Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Senator Le Pétomane?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There are so many reasons for Michiganders regardless of party and ideological bent not to vote for Abdul El-Sayed that the revelation that he likes to fart in public seems trivial in comparison. He’s a Communist who lies about his beliefs; he has called for defunding the police and he is anti-Semitic, though to today’s Democrats that’s a good thing. He refused to disavow his pal Hasan Piker, who is a vocal America-hater. Naturally Bernie Sanders, AOC and Obama are supporting El-Sayed.

Now a longtime aid to the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan has quit and gone rogue, calling his former boss for whom he worked as a bodyguard and a staff assistant a “manufactured man” who has maturity more appropriate to a high school locker room. Jordan Domingue told the media that during El-Sayed’s gubernatorial and Senate campaigns, he realized that the candidate was a “30-year-old leapfrogging into a job he was inexperienced for and only got through connections.”

“Now I’m far from blameless, and will reflect for years how I let myself be captured by loyalty and personality,” Domingue added. “When he acted like an entitled mobster to elected officials in 2017-2018, I excused it as a justified outsider earning their place. When he would say one thing to one group and another thing to a different group hours later, I considered it just the norm or ‘strategic ambiguity’ as he calls it.”

What Domingue really found intolerable, however, was El-Sayed’s affection for openly passing gas in front of staffers. “He would openly do so without warning or embarrassment as his form of stand-up comedy,” Domingue wrote. “To this day for him, the act of farting is easily one of the funniest things a person can do.”

Is that a good reason to vote against him, along with, you know, the fact that El-Sayed is an anti-American lunatic, which doesn’t bother the Mad Left these days? Le Pétomane was the stage name of Joseph Pujol (1857 –1945) who was a professional “fartist.” Not only could he fart at will, he could fart tunes. The Governor in “Blazing Saddles,” played by Mel Brooks, is named in honor of Le Pétomane.

There are lots of reasons to be dubious about this story. For one thing, it has “disgruntled employee” written all over it. For another, it was first reported by The Gateway Pundit, which is on the EA blacklist. I will also point out that supporters of Donald Trump are ethically estopped from assailing a candidate for having a sophomoric sense of humor and running for an office “he was inexperienced for.”

I also note that the levels of dignity and decorum, not to mention maturity, that the public has a right to expect from its elected officials has already been reduced to high school and even elementary school level by such class acts as GOP Rep. Lauren Boberg, Senator Fetterman dressing like gym rat and this…

Nonetheless, thinking that farting intentionally at the workplace is acceptable conduct does raise serious questions about judgment and socialization, if not sanity. And wouldn’t you agree that a superior intentionally farting among staffers in the workplace constitutes creating a “hostile work environment”?

Peak Lindsay Clancy Ethics Train Wreck Insanity! “The View’s” Sara Haines Can’t Understand Why Clancy’s Husband Divorced Her

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
@juice5news

🚨 THE VIEW HOST QUESTIONS PATRICK CLANCY FOR DIVORCING LINDSAY CLANCY ‼️ Sara Haines questioned how Patrick’s marital love ended so quickly after Lindsay killed their 3 children. Patrick has since remarried. Do you agree with Haines? #LindsayClancy #PatrickClancy

♬ original sound – Juice 5 News – Juice 5 News

[Sorry for stooping to using TikTok, but it had the only suitable clip that WordPress would let me embed…]

“The View” is trying to get its own private dining car on the Lindsay Clancy Trial Ethics Train Wreck. First Sunny Hostin uses the issue to declare that she was the “lone juror” who got a man declared not guilty after he killed a woman and made her into a delicious soup…and it turns out that she was lying about the whole thing and wasn’t the “lone juror” after all. Now Sara Haines—how can anyone determine which of these opinionated, wokeness-infected, ignorant women is the dumbest?—expressed her shock that Lindsay Clancy’s husband (now remarried) would divorce the woman who murdered his children. After all, Haines says, don’t the marriage vows state “in sickness or in health”?

Well yes, Sarah, but at least the vows I took didn’t have a “whether one of us murders our kids or not” clause in there.

Haines really and truly asks, “How did the marital love end so quickly?” Gee, that’s a real brain-teaser. Domestic abuse activists argue that “marital love” has been abandoned once a husband punches his wife in the face, but that’s obviously bad and inexcusable. Murdering the children is more nuanced. Good question, Sara. I’ll have to think about that….

