Character

On Incompetent Pundits (Like Bill Maher)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

It’s no wonder the “low-information” voter is confused. The media presents prominent individuals as experts, analysts and pundits who often lack the experience, education, erudition, breadth of information and, sadly, active brain cells to fulfill these roles competently. Meanwhile, much of the public lacks the tools and ability to distinguish legitimate authorities whose opinions are at least worthy of being taken seriously from the fake variety, as with the opinionated dolts of “The View,” officially a news program, remember.

I was forced to think about this toxic phenomenon when I read that Bill Maher proclaimed on his HBO political punditry/ comedy show that a President Biden -Nikki Haley ticket would be the perfect solution to the current Democratic Party dilemma as it prepares to face Adolf Hitler…excuse me, Donald Trump…in the upcoming election. Maher said Haley would be a “good fit” because she is a “woman of color.” “I know it’s crazy to think that she could run with Biden, but that’s my dream, a unity ticket. And then he would, I think, definitely win,” Maher said.

Good thinking, Bill: you’re an idiot. Worse than that, you’re a hypocrite.

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Sen. Britt’s Atrocious SOTU “Response” Was Even Worse (and More Unethical) Than I Thought…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

That’s not Sen. Britt in her immediately reviled “response” to President Biden’s faux State of the Union address. That’s Scarlett Johanssen as Britt in a subsequent Saturday Night Live “cold open” that practically wrote itself and was as richly deserved as any target of satire the 50 year-old show has ever taken on.

The principle is pretty basic: if the opposing party’s “response” to a SOTU is so bad that it distracts potential critics of the President’s speech, it’s a disaster. But Britt’s flame-out wasn’t just her speech’s “give Democrats a stick to beat Republicans with” kitchen setting, Britt’s creepy forced smile, and her community theater theatrics that marked her performance as a an embarrassment to the GOP and a gift to Democrats. It turns out that Britt was also lying her head off….and not even well.

Bill Clinton could make a fortune giving lessons.

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Unethical Quote of the Week (and a KABOOM!): President Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I gave the President a Julie Principle pass last week by not highlighting his hilarious open mic comment calling for Israel to have a “come to Jesus moment,” but I can’t let this one pass:

“I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal.’ It’s undocumented. When I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I’m not going to treat any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country. The reason our economy’s growing.”

The statement is by turns incompetent, irresponsible, and dishonest; in non ethical terms, cowardly, offensive and idiotic.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Holly Mathnerd

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Dishonesty is so normalized that this kind of performative fragmentation—signaling that one believes certain things while acting as if one believes other things—may eventually be recognized as a marker of intelligence and proper preparation for class climbing (or class maintenance, if one starts off in that class).”

—Substacker “Holly Mathnerd,” reviewing a book I haven’t read (“Troubled”) by a writer I never heard of (Rob Henderson), but gleaning from it wisdom that sorely temps me change both conditions.

It is pure coincidence that so soon after this post and this one —and even this one—another dishonesty and hypocrisy assessment presented itself. Something is in the air.

This is a phenomenon that Ethics Alarms has discussed frequently. The “elite classes,” like those who sent my college classmates to a series of prestigious schools, pushed for the legalization and cultural approval of regular pot use which they insisted was harmless. The resulting new social norm has devastated the lower socio-economic reaches that are more likely to abuse the privilege without the means to cope with the results. Support for “illegals”—Joe’s accurate word—via sanctuary cities and bleeding heart rhetoric was adamant until the progressive virtue-signalers in “sanctuary cities” had to deal with the real consequences of an open border policy.

More from Holly:

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For the EA “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” Files: Iowa Lawyer David L. Leitner

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

My chosen profession of legal ethics has not been covering itself with glory lately.

The Iowa Supreme Court suspended 68-year-old lawyer David L. Leitner as explained in a discouraging story in the Iowa Capital Dispatch. He’s out of the practice of law for two years: I would have disbarred him. First, Leitner represented an Iowa seed dealer who was convicted of bankruptcy fraud in 2007 after the lawyer helped him hide assets. Leitner created a company for the seed dealer with himself the company’s manager , allowing the seed dealer to send part of his income to the company while hiding it from the government, which the dealer owed about $71,000. (Can’t help clients try to defraud the government. Can’t go into fake businesses with clients designed to cheat on taxes. Pretty basic legal ethics.)

