I expect politicians to be hypocritical and without integrity. Journalists, however, especially those who engage in commentary, must display consistent principles, values and priorities or be disregarded, ignored and reviled as destructive, unprofessional, untrustworthy hacks.
Anahit Misak “Ana” Kasparian styles herself a progressive political commentator, a media host and a journalist. With the blatant hypocrisy revealed in the tweets above—first, her pious condemnation of anyone who would gloat about someone’s death, followed by her tweets today rejoicing in the death of lifetime public servant Lindsay Graham—Kasparian reveals herself to be a monster by her own standards.
The zombie speculation is because I’m sure I’ve seen that expression on “The Walking Dead” or “World War Z.”
The Florida Supreme Court wants to fine Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida Judge Diana M. Tennis (she’s in Orlando) after she admitted making more than 900 donations to left-leaning political causes, we learn from Law.com.
The Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission discovered last month that Judge Tennis gave nearly $30,000 in more than 900 separate donations to progressive candidates and those aligned with the Democratic Party.
A Judge or Candidate for Judicial Office Shall Refrain From Inappropriate Political Activity
A judge…shall not:
…make a contribution to a political organization or candidate.
Tennis told the commission that she mistakenly thought that the rule only applied to donations to candidates for state office, not federal ones. That means that she can’t read or understand statutes in plain language. Nothing in that rule above limits the restriction to state political activity. This judge is either dishonest or incompetent. Why would the Florida Supreme Court allow such a hack to continue sitting on the bench at all? She’s partisan, conflicted and untrustworthy.
The more I examine the issue, the more I realize that there are an unacceptable number of incompetent and unethical judges rotting our justice system, indeed an unacceptable percentage of bad judges that I fear equals a critical mass. Tennis is far from the worst, and she has no business judging anything more challenging than the state fair apple pie competition.
I could write a long post on this, or a short one. The short version is: “After star U.S. forward Folarin Balogun was suspended from playing in the next U.S. match (he got a “red card” for an infraction on the field), President Donald Trump intervened on his behalf by calling FIFA president Gianni Infantino. The red card suspension was subsequently lifted, and now Balogen can play in today’s match against Belgium.”
That summary is all you need to know, and I certainly don’t need to follow or care about soccer or the World Cup (I don’t) to make this easy ethics call: It was unethical for the President to use his influence to interfere with the World Cup for the benefit of the U.S. team. Nothing else is relevant:
Not whether the ref’s call that got Balogun the red card was deserved or not…
Not that Balogun is crucial to the U.S. team if it is to have any chance of continuing success in the tournament….
Not that Trump played a key role in getting the World Cup to the U.S…
Not that soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is even more corrupt than the National Football League, which is quite an accomplishment…
Not even the fact, if it is a fact, that the suspension was going to be lifted anyway and Trump’s intervention didn’t influence the decision.
It’s been a long time since Ethics Alarms had one of its trademark Naked Teacher Principle tales or even one of it’s many variations, like the Nearly Naked Teacher’s Volunteer Principle, the Drag Queen School Principal Principle, the Naked Porn-Performing Political Candidate Principle, and the Too Sexy Firefighter Principle, to name just a few. This one, from Alexander, Georgia, has nothing to do with July Fourth, except that I discovered the story this morning. It is certainly past time for one of these posts: the last one under the tag was here, and it was only about the related Naked Mayor Principle, involving the moronic mayor of Minot, North Dakota who accidentally sent an explicit nude video of himself to the city’s attorney.
Above is Maris Nichols, 25, a married Georgia high school teacher, who really likes having sex with students: she’s been indicted for showing at least six students the sweet mysteries of life in her classroom, at a golf course, and in a closet). Two of the teenagers were younger than 16. What puts Maris into the Naked Teacher Principle category is that she is a very provocative OnlyFans performer, and was being blackmailed by some of her students—it is unclear if they were among the one she was boinking—for better grades. They had discovered the OnlyFans channel she owns, operates, and uses to display her excellent Linda Lovelace impression, among other things.
