This is ridiculous.
The President took to social media again yesterday to announce that he doesn’t like the Pope:
What an irredeemably stupid thing to do.
Ethics Alarms Award Nominee
Ethics Villains: Yes, The New York Times Again…And Its Biased, Ignorant, Pro-Terrorism Readers
The gift link to the NYT article at issue is here.
I’m not going to quote it or summarize it. I will characterize it: the opinion piece, Gaza’s Rubble Is the Grave of Our Future, by Ghada Abdulfattah, “a writer who lives in Gaza,” is anti-Israel, pro-Hamas propaganda that the Times has handed a large amount of space to promote. This is a “poor Gazans being victims of genocide by those inhuman, cruel Jews” essay. The writer never comes right out and says that, but her chronicling of the devastation in Gaza since the Israeli assault began three years ago is definitely aimed at conveying that misleading message.
All right, I will offer a quote:
“It isn’t just the sadness of what was demolished. Seeing endless piles of concrete brings a second layer of violence — the violence of being forced to live with destruction. Rubble doesn’t just destroy the past; it erases the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today.”
Gee, I guess launching a sneak terror attack on civilians in your neighboring state, killing over 1200 people, including infants, raping woman and taking 250 hostages isn’t such a good idea, eh? Huh. Who knew?
An Axis Trump Derangement Case Study: The White House Ballroom Tantrum
Above is how a federal judge and all my Trump Deranged friends would like to see the White House East Wing look for the next three years or more.
How dignified and reflective of America’s history and greatness! This makes sense to them, you see, because President Trump took the initiative and decided to fix a long-standing deficiency of the White House, where he lives. Any previous President could have done this without uproar or significant opposition, you see, but as an example of the continuing 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, when the Left decided that it wasn’t going to accept the shocking election of a political outsider to foil their presumed coronation of a corrupt Democrat (but a historic one, see, so it was okay) and set out to obstruct literally anything he decided to do, big or small, important or trivial.
From the EA Trump Derangement Files: [UPDATED!]
The above ahistorical, moronic and infuriating cartoon was posted by a long-time friend and—believe it or not!—a tenured history professor at Georgetown. I am reaching the end of my patience with once smart people deliberately making less-educated people stupid, and for the second time this week (the first was prompted by this Facebook meme) I couldn’t wrestle my fingers to the floor fast enough and responded to my Trump Deranged freind, “Now, you KNOW this is untrue. I know it’s untrue, and I know you know it’s untrue.”
And this is Trump Derangement! People who actually have the education, wit and critical thinking skills to reject false framing and imaginary facts, yet who nonetheless betray their own principles and integrity in order to attack the President. I’m hoping Steve-O-in NJ will gift us with one of his excellent historical retrospectives about how the United States was, at great risk to FDR, aiding Europe in fighting the Germans well before Pearl Harbor, and what the U.S. sacrificed in lives and treasure to indeed rescue Europe as well as that civilization thingy. We also rebuilt Europe with the Marshall Plan and have been bolstering European military defenses ever since.
It’s bad enough for a UK cartoonist to issue that crap, but for a U.S. historian to endorse it? Truly despicable. OK, for me, long friendship plus Trump Derangement and aging brain cells equals forgiveness.
Barely.
UPDATE: There is hope! My old friend the professor reacted to my mild rebuke with a “thumbs up.”
The EA “Imagine” Award Goes To Pope Leo, Who Should Put A Bag Over His Head…
How I wish he had sung it! That would have been funny and maybe entertaining. Otherwise this kind of pronouncement is 100% useless and insulting, while making too many people dumber.
Speaking to executives and staff from Italy’s ITA Airways, the first U.S. Pope proved he could be as fatuous as other Popes by saying, “No one should have to fear that threats of death and destruction might come from the sky. After the tragic experiences of the 20th century, aerial bombings should have been banned forever. Yet they still exist … this is not progress; it is regression!”
Well, if we could have the marshmallow world John Lennon imagined, “nothing to live of die for” and no countries or religion, that might be slightly less ludicrous, but only slightly. Now that I’ve roused those banished brain cells where I store “Imagine,” let me take a few minutes to run “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” in my mind to cleanse it.
There! Much better!
MSNOW Revives Axis “Presidential Removal Plan E” In the Dumbest Way Possible, Raising the Need For a Similar “Incompetent Journalist Removal Plan”
It should be clear by now that MSNOW, previously MSNBC, exists only to misinform the public and make Americans more ignorant and divided than they already are. When I learn that a friend gets his or her news from this entirely propaganda-obsessed network, I conclude, reluctantly that this friend is now an idiot, and I will have to confine our conversations to, oh, movie trivia or something.
