Education

Ethics Hero: “Landman” Creator and Writer Taylor Sheridan

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Billy Bob Thornton star vehicle “Landman,” following the stressful life of a West Texas “landman” and operational executive for an independent oil company in West Texas, has a lot going for it, mostly Thornton, who is one of our most interesting and versatile actors. The Paramount streaming series is already better, in my view, then the last two oil dramas I watched, the over-rated “Giant” and the relentlessly unpleasant “There Will Be Blood,” in great part because as with all of his roles, Thornton brings a great deal of humor to the proceedings.

I have not finished the series’ first season (I sure hope there is a second), but I was struck by the long scene above in which Tommy Norris (that’s Billy Bob) gives a quick primer to his company’s attorney on the facile conventional wisdom of the anti-fossil fuel lobby. The rant begins (at the 57 second mark), as Tommy denies the “cleanness” of wind power, and he takes off from there. It was an instant classic that quickly went viral on social media: as soon as I heard it I knew I could find the speech on YouTube and resolved to post it today.

There are also a lot of rebuttals to the speech on line, and that’s great: the ethics point is that for once Hollywood isn’t stuffing smug 21st Century woke politics into its audience’s brains, but is presenting a dissenting analysis. More more amazing yet, this one comes from a series’ protagonist and an appealing one at that.

Taylor Sheridan, who created “Landman,” cast Thornton and wrote and directed the speech deserves thanks and credit for packaging a provocative point of view that is sure to spark debate. Debate is ethical. What isn’t ethical is cultural indoctrination, which is how Hollywood has mostly been approaching the oil issue for decades.

Not surprisingly, the Wikipedia entry linked above states that the series contains “misinformation about renewable energy… “exposed as common propaganda tropes by Big Oil.” This is why Wikipedia should be considered a member in excellent standing with the Axis of Unethical Conduct. If Democrats had won another term in the White House, we would probably see “Landman” forced to include a disclaimer on Tommy’s speech.

Ethics Observations on the UVA 2024 Election Fantasy Post Mortem

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I wish I could promise that this will be the last Ethics Alarms post about Democrats and the Axis being in denial over the reasons for President Trump’s victory last November. I hope it will. The capacity for self-delusion in this pathetic bunch, however, knows no bounds.

At the University of Virginia, a panel of scholars discussing “Race, Gender and the American Electorate” and moderated by Prof. Kevin Gaines, a professor of “civil rights and social justice,” blamed Kamala Harris’s loss in the Presidential election on racism and sexism.

Gaines said, “Viewed through the lens of the history of African American women in the United States, the defeat of the first black woman nominee [of] a major party for the presidency by an openly racist and misogynistic candidate seemed to recall the voicelessness and vulnerability of black women during the eras of slavery and segregation, particularly in the Jim Crow south.” He went on to compare Harris’s defeat to how “enslaved black women endured the violence of chattel slavery and the exploitation of their labor and reproductive sexuality.” “Even in freedom, black women historically have been overlooked and marginalized, not only by white male oppressors, but also — and often — by their extensible allies: black men and white women,” he concluded.

And this guy is a tenured professor.

Wow.

The panel was held last month at UVA’s Miller Center, supposedly a nonpartisan affiliate. Yeah, that panel sure sounds “non-partisan.” Although the center describes itself as striving “to illuminate Presidential and political history accurately and fairly,” there were no dissenting voices on its panel to point out that, just for starters, its moderator was spouting indefensible nonsense. All of the panelists without exception attacked Trump and those who voted for him in an event billed as a post-election analysis delving into “the complex interplay of race, gender, and age demographics as they affected the outcome.”

Gee, how about a discussion of why having a panel of three black anti-Trump Democrats doing the delving biases the analysis? (The whole program can be viewed here)

Gaines, who really is a piece of work, also said at one point that “it’s quite likely that this election was determined by voters who did not have… as comprehensive a view of politics and the issues as… a fair amount of Harris supporters.” Just…wow. Voting for an incoherent fraud who could never articulate a clear policy position on anything is evidence of “a comprehensive view of politics and the issues.”

