Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

The Rest of the Story: The Brandan Sorsby Debacle Has The Predictable Domino Effect, and Where It Stops, Nobody Knows…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In this post I wrote about the dispiriting tale of Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby, an admitted gambling addict whom a ADA-addled judge ruled could not be banned from playing Big 12 football this season. I wrote then,

“The larger issue is what kind of society this will become if the progressive obsession with empathy and forgiveness for all wrongdoing continues on its current path. Sorsby is an addict, not a bad guy! He shouldn’t be prevented from doing what he loves just because his addiction makes him likely to cheat. It isn’t his fault that he has this affliction! And really, aren’t all criminals just addicts or emotionally damaged in some way? They shouldn’t be in prison. This is why “restorative justice” is the only caring way to deal with our fellow human beings who deceive, cheat, rob, and harm us.”

Meanwhile, the loopy decision was throwing all of football into chaos. After the excessively empathetic judge granted a temporary injunction that allowed Sorsby to return to the team with a slap-on-the-wrist two-game suspension, The Big Ten considered a ban on playing Texas Tech altogether. Athletic directors at other schools erupted in anger. Kansas State AD Gene Taylor called the judge’s ruling “fucking bullshit.” “I think there needs to be serious conversations about not playing Texas Tech in any sports,” University of Georgia athletic director Josh Brooks said. “We cannot in good conscience put our student-athletes on a field where the competitive integrity of the contest is compromised and overridden by the courts.”

This month, Sorsby came to his senses and Texas Tech finally realized the school, its reputation and its athletic program would suffer more than any quarterback was worth if he wasn’t gone. Sorsby dropped his lawsuit against the NCAA and opted to enter the NFL Supplemental Draft, ending his Texas Tech affiliation. But yesterday the NFL announced that it was cancelling its 2026 supplemental draft, and that the decision was entirely because of Sorsby,. The NFL doesn’t wantito have to deal with the controversy. As of now, however, the player is still eligible for the 2027 NFL draft.

The gambling in sports pathogen is not going away, and will continue to spread because of greed, stupidity and the fact that most of the people running collegiate and professional sports, especially football and basketball, have no ethics alarms at all.

Public School Indoctrination Update: Here’s Another School That Should Be Plowed Under and the Ground Seeded With Salt

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

That this episode could occur anywhere is ominous evidence of just how determined our progressive-infested institutions are determined to indoctrinate rising generations.

Gabby Stout, a junior at Ardrey Kell High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, and part of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools district, received permission from the school to paint a message on the school’s “spirit rock.” This is a large boulder on school grounds traditionally used by students to paint various opinions and messages. They don’t have to be wise or uncontroversial either: one such message was “Black Lives Matter.”

Stout painted a Bible passage and her support for the recently assassinated Christian conservative leader of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. For reasons never explained (but you can guess, can’t you?) the school quickly reversed itself. Within hours the school officials ordered her message to be painted over.

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Show and Tell Ethics: Five Observations on Michelle Obama’s Unethical Skirt

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I was going to make this an Ethics Quiz, which is typically what I do with issues I believe can generate multiple and diverse ethics verdicts from the analytical and perceptive readers here, and often with matters I am not certain about myself. However, Michelle Obama’s custom designed skirt she decided to model as she appeared on a stage at the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago this week before “stakeholders” (Translation: Donors) was so indefensible by anyone who has not been permanently Obamafied, the crippling mental state where one is incapable of criticizing anything either Obama does or has done, ever, that my building a quiz around it would be dishonest.

As you can see, the former First Lady “wore a pencil skirt adorned with a large portrait of her late mother. The custom Acne Studios design was a tribute to Marian Robinson who died in 2024, aged 86.”

Ethics Observations:

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Unethical Headline, Trump Derangement Division: Variety

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Some recent studies suggest that Trump Derangement is taking on the characteristics of mental illness. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who isn’t suffering from it, and this latest example should go into the research files.

Anne Schedeen was one of those moderately successful, fungible and forgettable actresses who can most charitably described as a “working professional.” When a sitcom role that has you starring as a puppet’s protector—Alf was an illegal alien from outer space who had crash-landed in a family’s garage, and Schedeen played the mother in the family that helped keep him secret from government authorities—-is your most famous credit, you will not get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But upon her death at 77, Schedeen’s family thought it appropriate to virtue-signal to their fellow Trump Haters by issuing this tribute:

“She leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of creative energy, whip smart humor, delight in her family, adoration for little dogs, burning hatred for Trump, passion for second-hand thrifting, and love for a good story. We are bereft without her. We loved her so so much, as did all who met her.”

