Childhood and children

Naming Ethics: Your Children Can Suffer For Your Ignorance

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This one will be short, if not sweet.

A Reddit user shared this baby shower announcement on the sub-reddit devoted to terrible baby names, mostly absurd spellings….but this isn’t a spelling problem:

Yes, the parents are morons.

It seems that they didn’t know about the worst nuclear facility disaster in history, which rendered the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl a veritable ghost town in 1986, In some movies, it’s a zombie town. But the parents just thought it was a pretty name. You know, like “Treblinka.” Or “Malmedy.”

It is unknown at this point whether someone will back Mom and Dad into a corner, slap them silly, and tell them that they cannot stick an innocent child with that name, although naming a child “Chernobyl” is perfectly legal. It did prompt some inspired mockery on Reddit, though.

My favorite: “I guess it’s a nuclear family.”

Some Ethics Alarms Have Failed To Ring Here…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I am not passing judgment on the SNAP controversy, and Felicia may be a nice person and a wonderful mother.

However, rudimentary thought and consideration regarding perceptions, personal responsibility and common sense ought to make all but the hopelessly obtuse realize that a morbidly obese woman is a self-rebutting advocate for food stamps, as well as a meme waiting to be posted. Moreover, why is a single mother who has to work three jobs having four children?

Is Sen. Klobuchar really so dense (well, yes) and crippled by tunnel vision that the flaws in this particular advocate’s position never occurred to her? I have to believe Felecia exposes the astounding immunity progressives seem to have to reality, unless they are cynically convinced that the American public really is dominated by morons.

Any other theories?

The Proud Illegal Immigrant Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I almost made this an Ethics Quiz, but I ultimately decided that I know the correct answer. The right course of action is clear. Derek Guy, above, and all long-time illegal immigrants who come forward to say, “I’m illegal and I’m proud” are ficks. And their candor should place them at the top of the deportation list.

I pay no attention to fashion, fashion mavens, and fashion world news, and I don’t have a lot of respect for those who do. So I was blissfully unaware of Derek Guy’s existence [“Derek Guy, also known as Menswear Guy, who is well-known on on X for his men’s fashion tips and analysis…”] and that he has been thrilling the Trump Deranged for his mockery of J.D. Vance’s and the President’s attire. Nevertheless, the completely trivial celebrity posted this screed on Twitter/X that has “gone viral,” as they say…Don’t worry, it ends eventually:

Well.

The thing is full of every rationalization, straw man, appeal to emotion and unethical spin that you and I have ever seen regarding open borders and illegal immigration. In no particular order…

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Greta Thunberg Is Danny Bonaduce

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Now hear me out.

The National Review has a scalding—but more or less fair—-evisceration of Greta Thunberg, the past-her-pull-date former teen climate change activist. An excerpt:

You remember young Greta, right? The vinegar-rictused, Swedish ecological activist whom the media turned into a global celebrity back in 2018…Who can forget the climax of it all, the legendary comedy of Thunberg’s 2019 United Nations address? Visibly reading from a script and adopting actorly mannerisms — shrieking “HOW DARE YOU?” and bawling about “stolen dreams” and “stolen childhood” — Thunberg condemned the capitalist West for desecrating the hopes of neurotics like herself. “We’ll be watching you,” she warned icily…A neurodivergent teenage girl was granted supreme moral authority over mankind by adults desperate to weaponize her “vulnerability” to club the world into bending to the eco-socialist agenda pushed by her handlers. We were asked to take it all extremely seriously…Hungering for continued relevance, Thunberg responded by escalating her tactics, seeking arrest at anti-mining and anti-oil protests across Europe to garner headlines. But the media reaction was tepid, and the thrill was gone. It surprised me not the slightest bit when she instantly transitioned from environmental activism (old and busted) to pro-Palestinian activism (new and sexy with the kids these days) in the wake of the October 7 massacre. A year later, she was performatively arresting herself on podcast appearances to signal her solidarity with Hamas.

The bombardment ends with this: “As for myself, I couldn’t care less about Thunberg’s fate. If the Israeli Navy wants to hole her boat below the waterline as the French did to sink the Rainbow Warrior, then it’s no problem of mine. I don’t ever want to write about her again, and unless she escalates to suicide bombing, I intend not to. For as much as her astringent mien and unearned pretense make her a figure of comedy, I find her morally repulsive.”

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“Oh, And We Have Deadly Snakes In Our Yard…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Ethicist (Kwame Appiah to his friends and NYU students) gets a lot of questions about a common dilemma: what kind of things does a selling homeowner have an ethical duty to inform a potential buyer about? My favorite version of this issue—because you know how I am—involves houses where horrible murders have taken place, or ones that are rumored to be haunted.

Most of these non-horror movie situations are solved by a strict adherence to the Golden Rule. Would you want to be told that a property has X? If so, tell the potential buyer. Yeah, being ethical may cost you some money, or even a sale. Nobody ever said being ethical was easy or always beneficial to the ethical actor.

Last week Kwame was asked by condo seller of she was bound to tell a potential buyer that the condo association uses “pesticides, herbicides and other chemical treatments” that environmentalists regard as harmful, even though they are legal. The seller has been part of a group trying to force the association to go “green” without success. The Ethicist’s answer was reasonable: if the condo association was obeying local laws and ordinances, the dispute was none of the purchaser’s business until after the property was transferred. “[W]hen it comes to selling your unit, your responsibility doesn’t extend to reshaping a buyer’s worldview,” he wrote. “Those who dissent should make their case for reform, but disclosure is usually reserved for departures from what is recognized and approved — from what a reasonable person would anticipate. You’re free to voice your concerns. You’re not required to.”

