Character

An Offensive Medal of Freedom

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Yecchh.

Not the worst desperate mid-term election tactic President Trump has improvised this year, and definitely not the last, Trump suddenly announced during a Republican National Committee (RNC) campaign rally in San Antonio, Texas this week that he would be awarding former pitcher Roger Clemens the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Clemens was stunned. It is likely that Trump dreamed up the stunt on the spot. Trump may have been rewarding “The Rocket” for his effusive introduction, when he said,

“What a privilege it is for me to intro our great President. A man that loves our country, that puts all of us first, and puts America first. This is what I love. He’s made us better, he’s made us stronger, and more important, because of the border and everything here, he’s made us safer. And don’t forget, this is really important, this man put his life on the line for us. Don’t ever forget that.”

I’m checking: is Clemens, who evolved into a bigger and bigger asshole as his impressive career went on and who is current deemed unworthy of the Hall of Fame because of substantial evidence that his late career resurgence was fueled by banned PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs) the worst Medal of Freedom recipient ever? Looking over the list…

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Life Ethics, Professional Ethics, Family Ethics, Baseball Ethics: Paternity Leave During A Crisis

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This issue, which I feel strongly about and have so written, more than once, reared its ugly metaphorical head again this week.

The San Diego Padres were added to the National League in 1969. The team has been in two World Series, losing both quickly; the last time was in 1996. They have only made the National League Championship Series three times. The team closed the season hot, and faced the best team in baseball, at least based on their record, the Milwaukee Brewers, with high hopes. Among the team’s many stars (more, in fact, then Milwaukee) is Mason Miller, by consensus the best 9th inning relief pitcher (aka “closer”) in the game.

The Padres lost the first game of the five game series due to a fluke, as described here. They lost Game #2 as well, and faced elimination in Game #3. It was “all hands on deck,” the Alamo, Custer’s Last Stand. Nevertheless, before the game, Mason Miller chose to take paternity leave, a privilege the players won in a contract battle with owners in 2011.

My ethics analysis of this conduct begins with “Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.” The entire season, 162 games, many millions of dollars, millions of fans, a city’s economy and community, players’ careers and income, managers’ and coaches’ jobs, team sponsors and more ride on which teams win in the post-season. My position is that Miller’s decision was selfish, irresponsible and a breach of duty. His team not only needed him, but depended on him. His wife’s pregnancy had had hit no crisis (I checked); she also had other support available. If I were a team mate or the management, I would conclude that Mason Miller could not be trusted. An employee who flees in a crisis is not a desirable employee, especially when the employee is paid $4 million dollars for eight months of service.

Moral Luck Alert! The Padres won the game without Miller, then lost the next one, ending their World Series quest.

Ethics Alarms hosted an intense debate on this exact topic in 2021. I wrote in part,

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s October 7th Message

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.”

New York’s anti-Semitic, Islamist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in his official statement on the anniversary of the unprovoked and ambush Palestinian terrorist attack on Israel that included the murder of unarmed civilians, rapes, infanticide, and the taking of over 200 hostages, mist of whom died.

I could have had a much longer headline, and had to restrain myself to avoid posting one. Anyone who agrees with this vile man is an Ethics Dunce, as is anyone who voted for him or would argue that such votes can be justified. Mandani qualifies for an EA “Incompetent Elected Official” designation, because condemning the victims of terrorism while supposedly memorializing those victims is incompetent and irresponsible, unless one is an Ethics Villain, which Mayor Mamdani certainly is.

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Ethics Hero: Brit Hume

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Today is the 30th anniversary of the debut of Fox News, a day that will live in infamy for the Totalitarian Left, much as Elon Musk’s rescue of Twitter is reviled. Americans under the age of about 50 never reflect upon what broadcast news was like before October 7, 1996, and most of them can’t imagine how crucial the conservative news network has been to our democracy.

The emergence of Fox News has had some unfortunate and unanticipated consequences too, but those who argue that the United States, its public, culture and society would be better off with no TV news options other than the liberal Democrat monopoly of reporting and opinions, which was the state of the medium before Rupert Murdoch’s daring innovation, is revealing their own bias.

