Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Ethics Round-Up, 12/18/2019: The Day Before An Invasive Procedure Edition [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Yuck.

Even the satisfaction of knowing that the President reads Ethics Alarms, or at least thinks like I do…wait, that came out wrong. Anyway, today I expect to be uncomfortable, hungry and distracted, so who knows what might appear here today?

You were warned.

1. The Ethics Quote of the Day comes from ex-Marine and TV talk show host Montel Williams (who was very nice to me when I was on his show), on the “scandal” of some cadets flashing the dreaded “OK” sign during the Army-Navy Game:

 

“Both West Point and Annapolis are investigating, and it strikes me as defamatory that some in the media have branded these young people as racists without a shred of evidence. I understand that a handful of racists (perhaps living in their parents’ basements) attempted to co-opt the ‘OK’ sign as a symbol of white power … but that is not evidence that these kids were motivated by racial animus. We owe these young people, who had the courage to sign up to be part of the 1% who defend this democracy, better than this,”

I would say that we owe them better than even investigating such trivia. A ambiguous gestures are ambiguous, and no student, in a military academy or anywhere else  should have to defend or explain them. The students are entitled to the benefit of the doubt.  As with the “It’s OK to be White,” flyers, the rational, responsible approach by administrators is to ignore them, rather than to make a scandal out of nothing.

When will we see the first “It’s OK to make the OK sign” flyers? Heck, I may put some up myself…

2. Nah, there’s no progressive “war on Christmas,’ and there’s no mainstream media bias, either. And CNN’s Brian Stelter isn’t the most incompetent and absurd “media critic” since the term was coined! Imagine: Stelter asked on Twitter,

“Justice Neil Gorsuch is on “Fox & Friends” right now. The Q: How is it appropriate for a Supreme Court justice to try to goose sales of his three-month-old book by chatting on one of the most partisan shows on TV?”

More “Q’s”: Would it be appropriate for Gorsuch to chat on another network, like, say, CNN? Would “wtachdog” Stelter bitch about that? What does the level of partisanship of a show have to do with whether a Supreme Court Justice should appear there? Is there any rule or precedent holding that it is unethical for a sitting Justice to promote a book? (I’ll answer that one: no.)

Stelter’s whining wasn’t close to the most contrived objection to Gorsuch’s visit to the Fox and Friends couch, though. This was: Continue reading →

Impeachment Ethics Update, Holiday Edition, Part Two: The President’s Letter

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

The President’s epic and historic letter to Speaker Pelosi on the eve of the vote to impeach him is nothing if not audacious and to someone who has been making many of the same points the President’s letter does, satisfying. I bet Bill Clinton wishes he had thought of it, except that he had a problem Trump does not: Clinton had in fact committed felonies by lying under oath, something a President must not do. (As I said at the time, without ever hearing a satisfactory rebuttal, if a lawyer would be disbarred for such conduct, as Clinton essentially was—he was forced to quit the Arkansas bar before he was fired from it—how can a President be held to a lower standard?).As President Trump’s letter correctly states, “The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever.”

Well, they are recognizable under some bad and dangerous Constitutional theories, many of which have advocates in the House and among the “resistance” punditry. For example, even now, prominent Democratic House leader Maxine  Waters admits that she has no facts to back up her conviction that the President had a deal with Putin, she’s just sure he did. Waters said she was “ready to talk about” impeachment in February 2017, three weeks after Trump was sworn into office.Her theory later became that an opposing party House majority could impeach a President at will, and didn’t need any reasons other than as assertion that he was “unfit.”

That appears to be what Nancy Pelosi allowed her team to settle on, lacking anything better.

Naturally, the letter has prompted the Democratic Party/”resistance”/mainstream media coup team (what Ethics Alarms calls “The Axis of Unethical Conduct,” or AUC) to have a collective head-explosion orgy. The mainstream print media would not even report on the letter  fairly, in most cases not giving readers the chance to make their own assessment and publishing it with “factchecks” attached, many if not most of which were just partisan spin as rebuttals. For example, in the New York Times version, the section I quoted above was linked to this: “The articles charge Mr. Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But an impeachable offense does not have to be a specific crime.” Well…

  • That’s an opinion, not fact. Every previous impeachment has involved a specific crime.
  • As Prof. Dershowitz pointed out, the “obstruction of Congress” referred to in the Articles of Impeachment  cannot be called misconduct, since the Supreme Court has deemed the President’s power in this regard an open question until they rule on it—next June.
  • As Jonathan Turley (and Trump) pointed out, “abuse of power” is too subjective a standard to use as an excuse for impeachment.

