Character

Nah, The Democratic Party Hasn’t Become Openly Anti-Semitic! It’s Just That One of Its Biggest Allies Wants To Erase Jews From the Holocaust…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

When I read about this, I was certain that some NEA-hating conservative news source was exaggerating. Nope. It is right there in black and white, as you can see above in the entry from the National Education Association’s newly released 2025 handbook. My brain found this so shocking that it refused to explode as it should have, and just went into a safety shutdown. I can’t account for the last three hours…

The nation’s largest teacher’s union is a massive contributor to the Democratic Party, a major reason why public education has deteriorated into ideological indoctrination, and a force for ill in American culture and society. It was, for instance, substantially responsible for the disastrous decision to close the schools in the midst of the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck. Now it has openly proclaimed its hostility toward not just Israel, but the Jewish people.

The handbook, the NEA’s guide for the union’s nearly 3 million members, describes the Holocaust as having “12 million victims… from different faiths.” As unquestioned historical sources make undeniable, “The Final Solution” was at the core of Hitler’s extermination project. The NEA says the union will “promote the celebration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day” by “recognizing more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics.” This section is on the page before the one shown above:

The NEA then promotes “Nakba” education, which describes Israel’s founding in 1948 as the “forced, violent displacement” of 750,000 Palestinians. The document further pledges to teach that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” and defends educators’ and students’ “free speech in defense of Palestine.” In case the graphic above is too hard to read, here are the key sections:

States one news source, “Critics argue the NEA is promoting a one-sided, revisionist history while ignoring the central role of Jews in the Holocaust.” This would warrant a “Ya think?” except that I have used my quote for today in the previous post. Where’s the “argument”? That is exactly what the NEA does in the handbook, and the position goes beyond unethical into evil. The group is obviously proud of its position and confident that the Democratic Party and the public supports it.

Did you know that the Republicans and Donald Trump are Nazis?

Now what? Here is what…

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Return of the “2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck”

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Here is another important news story that the mainstream media (or Democratic operatives, per Instapundit) is ducking, spinning and warping like mad in order to protect its totalitarian allies in the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“The resistance”and the Democratic Party): the emails and other material recently declassified and released by Tulsi Gabbard backs up the contention Ethics Alarms began putting forward in the first Trump administration when it christened the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck.

This morning I stumbled on Fox News contributor and former GOP House member Trey Gowdy flipping out in frustration over the revelations and pretty much quoting Ethics Alarms from years ago. I can’t find a video of his explosion that will embed, and I can’t type well enough to make a transcript, but here’s the link, and here is a close approximation of the key quote:

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The Smearing of the President

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

…or, “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” Or, “THIS is CNN…”

Apparently the Axis media has made the considered decision to continue its unethical behavior from the first Trump term by employing any means necessary to create distrust in the elected President. This strategy, which is not only unethical journalism but despicable citizenship that is dangerous to national stability, also deliberately exploits and aggravates Trump Derangement Syndrome, which I now genuinely believe needs to be recognized by the American Psychiatic Association as a mental disorder. Because it is: the things many of my otherwise intelligent, educated and rational friends are posting on Facebook this year are heartbreaking. For example, several once-rational friends think this is a trenchant meme:

Morons. I’ll write a post about this current delusion later today, but it illustrates the point.

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I Guess, This Being An Ethics Blog, I Have To Post On “Coldplaygate.”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Social media has gone bonkers since last Wednesday night, when Andy Byron, the married CEO of New York-based software development company Astronomer, was caught by a “Kiss-cam” cuddling Kristin Cabot, the company’s head of human resources, on the Jumbotron at a Coldplay concert at Gillette stadium in Foxborough, Mass. When the two realized they were on camera, they went out of their way to look as guilty as possible, pulling apart, with her turning her back on the camera and him ducking out of view.

