Keeping up with the Supreme Court draft Alito opinion Freakout and the other ethics offal flying around has put me seriously behind in posting deserving Comments of the Day. There are two related to the May 5 Freakout post alone; this is the first of them, a neat summary of the state of affairs in Woke World.
If you notice, the far left’s policies are always about removing responsibility for bad decisions. You had reckless sex? Get rid of the baby. You didn’t pay your rent because you smoked pot and lost your job? Unemployment benefits. You don’t want to go back to work because you have an irrational fear of COVID-19? Let’s keep paying your rent. You committed a crime (and you are a minority), no jail time or possibly even a fine.
The test is too hard? Lower the standards. You can’t speak proper English? Attack proper English as elitist. Your culture teaches that it’s okay to beat your wife? Don’t judge other cultures who are different than you? There’s a dumbing down going on in this country. [Host’s Note: This process is what Ethics Alarms refers to as “The Great Stupid.”] Continue reading →
Steve-O-in NJ was inspired by the EA commentary on the Washington Post editors’ batty contention last week that Joe Biden was a “huge” upgrade over President Trump to write this Comment of the Day. I was reminded of it—I had intended to give Steve’s opus COTD honors earlier, but got distracted— when I realized that MSNBC was pushing the same gaslighting, prompting the previous post. The historical truth is that Joe Biden’s White House tenure so far wouldn’t give him a claim to being as a “huge upgrade” over any President using objective standards rather than partisan ones, as in “all Republican Presidents are worse than all Democrat Presidents,” which is the kindest way to explain the Post’s absurd assertion.
I am always interested in the topic of Presidential rankings, so after Steve-O has had his say, I’m going to follow up with an examination of how to assess who is the Worst POTUS Ever. Remember, leadership is also an official area of concentration for Ethics Alarms.
Just more proof that a lot of folks are so blindly partisan that they would not only vote for a ham sandwich if it had a D next to it, but wouldn’t vote for God Himself if He didn’t. Biden is so far headed for being 46th of 46. Grant probably no longer occupies the bottom of the ratings list. Harding was a corrupt, philandering son of a b****, but he had the wisdom to stand back and let the economy correct itself after the Panic of 1921. Obama was pretty feckless, but thankfully didn’t face any big new crises. Clinton was a pig, but the economy didn’t crash on his watch. So far, I can only compare Biden to Carter, the only president in recent history and even not so recent history who I can honestly and truly say has no strengths. Continue reading →
No “echo chamber” we, so it is appropriate to include as a Comment of the DayCurmie’s vigorous dissent on the current conflict between Disney and Florida, particularly its ambition conservative governor Ron De Santis.
Unlike you, Jack, I am neither a lawyer not an ethicist. The closest I’ve ever been to the former was being unofficially “pre-law” for about the first two and a half years of undergrad; the closest I’ve ever been to the latter is that you’ve called me ethical a couple of times. So forgive me if I have trouble discerning the line between that which is legal and that which is ethical.
Perhaps the terms of the agreement between the state and the corporation are akin to trademark laws: that Florida must aggressively defend its prerogatives or be in danger of losing them. But this doesn’t seem like something any corporate CEO would agree to. And I think we can take as given that Governor DeSantis would not be criticizing any corporation that publicly supported his position because they didn’t stay in their lane, even though the level of interference in public policy would be the same. No, it would be the progressives who’d have their collective skivvies in a twist in that case.
More to the point, Disney began their dissent, at least, while the bill was still under consideration. They were, in fact, arguing in favor of the status quo—when there was no law—a position that can hardly be regarded as interfering with the state, only with one party’s agenda. That they didn’t suddenly change their position when the bill became law doesn’t seem very problematic.
Moreover, it strikes me that educational policy is literally everyone’s business. I’m semi-retired now and not currently scheduled to teach at all in the fall, so I have no direct personal interest in what’s being taught in 3rd grade—these will never be my students—but I hope to be around long enough to be affected by their ability to vote or even to run for office… or to become doctors, lawyers, artists, or whatever. Yeah, I care what happens in that 3rd grade classroom. Continue reading →
“Curmie,” whose lively and erudite blog has been a favorite of mine for many years, weighed in on Ethics Alarms with his usual force on several substantial issues last week. Here is his first of two Comments of the Day (the other will be along shortly), both involving Florida controversies. This one takes off from the post, “Ethics Verdict: Non-Math Propaganda Does Not Belong In Math Textbooks”…
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Meh.