At another point in the discussion, the panelists expressed surprise that the abortion issue didn’t carry the day with women voters. Somebody should have pointed out to these boobs that there is literally nothing the President can do to make abortion legal or illegal. The panel did mention the overwhelming majority of black females who voted for Harris…because she is a black female. Who are the racists and sexists again?

Further observations:

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“The Meat Axe”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I had some amusing bloody meat-axe graphics all ready to go for this post, but it is really about flat learning curves: the Democratic Party’s, the Axis news media’s, and maybe, frighteningly, the public’s.

Yes, once again we have a looming test of just how stupid the public really is. Democrats are betting their very existence on the public being as dumb as a box of Joe Bidens, and the biased, anti-Trump news media, having already been completely exposed as the enemies of the people Donald Trump said they are, have predominantly fallen back to the same tactics that served them so well in Trump 1.0. The unethical “advocacy journalists” are gambling that propaganda will prevail, and that the 2024 election was just a blip because the Democrats ran a babbling fool—but a historic one!—for President.

Trump’s tsunami of executive orders along with the relentless DOGE assault has the Axis searching for a magic bullet or two. They settled on two old unethical stand-bys: ad hominem attacks, aka. “kill the messenger,” and “It’s a constitutional crisis!” Trump being elected at all was a constitutional crisis for the Angry Left, and the phony “He’s breaching traditional democratic norms!” trope was core to both impeachments and the “Trump is Hitler” campaign refrain.

Elon Musk is being vilified by using classic Democrat class warfare tactics: he’s been successful and is rich, so obviously he’s only helping Trump cut spending because he greedy and he’ll make money from it somehow. How dumb does someone have to be to buy that logic? If there is anyone in the world who can be trusted not to be serving his country for the money, it’s Musk. I heard some mouth-foaming contributor on CNN screaming this morning that “Trump is a liar and criminal” and “Musk wasn’t even born here!,” an odd argument from a defender of illegal immigrants.

But the EA “Flat Learning Curve” graphic is up there because I heard Chuck Schumer—is he really an idiot or does he just play one on TV?—say that sure, everyone agrees that there is too much waste in government spending, but “this is a meat-axe!” Yup, it sure is, Chuck, and if you don’t know by now that the only way to seriously address systemic corruption, waste, incompetence, dishonesty and obstruction is with a meat-axe (or blow-torch, or metaphorical nuclear bomb), you’ve never successfully managed anything.

Experienced managers know this, and both Musk and Trump are experienced managers as well as successful ones. Good leaders know it too. Heck, I know it.

What Schumer is really saying is, “We don’t want to solve this problem, we want to look like we want to solve this problem, and we are confident that you out there listening are so uneducated, inexperienced, naive and gullible that you’ll fall for it…again.”

When a system is broken, corrupt and incorrigible, and because of its dysfunction causing constant harm, the technique of carefully trying to extract the jewels buried in the shit pile never works. It takes too long. Every inch of the shit will have advocates claiming that it isn’t really shit. Paring down the bureaucracy gets delegated to the bureaucracy, and improvement is minimal if you are lucky. Most of the time, the inefficiency, waste and corruption just gets worse. Nobody can deny that this is the futile path the United States government has been treading.

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Stop Making Me Defend Georgetown Law Center!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

My law school alma mater—I also worked as an assistant dean there for several years—has been depressingly high on the list of ideologically-obsessed law schools along with Stanford, Yale and many others. Ethics Alarms has never held its fire on GULC based on any sense of misplaced loyalty. However, this time, as the school is being assailed for sponsoring a controversial speaker, I have to take its side for a change. Which is nice.

The Jewish Insider reports that a Georgetown University Law Center student group, a chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine, will host Ribhi Karajaha (above) as a speaker next week on February 11. Karajaha is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization. He is planning to speak about “arrest, detention, and torture in the Israeli military system,” an Instagram post says. Karajaha spent three years in an Israeli prison as part of a plea deal after he admitted to knowing about a terrorist bomb plot that killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl and injured her brother and father.

GULC is being criticized for allowing him to speak. On the contrary, it may be very instructive for law students to hear his point of view and to observe how he answers critical questions. This is known as “education.”

