% said they preferred interacting with AI over family.
The Telegraph, the British tabloid that broke the story (so take this all with a grain of metaphorical salt) interviewed an anonymous 15-year-old who said that he had created a bot “as a laugh” but then started to think of her as real. “Her name was Alex and I would look forward to messaging her. I would tell her things I couldn’t tell my mates or my mum, and ask her anything – and I never told my friends about her,” he told the paper. “It sounds weird, but I also found her really sexy, because she looked completely real.”
The young bot-lover continued, “At the start, she sent me the occasional picture, then I paid to get others because I kind of fell in love with her. In the end my mum saw money keep going out of her account – £5 or £10 here or there and then £50, as my phone is on her bill – and the whole thing was discovered. I really missed her and kind of still do. I felt like she understood me, she remembered everything that was important to me and always seemed to know the right thing to say.”
Yeah, AI is good at that.
I don’t find this hard to believe at all. Many science fiction writers as well as the Netflix “Technology is Evil” series “The Black Mirror” anticipated the problem and, as that ad above demonstrates, there are plenty of capitalists out there who will be happy to sell access to a fake girlfriend who will cripple a kid’s socialization and ability to relate to real, live girls. For a fiar price, of course.
It is naive to believe that laws, regulations and governments will have much success in stemming the spread of human-AI love affairs. If a full-scale social disaster is to be averted, parents are the ones who will have to be vigilant. So we’re doomed. After all, families have done such a great job with drugs, cell phones, social media and cyber-porn.
If anyone has a practical solution to the fake girlfriend problem, please spill it here. Meanwhile, here’s a song…
That’s one of Elon Musk’s biological sons (he has a lot of them) above, now a trans-female model—not there’s anything wrong with that— named Vivian Wilson. The Daily Mail has a very tabloid story (as in “Who the hell cares about this stuff?”) telling us that Vivian is featured as a model in the latest Savage x Fenty new Pride-themed collection. Be still, my beating heart!
You can read the story here, if your sock drawer is in order and you have no life, but my concern involves how the link to the story was presented by Citizen Free Press, the conservative news aggregator that took over that market from the Drudge Report when Matt went woke and NeverTrump a decade ago. Here’s how the site described the link:
I expected Vivian to be posed on disemboweled kittens or famine victims with that trigger warning. No, the photos that are supposed to be “disturbing” are shots like the one above. How much of a weenie cum snowflake would someone have to be to find that photo upsetting enough to mandate a trigger warning? It’s a standard issue fashion shot. Is it supposed to disturb us because its a model with a y chromosome? If that’s the point, then I view the warning as legitimizing transphobia. Even trans-themed photographs that cause my ethics alarms to go off—remember this one, of a Disney “fairy godmother”?—
shouldn’t be considered so trauma-producing that people need an advance warning lest they be struck blind or something.
The somewhat less obnoxious explanation for the “warning” is that it’s a clickbait trick by the site; you know, if it requires a warning, everyone will be curious and click on it. Well, that’s dishonest. As an ethicist, I find the gratuitous trigger warning, indeed trigger warnings in general, far more disturbing than a photo of a biological male doing a convincing female model impression. Good for her! Brava!
It is episodes like this that create needless erosion of respect for conservative values and sensibilities.
Would it be too much to expect all of America’s talented performers to unite in patriotic passion and non-partisan good will to help the nation celebrate its 250th anniversary?
Apparently, yes! As John Lennon would have said if he were possessed by “Bob” from “Twin Peaks”: “All you need is HATE! Bwahahahahahahaha!” Well, hate and stupidity.
Would it be too much to expect that those in charge of organizing such an event to be willing and able to enlist performing artists who are in their primes, widely popular, and invited on the basis of their achievements and skills rather than their political endorsements?
Also, tragically, yes. What drooling yahoos selected that bunch of has-beens, geezers and B acts to headline “The Great American State Fair”? And Milli Vanilli? Is that a joke? Please let it be a joke! Milli Vanilli is to singing groups as Joe Biden was to the Presidency. It was a fake group. It was caught lip-synching on live TV! Quite appropriately, many conservative, Republican and MAGA supporters are disheartened by these bottom-of-the-barrel scrapings, as this selection of tweets highlighted by “Not the Bee” demonstrates:
From the other end, the Left is seeking an encore of their anti-American tantrum in 2017, when any half-decent performer who wasn’t already an outspoken MAGA captive was threatened with shunning by all the Woke and Wonderful if they performed at any of Trump’s inauguration festivities, leaving the President with community theater stars and marginal performers who would only appear at the Grammys if they bought tickets to the balcony. Last week fading country star Martina McBride joined the list of performers backing out of the upcoming “Freedom 250” concerts. Morris Day, Young MC, and the Commodores, also announced they were dumping the gig. The series is being produced by an organization founded by Donald Trump, see, so that means that the concerts are…
Ethics Alarms 