Character

Sunday Ethics Apparitions, 8/16/2020: Triceratops? What Triceratops? What IS A Triceratops?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

1. From the Ethics Alarms cultural literacy files. I remember this re- tweet by acclaimed novelist Joyce Carol Oates from 2015; I can’t believe I didn’t post on it then. (Pointer to Ann Althouse for reminding me of it today):

Now,  I would like to believe that Oates was joking (I’m not sure about Tilley), but she is not known for madcap humor. Apparently “Jurassic Park,” Steven Spielberg  and popular culture are beneath her, and she was so focused on literature in school that dinosaurs completely missed her attention. I regard this as being estranged from one’s culture, and I regard that as irresponsible.

2. Question: If Twitter is taking down tweets involving hate speech, why is unequivocal hate like this permitted? Robert Trump, the President’s younger brother, died yesterday. The President wrote,

“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight. He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.”

Yet the hateful, vicious “resistance” couldn’t rise to a moment of bipartisan decency. The hashtag #wrongtrump, is the second highest trending on Twitter, with more than 80,000  tweets last I checked. Among the the ghouls were journalist David Leavitt., ” who tweeted, “What did he promise the devil for the Grim Reaper to take the #wrongtrump ???” (5.7 thousand people “loved” the sentiment), and Bishop Talbert Swan, president of the Springfield, Massachusetts, branch of the NAACP (and a pastor, which will perhaps help illuminate my attitudes toward organized religion), who wrote “Dear Grim Reaper, You took the #wrongtrump.” That one got 10,000 hearts.

These are mean, bad people with dead ethics alarms. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “HBO Max Adds A Disclaimer For Morons Onto ‘Blazing Saddles’”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I would not have expected mysterious veteran commenter Extradimensional Cephalopod to be the one to score a Comment of the Day regarding the idiotic and offensive “trigger warning” HBO Max felt it had to append to “Blazing Saddles.” Mel Brooks’ satire (and fart jokes) would not seem to the kind of thing a squid from another plane of existence would be able to appreciate. Shows what I know.

But seriously folks, this is the first ethical analysis of “Blazing Saddles” I’ve ever seen, heard, or imagined. And as usual with EC, it is thoughtful and enlightening.

Here is Extradimensional Cephalopod ‘s Comment of the Day on hate, contempt, and  the post, “HBO Max Adds A Disclaimer For Morons Onto ‘Blazing Saddles’”:

On the one hand, I agree with the people ridiculing the disclaimer. On the other hand, if it gets more people to watch the film and learn to appreciate satire, I’m in favor of a little message at the beginning that says, “It’s okay, you’re not a bad person for watching this film.” I’d like to get to the point where we don’t need the disclaimer, though.

When you mention hate and contempt, it makes me realize that most of what people refer to as “hate” is actually contempt, and that sloppy language prevents them from realizing what they want and what they need to do to get it. People don’t just want to eliminate “hate”—they want to be respected. Continue reading →

A Jumbo For The Ages And Other Ethics Observations on “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

For me, the most stunning ethics moment in the Netflix documentary “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich” was when Prince Andrew, a long-time pal of the late sex-trafficker/billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, appears on camera and engages in a spectacular Jumbo. In a televised interview, the brother of Prince Charles claimed he never met Epstein—though there are photos of the Prince standing with him. He also said he had no recollection of knowing the woman pictured in the photo above, who was one of the under-age girls Epstein sexually exploited and passed around among his friends. The woman in the background is British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who served as one of Epstein’s procurers (and who was recently arrested as an accessory to his crimes). Yet when Andrew was asked how he explains the photo if he never had anything to do with the American teenager it shows him with his arm around, he said, incredibly, “I can’t explain it.”

Wow. “Photo? What photo?” “Teenage sex toy? What teenage sex toy?” “Pedophile billionaire? What pedophile billionaire?”

