Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Unethical TV Commercial In Oh So Many Ways: 2024 Hyundai Tuscon SEL

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here’s now sinister this ad is: I must have watched it six or seven times before I thought, “Hey…wait a minute!”

The male “bad date” in the ad is so disgusting a viewer is half-hoping the woman pulls out a .44 and shoots him right between the eyes. This is masterful manipulation at work…he begins with an insult framed as blame causing him disappointment: “You’re too short.” Asshole. Then he reveals his narcicissm and boastfulness, showing the selfie “by the dumbbells.” Giant asshole! Next the air-drumming comment…UNBELIEVABLE asshole! When he gets to the bit about forgetting his wallet and “Sugarmamma,” the viewer is seeing red, and feeling that the victim of this toxic creep is being noble by just sneaking out rather than setting him on fire.

But she isn’t. She’s being an asshole too, just a slightly better one. Leaving the table on false pretenses to escape is cowardly and indefensible. Moreover, someone who misbehaves as outrageously as the “bad date” needs to be told just clearly how unacceptable his conduct is and why, since he obviously doesn’t know. His next victim will at least partially be the runaway date’s fault.

The commercial also showed an anti-female bias by making the bad date a male and his victim female. A genders switched version would inspire at least a substantial reaction from viewers of “What a weenie! The jerk doesn’t have the guts to confront that jerk!” But teh woman in the ad is also a weenie—it’s just that the Hyundai marketers are calculating that running away from confrontations and unpleasant situations is a girl thing, and socially acceptable.

No, it really isn’t. This is not only a stereotype, it’s a damaging one. Why haven’t we elected a female President yet? Accumulated cultural poison like this commercial is one of the reasons.

Incidentally, I hope that actor who plays the asshole was well paid for his performance, because he may end up dying single and alone as a result.

Ethics Observations on a Hollywood Controversy I Could Not Possibly Care Less About

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This story gets a Kaufman, the Ethics Alarms label for a topic that rates George S. Kaufman’s famous assessment of his interest in Fifties crooner Eddie Fisher’s difficulties finding younger women to date. (Eddie, you may recall, was the husband Elizabeth Taylor divorced to hook up with Richard Burton, and who earlier, with Debbie Reynolds, fathered Carrie Fisher.) Kaufman said, when posed with Fisher’s dilemma on a TV panel show,

“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope. The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.”

And yet there have been dozens of news stories and social media posts about the current story, and I feel compelled to comment.

“Emilia Pérez” is a 2024 Spanish-language “French musical crime comedy” about a Mexican cartel leader who enlists a lawyer to help her disappear so that she may transition into a woman. [Comment: Well, other movies with insane premises have managed to be good…] At the 97th Academy Awards, “Emilia Pérez” will have 13 nominations, including Best Picture. Karla Sophia Gascón, who plays the cartel leader, is the first openly trans woman to be nominated as Best Actress.

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Call Me Soft On Crime, But Revoking Probation For Assault-By-Sandwich Seems Unfair Somehow

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Public Service Announcement: Before we start, I want to establish and Ethics Alarms rule: the word is baloney, not “bologna” when I’m around. I’ve never understood why that archaic spelling has persisted.

Oquavious Chandler, a 29-year-old convicted felon, was arrested last week after his stepfather reported him for assault. The alleges victim told police that he had removed a PlayStation system from Chandler’s bedroom because he “was being too loud.” Chandler shouted at his stepfather and “threw a baloney sandwich at him, which ultimately hit him in the center of his chest.”