Characteristically, as we have seen the past three years, the attacks on the letter have focused on style at least as much as substance. (On substance, however, the letter is difficult to rebut.)

On yesterday’s CNN Newsroom,  the spectacularly hypocritical John Avlon (who once pretended to lead a “no labels” movement as a neutral non-partisan) claimed  that the President’s letter  would cause Republican Senators to raise questions about his “mental state.”  This is rich: Impeachment Plan S is blowing up in Democrats’ faces, so Avlon pivots to good old, evergreen, Plan E : ”Trump is mentally ill so this should trigger the 25th Amendment.”

Yeah, boy, putting out that letter laying out exactly what the impeachment is in language anyone can understand was crazy.

Avlon’s foolishness does raise a question: did the President really write the letter himself? I doubt it. I think someone–Steven Miller has been mentioned as a prime suspect—did an excellent job channeling the President’s unique style and tone, but the letter is too well constructed to be Trump’s alone. Hey, John: if someone else authors a letter for the President that he signs, and you think it’s an “unhinged rant”  and “the definition of not presidential,” does that mean he’s crazy? Can you delegate crazy?

As with so much that has gone before, the President has triggered his foes into broadcasting their own derangement.

A typical, measured, lawyer-checked, restrained Presidential letter would be far less effective. Ann Althouse figured this out, writing, Continue reading →

From “The Ethicist”: Revealing The Real Bigots Among Us

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Kwame Anthony Appiah, aka “The Ethicist,” apparently received two inquiries last week from what I fear are typical New York Times readers: self-righteous, progressive, and totalitarian at heart. As usually is the case, “The Ethicist’s” answers were competent. I’m not really concerned with his answers, though they were too timid and pandered to people who needed to be metaphorically slapped in the face. It’s the questions that are really ominous.

Inquirer #1 wanted to know what to “do” about her landlady, whom she and her partner “have come to believe that she harbors significant racial and gender biases.” She continued,

When units in our building come up for rent, she often asks  [us] to recommend friends, and over the years a number of our friends have lived here. I value being able to extend what really is an extremely good financial deal to friends who would really benefit from it, but am deeply uncomfortable about the fact that, in doing so, I am enabling her racism and sexism. Is there an ethical solution here? I wish I could report her to some sort of city housing authority (we are in Los Angeles), but I doubt I have any legal recourse as I’m not an aggrieved party and my belief in her biases is based on casual observations and overheard comments. I can’t point to a particular incident. I feel guilty for not wanting to recommend the place, as I know so many friends who could use the financial break, but I also feel like it’s harder and harder to justify “helping” her in any way.

The woman has not observed any incidents of racism or sexism, but she wants to “report” the landlady, who has apparently always treated her well. Inquirer #1 has decided that it’s unethical to “help” such a person because that would be “enabling” her evil ways, whatever they are. Basically, she feels that she is justified in punishing her landlady for not embracing her views, the “right” ones. Continue reading →

Final ‘Week Before Christmas’ Ethics Shopping, 12/16/2019: Joy, Obama, And JPMorgan

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Inspiring Christmas lyrics of the week:

Oh, the world is your snowball, see how it grows
That’s how it goes, whenever it snows
The world is your snowball just for a song
Get out and roll it along

1. That this kind of thing could happen at a major bank in 2019 is inexplicable and disgusting. Jimmy Kennedy, a nine-year NFL veteran,  earned $13 million during his nine-year career and had been told that he would be accepted as a “private client” at JPMorgan Chase, an elite designation with perks like travel discounts, exclusive event invitations and better deals on loans. When he went to  his local JPMorgan branch in Arizona to determine why he had not been accepted into the cataegory, he was told by his representative, who is black, “You’re bigger than the average person, period. And you’re also an African-American. We’re in Arizona. I don’t have to tell you about what the demographics are in Arizona. They don’t see people like you a lot.”

