Stories like this one remind me just how deep and complex the ethics void is becoming in our society and institutions. The hackneyed way of describing it would be “Why we can’t have nice things.” It is an ethics mess, rather than an ethics train wreck, just an icky, stinky, pile of unethical goo emanating from people and places that can’t be trusted.
Let’s pick our way through it. Get your gloves and Lysol, and put a clothespin on your nose…
“When the going gets tough, the tough get unethical.”—Me. Also, in election year 2024, Machiavellian and disgusting.
These are repulsive people. When I saw the Rolling Stone headline, “Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America ‘Can’t Be Compromised,'” I thought, “Oh-oh.” Then I read the story. Alito was tricked by a left-wing James O’Keefe imitator (Ethics Alarms’ verdict on O’Keefe’s methods and conduct has been consistent and unequivocal from the beginning: he’s an unethical journalist, dishonest and untrustworthy, whose methods have occasionally uncovered hidden agendas that can’t be ignored) posing as a conservative admirer at an event. Attending the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, Lauren Windsor, a progressive documentary filmmaker, introduced herself to Alito as a religious conservative. Then she proceeded to ask him leading questions and offer her own “opinions.” What she learned was that Alito was nice to strangers, and that with a stranger who seemed to admire him in a social setting, he chose to be agreeable rather than confrontational.
Here is the exchange: Windsor approached Alito at the event and reminded him that they spoke about political polarization at the same function the year before (who knows if they did or not, but if Alito didn’t remember, he wasn’t going to argue about it). In the intervening year, she told Alito, her views had changed. “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” Windsor said. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.” Alito’s reply: “I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
You will see from this that the Rolling Stone headline is misleading and deceitful. Alito’s comment could have been made from either side of the ideological spectrum: it shows agreement with neither side. Moreover, it begins “You’re probably right,” which could easily mean, “You’re full of crap, but you’re welcome to your opinion, and I’ll make you feel like a Supreme Court Justice agrees with you because I’m a nice guy and now you can tell your friends, ‘Justice Alito agreed with me!'”
I have often wondered about this phenomenon, reflecting back on my lucky hour-long conversation with Herman Kahn when he was widely regarded as the smartest man alive. He was an unpretentious, kindly, engaging individual, and throughout our conversation made me feel like I had expressed theories and ideas that he thought were perceptive and valuable. Maybe he left that meeting and told a friend, “Boy, I was just trapped talking to an idiot for an hour!” But he made me feel good, which is an ethical thing to do.
And I wasn’t secretly recording him so I could leak to the Washington Post my comments as his revealed beliefs.
Next Windsor told Alito: “People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness.”
“I agree with you. I agree with you,” Alito replied. Rolling Stone adds at that point that he “authored the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which reversed five decades of settled law and ended a constitutional right to abortion.” Oh! I see. Alito voted to end Roe “to return our country to a place of godliness” ! He’s a religious fanatic! He helped end Roe because of his religious beliefs!
Read the words, as Sir Thomas More might say. All Alito says is that he agrees that people need to fight for what they believe. He doesn’t even say that he believes in God. He also just says, “I agree with you. I agree with you,” which under those conditions might mean, “Now, nice talking to you, but stop monopolizing my time and let me meet some other people.” There is no rhetorical smoking gun in this conversation and nothing illuminating or newsworthy, except perhaps that the desperate left is stooping to emulating an unethical conservative fake journalist to discredit the U.S. Supreme Court, and unfairly victimizing Joseph Alito for the third time in two weeks.
These are, I repeat, disgusting people.
The New York Times, I must note, was hardly better than Rolling Stone. It also treated this manipulated, unethically recorded and ambiguous conversation as news worthy, and had a deceitful headline of its own: “In Secret Recordings, Alito Endorses Nation of ‘Godliness,’ Roberts Talks of Pluralism.” That implies that Alito (and Roberts) were aware of the recordings, and worse, Alito did NOT endorse a nation of “godliness.”