As I peruse three news cable channels during the day, hoping to learn something either about the world or the ongoing deterioration of U.S. journalism ethics, there are certain faces that repel me like opposite pole of a magnet. Brian Stelter on CNN. Hannity on Fox News. Literally everyone on MSNOW, of course, but Jonathan Capehart is particularly prone to saying really stupid things as if they were worth listening to.
On “The Weekend” this week, Capehart set a new low even for him. He was so horrified by the President making the quip about surprise and Pearl Harbor in front of the Japanese Prime Minister—standard fare for Trump, who enjoys doing and saying quiet parts out loud and doesn’t care who is offended—that he railed,
“I sometimes wonder, why are we not having a 25th Amendment conversation about this president?Because a comment like that, if it had come out of the mouth of President Biden, we would have been in rolling coverage about how Republicans on the Hill think that he should be removed from office for talking to an ally like that, and making that comment in response to a question from a Japanese journalist.”
I know I could spend all my time on Ethics Alarms pointing out the astoundingly flagrant bias and Trump Derangement displayed by members of the Axis media, but Capehart’s idiocy in this instance is epic. Let’s see…
From the Ethics Alarms “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files…
Let me moderate that: the above comparison of Variety headlines about deceased artists (over two articles by the same writer) “speaks for itself” in that it vividly demonstrates the familiar biases and double standards warping values and analysis in the news media, progressive bubbles, and the realm of entertainment especially.
But allow me to add a few observations:
1. No artist’s political participation or views should “overshadow” his or her legacy, reputation or success in a creative field. I know I have written about this often, perhaps too often, but it seems to be a concept most people have a hard time accepting. I hold that the same principle applies just as strongly to an artist’s personal life and character. Our most brilliant comedians and comic actors, for example, with a few exceptions, were terrible human beings when they were not performing.
2. Chuck Norris was nowhere near as outspoken as Reiner regarding politics; he also was a lesser star in Hollywood’s firmament. His was a narrow genre, and one mostly favored by conservatives. Like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, his public stance on many issues was consistent with what one would expect from one of his characters. I have found that in such cases, the public opinions are frequently part of the artist’s calculated myth-making.
3. As I have noted before, I love many of Reiner’s films and regard him as, if anything, an under-rated director. He also made some of the most idiotic statements about political matters that I have ever heard or read, including from brain-damaged social media users. (Riener’s Ethics Alarms dossier is embarrassing. EA has never mentioned Norris except with this post.) That doesn’t change my assessment of his achievements as an artist any more than the certifiably demented pronouncements and rants by Robert DiNiro, Bette Midler, and Morgan Freeman (among many others) cause me to enjoy their talents less.
4. The fact that so many progressives seem unable to function this way is, in a word, sad. It also is strong evidence that the left side of the ideological divide is emotionally ill.
_______
Pointer: Chris Martz
Comment of the Day: “Ethics Jump Ball” (or “Brilliant Guest Post by Ryan Harkins”)….
Yesterday, in near shock that a good and once wise friend posted on Facebook the head-exploding meme by a simple-minded activist named Jenny Carter, above, I challenged Ethics Alarms readers to perform the thorough defenestration of that smug brain-garbage it deserves. I had neither the time nor energy. Responding to my metaphorical Bat Signal, erudite veteran commenter Ryan Harkins came through like a champ, authoring the masterpiece below, a Comment of the Day if there ever was one. Here is his rebuttal, really a guest post in length and quality, in response to the post, “Ethics Jump Ball”:
Dear Jenny,
You can make strawmen of our principles all you want, and argue all day against them, but all that will gain you is a smug feeling and “likes” from your friends, and make absolutely no inroads with the MAGA crowd whatsoever. But I know that your entire intent is to make me waste my time answering you. So, perhaps foolishly, I will oblige.
To begin, a little groundwork. A dilemma is only a dilemma if you really only have the two options. If there is any other alternative, such argumentation falls apart. Second, if you are going to address our principles, maybe you should determine what those principles actually are. For example, being pro-Second Amendment is not about shooting people. It is about the right to bear arms against, especially, an overbearing, tyrannical government. Being pro-life does not mean that you believe that no one should die, ever. Third, in any given situation, there may be more than one principle in play, and to ignore that to score rhetorical points is arguing in bad faith.
