Character

From “The Rest Of The Story Files,” The Resolution Of The Great Central Park Dog-Walking Controversy, And I Don’t Like It One Bit

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Amy Cooper

You might have forgotten this ethics story from last May. That would be understandable. It was momentarily big news (though it should not have been), but it occurred on the same day Derek Chauvin put his knee on George Floyd’s neck, and the George Floyd Freak-out and The Great Stupid soon descended on the land.

The verdict here—you might want to review the post—was that the villain in the story, Amy Cooper, was indeed an asshole for calling the cops on a black bird-watcher in Central Park.She did it because he told her to leash her dog (as the rules required) and began filming her defiant reaction. The other Cooper, Bird-watcher Christian, posted the video, thus severely tearing the fabric of Amy’s life for a single incident of miserable conduct. (“Take that, bitch!”) She was fired and humiliated, and New York banned her from Central Park and tried to put her in jail. Amy is also probably tarred as a racist for life, though as I argued in the post, the fact that she mistreated a black man and attempted to use his race against him doesn’t prove she’s a racist. It just proves she’s an asshole.

Christian, who did his part to blow an ultimately minor dispute into a national controversy, ultimately had second thoughts, and to his credit decided not to pursue a legal vendetta against Amy. I don’t like his rationale for this, which consisted of two rationalizations that I detest: #38 B, Excessive Accountability, or “She’s Suffered Enough,” and the awful rationalization #22, Comparative Virtue, or “There are worse things.” He told a reporter that he felt the lack of D.C. statehood was more important than punishing Amy Cooper. Oh. If there’s one thing that makes me think about D.C. statehood, it’s a rude white dogwalker having an altercation with a black bird-watcher.

I would have had no problem with prosecuting Amy Cooper for making a false complaint to the police if that law were enforced in New York as a matter of course. It isn’t, however. NYC District Attorney Cyrus Vance decided to charge Amy because of the high profile nature of the case, and to grandstand for social justice warriors, using the Minnesota white cop’s knee on black neck narrative as an opportunity. The Ethics Alarms verdict is that this was an unfair and irresponsible reason to pile on Amy, not because she didn’t deserve to be charged, but because the motive behind her charging was unethical for a prosecutor, and indeed racially biased. Vance would not have charged a black Amy under the exact same circumstances.

Now you’re caught up, so this next development can be put in context: the criminal case against Cooper was dismissed a month ago. In part because Christian Cooper declined to support her prosecution, Amy Cooper cut a plea deal that stipulated that if she completed a “therapeutic program” including instruction “about racial biases,” all charges would be dropped. She did, and they were. Amy had faced up to a year in jail if convicted, so a metaphorical gun was at her head. Learn to love Big Brother, or else.

Yecchh.

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NBC News May Be An Ethics Dunce, But Jordan Fuchs Is An Ethics Villain

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Shunning

When we last left the Washington Post’s fake quote debacle, the paper had identified Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs as the source of a false account of then-President Trump’s phone call to the state’s investigator into irregularities in the 2020 election. Both Fuchs and Post blogger Erik Wemple were channeling Dan Rather “ethics,” arguing that Fuch’s lie that the President said “Find the fraud!” was inaccurate but true.

Now we learn, after someone checked the record, that at least one of the media sources had in fact unwittingly allowed Fuchs to verify her own lie, and claimed it had received a confirmation of the Post fake news from “a source familiar with the conversation.”

CNBC reported the following on January 9, the same day as the Washington Post story:

NBC News has confirmed The Post’s characterization of the Dec. 23 call through a source familiar with the conversation. Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs told NBC News: “We can confirm the events in the Washington Post story.”

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3/17/21 Ethics Wind-Down, 3/18/21 Wind-Up…Featuring “The Song Of The Year”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Wind-Up

There’s nothing quite like a flaming tooth-ache to spark an early-morning post…

1. Corporate incompetence, Indian-style: The Cleveland Indians knee-jerked themselves out of their history, traditions and name by somehow concluding that the Black Lives Matter rioting obligated them to abandon “Indians” just because the NFL Washington Redskins had capitulated to political correctness thuggery. Like all of baseball and most of professional sports, the team decided that signaling progressive virtue was more important than their fans. And like the Redskins, the team prepared to to go through the 2021 season without a new name…just nothing, as in “Cleveland Baseball Club,” or something similarly generic. Because of the unseemly, unnecessary and unplanned rush, the Cleveland Whatsis-es also made it difficult to come up with a new name. Changing a team name is a large and expensive mess, because the name and logo are on everything from the team’s merchandise to websites, sponsorship deals, and the ballpark. Trademarks are needed to protect them. “Advice for anyone doing any product: Before you make it public, file,” Andrew Skale, a San Diego-based trademark attorney told the New York Times.

