I increasingly find myself searching, usually in vain, for stories to reassure myself and Ethics Alarms readers that out society, in the words of the pious churchgoers of Rock Ridge, isn’t “turning into shit.” Here is story out of Alabama involving a Waffle House. I’ve never eaten at one, though there has been a Waffle Shop down Russell Road in Alexandria, VA, less than five minutes from my home by car, the entire 39 years I’ve lived here. The fact that its awning has misspelled “Waffle” with only one “f” for all that time is the reason: I figure that it you can’t spell your own specialty, I can’t trust you to make it right, either.
But I digress…
At a Birmingham, Alabama Waffle House on the morning of November second, an estimated 25 customers found that the restaurant had only a single employee named Ben on duty to serve the whole mob. Apparently there had been a scheduling snafu, leaving Ben with the responsibility of serving everybody. Said one witness to the scene, . “He was just staring at the room full of people. I can’t imagine what he was thinking.”
Then one customer who had been sitting at the bar, asked Ben what was going on and received the answer. He stood up, asked for an apron, and started washing dishes. A few minutes later a female customer left her table and began bussing those of other partons, taking and serving orders, and making coffee. Then a third customer joined the volunteer staff. Continue reading →
When I read the headline about the reversal of the name-change for the old boulevard in Kansas City, I was secretly hoping it would be because of recent credible revelations that Reverend Martin Luther King had facilitated a rape, and worse. In May, King biographer David Garrow unearthed previously classified FBI documents showing that King was a bad guy in private by any measure, even using a Donald Trump or a Bill Clinton standard. I had written at the time,
“I want to see the ignorant, doctrinaire college students, progressive history censors and pandering politicians face this crisis and either live up to their alleged virtues and censorious standards, or admit that they were dead wrong, as I and many others have been saying all along….
As a civilization, we must recognize and honor the many, many men and women of all races and origins who have made humanity better by their public deeds, intellectual advancements and accomplishments in civic life, war and peace. Few of them, if any, did not have serious flaws or engage during their lives in conduct that today, or even in their own times, would be considered reprehensible. Using these acts, and solely these acts, to assess which historical figures are worthy of being remembered by future generations leads to a societal suicide, embracing a culture without heroes or aspirations.”
I was thus hoping that the statue toppling side of the political spectrum was being forced to sample some of its’ own medicine, and that King had lost an honor using the same, misguided principle that had the Democrats removing the names of their party’s founders, Jefferson and Jackson, from their annual dinners. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, and perhaps when the gander realizes it’s bitter and stupid sauce, it will smarten up.
No such luck. It doesn’t seem as if King lost his street because he was a sexual predator, just because more Kansas City voters than not thought the old name shouldn’t have been changed in the first place
Steve-O-From NJ, however, does seem to be right about double standards where honors are concerned.
[Incidentally, has anyone read any hint of acknowledgment from the U.S. media, African-American groups or the NAACP that Garrow’s information raises a question about the propriety of honoring Dr. King? Neither have I….]
After two years of statue-toppling and other attempts to erase history, it should come as no surprise that eventually someone should suggest yanking something down dedicated to some darling of the left. The fact is that no city is REQUIRED to have a street named for King, nor is any citizen REQUIRED to honor him. In fact, as has been pointed out here, MLK was far from a saint in life, particularly with regard to his poor treatment of women. There is enough reason to criticize him to justify questioning why he should be honored at all, particularly in light of the current attacks on other (much more significant and influential) historical figures such as Columbus and Jefferson.
Of course the Left, and the black community in particular, doesn’t see it that way. If you’re lucky, they’ll just give you a non-answer, to the effect of the one is nothing like the other. If not, they’ll accuse you of being a racist, not because you said something affirmatively racist, but because you failed to give what they believe is proper deference to one of their icons. Continue reading →
And NBC knows it was blackface, though the truly awful Bahar denies it on the link.
Althouse is right that Trump Jr. Is right, and that they are hacks. All of the mainstream media are untrustworthy, biased, dishonest and manipulative hacks, as we enter a crucial political campaign and impeachment fiasco in which public civic literacy and awareness are critical, even as these organization attempt to undermine it to advance their own political and ideological agendas. Their behavior could hardly be more dangerous, divisive, or destructive.
Now tell me again why it is wrong for the President to call them out as “enemies of the people.” That description is as accurate as “hacks”, and far more correctly alerts us to the seriousness of their corruption.
