Character

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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Thinking About “The Box”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I recently re-watched “The Box,” which my wife and I had first seen more than a decade ago. It is a horror movie based on the 1970 short story “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, one of the writers of the original “Twilight Zone,” and Matheson’s conceit, a mash-up of science fiction and ethics as his work often was, had been turned into an episode of one of the reboots of Rod Serling’s creation.

If I recall, I didn’t make it to the end of the film the first time, because the set-up was so annoying. A strange, disfigured man shows up at a couple’s door with a strange box in his hands. It consists of a red button under a locked glass dome that must be opened with a key. The man explains to the stunned wife (her husband is at work, getting bad news about his job) that they have been chosen to be the recipients of a gift. All they have to do is push the red button, and the man will return to hand over a brief case filled with a million dollars, which will be tax free. However, when the button is pushed, someone, somewhere in the world, will die. He assures the wife that they won’t know the doomed individual. They have only 24 hours to consider the offer, at the conclusion of which the man will return and take the box away to offer to someone else.

It is, obviously, an ethics hypothetical that has been posed in many different ways through the years. What bothered me originally, and worries me now, is that anyone I would care to have in my community would ever push the button. (As you can guess, one of the couple does—“Why not? It’s just a box…” and a chain reaction is launched that causes havoc.)

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Curmie’s Conjectures: Court Storming and the Absence of ‘Sprezzatura’

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

by Curmie

After the Wake Forest Demon Deacons beat the Duke Blue Devils 83-79 in basketball Saturday afternoon in Winston-Salem, hordes of Deac fans stormed the court .  Actually, the previous sentence isn’t quite accurate.  Video footage shows that several fans who had gathered under one of the baskets ran onto the court and were already at the free throw line before the game even ended.

These incidents are increasingly commonplace, abetted by television coverage of the events, even as the networks pretend to be appalled by the potential for injuries resulting from the practice.  Court-storming may be part of the culture of the sport, but there are—or at the very least should be—limits.  I have no problem with displays of post-adolescent exuberance, but the safety of players, coaches, and officials must be paramount.

The inevitable finally happened, and Duke star Kyle Filipowski was not merely jostled, but injured, in the melee, seriously enough that he had to be helped off the court.  As the recipient of a degree from the University of Kansas, I am morally and ethically obligated to despise all things related to Duke basketball 😉, but whereas I want them to lose every game, I don’t really want anyone to get hurt.

The exact extent of Filipowski’s injury is still unclear, but it certainly could affect both the Blue Devils’ chances for the rest of the season and post-season, and, importantly, Filipowski’s future.  He’s projected as a first-round draft choice, possibly even a lottery pick, in the upcoming NBA draft.  He stands to make tens of millions of dollars over the course of his career… assuming he can play.  There is such a thing as a career-ending injury, especially when we’re talking about knees, and that’s what this is; if this injury wasn’t severe, that’s only because of what Jack would call “moral luck.” 

The video shows that at least three different Wake Forest fans made contact with Filipowski as he was trying to leave the court.  Whether or not the bumping was “intentional” and “personal,” as Filipowski alleges, it was at best reckless and at worst criminal.  Let’s face it: the man is seven feet tall; it’s not like he couldn’t be seen.  The ethics of the situation, of course, would be the same if it had been a bench player, a student manager, a coach, or a referee who was injured.  The incident attracts more headlines because it was Kyle Filipowski who needed to be helped off the court, but the rationale for banning court storming would be the same. 

At least two other visiting players have been bumped into by opposing fans in court stormings this season.  One of them is Iowa’s Caitlin Clark , probably the most famous women’s basketball player in the country—even more so than WNBA stars.  She was “blind-sided” and actually knocked to the floor by an Ohio State fan in a court storming in Columbus. 

Imagine if she’d been seriously injured.  She wouldn’t have broken the NCAA scoring record for the women’s game, and she wouldn’t be closing in on the real record, held by Lynette Woodard.  (The NCAA wasn’t the organization in charge of the women’s game when Woodard played, and they’re being predictably petty, narcissistic, and anal retentive about recognizing Woodard.)

