Character

Sunday Ethics Affirmation, 6/27/2021: “Life Is Unfair, Suck It Up” Edition [Cont.]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

[back to where we were before I was so rudely interrupted…by life, ironically enough…]

3. Baseball Ethics: Sticky stuff update! Baseball’s sudden emergency crack-down on pitchers using various versions of glue on the ball to make it go faster and be curvier caught its first cheater today: Seattle Mariners left-hander Héctor Santiago was ejected from today’s game against the White Sox by home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi after a between-innings foreign substance inspection. Santiago’s glove was confiscated. If the glove indeed shows the presence of a forbidden substance, the pitcher will be subject to a ten-day suspension under the terms of Major League Baseball’s new enforcement of the prohibition against ball doctoring. There is some skepitcism that the test will prove Santiago guilty, since it is believed that nobody could be so stupid as to try to keep using “sticky stuff” this week, knowing that they will be checked. On the other hand, Gerrit Cole, the 2019 Cy Young winner who has been widely suspected of being a “sticky stuff” addict, apparently went cold turkey. Today, against the Red Sox, his pitches were spinning much slower than usual, and he got clobbered, giving up 6 runs, 8 hits and 3 homer in just five innings. A coincidence, I’m sure…

4. Tales of The Great Stupid: Apparently the mainstream news media decided that this was just too embarrassing and might hurt the cause of mad wokism…because so far, it has managed to ignore it. A National Archives’ task force on racism determined that the structure, which houses the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights demonstrates “structural racism,” portraying the Founding Fathers and other “white men” too positively, since it “lauds wealthy White men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and other People of Color], women, and other communities.” The report also calls for “trigger warnings” to be put in place with historical content to “forewarn audiences of content that may cause intense physiological and psychological symptoms.” Cassie Smedile, executive director of conservative group America Rising, called the report “the radical Left’s latest attempt to sow division and rewrite our history.” No, it’s the latest example of the progressive mainstream as it has metastasized to reject the idea of the United States of America. Blame Obama, who appointed National Archivist David Ferriero in 2009, and the Senate, which confirmed him, and President Trump, who didn’t have the foresight to fire him. He assembled and commissioned the task force, meaning he knew exactly what he would get. Ferriero claimed the task force was necessary in light of George Floyd’s death last year, the report notes. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense: an example of local police misconduct in Minneapolis without any demonstrable racial motive or animus mandates another trashing of Jefferson, Madison, Washington and the rest. [Pointer: A.S.]

Brilliant.

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Objective Take-Aways From Fiona Hill’s “Fire Alarm” Story

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Fiona Hill

I know how I missed this: I won’t watch CNN, and especially not the ridiculous Don Lemon, unless there’s the equivalent of a gun at my head. I finally caught wind of it when a New York Times’ hard left op-ed writers, Nick Kristoff (who is one of the few rational ones in that group) referenced the tale as if it is indisputable proof of President Trump’s awfulness. On June 16, Fiona Hill, once Trump’s top Russia adviser, told Don Lemon that she was so upset at how Trump’s 2018 press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin was proceeding that she looked for a fire alarm to pull and considered faking a medical emergency when she couldn’t find one, just to disrupt it. “I just thought, let’s cut this off and try to end it. I couldn’t come up with anything that just wouldn’t add to the terrible spectacle,” Hill said on “Don Lemon Tonight.”

The “terrible spectacle” she was trying to avoid was that Trump refused to support US intelligence conclusions that Russia had tried to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. Her self-glorifying account—at least to Trump-haters—didn’t get much coverage beyond CNN: little from the mainstream media, none from the conservative media. I sense, however, based on Kristof’s use of it, that it is destined to be wielded by Democrats as a “this is how terrible it was to have Donald Trump as President” story evermore.