The revolution may well have failed without Brit Hume, so today seems like an appropriate time to honor him. Hume started his career in national broadcast news with ABC—you know, the company that now calls “The View” a news program. In 1989, he became ABC’s chief White House correspondent and was prominent in that role until he quit in 1996 to join the new rebel network. A thorough professional, a recognizable face and a respected name, he instantly gave credibility and visibility to the Roger Ailes-led project.

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Senator Le Pétomane?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There are so many reasons for Michiganders regardless of party and ideological bent not to vote for Abdul El-Sayed that the revelation that he likes to fart in public seems trivial in comparison. He’s a Communist who lies about his beliefs; he has called for defunding the police and he is anti-Semitic, though to today’s Democrats that’s a good thing. He refused to disavow his pal Hasan Piker, who is a vocal America-hater. Naturally Bernie Sanders, AOC and Obama are supporting El-Sayed.

Now a longtime aid to the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan has quit and gone rogue, calling his former boss for whom he worked as a bodyguard and a staff assistant a “manufactured man” who has maturity more appropriate to a high school locker room. Jordan Domingue told the media that during El-Sayed’s gubernatorial and Senate campaigns, he realized that the candidate was a “30-year-old leapfrogging into a job he was inexperienced for and only got through connections.”

“Now I’m far from blameless, and will reflect for years how I let myself be captured by loyalty and personality,” Domingue added. “When he acted like an entitled mobster to elected officials in 2017-2018, I excused it as a justified outsider earning their place. When he would say one thing to one group and another thing to a different group hours later, I considered it just the norm or ‘strategic ambiguity’ as he calls it.”

What Domingue really found intolerable, however, was El-Sayed’s affection for openly passing gas in front of staffers. “He would openly do so without warning or embarrassment as his form of stand-up comedy,” Domingue wrote. “To this day for him, the act of farting is easily one of the funniest things a person can do.”

Is that a good reason to vote against him, along with, you know, the fact that El-Sayed is an anti-American lunatic, which doesn’t bother the Mad Left these days? Le Pétomane was the stage name of Joseph Pujol (1857 –1945) who was a professional “fartist.” Not only could he fart at will, he could fart tunes. The Governor in “Blazing Saddles,” played by Mel Brooks, is named in honor of Le Pétomane.

There are lots of reasons to be dubious about this story. For one thing, it has “disgruntled employee” written all over it. For another, it was first reported by The Gateway Pundit, which is on the EA blacklist. I will also point out that supporters of Donald Trump are ethically estopped from assailing a candidate for having a sophomoric sense of humor and running for an office “he was inexperienced for.”

I also note that the levels of dignity and decorum, not to mention maturity, that the public has a right to expect from its elected officials has already been reduced to high school and even elementary school level by such class acts as GOP Rep. Lauren Boberg, Senator Fetterman dressing like gym rat and this…

Nonetheless, thinking that farting intentionally at the workplace is acceptable conduct does raise serious questions about judgment and socialization, if not sanity. And wouldn’t you agree that a superior intentionally farting among staffers in the workplace constitutes creating a “hostile work environment”?

The Naked Teacher Principle, Brought To You By “Only Fans” Again and Of Course [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

[Added: The comments to this post indicate that many don’t know what the exact Naked Teacher Principle is. My fault: I usually re-state it in the posts, and did not this time. The Principle states that a secondary school teacher or administrator (or other role model for children) who allows pictures of himself or herself to be widely publicized, as on the web, showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses, cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result. It does not hold, and has never held, that such teachers must be dismissed or should be dismissed in all cases.]

That’s St. Louis substitute teacher Sheena Sittner above—trust me on this. Like some other teachers—and bet there are a lot more potential firees out there—she lost her job over having an OnlyFans account. It wasn’t the school that fired her but the agency that delivers substitute teachers that suspended her pending termination and that she must “refrain from contacting any school or districts.”

The enterprising educator follows July’s Naked Teacher Principle (NTP) star, Maris Nichols, 25, the married Georgia high school teacher who in addition to having sex with students is a provocative OnlyFans performer. Maris was being blackmailed by some of her students who discovered the OnlyFans channel she owns, operates, and uses to display her excellent Linda Lovelace impression, among, uh, other things.