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A Nelson For Disney and “Snow White”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“The Nelson,” the Ethics Alarms designation for very special episodes of swell-earned schadenfreude, was introduced in 2023 in a post about…Disney’s live-action reboot of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the 1937 animated film that began building the Disney entertainment empire. Thus it is nicely symmetrical for Nelson to give his trademark “Ha ha!” to the trailer of this slow-motion disaster, which has set what is believed to be a YouTube record with, as of yesterday, 40,383 “likes” and 1,012,299 “dislikes.” The film is hitting theaters in March. Ethics Alarms warned Disney about what was bound to happen if and when this botched project ever got out of the cutting room. I wrote in part,

The ethics value defied here is competence, and what we are seeing is the classic sunk costs fallacy in its classic form. The Vietnam War was the most painful example of this breach of life competence and common sense, which holds that devoting a lot of time and/or resources to a failed project argues for devoting more of the same, lest those “sunk costs” go to waste. In reality however, what is being missed is that fact that whether or not one has invested a great deal in a lost cause, its status as a project that has proven itself unworthy of investment is unaltered. Doing what Disney is doing with the “Snow White” project is called “throwing good money after bad.” It is bad business—incompetent, wasteful, and irresponsible.

First, Disney woke fanatics thought it made sense to cast a Snow White-of-Color, which makes no sense since the story makes such a big deal about how “fair” the heroine is. Then, because a single au courant little person actor complained about the dwarfs in the classic fairy tail, Disney eliminated them in favor of these dorks…

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Brevard County School Superintendent: “We Hold Our Leaders to the Highest Standards…” Yeah, RIGHT.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Roosevelt Elementary School (in Cocoa Beach, Florida) principal Elizabeth Hill-Brodigan (above, right) held a party with more than 100 teens in attendance. Alcohol was flowing, joints were being puffed. When police arrived at Hill-Brodigan’s home after a tip on January 19, they discovered the wild underage party, one teenager having an alcohol-related medical episode on the front lawn, and Roosevelt Elementary teacher Karly Anderson (left), who was drunk as a skunk. They also found alcoholic beverages in coolers. Now police have learned that these parties have been occurring for a while, once or twice a month.

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New York Magazine Is Caught Manufacturing Fake Evidence Of “White Supremacy”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Once upon a time, the news media would get away with this kind of blatant dishonesty.

The story itself that New York Magazine used this deceptively cropped photo to introduce (The Cruel Kids Table: Out late with the young right as they cultivate cultural domination”) states that “Almost everyone is white” after beginning the story by quoting a party attendee as observing, “Have you noticed the entire room is white?” Promoting the piece, the NY Mag X account wrote that the story was about “the young, gleeful, confident, and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on the rest of America.” This was a hit piece about a supposedly all-white conservative influencers Trump inauguration party, yet the party’s host was black Gen Z Republican strategist CJ Pearson. Others pointed out, like black conservative pundit and “influencer” Rob Smith, also a guest at the party, that there were many Hispanics, blacks and Asians there. He posted this photo…

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Fake Ethics Hero: Pamela Hemphill, A.K.A. “MAGA Granny”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Does anyone say “Color me X” any more? Oh hell, I don’t care: Color me unimpressed with “MAGA Granny” rejecting her pardon from President Trump for her role in the January 6 Capitol riot that was the worst thing to happen to the United States since 9-11. Or Pearl Harbor. Or the Civil War.

She’s the retired 72-year-old drug and alcohol counselor from Boise, Idaho who pleaded guilty in January 2022 to a misdemeanor for entering the Capitol during the riot and was sentenced to 60 days in prison and three years of probation. She was one of those “rioters” who was basically walking around. The Axis media is singing her praises because she announced that she says won’t accept the pardon.

Hemphill said in an interview this week that she was turning President Trump’s gift down. “It’s an insult to the Capitol Police, to the rule of law and to the nation,” she said. “If I accept a pardon, I’m continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about Jan. 6.” She now says she doesn’t support Trump or (in the words of the New York Times) “believes his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.” (For the thousandth time, that is not a lie but an opinion that cannot be proven or disproven). A therapist had helped her change her view of the episode, you see. Now she realizes, she says, that the “Stop the Steal” movement. “was a cult, and I was in a cult.”

Winston Smith knows just how she feels.

I wonder if that therapist put a cage of hungry rats on her face to prompt Pam’s epiphany?

