Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Urgent Notice Of Correction: Chuck Schumer’s Apparently Non-Existent “Unethical Quote Of The Century,” And My Abject Apology Because Bias Made Me Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

Last evening, I posted an Unethical Quote allegedly made by Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer that “Donald Trump’s impeachment acquittal will be meaningless because we never accepted the results of the 2016 election in the first place. Anyone who accepts an acquittal is a danger to our democracy.” I originally titled it the Unethical Quote of the Day, and later, as I read it again while responding to the predictable shocked comments, I upgraded the comment to Unethical Quote of the Century, a designation I was prepared to defend.

This morning, momentarily awake and planning to go back to sleep, I decided to check the Ethics Alarms comments, and saw this, from frequent commenter Here’s Johnny.

Re: Unethical quote:
I would think that, for the unethical quote of the century, I would be able to find a few references to it in the news media. My best Google search efforts have turned up reports from Ethics Alarms and The Sacramento Brie. The Brie does not appear to be a legitimate news site, and their reference to this quote appears to show a Fox News screen grab. Searching at Fox News did not turn up the quote. The quote does not appear in the Senate Democrats text of Schumer’s comments at the press conference where he supposedly made the comment.
So, what is going on here? Is there evidence that Schumer actually said what is in the quote? I could not find it.

This was disturbing. The post had no link, which is unusual, and I couldn’t tracj down where I got it from, though I believe the pointer came from a Trump Deranged friend on Facebook who quoted it approvingly. I’ve checked my browser history to no avail. After reading HJ’s comment, I listened to every YouTube clip I could find from Schumer yesterday. He made a number of disingenuous and hyperbolic statements about a trial with no witnesses not being a trial (The Clinton impeachment had no witnesses, and Democrats seemed to be happy with that), but nothing as outrageous as the alleged quote I posted.

Like Johnny, I cannot believe that if Schumer said something that irresponsible, it wouldn’t have been widely reported. Thus I am suspending the post pending verification, and as of this moment, assume that it was false. I also deleted the tweet that the blog generates for every post. I will continue to  look for the quote and the source, and to identify exactly how this happened.

To some extent I know the latter: the news media and other Democrats have been foaming at the mouth for days, and many of the quotes are no less head-exploding than Schumer’s, except that they were not made by the leader of the party in the Senate. Assuming that there was no such Schumer quote, I was bitten by fake news that triggered confirmation bias. I have written for years that the Democrats/”resistance”/ mainstream media alliance have denied the legitimacy of President Trump’s election, and that conclusion is objectively unavoidable. Though I was stunned to see Schumer say so out loud, it was not as if what the quote indicated was out of line with reality. The second part, about “the danger to democracy,” echoed many of the irresponsible statements made by Rep. Schiff and others during the House impeachment managers’ presentation, and similar rhetoric by pundits and other Democrats. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), for example, tweeted yesterday,

“The Senate’s abdication of responsibility to the rule of law represents a much deeper threat to our democracy, our institutions, and our republic. The GOP knows that its agenda is incompatible with democracy, so their larger project is to dismantle it.”

That statement is as inflammatory and absurd as the alleged Schumer tweet, but not as shocking because OAC is, after all, an idiot. Schumer, however, is not.

I cannot apologize sufficiently for this. My attention has been even more divided than usual this past week—that’s not an excuse, but a partial explanation—and I’ve been bouncing around two computers and two many news sources to count, and, apparently, keep proper track of. I should never post a story or commentary with out verified links to the source, and, frankly, I don’t know why I didn’t this time.

Facebook is unreliable; I know that. There were plenty of aspects of the quote that should have set off my own ethics alarms, but I let my emotions take over: the quote really infuriated me, because as I suggested by noting the Schumer was “playing with fire,” that kind of rhetoric—and there has been a lot of it— rips at the connective tissue that holds this republic together. However, publishing unverified inflammatory rhetoric is just as wrong as saying such things.

Readers here have to be able to trust me; an ethics blog without trust is like a—oh, you can make up your own metaphor, I’m too upset to be clever—and this time I failed their, your, trust by not following my own procedures, and apparently being fooled  because I didn’t heed my most important rule, to avoid bias making me stupid. I apologize to everyone reading this, everyone who passed along what appears to be Ethics Alarms fake news, and everyone who might have been misled by the fact that the invalid quote was passed along. I apologize to the commenters whose reactions are vanishing with the essay: I’m so sorry. I wasted your time. I also apologize to Senator Schumer.

I am going to have to do better, and I will.

I could say that I hope I can find that the quote was accurate after all, but I don’t. I am relieved that it appears to have been fabricated. I felt, when I read it, and foolishly believed it, that this was a tipping point, and a dangerous one.

Now, before I go back to bed and dream of self-flagellation,  I am going to add the portion of the banned post that I know was accurate, because it had value. Indeed, another reason I accepted the quote impulsively, I think, is that it gave me a pwoerful lead-in to content I had already written. That will teach me.

I hope.