All Jimmy Durante had to deny was the existence of the stolen elephant he was holding at the end of a rope.

Reasonable minds may disagree about the worst ethical breaches on display in the documentary; there are so many. Epstein, of course, was scum—a predator, a sociopath, and a crook. I found no surprises regarding him personally. I also knew that wildly wealthy villains have the ability to corrupt everyone around them, but the supporting cast of the Epstein story provides  bracing reminders, such as… Continue reading →

Among All The Smoking Guns Showing The Mainstream Media’s Willingness to Lie Outright To Impugn President Trump, This Might Be The Smokingest

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Here’s a sequence from yesterday’s news conference:

Watch it, please. Here’s a summary of what transpires:

Step 1.:  A reporter asks the President about his thoughts on the theory floated by a Constitutional law professor in Newsweek that Kamala Harris shouldn’t be considered a ‘natural born citizen” and thus technically isn’t eligible to be Vice-President or President.

Step 2: The President offers no opinion on it whatsoever, and makes it clear he didn’t read the article (who reads Newsweek?). He says 1) he heard about it 2) it is his understanding that the author is a genuine authority 3) he doesn’t know what the guy actually argued (Trump asks the reporter if the problem is that Harris “wasn’t born” in the U.S.)

Step 3.The reporter quickly summarizes the professor’s point.

Step 4. The President says, first, that he has no idea if the professor’s claims are right, and  concludes by saying he “doesn’t know about it” that he “just heard about it” and will “take  a look.”

And Step 5?

CNN headlines, “Trump promotes another birther lie, this time about Kamala Harris”

Reporter Daniel Dale, Holmes Lybrand and Tara Subramaniam, wrote,

” President Donald Trump spent years pushing lies about the birthplace and presidential eligibility of President Barack Obama, the first Black president. On Thursday, he started floating a new birther lie about Sen. Kamala Harris, who, if elected, would be the first Black and Asian American vice president. Trump’s incendiary nonsense about Harris was part of a Thursday self-described “news conference” he largely used to campaign against his Democratic election opponents…”

Three reporters wrote this completely false story, and CNN published it!

Let’s count the lies: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 8/13/2020: Kamala Harris Selection Hangover Edition [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Hi!

In the 1945 drama “The Lost Weekend,” Ray Milland (above) played alcoholic Don Birnam, and won  the Oscar for Best Actor. The film also won the Oscar for Best Picture. Have you ever seen it? The film is virtually never shown on TV. Milland is another one of the once major Hollywood stars who are almost completely forgotten today, a fascinating group that includes Claire Trevor, Fredric March, Irene Dunne, John Garfield, and Norma Shearer, among others. If their major works were in black and white, they weren’t lucky enough to star in a film regarded as a classic, and they didn’t have a popular TV show when their movie career waned, the culture just forgets about them….and loses as a result. How many non-film nerd Americans under the age of 40 could recognize any of those actors, never mind all of them?

1. Nothing to see here: move along! Yesterday it was reported that the Democratic Party purchased the Antifa.com domain, and that clicks on the link went directly to the Biden campaign site. I checked: it did. Then, by 5:30 pm, the Biden redirect was eliminated. Res ipsa loquitur!

UPDATE: I’m putting an official question mark on this one. It is true that the Antifa.com went to Biden’s site, but that could have been a partisan dirty trick.  Of course, if true, this is the kind of story that the mainstream media would bury. If it was a set-up, it’s the kind of story the right-leaning media would credulously report as proof of Democratic de facto embrace of violence.

Trustworthy, objective journalists would be nice…

2. The vise tightens...Yesterday I noted that colleges and universities were increasingly cancelling their acceptances of students based on revelations of their past social media posts. In one case, Liberty Woodley, 17, the 2020 valedictorian of her high school class in Cape Coral, Florida., had accepted an offer to attend the University of Florida. Then a self-righteous and vicious  actress and “influencer” named Skai Jackson last month asked her more than 500,000 Twitter followers to send her screenshots of  “hateful” social media posts, so she could wrck lives and inflict pain on strangers. Someone sent in one of Woodley’s old Instagram posts in which she wrote when she was 16.