Today, July 3, in 1863 was the date of Pickett’s Charge, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee ordered a desperate Napoleonic advance against the Union line at Gettysburg in what has come to be a cautionary tale in human bravery and military hubris. The same day marked the zenith of the career of George Armstrong Custer, the head-strong, dashing cavalry officer who would later achieve both martyrdom and infamy as the unwitting architect of the massacre known as Custer’s Last Stand.
I have vowed to do all I can, which admittedly isn’t much, to get the story of what I like to call Custer’s First Stand into our nation’s cultural memory. I wrote much of what you are reading now way back in 2011, and have not adequately fulfilled my pledge since, although I have mentioned “Yellow Hair” (as his Native American conquerors called him) periodically over the years. Many historians have opined that Custer may have saved the Union army from defeat at Gettysburg with his bold actions this day, and therefore may have saved the Union itself. That accomplishment is far more important than the blunder at Little Big Horn that defines Custer’s image and reputation.
Custer’s heroics on the decisive final day of the Battle of Gettysburg teach their own lessons, historical and ethical. Since the East Calvary Field battle has been thoroughly overshadowed by the tragedy of Pickett’s Charge, it is little known and seldom mentioned. That is wrong.
Tell your friends and families the story, which has never been portrayed on screen. It is a really good story.
I’m giving my inner Fredo a workout lately, because so, SO many positions that I have emphasized early and often on Ethics Alarms have been proving blazingly accurate. To be fair, it didn’t take an IQ much higher than Fredo’s to figure out that Tucker Carlson was a huckster, a fraud, a hypocrite, a shameless self-promoter, a liar and a weasel, but for some strange reason—maybe it was the hair?—an amazing number of usually smart people couldn’t see it. Glib demagogues and sociopaths are like that, though: they hypnotize people with their verbal facility and shameless audacity
Tucker’s latest grift is that he says he wants to start a new political party, presumably of dim-witted, gullible, anti-Semitic, isolationist Republicans. He even appeared on MSNow right after renouncing the GOP, knowing well what the network is and the America it wants to create, but never mind, Tucker Carlson literally has no integrity. He’s smarter than Marjorie Taylor Greene (who isn’t?), not as obviously bat-house crazy as Candace Owen, not as pathetic as Bill Kristol, but still: the man is not a serious person. He makes Bill Maher seem like Victor Davis Hanson. Carlson is a trust fund rich kid who never had to do a hard day’s work in his life, and is the kind of pseudo-intellectual not very bright people think is brilliant.
The New York Times “breaking news” story from the weekend begins, “Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit: An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the President and the Commerce Secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten.”
You can read it all here, at a gift link. From my reading, the story seems well sourced and fair, though it is the Times, and the Times has been doing everything in its power for over a decade to undermine Donald Trump. The Times isn’t the only one reporting the story, though: The Nation pounced on it with glee; I’ve also found the story reported by Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, MSN, India Today, various leftist substacks (Paul Krugman loves this story), Yahoo Finance, Mediaite, the Financial Times, and more obscure platforms. I expect CNN, PBS, MSNOW and the alphabet networks to be along any minute.
What I can’t find is any reporting on this apparent conflict of interest and Trump family self-dealing by the conservative media. (As of this moment it is also missing from news aggregator “memeorandum,” I assume because this partisan site is so excited about the Supreme Court upholding the $5 million jury verdict against the President regarding the E. Jean Carroll affair.)
I was briefly tempted to make the latest Savannah Guthrie sympathy porn outbreak on NBC’s “Today” show an Ethics Quiz, but to heck with it: I have no doubts about this. “Today” show is abusing its position as a news or an entertainment show to exploit the disappearance of co-host Savannah Guthrie’s almost certainly dead mother for cheap publicity and reality show appeal. As for Guthrie, it’s simple: she is unprofessional, self-indulgent, and incompetent.