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!
I saw this ridiculous thing in the latest Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue. It costs $20,000, and the description says it is great for teambuilding and conferences.
Suuuure.
Ethics Alarms has stated many times that nobody’s legal use of their own resources that isn’t aimed at causing harm can be called unethical if it doesn’t cause the purchaser to default on other obligations. I believe that.
I must say, however, that I would have a difficult time wrestling my contempt to the floor for anyone, or any company, that couldn’t find a more productive use for $20,000 than buying that ugly piece of junk. It’s only good for a conference if the conference has exactly 7 people involved, and even that’s giving the theory the benefit of more doubt than it deserves. Spending $20,000 on something as trivial and useless as a “seven person tricycle” is just broadcasting a message that says, “Look at me with awe, peasants! I have money to burn, and I’d rather burn it than use it to accomplish anything worth accomplishing!”
I don’t like people who think like that, and I never will. Yes, it’s a bias.
I think I’ll keep it.
Who would have thought that New York Times readers could do such a terrific Peter Sellers impression?
Paul Krugman, once a Nobel Prize winner, now the very model of a modern progressive hack, issued his contribution to the current “Protect Joe Biden!” hysteria among pundits and journalists. It’s called “Why You Shouldn’t Obsess About the National Debt,” and if this won’t get the Nobel people to demand their prize in economics back, nothing will.
The intellectual dishonesty of the piece is stunning even for Krugman—I remember how an old friend favorably posted one of Krugman’s columns to Facebook and the scales fell from my eyes making me realize that the old friend was an idiot and had always been one—and the rationalizations he uses to shrug away the $34 trillion national debt are breathtaking in their audacity. Some examples:
Last night I saw this story in the New York Post, relayed by conservative provocateur Ace of Spades:
Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan revealed Friday that a Facebook user claiming to be a “cousin” of a juror in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial suggested he had advanced knowledge of last week’s guilty verdict.
“Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention,” Merchan wrote in a letter to Trump attorney Todd Blanche and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
“In the comment, the user, ‘Michael Anderson,’ states: ‘My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted … Thank you folks for all your hard work!!! ….’” the judge explained.
The story also reveals that “Michael Anderson” is a self-admitted “shitposter,” someone who uses social media to spread falsehoods and derail serious discussions on politics and other matters.
Hmmmm.
So the guy, if he is a guy, who revealed this supposed conspiracy to rig the jury verdict against Donald Trump has no credibility at all. He’s a lying asshole and proud of it—you know, like Michael Cohen.
It is only responsible for the judge to reveal this, and for an investigation to take place. This, in turn, will probably give “Michael Anderson” the fifteen minutes of fame he craves, and inspire more assholes to enter the wonderful, profitable, destructive field of “shitposting.”
Meanwhile, I saw MAGA types all over the web last night calling for the trial verdict to be abandoned based on this almost certain trolling effort, thus making themselves look like gullible fools, and confirmation bias victims.
Is this a great country or what?
In a new filing released today, Justice Clarence Thomas amended his financial disclosure for 2019 to note that he “inadvertently omitted” reporting two extravagant vacations paid for by conservative billionaire Harlan Crow, one to Indonesia and the other to the Bohemian Grove, an all-male retreat in northern California. Just slipped his mind! Hey, it could happen to anybody! Who hasn’t completely forgotten about a luxury trip they have enjoyed on the dime of a politically active tycoon? Heck, I know I just remembered one today, after I read this story. Well, it’s all better now; Thomas just retroactively corrected his lie of omission from five years ago.
Anyone who accepts this is ethically estopped from complaining about the White House editing Joe Biden’s blabberings to make him sound less like he belongs in a hospice.
Pro Publica correctly notes that last year, when these and other examples unusual largess from Crow—like paying for Thomas’s mother’s house—were revealed, Thomas’s “Justice Thomas’s lawyers issued a statement on the Justice’s behalf. saying that the allegations were untrue.