But what Hill’s grandstanding really reveals is something every different, which is how this President, unlike all those before him, was sabotaged actively and passively by members of his own staff and administration who didn’t like him, trust him, respect him, or believe that he was a legitimate President. The media-derided term for what Trump had to contend with was the “deep state,” which had a conspiratorial ring and allowed those who correctly reported what was flamingly obvious to be ridiculed as paranoid. That term, however, was misleading.

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What Its Fraudulent Anti-Gun Video Reveals About “Change the Ref”And Everyone Applauding it

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Change the Ref

The anti-gun group “Change the Ref” pretended to represent a fake school, “James Madison Academy,” when they invited former NRA president David Keene to give a speech at a graduation ceremony. He was told that he was participating in a rehearsal, as he addressed a stadium of empty chairs. Another gun rights advocate, John Lott Jr., also was lured into the trap by the same ruse.

In reality, the group was filming an anti-gun video. As Keene exhorted the imaginary students to revere the Second Amendment, the video added audio from 911 calls, and the sounds of terrified students during an active shooter episode (or simulations of them). Keene addressed empty chairs, 3,044 of them, allegedly representing children and teenagers who were shot and killed before they could graduate from high school, though he wasn’t told that. Just a rehearsal! After they provided the desired footage to be used against their cause, Keene and Lott were told that the ceremony was canceled.

Change the Ref was founded by Patricia and Manuel Oliver, parents of a boy killed in the Parkland, Florida, shooting. The video is called the “The Lost Class.” Powerful! Clever! Also dishonest, unfair, disrespectful, unforgivably unethical and one more thing: signature significance. A group that would do this is untrustworthy. Nothing it says or publishes can be trusted; none of its arguments can be taken at face value; none of its statistics or analysis can be relied upon by anyone. With this video and its abuse of Lott and Keene, Change the Ref exposes itself as practicing “by any means possible” warfare, not legitimate policy advocacy. It believes that the ends justify the means—their ends. It is a perfect match for the current progressive movement, which has taken an ominous turn to totalitarian strategies with its full embrace of Alinskyism.

Good to know.

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Ethics Observations On The Cruz-Hirono Exchange During The Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Here is the full exchange. Do watch it all:

I could justly call this a case of res ipsa loquitur, requiring no further explication, but let’s be clear about what was going on.

Senator Hirono stated that her objection to the doctrine of Constitutional originalism was not based on law or theory, but on the fact that cases like Roe v. Wade, which made abortion a right, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same sex marriage, would not have been decided as they were had the Supreme Court majority used an originalism standard. That is, obviously, a purely consequentialist argument: if the results of applying a principle do not yield what she favors, then she does not believe the principle should be applied. It is an “ends justifies the means” position, and that is antithetical to the rule of law, as we have discussed on Ethics Alarms often. If the law is enforced by judges according to a floating standard whereby a principle is valid when a desirable result will arise from applying it, and invalid when an authority prefers a different result, then the law has no integrity, and the system becomes arbitrary and chaotic.

Senator Cruz, after his questioning of the Biden judicial nominee who tried to dance his way through Cruz’s implications that he was not consistent in his judicial philosophy, then referenced Sen. Hirono’s unambiguous explanation about why she opposed originalism: decisions she likes would have come out the other way. She responded by accusing Cruz of “mansplaining” and mischaracterizing what she said. When Cruz reasonably tried to ask exactly how he had mischaracterized her statement, the Democrats furiously attempted to block his response. When that failed, and Cruz asked directly whether she had said what she said, Hirono babbled incoherently, finally said “No.”

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No Good Guys Or Innocent Victims In The Tucker Carlson-New York Times Spat

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Carlson 3

Apparently the New York Times got tired of Tucker Carlson’s two faces, so media reporter Ben Smith did a hit piece on the Fox News star. He revealed that Tucker, despite his oft-expressed disdain for the mainstream media and its reporters, “spends his time when he’s not denouncing the liberal media trading gossip with them. He’s the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J. Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr. Carlson himself).” Smith adds, “I won’t talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him. But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, ‘a great source.’”