“The U.S. trademark office offers this kind of unique ability to file when you haven’t started using it, so take advantage of that,” Skale said. “Because I’ve seen when people that have issued news releases about new products and haven’t filed yet, and then they have problems later because some idiots decided to squat on them.” Or maybe not such idiots. Because of the Ex-Indians moral panic, many of the names the team could have chosen based on its history and culture will be now be expensive.Trademarks were filed by squatters after Cleveland’s first announcement for “Cleveland Baseball Team” (from someone in Georgia), “Cleveland Baseball Club” (from a company in Ohio), “Cleveland Guardians” (from someone in New York), Cleveland Rockers (from someone in California), Cleveland Natives and Cleveland Warriors (though even the Ex-Indian aren’t so stupid as to wade back into Native American controversies again), and most of all, the Cleveland Spiders, which has been an early favorite. That was the name of the team. That was the name of the team for ten years, 1889-1899, when baseball players looked like this…

Spiders

The No-names are fighting some of these filings, because the Trademark Office tends to disfavor squatters. It all could have been avoided, though, if the team hadn’t wushed to be woke, thus joining The Great Stupid.

I wonder if “Spider McBaseballfaces” has been taken…

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Question: Should Ethics Alarms Develop An Official “Groveling Weenie” List?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Apology Adams

The above was authored by Scott Adams, the “Dilbert” cartoonist, who has also gained fame (or notoriety) as a “Trump whisperer.” He recently composed this “preemptive apology” for when the Cancel Mob comes for him, as it surely will. Reader Richard Marr, who pointed EA to this, asks where it fits on the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale. He’s joking, of course: it’s a gag apology, and there is no category for that. It’s also a terrific grovel, which is what so many apologies from those accused of being “insensitive” or otherwise speaking or behaving contrary to mandated opinions and values from the increasingly dictatorial and threatening Left.

The Adams satire moves me to ask a serious question: Should Ethics Alarms add a page listing the revolting grovelers that have marked The Great Stupid, Americans who in fact did nothing wrong, but to keep their jobs, or status, or please demanding and arrogant peers, have prostrated themselves with statements that sound like excerpts from “The Manchurian Candidate” screenplay? The Ethics Alarms term for them is “Weenies”—weak, cowardly, venal or desperate people and entities who are content to have speech censors and ideological bullies gain power and slowly crush the spirit of liberty that has defined the United States of America. The Weenies lack the character and fortitude to stand up for the nation and its values, and would rather signal phony virtue as it is being defined by the cultural wrecking crew than display the real, more difficult virtues these times demand.

The Weenies include sports organizations like the NBA, entertainment companies like Turner Classic Movies, consumer companies like Brigham’s, journalism organizations like ESPN, and many more. They include celebrities like Sharon Osbourne, athletes like the recently retired Drew Brees, performers like Lady Antebellum, journalists like fired New York Times science and health reporter Donald McNeil, as well as professors like Matthew Mayhew and other teachers and academics too numerous to mention here. And, of course, politicians.

I will have to create a clear definition to distinguish the Weenies from the totalitarians, who they aid and enable with their groveling and virtue signaling. Georgetown Law Center, for example, is a genuine engine of totalitarianism; the two professors who meekly left its faculty because they were caught on Zoom explaining the realities of affirmative action are Weenies.

I envision this list as a group project, something like the “hate group” lists compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center, except that it will be honest and fair.

Your opinion is officially sought.