Oops.  Once again, I indulged in a little inaccuracy.  What I referred to above as “the inevitable” had long since happened, as ESPN’s William Weinbaum reports:

 In a 2004 court storm, Tucson H.S. star Joe Kay suffered a stroke & was partially paralyzed. “It’s way too long that we’ve been putting up with this,” Kay told ESPN Sat. after Duke’s Kyle Filipowski got hurt. “I’m completely in favor of banning court storms & field storms.”  Now 38, Kay said, “The police should arrest people for going places they are not allowed to go… enforce the rules as they do at other places. It’s exactly the same thing.” “Hopefully people will now come to their senses.”

The only thing that’s changed is that Filipowski is known by virtually all college basketball fans across the country, whereas Kay may have been a local celebrity, but folks like me in East Texas weren’t saying “OMG, Joe Kay got hurt in a court storm.”  Now, maybe, something will happen… but not unless the powers-that-be actually want it to, and that, despite the copious tut-tutting from the NCAA, conferences, universities, and the media, doesn’t seem to be the case.  Indeed, statements of concern and promises of future action from the likes of ACC commissioner Jim Phillips seem very much to be what my mom would call “balloon juice.”

Among those who have engaged in court storming this season, both in games in which their team beat Kentucky, were LSU women’s star Angel Reese and South Carolina President emeritus Harris Pastides, who even took to social media to boast about his participation.  The problem isn’t going to go away, even in the wake of an injury to a star player, unless there are real, enforceable, guidelines designed both to allow celebrations and to protect the visiting team.  And by “enforceable,” I mean sanctions that will be felt, not petty fines of a few thousand dollars to multimillion-dollar programs.

Jay Bilas, probably ESPN’s best analyst (and a former star big man for Duke himself), is outspoken about this issue:

“It’s got to stop but it’s not going to.  There’s no appetite in college basketball to stop it. The SEC has a rule against it but the institutions are happy to pay the fine because they like the visual. And the truth is, we in the media like the visual too.  We put it at the end of every highlight. Years ago, when people used to run out on the field or on the floor, we wouldn’t show it. That was our policy. We don’t have that kind of policies with court stormings. We like it. It’s not stopping and it’s a shame.“

Duke coach Jon Scheyer said after the game that when he played, “at least it was 10 seconds and then you could storm the court. Now, it’s the buzzer doesn’t even go off and they’re running on the floor.” 

Ten seconds isn’t enough, but 30 probably is.  It wouldn’t be difficult to institute a rule that no fans are allowed onto the court, ever, until 30 seconds after the final buzzer.  The mechanism already exists in the 30-second clock; let it serve another purpose.  The home university can forbid court storming altogether, but they must enforce the ban for 30 seconds.  If fans want to celebrate on the court and the home team doesn’t object, so be it, but not until the officials and the opposing team are out of harm’s way.

And if fans are on the court before the game clock has expired, that should be a technical foul on the home team in addition to the other penalties.  Would it have mattered this weekend?  Duke would have had two free throws and the ball with about a second left in the game.  Could they have forced overtime or even won in regulation?  It’s extremely unlikely, but the chances wouldn’t have been quite zero.

Whatever the exact rules become, violations must be punished severely.  At present, neither the NCAA nor the ACC (in which Wake Forest and Duke play) have any specific sanctions at all in place for court storming.  The home university must be responsible for enforcing the rules; failure to do so should be punishable by a significant fine even for the first offense.  I’d suggest $500,000 for the first offense, with half paid to the NCAA or the conference and the other half to the opposing school.  Subsequent offenses within a 36-month period would involve stiffer fines, loss of scholarships, and perhaps a prohibition against post-season play.

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A Relatively Minor Incident That Explains Why Nobody Can Trust Anybody in Politics, and Shouldn’t.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

A robo call supposedly featuring President Biden urging New Hampshire Democrats not to vote in the state’s presidential primary was immediately used by the news media to accuse Republicans of suppressing votes, because, you know, that’s what they do. The media reported that two Texas companies were the source of the calls: Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom, and that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had issued cease-and-desist letters to both companies. Texas companies—well, we all know what THAT means.