How is someone as dumb and confused as Haines on television anyway? The inconvenient truth about all journalism is that the vast majority of reporters just aren’t very bright, and certainly not as smart as they think they are. Nonetheless, we allow them to have public platforms and exposure that consistently accomplish the opposite of what our Founders believed made “the press” essential to a functioning democracy. Heck, we allow them to manipulate elections. Haines and her colleagues—not just the confederacy of dunces on “The View” but reporters and pundits generally—make the public less informed, less astute, less ethical and less responsible. Somehow this stupid woman—yes, I hold that asking why a man would divorce his wife after she murdered three children, especially their three children, is signature significance: no intelligent person even thinks that’s a puzzle, never mind announcing it on national TV—managed to be a correspondent on NBC and ABC. What does that tell us about the competence, judgment and trustworthiness of broadcast news?

Related questions:

Will anything cause ABC to recognize that calling “The View” a news program is a disgrace, and that the network metaphorically soils itself and the culture every time it gives this coven of morons gets another hour to lobotomize the public?

How do Democrats continue to get votes when siding with progressives means associating oneself with the likes of Sara, Sunny, Whoopi and Joy, never mind Bernie, Kamala, AOC, Fredo, Ayanna, Jasmine, Gavin, and Zohran?

When did American woman lose their ethical bearings?

Can they be saved?

“The Ethicist” Gets A Question That I Would Answer:

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

But if I were running “The Ethicist” column, I wouldn’t dignify such a dunderheaded query with publication at all.

“Name Withheld” says that her boyfriend admits to “sexting women on the social platform YikYak, which lets you message anonymously with other people at your college.” She continues in part:

“I don’t know if I should break up with him. If he were cheating, I would do so instantly…This is a weird middle ground where he’s not really cheating, but he’s definitely crossing a line. He also told me that he first started sexting people (on other platforms) when he was in middle school… I worry that it may be a mental-health issue…We share a fair number of friends, and despite this major failing, I still think that my boyfriend is an upstanding guy. I don’t want to cause him harm by telling people why we broke up… But I also don’t want to harm my reputation — I can’t afford to lose friends because they think I’m in the wrong for breaking up with him.”

She closes her epically clueless letter with a surprise question. I assumed she was asking whether The Ethicist (NYU philosophy professor Kwame Anthony Appiah) thought she should break up with the creep. Her actual question: “Is sexting anonymously cheating?”

My runner-up answer to the letter after “RUN AWAY!” would be, “What the hell is the matter with you?” What’s the difference whether sexting women anonymously is technically “cheating” or not? Her sicko boyfriend has been sending anonymous sex messages to women since he was in junior high school! (“Dear Ethicist: Is torturing small animals cheating?”) Whatever you choose to call it, such conduct is signature significance: no “stand up guy” behaves like that. Case closed, boyfriend disqualified as trustworthy love-interest beyond a reasonable doubt, no appeal, end of story, bye-bye!

The number of flashing “IDIOT!” signs in the letter are impressive. She appears to think that “cheating” is the only permitted justification for breaking up. If she’s so worried about injuring his reputation by telling people that he’s a sick perv, then don’t tell anybody. How hard is that? But my favorite is “I can’t afford to lose friends because they think I’m in the wrong for breaking up with him.” She can’t afford to lose friends who don’t think sexting women anonymously is enough of a red flag for a boyfriend that it justifies telling him to hit the road? Who needs friends like that? Who wants friends like that? The doomed college co-ed—what becomes of women this confused? Nothing good—literally is saying that she would continue a dangerous relationship if her friends wanted her to. Wow.

Now let’s see what the Professor says….Ugh! Terrible. Equivocating academic-speak gobbledygook. Example: “Plenty of people would find his activities — para-sexual interactions with para-amours — cheating adjacent.” You can read it for yourself if, and only if, your sock drawer is organized.

Ethics Observations on the Walmart Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

An awful event that could have been avoided in many ways if even one of the key players had just behaved responsibly and ethically, or knew what behaving responsibly and ethically is…

Bert Atienza, 77, was shopping at Walmart with his wife after church a week ago when store a 17-year-old store employee rushed down the aisle narrowly missing Josephine Atienza with a cart. Bert sharply admonished the young woman, saying, “You almost hit my wife with your heavy cart, and you did not even say excuse me or apologize to her,” according to his wife in interviews after the event. The African- American staffer argued with him briefly and then tossed a can at the couple as they walked away. Minutes later Travis White and Erika Mitchell attacked Bert as their daughter, the reckless employee, watched according to store surveillance video. [Note: Accounts say they “allegedly” attacked him. It it’s on video, it happened, unless the claim is that the video is a “deep fake.” I hate that reflex news media characterization. (‘John Wilkes Booth allegedly shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford’s Theater in front of hundreds of witnesses…’) Even the attorney for White and Mitchell doesn’t dispute the attack].