It’s a theoretical argument that Nichols’ example, which provides one reason OnlyFans teachers have no defense to offer school boards once they are outed, doesn’t apply to a substitute teacher. Who would extort a substitute teacher for grades, when they don’t usually give out grades? Never mind, though: there are plenty of other reasons a school (and parents) might not want to have an amateur porn star guiding young impressionable minds. Do I have to go through them again? Here’s an idea: why don’t you review the EA archives on the subject? It will be entertaining, and I don’t have to write the same things I have posted dozens of times over many years.

Sheena does have a distinction that puts her in a sub-category: she’s a dim-witted rationalizing Naked Teacher. She’s been broadcasting X-rated content on OnlyFans along with her substitute teaching for the past two years, and says she knew it would probably be discovered eventually. “If teachers were paid better, women wouldn’t have to resort to online content creation,” Sittner said. “Sex sells.” Yeah, so do kidneys, crack and child trafficking. And, you know, women don’t have to resort to selling their body and dignity for the enjoyment of pervs: there are many other options. Moreover,the reasons one chooses to engage in a side-gig that is incompatible with holding a parent’s trust as a role model and a conveyor of societal values still don’t justify the conduct if it affects others and is inappropriate.

Maybe this is why she’s just a substitute teacher.

The Cornell Frat Rape Ethics Train Wreck, Part II

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I paused Part I when I hit item #6 and the post began reaching Alizia Tyler-level length. Since then, about 24 hours ago, there have been new revelations, commentary and developments. Picking up where I left off…

7. The New York Times tracked down the detailed filings in the private Title IX proceedings Cornell undertook, including hundreds of pages of emails, text messages, photographs and interviews with “Jane Doe,” her friends and the alleged rapists. This section from the Times report is, I think, definitive (the Times is playing it straight for a change):

At 3:05 a.m. on Oct. 20, 2024, one of Jane Doe’s roommates sent her a text.

“Are you coming home tonight?” she asked.

Four minutes later, Jane Doe texted back that she didn’t know.

The roommate went to sleep, she would tell investigators. When she woke up at 11 a.m., she uploaded a photo of her empty room to Snapchat. “Only I made it back home,” she wrote on the post.

Around 11:15 a.m., she said, Jane Doe arrived home, still in her “big boots and small dress” from the night before, according to the roommate. She had consumed ketamine and had sex with multiple men, she told her two roommates. One roommate told investigators that Jane Doe did not use the word “rape” or “assault” yet.

It seemed like she was “in shock,” her other roommate later told investigators, “not really understanding the gravity of what she was saying.”

The next day, on Oct. 21, Jane Doe went to her “big sister” — a woman designated as a mentor — at Cornell’s Tri Delta sorority and told her there were rumors circulating that she was a “slut.” The big sister, a junior at Cornell, told investigators that Jane Doe added with a laugh that “unfortunately they are true.”

To me, this means that the accuser was not raped and didn’t regard herself as being raped. The editorial comments of her friends indicate biased allies doing their best to frame the event in the manner most favorable to someone they care about. I know, I know: victims of sexual assault blame themselves, are awash in shame, and often take time to “process” what occurred. Or they are persuaded by others to reexamine what happened in a way that avoids accountability, provides a path to financial damages, and that victimizes others. Whichever went on here, I don’t see how a criminal prosecution and conviction is possible unless politics tramples the law—which, as we all know, it often does.

8. The student received a text message from Jonathan Newell, one of the men she would go on to accuse of sexual assault. Note that his name is out there but hers is being withheld by the news media, despite the fact that both, or neither, may be victims. “I just wanted to apologize for how things went down the other night,” Newell wrote. He said that he and Matthew Ingalls, another student she accused of sexual assault, both “felt terrible” that they were too stoned and drunk to “shut it down and kick people out before it got way out of hand.”

“Jane Doe” replied to him, “At the end of the day none of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly I really liked being with you and Matt.” Not illegal means, “I wasn’t raped, but you know that.”