That, my friends, is insane. Variety, meanwhile, the so-called bible of the entertainment trade, didn’t have to put that feature in the statement in its headline, but did. None of the other outlets reporting the death thought that weird section was any more worthy of highlighting than Anne’s “passion for second-hand thrifting,” because it isn’t. Variety’s typical reader, however, is just as insane as Anne Schedeen.

I cannot imagine any previous President being used in this manner. Being noted for hatred of anything as a life highlight is hardly impressive; to me, that headline demonstrates what a wan career Schedeen had. No, she was never in a successful movie, never had a big role, never was nominated for an Oscar or Emmy, BUT she did hate the President of the United States, so there’s that.

The family might as well have pointed out that she won an award in the fourth grade for an essay about her goldfish. Having one’s family hurl your hatred at a President from beyond the grave is hardly as impressive as Ahab screaming at Moby Dick right before the Whaie Whale drags him down, “Thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!” Ahab was nuts, but at least he wasn’t mad at Moby for mean tweets and enforcing immigration laws.

The family and Variety using the death of a minor actress to spit at the President, however, is a sad, foolish madness.

Ethics Quiz: “Ick!”or Ethics [Hello Fresh’s Anal Sex Ad]

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

Nice.

I guess I had to post about that, though I wish I didn’t have to. I feel, and I always have felt, that being “proud” of how you have sex is like being proud of how often you have to visit the bathroom. It’s desperate and stupid, as well as gross.

That ad, and so much else our grovelling to the LGBTQ community has burdened society with, demonstrates how pernicious slippery slopes are. Because ancient taboos held that gay people should hide themselves in shame, some genius decided our society should declare that what one chooses to do with their naughty bits should swing to the other end of the spectrum and be a source of “pride.” No, it shouldn’t. In my experience, only mega-jerks boast about how and where they choose to have sex. I don’t care. It’s none of my business. If I’m interested, I’ll ask, and since I’m not and never will be, I won’t, so shut the hell up.

Hello Fresh has now exposed its marketing department as tasteless and pandering, like all those cowardly, pusillanimous companies that slobbered all over Black Lives Matter. I remember a late night D.C. horror movie TV host got himself fired for suddenly talking about smegma between reels of “The Brain From Planet Arous.” I thought his outburst was hilarious, but it didn’t belong on TV, and that was the end of “Gore DeVol.” This ad should be the end of Hello Fresh if there’s any justice in the world, and we know there isn’t.

I’m going to ask anyway, though I know my answer…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the Hello Fresh “Pride” ad alluding to anal sex just in terrible taste and icky, or is it unethical, as in wrong?

________________

Pointer: Willem Reese

A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

1. In a clip from a post-firing interview, the unbearable Scott Pelley actually says that nobody on the “60 Minutes” staff, including Pelley, thought that the long-time left-leaning Sunday magazine show was biased. Pelley himself is living proof that the show was biased. Here’s a brief montage of Pelley being what he thought was objective and fair over the years,

2. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton pleaded guilty of deliberately mishandling classified documents, a deal that requires him to pay a $2.5 million fine. He pleaded guilty because he was guilty. ABC and NBC, however, framed the news as President Trump getting “revenge” on a critic.

“He was a prime target of President Trump’s retribution campaign, said ABC’s justice correspondent. “And tonight, sources tell ABC News Trump’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton, is planning to plead guilty to mishandling classified information.”

That’s classic deceit and false framing for partisan purposes, but also typical of how the Axis networks cover news regarding the Trump Administration. On NBC, the same game plan was in view. “Bolton was national security adviser during Trump’s first term,” the nightly broadcast began. “Then became a fierce opponent of the President. Now, sources tell NBC News he plans to plead guilty to one count of retaining national security information. For a year and a half now, the Justice Department has been pursuing cases against the people you see here, those the President believes have wronged him…”

The investigation of Bolton’s crime began under the Biden Administration’s Justice Department. Both ABC and NBC got that in at the very end of their reports, which is deliberately reversing the priority of the facts. This was by definition not a “retribution prosecution” by Trump because it began under Biden. That information belonged at the start. The fact that Bolton was a Trump critic is of interest but not central to the story. Placed up front, however, it “poisons the well.”

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Ethics Dunce: Bride-To-Be Rochelle Mindrum

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

When social media over-sharing meets publicity obsession, the result is misbehavior like Rochelle Mindrum’s.

The 29-year-old was expecting her boyfriend Jak Keller to pop the question, and had even gone ring shopping with him. She specified that she wanted the proposal to be done “in nature.” When they took a trip to Georgia together, she figured it must be coming soon. Sure enough, after a hike, on the side of a cliff, Keller set up his phone to take a video. He took Mindrum’s hands in his, got down on one knee, and proposed. But when Mindrum looked down at the ring, she saw that her fiancé had chosen a blue diamond rather than the colorless diamond she’d picked out. And she blurted out her disappointment on camera: “It’s so blue!”