I heard Angela Davis speak when I was student. Davis was a radical Marxist, a domestic terrorist and a criminal. Listening to her was an invaluable experience. She was charismatic and obviously brilliant, but she didn’t brainwash me with laser eyes. I witnessed first hand and in person what fanaticism looks and sounds like. Education.

Georgetwon law student Julia Wax Vanderwiel told Jewish Insider that Karajah’s presence on campus “threatens the security of all Jewish students.” What, is he going to morph into Palestinian Hulk and run amuck? He’s going to talk. Words should not make anyone feel unsafe, and if they do, even then the words are still conveying useful information. The unsafe speaker myth has been embraced by the Mad Left as a way to censor speech and muzzle political opponents.

If Georgetown law students are wise and ethical, they will allow the terrorist to speak without disruption. Unfortunately, they have been attending an institution whose Dean has endorsed partisan and political censorship, so I will be genuinely surprised if that is how this episode plays out.

Today’s Sad and Desperate Argument From a Facebook Friend Who Once Was Too Smart To Post Something This Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Unbelievable.

That idiocy was posted by a lawyer, former law dean and law professor. How is this possible?

It is like saying that if you believe the French Revolution was a human and political disaster, you should have to explain why you object to each section of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.” It is like saying that it’s a cop-out to claim that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free” is a hateful call for the eradication of Israel, unless you explain: “What’s so bad about starting at the river? What’s so wrong about going to the seashore? What do you find so objectionable about freedom?”

Whoever thinks this meme is a devastating rebuttal of opposition to DEI as a social, employment, and organizational policy doesn’t comprehend a foundational principle of language, which is that words in particular contexts and combinations often mean something entirely different from what the words mean individually and in a vacuum.

Sure, diversity can be nice, but not as an enforced value, and not in every context. I don’t see anyone advocating more racially diverse NBA teams, for example. Most of the time diversity isn’t even an ethical value, just a feature that may or may not have benefits to a group. Equity, the only concept of the three that I see on my wall as one of the ethical values, means fairness. But fairness is extremely subjective, making it one of the more tricky ethical values, and when it is used as it is used in the context of the DEI Division of The Great Stupid, what it means is “equal outcomes for all.” That is Marxist Cloud Cuckoo Land garbage. Life doesn’t, shouldn’t and can’t work like that. There are winners and losers; enterprise, talent, diligence, intelligence and skill matters, as well as luck. Trying to fight that fact of existence is a fool’s errand, or, more often a con artist’s scam.

“Inclusion” is the weird one: what it means in context of the DEI movement is that all exclusion is malign and sinister, the result of deliberate discrimination on the basis of invidious factors. False.

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Brevard County School Superintendent: “We Hold Our Leaders to the Highest Standards…” Yeah, RIGHT.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Roosevelt Elementary School (in Cocoa Beach, Florida) principal Elizabeth Hill-Brodigan (above, right) held a party with more than 100 teens in attendance. Alcohol was flowing, joints were being puffed. When police arrived at Hill-Brodigan’s home after a tip on January 19, they discovered the wild underage party, one teenager having an alcohol-related medical episode on the front lawn, and Roosevelt Elementary teacher Karly Anderson (left), who was drunk as a skunk. They also found alcoholic beverages in coolers. Now police have learned that these parties have been occurring for a while, once or twice a month.

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Pundit Malpractice, Part I: David Brooks, Making The Public More Ignorant About History Than They Already Are

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What excuse does David Brooks have for publishing manifestly false Presidential history as part of the usual New York Times anti-Trump propaganda? None that I can see. He styles himself as a thoughtful public intellectual. He majored in history at Columbia. Okay, he is Canadian but he lives here and is presented by the New York Times as an authority.

I have to presume that if he writes a column with flat-out false information about U.S. political history, he is misleading the public intentionally or, just as unethically, he didn’t check his facts. Of course the New York Times editors don’t hold him to being factual, responsible or ethical. They let Charles M. Blow, Michelle Goldberg and their other biased hacks get away with worse most days. But I expect them to lie. I expect Brooks to be wrong, but at least to get his facts right.

Nope.