“I really try so hard not to be a racist person, but I most definitely am, there’s no denying it,” it said. Based on that, her acceptance was revoked.

 In an interview with The Gainesville Sun,  Liberty explained that had written the post out of anger at a time when she was being constantly bullied by some black classmates. “I am not racist at all, and I am not full of hate,” she said.  Well, there’s a Catch-22 for you! Oprah Winfrey and others are haranguing whites to admit their inherent racism as a first step to addressing “systemic racism,” but if they do what is asked, it means they are hateful and must be cancelled.

What do you want to bet that Liberty will vote for all Democrats in November? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“I saw in a tweet that [Biden] was forefronting the Charlottesville “fine people” hoax… despicable. They have chosen quite deliberately to commit to a lie that is intended to make black people feel hated and they are doing it for political gain… I blogged in April 2019, “If Biden does not come forward and retract [a video relying on the Charlottesville hoax] and apologize and commit himself to making amends, I consider him disqualified. He does not have the character or brain power to be President.” Now, more than a year later, Biden has done the opposite. He’s doubled down on the lie and he’s making it the centerpiece of his campaign!”

—-Retired law professor/blogger Ann Althouse this morning, reacting to “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Speech Transcript August 12: First Campaign Event as Running Mates.” 

Here’s the tweet:

Ann could be best described as an  old school  moderate Democrat, which in today’s environment means she is a conservative, a racist, and a traitor. She is shocked—shocked!—that the Democratic nominee for President would advance a false narrative based on Big Lie #3, arguably the foundational lie of the “resistance” that has been repeated by activists, pundits, reporters and Democratic leaders and elected officials for nearly four years. That Big Lie is “Trump Is A Racist/White Supremacist.”

The Charlottesville canard has become the go-to “proof” of the President’s racism by the Trump Deranged, either through ignorance (from believing the news media) or malice. To refresh your memory (and give you a quick reference to cut and paste into social media posts to shake on your “friends'” cyber-faces, here is the relevant section from the “Big Lies” compendium: Continue reading →

It looks Like Biden Has The Hypocrite Vote Locked Up!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Shaun King is a social justice warrior star and a Black Lives Matter shill. As far as I can determine, King is black the way Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee. Never mind: he has built his career on identifying as a victimized person of color because, he says, his mother told him his father wasn’t the white man on his birth certificate, but a light-skinned black man. For many, many reasons, I wouldn’t trust anything Shaun King  says or writes, nor would I trust him to mail my water bill. One litmus test for me: he still claims Mike Brown was murdered by a racist cop. He is the very model of a modern major advocate of “Facts Don’t Matter.”

Here, next to King’s tweet about Biden and Harris from two years ago,  is his tweet yesterday celebrating Super-Hypocrite Kamala Harris’s selection as Joe Biden’s running mate.

To be fair, did say 1%. Continue reading →

Rainy Day Ethics Warm-Up, 8/12/2020: More Ethics Thoughts On Kamala Harris [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I always thought Glenn Yarbrough was the B version of Gene Pitney, who was better. Did you know that Gene Pitney wrote “Hello, Mary Lou (Goodby Heart)” and “He’s a Rebel”? He’s a singer we don’t usually think of as a songwriter, but like the great Bobby Darin, he was a prolific and a successful one who is in the American Songwriters Hall of Fame. Unlike Darin, however, Pitney didn’t record his own songs, saying in one interview that as odd as it sounds, his best songs were not ideal for his own voice and style.

The melody of “Baby the Rain Must Fall” was the creation of Elmer Bernstein, the acclaimed composer of so many classic film scores, like “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape.”

And thus endeth the pop culture sermon for the day….