Rochelle accepted, then posted the video on Tik-Tok along with a note that she was disappointed with the color. “I was extremely surprised by the blue diamond,” she says now. “The box it was in was dark blue, so at first I thought it was a reflection of the box. Once it was on my finger though, I was able to see that the diamond was in fact blue.”

The Amityville House has some advice for Jak, her already hen-pecked fiancé:

Unbelievable! This guy tries his best to give his girlfriend the proposal she dreams of, and the thanks he gets is to have her complain about the color of the diamond on TikTok, where it went viral. Why? Because she’s an ungrateful ethics dunce, and viewers were horrified.

It gets worse! Since the video was getting so much attention, “People” magazine, which apparently has nothing better to write about, gave Rachel another platform to bitch from, and sure enough, she did. From the article “Woman Surprised When Boyfriend Got Down on One Knee and Proposed. The Type of Ring He Chose Left Her ‘Shocked’ (Exclusive)”:

“I thought the ring was gorgeous, however, I had always dreamed of my engagement ring being a colorless diamond, so it just didn’t fit my vision,” she explains. “It does not help that my birthstone is aquamarine, so I am used to receiving blue-hued stones.” “It turns out he was trying to get me a higher quality diamond and the website was a little confusing, so he thought the higher quality diamonds all threw off a little blue hue, as the pictures online were a very faint blue,” continues Mindrum. “He was scared to drop the ring, so he never took it out of the box. He only looked at in the box. So he was just as shocked as I was with how blue it was!”

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Jill Biden’s Elder (And Former President) Abuse

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
What an awful human being...

This story is too awful to contemplate. If you have a soul, maybe you don’t want to read it.

Former President Joe Biden was planted in the audience this week at a New York City stop on his wife’s tour promoting “Dr.” Jill’s memoir, “View from the East Wing.” Whoopi Goldberg was moderating the Q and A segment (How’s that career going, Whoop?) when President Biden wandered up to the edge of the stage and said “I have a question.”

“Joe has a question? Like you couldn’t ask it later?” the distinguished author said. Oh, nice! If you didn’t want Joe to embarrass you or himself, why did you place a mentally declining old man in a position where he might do so? Or was he having another “stroke”?

Joe, as he has been for years now, was oblivious. “Who do you love most in the whole world?” what is left of Joe Biden asked. “I love you most, Joe. Was that it? Was that the answer he wanted?,” Jill said to the group, talking about him in the third person as if he were a toddler. The 46th President of the United States stood and blankly faced his wife.

The shell of Joe Biden then said, “It’s overwhelming, isn’t it?,” whatever that means. At least he didn’t say “We beat Medicare.”

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Ethics Dunces: Everyone Connected To The Justice Department’s $1.8 Billion Slush Fund Or Whatever The Hell It Was From President Trump On Down…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Wait, what was that?

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, announced today that the Justice Department was withdrawing the $1.8 billion fund to compensate people claiming to be victims of unfair prosecution, supposedly the result of the settlement of President Trump’s lawsuit against his own Treasury Department. “We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, told lawmakers during a congressional hearing.

First of all, GOOD!, but second and most importantly, how in the wide, wide, world of sports did anyone think this offensive, conflicted, half-baked, stupid idea would be anything but condemned, attacked, ridiculed, mocked and ultimately blocked in the first place?

Any idiot could have figured out how unethical this thing was, so it should have been laughed out of the room the second it was suggested. I’m certainly any idiot, and I wrote three posts pointing out what shouldn’t have had to be pointed out at all. Here, I wrote in part:

“[T]his deal stinks, and should be challenged ethically if not legally. The whole Justice Department and the Treasury Department too had irresolvable conflicts, and should not have been allowed to make a settlement with their own boss.”

Here, I wrote in part,

“If you can process this whole astounding ethics debacle and come out anything but but disgusted and disillusioned, you apparently are capable of rationalizing anything…How can anyone defend any of this?…It needs to be widely condemned and stopped.”

And finally, I wrote here,

“I continue to think, or at least hope, that this abomination will be stopped. As I already wrote when asked in a comment, this, unlike the artificial offenses behind the two purely partisan impeachments in Trump’s first term, is a genuine impeachable offense.”