In the obnoxiously headlined “How Trump Will Fail,” Brooks tells us that “Trump has gone all 19th century on us. He seems to find in this period everything he likes: tariffs, Manifest Destiny, seizing land from weaker nations, mercantilism, railroads, manufacturing and populism.” At least he hasn’t embraced the version of America pushed by the Biden Administration: open borders, government censorship, racial discrimination, political prosecutions, puppet Presidencies and government cover-up journalism. The main thrust of Brooks’ analysis is that “populism” doesn’t work and has never worked in the U.S.. Brooks’ sneer at the American values of individualism, personal responsibility, exploration, confidence, exceptionalism and capitalism is palpable.

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Awww, Some Law School Seniors Just Had Their Job Offers Revoked By That Mean President Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The New York Times and other sources are weeping with the dozens of recent law school graduates whose job offers were rescinded by the Justice Department after the students thought they were about to begin entry-level positions in its antitrust, criminal, civil rights, immigration and national security divisions, and at the F.B.I. This is another good example of how the Times cannot help itself from spinning and editorializing in a partisan manner even the most straightforward story. “The offers were made through the Attorney General’s Honors Program,” sayeth the Times, “which has functioned without controversy,” for decades, it says. See? This is so unfair! Except the fact that something has avoided controversy doesn’t mean it should be free from change, reform, or even elimination. “The program appears to be the latest target of Trump political appointees intent on reversing even the most workaday decisions made by their predecessors,” sniffs the paper. Oooh, these were political appointees who obviously don’t understand a good program when they see one. And those MAGA Nazis want to mess with harmless, innocent, inconsequential “workaday” decisions! (Pssst! Hiring lawyers is never a “workaday” decision, or shouldn’t be, even in the Justice Department.)

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And This Is Why DEI Must DIE…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Three impressive, qualified, white male law professors applied to join the faculty of Northwestern School of Law. They were First Amendment expert (and Ethics Alarms favorite) Eugene Volokh, Ernest A. Young of Duke University’s Law School, and Ilan Wurman, a distinguished professor at The University of Minnesota Law School. All were rejected in favor of DEI hires, despite being objectively better qualified than the successful candidates. Now “Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences” (FASORP), a collective of professors and lawyers who seek to expose and stop racial and gender preferences in higher education, is suing on the professors’ behalf.

“As a result of the [DEI] mandate, Northwestern University School of Law refuses to even consider hiring white male faculty candidates with stellar credentials, while it eagerly hires candidates with mediocre and undistinguished records who check the proper diversity boxes,” the complaint alleges. Northwestern violates the law by “hiring women and racial minorities with mediocre and undistinguished records over white men who have better credentials, better scholarship, and better teaching ability,” the suit says.
“But this is prohibited by federal law, which bans universities that accept federal funds from discriminating on account of race or sex. University faculty and administrators think they can flout these anti-discrimination statutes with impunity because they are rarely sued….But now the jig is up.”

The case of Volokh would seem to be particularly difficult to refute. The suit asserts that Volokh’s accomplishments exceed those of nearly every professor currently on the Northwestern Law School faculty, but because he is a white man and “neither homosexual nor transgender,” he was judged unacceptable.

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Cultural Literacy Note: “Drinking the Kool-Aid”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The Daily Mail headline is beyond stupid—-“People are only just realizing the dark origin of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ phrase”—-but sharp-eyed commenter Other Bill was quite astute to draw it to my attention (Thanks, OB) with an email this morning.

Apparently several historically and culturally illiterate whipper-snappers on social media expressed surprise at the “dark origin” of the common phrase “he (or she) drank the Kool-Aid” to describe someone who has been gulled into believing something false or dangerous. Yet this gap in the younger generations’ knowledge shouldn’t be surprising. Oh, there was a movie about the horrible incident and it is one of the best examples of the dangers of cults. But the Jonestown mass suicide of the 918 American followers of cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana occurred almost 50 years ago, in 1978. As unusual and shocking as it was, the poisoned powered drink massacre is not the kind of event likely to be covered in history courses: schools barely cover World War I. How would someone under the age of 50 come to know about the event?

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