Yikes.
Possible responses:
What was your reaction?
...Trump might blow the race to Joe
By acting crazily.
Christmas Eve found Donald
Roasting no chestnut
Trump’s deranged for Christmas
He’s in a nasty rut!
Here is what the man who wants to be trusted to hold the most powerful job on earth sends out to the public…
It’s really a shame that I have to post this today, when the Ethics Alarms traffic consists largely of metaphorical tumbleweeds blowing down the empty dusty streets. However, we know most of the news media is trying to bury the series of revelations that prove that the leader of higher education rot hired an unqualified president because she was black, female, and a DEI agent, and that because she is black and female, Harvard is employing lies, excuses and rationalizations to avoid dumping her when a white male president who had been revealed as a plagiarist in scholarship and a blathering fool before Congress would have been fired in a flash.
I know this blog is a small, tinny voice in the vast wilderness, but it’s something.
Above you see excerpts from a 15 page letter sent to the New York Post threatening to sue on Harvard’s behalf if the paper continued to report the discovery by conservative reporter Christopher Rufo and others that Gay had plagiarized the works of other scholars by using their words and ideas as her own without attribution in dozens of instances, including her Harvard dissertation. The Post points out that Harvard, through its attorneys at Clare Locke, stated that there was no plagiarism and that the allegations were false before Harvard had bothered to investigate the claims. This also means that Gay approved of the letter, which she knew was itself “demonstrably false”:
Nothing says Christmas like a late 19th century black Deputy Federal Marshal in the Indian Territory. As I watched the Paramount+ video series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.” I was struck by what an inspiring and unifying this remarkable man’s story would be for school children, and wondered not only why it isn’t taught today, but why it wasn’t taught while I was in school. Not only hadn’t I heard of Reeves before last night, I assumed the film was just another race- or gender-flipped Western, like “Django Unchained or The Hateful Eight.” It’s an amazing story, and a true one.
Bass Reeves (1838–1910) was born as a slave in Arkansas, then lived in Lamar and Grayson counties, Texas, where he belonged to Col. George R. Reeves, who later become the Speaker of the House in the Texas legislature. Reeves escaped north into the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), where he had dealings with the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole tribes, learning enough of their languages to be useful to him later. He fought with the Union Indian Home Guard Regiments during the Civil War, then settled in Arkansas as a farmer. To make extra money, Reeves served as a guide, scout and tracker for the deputy U.S. marshals who worked in the Indian Territory (like Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit”!) out of “Hanging Judge” Parker’s federal court at Fort Smith. Judge Parker commissioned Reeves as the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River.
He worked for thirty-two years as a deputy marshal in the Indian Territory, arresting an estimated 3,000 lawbreakers and shooting 14 of them dead in self defense. (It helped considerably that he was 6’2,” remarkably strong, and a dead shot with pistol or rifle.) Reeves was never wounded himself, though his hat was shot off a few times (they show this in the series). Reeves demonstrated his integrity when he brought his own son in for murder once a warrant was issued.
It was interesting that the following incident occurred shortly after my post defending horror auteur Mike Flanagan from a conservative critic’s attack because he had one of his characters say that she “threw up in her mouth” thinking about Tucker Carlson. Guesting on “Prime Time with Alex Stein” (Stein is kind of a cheap knock-off of Tucker Carlson), the Fox News exile was asked by his conspiracy theory-loving host, “Do you think that the moon landing was real, and do you think that it was done by Nazis that were literally brought over during Operation Paperclip? Is that a conspiracy or is that true, in your opinion, Tucker?”
I’ve always wondered if the Nazi scientists were only figuratively brought over in Operation Paperclip, haven’t you? Stein’s question was brain-meltingly stupid, and the only responsible answer to it in a broadcast setting would be, “Of course the moon landing was real, of course I don’t believe it was faked, and if you do, I’m leaving so I can be interviewed by someone who is smarter than you, like, say, my dog.”
But Carlson didn’t say that. Instead, he replied, “You know, I don’t know! I do know that the the original moon landing tapes have been erased at NASA because they needed, you know, the tape space. So they just kind of taped over them.” Yeah, they did: almost all conspiracy theories depend on relevant records and evidence being destroyed or lost. It doesn’t matter: the moon landing conspiracy theory is one of the most ridiculous and insulting of them all. Giving it any credence is unforgivable: Buzz Aldrin once punched a guy in the face when he implied that the old astronaut was part of the supposed hoax, and I thought that was an appropriate response.
