Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Addendum: Joy Reid’s Rant

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

This little factoid is too rich to pass up. As noted yesterday in the pot pourri post, the execrable racist Joy Reid had done an interview raging about how everything whites invented had been stolen from black innovators, focusing especially on music. “We black folk gave y’all country music, hip hop, R&B, jazz, rock and roll, they couldn’t even invent that. But they have to call a white man The King. Because they couldn’t make rock and roll. So they have to stamp The King on a man whose main song, was stolen from an overweight black woman,” the former MSNBC star said.

The “overweight black woman” she was referring to was Big Mama Thornton, the original artist to sing “You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog,” which she recorded on August 13, 1952. It was Thornton’s only hit record, selling over 500,000 copies. Elvis, of course, subsequently recorded the song and it became not only an even bigger hit, but his breakthrough record.

Mark Hemingway of The Federalist pointed out on “X” that, as usual, Reid didn’t know what she was talking about. For while Big Mama was black and was the first to sing the song, she didn’t write it. “Hound Dog” was written by the immortal Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who were as white as Elvis.

They wrote or co-wrote over 70 chart hits including many of Elvis’s most famous songs. Among their hits for other artists: “Stand by Me,” “Leader of the Pack,” “On Broadway,” and Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” Peggy was very white. Lieber and Stoller were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Quoth Hemingway: “Reid is an idiot.” Yes, and she’s a racist idiot who makes anyone who listens to her more ignorant than they were when she started talking.

Incompetent Re-Branding of the Decade?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Amazing. Mediaite, an MSNBC cheerleader, calls this thing above as ‘surprisingly elegant.” Elegant? MS is best known as a disease, and a nasty one. If someone says, “I have MS now,” the proper result is, “I’m so sorry! What’s the prognosis?” More pandering from Mediaite: “Media rebrands usually stink. Quibi. Tronc. Syfy. The graveyard is crowded with names that sounded bold in the boardroom and ridiculous everywhere else, which is why MSNBC’s new identity as MS Now feels like such a surprise. It’s not perfect. It’s not thrilling. But it’s… smart.” Hey, everybody! It’s smart to make your new identity the common name for a dread disease! Is it possible that no one mentioned this among the dozens—hundreds?—of alleged professional marketers and image consultants involved in the process? Just to make sure I’m not imagining this, I just Googled “MS.” The result:

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Pleading Not Guilty Is Never Unethical, But On Occasion It Is…What? Futile? Disingenuous?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In 2019, John R. Anderson III, 42 (above) was sentenced to six years in prison for aggravated stalking in DeKalb County (Illinois). Now he’s being charged with stalking again in a new case, as he faces 11 counts of stalking, harassing and violating an order of protection. Anderson has pleaded not guilty, which is his Constitutional right. Of course he’s innocent until proven guilty, and he and his lawyer cannot be called unethical for wanting to make the prosecution prove the case against him beyond a reasonable doubt.

Nonetheless, this appears to be one of those cases where the not guilty plea itself is likely to destroy any credibility the defendant might have. You see, Anderson allowed himself to star in a 2022 episode of “I Am a Stalker.” Not only that, but the woman he admitted to stalking in that episode is the same woman he is accused of stalking in the current case.

According to court records, his re-stalking occurred last December and January of this year. First he violated a 2024 order of protection and “harassed” the woman by placing messages and content on her cellphone, writing a letter to her, texting her and making repeated calls to her using different phone numbers and apps to hide his contact information. He also is accused of surveilling her residence by parking in front of her home and her place of employment, “repeatedly calling and texting her,” and placing cupcakes on her vehicle.

Oooh, “cupcake stalking” sounds especially creepy.

Authorities say that Anderson gained access to her car, placed a GPS tracking device in it, and gained access to her Amazon Alexa device. This guy is good. He sure sounds like an especially experienced and professional stalker; this is probably why Netflix sought him out for its series, which my sock drawer crisis sadly preventing me from watching.

