I don’t know who “Cynical Publius” is: does it matter? (Grok is the irritating Twitter/”X” AI bot, and I couldn’t stop it from photo-bombing my screen shot.)
Points:
Character
“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Two Glaring Examples…
1. The former reliably progressive, Democrat-supporting Rolling Stone reporter Matt Taibbi nicely exposed the Washington Post’s astoundingly flagrant Democratic operative Phillip Bump (EA dossier here) on Taibbi’s substack. (I have been temped to subscribe, but…)
In “Note to Philip Bump: The Washington Post columnist speaks on CNN; a brief reply” he writes:
Unethical Tweet of the Month: Actor Bradley Whitford
Just remember, the Ethics Alarms position is to strive as much as possible to remain unbiased regarding a performer’s art regardless of his or her demonstrated political orientation or revealed personal character flaws. I enjoy Bradley Whitford as an actor.
But only an unethical, bullying asshole would write a tweet like that.
Is Marco Bisbikis The Most Unethical Lawyer Ever?
How could a lawyer be more unethical?
As unethical, sure: I am confident that there have been other lawyers who are tied with this Michigan lawyer for the title. But more? Consider:
Marco Bisbikis, a Michigan lawyer in good standing, worked as an attorney for the Dan Hutchinson and his wife, wrote himself into popular Oakland County jeweler’s will while he was preparing it for his client, who was also under the impression that his attorney was a loyal friend. (Can you blame him? Who wouldn’t trust a face like that?)
Then Bisbikis paid a hit man to shoot and kill Hutchinson so the lawyer could inherit millions of dollars in a trust fund. On June 1, 2022, outside an Oak Park pawn shop, the hit man did just that. Bisbikis and the hired killer, Roy Larry, were convicted of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation of murder, and felony firearm and in June they were both sentenced life in prison. Two other men involved in the plot were convicted and sentenced last year.
Ugh! Ethics Dunce—AGAIN—: University of Houston Law Professor Renee Knake Jefferson
This is an example of why I am disgusted with my field and chosen profession. Just last month I designated Jefferson, a legal ethics professor among other things, as an ethics dunce for her blatantly partisan and biased commentary. This time, it’s personal.
Seeking to find a reliable, trustworthy, accurate source of legal ethics news and developments (since the demise of the excellent legal Ethics Forum, I am reduced to the scattershot, overwhelmingly left-biased commentary on the APRL listserv), I subscribed to the professor’s substack, Legal Ethics Roundup, taking seriously her promise that it would supply a “Monday morning tour of all things related to lawyer and judicial ethics.” But the Legal Ethics Roundup I received this morning, like all its predecessors this month, cheerfully informed me that “For the month of August, the Legal Ethics Roundup is on pause.”
Bad Celebrity Ethics: David Copperfield’s Penthouse Trick
Trust me on this: almost all magicians are weird. I strongly suspect that they tend to be on the “neurodivergent” spectrum (that’s the new politically correct term for autistic: you know my views on linguisitic rebranding), but they have other problems as well, including the tendency to slide into more destructive unethical behavior after building their lives around deceiving people for fun.
Alakazam! Here’s David Copperfield to demonstrate how it’s done!
Ethics Quiz: The “Inappropriate Dance” [Updated and Expanded]
Maybe this one should be titled, “Tell Me What I’m Missing.”
Buhach Colony High School (California) principal Robert Nunes was placed on administrative this week after a video of an obviously planned and choreographed bit of foolery with the basketball team’s mascot “went viral.” It was a pep rally. Mascots (which I hate, but that’s another issue) frequently do these kind of routines, and bringing authority figures into the gag is standard fare, giving the human butts of the giant costumed things a chance to appear more human, show they are good sports, yada yada. I’ve seen baseball managers get in to faux fistfights with these escapees from a Disneyland parade. The crowd generally loves it, the morons. Big deal.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is is fair to suspend a high school principal for that routine above?
Why Bob Laterza, It Profits A Man Nothing To Reveal Himself As An Ethics Dunce To The Whole World, But For A Lousy 15 Minutes Of Fame?
Congratulations are due to South Shore Little League manager Bob Laterza. He got his name prominently mentioned in the sports media by verbally attacking baseball mega-star Aaron Judge, immediately setting off a controversy.
Judge’s Yankees played the Detroit Tigers in the MLB Little League Classic at Williamsport, Pa. The Staten Island Little League coach slammed the Shrek-like slugger afterwards, telling the media,“How about turning around or wave to New York and the kids that think you’re a hero? They are the ones who pay your salary.” Laterza alleged that Judge ignored his young players as they shouted his name from 10 feet away.
