Character

Unethical “Journalist” of the Month: Jason Sattler

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ethics Alarms just added “Unethical Journalist” to its categories. I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier, but the furious “It isn’t what it is” caterwauling from so many mainstream media voices that it is absurd–absurd, I tell you!—for anyone to think that Joe Biden isn’t ready to win “Jeopardy” and recite the Constitution from memory sealed the deal. The spectacle has been as depressing for the public as it is embarrassing for the rotting profession of journalism.

Some sectors managed to barely turn around and accept reality, sort of: the New York Times, after publishing ridiculous denials from Paul Krugman and others, issued an editorial Sunday expressing alarm at the combined effect of the Biden DOJ’s Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 388 page report stating that the President had “diminished faculties” and was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” But even that cry in the dark concluded that Biden “needs to do more to show the public that he is fully capable of holding office until age 86,” a statement that disingenuously implies that Biden has done anything that indicates he can do his job now, much less in five years.” How can he do “more” to show something is true when it is so obvious that it isn’t true? It’s like complaining that public schools need to do more to show that they are unbiased and competent.

And naturally, the Times’ only stated impetus for its alarm was not that having a mentally deficient President is a peril to the nation, but that “the stakes in this presidential election are too high for Mr. Biden to hope that he can skate through a campaign with the help of teleprompters and aides and somehow defeat as manifestly unfit an opponent as Donald Trump.” (Don Surber, a newspaper journalist turned Substack pundit, notes that his old employers, which have seen their circulation more than halved in the last 20 years and opines that newspapers have destroyed their credibility by dropping all pretense of credibility and are doomed. “It is not that the media gets the story wrong; it is that the media seldom admits it was wrong,” he writes.)

Which brings me to “journalist” Jason Sattler.

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From Texas, A “Better Late Than Never” Horror Story

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

The Texas Monthly story is titled, “The Juror Who Found Herself Guilty.” Its tone is celebratory: a juror who made an unethical decision (though the writer attempts to mitigate it in many ways throughout his article) courageously decided to undo the wrong, and succeeded. Far from being impressed with the alleged ethics hero, Estella Ybarra, I found the story infuriating, and its conclusion that Ybarra should be admired untenable.

The story is in the familiar, long-form format familiar to readers of the New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair and The Atlantic. We are given more details about the lives of all the participants in a drama than we need as well as thick context about every facet of the tale. It can be summarized easily, however, and relatively quickly.

In 1990, when Ybarra was 48 years old, she served on a jury charged with determining the guilt of a Mexican-American man accused of rape. She was the hold-out juror, Henry Fonda in “Twelve Angry Men”; everyone else was certain Carlos Jaile (above) had raped an eight-year-old girl. Ybarra was not: she felt the evidence was thin. There was no physical evidence, the defendant had an alibi, and the main proof of his guilt offered was a child’s eyewitness identification after the fact. But, we are told, Estella was still learning English despite being born in the U.S. (Whose fault is that?) and didn’t understand the justice system very well. (Or that?). As a result, she allowed herself to be bullied into voting ‘guilty’ by the men on the jury, even though she was not at all convinced Carols Jaile was.

She went home after Jaile was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and wept, we are told. This is supposed to make her seem sympathetic. Later, Estella received a certificate in the mail stating that by serving as a juror and “accepting this difficult and vital responsibility of citizenship in a fair and conscientious manner, you have aided in perpetuating the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty and the only safe guarantee for the life, liberty and property of the citizen.” Ybarra threw the document into a drawer. She told the writer, Michael Hall, that she thought to herself, “We sent an innocent man away for the rest of his life.”

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Clearly, #MeToo Never Quite Got Its Message Across

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Baltimore judge Kevin M. Wilson is facing an ethics hearing in May after a female lawyer accused him of inappropriate and unwelcome touching at a bar association event at the Maryland Club in May of last year. Thecomplaining victim says that when she stopped at a table where Wilson and another judge were seated, she felt Wilson’s hand rub her leg up and down. Two lawyers witnessed this, as well as hearing the complainant tell Wilson that his behavior was inappropriate. The judge moved his hand away, but then, also allegedly, put his hand back on the attorney’s leg, moved his hand up under her skirt, and touched her buttocks.