My pro tip would be that any time one’s plea is likely to cause the jury to roll their eyes so hard their eyeballs cramp, cutting a plea deal with the prosecutor is the wiser and, yes, the more ethical course.

It’s Time To Concede That The NYT Is Just A Partisan Propaganda Organ and Little Else

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Above is a Times front page in which the paper piled on to the international criticism of Israel in the Left’s “Think of the Children!” effort to blame Jews for the consequences of the war Hamas started and refuses to end.

“Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, about 18 months, with his mother, Hedaya al-Mutawaq, who said he was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition,” the original caption to the photo said. Evil Israel is starving innocent children to death! Then, five days after the story was published, on July 29, the Times issued an editor’s note (buried at the bottom of the article) as well as a brief statement on its communications social media page that corrected its story, writing that it “had learned” that the child had underlying medical issues that affected his muscle development. Otherwise it did not retract any part of the feature, “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” including its now especially dubious claim that the child was suffering from malnutrition due to food shortages.

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As If Any More Proof Was Needed, Trump 1.0 Nemesis Jim Acosta Reveals Himself Beyond All Question To Be An Unethical Hack

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

You see, no decent, ethical journalist would even think of doing this. No intelligent journalist—or pest removal professional—would either. Yet this is the guy CNN sicced on President Trump and his press secretaries in his first term. This irredeemable partisan hack became a broadcast news star with neither the common sense, acumen, professional skills or decency to justify such status, which he is making a living off now.

This is CNN. This is Jim Acosta. This is the state of American journalism.

Former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta released the video of him interviewing an AI-generated version of Joaquin Oliver, who is dead. He’s one of the 17 victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the tragedy that also inflicted David Hogg on the world, as if the shooting itself wasn’t horrible enough.

The avatar was animated from a photograph of the late 17-year-old who appears wearing a beanie while speaking in a monotone digital voice. Acosta begins by asking, “What happened to you?” to which the AI version of Oliver responds, “I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone.”

Let’s pass on the conduct of the parents in creating the creepy thing, which is right out of an episode of “Black Mirror.” The topic is journalism ethics. Today’s reporters are so estranged from the concepts of honesty, respect, objectivity, responsibility and trustworthiness that no ethics alarm pings when someone says, “Hey Jim! Apparently there’s an AI version f one of those dead Parkland kids. Why don’t you interview him? Maybe he’ll say something nasty about Trump!”

True, Acosta is pretty much the bottom of the barrel in the profession that is already the bottom of the profession barrel, but still, it wasn’t that long ago that a stunt like this would be considered outrageous if attempted by a shock jock like The Greaseman or Howard Stern. I would say that this is the canary dying in the mine, except that then Chris Cuomo or Don Lemon might interview an AI version of the canary.

[Even WordPress is disgusted; it won’t let me download a photo of this asshole.]

Sydney Sweeney Indeed Has Great Genes and Those Freaking Out Over Her Jeans Ad Do Not

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

If an attractive black model or actress had made this commercial, nobody would be complaining. But because Sweeney is white and blonde, and because the American Left has lost its mind, a classic provocative blue-jeans ad (Remember Brooke Shields saying “Nothing gets between me and my Calvins”?) is being cited as proof that America is embracing Hitler’s Master Race narrative. Sure.

This warrants an Ethics Alarms “Bite Me!” if anything does.

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Trump Derangement Monday Begins With a “Nelson” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The New York Post reports that a Manhattan rally in support of “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert drew about 20 protesters yesterday. The NYPD police who were there to prevent violence (I can’t believe I am writing this!) quickly left when the indignant Trump-haters dispersed after just a few minutes. The leaders of the stupid “We’re With Colbert” rally outside the CBS Broadcast Center on Manhattan’s West Side had said that the protest was part of a nationwide call for “integrity.”

As we all know, late night network talk shows go with integrity like sushi goes with Turkish taffy and ketchup.

