Character

Some Answers To Gail Collins’ Question: “Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Gail Collins is one of the New York Times’ chatty and less extreme progressive columnists, which is not to say that her bias doesn’t leap from the page at regular intervals. Her latest effort is “Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?” (gift link). The sudden interest in this on-its-face sexist query comes from two likely sources: Michelle Obama’s offensive accusation (but she just doesn’t like the United States very much and has been saying so in various ways since she was in college) that the public isn’t “ready” for a female President, and the moronic DNC cant that the only reason Kamala Harris lost (after the worst Presidential campaign ever!) was that she was sort-of black and/or female, take your pick.

The United States doesn’t need a female President, or a male President, or a black President, or a white President, or a gay President, or a short President. The United States needs a competent, ethical courageous and effective President, and what EEOC category or categories that leader fits into should be irrelevant. Now, I have spent decades studying where Presidents come from, and it is true that a lot of the features and backgrounds that seem to create the weird types that tend to become POTUS do not help the chances of aspiring female Presidents, and it will take a remarkable, unusual woman to overcome the template. (But Presidents should be remarkable, shouldn’t they?)

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Once Again, An AI Bot Doesn’t Know What It’s Talking About, This Time Regarding U.S. Presidents

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I wish Ann Althouse would stop publishing her conversations with Grok, Elon Musk’s chatbot. Is she on Elon’s payroll? Yesterday, the quirky retired progressive law prof turned blogger was writing about the Netflix series “Death by Lightning” based on the excellent  “Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President,” which EA discussed several years ago. (The books main character, James Garfield, is one of my favorite Presidents, as is the man who succeeded him after he was assassinated, his VP Chester A. Arthur.)

Noting that Garfield was a reluctant Presidential nominee, Ann decided to once again ask Grok’s opinion, as she has been doing almost daily for months now. “I’m interested in the Presidents who have not wanted to be President, who have felt bad about winning. I asked Grok to list them in the order of how much they did not want to have to do it.” Well, I wouldn’t have had to ask that, and Althouse, by publishing Grok’s ill-informed and sloppily reasoned answer, has made her readers less informed than they already are. Here was Grok’s terrible answer:

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The U.S. “Isn’t Ready” For a Woman President? Oh Shut Up, Michelle!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Michelle Obama‘s latest nonsense was too stupid for an “unethical quote” award and she’s never been elected to anything, so the “Incompetent Elected Official” designation is also beyond her grasp. If “Most Over-rated, Arrogant, Narcissistic First Lady in U.S. History” title was the prize, Michelle would lap the competition.

Here’s her whole, nauseating quote in response to actress Tracee Ellis Ross (Diana’s daughter) on whether there has been enough “room” created for a woman President, whatever the hell that means:

“As we saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready. That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running ‘cause you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman. We got a lot of growing up to do and there’s still … a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman and we saw it.”

What? Who admires this woman, and how do they justify it? To begin with, Hillary Clinton, a woman last I checked, won the popular vote in the 2016 election, meaning that our bigoted, juvenile population still voted for a female President despite her running one of the most inept and offensive campaigns in U.S. Presidential history…until the next woman ran. You can see that one with full babbling cretinism flying in the video above, where Kamala gloats about her “three dimensional chess” brilliant strategy that lost.

It isn’t that the U.S. isn’t ready for a female President: it isn’t ready for a phony, blithering, incompetent female President. Kamala lost by less than 2 percentage points despite being unable to put together a coherent argument, getting an unearned nomination, picking a complete boob as her running mate, and praising the record of the even bigger boob who picked her as VP, and who was the Worst President Ever.

“Harris lost because of sexism” is a despicable, dishonest and insulting excuse for her party’s defeat, and the fact that Michelle Obama would stoop to it gives us one more, like, incompetent and untrustworthy, like, female not to vote for as, like, President.

What an asshole.

Note To ABC News: “Live By The Bias, Die By The Bias!”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

ABC News got its just desserts on Sunday, when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” to discuss with George the government shutdown and correctly characterize it as the Democrats holding the innocent Americans hostage while they try to refuse to acknowledge that they no longer run the country.