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Post 2024 Election Freakout Update, Fashion Ethics Division: How Hateful Are The Trump-Haters? THIS Hateful…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Believe it or not, the social media Trump Hate mob was offended by that photo and others of Ivanka Trump wearing the dress at President Trump’s Inaugural Ball. Why, you well may ask, especially if you are of sound mind and under the age of 80? This is why…

Yes, Ivanka had the audacity to wear a recreation of one of the dresses Audrey Hepburn wore in “Sabrina,” a 1954 film with William Holden (above) and Humphrey Bogart. That film is so old that it had a remake, and the actor who played Bogart’s part is in his 80s, Harrison Ford. My late wife Grace loved Audrey Hepburn, and though I re-watched that film with her just about a year ago, I wouldn’t have picked up on the dress homage. But nothing is too petty and bonkers to attack a Trump over.

“She [Audrey] is the complete opposite of Ivanka’s silver spoon life,” read the comment of one lunatic. Typical ignoramus: Hepburn was raised in a wealthy family among the Dutch aristocracy; her mother was a baroness, her father a wealthy oil executive. But facts don’t matter to these nutcases.

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“Superman II” Plot: After Trump-Deranged Sen. Murphy Makes An Ass of Himself, Vogue Says “Hold My Beer”…

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

The previous post discussed the level of hysteria now being attained by the Trump Deranged, with a U.S. Senator yesterday joining in the bonkers conspiracy theory that the Trump administration is a cabal of actual Nazis . Chris Murphy’s echoing the ridiculous Big Lie that Elon Musk gave a deliberate Nazi salute—you know, like Superman when he’s flying—

….managed to surpass even the late campaign claims by the dumbest sub-species among the Axis of Unethical Conduct that Trump was emulating the American Nazi Party when he held a campaign rally in Madison Square Garden. Yes, the Nazi salute smear on Musk is even worse than that, though redolent of the “OK” secret white supremacy hand signal insanity that the Mad Left used to slime everyone from lawyers to baseball fans during Trump’s first term.

Here is Vogue, writing about the cool necklace Ketanji Brown Jackson (above) wore to the inauguration:

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Unethical Quote of the Month (and Ethics Villain): Sen. Chris Murphy (D.-Conn)

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

“What do you think about Trump’s most visible advisor, Elon Musk, performing a Nazi salute?”

—-Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut and based on this question, a completely unscrupulous one, questioning Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik in her confirmation hearing to be confirmed as U.N. ambassador

Yecchh, ick, ptui, gag, retch! I’m sure it’s theoretically possible to stoop lower than Murphy, but I don’t want to think about what that would be. Urinating on the nominee perhaps?

This is pure Trump hate translated into slander. Musk, while gesticulating yesterday, ended up with one arm outstretched briefly with the palm down, and the still frantically desperate Axis, including PBS, began circulating the absurd Big Lie that Musk gave a Nazi salute for some reason. Oh! I get it! It’s because Trump is a Nazi!

I still can’t get my head around the reality that a U.S. Senator would try to join in on this gang smearing of Musk. CNN’s Scott Jennings X’d, “The only good thing about the Elon salute stupidity is that it adds to the list of people in public life who should never, ever, ever be taken seriously ever again by anyone ever.” Good point, and well said. Now, I’m ahead of Jennings, because I never took Murphy seriously anyway, except that he’s a serious jerk. Murphy is one of the worst of the worst in Congress, and missed my pre-election blacklist only because he wasn’t running. Yet even I, who regard him as an ongoing embarrassment to the Senate and the nation, didn’t see him resorting to this.

The question wasn’t even relevant to Stefanik, though she answered it with appropriate contempt, saying, “That is simply not the case. To say so – the American people see through it. They support Elon Musk.” I wish she had added, “And they are not the morons you seem to think they are. They know he didn’t give any Nazi salute.”

I find it hard to believe that the Democrats and the Trump-hating news media are really going to escalate their craziness as they try to destroy Trump for another term. Is it possible? Do they have a death wish? Are they that deluded? Is their learning curve not just flat, but upside-down? Jennings is not exaggerating. Bias makes you stupid, and hysterical bias makes you ridiculous.

(That’s Superman giving his “Nazi salute” above, courtesy of the Babylon Bee.)