“Our country is not perfect, never has been,” said the event’s organizer, whose name isn’t worth mentioning since he is clearly, you know, a moron. “But we’ve always had the First Amendment, and now Mango Mussolini is trying to take that from us.” Right. The party this guy obviously supported actually set up a federal agency to restrict speech, conspired with the news media to embargo facts, statistics and news that it found inconvenient to its aspirations, conspired with that news media to feed partisan propaganda to the public, employed a White House spokesperson who routinely spewed disinformation, and pressured social media platforms to censor critics. Then it ran a ticket that openly promoted censorship of “hate speech,” which means, as always, “whatever the Axis of Unethical Conduct doesn’t like.” “Mango Mussolini” (Nice!) is anti-First Amendment because he correctly sought to hold CBS accountable for a brazen act of election interference as it surreptitiously tried to make Kamala Harris seem less like the babbling fool that she is and was caught red-handed.

Meanwhile, another clear example of how the President’s weaponizing of tariffs is defying the doomsayers cannot attract any positive coverage from most of the “enemies of the people”, nor, of course, the “my mind’s made up don’t confuse me with facts” Trump Deranged like whatever his name is above. The EU trade deal announced yesterday “will likely not do much for economic growth on either side,” sayeth the Times, despite confessing elsewhere that the European Union had agreed to purchase $750 billion of American energy over three years and to increase its investment in the United States by more than $600 billion above current levels. How could that possibly be a bad thing? How could critics not give the President some credit for the deal? That’s easy: whatever President Trump does or says is by definition bad.

Seems fair…

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Nah, The Democratic Party Hasn’t Become Openly Anti-Semitic! It’s Just That One of Its Biggest Allies Wants To Erase Jews From the Holocaust…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

When I read about this, I was certain that some NEA-hating conservative news source was exaggerating. Nope. It is right there in black and white, as you can see above in the entry from the National Education Association’s newly released 2025 handbook. My brain found this so shocking that it refused to explode as it should have, and just went into a safety shutdown. I can’t account for the last three hours…

The nation’s largest teacher’s union is a massive contributor to the Democratic Party, a major reason why public education has deteriorated into ideological indoctrination, and a force for ill in American culture and society. It was, for instance, substantially responsible for the disastrous decision to close the schools in the midst of the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck. Now it has openly proclaimed its hostility toward not just Israel, but the Jewish people.

The handbook, the NEA’s guide for the union’s nearly 3 million members, describes the Holocaust as having “12 million victims… from different faiths.” As unquestioned historical sources make undeniable, “The Final Solution” was at the core of Hitler’s extermination project. The NEA says the union will “promote the celebration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day” by “recognizing more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics.” This section is on the page before the one shown above:

The NEA then promotes “Nakba” education, which describes Israel’s founding in 1948 as the “forced, violent displacement” of 750,000 Palestinians. The document further pledges to teach that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” and defends educators’ and students’ “free speech in defense of Palestine.” In case the graphic above is too hard to read, here are the key sections:

States one news source, “Critics argue the NEA is promoting a one-sided, revisionist history while ignoring the central role of Jews in the Holocaust.” This would warrant a “Ya think?” except that I have used my quote for today in the previous post. Where’s the “argument”? That is exactly what the NEA does in the handbook, and the position goes beyond unethical into evil. The group is obviously proud of its position and confident that the Democratic Party and the public supports it.

Did you know that the Republicans and Donald Trump are Nazis?

Now what? Here is what…

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Comment of the Day: “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck’”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

AM Golden invades the realm of Ethics Alarms long-form historical ethics commenter Steve-O-In NJ with an epic Comment of the Day, and a thing of beauty it is indeed. The post also brings back many memories I would rather have left buried. Here it is, in reaction to the essay, “Return of the ‘2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck'”:

***

This is a 60-plus year process in the making. Barry Goldwater ran a fairly incompetent campaign but he absolutely had the news media biting at his heels the entire time. They gushed about Bobby Kennedy in ’68, they took potshots at Nixon. By the time Reagan came along, he faced hostility from a large segment of the press and Hollywood. In the meantime, Brain Trusters infiltrated the universities and encouraging the student protest movements instead of explaining how our Constitution was designed to work, culminating in a culture 50 years later that understands its country so poorly that it gets its news from Jon Stewart who is able to ignorantly proclaim that the Constitution doesn’t say that protests have to be peaceful.