The two parents shoved Atienza from the back, one punched him in the face, then they pushed him into the shelving unit. After he fell to the ground, as one of the attackers kicked him. “While he’s on the floor, they’re still kicking him and I told them stop. My husband has heart problems,” Josephine said.

Oh! We’re sorry, if we knew the 77-year-old man had heart problems, we never would have attacked him!

Bert Atienza lost consciousness before help arrived and he was rushed to a hospital where he died the next day. White and Mitchell were arrested days later and charged with second-degree murder. Their daughter (described as “no longer employed by Walmart”—ya think?) has also been charged with assault and battery, aggravated malicious wounding and conspiracy to commit a felony. Her name has not been released to the press because she is a minor.

Well! What a nice story! Let’s see..

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Esteemed Progressive Law School Dean Boasts About His School’s Illegal “Good Discrimination” In Faculty Hiring. Surprised?

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Ethics Observations:

1. These people cheat. They are proud of their cheating: it’s “the ends justifies the means” exemplified. This is a law school dean—at a prestige law school!— openly admitting and rationalizing violating the law.

2. He also says that he’ll lie under oath to deny what he said.

3.Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has a long and disgusting EA dossier (at the link) but is always—always, no exceptions—represented in the mainstream media as respected legal scholar. I don’t respect him: he’s an Ethics Villain, and undeniably so.

4. Notice that he says “diversity is important” but he never says why it’s important. This is just an article of faith with the Left. It is important because it just is, that’s all, and they say it is, so there.

5. I’m playing the Learned Judge tonight in a law school production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Trial by Jury” (1875, and as funny and sharp now as it was on opening night.) The Foreman of the Jury, a bass-baritone role, is being played by tiny female student, a soprano, who is inaudible and who can’t remember her entrances. She is easily the least able member of the chorus. Why was she cast in that role? She is the only “student of color” who auditioned, and the student organization has by-laws requiring “diversity” in casts. As a result, the show sounds worse, looks worse, all of the cast members who are qualified for their roles will get fewer benefits from their work and dedication as a result, the audience will enjoy the show less, and the exploited student, who is a very nice young woman, will be embarrassed in public. If I had to describe a perfect example of what’s wrong with DEI logic, I doubt that I could come up with a better one. Yet ideologues like Chemerinsky still use their authority to assure the world that discriminating against white males in pursuit of diversity is an “unalloyed virtue, as Gilbert might say.

6. Our cast—all of them (but me!) list their “pronouns” in their program bios— had a rehearsal in the faculty lounge. There are only two newspapers there for faculty perusal: The New York Times and the Washington Post. Nah, U.S. law schools aren’t Leftist indoctrination centers! What a ridiculous conspiracy theory…

7. Do let me know if any Axis news media outlet breathes a word of this incident. My bet: there won’t be any.

Unethical Quote of the Month: Lindsay Clancy Trial Juror Kellie Farina

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”

—Kellie Farina, one of the three jurors interviewed following the mistrial called in the Lindsay Clancy murder case, after the jury deadlocked 11-1 with a single hold-out male juror refusing to vote for acquittal.

That may end up being an iconic unethical quote, one that echoes through the years as America comes to realize how shattered the values of American women have become in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The especially nice touch is the use of “viciously,” don’t you think? ‘Imagine, this idiot was somehow stuck on the fact that a mother murdered her three small children viciously! What’s the matter with him?’

I’d like to know what’s the matter with anyone who can “get over” the fact that three children were murdered by their own mother “viciously.”

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OH NO! Trump Is Toppling A Work Of Art Outside The Kennedy Center! Democrats Would NEVER Take Down…Oh. Right.

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Well, I’ll say this for my Trump Deranged Facebook Friends: they are useful for keeping up on that group’s rapidly progressing mental illness, which exhibits symptoms manifesting constant fury over trivia, obsessive behavior, presumptions of certitude, and loss of all perspective. Oh, and hypocrisy! Mustn’t forget hypocrisy.

My friend the Trump Deranged professor posted this today with favor:

“Today, a permanent artistic gift—Joel Shapiro’s “Blue”—was taken from the nation because Donald Trump didn’t like it.

“September 18, join Hands Off the Arts to raise your voice and make sure Trump pays the political price for his vandalism of John F. Kennedy’s memorial and our nation’s cultural center.”

I’m marking my calendar right now!

