Character

From The “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Files…White Male Conservative Smirk Bad, Black Female Democrat Smirk Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The definition of a “smirk”, I see as I peruse several dictionary definitions, is a condescending, smug, conceited or silly smile, universally regarded as obnoxious, rude and annoying. Thus the expression caught in an instant on the face of a teenage Catholic school student as a Native American activist intentionally confronted him, blocked his way and banged his drum within inches of his face was deemed by multiple commentators and pundits from progressive news organizations—that is to say, news organizations—to make the kid’s face “punchable.”

Examination of the video revealed that Nick Sandmann was not, in fact, smirking at all, but smiling awkwardly because human beings don’t have appropriate expressions pre-programmed for “old Indian jerk starts chanting and beating a drum in your face without any discernible reason when you have no clear avenue of escape.”

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 10/8/20: In Which I Am At A Loss For Words

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

profile-picture-questions

1 As predicted, the police shooting of a black teenager with a semi-automatic weapon resulted in a new round of riots, this time in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin because the officer involved was not indicted for 1) being a police officer, and  2) having to shoot a an African American who 3) resisted arrest. Of course.

Riots are unethical. Demonstrating against responsible and fact-based law-enforcement decisions whether to prosecute is unethical. Creating a culture in which it is presumed that enforcing the law against a particular race is racist is unethical. This is all what one political party, just one of two, is supporting, rather than clearly condemning. That too is unethical.

And supporting such a party is unethical, as well is ignorant.

While I was typing this, an ad, not “approved by Donald Trump,” featured a woman being terrorized in her car by a mob, and noted that the Biden-Harris ticket would try to disarm citizens while “defunding the police.” “Vote Against Biden-Harris to keep safe” the ad concluded.

I think that’s entirely fair.

2. I did not watch the Pence-Harris debate, and I may not even review the video or the transcript. There should be nothing left to learn about Harris at this point, after watching her giggling, incompetent performances in the Democratic candidates’ debates. I assume she made numerous counter-factual assertions, and I assume the best she could do was to level pre-scripted ad hominem attacks on the President to pander to the Trump Deranged Democratic base. I assume no one asked her about the apparent hypocrisy of her enthusiastic alliance with a serial sexual harasser and the object of a rape accusation when she savaged a nominated Supreme Court Justice based on far less. I assume no one will ask how she defends the open decision to base the critical choice of who stands “a heartbeat from the Presidency” on nothing, literally nothing, but skin color and gender, resulting in Harris  being chosen despite no relevant experience and clear rejection by voters in the primaries. And I assume the Vice-President was stolid, professional and boring, as he always is, thus sparking comparisons with the President’s uncivil, un-Presidential but wholly Trump-like performance in the first Presidential debate.

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The American Bar Association Has Lost Faith In Professionalism, It Seems.

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

For as long as I can remember, lawyers took pride in that fact that they could pound away at each other in the court room, shout, sneer, mock and beat an adversary into a metaphorical pulp, and put it all aside the second the case was finished. The idea that being friends, even close friends, with an opposing advocate compromised a lawyer’s determination and willingness to fight for his or her client was an anathema to the whole concept of professionalism. During the Civil War, West Point classmates on opposite sides sometimes met before a battle, shared a whisky, old memories and a few tears, and the next day did their best to kill each other. That mindset was analogous to how I was taught lawyers were supposed to behave, and, indeed, did.

Now the American Bar Association has apparently decided that it was all a myth. In  Formal Opinion 494, “Conflicts Arising Out of a Lawyer’s Personal Relationship with Opposing Counsel,” the ABA expresses doubts that many lawyers are up to the task.

“A personal interest conflict may arise out of a lawyer’s relationship with opposing counsel, the ABA now says. “Lawyers must examine the nature of the relationship to determine if it creates a …conflict and, if so, whether the lawyer reasonably believes the lawyer will be able to provide competent and diligent representation to each affected client who must then give informed consent, confirmed in writing.”

The opinion breaks possible personal relationships into three categories:

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Comment Of The Day: “Oh, Look! More Baseball Ethics Dunces! This Time, It’s the Baseball Writers’ Association of America”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I have been remiss in getting up “Comments of the Day,” another consequence of my frustration adapting to the new WordPress “block” system, damn it.  I usually hand le COTD posts from my laptop, and posts requiring my concentration and composition rather than the imported wisdom of others from the Fortress of Ethics Solitude, my office.

I’m posting this follow-up comment from Here’s Johnny regarding the baseball writers’ gratuitous smear on the original commissioner of baseball based on nothing but rumor, a desire to practice “anti-racism,” without actually doing anything, and the smug assumption that History Doesn’t Matter, Gratitude Doesn’t Matter, and Honors Don’t Matter.