In other words, Carlson is a hypocritical double agent. condemning the mainstream media on his TV show and doing favors for them behind the scenes. One especially nauseating tale is how Tucker related a private conversation with President Trump that made Carlson look good and Trump look foolish for an coming book by the Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.” Since only two people were on the line, and Trump didn’t reveal it, Carlson is the only possible source. But the whole article is nauseating, including the casual way all the participants excuse such “double games” as business as usual. Everybody does it, you see, so it’s OK. “It’s so unknown in the general public how much he plays both sides,” one reporter for a prominent publication who gets dirt from Carlson regularly told Smith. Another Washington journalist explained how Carlson benefits by assisting the same reporters he says he “hates,” saying, “If you open yourself up as a resource to mainstream media reporters, you don’t even have to ask them to go soft on you.”

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/21/2021: Happy Birthday U.S. Constitution! [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Constitution signing

On this day in 1788, habitually cantankerous New Hampshire became the ninth and last required state to ratify the Constitution of the United States and make it the law of the land. December 7 of 1787 had seen Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Connecticut quickly signed the document. But Congress had voted that at least 9 of the 13 former colonies had to sign on before the document was considered adopted. New Hampshire, Massachusetts and the remaining states opposed the document, as it failed to reserve sufficient powers to the states and did not protect individual rights like freedom of speech, religion,the press, and the right to bear arms. In February of 1788, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and other states agreed to ratify the document with the promise that necessary amendments would be developed and proposed. The Constitution was ratified based on the compromise by Massachusetts, Maryland and South Carolina, making 8. New Hampshire made nine. The first Congress under the new Constitution adopted 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, and sent them to the states for ratification. Rhode Island, which opposed federal control of currency and was critical of compromise on slavery, was the last hold-out; the U.S. government had to threaten to sever commercial relations with the state to force it to sign on. Finally, on May 29, 1790, Rhode Island voted to become the last of the original 13 colonies to join the United States of America.

Today the U.S. Constitution is the oldest written constitution in operation in the world, and the only one predicated on ethical principles, thanks to the Bill of Rights.

I would have preferred to see Constitution Day made a national holiday over “Juneteenth,” since it was the principles laid out in the Constitution, along with the Declaration of Independence, that eventually led to the elimination of slavery, and the document has been the backbone of our republic’s epic success in other respects as well.

1. “Larry Vaughn Day”? I regret not noting yesterday that it was the anniversary of the release of “Jaws,” a milestone in American cultural history. It is also an ethics movie, and one that pops into my mind often, since the irresponsible conduct of the weaselly mayor of Amity, Larry Vaughn (Played by Murray Hamilton, who made a career of portraying human weasels), remains SOP for so many elected officials, locally and nationally, and also the leadership of corporations, associations, industries, sports, universities and <cough> religious organizations. Ethics Alarms has a Larry Vaughn tag, and I should have used it in dozens more articles than I have. He is the perfect symbol of leadership that, in the words of Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) will always “ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass.”

The U.S. could benefit greatly from a “Larry Vaughn Day” on June 20 in which every elected official and organizational leader be required to watch “Jaws.”

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An Unethical Times Columnist Says Goodbye

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

frank_bruni

Let me begin with the obligatory “Good!” Frank Bruni, one of the New York Times’ stable of irresponsible left-biased op-ed writers, filed his final column in today’s Sunday Times. How bad is the Times’ opinion-writing team? This bad: I wouldn’t put Bruni in the same circle of Pundit Hell as his colleagues like Charles M. Blow, Thomas Freidman, Michelle Goldberg, Ezra Klein, David Leonhardt and Paul Krugman, and yet he has a substantial dossier at Ethics Alarms, including a well-deserved Ethics Dunce in 2015. He had had authored a near parody of a “this guy is conservative, so we know he’s stupid” rant about then Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who had just dropped out of the GOP race for President. I wrote to conclude that post (this is long, but I forgot I had written it, and it’s good):