Certainly the injection of any kind of political agenda into elementary school math textbooks is a significant problem. Or at least it would be, if it actually happened on anything like a regular basis. What I find most interesting about this case is the fact that neither Governor DeSantis nor anyone on the Board of Education has (yet, as I write this) shown an example of the offending material from any of the books that have been sanctioned. I presumed that since the list of books has indeed been made public, numerous such examples will soon be forthcoming. Then we can make an informed judgment. Except, of course, now the governor is claiming the specifics are “proprietary information” as publishers weigh possible appeals to the rejections. Were I of a cynical disposition (perish the thought!), I might suggest that that delay ought to get him past the November elections. [JM Note:Subsequent to Curmie’s comment, some examples of varying persuasiveness (see above) were made public.]
What we have by way of example, at least that I can find, is an obviously absurd question that appeared on a homework sheet in a Missouri school. Back when I was blogging more regularly, I’d write about similarly stupid assignments several times a year. I’ve got to yield here to Florida State Representative Carlos Smith’s observation that “The best his [DeSantis’s] propaganda machine could do was deflect to a Missouri district that apologized for a homework assignment they didn’t approve.” Importantly, the worksheet was pulled from a website, not a textbook. So we can’t blame McGraw-Hill or Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt for that particular outrageousness. Continue reading →
What’s been interesting to me recently is the fundamental lack of self awareness exhibited from progressives in these cases.
I get it. They’re bubbled. They do a disproportionate amount of their communication either with people who already think like them or with strangers on platforms that filter their already tilted perspectives through algorithms or self curation. But at some point it beggars belief.
I wrote about CRT last June (https://humbletalent.substack.com/p/critical-race-theory?s=w), and predicted that it would be the issue we’d still be talking about in 2022. It’s a racial issue, which progressives feel very strongly about. It’s an issue where they are wrong, but refuse to reflect on. And it’s an issue with a *very* interested and entrenched demographic involved (parents). Continue reading →
Michael West’s Comment of the Day was less a commentary on a post than an observation triggered by it. There’s been a lot of lawyer-style analysis around here of late, so it’s high time for an engineer’s perspective—in some respects the reverse of the legal problem-solving method– to be highlighted, in reaction to the post, “Observations On The Unethical Tweet Of The Month.”
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Science is a wonderful thing. The rise of empiricism as a practiced discipline by professionals from it’s rudimentary roots in ancient philosophy has allowed mankind the ability to learn beyond his superstitious ancestor’s imaginations. And combined with that human imagination – the knowledge gained by science has empowered us to manipulate, to engineer, incredible solutions to direct problems as well as reduce mere inconveniences and discomforts to non-entities.
Scientists and engineers, by merely studying a problem, determining predictable laws that govern the interactions within problems and using that knowledge to develop a solution, opened up the power of man’s intellect.
But therein lies another problem. We think we can engineer, we can manipulate our way to solve everything. We think we’ve studied the factors going into a problem so thoroughly that we know the right solution. I’m an architect, and we have a saying – “A problem thoroughly defined is more that half-solved”. By “defined”, we mean, researched, studied, determined our constraints and our opportunities. Very rapidly, in the design process – the more we spend in studying the problem the more our options are narrowed down to one or two appropriate solutions. Soon, the solution presents itself. Continue reading →
I guess I should apologize for using that clip to introduce DaveL’s sensitive and wise Comment of the Day, but I couldn’t resist: just leaped into my head. Otherwise, his superb observations need no introduction.
I lost my first wife at a young age. She was 30, I was 26, we had been married a little over two years. I’ve since remarried, and have been so for nearly 13 years.
Widowhood seriously messes with people’s heads when it comes to timeless ideas of true love and fidelity. Divorce they can cope with – clearly that person wasn’t “the one”. It “wasn’t meant to be.” The pledge you made to love them for the rest of your life has been ruptured, no more need be said about it. But widowhood, particularly in the young who remarry, screws it all up because they feel they must choose one spouse to be “the one”, the “real” spouse, the “love of one’s life”, and the other one denigrated to understudy status. Continue reading →
Existentialist warrior and unique Ethics Alarms commenter Extradimensional Cephalopod’s Comment of the Day on the post about the NFL’s requirement that all teams hire a “minority” assistant offensive coach in the pursuit of “diversity, equity and inclusion” marked the first mention here of the Matthew Effect, often loosely summarized to explain why, as the song says, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”
Although I agree with most of the sentiment, I should clarify something about this point: Jack wrote:
“In other words, they must receive remedial training because they would not have been hired based on their experience or demonstrated skills.”