In the election of 1992, Arsenio Hall ranted in his monologue when President George H.W. Bush said he probably wouldn’t appear on Hall’s show after Gov. Bill Clinton did, yelling about what made Bush think Hall wanted him on his show. Open hostility over who may or may not be a guest on Hall’s show paved the way for the venom spewed on every Late Night show today.

Believe all women? Not if they accused the first “black” President, Bill Clinton, of sexual harassment and even rape. “Anyone can drag $100 through a trailer park,” right? Bubba was caught with his pants down and allowed us to be caught with ours down on 9/11/2001 when he blew off an offer to hand over Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, the culture wars were heating up and Americans were becoming concerned about the country’s direction.

George W. Bush – faced with a supremely hostile news media and entertainment industry – endured screeds about stolen elections, fake Presidencies and two mocking cable television shows (“That’s My Bush!” and “Lil Bush”) before he gained some respect after 9/11, but never really got the credibility he deserved. In pop culture, far too many Bush-deranged Harry Potter fans believed they saw the myopic Ministry of Magic’s denial that the evil Voldemort had returned in the efforts by the Bush administration to urge vigilance in watching out for terrorists. Ah, remember when J.K. Rowling was the voice of truth? The damage to the American public’s understanding of the Constitution, particularly the Judicial branch, continued apace

Bob Dole and John McCain were treated as racist, sexist old men who would put this country into a Nazi theocracy; Mitt Romney was framed as a racist, sexist and religious nut who would send this country into a weird Mormon Nazi theocracy. All three were all virtually Hitler.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama was the be all and end all of existence. He who could do no wrong—and could not be touched because he had black skin and anyone who criticized him was a racist—took full advantage by damaging America on the world stage and inciting racial divisiveness on a scale that hadn’t been seen in 50 years.

When Donald Trump was campaigning in 2016, the news media covered him incessantly. It now appears that they wanted him to be the nominee because, in the words of Stephen Colbert on the day my family and I sat in his audience in NYC on a hot July day as he did a riff on how corrupt Hillary Clinton was, “Hillary so corrupt the only candidate she can beat is Donald Trump!”

It turned out she couldn’t even do that.

So the forces that had been coming together for 60 years—the biased news media, the leftist entertainment industry, progressive-dominated academia and other elite, corrupted professions coalesced into a single so-called Resistance Movement. Trump says people coming through our border with Mexico aren’t all angels, they accuse him of saying all immigrants are criminals. Trump says not everyone protesting in Charlottesville was a racist Nazi, he’s accused of “bothsidism” and pestered endlessly about condemning white supremacy even though he did condemn it. Trump is falsely accused of colluding with a foreign power, leading a big chunk of the population to believe his Presidency is the result of another stolen election.

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On the Damning Birthday Doodle….

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I just woke up and feel like I’m going to barf. Almost certainly this is because I knew when I finally hit the sack last night that I was going to have to write about this new low in Axis “Get Trump!” shenanigans—oh, I’m sure there will be even lower ones to come—this morning.

You see, it seems that a long time ago, eventually-to-be-President Donald Trump wrote a bawdy birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein as part of Ghislaine Maxwell’s project to create a leather notebook filled with such cards from his friends. It seems that Trump cooperated with the project, which means that he had criminal sex with under-age girls. Or it means that he would have liked to have sex with under-aged girls. Or that he’s evil and needs to be destroyed by any means necessary, of which this smoking doodle evidence is one….but the Trump Deranged lunatics who are fulminating over this “scandal” already know that, or think they do, so again we find ourselves asking, “What’s going on here?“

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