Kennedy recorded the conversation, and after pulling most of his money out of JPMorgan,  complained to the bank as well as an industry watchdog agency. The bank sent him a letter saying, “You stated that Mr. Belton informed you that our firm was prejudiced against you and intimidated by you because of your race. We found no evidence to substantiate your allegations.”

He also sent the recording to the New York Times, which wrote about Kennedy’s experience. A few days later, Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, sent a memo telling employees that such behavior “does not reflect who we are as a company and how we serve our clients and communities every day.”

That’s the Pazuzu Excuse: “It wasn’t me!” Sorry, chief, but if you have employees treating African Americans like Kennedy was treated, that is who you are as a company, and as CEO, you’re responsible. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 12/14/19: Insulting George Washington And Other Annoyances”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

There goes Professor Morrison!!!

This is the third (in three days) and final, for now, of a series of  impeachment-related Comments of the Day by Ethics Alarms loyalist and ace  Glenn Logan. He’s authored a couple more COTD-worthy posts since this one went up two days ago; at this rate, I might just turn the blog over to him and Mrs. Q (whose latest column is coming!) and retire to beachcombing and directing satirical musical reviews.

In his latest, Glenn did me a favor and defenestrated George Washington law professor, Alan Morrison’s depressingly lame attempt to rebut Jonathan Turley’s superb explanation of why the House’s impeachment ploy was misguided and wrong.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Saturday Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 12/14/19: Insulting George Washington And Other Annoyances”:

Morrison complains that the House cannot obtain the information they need to impeach Trump or not because Trump insists on is right as the head of an equal branch of government to have the House demands on the executive subjected to judicial scrutiny.

Therefore, his claim is that the House has no choice but to infer whatever it can from the witnesses who have testified so they can get the President impeached before the election.

This is not just a weak argument, but a completely specious one. The President:

a) considers the investigation illegitimate and partisan, and;

b) has a duty to protect his office against just such an illegitimate partisan investigation by legitimately referring such demands to the courts. Continue reading →

Movie Flop Ethics, Part I: “Richard Jewell” And The Alleged ‘Female Reporter Trading Sex For Scoops’ Smear

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The two big flops among movies that opened last weekend were director Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell” and “Black Christmas,” the second attempt to re-boot the 1976 slasher cult film. Both disasters have ethics lessons to teach, or not teach. Let’s look at Clint’s movie first.

“Richard Jewell” made lass that $4.5 million in its first weekend, and has also been snubbed by the various year-end awards. It is based on the now mostly forgotten  story of how Jewell, initially hailed as a hero for his part in foiling the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing plot,  was falsely accused  of complicity by local law enforcement, the FBI, and the news media. Conservative outlets loved the film, but the other side of the divide focused on a subplot, as the film’s screenplay  suggested that a named Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, now deceased,  used sex to persuade a source to break the story.  The Journal Constitution has been attacking the film, denying that Kathy Scruggs would ever used he body to get a scoop. Her colleagues, friends and  family all insist that she would not have slept with a source, and reporters around the country circled the metaphorical wagons to proclaim they were shocked–shocked!—that anyone would even suggest such a thing. Jeffrey Young, senior reporter for HuffPost tweeted,  “The lazy, offensive, shitty way screenwriters so often treat female journalists infuriates me. Depicting women using sex to get stories is disgusting and disrespectful. It’s also hacky as hell. I was planning to see this movie but not anymore.’ Melissa Gomez of the Los Angeles Times wrote,  “Hollywood has, for a long time, portrayed female journalists as sleeping with sources to do their job. It’s so deeply wrong, yet they continue to do it. Disappointing that they would apply this tired and sexist trope about Kathy Scruggs, a real reporter.’ Susan Fowler, an opinion editor at the New York Times tweeted “The whole “female journalist sleeps with a source for a scoop” trope doesn’t even make any sense…”

This would be damning, except that while it may not be standard practice, there are plenty of examples of female journalists doing exactly what Eastwood’s film suggests.  Last year the Times—yes, Susan Fowler’s paper—reported on the three-year affair between  Times reporter Ali Watkins and James Wolfe, senior aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a regular source for her stories. In October,  an employee of the United States Defense Intelligence Agency was arrested for leaking classified material to two reporters, and he was involved in a romantic relationship with one of them. Both reporters are still employed by their respective news organizations, the  Times and CNBC, so its hard to argue that sex-for-scoops is being strongly discouraged.