And to disgrace and expose themselves to hold common cause with the sordid likes of “The View’s” most ignorant and hateful loudmouth! Astounding! I am again reminded of this moment in “A Man For All Seasons,” as Sir Thomas More confronts the man who lied under oath to falsely prove More'[s alleged treason:
If you can’t sleep, might as well be thinking about ethics…
1. “I’m smart! I’m not stupid, like everybody says…” While trying to find the post I linked to yesterday(about corrupt and abusive systems of municipal funding, justice and law enforcement that “are virtual dictated by poverty and demographics that make an ethical system impossible”),, I stumbled upon a post written in August, 2014, titled “Prediction: The Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck.”Five years and three months later, I had no clue as to what that prediction might have been, and was curious to find out what it was. My prediction was this:
At this point, we have no way of knowing what the truth is. Maybe Wilson executed Brown. Maybe he is a racist. Maybe he is a psychopath. And maybe Brown’s conduct justified the use of deadly force by the officer, and the teen was largely responsible for his own demise. Presumably we will eventually know the truth.I confidently predict this, however, based on what occurred in the Martin-Zimmerman case:
IF the evidence supports the conclusion that Brown charged at Wilson, neither the family of the slain teen, nor the African American community in Ferguson, nor the protesters, the race-hustlers, the black and progressive politicians who benefit by preserving racial tension and distrust, much of the news media and many, many pundits and political bloggers, will change their rhetoric, accusations or the prevailing Ferguson narrative one bit. They need for the narrative as it stands to be true, and want it to be true. Massive confirmation bias will ensure that the death of Mike Brown will be talked about, protested and regarded as an example of racist police oppression of young black men, and the truth, in the end, will be irrelevant.
I hope my prediction is wrong.
And, as we now know, it was not. Several candidates for the Democratic Party’s 2020 nomination for President have referred to Brown’s “murder,” the news media has largely allowed their intentional misrepresentation to go uncondemned.
2. Democracy Dies in Darkness update: Facebook and YouTube have joined the bizarre media censorship conspiracy that is committed to keeping the name of the Ukraine “whistleblower” from as many lazy and inattentive members of the public as possible. This is happening despite the fact that his name has been thoroughly revealed in many forums: he is almost certainly Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst, committed Democrat and consort of Joe Biden, Rep. Schiff, John Brennan and other Impeachment Plan S architects. Ciaramella also was cited in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the now-disproven collusion between Donald Trump and Russia. It included Ciaramella’s May 2017 email summaries of a meeting between Trump and Russian officials that were eventually leaked to a New York Times reporter. Continue reading →
1. Clean-up on the baseball aisle! Last April, I wrote a post urging Baltimore Orioles first-sacker Chris Davis to retire and save his desperate team some money, since it is clear that he can no longer play at a major league level despite being paid 23 million dollars in 2019, with a similar amount due him through 2022. At the time, Davis Davis was 0-for-23 with 13 strikeouts and hitless in 44 at-bats since the previous season, when Davis batted .168, the worst in major league history for a regular, with a horrible .539 OPS (On base percentage plus slugging percentage), and a -2.5 WAR, meaning that the Orioles would have won 2.5 more games with a borderline major leaguer from the minors playing in his place.
Several readers have emailed me asking how things turned out for Davis, who did eventually get a hit, and who was still in the starting line-up frequently enough to hurt the team. The answer is that Davis was better than he was in 2018, but he was still horrible. He batted only .179, with a -1 WAR, and an OPS of .601. He earned more than $418,000 per hit.
He’s earned almost 119 million dollars in his career, yet appears willing to continue to embarrass himself and hurt his team and team mates for three more sure-to-be-ugly seasons in order to collect another 69 million.
Yechhhh.