Don’t Be Lulled Into Apathy Because It Involves A Silly Daytime Talk Show Watched By Idiots And A Reality Star Of Negligible Importance: CBS Pulled A TV Show Because Someone Dared To Criticize A Black Woman. It’s Time To Draw A Line In The Sand…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Osbourn

This makes two frightening ethics stories involving the media in a row, the worst back-to-back Ethics Alarms concerns that I’ve seen in ten years here. The seriousness of the previous story is easy to grasp: multiple news organizations deliberately misled the public to suggest misconduct by President Trump that never happened, and “coincidentally” they did so with perfect timing to affect the crucial special Senate elections in Georgia. This second horror is trickier, because it involves what to normal people is trivia layered on trivia. However, it may be the more terrible of the two.

Try to follow this without getting disgusted and turning on “Three’s Company” re-runs, or you can jump to the bottom of this nauseating account for the reason why the episode is important despite all evidence to the contrary…

1. It began with the Oprah interview of the narcissistic and manipulative Duchess of Sussex and her dominated husband last week, during which Meghan absurdly played poor little rich girl and poor princess while accusing conveniently un-named members of the Royal family of being racists. Even the fact that the couple sold the interview to O didn’t dissuade the celebrity-addled Princess Di cult from swallowing every whooper served up by the former actress like it was a culinary masterpiece. Tellingly, the interview went over like a lead balloon, as my father used to say, in Great Britain, where Meghan Markle and Harry are even less popular members of the royal family than Jeffrey Epstein pal Prince Andrew.

2. Then, on a British morning talk show the next day, celebrity muckraker Piers Morgan announced that he didn’t believe the couple’s tale of abuse, and thought it was outrageous for two entitled (literally) individuals of unearned wealth and power to present themselves as victims, and particularly offensive for Markle to be posing as a victim of “systemic racism.” For this he was accused of being biased—he’s white after all—and Morgan, who bottom-feeder though he is does not grovel or back down, quit his co-host job on the spot, walking off the set.

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Yet Another Update On“Introducing The ‘Technologically Inept Adjunct Professor With Politically Incorrect Opinions Principle’”…Ethics Dunce: Professor David Batson

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

weenie

When we last left furiously virtue-signaling Georgetown University Law Center it had fired veteran adjunct professor Sandra Sellers last week for discussing frankly but inadvertently over Zoom a situation that everyone connected with the Law Center knows to be real. GULC had also suspended her co-instructor David Batson for barely nodding his head during Sellers’ statement of frustration that black students too often end up at the bottom of her grading curve. Dean Treanor, in his statement declaring the intended private discussion as “reprehensible,” darkly insinuated that Batson had failed a “bystander responsibility.”

Now Batson has also resigned, in a letter sent to the Washington Post, saying,

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Getting The Week Off To An Ethical Start, 3/15/2021! LBJ’s Doubts, Fake News, And second Acts

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Today in ethics history, on March 15, 1964, President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to urge the passage of a voting rights bill. Johnson declared that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote, a right supposedly guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War but foiled by many states that erected barriers based on race such as literacy and character tests and outright intimidation. “Their cause must be our cause too,”Johnson said, referring to Africa-Americans. “Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

It is a propitious time to consider LBJ, because a newly published book has revealed that his wife Lady Bird had to talk him out of quitting not long after his voting rights bill had become reality.

Johnson dictated his ideas for a withdrawal statement to his friend, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas while in the depths of depression. “I want to go to the ranch. I don’t want even Hubert to be able to call me,” he told his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. “They may demand that I resign. They may even want to impeach me.” The First Lady ultimately talked her husband him through that period, allowing him to complete the final three years of his term. She wrote about the episode in her diary, she ordered the entry kept secret for years after her death.

I was not aware that Johnson was prone to clinical depression. Now I’m curious about how many of our other Presidents were. I was aware of three before Johnson—Pierce, Lincoln and Teddy. I’m sure there are more. Leaders, however, must not reveal their doubts and failures of confidence.

1. I believe this is called “putting the cart before the horse...” From the Boston Globe:

US officials have arrested and charged two men with assaulting US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 attack, but they do not know yet whether it caused the officer’s death.

Ah, how they want to be able to say that the rioters in the “armed insurrection” in which nobody had a gun (and that wasn’t an insurrection) killed Brian Sicknick. This mission has taken on extra urgency since the mainstream news media keeps saying, even now, that Sicknick was “killed” in the riot or by rioters. Yet as the Globe admits, as of today, this claim remains a lie, or if you prefer, fake news.