So let’s get into it.
I’m Shocked…SHOCKED!…That Mayor Mamdani’s Wife Is A Flaming Anti-Semite!
I have a very good friend, an actor, a lawyer, a Jew and a “useful idiot” for progressives, who recently wrote a passionate and articulate Facebook post about however one felt about Israel, there was no excuse, justification or salvation for people who hated Jews. And I recalled that he had been among my misguided and ethically-crippled Facebook friends who actually celebrated the election of Communist Zohran Mamdani, as had others of my friends as well as Democratic Party Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and this august crew (from Mamdani’s website):
But it’s even worse. With the exception of the disgraced ex-Governor of New York who was running against Mamdani, not a single national Democratic leader would say publicly, “What???? Are you all out of your minds? This guy hates Jews! What has our party become?”
What indeed.
Of course there was plenty of evidence that the Mayor-to-be’s wife was a Jew Hater, but the Axis media went to its usual great lengths to bury that fact like a cat buries its turds in a cat box. Today the Washington Free Beacon did the public a favor with a metaphorical bucket full of ice water to the faces of all of Mamdani’s enablers, deniers and useful idiots. The post is headlined, “Zohran Mamdani’s Wife Celebrated Palestinian Terrorists, Including Plane Hijacker, In Social Media Posts From Early Adulthood…Rama Duwaji also boosted a post that said Tel Aviv ‘Shouldn’t exist in the first place.’” There’s no paywall: read it. Send it to your Trump Deranged friends, and all your blind Facebook friends who thought this Marxian demagogue was so charming and passionate.
Better yet, shake the Free Beacon story in front of their smug, stupid faces like a Jack Russell Terrier shakes a rat—you know I love that image—or even better YET, do this..
Now, they will huminahumina that just because someone marries the love of his life who happens to want Jews wiped from the face of the earth doesn’t mean Mayor Mamdani feels the same way. Right. Heck, we don’t know that Eva Braun was bad, do we? Riiiight. Mayor Mamdani just used St. Paddy’s Day to compare the Irish Republican Army to Palestinians, who want Jews wiped from the face of the earth. This isn’t hard.
As for the Mamdani-chering Jews, like my friend, a smart and compassionate man, who celebrated Mamdani because he opposes Donald Trump, there are no excuses. They should be ashamed of themselves. He should be ashamed of himself. I am ashamed of him. People should turn their backs on these ethically corrupted fools like the jurors in “Twelve Angry Men” turn their backs on Juror 10 (Ed Begley) when he erupts into his final bigoted rant..
The irony? I cast that pro-Mamdani actor-friend in one of my productions of “Twelve Angry Men.”
“A representative for Mamdani did not respond to a request for comment,” notes the Free Beacon. Of course not. What would he say?
Update! “A ‘Great Stupid’ Court Case SO Stupid That It Makes “The Great Stupid” Look Almost Smart…”
The story that the great radio story-teller Paul Harvey would now tell us the rest of was the subject of the post below, from August 2024. As you will see, it made my head explode, but there has finally been a resolution, and ethics and common sense prevailed. Review the horrible case. Will voters really hand power back to the party that not only responsible for such things, but that still wants to establish them as our national standards? Really?
But I digress. Here is the original post, and I’ll add the recent developments at the end…
That crude, ambiguous drawing above got a first grader—we’re talking six-years-old here—suspended. That’s almost all you have to know for your head to explode if it is properly wired.
The Ethics Villains and Dunces are so thick in this fiasco you could use it to lay bricks. I’m almost embarrassed to tell the story, which I first saw at Reason…
In March of 2021, a first grader referred to as “B.B.” ” drew a picture we are told was intended to show people of different races, representing “three classmates and herself holding hands.” (I’d save the money the family was planning on spending on art school for B.B., if that was their intent.) Above the drawing, B.B. wrote “Black Lives Mater” (Latin!) with the words “any life” stuck in-between the slogan and the jelly beans, or whatever they were. B.B. then gave the drawing to a black classmate, as what B.B. testified was intended as a friendly gesture. But the classmate either ratted out B.B. or the principal was told about it by the teacher, or something (because school administrators don’t have anything better to do than to police the political correctness of kids’ drawings).
The school’s principal, Jesus Becerra, admonished B.B., saying that the drawing was “inappropriate.” B.B. was ordered to apologize to her classmate, prohibited from drawing any more pictures in school, and prevented from going to recess for two weeks.
Ethics Alarms 