Highly competitive fields such as sports, entertainment, business…–okay, basically all fields on this inhospitable planet–are subject to the Matthew effect. . With multiple stages of competition, extra opportunities early on lead to exponentially more opportunities at each subsequent stage, due to the greater experience and exposure attracting more mentors and benefactors.
If you’ve read Freakonomics, you may be familiar with how hockey players’ birthdays are all around the same time of year. Based on the birthdate cutoffs for when they started school, they would have been the oldest students and therefore the biggest and strongest, and therefore they received preferential treatment from coaches looking to build competitive teams. Each year their greater experience and skill due to the previous year’s preferential treatment led to more preferential treatment, et cetera. These advantages added up over the years until they became professional athletes.
If we assume that a person’s minority status prevented them from getting any breaks early on, it makes sense that people would want to give them preferential treatment after the fact to make up for it. Those people would not assume that their current lack of skill represents an innate lack of talent. Continue reading →
I have a lot of reactions to mermaidmary99’s Comment of the Day regarding the Will Smith debacle that dominated the past week after it turned into a full-blown Ethics Train Wreck. But her post is provocative, and represents an important perspective. I’ll leave my comments until after she’s had her say.
I don’t think it’s fair to assume the worst about him. What he did would take a LOT of time to process.
When one snaps the way he did, it’s not because you had a bad day. In my experience it’s because of a lot of things which have been buried, denied and all those things were trigged in that moment.
Will is a human being and I think it’s on us to extend a bit of mercy and kindness when we see good actions.
No one knows if the apologized to Chris Rock yet, and I don’t blame him or Chris if they kept it private, for now.
I just think that we could refrain from being so judgemental about every move he makes and if it means he’s sorry or not, or assign motives to everything.
Unless we know for certain, those things are pure speculation.
Why not hope the best?
I am speaking from experience. I am a bit reluctant to share them but I will for the sake of maybe some understanding and mercy being extended his way.Continue reading →
I assumed yesterday that I wouldn’t be writing anything about the Oscars, which have politicized and wokified the ceremony into irrelevance, and here we are with the third Oscars-related post, following my my earlier ones here and here. This, a Comment of the Day by one of Ethics Alarms’ most veteran (and most restrained) commenters, Tim LeVier, is also by far the best, delving fearlessly and perceptively into the ethical issues raised by Will Smith’s astounding physical attack on Chris Rock in front of the Hollywood glitterati and an American TV audience of diminished but still significant numbers.
Before turning things over to Tim, I will mention here, because I may forget later, that my print version of the New York Times today included a story covering last night’s awards and broadcast that did not mention the Smith-Rock episode at all. How do you explain that? The story included Oscar fashions and the “historic” awards (apparently whoever plays Anita in “West Side Story” must get a statuette); it mentioned the three smug hosts’ infantile “Gay, gay, gay!” chant. But a major star attacking a major comic on stage in an iconic awards ceremony wasn’t deemed by the New York Times as “news.”
What a great newspaper. If anything called for the “Naked Gun” clip, this does...
Honestly, I’m more interested in the public reaction than the event itself. People seem to have this immediate need for clear thinking and the next chapter of the story. It’s a problem in our society more commonly referred to as instant gratification. Most of the posts and hot takes are in this vein but with varying objectives.
The pearl clutchers are the worst. “Why didn’t a police officer go an arrest him?” “Why didn’t the show director eject him?” “Why didn’t security intervene?”
Police need a complaint. The director needs time. Security aren’t in on the performance and have a tough time knowing reality from fiction particularly when the assaulted party engages with the assaulter and the assaulter casually moves into position.
It will be interesting to hear from Glenn Wiess the director and any producer about the mental gymnastics they were doing to figure out how to proceed. In the moment, during that commercial break, I’m sure it was “Is everyone cooled down now?” “Can we get through the remainder of the program?” “Am I required to take action?” “What does Chris Rock have to say?”
It was an unprecedented moment for sure and I guarantee there are some figures having discussions this morning on how to treat this going forward. There will be bright line rules put in place for the future. Everyone has now considered this predicament. Should it happen again, that person will be ejected….and then we’ll get to hear about “double standards” and “hypocrisy”. Continue reading →
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