The New York Post reports from “Page Six,” which catalogues celebrity news, gossip, and other matters that waste time and thought,
“[On]“Today” show on Tuesday… Savannah Guthrie broke down in tears while discussing the ransom note her family received in February allegedly claiming her missing mom, Nancy Guthrie, had died. “A lot of people at ‘Today’ are affected by it,” says a source. “There was a sense of sadness today. Everybody just feels so bad for her. There is a lot of uncertainty.” “There is a lot of admiration and praise for her that she is still able to do her job,” says our source. “People really support her and care about her, and people are heartbroken.” During the show, Guthrie said she had “no comment” on the headlines and is “not involved in … coverage” of her mother’s abduction, but that she couldn’t “pretend” to not be present for the conversation. “I just wanted to take the opportunity to really ask people and really beg people to come forward because somebody knows something,” Guthrie continued.“This is a news story today that is on your radar, but this is the life my sister, [Annie Guthrie], lives, that I live, that my brother, [Camron Guthrie], lives, that our extended families live, that our children live every day,” she explained. “We cannot be at peace,” the journalist said. “No matter how much I try to come out here every day and smile and find that joy — and I will, I promise I will — this is a moment to say we need your help. … I’m not gonna miss that opportunity.”Guthrie ended her emotional plea with a promise: “We love our mom, and we’ll never stop looking for her. Ever.”
Ugh.
Ethics Alarms flagged the news media’s Guthrie obsession as unethical special treatment for the rich and famous in February, when the apparent kidnapping was at least new:
I can’t wait to hear my Facebook friends blame Trump somehow.
Last night Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old Democratic Socialists of America. member defeated Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in their primary. Chevalier’s stated positions will make her the most radical Democrat, or member of any party, elected to Congress ever if she prevails in November. She wants to abolish police, prisons, and borders. “All deportations are wrong,” she maintains, even when an illegal immigrant has committed a felony.
She was one of the founders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the militant student group behind the violent 2024 occupation of Columbia in support of Hamas. “We are Westerners fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization,” she says. “We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our intifada is an Internationalist one…” She complains that Bernie Sanders and AOC are too pro-Israel.
How could any American vote for her? Chevalier calls the United States “a fucking disgrace,” and as signature significance for a woke maniac whose brain raised its hand and asked to leave the room, refers to the United States as “occupied” Native American land. Naturally, she also wants the government to seize “all properties from landlords.”
Imagine: the Trump Deranged are so warped by hate and hysteria that they are willing to put people like this lunatic and Graham Platner in positions of power and risk allowing the party that supports them to get control of the nation. For the second time today, I am reminded of that guy who shot the nails into his head to stop his arm from hurting.
It’s stunning that anyone would have to explain to someone with functioning neurons that it is irresponsible to support candidates like Chevalier and the party that spawns them. But this toxin has been seeping into the American culture for a very long time, since the late Sixties at least. The vile conservative talk show host and author Michael Savage had a best-seller 20 years ago called “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” I wrote several articles about how unethical it was for one side of the partisan divide to call the other mentally ill; to me it was redolent of the way the Soviets discredited, isolated and imprisoned dissidents. Savage is vicious, but he’s not stupid, however. I may have to admit that in today’s environment, that ugly title has the ring of truth.
I was going to make this an Ethics Quiz, which is typically what I do with issues I believe can generate multiple and diverse ethics verdicts from the analytical and perceptive readers here, and often with matters I am not certain about myself. However, Michelle Obama’s custom designed skirt she decided to model as she appeared on a stage at the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago this week before “stakeholders” (Translation: Donors) was so indefensible by anyone who has not been permanently Obamafied, the crippling mental state where one is incapable of criticizing anything either Obama does or has done, ever, that my building a quiz around it would be dishonest.
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