2. More on Joy Behar’s terrible, no good, very bad week: The highlight of Donald Trump Jr.’s visit to “The View” came after Behar recited the typical and overly-familiar talking points about Trump Sr.: “[President Trump] called some Mexicans rapists [Correction: He referred to illegal immigrants from Mexico as rapists who were rapists] , he attacked the handicapped, [No, Joy, he mocked a single handicapped reporter, and there is some evidence that he didn’t even do that], he bragged about it” [Huh?], and “We heard the ‘Access’ tape, where he bragged about grabbing women by their genitalia.” [No, he never said that he had personally grabbed any women “by the pussy.” Boy, am I sick of THIS narrative..] Rather than quibble with her, DJT Jr, had come armed and ready, and replied, “We’ve all done things that we regret, I mean, if we’re talking about bringing a discourse down, Joy, you’ve worn blackface.” Continue reading →
They are whooping it up at the Trump-Haters Club, because President Trump will have to pay $2 million in damages to nonprofit groups as a penalty for what can only be called a fraudulent use of his foundation in 2016. As part of the settlement agreement, the President had to admit misusing funds raised by the Donald J. Trump Foundation, accessing them to assist his campaign, pay off debts of businesses he owned, including Mar-a-Lago and the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, and, as an especially obnoxious move, purchasing a $10,000 portrait of himself to hand in one of his Florida hotels. New York’s Attorney General filed suit accusing the Trump family of using the foundation to benefit various businesses and assist Trump’s presidential run. You can’t use a non-profit like that; this is the kind of scam that got Tom DeLay thrown in prison.
The President admitted that the alleged charity charity gave his campaign complete control over the $2.8 million that the foundation had raised at an Iowa fund-raiser for veterans in January 2016. It was in fact a fund-raiser for the campaign, not veterans.
HEY! Don’t you see that? IT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!”
These two recent stories puzzle me. There are some aspects of civil conduct and societal norms that every cognitively functioning human being who lives in this society and culture cannot possibly have failed to notice. Nonetheless, these events keep happening. Quite part from the specifics of the incidents, they represent a failure of basic life competence.
1. California: Another Teacher Uses Blackface
I have, much to my sorrow—it was one reason Ethics Alarms is censored on Facebook—defended the use of dark make-up when its objective is not to denigrate and mock a race, but to play a dramatic role in a context where such make-up is necessary. White actors should be able to play the Moor Othello. In a saner society, white kids should also be able to dress up as Barack Obama or Beyoncé for Halloween, but interpreting any use of dark make-up as a deliberate reference to minstrel show “blackface” is now part of the victim lobby’s power tool kit, and one has to be aware of and understand the risks of bucking a treasured narrative.
How could any teacher not know, following the travails of Governor Northam in Virginia and Justin Trudeau in Canada, about this cultural landmine? If these elected officials, among others, were threatened by the cancellation culture for having used black makeup as students years ago, wouldn’t it be screamingly obvious that using blackface today, before a classroom, would be professional hari-kari? (Oops! Cultural appropriation there!)
Yet a white high school teacher in Milpitas, California wore blackface in his class on Halloween to do an imitation of the rapper Common. Of course one of the students made a viseo, of course it came to the school board’s attention, of course it created an irresistible opportunity for members to grandstand and engage in virtue-signalling, and of course such opportunities must not be wasted.
Thus Chris Norwood, the president of the school board in solemnly intoned that the behavior was “inappropriate, unprofessional and insensitive” and called for an investigation, adding,
“As an African-American man, the history of blackface reminds me of the cruelty, hatred and fear my parents and people of African ancestry have dealt with in the past and still experience today around the world. Unfortunately, blackface still permeates global society today through social media, comedy and fashion.”
Former Virginia lawmaker Joe Morrissey won the state Senate seat for the 16th District in the Old Dominion last night, defeating Independent Waylin Ross. Morrissey got more than 60% of the votes, showing an enthusiastic electorate. He will now represent parts of Richmond, Chesterfield County, Petersburg, Hopewell, Prince George County, and Dinwiddie County.
Who is Joe Morrissey? Let me refresh your memory using this post, from 2014. The first half of it was about revolting Republican House member Blake Farenthold—the guy wearing the duck pajamas—
who was, thankfully, finally forced out of office in the wake of #MeToo. The second half was about Joe: Continue reading →
(Bear with me: This video will be relevant by the end, I promise..)
“If you’re going to take people’s guns away, wait until you get elected — then take the guns away. Don’t tell them ahead of time.”
“The View’s” panelist Joy Behar, commenting on Beto O’Rourke’s exit from the Democratic presidential nomination race after announcing that he advocated the confiscation of semi-automatic weapons.
I don’t even watch “The View,” and Joy Behar’s ignorant and strident vocal abuses of law, ethics and logic have still made it into many Ethics Alarms posts. Imagine if I actually watched the show regularly. The woman is astoundingly ignorant, and celebrates it, issuing loud and emphatic opinions that would be argued down in a competent 7th grade class (if there are such things), yet ABC gives her a public platform that is only responsibly reserved for, if not brilliant and knowledgeable pundits, at least ones that could win a game of Scrabble with a Dachshund puppy.