9. Here, thanks to reader James Flood, who flagged it in the comments to Part I, is feminist Camille Paglia on the basic principles of feminist hypocrisy the incident and one like it highlight…

10. Among the messages in the infamous SnapChat exchange among members of the fraternity during the orgy or what ever you want to call it was an alert that there was “free pussy” upstairs. Victory Girls opines in part,

“The female student’s original claims were that sex and drug use at the Chi Phi fraternity house just off of Cornell’s campus was consensual, but now, the story, perceived to be pushed under the table for two years, has risen back to the surface. And now, Jane Doe is telling a different story…his kind of stuff happens every weekend on any given university campus-this is one time that it is actually hitting the news…This case is not just a case of them versus her. This case, and the behavior that surrounds it, are a cry for help…

“Some young people go to college with a specific career goal in mind. Some young people come to a university to explore their identities, to embark upon new horizons and, yes, to belong. …Fraternities and sororities sell the price tag of lifelong friends, leadership opportunities and exclusive networks and experiences on their websites and social media of carefully-curated videos and photos. The guys want the hot girls at the parties and the girls want to go to the parties at the “husband house.”

… Fraternities use slogans like, “building better men”, “friendship, justice and learning”, “transforming lives”, “courage to be more”, to name a few of their catchy and contrived mottos. Sororities talk of philanthropy, “bravery”, “togetherness”, “family”, “values” and “inspiring positive change”…Nothing says “bonding” and “gentlemen” like putting “free pussy” in a group chat. On the flip side of this coin, the young woman who was allegedly raped spent some time drinking at a sorority house on campus before going to the Chi Phi house to meet a guy she was chatting with for an alleged hook-up. How she ended up upstairs with no girlfriends who value “togetherness” is also a big, glaring question. So much for the “values” of the sisterhood.

…Special prosecution or not, this case, and all of the young people involved, is a tragic depiction of a toxic campus community….they all need to take a good, hard look. Universities’ blanket statements that “they take sexual violence seriously” and their willful ignorance of what happens on off-campus houses that still bring money into the University is not enough. Organizations that claim to raise “gentlemen and leaders” and “brave women” do not lend themselves to this type of behavior. A “gentleman” in a formal suit one evening who later participates in a chat (or who is an “innocent” bystander in said chat) advertising “free pussy upstairs” is not a “productive member of society.”…A girl that offers to sniff ketamine off a guy’s junk and have a threesome is a woman with severe insecurities who needs REAL friends who will stop her from the self-destructive behavior that she may later regret and encourage her to have dignity and respect herself. This is not a Cornell problem. Or a college problem. Or a left versus right problem. Or even a legal problem. This is a bigger MORAL problem. This is a right from wrong problem…

I have stated many times here that I believe fraternities are disasters-in-waiting, despite anecdotal evidence that they and sororities have social and socializing value. My college killed its fraternities in the 19th Century. “Morality” is not the issue here, and citing it just fogs the conversation. People are being hurt by this kind of conduct. Ethical people don’t engage in conduct that hurts people. For “Jane Doe” to seek to harm (or benefit from while harming) those who were willing participants in an activity she consented to and encouraged or appeared to consent to and encourage is unethical.

11. The New York Times reports that two of the fraternity members accused by “Jane” were expelled. Another who had already graduated is barred from campus. Two more were suspended. The remaining two men, Scott Norris and Scott Kretzschmar, were ordered not to contact Jane Doe, to study sexual harassment, social media use and bystander intervention, and to write “reflection papers.” Their crime was being part of a group of men who entered the room after reading the Snapchat “free pussy” message. A lawsuit filed by Kretzschmar against Cornell shows that he was not found responsible for sexual assault. Cornell ruled that he had committed a lesser offense of “attempted sexual exploitation.”

Come on.

Watch “Animal House,” for heaven’s sake.

A lawyer for Kretzschmar said in a statement that the discipline his client received showed that he was “never accused of, nor found responsible for, rape. He was not even present during any sexual activity.”

“Jane Doe” has received no academic discipline at all. Ever since the Obama era’s despicable (but typical for that administration) “Dear Colleague” letter, universities have operated from a position of presumed guilt for male students accused of sexual assault and presumed victim status for their accusers. You know. Justice. “Equity.”

There is a lot more, but that’s enough for now.