Bessent made it clear—because, you know, it’s the truth— that the Democrats’ aim was to sabotage Trump’s record going into the midterm, as he described the “human costs” of the Left’s tantrum including holiday air travel, cargo transport and supply chain disruptions. When Stephanopoulos acted as he always does, as an advocate for his political party, Bessent pointed out his hypocrisy.

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No Surprise: Prince Harry Is An Ethics Dunce, and Also an Idiot

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On the superb Showtime series “Ray Donovan,” actor Dash Mihok played Ray’s sad, stupid, easily manipulated brother, “Bunchie.” I always thought self-exiled Prince Harry was disturbingly Bunchie-like in appearance and intellect, and he proved the latter resemblance spectacularly in recent weeks.

As I discussed in an earlier post, Prince Harry attended one of the World Series games in L.A. with he and his insufferable wife wearing blue-and-white Dodgers caps. Harry’s father, King Charles, is the official ruler of Canada, a part of the British Commonwealth, and given that the Dodgers’ opposition in baseball’s ultimate series was the Toronto Blue Jays, many Brits and Canadians were upset that a member of the royal family would publicly favor the American competitor over the Canadian one. Of course they were. Imagine the scandal if one of Trump’s sons ostentatiously cheered on a Russian athlete in the Olympics.

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A Law Student Production of “Hamlet”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society is the now half-century old theater organization I inadvertently spawned as a first year law student (before they were called “1Ls”) at Georgetown University Law Center. Right now, the group, which calls itself “The only theater group with its own law school,” is nearing an all-time peak in student participation, interest and talent, making this old lawyer-theater guy proud and happy indeed.

Last night I attended closing night of the group’s ambitious, full production of “Hamlet,” which most community theater groups wouldn’t dare attempt. It was a modern dress version (period set “Hamlet’s” are the exception rather than the rule and have been for decades) with an “emo” concept that worked just fine. The student director staged with skill and intelligence, the casting was spot on, and it even gave me some new insights into the work despite having see the play too many times to list. Yes, a woman played the Danish prince, but the 1L actress was excellent, and female Hamlets first appeared in 1899, when the great Sarah Bernhardt played the role.

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Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Month: Zohran Mamdani [First in a Long, Long Series…]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”

—Zohran Mamdani‘s marathon victory speech on Election Night, after the Democratic Socialist (that is, Communist) was elected as New York City’s mayor.

A commenter asked my opinion regarding Mamdani’s speech and I demurred, because it was standard commie tripe that I’ve read and heard from everyone from Lenin to Castro, and now this guy. He speaks well, and I’m always in favor of that as a key leadership skill. So did David Koresh. However, as I kept seeing that quote being published by the disgracefully uncritical mainstream media, my inner Popeye scratched to get out (“It’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!”) Who does he think he’s kidding?

Perhaps more importantly, what is the proper reaction to any American who wasn’t raised in a cave who doesn’t hear that insane claim and conclude, “Oh, brother! So much for that guy. He’s either lying, ignorant or a moron”? At very least it’s “RUN AWAY!”

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Ethical or Unethical Quote? President Trump on Nancy Pelosi:

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments


“Nancy Pelosi, the old and broken political hack who Impeached me twice and lost, is finally calling it ‘quits.’ She illegally made a fortune in the Stock Market, ripped off the American Public, and was a disaster for America. I’m glad to see the stench of Nancy Pelosi go!!!”

—President Donald Trump on Truth Social today, responding to the news that Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi will not run for another term. (What do you really think, Mr. President?)

I was going to frame this as an Ethics Quiz, but thought better of it. Of course a U.S President shouldn’t stoop to this kind of rhetoric, even if everyone else is, about him. “Old and broken,” “hack” and “stench” cross the line into ad hominem, but then that’s Trump, unfortunately. The sentiment, however is deserved, which is why EA designated Pelosi as an Ethics Villain. She has been an unequivocally destructive force on the U.S. scene, from her irresponsible and unethical ushering of Obamacare through to passage without letting it be thoroughly vetted, to her ruinous impeachments (we no longer have a non-partisan impeachment option, thanks to her precedents) to her disgusting performance during Trump’s final State of the Union address in his last term, to the rigged “J-6” hearings. Trump is also correct about her insider trading, though she has the defense of “Everybody does it,” just not as effectively as she did.