—–Donald Trump, in the same stream of consciousness rant that produced his previous Unethical Quote of the Month in New Hampshire (the clip is here)
I don’t have to explain what’s wrong with this, right? I don’t have to explain it because if you read Ethics Alarms, you must have at least a sufficient number of functioning brain cells to know why this is a stunningly idiotic thing for Trump to say. Now, I might decide that it is interesting that Russia’s Machiavellian dictator is using the various prosecutions of Trump by Democratic officials and Biden’s Justice Department to point out the hypocrisy in U.S. democracy under Biden, and refer to that Putin quote (if it really is a quote) for that purpose. However, I would never use a Putin in an appeal to authority, which is what Trump did in New Hampshire.
‘You don’t believe me that Biden is a threat to Democracy? Well, even such a distinguished expert as the Russian dictator agrees with me, so there!’ is what Trump said, in essence. Putin cannot be used as an authority because Putin is a proven liar, and is especially useless for that purpose regarding the United States, which is, after all, supporting a nation Russia is currently fighting. What Trump said is literally as absurd as it would have been for Richard Nixon, running for President against Hubert Humphrey in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam war, to quote Ho Chi Minh or Chairman Mao saying that the Johnson administration was filled with warmongers and fools. Nixon didn’t do that, of course, because whatever else he was, Richard Nixon was a good lawyer, and knew that if you use an unreliable and discredited authority in a brief or oral argument, the court is going to think, “Wow, this guy is desperate. And an idiot…”
–—Presumptive GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump during a rally in Durham, NH.
To its credit, C-Span introduced the clip of Trump blathering by noting he was talking about illegal immigrants, and I’m sure he was. However he never said “illegal immigrants” or anything similar. He just gave a number that could be illegal immigrants or just immigrants. “When they let 15, 16 million people into the country…we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he began. Wait, we “let” legal immigrants into the country: is Trump complaining about them?
While I was certain that Harvard would not have the integrity or guts to dump its albatross of a president having trapped the university in DEI Hell by selecting a black female social justice warrior in the first place, I have never held any illusions that this reflex circling of the progressive wagons and rote vote of confidence would do anything to slow Harvard’s demise. To be curt: the nation’s most prestigious university—for now—has a flat learning curve.
Isn’t that ironic.
Here are three updates on the ongoing Harvard debacle:
City-Journal, arguably the best of the conservative websites, has extensive coverage of the plagiarism allegations against Claudine Gay, whose presidency of Harvard was already on shaky ground following her awful testimony before Congress regarding the burgeoning anti-Semitism on campus. It is too detailed for me to summarize correctly, and if I cut and paste sufficient amounts of the piece I’ll be plagiarizing, so you should read all about it here. (You may have to register, but access is free.)
Disgustingly, the New York Times and the Washington Post have not reported this yet. That’s outrageous, and one more screaming example of how the Left circles its wagons any time an ally seriously screws up. Harvard is to progressive indoctrination in education what the Times is to progressive propaganda in journalism, but the last thing the mainstream media needs now is another Hunter Biden laptop fiasco. Harvard is very much in the news already for it’s ugly role in the Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck; Gay is now a central figure, and for the plagiarism development to be given the “nothing to see here” treatment by the news media is spectacularly foolish as well as unethical. [Update: This afternoon, after Harvard mentioned the plagiarism issue, both the Times and the Post finally reported on it its digital editions.]
But I digress…I had initially assumed that the accusations that Gay had violated Harvard’s own policies on citations, credit to other scholars and plagiarism were like past attacks on controversial authors like Ann Coulter, technical but non substantive, the sort that could be dug up on many published public figures by those seeking to damage their reputations. I was mistaken, however. Gay’s violations are substantive and substantial. Moreover, Gay appears to have appropriated material from one of the most significant scholars in the field of racial issues in American, now retired Vanderbilt professor and author Carol Swain.
Imagine: this guy is on the House Judiciary Committee! Imagine again: here is what passes for rational, logical, responsible rhetoric on MSNBC.
Asked about the disgraceful performance of the three college presidents under questioning from Rep. Elise Stefanik, Rep. Raskin pulled out every irrelevant anti-Republican talking point he could think of to avoid criticizing fellow woke warriors, beginning with saying he hopes a college president would take action when there are calls for genocide on campus because “lax Republican gun laws” mean “we’ve got to take very seriously” people making threats.
Yes, the debacle at the hearing was about gun control. Then he really got rolling:
Ethics Alarms 