My experience is that reminding Facebook friends of this fact drives them bonkers.

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Sorry, I Can’t Let This Pass: The Number Of Women Accusing Gov. Cuomo Of Harassment Or Worse Just Jumped from 7 To 37

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Cuomo billboard

Yesterday evening, noting the the “Love Guv’s” accusers had risen to seven, I wrote, I thought in jest, “Oooh…Bill Cosby must be getting worried!” Now the Cos, who has over 50 women who say he drugged and molested them, really might wonder if Cuomo is a threat to his record. For The Independent reports,

A New York Magazine report outlines 30 new women accusing Andrew Cuomo with a litany of various allegations. As a result, several say they had to go to therapy, take anti-depressants, and call a suicide hotline….One of Cuomo’s speechwriters accused him of “racialized abuse” and said that she was only hired to “fill a quota”. Accuser Ana Liss, 35, told New York Magazine “started pursuing mental-health services when I was there because I thought I was going crazy. My parents thought I was going nuts”. “I was angry and crying all the time, and I went on Lexapro,’ she added. ‘I did call in to a suicide hotline because I felt like such a friggin’ nobody.”

The sudden jump in accusers is a surprise, but not the mounting total. After accuser #2 came forward, I wrote, “[T] he acid test for sexual harassment (and worse) is whether there are additional victims who come forward after the first one breaks the silence. Cuomo is now up to two. It’s a safe bet there are more.” Mark that as one more fact that the mainstream news media withheld that readers here were alerted to.

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Maybe Cheerleading Isn’t Unethical, It’s Just Useless And Encourages Unethical Values…Like In This Case

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Sexy-Redskins-cheerleaders

In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Raffaela Spone anonymously sent the coaches of her high school student daughter’s cheerleading squad “deepfake’ photos and videos that depicted the girl’s competitors nude, drinking, or smoking to get them kicked off the team. She also sent the manipulated images to the girls, and urged them to kill themselves, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub’s office said.

Nice! Of course, the woman is insane. Still, there have been far too many episodes like this. One is too many.

On a utilitarian scale, cheerleading is so deep in negative territory that it couldn’t see the positive side with super-vision. It is, of course, the epitome of presenting girls and women as sex objects while pretending that it is something else. The alleged function, “leading cheers,” is gratuitous and annoying, like those “Cheer!” commands on baseball park electronic scoreboards, or “Charge!” trumpet riff. Home crowds know when to cheer; I’ll cheer when I feel like it, thanks: BACK OFF!

But everyone knows that’s not why cheerleading squads exist. In pro sports, they are blatant eye-candy for middle-aged male fans and sexual prey for the players. Otherwise, why not have male cheerleaders? (Yes, yes, I know some schools have them). As an earlier post here pointed out,

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Ethics Dessert, 3/12/2021: Goodbye “Jimmies”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

IceCreamJimmies

1. Have you been following the Taylor Lorenz affair? Let me see if I can bring you up to date without spending more time than is justified, since she is, all things considered, trivial. She is a New York Times culture and tech reporter who has botched things up enough to be fired under previous standards of journalism (which now has no standards.) She has been repeatedly caught fabricating claims about public figure: in the last six weeks she twice publicly lied about Netscape founder Marc Andreessen: once claiming she overheard him he used the word “retarded” in a Clubhouse room (he hadn’t, but so what if he had?) and later accusing him of plotting with a white nationalist to attack her, which also didn’t happen. She also often uses her platform with the Times to attack private citizens by accusing them of harboring non-acceptable beliefs. Last week, she took to Twitter on National Women’s Day to claim victim status, writing on Twitter,

“For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment….it is not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I have had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life…No one should have to go through this.”

This, in turn, triggered Tucker Carlson, in his Fox News show, to refer to Lorenz in a segment on how powerful people like Meghan Markle got away with playing victim. He mocked Lorenz’s tweets in light of her position as a star reporter for the Times when much of the nation is out of work. “Lots of people are suffering right now,” Carlson said. “But no one is suffering more than Taylor Lorenz.”

The Times, incredibly, accused Carlson in a public statement of unleashing “a wave of harassment and vitriol” at “a talented New York Times journalist,” and concluded with, “Journalists should be able to do their jobs without facing harassment.”

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