Morons. When you are caught beyond escaping, life competence dictates that you must have the presence of mind to maintain whatever shred of dignity you may have left. (Practice helps.) The couple’s futile efforts at a cover-up prompted Coldplay front man Chris Martin to say from the stage: “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy.”

Then the clip gained millions of hits on X, TikTok and Instagram, so it was easy to identify the illicit lovers. Astronomer announced that it had put Byron on leave, saying, “Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability.” Over the weekend, Byron resigned.

The incident is an instant classic, which means people will remember it longer than the usual day-and-a-half. The Philadelphia Phillies made fun of the scandal by screening a video on the Jumbotron during Friday night’s game showing the team’s mascot Phillie Phanatic in an embrace with a fuzzy green companion. Commemorative merchandise, such as a sweatshirt bearing the legend “I TOOK MY SIDEPIECE TO THE COLDPLAY CONCERT AND IT RUINED MY LIFE” can be purchased online.

Ethics notes…

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Another Bonkers Question To “Social Q’s”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Who are these people?

A mere summary won’t do the full craziness of this question to the NYT’s manners advice column full justice, so here’s the whole, ugly thing:

My husband’s brother, mid-60s, has always been single. Before his parents died, he lived with them. While attending a violent political rally that my husband and I opposed early in the pandemic, he contracted Covid, then infected his mother and behaved irresponsibly in managing her care. She died soon after. We have had no real relationship with him in years. Still, he emails suggestions of gifts he would like for birthdays and Christmas. We send them, and he responds with thank-you notes. When he asks what we would like, we respond that we don’t want any gifts. He sends them anyway, and we donate them to charity. We do not acknowledge them, which we normally would do. Recently, he expressed a desire for acknowledgment of his gifts. How should we handle this?

I’m not going to read columnist Phillip Galanes’s answer to this one because I declared him an irredeemable woke bigot quite a while ago. I’m insulted that he thinks any reader worthy of human association would be interested in such a family’s pathology. Shunning a family member is an extreme move that had better be justifiable; shunning him without letting him know he’s being shunned is not just cruel, it’s weird.

Considerations:

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Smug, Self-Satisfied Progressive Asshole of the Year: David Litt

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

The obnoxious screed “Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?,” authored by an obscure writer I never heard of (three of his better-known mentors are above) and hope I never hear of again, was deemed appropriate content for New York Times readers, and not as satire either.

Litt epitomizes the type of insufferable elitist jerks that have made the modern Left the pit of despond that it has become over the last decade or so. Yuck. Was this guy ever a tolerable human being? The Times should be required to publish a full analysis of how Litt got this way as a public service, kind of like that episode of “I Love Lucy” where her book draft was sought by a publisher to use in a how-to tome to illustrate what writers shouldn’t ever do.

The column is about how Litt “felt a civic duty to be rude” to his wife’s younger brother because he hadn’t seen the light and surrendered his mind to the Woke and Wonderful. A few excerpts will tell you all you need to know about Litt, but I may add a little commentary here and there:

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There’s No Crying In Tennis!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Poland’s No. 8 seed Iga Świątek beat the U.S.’s 13th seed Amanda Anisimova 6-0, 6-0 in the Wimbledon women’s final yesterday. That’s a slaughter in tennis, ending Anisimova’s feel good story as an underdog in humilation.

Świątek is one one of the best players in the world; though this is Świątek’s first Wimbledon title it’s her sixth Grand Slam title. She was favored to win, but no one has won the Women’s finals 12 games to none in a Grand Slam tournament since 1988. Anisimova’s wipe-out is being attributed to nerves; if she were a male player, the explanation would be “choking.”

Worse, however, is that after the match Anisimova started weeping, covered her head with a towel and left the court. When she came back to a huge reception from the crowd, she was still sobbing. After receiving the runners-up’s plate at center court, she cried some more as she addressed the crowd.

