Character

Most Unethical Non-Criminal Cabinet Member In History?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I don’t know. Quite a few Cabinet members have been convicted of crimes in office, and the Biden Cabinet has other bad apples, notably Attorney General Merrick Garland. Still, it’s hard to imagine any federal department head more incompetent or guilty of dereliction of duty than Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Or more of a weasel. To be fair, he is the first Cuban-born Homeland Security Secretary, which makes him “historic” and yet another diversity feather in the current Democratic regime’s cap. And after all, that’s what’s really important, right?

I wish I were kidding.

Mayorkas, you no doubt recall, says that our Southern border is “secure,” apparently using the archaic definition of “secure” that meant “as porous as cheesecloth” in Chaucerian English. He also attempted to install an Orwellian “Disinformation Governance Board, until even the Democratic Party’s captive news media objected, which always signals that the Left’s totalitarian aspirations are getting ahead of themselves. But he really secured his place in the U.S. Cabinet Members Chamber of Horrors, it has now been revealed, by deliberately condemning border agents of whipping illegal immigrants along the Texas-Mexico border when he knew the allegations were false.

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Hypocrisy Check: If You Think Suffering Lingering Effects From A Stroke Disqualifies John Fetterman For The U.S. Senate, How Can You Support Herschel Walker?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Those who fervently believe that it is important to the future well-being of the nation to get the U.S. Senate out of clutches of the Democrats understandably regard the U.S. Senate race in Georgia, where ex-football hero Herschel Walker is attempting to knock Sen. Ralph Warnock out of office using celebrity, Donald Trump’s endorsement, an “R” next to his name and little else, as a crucial battleground. However, one can’t espouse ethical principles and discard them when they become inconvenient. (Well, one can, but it is dishonest and wrong.) The same people who rightly insist that John Fetterman’s lingering disabilities resulting from a May stroke make it irresponsible for him to continue running for Senator in Pennsylvania are choosing to ignore Herschel Walker’s claims that he has been “cured” of dissociative identity disorder (DID), aka. multiple personality disorder, that favorite mental aberration of Hollywood horror movies. Continue reading →

What Is The Fair And Just Punishment for Charles Southall III?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

After all, his crimes were non-violent. He’s African-American, and systemic racism has caused the “over-incarceration” of black men. He’s a man of God, and the Bible tells us to forgive. It says that there should be redemption even after heinous wrongdoing. Should Charles Southall III even spend time in prison at all?

For more than three decades, he has led the First Emanuel Baptist church in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But the minister also embezzled donations from congregants that were supposed to fund charity projects and building improvements. He stole grant and loan funds from the Edgar P Harney Spirit of Excellence Academy that he had created, and deposited them in a bank account controlled by him and an accomplice. He converted rental and sale payments on properties owned by his church. All together, the minister took about $900,000, and used the money to pay off his personal expenses and purchases.

He pleaded guilty and has pledged to pay back what he can. The guess is that Southall will spend less than a decade in prison, probably much less. Are you satisfied with that result?

I’m not.

The verdict here on Ethics Alarms is that even a decade isn’t enough. This man has done far more harm than the typical thief, even more than the typical thief of nearly a million dollars. He took money that was supposed to help the needy. He misused funds families of ordinary means gave to the church in the spirit of charity and generosity. He abused their trust, and quite possibly damaged the faith of many of them. Southall betrayed his profession, and it is a profession that is supposed to bolster virtue and values in society, not make a mockery of them.

What Southall did is worse, in my view, than armed robbery. It deserves the same kind of harsh sentence Bernie Madoff received for stealing the assets of foundations, investors and retirees. Madoff took billions, and was sentenced to 150 years, because that was the maximum the law allowed. Madoff, however, didn’t steal his money in the name of God, charity, and community service.

150 years locked up for Southall seems about right to me.