Here’s the remaining section of the now zapped post, and one more time, I am so sorry: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/31/2020: A Man’s Home Is His Box, And More…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Hello, Ethics Alarms, Good-bye January…

Between the nauseating impeachment charade and baseball’s cheating scandal (and the largely ethically ignorant commentary regarding it),  the bias of the mainsteam media reaching critical mass in episodes like this and the Don Lemon panel’s mean girls mockery of those dumber than dumb Trump supporters, mounting evidence that Democrats are going nuts based on the rise of a superannuated Communism fan in the race for the party’s Presidential nomination, and, of course, my wife doing a face-plant into some asphalt,  it was a not a happy 31 days at The House of Ethics.

Amazingly, it has been a very good month for the President, becoming the first POTUS to unequivocally endorse the anti-abortion movement by appearing at the March for Life, cutting a partial deal with China, ridding the world of Qasem Soleimani (and in doing so, prompting  his domestic foes, including the news media, to publicly sympathize with a terrorist and a nation that habitually calls for America’s destruction), releasing a Mid-East peace plan that is garnering support everywhere but from Iran, the Palestinians, and, of course, the U.S. media, and seeing economic figures so good even the New York Times has been forced to acknowledge them, all while being called every  name in the book and an existential threat to democracy on C-Span by the Democratic House impeachment managers.

1. “Dolemite Is My Name” We finally watched “Dolemite Is My Name,” (on Netflix), Eddie Murphy’s homage to comic Rudy Ray Moore and  his 70s Blaxploitation film “Dolemite.” So much for my proud claims of cultural literacy: I never heard of  Moore or his film, which is apparently a genre classic. Moore is regarded as the Father of Rap; how did I miss this for so long? Murphy’s movie tells the mostly true story about how a group of complete novices, led by Moore, made an exuberantly idiotic movie (faithful to Moore’s formula for success with black audiences: “Titties, funny, and Kung-Fu”) for $100,000 that grossed 10 million.

The movie is fun as a black version of “Ed Wood” (same screenwriters, I discovered later) and won some awards. For it to be make any 2019 Ten Best lists, however, is blatant race pandering by critics. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “The Vital Concept Of Culture, Part I: Ignore It At Civilization’s Peril”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I apologize for not yet having completed and posted Part II, as was my intention, but happily, certified Ethics Alarms commenting ace Ryan Harkins entered a Comment of the Day that could have been Part II on its own.

Here is Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day on “The Vital Concept Of Culture, Part I: Ignore It At Civilization’s Peril”:

There’s a certain “you reap what you sow” in all of this. Western Civilization has spent the last few centuries slowly jettisoning classic understanding of morals and culture while embracing relativism, in which no one can absolutely say anything is right or wrong. From this new viewpoint of tolerance, we’ve bred a culture in which no one’s “truth” can be better than anyone else’s, and anyone who claims to know “truth” is a bigot. This opens the door to the idea of multiculturalism, where we celebrate this plurality of opinions because we want to show how good we are by accepting everyone else’s “truths”.

But what ultimately underlies this progression from classic values to utter chaos? I would posit that it is the ever-present temptation to redefine as “good” everything that “I want”. It is the grasping of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All throughout history, we’ve undoubtedly had rationalizations for bad behavior. If someone says what we’re doing is wrong, we need to have an excuse that makes it not wrong. What the relativism of the modern age gives us is the perfect cover for all our immoral actions. I get to define what is right, because if you dare say what I’m doing is wrong, I barely have to defend myself. “That may be true for you, but it isn’t for me.” Or I can just accuse you of being a hater and walk away feeling justified. Continue reading →

In The Twitterverse, Like Bizarro World, Right Is Wrong And Wrong Is Right, As The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Keeps Rolling Along

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This would have made my head explode, except that nothing involving Twitter can make my head explode any more. This is, however, a troubling indication that the United States may be turning into Bizarro World, where right is wrong, wrong is right, smart is stupid, and stupid is smart.  (The ascent of Bernie Sanders is another indication.)

Behold:

Quarterback Patrck Mahomes of the Super Bowl LIV -bound Kansas City Chiefs was attacked by the Twitter mob this week because of a series of tweets he sent when he was in high school.

Ethics Fouls #1 and #2: This is the Hader Gotcha again, described here. Some utter jerk, presumably a  fan of the pro sport a friend accurately disdains as “concussionball”—that’s unethical too, but I’m leaving that alone for now– decided to see if he could make trouble for Mahomes  ahead of the Chief’s AFC Championship game on Jan.-uary 19 by searching his Twitter feed for tweets that might spark his “cancellation.” That’s a hateful and unfair act (Ethics Foul #1 ) with a nauseating Brett Kavanaugh hearings odor.  Then, because jerkism is spreading in the U.S. faster than the Coronavirus in China, people actually attacked the quarterback online when the selected old tweets surfaced, as if what a 16  year old expressed in a tweet had any relevance to who that kid grew up to be, or football, or the Super Bowl. (Ethics Foul #2.)

Ethics Fouls #3, #4 and #5  And what were offending tweets?

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/30/2020: The Almost All Bolton Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

No, that’s not my Christmas tree, that’s John Bolton.

 Reluctantly Taking Down The Christmas Tree Day has finally arrived.