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Into the “It Isn’t What It Is” Hall of Fame Goes L.A. Mayor Karen Bass

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Video has “surfaced”—where do these surfaced videos go to, before they surface?—of Los Angeles’s incompetent, smug, ridiculous mayor Karen Bass answering a question about her city’s ICE riots by replying that “they never happened.” See?

The response on social media has been swift and terrible…

I just don’t understand.

How do politicians like Bass keep getting away with this? Democrats during the Biden Administration set new records for “It isn’t what it is” gaslighting. The border was secure. Inflation wasn’t really excessive. Men who declared themselves women while keeping all their junk were…POOF!…women. Joe Biden was “sharp as a tack.” War is Peace. Oops, sorry, that last one was Big Brother. How does Bass and her party live with themselves? How can they look themselves in the mirror? Why do Democrats tolerate it?

Have they no sense of decency, at long last? Have they left no sense of decency?

Apparently not, or they would be hiding their heads under paper bags.

[Of course, it helps that virtually no Axis news sources have reported on the video. But we know that journalists have no sense of decency…]

Biden’s Doctor Claims Privilege and Takes The Fifth

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Former President Biden’s White House physician, Kevin O’Connor, refused to answer questions for the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the White House and Democratic cover-up of Biden’s mental decline and disability. News accounts from the Axis keep stating that Biden’s condition and a cover-up are “alleged” only, but res ipsa loquitur: what we already know, have witnessed and heard tells us all we need to know except the who, how, and how long. Biden was (is ) suffering from dementia of one kind or another. His condition was carefully, if insufficiently, hidden from the public. The fact that his power had to be exercised by unelected figures using the President as their agent, puppet or beard constitutes at least as great a scandal as Watergate, and perhaps a more substantial attack on our democracy.

This betrayal of the public trust requires at least as thorough an investigation as that definitive scandal in the Nixon White House received. Democrats, however, unlike the Republicans of the Watergate era, are refusing to do their duty and assist in the inquiry, probably because they have metaphorical blood on their hands. They were complicit. They were guilty. The House inquiry includes questions about whether Biden’s staff used the autopen to illegally carry out official actions in Biden’s name. One would think both Democrats and Republicans would be concerned about this. Apparently not. Make of that what you will.

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The Ethicist Answers An Officious Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

…and much more nicely than I would have,

“Name Withheld” says that a member of her book club typically regurgitates online reviews of the assigned books that she seldom reads, aggressively presents them as her own, and is begging for a slapdown. “In the days before a meeting, she will casually share with me that she ‘couldn’t get into it,’ but she never says so to the other members. I sit there steaming but don’t reveal her duplicity. What would you do?,” she asks Prof. Appiah, the Times Magazine ethics advice columnist in lat week’s column, “A Woman in My Book Club Never Reads the Books. Can I Expose Her?”

“I get why you’re peeved,” the professor says. So do I: she thinks a social book club is a seminar for credit. “Still, the first rule of book clubs is that someone will always show up having read only the first chapter and the last page, armed with three profound observations from Goodreads.” No, that’s the second rule of book clubs. The first rule is to provide a regular opportunity for people to get together and socialize in the context of a structure more potentially engaging than arguing about Donald Trump. “Your job, in any case, isn’t to police her page turns. Cast yourself as the enforcer, and you betray the spirit of a group dedicated to forging connections through stories.”

Bingo.

“But the goal isn’t to humiliate her…maintain your small, imperfect community. One thing you’ll have learned from your books, after all, is that the flawed characters are always the most human.” Yadayadayada. Maybe she’s having cognitive issues. Maybe she’s dyslexic. Maybe she’s lonely and just wants company. Maybe she’s insecure about her analytical ability. The woman’s cheating in her book club exploits literally hurts nobody but herself at worst, and possibly allows her some human contact that she desperately needs at small cost to the other members.

Sure, the inquirer can expose her. To me, however, the fact that she’d even consider it means I’d rather have the book faker in my club than her.