The alleged vandalism was Trump’s ordered removal of the ugly thing above, which, since I started personally boycotting the monument to one of our most unethical Presidents and his corrupt family dynasty that included a U.S. Senator who left a young woman to die in a submerged car, I had never seen before. Huh. Is the outrage over Trump getting rid of that piece of blue crap more contrived than the fury over the 250th Commemorative coin, or less?

In a risible report, the New York Times informs us that “Blue” is a “towering artwork.” And it fit so well with the neo-Classical style of the Edward Durrell Stone white marble box-shaped Center, too!

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts removed a major outdoor sculpture from the center’s grounds on Wednesday. The work, installed in 2019, was targeted for elimination after President Trump’s takeover of the center, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

The Kennedy Center made no advance announcement of its plans to remove the towering, vivid blue metal sculpture of a stick-like human figure, called “Blue.”

On Wednesday morning, the limbs and torso of the figure were wrapped in protective material; an arm was the first to be removed.

The Kennedy Center confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that the sculpture was being deinstalled and that a foundation dedicated to the artist would determine its next location. It did not say the reason for the removal but noted that the deinstallation of artworks that had been donated or lent was common practice for conservation or preservation purposes.

A news release from around the debut of “Blue” describes it as a permanent sculpture for the grounds.

“We are deeply grateful to Joel Shapiro for the years ‘Blue’ has spent animating our campus and connecting visitors to his vision,” the statement said. “We are honored to have been stewards of his vibrant work and a part of his enduring legacy.”

Mr. Shapiro died in 2025. His daughter, Ivy Shapiro, who is president of his foundation, said in an interview that she thought her father would have been “alarmed” that the sculpture was being taken down from its intended location.

“In Joel’s mind, it was one of his greatest site-specific commissions, which celebrated joy, freedom and creativity,” she said.

Hear! Hear! I know I’ve always seen giant metal stick figures as celebrations of joy, freedom and creativity. Not as much as those inflated wiggly-men, of course, but still.

If there is one thing I do not care to hear knee-jerk progressives bleat about in their ravings, it is President Trump removing a single ugly artwork from the grounds of a public building because “he didn’t like it.” In this case the President showed exquisite taste (for a change) but even if the thing weren’t a big blue metal stick figure, the reason “It stinks!” is still a brilliantly-reasoned critique compared to the Axis and Friends removing over 160 statues from public grounds …

…because a black lifetime petty thug died after an accidental use of excessive force by a Minnesota police officer while he was resisting arrest and over-dosing on drugs.

The hypocrisy—and willful blindness to it—exhibited in this latest episode of “Everything Trump Does Is Terrible And Justifies Impeachment If Not Death!” is…I need a new adjective for “beyond belief.” Let’s see…it looks like I use all of them, and the Thesaurus list doesn’t even include “gobsmacking,” “head-exploding” or the phase that keeps jumping into my mind right now, “so fucking stupid it makes my pancreas whimper.” I guess I’ll go with the Cambridge Dictionary’s more dignified and restrained “impossible to comprehend.”

Dolly Death Aftermath Ethics: If You Have To Be A Knee-Jerk, Fact-Resistant, Virtue-Signaling Progressive Shill, FINE, But Stop Lying

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

[This is CNN! I had to find an excuse to post this, but it is relevant to Paragraph 7 below.]

All over Facebook, my Trump Deranged friends have been egging me on to stuff their metaphorical heads up their metaphorical asses after they have used Dolly Parton’s demise to justify their own biases. My favorite was the one that began, “I don’t want to talk about Trump, but isn’t it interesting that the vile, bigoted asshole wrote nice things about Dolly even though she was woke and an LGBTQ supporter.”

Note: This woman doesn’t want to talk about Trump, but immediately turned an appreciation for a recently deceased, non-political country music superstar into an excuse to attack the President.

Remind me: how did I end up with so many friends like this?

Lie #1: Dolly Parton was not by any stretch of the imagination “woke.” She consistently refused to take political or culture war positions. “Live and let live,” “Trust in the Lord,” Love your Neighbor” are not woke talking points.

Lie #2: She was not an LGBTQ “supporter” other than to say she loved everyone. Claiming that Parton was a member of the Pride mob is now a viral near consensus on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook, and even the bots on Google and “X” will confirm that non-fact. It’s the reverse of “If you’re not for us, you’re against us”; in Dolly’s case, that she didn’t support active bigotry against gays etc. and believed they should have the same rights and acceptance as everyone else, made her an LGBTQ+ activist.