Ethics Lessons From An Epic “That’s Baseball!” Moment in Milwaukee

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

What would have been a go-ahead 2-run homer by the San Diego Padres’ Ty France in the top of the 9th inning in last night’s Padres-Brewers NLDS series opener was foiled by a cable in the retractable roof stadium at America Field Park. The huge fly ball (49 degree launch angle, the steepest ever recorded there) on the way over the fence in fair territory struck a cable and fell straight down into the waiting outfielder’s glove. By the ground rules in force, the ball was in play and it was an out. One batter later, the Brewers had won 3-2.

Batted balls used to hit parts of the roof a lot in the Ray’s awful park in St. Petersburg before its roof was repaired, but that’s because the beams, cables, catwalks and rails were too low (and too many). This had never happened in Milwaukee’s American Family Field to cost a team a home run before, and the former “Miller Park” opened 26 years ago.

Yet the only time a ball about to be a home run hit the roof happened in the 9th inning of a play-off game, saving the home team from a crushing loss! It could have happened in a mid-May game. It could have happened in the third inning of an 8-2 loss. It could have happened when the Brewers were playing an inter-league game against the Angels. The odds were that if the fluke were going to happen at all to any team, it would have happened TO the Brewers, since its their home field. And heck, the retractable roof could have been open, meaning that there wouldn’t have been anything for France’s ball to hit.

But no. The first and only time, this particular stroke of bad luck (well, good luck for the Brewers) happened on national TV, in a critical game. Meanwhile the Brewers, who had the best record in baseball, are trying to finally get back to the World Series for the first time since 1982.

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Stay Classy, College Football!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

As I will argue here until the metaphorical cows come home, football is a cultural embarrassment and a societal pathogen. In addition to that “giving players brain damage” thingy, both colleges and the pros allow their players to be felons and thugs if they are good enough. The King’s Pass reigns. Colleges now pay their football players, so they are truly fake students. The game (aka. business) advances the corruption of higher education. We once were told that a benefit of sports was that it conveyed the value of sportsmanship ( as in “ethics”) to rising generations. Riiiight, about that:

  • A star on the #1 team in the nation, Texas’s Colin Simmons was flagged for an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty after he simulated urinating after a record-setting sack of Tennessee’s quarterback.
  • Another player, Raleek Brown celebrated a touchdown by rubbing his genitals, sniffing his hand, and pretending to pass out. The Texas running back was not flagged for that disgusting celebration, after all, that was funny!

Steve Sarkisian, the Texas coach, said about the penalty,“We took [Simmons] out. We addressed it, and put him back in. I’m not gonna give the guy the death penalty over an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We’ve got to fix it, though. That can’t continue as we move forward.”

Why does “that” exist at all, Coach? It’s your job to manage the culture on the team. I guarantee that a Major League Baseball player who mimed urinating on the field would be suspended immediately, and for a very long time, if not released. Why did one of your players think such public vulgarity was appropriate? Yeah, yeah, upbringing, growing up with a bad crowd, Hip-Hop, yada yada. College once was where young idiots were supposed to learn how responsible adults get through life. Notice that the coach was concerned about the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, not the unsportsmanlike conduct.

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On Perpetual Immaturity and Facing A Life-Defining Moment

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Two thoughts on the first day of the MLB play-offs:

1. I am officially 12-years-old. (Most of my friends and associates know that, but it continues to amaze me.) Today I have critical client work to do involving huge amounts of money (for them, not me). I have several medical issues I need to attend to ASAP. I’m late getting my invoices out and I’m in cash-flow hell. But all I can think about is the Red Sox-Yankee game tonight. (8 PM, EST. on NBC)

This is the juvenile state of mind that led me to risk my job in 1978, when I walked out of a critical, high-level capital fundraising meeting at Georgetown, with all the brass present, saying, “I’m sorry, but the Red Sox and Yankees are playing a game in Fenway Park in an hour to decide the American League East, and I have to see it. Let me know what you all decide.” (That was the Bucky %$#@ Dent Game.) My wife-to-be Grace was at the meeting and was the only one smiling; everyone else looked like the audience in “The Producers” after “Springtime for Hitler.”

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