And the dog is licking my toes…

UPDATE: Well, that was a failed experiment. When I tried to move the text from Word to WordPress, I couldn’t make the format work from the laptop, so I’m back at my PC. That was 20 more minutes of my increasingly scarce time on Earth robbed by WordPress. I’m thinking of sending them an invoice...

Here’s Here’s Johnny’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Oh, Look! More Baseball Ethics Dunces! This Time, It’s the Baseball Writers’ Association of America”:

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My Mentor, My Friend: David J. McCarthy, 1935-2020

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Dave McCarthy

I have many things I want to write about, but this is something I have to write about.

I learned recently that my friend, mentor, teacher and my first boss David J. McCarthy, Jr. died on October 1, at the age of 84.  The key word here is probably mentor, but I’m not certain I have the perfect word for David. What do you call the person who probably did as much to influence the course of your life, all positively, than anyone else other than your parents? That was him. I know: I understand the real meaning of “The Road Not Taken.” It’s possible, even likely, that I would have ended up in the same place, or close to it, without someone pointing me to a path I had never considered at a point when I was desperately looking for options. But if a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon can cause a hurricane in Milwaukee, David McCarthy was the pterodactyl flapping his wings who changed, literally, everything in my life.

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Ethics Alarms Translation: NBA Commissioner Adam Silver Explains It All

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

NBA I cant breath

In a recent interview, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver gave a useful and predictable, if disheartening, response to a question about the National Basketball Association’s crashing ratings, and the widespread (and surely accurate) belief that many fans have been alienated by the league’s endorsement of aggressive Black Lives Matter propaganda in the arenas, on the courts, on players’ uniforms, and in other aspects of the sport.

Rachel Nichols on NBA Countdown asked the businessman, and I use that term pointedly,

The NBA has certainly been the most visible billion-dollar organization championing social justice and civil rights. As you noted in your press conference the other day, though, that has not been universally popular. How committed are you to being that going forward?

I have to interject here: “not universally popular” is craven equivocation by the interviewer, echoing several Ethics Alarms rationalizations like, 19A The Insidious Confession, or “It wasn’t the best choice.” I hate that crap; as I get older, I hate it more: “It wasn’t everything we hoped for” used to mean, “It was a complete disaster,” and similar weasel words to avoid being direct and honest. The NBA’s Black Lives Matter boot-licking wasn’t “not universally popular,” it was unambiguously unpopular. Such deliberate avoidance of the truth is deceit, and is a variety of fake news.

Silver responded,

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Oh, Rats! I Was Hoping This Creep Was A Republican, So I Could Prove that My Detestation Of Hypocritical Frauds Being Supported By Hypocritical Voters Is Completely Non-Partisan

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Cal-Cunningham-Family

I admit to not following North Carolina Senate campaign closely. I should have known candidate Cal Cunningham was the Democrat challenging (and, pollsters say, leading) GOP Senator Thom Tillis in what is considered a crucial race for the control of the Senate. Over the weekend,  Cunningham, an Iraq war veteran and the married father of two admitted to sending a series of sexual messages (including a “sext”) to Arlene Guzman Todd, a California-based public relations strategist. “Would make my day to roll over and kiss you about now,” he wrote in one message.

Cunningham has been basing his campaign on themes of honor and character. [Mainstream media bias note: The New York Times described the exchange as “flirtatious.” Call me old fashioned, but I don’t consider “dick pics” as flirty.]

Now a Facebook comment from a woman named Erin Brinkman claims that her close friend also engaged in a multi-year affair with Cunningham. “He’s been having an affair with a good friend of mine since 2012. Not the woman mentioned in the story. Needless to say, my friend was devastated. But my feeling is, if they’ll cheat WITH you, they’ll cheat ON you!,” Brinkman wrote.

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Yes, Fire This Teacher, Make Sure He Never Teaches Again, But That’s Just The Beginning…

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Stanton

Tacoma, Washington sixth grade technology teacher Brendan Stanton needs to be fired, but that’s only the beginning. His conduct needs to be widely publicized, and the consensus needs to emerge that the kind of conduct he engaged in…

1. Is unacceptable.

2. Is abusive

3. Is indoctrination rather than education

4. Is all too frequently allowed, enabled, and even surreptitiously encouraged in the educational system

5. Must stop.

Those who are inclined to defend Stanton should also be flushed out, condemned and declared to be what they are, and what they are is not reasonably disputable. They are deliberate enemies of American values and democracy. They should have a metaphorical red E, not on their chests, but their foreheads.

Now that all of that is out of the way, and I’ve had a stiff drink, here’s what Stanton did.

Each day, Stanton asks his remote learning students at Perry G. Keithley Middle School students a daily question, requiring students to write their answers in the online chatroom. According to a screenshot, one boy  wrote:

“I admire Donald J. Trump because he is making America great again. And because he is the best president the United States of America could ever, ever have. And he built the wall so terrorists couldn’t come into in the U.S. Trump is the best person in the world. And that’s why I admire him.”