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Searching For the Most Apt Analogy for George Santos Turning Up at the SOTU…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is it Scarlet O’Hara, forced by Rhett Butler to play the seductive Woman in Red at Melanie Wilkes’ birthday party, after he discovers her flirtations with Melanie’s husband? Is it the proverbial skunk at the picnic? Or was the expelled GOP Rep. emulating Davey Crockett in the most recent film account of the Alamo (which, I note with shame, I barely acknowledged this year since my week was occupied with another more personal tragedy), defiantly staring down his foes after the battle was lost?

Or do you have a better analogy? Whatever George Santos was doing by showing up last night, it took gall, which we know the serial liar, fraudster and poseur has in abundance.

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John Kerry Enters the “Incredibly Stupid Statement” Competition!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I heard about this, initially thought it was some right-wing pundit’s exaggeration, and then thought, “Wait, it’s John Kerry. He might really have said something this skin-peelingly stupid.” And indeed he did.

Kerry is a ridiculous human being, always lacking self-awareness, always personifying the worst of arrogant, corrupt and incompetent Washington. With a straight face, and without suddenly slapping himself silly as soon as the words tumbled out of his mouth, this life-time pious, virtue-signaling phony actually opined that people would feel better about Russia as it wages war against Ukraine if it would do it with more concern for threat of climate change.

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We Have a New “All-Time Most Outrageous Excuse” Champion! Meet Mark Nakagawa…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

You may need some background on this Ethics Alarms distinction, which has not been discussed here since 2022…It all began fifteen-and-a-half years ago, when then rising starlet Lindsay Lohan got the first award on the old Ethics Scoreboard. Arrested for driving intoxicated and found with cocaine in her pants pocket, Lindsay told police that she wasn’t wearing her own pants, and had no responsibility for the coke contained in them. That stood as the “most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever” until 2012. That year, the drunken captain who piloted the Costa Concordia cruise ship onto the rocks and left his passengers to fend for themselves claimed that he left the capsizing vessel before his passengers because he “fell into a life boat.” He still missed his chance at the title because the same month, The Smoking Gun reported that in Wisconsin, police responding to a domestic abuse episode were told by the alleged attacker that his victim had really been beaten and nearly strangled to death by a ghost.

Then he was overthrown by Melissa Jenkins Johanson, 47, who drove her car down a footpath in Wales thinking it was a road because she was blind drunk, and who blamed her dog, which she swore was driving her car at the time.

Well, Mark Nakagawa is the new champion.

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SCOTUS’s 9-0 Smackdown of Democratic State Lawfare to Stop Trump Exposes the Unethical Left for All to See

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

All to see, that is, except those whose eyes have been so jaundiced by hate, indoctrination and lies that they are blind.

A 9-0 decision by an ideologically fractured U.S. Supreme Court, rejecting a cherished partisan fantasy devised to hold on to power that one party has empathically shown that it is unfit to possess, should logically result in frank admissions of error, bias, foolishness and confusion by those who insisted that the tactic thus condemned was correct, legal and wise. But today’s progressives are not logical, nor are they self-aware or particularly smart. The reactions from pundits, left-warped lawyers and others (what are the creatures on “The View”?) really should be viewed as a gift. They are telling us what they are, admitting what they are. It’s ironic: the first post of the day was titled, “Will the Disastrous Results of The Great Stupid Result in Learning, So Behavior Changes, or Will the Fools Responsible Keep Trying To Govern On Dreams Rather Than Reality?,” but it wasn’t about the Trump-Deranged learning from their absurd and intellectually indefensible embrace of the 14 Amendment Trump disqualification plot. The SCOTUS decision hadn’t come down yet. Nevertheless, the headline is apt in the aftermath of the decision and the Axis’s embarrassing tantrums. They won’t learn because they can’t learn, even though refusing to admit their mistakes makes them ridiculous, untrustworthy and unpersuasive.

Here are the kinds of people who have been running our government, journalism, entertainment, law schools and universities:

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Biden-Supporters Are Officially Ethically Estopped From Complaining That Trump Lies

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

President Biden went on Seth Myers’s late night show this week to bask in a fawning interview by a partisan supporter who wouldn’t ask him any questions harder than “What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?,” and still managed to screw up.

After the show’s taping, Biden was confronted by reporters while licking an ice-cream cone and asked when a Gaza ceasefire might occur. “I hope by… the end of the weekend,” Biden answered. “My national security advisor tells me we’re close. We’re close. It’s not done yet. My hope is by next Monday, we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden said. That was great news for anti-Israel progressives, and right before the Michigan primary, where Biden was likely to face Arab protest votes against his re-nomination.

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