Continue reading →

A Holiday Jumbo! The Non-Racist Confederacy/Nazi Enthusiast

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In Billy Rose’s spectacular musical “Jumbo,” Jimmy Durante was confronted by a sheriff as Jimmy tries to tiptoe off with the largest elephant in captivity trailing on a rope behind him. In answer to the officer’s question, “Where are you going with that elephant?”,  the immortal Schnoz answered, innocently, “Elephant? What elephant?”

Sadly, “Jumbo” will never be produced again: too old, too expensive, too politically incorrect (it’s about the traditional circuses that had trained animals, like elephants, in their shows). Nonetheless, Jimmy’s tradition is alive and well, if you can call denying what is obvious to anyone “well.”

In Des Moines, Iowa, William Stark has painted Confederate battle flags and swastikas on pallets around his property, which is next to an elementary school. Nice. Morris Elementary has released a statement denouncing Stark’s display, which the students, who are about 60% black and Hispanic, can see when they come and go from the school, and from the playground.

Stark says he can’t imagine what their problem is. “They don’t know their history, evidently,” he protests. “That’s the only reason I can think of that they can think anything bad about it—they don’t know their history.”

I wonder what history he’s referring to.

Stark denies that there’s anything about his Nazi-Confederacy display that suggests racism, thus entering “Racism? What racism?” into the Ethics Alarms Jumbo log.

“It’s a free country,”  Stark adds. “I’ll put it out there if I want to.”

Verdict: Racist asshole.

Here’s Willy and his “non-racist” artwork:

He does have a Christmas wreath on his door, however….

Sunday Ethics Reflections, 12/15/2019: Bad Film Criticism, Bad Journalism, Bad Honors…And Some Really Stupid Stuff Too

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

The late, great, Jerry Vale..

(Also known as “the mob’s favorite tenor”…)

1. And speaking of Martin Scorcese movies, since Jerry Vale is alluded to in several of them…”The Irishman” has been viewed on Netflix by many of my showbiz friends, and most, while complaining about the film’s length, have declared the performances “brilliant.” This reaction, is, I think, bias at work, the so-called “halo effect.” It’s the same phenomenon I witnessed in the D.C. theater community, where certain actors, directors and big theater companies were routinely called “brilliant” in their efforts, when in truth, the exact same product presented by artists with lesser reputations would be shrugged off or ignored.

The three veteran stars of “The Irishman” are being praised by critics across the board, but in truth, with the exception of Al Pacino, they seem weary and channeling earlier, better performances. This is especially true of Joe Pesci, who shows none of the energy we associate with his best performances, and the script requires him to run the gamut of emotions, as the old joke goes, from A to C. He’s as old as Joe Biden, and looks and acts every inch of it, though his character is supposed to be younger. Scorcese has used tech wizardry to give De Niro a younger face when necessary, but it still sits on top of his  80-year-old body. and there is nothing in De Niro’s act that we haven’t seen over and over again (though not so much lately, as Bob has been collecting checks for bad movies in which he appeared to be “phoning it in”).

Pacino, as Jimmy Hoffa, is lots of fun as usual, but he doesn’t appear to be trying to be convincing as the mysteriously disappeared labor boss, who was 62 with he vanished. Pacino is 79. How could anyone call Pacino “brilliant” as Hoffa? Jack Nicholson was far more convincing in the film “Hoffa,” and Pacino isn’t significantly different than he was playing a Hollywood agent in “Once Upon A Time In America.”

It must be nice to reach that stage as an actor when you get paid big checks just to show up, like Marlon Brando in “Superman.” Especially if everyone is going to say you were brilliant.