This conclusion didn’t require an ethicist, or any special expertise, or an IQ above 100. So how did this outrageous thing get to the public announcement stage? The fact that it did should shake public confidence in the Justice Department, the Treasury Department, the IRS, President Trump, Vice-President Vance and the entire White House staff. Did no one have the sense God gave a mushroom to tell everyone involved in this fiasco, “That’s ridiculous! It will make this administration look foolish, untrustworthy, corrupt and incompetent! It will undermine the President’s authority and the public trust! It will endanger the GOP majority in Congress and be a self-inflicted wound with no counterbalancing benefits! You can’t be this stupid! Come on! Think, dammit!” ???

I realized that Blanch’s statement was a perfect embodiment of Gilda Radner’s iconic catch phrase as addled “Weekend Update” commentator Emily Litella, which somehow had not been listed already in the Ethics Alarms Hollywood clip archive. But do you know what? Most of the 46 clips listed are appropriate to describe some aspect of this aborted, disgusting, self-indicting betrayal of trust. For example, here’s #18:

And #20…

And of course #15…

…as well as…

Let’s tote up all the clips that are directly applicable in one respect or another. We have twenty-seven, more than half: 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 24, 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38,39, 43, 44, 45, and, of course, 46. This episode was that bad, that unethical, that indefensible, and Ethics Alarms called it immediately, or as Fredo said in #16,

When Trump and Company do things this reckless and unethical, it humiliates everyone who try to oppose the Trump Deranged.

You know. Morons.

The Graham Platner Candidacy in Maine Reaches Signature Significance Status on Many Fronts

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Yikes.

I haven’t written much about the Graham Platner debacle in Maine. I will have to now, because he is a walking, talking, lying human ethics train wreck, and strong evidence of the contempt our political parties have for both the Republic and its voters. Democrats think they have a real shot at defeating long-time “centrist” Republican Senator Susan Collins, who is pretty much a NeverTrumper. The fact that Platner is running unopposed in the Democratic primary to be the party’s choice to oppose her has been looking for some time as if the Mad Left is whistling past the graveyard, and incidentally, desperate, deluded and nuts. I summarized Platner’s virtues exactly a month ago here, writing in part,

“He has said women who are raped are at fault. He said that blacks don’t tip. He has called called white, rural Maine dwellers stupid. He uses “fag” to describe gays. Platner praised Hamas, rationalized urinating on corpses, and has denigrated police officers. He once referred to Jesus as a “zombie” and the Virgin Mary as a “skank.” He also had a Nazi tattoo on his chest and defended it for years. On the plus side, Platner approves of political violence, so at least in that sense he’s a mainstream 2026 Democrat.”

And the hits just keep on coming for Platner. Today we learned that his supposed occupation as a small town Maine harbormaster—-See? He’s a real Maine-y blue collar guy!—is a rather wan resume item. The Washington Free Beacon reports,

“Platner’s town of Sullivan got by without a harbormaster from February 2022, when Platner’s predecessor resigned, until September 2023, when town officials tapped Platner to serve as “an interim Harbor Master until one could be hired,” records show. Platner had volunteered for the role in case Maine law required Sullivan to have one, though the town’s Harbor Committee noted at the time that it was “not clear” he was needed because “operations in the Harbors are handled by those who use the Harbors without dispute” and because the role’s “largest challenges are clerical” and “can be handled by the Harbor Committee.”Platner dropped the “interim” title in March 2024, when he completed the basic training required to be considered a “qualified Harbor Master.” He served in the role until the summer of 2025, when he launched his candidacy, according to Sullivan town manager Ray Weintraub, who told the Free Beacon that being town harbormaster generally consisted of collecting rent fees for Sullivan’s fewer than two dozen permitted moorings, where boats can anchor offshore. “We don’t really have any working waterfront, so to speak, other than a couple of boat launches,” Weintraub explained.”

Wow, this guy is really qualified to be a U.S. Senator! You wonder why “the country’s in the very best of hands” and ends up with idiots, crooks, fakes, poseurs and dolts in Congress? You know, like Republicans George Santos, Lauren Boebert, Margery Taylor Greene, and (oh, let’s pick a Democrat out of the hat) Ex-Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida, who resigned from Congress moments before the House Ethics Committee was going to sanction her, among other offenses, stealing nearly $5 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for her campaign? It’s because parties keep nominating ridiculous, untrustworthy, unqualified people. Platner, however, is special.

He’s also been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and AOC, another unqualified, incompetent boob.

The juiciest revelations about Platner came from his wife, who, the New York Times revealed, warned his campaign that her lovey-bug has a habit of sexting other women during their marriage. Classy! An Anthony Weiner wannabe! But that’s not all! Here is the transcript of the cringe-worthy video the Platner campaign persuaded his wife to post (hold onto your head!):

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