“Bruni clearly thinks Walker is stupid and evil. You can tell from various hints in his column that he had a slew of veiled slurs based on Walker’s lack of a college degree loaded and ready should Walker become a viable candidate, and of course opposing unions is evil. Actually, it’s nearly evil to pretend a public union is the same as a union, which Bruni does by not making the distinction. (This is the progressive way: immigrants and illegal immigrants are also the same thing, unworthy of distinction.) Public unions embody inherent conflicts of interest and a quid pro quo scam, which Walker, miraculously for a man with the intellect of a sea sponge, somehow grasps while brilliant progressives like Bruni do not.

“Biases—which make all people stupi, but do not necessarily make them Republicans, which is a puzzlement––lead Bruni to an embarrassing display of confirmation bias. Today Walker-kickers all over the web were mocking him for an incident years ago in which he intended to write “mazel tov” in a letter to a Jewish constituent, and instead wrote: “Thank you again and Molotov.” Bruni, like the other Republican haters I have among my Facebook friends, see this as smoking gun proof that Walker is a moron. When someone you respect says something equally stupid, of course, it’s a meaningless gaffe. Joe Biden says more idiotic things in a week than Walker has in a lifetime, and Bruni will never cherry pick one of his verbal meltdowns. Obama, infamously, pronounces the “ps” in corps, a trust-busting error for a Commander in Chief, and not funny like using Molotov for “mazel tov.” Well, never mind: we all know Obama’s brilliant, so it doesn’t count. And we all know Bruni has never had an equally embarrassing howler caught by an editor or an intern. Imagine a world where your worst typo or “speak-o” would be held against you for the rest of your life. In my case, I think I’d have to head for the woodchipper.

“Total lack of awareness of one’s own flaws, biases and blatant inconsistencies is the true mark of intellectual deficiency. Walker realized when he couldn’t cut it as a Presidential candidate: what’s Bruni’s excuse for not reading his own tripe and realizing, ‘Gee, maybe it’s time to open that sex toy shop?’ He writes, ‘I’m weary and wary of politicians whose ambitions precede and eclipse any serious, necessary preparation for the office they seek. Walker is a perfect example.‘

Walker is a perfect example? Scott Walker has served as a governor of a large industrial state for five years before running for President. Barack Obama had no leadership preparation whatsoever, domestic or foreign, before daring to call himself Presidential timber. Ah, but you see, being prepared isn’t required if you are intelligent, which is defined as “agreeing with Frank Bruni.”

Interestingly, Bruni’s last column suggests that maybe he did realize that much of his product was the aforementioned “tripe.” It’s in the form of a mea culpa for past excesses that he chooses to own up to when it’s too late to reform. Nice. I call this a “McCain,” an honor Sen. John McCain earned when he lost the South Carolina Presidential primary and then announced that it was wrong for the state to still fly the Confederate flag, a position he conveniently never expressed when it might lose him some votes. To say I detest such conduct is an understatement. The conveniently late apology is not accepted: it has been delivered to make the miscreant feel unburdoned by his guilty conscience, but is a telling ethics breach on its own.

Here are some of Bruni’s final admissions….and as you read them, consider this: the New York Times employed this hack and gave him a regular platform for 10 years.