2.  And now for something completely stupid. This is remarkable in the dual category of incompetence in one’s chosen pursuit (theft) and unforgivable ignorance regarding social media.  Arlando Henderson, 29, who worked for a bank  in Charlotte, North Carolina, stole money from his employer’s vault at least 18 times, for a grand total of $88,000.  He was apprehended and arrested after posting about his robbery hobby on Facebook, including posts showing his new Mercedes-Benz, and this one…

You know, if someone is this stupid, ethics alarms hardly matter…

3. Surely we are missing some crucial information here...The New York Giants, in the midst of a horrible season, fired veteran cornerback Janoris Jenkins last week. Why? He was engaged in an argument with a fan on social media who objected to Jenkins posting  his personal stats after a game that his team lost, and wrote,

“I only can do my job.. retard. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “If I Had Been Able To Swing A Full-Time Impeachment News And Commentary Blog…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Now the second of three Comments of the Day I’m posting this weekend authored by Glenn Logan. Like the first, this one is about the impeachment drama (or farce, if you prefer.)

His specific context is the post, “If I Had Been Able To Swing A Full-Time Impeachment News And Commentary Blog, These Kind Of Things Would Have Been On It…” It begins with a quote from the text. I suppose this is as good a place as any to apologize for floating the idea of launching a separate blog to address what still is infuriating to me, the impossibility of getting accurate, objective information regarding the process, its history, essential legal principles involved, like hearsay and due process, and the context of this particular blot on our history. This would not be needed, except that we have no trustworthy journalism sources today. One stop information is impossible, and few people have the time or inclination to bounce around the web to get a fair snapshot of what’s going on without being misled by misrepresentations on one side and crucial omissions on the other.

Almost as soon as I asked for volunteers to assist in this project, the metaphorical roof fell in on me, and just getting this blog out every day became difficult. At this point in my life I should have been financially independent enough to devote full time to projects like the impeachment site. I’ve got half-drafted books lying around, I have half a dozen other fascinating and important projects that should be moving forward and instead have been on my “To do” list for years. This is nobody’s fault but my own: not enough focus, not enough discipline, too easily distracted by topics that interest me but don’t pay the bills or advance the chess pieces.

What a waste. But the end of the year always sees my mind running in this gutter. Anyway, I’m sorry.

Now here’s Glenn:

“For leaders, those who deal in power, distinguishing between rightful and wrongful acts based on motives is particularly difficult, if not impossible.”

I think the Democrats are being deliberately deceptive here, and can’t really say what they mean. What they mean is that the actions they have ascribed to Trump are crimes because Trump did them. If a person such as former president Barack Obama, or more pointedly former vice-president Joe Biden, had done the exact same thing, they would carry with them a presumption of innocence, validity and indeed, praiseworthiness. Their motives would’ve never been questioned, let alone put forward as the basis for an impeachment.

This just highlights the political nature of the impeachment “process” the Democrats have initiated, and the utter bankruptcy of their argument. If they can define crimes as not the acts themselves, but the combination of and act and who commits it, they will have reached a point that Orwell couldn’t, or didn’t imagine. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: GretaThunberg

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall and they will have to do their job to protect our futures.”

—Climate change demagogue Greta Thunberg to cheering protesters somewhere or other; it doesn’t matter, and I don’t care.

Maybe the hubris-poisoned Swedish teen doesn’t know that “against the wall” is a violent and threatening allusion, but then she has forfeited the normal leave I would grant a high-schooler by going around the world pretending to know more than one. She doesn’t of course. She has just been programmed to lecture adults as a surrogate for adult activists, as they use her as a human shield against critics, kind of like when Curly of The Three Stooges would don glasses and shout “Can’t a man with glasses!”  Can’t be mean to a teenaged girl!

Greta  might as well be a Muppet, like Kermit or Miss Piggy, except I have a hard time believing that a Muppet would every threaten to line up world leaders against a wall.

World leaders have many responsibilities, among them being the duty not to pay any attention to indoctrinated children with a false sense of their own wisdom. For Time to make this obnoxious kid its “Person of the Year” is the height of pandering and unseriousness, which, com to think of it, pretty much decribes what Henry Luce’s baby has grown into in its twilight years.

Thunberg makes Cindy Sheehan look like Gandhi. As for anyone who cheers Greta’s rants, they are enabling a slow-motion tragedy. She’s a female Marjoe Gortner now, and likely to end up angry, bitter, emotionally disturbed, a drug addict, a hustler, dead before her time, or worse, a reality show star.