You know what her last featured howler was on Ethics Alarms? This: she asked, in reference to a President Trump tweet mocking Rep. Omar, “Why can’t he be brought up on charges of hate speech?Why can’t he be sued by the ACLU for hate speech? I don’t get it. How does he get away with this?”
Why? WHY, you incredibly ill-informed woman? Because there is no such crime as “hate speech.” Because the ACLU defends free speech, it doesn’t sue people for what they say. You don’t get it because you’re the most illiterate, ignorant pundit on television, maybe on television since its inception. He gets away with this because it’s the United States, and we have a Bill of Rights. Or as the late Sam Kinison would say,
This latest must be my favorite Joy cretinism. See, she’s a typical progressive totalitarian as well as a dolt. The way to get your agenda enacted is to lie to the public so they vote you into office based on false pretenses! Sure, that’s the ticket! And not just any agenda, either—this isn’t like Barack Obama promising to be a unifying President who favored neither black not white. No, Joy wants candidates who plan on gutting individual rights to lie about their plans so citizens will go to the polls like lambs to the slaughter. Usually it’s villains that TV shows trying this trick, monsters like Hitler and Sideshow Bob. The View has a permanent panelist who endorses that route to power, openly, proudly.
She better watch out: Democrats don’t want her spilling the beans like that,
Of course, the strategy is impossible. To begin with it’s unconstitutional, but naturally Joy, having slept through school, doesn’t know this. Second, eventually people would find out that Beto’s Brownshirts were going door to door, and the results would not be pretty. These are just details, however: Joy just says whatever flotsam and jetsom flots into her cranium, and does her level best to make View viewers as brick-stupid as she is. Here are some other Joy highlights from past posts:
Speaking of Joe Biden’s habitual groping: “It’s a long way from smelling your hair to grabbing your hoo-ha… I don’t think it rises to the point we’ve been listening to like Harvey Weinstein and the rest of these people”
Justifying Democrats manufacturing imaginary offenses by the President: “Because we’re desperate to get Trump out of office. That’s why.”
Explaining how the GOP can control the Senate when more votes were cast for Democrats in the House: “Because of gerrymandering!”
On the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Kavanaugh hearings: “These white men, old by the way, are not protecting women… They’re protecting a man who is probably guilty.”
Responding to Alan Dershowitz’s criticism of Mitch Mconnell blocking the Merrick Garland nomination: “Well then how come Mitch McConnell is not in jail? That’s what I want to know.”
There are many more. Now, Joy has a right to be stupid, but she does not have a right to have a major network facilitating her making the public stupid. As I wrote here, I don’t advocate her being forced off the air by boycotts, in the manner that so-called liberals have tried to silence Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. That’s censorship; that’s the Left’s MO in 2019. However, it is irresponsible for any network to package the clueless opinions of a woman with the intellect of a Pet Rock for public consumption. It’s like selling tainted food, or a car that keeps breaking down.
It is broadcast malpractice. She should be fired. She should have been fired years ago.
I even wrote a song about it. Sing the words to the music of “How do you solve a problem like Maria?”(from “The Sound of Music”) in the video above. I skipped the intro: it starts with the main theme.
Can’t The View Fire an Idiot Like Joy Behar?
Can’t the View fire an idiot like Joy Behar?
Why can’t they put that loudmouth in her place?
The View should protect the public from her nonsense
And wipe that smug expression off her face.
Many a thing you know they’d like to tell her
There is so much she doesn’t understand
But how can they make her read
Or research before a screed
You might as well try to lift a baby grand…
Oh, how do you fix an idiot like Joy Behar?
When will this moron finally be canned?
She is constantly confused
Ill-informed and so bemused
Hasn’t read the Constitution even once…
She’s predictable I guess
Since her values are a mess
She’s not clever! She’s not funny! She’s a dunce!
But Joy’s certain she is smart
And with gusto plays the part
Of the brave progressive warrior at work
Confrontational and loud,
She’s intolerant and proud
She’s embarrassing…let’s face it,
She’s a jerk.
Can’t the View fire an idiot like Joy Behar?
Why do they want to make their viewers dumb?
It’s so perverse inflicting her like they are…
Her opinions are like a drug that makes brains numb.
1. So now we know…The mysterious “whistleblower” is almost certainly Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst, former National Security Council staffer, and a career intelligence officer.who has served in both the Obama and Trump administrations. It would have been nice and reassuring if he were not so strongly tied to the Dark Side, meaning the Democrats and various “resistance” figures, but he is. That doesn’t mean he had an agenda, but somehow all of the leakers and rebels who have been instrumental in keeping the Left’s coup fires burning have aspects of their backgrounds that justify skepticism.