Can’t have American students professing admiration of the President of the United States now, noy when a virtuous and woke teacher runs the class! Stanton kicked the vile child t out of the chatroom, deleted what he wrote lest it corrupt others whose brains and opinions he was assiduously molding to his personal specifications, and proceeded to attack the President and the student.

Incidentally, according to Gallup’s annual poll, President Trump tied with Barack Obama in 2019 as the most admired man in America. Parenthetically, he wouldn’t make my top hundred (neither would Obama).

“The example that was shared in the chat, which I went ahead and erased for us, was not appropriate right?” Stanton told his class. Especially as that individual has created so much division and hatred between people and specifically spoken hatred to many different individuals, ok? Again, that individual has spoken hate to many individuals and I don’t think is an appropriate example for a role model that we should be admiring.”

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Rationalization #3A, Pollyanna’s Mantra, or “Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining”

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

pollyanna

Not only is the Ethics Alarms Rationalization List getting its first new addition since April, it’s also finally up to date. I had neglected to add the two most recent rationalizations, Rationalization 25C, The Romantic’s Excuse, Or “I care so much!” and #52A, Kennedy’s Stall,  or  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”  to the main list after introducing them in posts

I think today’s addition is the 104th Rationalization, and I’m as surprised as you probably are that there are so many. Most of the recent additions have been close relatives of previously entered ones, indicated by the letters A,B, and C, and also making counting them difficult, especially for me, since I count only slightly more accurately than I spell.

Pollyanna’s Mantra, named after the 1913 children’s literature classic by Eleanor H. Porter (and the now more famous 1960 Disney adaptation of the novel that made a sensation out of child actress Hayley Mills, above) about a little girl who was determined to see the good in everybody and everything, is another in the sub-rationalization category, stamped 3A to mark its close relationship with #3, Consequentialism. “Every cloud has a silver lining” carries on the deception of #3, which takes advantage of a quirk of human nature that wants to confer credit for the accidental and unintended benefits of an unethical decision or unethical conduct on the individual responsible for the decision or conduct. Pollyanna’s Mantra seeks to mitigate accountability for unethical conduct that has had predictable negative results by trying to shift attention to some positive consequences, real or contrived.

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Weekend Ethics Update, 10/4/2020

/ Jack Marshall / 152 Comments

Weekend Update

1. I’m not going to dignify all of the online cheering of President Trump’s positive test for the Wuhan virus with quotes from celebrities and social media creatures, though I have them. There have been similar reactions to the fact that Kellyanne Conway recently tested positive as well. A reputable poll—assuming that any are reputable polls—found that 40% of Democrats surveyed were “happy” the President was sick. I have never been happy that anyone was sick in all my years on this planet. This is a mean, vicious, ethically warped group of people that are behind Joe Biden in this election, and one more factor pushing me to a tipping point. (No, I’m not there yet.) But I really do wonder how decent people can make common cause with hateful individuals like this.

For what it’s worth, my perspective is that if the President plays this right, the bout with the virus will help him in November.

I agreed with his decision to largely eschew masks in public appearances, just as FDR kept his wheelchair mostly hidden from public  view and like George Washington riding into battle in full uniform, gleaming white wig, ring a tall white charger. That’s part of leadership: looking strong while also being strong. The President got sick while doing his job. Joe Biden has been hiding in the basement, taking half-days and yesterday gave a speech while wearing a mask. He looks weak, and is weak. There has never been anything especially leader-like about Biden, and most of his support is based on blind, irrational hatred of his opponent fanned into dangerous intensity by the news media and the Angry Left. I think Donald Trump may have been the only President elected more out of dislike of the opposition than genuine support of the winning candidate, and I’m not even certain of that. The candidate perceived as the strongest leader almost always wins.

2. Nah, the First Amendment isn’t in any danger from progressives! Don’t be silly! In June, the president of Miami University appointed a task force of faculty, students and staff to develop recommendations on improving the school’s “diversity, equity and inclusion.” Tellingly, no lawyers or civil libertarians make the membership list.

Now the task force has produced its recommendations, and a more confounding mass of Authentic Frontier Gibberish it would be hard to find. ( “As an Ohio public university, Miami may serve the greater community by expanding IGD pedagogy and praxis to alums and the business community”… “Create internal and external diversity marketing plans to promote literacy around intergroup dialogue and allyship across diverse social identities with sensitivity to Miami’s status as a predominantly white institution…”)  Naturally, re-education and indoctrination are among the 43 recommendations: “Make IGD mandatory for all undergraduate students, beginning with first year students, by requiring incoming first-year students to take a 1-credit IGD course (equivalent to the CAWC’s Intro to Voices program) following UNV 101 (or similar discipline-designated courses; e.g., CHM 147). Thereafter, provide other academic and co-curricular IGD opportunities for further development.” Then there’s this:

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