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Baseball Has A Cheating Problem That Is Old, Was Supposedly Addressed Decades Ago, And Is Strangling The Game. It Is Relevant To More Than Baseball (Part 3: The Crackdown)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Before the 2021 season started, Major League Baseball claimed that it was about to start enforcing the rule against applying foreign substances to the baseball. Why. one might wonder. As Part I described, baseball has been casual about this rule for a long time, and the pattern goes back even longer than when Ethics Alarms first discussed it. In 1920, the game, trying to clean up its tarnished image in the wake of 1919 Black Sox scandal, banned the spitball as well as other “trick pitches” that involved altering the ball itself a few pitchers who were regarded as “spitball specialists” were “grandfathered” meaning that they were allowed to keep throwing the otherwise illegal pitch while others were not. This is not the way to make a rule against cheating, and the ambivalence about the spitball continued well into the 1980s. Baseball, and especially sportswriters, seemed to think this particular kind of cheating was cute. Only a few pitchers could throw a spitball, and those who did, notably Gaylord Perry, now in the Hall of Fame, were only occasionally caught and punished. Baseball finally made a rule that a pitcher couldn’t bring his fingers to his mouth; if he did, an automatic ball was called. Meanwhile, umpire searches of a suspected pitcher using other substances like K-Y jelly, usually hidden in a cap, became the stuff of comedy, as in the famous sequence from “The Naked Gun” above.

MLB became lax about enforcement, and predictably, some pitchers, and eventually most pitchers, took what was accepted as a “little” pine tar to get a better grip on the ball and, aided by modern chemistry, began using so-called “sticky stuff” to get higher rates of spin on the ball than they could with their natural talents. This development accelerated after 2018, when home runs became more common than ever before. When the rate of homers reached absurd levels in 2019, breaking the rules against putting foreign substances on the ball was viewed as a matter of professional survival. Pitchers experimented, trying Tyrus Sticky Grip, Firm Grip spray, Pelican Grip Dip stick and Spider Tack, a glue intended for use in World’s Strongest Man competitions and whose advertisements show someone using it to lift a cinder block with his palm. Some combined several of those products to create their own personal “sticky stuff.” Their clubs used Edgertronic high-speed cameras and TrackMan and Rapsodo pitch-tracking devices to see which version of the glue worked best.

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Unethical Email Of The Month: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Lightfoot email

That obnoxious, bullying, uncivil and unprofessional memo from Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, is signature significance. Competent and effective managers don’t write and send memos like that, not even once. As a subordinate, I would resign after receiving such an email. As a supervisor, I would place a staffer who sent that memo on probation after requiring her to apologize to the recipient.

Chicago is one of the most difficult American cities to govern. Lightfoot is currently facing legal problems as a consequence of her discriminatory announcement that she would only do interviews with “journalists of color.” The email, just another of many pieces of evidence showing Lightfoot’s arrogance and incompetence.

This is what happens when voters elect officials based not on their management experience and revealed leadership skills, but on their gender and skin shade.

[Instapundit’s Ed Driscoll had a funny line about the email: “CHICAGO’S MAYOR MORPHED INTO JACK TORRANCE SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED…”

Baseball Has A Cheating Problem …It Is Relevant To More Than Baseball (Part 2): Unethical Quote Of The Week: Boston Red Sox Manager Alex Cora

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Cora

“I come from suspension and I know how embarrassing that is and how tough that is, not only on you as a person but your family, your friends and the people that love you. Ten games, a year, two years, three years, it doesn’t matter. Being suspended is hell and you don’t want to go through that. I was very open to them and hopefully they understand that.”

—Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora on Major League Baseball’s threat of 10 game suspensions for pitchers  caught cheating by using sticky substances on baseballs , a practice that has been against the rules  for a hundred years.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote that Alex Cora, then serving a one year suspension from Major League baseball, didn’t “get it,” it being why cheating is wrong, what ethics is, and why it is important to act ethically in all aspects of life. He still doesn’t get it. Cora (you can catch up here) was suspended because he engineered and oversaw a  season long sign-stealing scheme as bench coach in 2017 for the Houston Astros, who used it to inflate their offense and ultimately win the World Series. When it was finally discovered, Cora was the acclaimed manager of the Boston Red Sox, who succeeded the Astros as World Champions in 2018. The Red Sox had been cheating in their triumphant season too, though not as extensively, and  an investigation blamed it all on a low-level coach., not Cora, though Cora was his supervisor, and the whole thing seemed oddly reminiscent of Cora’s cheating in Houston. Continue reading →