More on the scary-horrible Kamala Harris…

1. Well that didn’t take long! Already the narrative is starting that criticism of Kamala Harris is based on racism and sexism, and not her dreadful personality, sketchy past, and career baggage.  Wholly predictable, and designed to keep the public just getting to know Harris from really learning about her by stifling critics. Journalists, of course, can be counted on to stifle themselves when a Democrat has a problematical record.

2. More spin...Dumped “Meet the Press” host David Gregory actually went on the air this morning to say Harris was “the safe choice.” Biden had no safe choices once he was trapped into naming a check-box candidate.  What Gregory meant, I assume, was that she was the least risky in a slate of horrible options. That is true.

3. “How deep is the ocean? How high is the sky?“…I neglected, in last night’s post, to recall this example of Harris’ hypocrisy, from April 2019, when Harris was widely regarded as a frontrunner for the Presidential nomination:

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she believes women who say they felt uncomfortable after receiving unwanted touching from former Vice President Joe Biden.

“I believe them and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it,” Harris said at a presidential campaign event in Nevada.

 

Then, after Harris’s run for the White House flopped and she began stalking the Vice-Presidency, Harris supported Biden and dismissed the accusations of Tara Reade, though she had savaged Brett Kavanaugh based on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s far more dubious accusations. I can’t wait to hear how feminists explain that one.

I wonder: Who has the greater integrity vacuum, Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris?

Luckily for Harris, if you are “of color,” you can’t be a  hypocrite, or at least no white critic can point out you’re one. Those are the rules… Continue reading →

Wuhan Virus Ethics: The Conflicted Pitcher

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Mike Clevinger: star pitcher, loyal team mate, jerk.

It’s baseball meets the Wuhan virus in today’s ethics showdown. Not surprisingly, since baseball players have the approximate ethics acumen of a typical member of Congress, the virus wins.

Essential background: Major League Baseball is desperately trying to complete some semblance of a season, with the key word being “semblance.” There are no fans in the stands; double headers games are only seven innings, and teams have NFL-style “taxi squads” instsead on minor league teams. Baseball has also installed strict protocols involving masks, social distancing, and players avoiding physical contact. One team, the Florida Marlins, has already had a virus breakout that took almost half the active roster out of circulation. This resulted in lots of canceled games and the reworking of other teams’ schedules. (Ironically, the Marlins taxi squad players have done almost nothing but win since they took over. That’s baseball, Ray!). Now a second team, the S, Louis Cardinals, has had multiple players test positive because a player came in contact with an infected non-team member, than joined the other Cardinals on a plane. St. Louis has missed two weeks of games. MLB knows that much more of this will make continuing the season, weird as it may be, impossible. Teams have been warned of dire consequences if they don’t  keep their players—you, know, millionaire morons with the emotional maturity of Adam Sandler—in line.

Now, the rest of the story. Continue reading →

Yes, I’m Blaming The Victim: Ben Gravolet Is An Ethics Dunce. And A Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

You may have missed it, but Ellen DeGeneris, the queen of daytime talk shows whose brand has always been her niceness, has had her once impeccable  reputation sullied lately as employees of her show have complained about a “toxic environment” that the star did nothing to address. There’s an investigation now, and Ellen is rumored to be considering leaving “Ellen,” meaning that instead of toxic employment, her staff and production crew will have no employment at all.

In the midst of this crisis for DeGeneris, sensing a cheap opportunity to grab some publicity, kick her when she’s down, and apparently seek vengeance for a slight that he has obsessed about for more than 40 years, a man named Ben Gravolet has come forward to tell the world that…..what, that DiGeneres sexually molested him? That she was secretly working for Fidel Castro? No, Ben accused Ellen of being mean to him when he was 11 years old.

We should have seen this coming, for it is the dangerous slippery slope Christine Blasey-Ford’s dubious accusation against Bret Kavanaugh greased. Continue reading →