I’m sad. This was one of the Marshall’s loveliest trees ever; a neighbor said just yesterday that seeing it through our big living room window cheered her up every day. I always dread this, and not just because of the inevitable prickle wounds: the world seems a darker and more pessimistic place without a bit of Christmas in evidence. However, there’s no avoiding the chore: this tree is so dry I am taking down ornaments by snapping off the ends of branches by my fingers.

1. On Bolton. I suppose this qualifies as a sub ethics train wreck to the Trump Impeachment Ethics Train Wreck, which is itself a sub ethics train wreck to the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck…

  • Former Trump National security advisor John Bolton, a hawkish loose cannon who gets along with no one, was another example of a doomed appointment by the “We’ll appoint the best people” President. A  falling out and  acrimonious dismissal were so predictable, just as with Moochie, Bannon, Omarosa and other dubious personalities.

And, of course, the President is a dubious personality himself.

What a great witness!

  • Bolton, like Omarosa, wasted no time cashing in on his truncated White House experience, and wrote a book for Simon & Shuster scheduled to be released in March of 2020. This conduct alone is signature significance for an untrustworthy snake. Once, now long ago, no respectable member of a Cabinet or high official in an administration would write a tell-all book revealing incidents and words  learned in trust and confidence while that administration was still trying to govern, and many would refuse to reveal such information ever.

Though Bolton’s venal disloyalty has entered “Everybody does it” territory, it is still wrong, still unethical, and still the mark of a Judas. Continue reading →

Don Lemon’s Apology Proves He’s A Liar And A Coward As Well As Biased And Unprofessional. Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

CNN? Hello?

CNN’s Don Lemon’s joking and guffawing with his panel about the rubes and yokels who support the President has been an immediate source of criticism, and not only from conservatives. The RNC also quickly made a TV ad out of it,and if I were in charge, we would see it all year. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

For anyone who has  been paying attention, and definitely who’s been reading Ethics Alarms, this is all poison frosting on the cancer cake. It has been undeniable for years that Lemon is a foolish, juvenile, arrogant, unprofessional progressive hack who has become more reckless over time, convinced as he is that he would have to sexually assault Anderson Cooper on the air before CNN would even consider firing a black, gay favorite of the woke and Trump Deranged. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) [CORRECTED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“It was a fact-free summation of a case bereft of evidence – we need the evidence. We need the witnesses and documents.”

—-Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, commenting on C-Span regarding the Trump defense lawyers’ presentation.

I suppose this isn’t so much of an unethical quote as a quote that reveals one’s own unethical conduct by accurately stating the facts. Yet Blumenthal doesn’t seem to realize that what he just admitted proves that this benighted impeachment sham is as I and others described it to be from the start: a case bereft of evidence.

Other points: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/28/2020: Transcripts! Audacious Defense Lawyers! Canadian Defamation! “Bombshells”! [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments

Good morning…

1. Here’s a typical unbiased New York Times front page headline regarding the impeachment trial (from last week):

“One One Side, Piles of Evidence, On the Other, Heaps of Scorn”

Here’s some more scorn: there is no evidence at all of impeachable offenses on  that pile, and scorn for the President is being treated as evidence.

2. This is astounding. (From johnburger, and thanks) Check out this.

Continue reading →

Six Ethics Lessons As Bill James Falls Into His Own Research Trap

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Baseball philosopher, iconoclast and analyst Bill James is one of my heroes for his amazing ability to look past conventional wisdom with an open mind. Beginning as essentially a self-published pamphleteer writing out of his basement, James’ counter-traditional explorations of baseball statistics eventually changed how baseball was watched, assessed, scouted and played, simply on the strength of Bill’s  ideas and his facility in explaining them.

His talents could be used in many other fields–James has recently branched out into examining famous unsolved murders—but it is also true that many of the ideas he has developed in relation to baseball have wider applications. For example, James was the source of the concept of “signature significance,” which is a staple here at Ethics Alarms.

His writing also taught me that bias makes us stupid, and about the insidious power of rationalizations.  Many of James’s observations seemed intrinsically obvious once he made and explained them, and the fact that  baseball executives, writers and players could have been so wrong about their own game for so long seemed incomprehensible. But the reasons were what they always are, in all fields. People are biased toward what they have always believed —confirmation bias–and the “It’s always been this way” variation on the most powerful rationalization of them all, “Everybody does it”  breeds blindness and  intellectual laziness. Continue reading →

Res Ipsa Loquitur: Woke Politics And Counter-Factual Progressive Cant Are Driving People Crazy

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Here is another question to Slate’s sex advice column, “How to Do It”:

I’m a cis woman in kind of a classic millennial sex pickle: I’m really repelled by heterosexuality politically and personally, but I’m also really into dick. I’ve been thinking maybe I should look for bi dudes/ bicurious gay dudes, but I am not sure how best to do that. Rich, what would you think of a woman being on Grindr or Scruff? I do want to be respectful of gay men’s spaces and not horn in where I’m not welcome, but I really would love to find a vers guy with queer politics who would be up for casually dating a woman. What do you think? If you were me, where would you look?

—-Radical

My answer? Continue reading →