That’s Judge in the photo above, wearing the 99 jersey in the middle of a mob of admirers at the event.
The only reason the coach’s grandstanding was considered news is that his target was Judge, not only the best player alive this season but also renowned as a model baseball citizen and one of the nicest people ever to play the game, even if he does play for the Yankees. Judge signed autographs and posed for pictures with many Little Leaguers from the various teams attending the game. Laterza criticism was the ultimate cheap shot, acquiring some pitiful publicity for himself by assailing a major celebrity.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Judge refused to respond to Laterza’s accusations. It is that kind of abuse from entitled fans and others who believe that baseball stars owe them every second of their time that has prompted many players to announce that they won’t engage with anyone, sign autographs or anything else.
Never mind though. Bob got his name in the sports section.
Chess Ethics: Yeah, My Expert Opinion Is That Trying To Poison Your Opponent Is Unethical
I could be wrong…
Amina Abakarova, a 40-year-old female chess player and chess coach from the Russian Republic of Dagestan, poisoned another female player during a chess tournament in Makhachkala. This is unethical, cheating, and really poor sportsmanship.
Surveillance footage from the Dagestan Classical Chess Championship showed Abakarova spreading a substance later identified as mercury on the chess board and pieces that she knew would be touched by a rival, Umayganat Osmanova. CCTV footage revealed Abakarova walking to the table where Osmanova was about to play a match and smearing something on the chess board and pieces. See?
Osmanova began to experience nausea and dizziness just 30 minutes later after she began play on the poisoned board. She noticed that some foreign substance was on the pieces and suspended the game before she was too seriously affected, but she still had to be hospitalized.
Curmie’s Conjectures: Incompetence and Arrogance of Olympian Proportions
by Curmie
[This is Jack: With this welcome column by the indefatigable Curmie, I think I can safely say that Ethics Alarms has finally put all of the ethics controversies arising from the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to bed, yes?
I sure hope so. Let’s see: we had the Opening Ceremony “Last Supper” thing, the “don’t photograph beautiful and sexy female athletes so they look beautiful and sexy” silliness, the announcer who was sacked for evoking a mild female stereotype that is sort-of accurate, the intersex boxer thing, the Australian breakdancer, and now Curmie examines the bitter women’s gymnastics scoring controversy over mini-points that are completely subjective anyway.
I am truly grateful, because I was going to have to post on this if he didn’t. And if I needed any more validation of my position that the Olympics are a bad, corrupt joke and not worth my time (I don’t), Curmie just supplied it.]
The three women you see pictured at the top of the page currently stand in the third (i.e., bronze medal), fourth, and fifth positions in the Olympics final in the women’s floor exercise. You see them from top to bottom in their relative positions as I write this; whether those will be the final final rankings remains to be seen.
Anyway, from the top down we see Romania’s Ana Bărbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, and the US’s Jordan Chiles. Each of them has reason to believe that she—and she alone—should be the bronze medalist. But a series of judges’ fuck-ups (apologies for the language, but there is no other adequate term) have resulted in a brouhaha that makes clear that whatever the NCAA or FIFA may do, the IOC isn’t going to give up its title as Most Corrupt and Incompetent Sports Organization without a fight. But wait! Who’s that coming up on the outside? It’s the Tribunal Arbitral du Sport (Court of Arbitration for Sport), or TAS, staking their claim, and they’re backing it up with hubristic posturing! It’s coming down to the wire, and it’s anybody’s race!
I have already made clear my distaste for sports which rely on the subjective opinions of judges rather than on some objective criterion. Yes, referees can make mistakes, but at least we know that the team that scores the most points will win, as will the swimmer who touches the wall first or whoever throws the thing the farthest. In these events, it’s clear: the US won a gold medal in the 100m sprint because a photograph made it clear that Noah Lyles’s torso crossed the finish line .005 seconds before Kishane Thompson’s did. The US women’s basketball team also narrowly won gold, beating the French team by a single point because on the last play of the game the home team’s player had her toe on the three-point line instead of just outside it.
Those close finishes seem more arbitrary when there’s no objective way of distinguishing between the performances. It’s also true that gymnastics is second only to figure skating in terms of judges giving credit to established stars just because they’re established.
But let’s assume for the moment that the judges’ votes in the floor exercise, though subjective, were both informed and honest. If you were to ask a dozen experts which of the three women discussed here was the “best,” I’m betting that all three would get at least two votes apiece, but ultimately that’s irrelevant to the current situation.