The event was called “Join Our District Court Judges for Practice Tips on Tap,” so I guess maybe Wilson was just…tapping. 

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Regarding “The Appeaser’s Apology”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In last week’s open forum, there was discussion regarding this incident:

During his testimony in a U.S. Senate hearing on social media and its negative effect on children, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to a question inquiring whether he had taken any action to mitigate the problem, such as firing employees, providing compensation to alleged victims or apologizing to the families of people who were harmed by posts on Facebook or Instagram, which his company also owns. In response, Zuckerberg stood up, turned to an audience including parents holding up pictures of loved ones, and said,

“I am sorry for everything that you have gone through. It’s terrible. No one should have to go through the things your family has suffered. And this is why we invested so much and will continue doing industry leading efforts to make sure that no one has to go through the types of things your families have had to suffer.”

Tasked (by himself) with deciding where this statement falls on the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale, commenter JutGory opined,

It almost looks like a Number 8 (A forced apology for a rightful or legitimate act, in capitulation to bullying, fear, threats, desperation or other coercion.), except that Zuckerberg is not apologizing for a rightful or legitimate act. The Legislators were ascribing acts to him when he did nothing.

It also looks like a 10 (An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.), except that, again Zuckerberg is not apologizing for something he did.

I think the Apology Scale needs another collateral entry that does not actually fit on the scale: The Appeaser’s Apology: A forced apology offered in response to a baseless accusation of wrongdoing because the person demanding the apology is too stupid or self-righteous to bother reasoning with.

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Now THIS Is an Unethical Judge!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

How do people this unethical…and dumb…get to be judges? I don’t understand this story at all.

Sidney Southerland is a party in a child custody case before Family Court in the Bronx, and was surprised one day to receive a personal message on 3Fun, “the leading app for sexually free singles.”

The message was from the presiding judge in her case.

“GM,” the woman wrote in a message just before 8 a.m. on January 24 (“GM” is texting slang for good morning), “Am Cynthia. How are you?” The sender’s profile photo showed a woman wearing black heels and a black negligee, sitting cross-legged on a couch.

A stunned Southerland read the woman’s profile, which stated, “We are a full swap couple in an ethical non-monogamous dynamic looking to have some hot sexy fun with other full swap couples and single ladies.” It continued, “We love thick girls just as much as we love petite girls! At the end of the day it’s all about personality. Guys at the most should be stocky and I the female, prefer males to be somewhat endowed.”

It was her Family Court judge, Cynthia Lopez, and she had sure picked the wrong target for a pick-up. 

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I, For One, Am Thrilled That Rep. Ayanna Pressley Isn’t Conceding the “Most Unethical Member of ‘The Squad'” Title Without A Fight…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This has been a banner few months for “The Squad.” The one male member of the frighteningly incompetent, unethical and offensive band of far Left Democrats of Color disgraced himself by setting off a false fire alarm to try to block a vote in the House and claiming it was an accident, an obvious lie. Rep. Tlaib got herself censored for publicly advocating wiping Israel off the map. Rep. Omar recently proclaimed that her first loyalties were to Somalia rather than her adopted country, the U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, by most estimates the dumbest and least qualified of the gang, is being investigated by the Justice Dept, for misusing campaign funds. AOC, of course, is perpetually ridiculous. Let’s see, what has she done lately? Oh, she’s accusing Israel of “genocide” because it is waging war against the region that launched a surprise terror attack against its civilians, as it should and must. It’s an ignorant and indefensible position, but that’s Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. She’s like that pretty much all the time.

Yet amidst all of this, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) has been out of the limelight, and not keeping up her end of the bargain in behaving appropriately Squad-like. I’ve been disappointed in her. Fortunately, she came out smokin’ this week, accusing Walgreens of engaging in a “life-threatening act of racial and economic discrimination” in its decision to close one of its branches in Boston’s overwhelmingly black neighborhood of Roxbury. 