Sunset Ethics Reflections, 10/19/2022: How Much Of This Stuff Matters, Anyway?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I’m increasingly feeling like it is impossible to distinguish the important and substantive ethics developments from those that are just annoying or depressing. For example, this:

That’s the new  Anna May Wong quarter, honoring the Chinese-American actress who joined the Hollywood community during the silent film era. Yes, it’s “historic”: she is the first Asian American to appear on US currency. This is the fifth new coin in the American Women Quarters Program. The others, all appearing in 2022, feature poet and activist Maya Angelou (of course); the first American woman in space, Sally Ride; Cherokee Nation leader Wilma Mankiller; and suffragist Nina Otero-Warren.

I don’t really care, but Wong is a trivia answer. She only is getting this honor because of her race. Quick: name a famous Anna May Wong role or film. Hint: There aren’t any. Handing out honors like having one’s image on a quarter based on race alone is racial discrimination. You want important American women on some quarters? Fine: try Eleanor Roosevelt. Abigail Adams. Harriet Beecher Stow. Lillian Hellman. Babe Zacharias. Marion Anderson. Sophy Treadwell. Emily Dickinson. Inventor-Actress Hedy Lamarr. Heck, Julia Child. There are hundreds of women who contributed more to U.S. society and culture than Anna May Wong, but she was the “right” color.

The question is whether this kind of thing is too trivial to bother with, or whether it is another unethical precedent-setting, tiny metaphorical cut.

1. No, John, this isn’t a medical record, and it doesn’t help. In a useful example of how one can convince everyone that he is indeed hiding something, the John Fetterman campaign released a letter by Dr. Clifford Chen saying that the Pennsylvania Democrat running for the open U.S. Senate seat  has “significantly improved” following his stroke in May and “can work full duty in public office.” The campaign  called this a “medical report” after Fetterman’s refusal to release his  health records began being criticized even in the Democratic Party allied news media. “Overall, Lt. Governor Fetterman is well and shows strong commitment to maintaining good fitness and health practices. He has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” Chen wrote. But Chen, while he is one of Fetterman’s doctors, is a Democratic Party donor and a Fetterman donor as well. That’s a conflict of interest, and a letter from one’s physician is not the equivalent of health records. Why not just release the records? Well, we know why. It’s the same reason that Donald Trump doesn’t release his tax returns. Continue reading →

“1776” Actress Sara Porkalob Is An Ethics Dunce And Should Be Fired

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The new, non-traditionally cast, “diversity”-pandering revival of “1776” is about to open on Broadway. Ethics Alarms already discussed it here: the production seems like a cynical, misguided, truly terrible idea that is likely to crash and burn, but as I wrote last month, “I hope the result is brilliant and illuminating.” I also wrote, “What I see, however, is a cynical abortion of a classic musical motivated by arrogance, ignorance, and greed.” In other words, the thing has a lot of self-inflicted problems standing in the way of critical and financial success, nicely symbolized by the photo above of an Asian-American woman playing slaveholding Continental Congress member Edward Rutledge singing “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” in the musical’s most dramatic scene. As a stage director and American history fanatic, I don’t see how having that song performed by someone who can’t evoke Rutledge in any way does anything but undermine the best song in the show. But hey, you never know.

One thing the radical production doesn’t need, however, is for that same performer to trash the production publicly. Here is “Rutledge,” Sara Porkalob, in an interview with Vulture’s Jason P. Frank:

“To me, the play is a relic. It is a dusty, old thing… On the inside, I’m cringing… I’m like, It’s okay. I wouldn’t have wanted it this way, but I am doing my job….[The direction] is horrible. I hate it… What I want to do with my time is make new works with collaborators…I feel like I’m going to work.”

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October Surprise! Ethics Observations As Herschel Walker’s Past Strikes Back…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The first observation is that neither of the surprises should surprise anyone at all. Former NFL football star Herschel Walker is about as vulnerable a political candidate for high office as one can imagine, even in the “Get Trump!” era. I’ve covered much of this already. He’s exaggerated his scholastic achievements, hidden the fact that he has several children conceived without the formality of marriage, admitted bouts with mental illness and a suicide attempt, and vaguely acknowledges committing domestic violence.