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Stop Making Me Defend the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Almost a year ago, Ethics Alarms discussed the case of Liam Morrison (above), a seventh grader who was told that his “There are only two genders” T-shirt was inappropriate as school attire. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld a District Court decision from 2023 that the Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts didn’t violate Liam’s First Amendment rights by telling him to change his shirt.

Chief Justice David Barron, writing for the Court, concluded that “the question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them – educators or federal judges.” He continued, “We cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make ‘an environment conducive to learning’ at NMS to use rather than to the educators closest to the scene.”

I wrote, in a post agreeing with the decision both ethically and legally,

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“The Case of the Cut-Short Crucible”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That’s what this unholy mess of a high school play ethics train wreck would be called if it were an old “Perry Mason” episode.

The run of a student production of “The Crucible” at Fannin County High School in Blue Ridge Georgia was cut from two performances to one for reasons unknown. Understandably, the students and their parents were upset. The administration explained that the reason was a licensing agreement violation, and the school was afraid of having to pay damages, or something. It said in a statement,

“After Friday night’s performance of “The Crucible,” we received several complaints as to an unauthorized change in the script of the play. Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script. These alterations were not approved by the licensing company or administration. The performance contract for The Crucible does not allow modifications without prior written approval. Failing to follow the proper licensing approval process for additions led to a breach in our contract with the play’s publisher. The infraction resulted in an automatic termination of the licensing agreement. The second performance of The Crucible could not occur because we were no longer covered by a copyright agreement.”

Ah, but woke theater Fury Howard Sherman, the same guy who thinks that it’s okay for actors to boycott performances they are contractually obligated to perform because they don’t like the political views of particular audience members (like, say, the President of the United States), is muckraking again. He writes on his website that he’s sure that the show was really cancelled because “the play about witch hunts, about the persecution of people out of hysteria, despite being an acknowledge American classic widely taught in high school classrooms and performed frequently on high school stages, had provoked the same moral persecution it portrayed as unjust.” See, somebody’s mother told a student that the principle had said “that somebody in the audience didn’t like the context of the play and said that it was demonic and disgusting” so the final performance was cancelled.

Does Sherman produce any evidence that isn’t double hearsay that such a sequence occurred? Nope. Do we hear a quote or see a message from the alleged illiterate lunatic who registered such a complaint? No again. But never mind: Sherman is a progressive (to be fair, most theater types are progressives…welcome to my world) with an agenda.

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A Teacher Gives Up: Ethics Observations

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is a TikTok video that is now unavailable on that platform for some reason—maybe the Chinese don’t want the truth getting out there. The video is long, and the distraught teacher is obviously not a video pro, but her message is heartfelt as well as astute. Attention should be paid.

I stumbled on Hannah’s lament as I was preparing to write another post that it quickly subsumed. That one was a response to this [Gift link!] in which a Hollywood screenwriter blames the public for the fact that Hollywood movies stink now. “The true problem lies with you, the audience,” he writes. “[I]t’s hard to argue that Hollywood is doing anything other than giving you, the moviegoing public, what you want.” I was going to call my response, “It’s the Culture, Stupid!” and point out that Hollywood is as much responsible for the culture as it is now a victim of it.

Hollywood helped create the attention deficit-afflicted, literature starved, culturally illiterate generations that drive politics and commerce now. As Hannah’s video makes clear, there are a lot of factors that have created an American public that is unable to absorb complex issues or enjoy stories that will teach them something valuable about life and humanity. Hollywood and the entertainment industry are as culpable as any of them.

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Yes, My Conservative Facebook Friends Can Be Just As Irrational As the Progressives…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

A usually wise and measured conservative Facebook friend posted with approval a tweet by conservative pundit Matt Walsh, complaining about the father of a 15-year-old school shooter who killed two people and injured six others being charged after the tragedy. The killings (the girl shot herself as well, and died) occurred at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, in December.

“Let’s just be honest about the pattern here,” Walsh wrote. “This is the third time that a parent has been charged for violence committed by their child. In every case, the parent has been white. There is violence committed in the streets of every major city every single day. You could blame the crappy, neglectful parents in literally all of those cases. And yet none of them have ever been charged.”

Wow, talk about the wrong hill to die on! Both of those other cases involved criminally negligent parents, and the father of the late shooter in Wisconsin may have been the worst of the three.

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Twin Ethics…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

When I read this story in the New York Times, I checked to see what I had posted in the past regarding twin ethics and was shocked that I could find only two essays on the topic. After all, twins deliberately impersonating each other for their own benefit has been a theme from ancient Greek comedies and Shakespeare right through to “The Jackson Twins” comic strip, “The Parent Trap,” and “The Patty Duke Show.”

There was a “Columbo” episode where twins used their ability to impersonate each other to pull off the “perfect murder,” which naturally Columbo solved anyway. But just because twins switching identities can be clever, funny, effective, or cute doesn’t make it ethical.

The first of my twin ethics posts involved a twins who impersonated his brother to win $50,000 in a contest. The other one came from Brazil, where twin brothers had used their resemblance to impersonate each other and date as many women as possible, and then defend themselves from allegations they were cheating on girlfriends. These twins were ducking child support one of them owed by refusing to say which one of them had fathered a child (DNA tests proving inconclusive because they their were identical twins)  assuming they would escape having to pay. It didn’t work: a judge ordered that they both had to pay child support and that the names of both men ended up on the girl’s birth certificate.

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