Like all lawyers, Supreme Court Justices are prohibited from lying in the course of their professional conduct. The prohibition on lawyer conduct is serious, but even more serious for judges, and extra-special, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious serious for the highest judges in the land.
Thomas is a disgrace, as I have said before.
But at least he never let his wife fly a 250-year-old historical flag that some idiots used to express their own political opinions…
Why would anyone—any nation, any organization, any business or individual—trust a nation that would do something like this?
A major tourist attraction, Yuntai Falls, at the Yuntai Mountain scenic resort in China’s central Henan province, has been promoted as China’s “tallest uninterrupted waterfall” to its millions of yearly visitors. But this week a hiker’s video revealed that the falls are fed by a secret network of water pipes. In a statement, officials admitted that they added water to the cascade to improve the viewing experience for tourists. OK, technically the waterfall admitted that it was phony, as the statement said, “Depending on the season, I cannot guarantee that I am in my best condition whenever my friends come to see me.”
That’s Liz Wolfe, a regular writer at Reason.
Why would anyone present themselves to the world and strangers with a pose like that? (I am going to try to ignore another bias in this post, otherwise attractive people who wear nose rings, which I regard as the equivalent of deliberately having a booger hanging out of a nostril.) I’m a stage director: interpreting and evoking facial expressions and body language is what I do (and well, by the way). I would direct an actress to use that pose and expression if she were playing a character who was arrogant, defiant, remote, contemptuous of the world and hostile.
Someone who presents themselves in such a manner in real life is either so insecure that she is trying to keep everyone at a safe distance, or arrogant, defiant, remote, contemptuous of the world, hostile, and proud of it. This is a form of visual incivility. “Why should I waste time with you, peasant?,” that look says to me. And my response to that look is, “Oh, bite me. Get over yourself. Grow up.”
—President Biden, outrageously adopting Donald Trump’s long-standing position that he party has condemned as racist and “xenophobic” because his poll numbers are looking bad.
Seldom has the “Die Hard” clip (from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive) been more appropriate or infuriating. For more than three years, Joe Biden’s administration deliberately signaled to aspiring alien lawbreakers that they would be wink-winked into the United States despite defying immigration laws, let free to run amuck if that’s what they chose to do, and law enforcement would look the other way. Officials like Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas gaslighted the public by insisting the border was secure when anyone with eyes or a camera could see it was anything but. An estimated 2.5 illegals have entered the country across this “secure border.” Awakening to the reality that the majority of the American public doesn’t view that as “a Great Replacement Conspiracy,” but simply as incompetent, irresponsible, dangerous and wrong—you know, like Donald Trump said in 2015 as he launched his (quixotic, everyone thought) candidacy for the Presidency and was tarred as a racist for it?—suddenly, Mirabile Dictu!, Biden is singing a different metaphorical tune.
Robert DeNiro’s political rants about Donald Trump are crude, ad hominem attacks and a poor reflection on his character and intelligence, as I have noted more than once, most recently here. It doesn’t matter, however, how much of a jerk DeNiro is and how deluded he may be about the worth of his partisan opinions, at least as far as the legitimate plaudits he has earned for his acting (I don’t especially enjoy him as an actor, but I appreciate his talent and craft from a technical perspective) or other aspects of his life.
For example, DeNiro is apparently a generous contributor to charities. That’s nice. Among the non-profits he has given to are 46664, American Foundation for AIDS Research, Artists for Peace and Justice, Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Celebrity Fight Night Foundation, Elton John AIDS Foundation, FilmAid International, Film Foundation, Friars Foundation, STILLERSTRONG, Fulfillment Fund, HEART, Hearts of Gold, Hudson River Park Friends, LeBron James Family Foundation, Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center, Robert F Kennedy Memorial, and Stand Up To Cancer. The actor has a lot of money, but this is still an impressive array: a surprising number of stars of stage, screen and sports give very little to charity.
Ethics Alarms 