Surprise! The deep-fake recording was not the work of those racist Republicans, but of a Democratic consultant who worked for Democrat Dean Phillips’s quixotic Presidential campaign. Phillips has the ethical mission of giving his party’s voters the opportunity to show that they would prefer not to have a rapidly declining dementia sufferer carry the Democratic banner in November.

Paul Carpenter, a New Orleans magician—that’s him doing street magic above— came forward to admit that he was hired to use artificial intelligence to impersonate President Joe Biden for the robocalls. Carpenter explained that he was hired in January by veteran Democratic consultant Steve Kramer, who has been advising Phillips. “I created the audio used in the robocall. I did not distribute it,” Carpenter said. “I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it. There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.” He says he was paid $150.

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The Chrystal Clanton Saga: I Don’t Understand This Story At All…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Does this make sense to you?

SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas has hired Crystal Clanton to be his law clerk beginning in the upcoming term. In 2015, when Clanton was 20 and working for Turning Point USA, she was accused of sending racist texts to a fellow employee. One alleged text read, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE…Like fuck them all … I hate blacks. End of story.” The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote about the texts in 2017 in an article about Turning Point USA, which is close with Thomas’s activist wife Ginni. Clanton wrote in an email to Mayer, “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager.” The first aspect of the story I don’t understand: I am reading everywhere that Clanton didn’t deny writing the texts, which points to her guilt. I would say that stating that you don’t recall sending a message and that it isn’t something you believe, believed or would ever say is the equivalent of a denial.

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Now THIS Is an Unethical Lawyer!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Tennessee Supreme Court this month disbarred a Nashville lawyer, Brian Philip Manookian, for habitual unethical conduct that I have a hard time believing that any lawyer would dare to engage in even once. Manookian, wrote the Court, “engaged in this long pattern of intimidating and degrading conduct” to succeed in a medical liability case, the Tennessee Supreme Court said. His goal was to coerce opposing lawyers “into standing down to avoid personal humiliation and emotional distress for them or their families. A business model of sorts, based on fear….To say that Mr. Manookian engaged in multiple offenses is to understate,” the state supreme court continued. “Despite lectures, fines, sanctions and suspensions from judge after judge, Mr. Manookian did not choose merely to continue engaging in misconduct—each time he received the expected negative reaction to his behavior, he responded by escalating it.”

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Alan Page, Esq.: Role Model

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

After being so critical of the NFL’s ethics and business practices, I feel obligated to highlight the impressive example of Alan Page, a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee (in 1988) who does not suffer from CTE and who exemplifies the kind of role model American youth should know about and emulate. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had no idea that Page had gone on from his NFL exploits with the Minnesota Vikings to, among other things,

  • Establish and oversee the Page Education Foundation, which award Page Scholarships to black students who are then obligated  to mentor younger children. The foundation has awarded nearly 9,000 scholarships and taken in approximately $16 million in grants.
  • Earn a law degree from the University of Minnesota in 1978, while he was still playing football.
  • Practice employment law in a law firm,  join the Attorney General’s office, and eventually became assistant attorney general.
  • Get elected to the Minnesota Supreme Court four times,  sitting for 22 years on the court before  hitting the mandatory retirement age of 70.
  • Write inspirational children’s books with his daughter, Kamie Page.

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From India, the Case of the Ethical Burglars

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I am at a loss as to how to categorize this strange story, as Mallory’s outburst above suggests.

Thieves broke into the opulent home of celebrated Bollywood film director M. Manikandan, escaping with gold, silver and cash. A few days later, however, someone left a small plastic bag outside the mansion’s gates. It was carefully fastened shut, and contained an object wrapped in a white handkerchief. Upon unwrapping it, the director discovered a medal he had won in 2021 for one of his acclaimed films. Accompanying the prestigious award was a handwritten note from the burglars (in Tamil, one of India’s many regional languages). “Sir, please forgive us,” the note read. “Your hard work belongs to you alone.”

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