From the generally useful and fair article about in Heavy:
Ciaramella has worked for the Central Intelligence Agency for several years and was assigned to the White House during the end of the Obama administration. He worked closely with Biden in his role as an expert on Ukraine. Ciaramella also has ties to Sean Misko, a former NSC co-worker who now works for Representative Adam Schiff and the Intelligence Committee. According to The New York Times, the whistleblower first went to a CIA lawyer and then to an unnamed Schiff aide before filing the whistleblower complaint. The aide told the whistleblower to follow the formal process, but conveyed some of the information he learned from him to Schiff, without revealing his name, The Times reported.
“Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community,” said Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Schiff, told The Times.
The whistleblower’s ties to Democrats, including Biden, Schiff, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of Intelligence James Clapper and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, have created controversy, with Trump and Republicans using his past work with them in an attempt to discredit him.
I did say generally fair. The fact that this guy who created the path to the latest impeachment excuse just happens to be a Democrat with connections to a veritable nest of anti-Trump zealots does and should discredit his objectivity to some extent. An “attempt” shouldn’t be necessary.
A study published today in JAMA Pediatrics warns that kids’ literacy and language skills suffer with screen use, and MRI scans of their brains appear to back up the findings…. Forty-seven 3- to 5-year-olds took a test to measure their cognitive abilities, and their parents were asked to answer a detailed survey about screen time habits. …The scans revealed that kids who spent more time in front of screens had what the authors call lower “white matter integrity.” White matter can be roughly thought of as the brain’s internal communications network—its long nerve fibers are sheathed in fatty insulation that allows electrical signals to move from one area of the brain to another without interruption. The integrity of that structure—how well organized the nerve fibers are, and how well developed the myelin sheath is—is associated with cognitive function, and it develops as kids learn language. …Lead author John Hutton of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital told MIT Technology Review there’s a clear link between higher screen use and lower white matter integrity in the children his team studied. That structural change appears to be reflected in the results of the cognitive test the kids took as well, which showed high screen time associated with lower levels of language and literacy skills. “The effect size is substantial, as these findings also rigorously controlled for multiple comparisons across the brain,” Hutton says.
One easy and ethical remedy would be for parents to make sure their kids don’t see them constantly staring at their phone.
3. A terrific, ethical, extemporaneous speech from Richard Dreyfus. No, Richard Dreyfus is not, and has never been, a typical Hollywood knee-jerk leftist. Glenn Beck’s conservative website “The Blaze” was “astonished” when actor/educator Richard Dreyfus recently told Fox News host Tucker Carlson,
“You were talking about the speakers on university campuses. And I am totally, incontrovertibly on your side about this. I think any intrusion into freedom of speech is an intrusion into freedom of speech. And when one of the presidents of one of the colleges said, ‘this is a school, not a battlefield,’ I said, no, it is a battlefield of ideas and we must have dissonant, dissenting opinions on campuses and I think it’s political correctness taken to a nightmarish point of view
I have withdrawn from partisan politics. I am a constitutionalist who believes that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be central and the parties must be peripheral. What’s most important for me is what you just mentioned haphazardly, we are over 30. Civics has not been taught in the American public school system since 1970. And that means everyone in Congress never studied the constitution and the bill of rights as you and I might have. And that is a critical flaw because it’s why we were admired and respected for so long, it gives us our national identity, it tells the world who we are and why we are who we are, and without a frame that gives us values that stand behind the bill of rights, we’re just floating in the air and our sectors of society are not connected.
What’s really important is that the assumptions of the left and the right are all skewed wrong. We have to find areas of agreement and areas that we share. And we do share the notion that education accomplishes certain things. One, it turns students into citizens. And, two, it teaches students how to run the country before it’s their turn to run the country. And, three, it teaches the values of this nation.
People come from all over the world or are born into this nation without the values that we have here. That’s why they came here, to get them. And what are they? You can put them in opportunity, rise by merit, mobility, and freedom. That’s what we sell. And if you don’t want that, you’ve chosen the wrong place. And you don’t get a pass by being born here, you have to learn it. Even the Ten Commandments are not known at birth. You must learn them. And we must learn our values and if we don’t, we are fatally, fatally wounding ourselves. We will not have any way to really combat the ideas behind ISIS because we won’t know our own. And we have to.
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