Yes, Trump’s message is typical “tit-for-tat” after she called him a “vile creature” and the “worst thing on the face of the earth,” to which “hack” and “stench” seem mild insults in comparison. President still have an obligation to eschew such name-calling and “take the high road,” a principle that Trump either rejects or refuses to acknowledge.

On the other hand, as Captain Hook would never say, everything Trump said is true. So there’s that… Ann Althouse wrote that she was impressed that Trump didn’t slip any sexist rhetoric into his message.

And that, my friends, is called damning with faint praise.

Back Off, Progressives: Dwight David Eisenhower Was An Excellent President In His Time.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Which is, after all, the only time that matters.…at the time.

I just wrote a long rebuttal to a recently Trump Deranged friend of impressive mind and credentials, who decided to go after, of all people, President Dwight Eisenhower for a speech in which he extolled moral values because, my friend’s Facebook post declared, “in real life the years of Eisenhower’s administration—essentially all of the 1950s—did not even come close to measuring up to the tenets of social, racial, ethnic and sexual justice and economic equity that most of us today believe are the standards of a just society.”

“That is an important reminder for all of us us that times do change,” he continued, “and that as right-thinking as Eisenhower’s words seem on the surface, they were spoken by the leader of a society that was very repressive in many ways—economically, socially, racially, sexually and otherwise.” This, to use the vernacular, pissed me off greatly. Ike has gone higher in my estimation of him as President the more I read about him and especially the more I watch other President struggle with the job he seemed to do effortlessly. (Of course, Ike may be the only one of our Presidents for whom the office could be considered a step down in difficulty and responsibility, after overseeing the Allied effort to save the world in World War II.)

Here, with minor edits to protect the guilty, is what I posted in response to that slap at Ike:

***

But this is the purest form of Presentism, and a grossly unfair assessment of Ike, one of our most under-rated and effective Presidents. It is always easy to go back and condemn figures of the past who did not have the benefit of many decades of accumulated experience and wisdom; easy and wrong. It is by this standard that we saw efforts in demented regions like San Francisco (and our own) to strip historical honors from, among others, the Founders, because they were not sufficiently psychic to reject their society’s and culture’s mistaken beliefs, such as the inherent inferiority of other races to theirs.

 I’ve studied Eisenhower’s own writings and those about him. His vision of the Presidency was that his job was to protect and preserve the culture, not change it; that the culture would evolve and change in its own time, when society was ready for it. As a result, Eisenhower led a United States that honored and trusted its institutions at a level that seems astonishing today. He had a great part in that.

Nobody accused him of being a “king,” but in Boston, even then a bulwark of the Democratic Party, kids listened to “Hail to the Chief” on the most popular children’s show (creepily titled “Big Brother”!) as a photo of Ike appeared (the one above, in fact) on the screen and we “toasted” the President of the United States with a glass of milk. The Horror.

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Ethics Hero: Singer Tish Hyman

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In an ethics seminar I recently described how conduct could be legal but unethical (example: lying) and ethical but illegal (civil disobedience). Singer Trish Hyman decided that a little disturbance of the peace in a Gold’s Gym’s cafe area was the best way to draw attention to the gym’s unethical (and stupid….but woke, so it’s okay) practices regarding dangling penises in women’s changing rooms, so she shouted out her complaint raucously and made sure it was recorded.

The Beverly Center Gold’s Gym revoked the singer’s membership after she complained that a transgender wannabe woman (“with a big dick”) being in the women’s dressing room. “Today I was naked in the locker room. I turned around, and there was a man there. Boy clothes, lip gloss, standing there looking at me, and I’m butt naked,” Hyman said in a video posted on TikTok.

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