Walker has no political experience or relevant achievements that would make him a qualified candidate for the U.S. Senate in Georgia. He’s a local celebrity and has personal charisma; he is also an African-American in a state with a lot of black voters (and football fans). That’s about it. In the United States of America in the Age of the Great Stupid, that can also be enough.

It was irresponsible for the Republican Party to present such a cynically-chosen nominee to the voters of Georgia, incompetent for voters to check his name in the primary, and certifiably stupid for the GOP to store a substantial amount of their chances of taking back control of the Senate on such a shaky vessel.

Yesterday, they all got what they deserved… Continue reading →

‘Hi! I’m Chris Cuomo! I’m An Incurable Dummy, A Proven Liar, Proudly Biased, Unprofessional, I Was Fired For Sexual Misconduct And Ignoring Conflicts Of Interest, And Now I Want You To Let Me Tell You What To Think…’

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Those weren’t quite his words, but that is a fair summary of the message sent by disgraced CNN face-man Chris Cuomo, aka. Fredo, as he launched his new NewsNation show, creatively named, “Cuomo.”

“So, this show is going to be different than what I’ve done in the past because I’m different and I’ve spent a lot of time looking and listening on the sidelines…It’s obvious to me that we need people in my position to do more,” Chris babbled in his premiere yesterday. “To not just play or even referee the game that is plaguing our politics and society. That means exposing the game, show when it’s played, show how it’s being played, and also to be more transparent about where my head is on the issues that we cover.”

Who are people in “his position,” do you think? People who only got their prominent jobs on TV news (not to mention an admission to law school) because their fathers were famous and popular governors of New York? People who think “hate speech” isn’t protected by the First Amendment, as Cuomo once claimed on Twitter? People who use their positions of public trust to pimp for their corrupt brothers? There is nothing, quite literally nothing, about Chris Cuomo or his record at CNN before he was justly though tardily fired that would make any human being with enough functioning brain cells to give a marmoset a good game of Scrabble think, “Hey, I can learn something from this guy!”

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The FBI’s Draft Termination Letter To FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What more is there to be said? Well, just a little.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Georgia Republican Senate Candidate Herschel Walker

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“You know, he without sin cast the first stone. Does my opponent believe in redemption, being a pastor? That’s what’s so funny. And I say that because I’m not gonna get into what happened with him in his past. I want him to do—what’s going on with his policy. He’s talking about something I was a part of over 15 years ago, maybe even longer.”

—Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, quoting Jesus from John 8:7 while ducking a question about allegations of his past domestic abuse.

Atlanta-based magazine Rolling Out asked Walker about domestic abuse allegations that occurred between 2001 and 2008. In Walker’s primary race against Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, a campaign ad posted online claimed that police reports and court records from 2001 to 2008 indicated that Walker had “a history of physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior” involving his ex-wife, Cynthia Grossman who was   married to the former NFL star from 1983 to 2002. The question is a fair one, since earlier this month, Walker released his own campaign attack ad claiming that his opponent in the Senate race, Democrat Ralph Warnock “hit his wife with his car,” was “accused of neglecting his small children” and “ran from the process server” who tried to serve him court papers. Continue reading →

This Is Comforting: “The Great Stupid” Is Greater And Stupider In Canada, As You Can See…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

But for how long?

That’s a male, Oakville High School (about 20 miles from Toronto) “transitioning” shop teacher, parading with his, or her—it really doesn’t matter— gigantic prosthetic boobs. The Halton District School Board defends “her” completely voluntary appearance and attire in the name of “gender rights.” Meanwhile some students have skipped class, some are protesting, and parents are objecting.

My heavens, what could they be upset about?

“This teacher is an extremely effective teacher,” the board’s chair told the media. (Other than creating a completely unnecessary distraction by choosing to wear fake breasts twice the size of his head, of course—picky, picky...)The school board is creating a “safety plan” to ensure this serious professional can continue teaching without incident.

Yes, this Canadian variant of The Great Stupid virus could spread over the border. Continue reading →