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R.I.P. Chita Rivera, an Ethical Star

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Chita Rivera, veteran musical comedy star, actress and dancer extraordinaire, has died at 91. She had a remarkable career and an unusually long one. I saw Chita perform live but once, long after her prime in a West End production of “The Kiss of the Spider Woman,” a not-so-great and over-hyped musical. Rivera had major roles in the hit Broadway productions of ”West Side Story,” “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Chicago,” among others. The Times obituary is full of information, though it skirts over what I recall as being a particularly cruel career blow, when Rivera was passed over for the role of Anita in the film version of “West Side Story” for Rita Moreno, even though Rivera had won a Tony for her performance in the role on stage. It also doesn’t mention an unusual altruistic act by Rivera when she was co-starring with Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde in the 1960 musical, “Bye Bye Birdie.”

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KABOOM! Harvard’s Chief Diversity Officer Is a Worse Plagiarist Than Even Claudine Gay!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

And there goes my head. I just painted the ceiling of my office, too.

Unbelievable! The Washington Free Beacon, in an exclusive (hey, you wouldn’t expect the New York Times, the Washington Post or the Boston Globe of “Spotlight” fame to do any investigative journalism that might embarrass a black, female DEI officer at Harvard, would you?), revealed that Harvard University’s Sherri Ann Charleston appears to have “plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks” and even taking credit for a study done by her own husband according to a complaint filed with the university yesterday. Charleston was the chief affirmative action officer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then joined Harvard in August 2020 as its first chief diversity officer—you know, because the negligent death of an overdosing career crook in Minnesota meant that Harvard had to launch a new bureaucracy. And what to you know? Charleston contributed to the fateful selection of former Harvard president Claudine Gay!

Charleston’s Harvard bio describes her as “one of the nation’s leading experts in diversity,” whatever that means. Oh wait…it means that she’s aces at “translating diversity and inclusion research into practice for students, staff, researchers, postdoctoral fellows and faculty of color.”

The allegations against Charleston look irrefutable and damning. From the Free Beacon report:

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Well You Know, God DOES Work in Mysterious Ways…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Denver, Colorado pastor Eli Regalado announced in a YouTube video last April that he would be selling cryptocurrency. The pastor said he was “setting the rails for God’s wealth transfer.” Regalado and his wife then began selling cryptocurrency, dubbed INDXcoin, to members of his Victorious Grace Church and other Christian communities in the Denver area using his “the “Kingdom Wealth Exchange,” an online cryptocurrency marketplace he set up for the purpose. They peddled the holy investment with prayers, quotes from the Bible, and entreaties to have faith in their product. Sure enough, the plan was a godsend, at least for the pastor and his wife: the Regalados raised more than $3.2 million from over 300 investors.

Unfortunately, the INDXcoin was worthless, except for the purpose of making the pastor and his wife rich. The Regalados used around $1.3 million of the supposedly “investment funds” on a Range Rover, jewelry, cosmetic dentistry and vacations, while renovating their Denver home. Hallelujah!

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How Do You Solve A Problem Like Rep. Omar?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I was actually going to begin this post with a parody of the cheery song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music,” “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?,” but decided against it for two reasons. First, no English words rhyme with “Omar,” so you’re stuck with fake sort-of rhymes like “home are” and “sonar,” and second, this is too serious a problem to cover in a song parody.

Among Donald Trump’s myriad offensive, stupid and gratuitously inflammatory comments while President was when he said in 2019 that the members of “the Squad” should “go back to where they came from.” This was particularly inept since most of that group of radical, socialist, anti-Semitic and or dumb-as-bricks Democrats are “from” the good ol’ USA, but in the case of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) at least, Trump may have had a valid point that he, as usual, chose the worst possible way to express.

In 2019, Omar declared as part of the anti-Semitic theme much of the Squad vocally embraces, “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says that it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Her message was that a lot of U.S. officials—you know, Jews— allowed a conflicting fealty to Israel to blunt their duty to pursue what is in the best interest of the United States. But yesterday, a video surfaced on Twitter/X showing Omar rousing a Somali-American crowd in her district by saying in part,

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