Let’s examine this one a bit more. shall we? Dolly Parton never directly advocated same sex marriage. She once joked about gay marriage, “Why can’t they be as miserable as us heterosexuals in their marriages?” Bob Hope might have made that joke. (Maybe he did.) Bob was not “woke.” She gave the obligatory lawn sign pablum “I think love is love and we have no control over that” when pressed. I guess she also supported the Man-Boy Love group, then. “I think people should be allowed to marry,” was another of Dolly’s carefully worded ambiguities. Donald Trump’s comment was, “I have no problem with the gays.” Did that make him “woke”? An LGBTQ activist?

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“Baseless”?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

How many times have you read or heard Axis “journalists,” Democrats, the Trump Deranged and your smug and brainwashed social media friends mock any suggestion…especially those by Donald Trump…that our election results are untrustworthy and the 2020 election may have been stolen, by saying the claim is “baseless”? I can find that denial in new online content still, and would, if my sock drawer wasn’t in such bad shape.

Since that election in the teeth of The Great Stupid, the assessment here on Ethics Alarms has remained the same, to wit: It is impossible to prove the election was stolen, but the suspicion is far from “baseless.” Moreover, the fact that the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s rote rebuttal continues to be that the claim is “baseless” is itself justification for that suspicion.

Democrats held their primary election for Wisconsin governor last week with the party terrified that Democratic Socialists of America candidate Francesca Hong would be the victor, putting what the party considers to be a flippable U.S. Senate seat in the hands of a nut case who wants to eliminate Thanksgiving and defund the police. Despite all pre-primary pollsters declaring that Hong had a double-digit lead over Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Cowley managed to win the primary in the early morning hours. But something was clearly amiss.

Milwaukee Election Commissioner Paulina Gutierrez said when she arrived at the courthouse in Milwaukee County, 5 out of the 9 USB drives she brought with her did not have the absentee vote results they were supposed to contain. That amounted to 15,000 ballots, and Crowley won by only 3,783 votes. Election officials re-downloaded the missing information, or that’s what they said they were downloading, and brought the drives back to the courthouse. Crowley was declared the winner by the Associated Press at 2:34 a.m.Meanwhile, NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki was on camera, so stunned he couldn’t speak.

The video of Kornacki learning about the USB debacle was posted to Twtter/ X. His long moment of stunned silence has been making its way around social media. The Daily Mail posted a section where Kornacki could not help but laugh and asked NBC News national politics reporter Ben Kamisar, “Are you serious?” when the two learned that restarting the process might take hours.

“We’re kind of, indefinitely waiting for them to get their act together here,” Kornacki told Kamisar later. “It really is coming down to this one giant update in Milwaukee, but man, we waited 90 minutes for them, they did this whole procession, and then they find out there’s nothing on the sticks,” he said. “The audience has been with us for four, six hours in some cases, for this moment that didn’t happen…I think we are gonna wrap it here, for the reasons we’re saying here … I want you to know, I hate doing this to you.”

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Flagrant Media Bias And Disinformation of the Year: NPR

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Here is how National Public Radio reported those statistics on D.C. crime on the one-year anniversary of President Trump ordering the National Guard to patrol the National Capital.

“Multiple studies have since found that the National Guard presence in D.C. has had no effect on violent crime, although there has been a decrease in opportunistic crimes like petty theft and vehicle break-ins.”

That summary arrives after NPR spends nine full paragraphs burying the lede, only to lie about what the lede is anyway.

When I read that [Aside: NPR had the gall to send me a solicitation for a contribution via email, signed by the NPR host who blackballed me as its ethics commentator for telling the truth about late-hit sexual harassment complaints, because I “seemed to be defending Donald Trump.] this morning I was genuinely puzzled. When I surfed past Fox News last night, Laura Ingraham was declaring that the statistics proved that Trump’s use of the National Guard was prudent and has been a great success. Two completely divergent news reports. This is why our journalism has become untrustworthy and dangerous. This is why civil discourse is nearly impossible, with citizens operating under competing distortions of reality.

And this is why President Trump was and is right to call our news media “enemies of the people.”

However, NPR’s distortion and deceit qualifies the network as a media Ethics Villain and an Ethics Corrupter. Note the chart above from the D.C. police site. A 32% decrease in murder is not “no effect” on violent crime. That isn’t just spin or bias, that’s a lie. NPR also plays language games, because that’s the Left’s specialty. “Opportunistic crimes like petty theft and vehicle break-ins” is the euphemism this nauseating excuse for a news organization uses to describe the following crimes that have decreased significantly in the past year in the District:

  • Robbery
  • Arson
  • Motor vehicle theft
  • Theft
  • Property crime
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