Since there is some reason to suspect that Jill Biden has been doing an Edith Wilson impression for at least some of her husband’s ill-starred term as President, a substacker decided to do a deep dive into Dr. Jill Biden’s dissertation to assess exactly how intellectually qualified she is to be shadow-President. What she found was, to understate it, horrifying….and yet, all in all, not surprising.
To summarize, the doctorate of education Jill received from the University of Delaware in January 2007 was based on a “scholarly” dissertation that was objectively crap. It is riddled with typos, mathematical errors, and horrible writing. Holly Mathnerd (not her real name, presumably) writes in part (this is a huge essay),
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) June 30, 2024
If Joe Scarborough had a scrap of decency, an atom of responsibility, or a wisp of the capacity for shame, he would voluntarily end his “Morning Joe” show, retire to private life, and ideally wear a paper bag over his head ’til the end of his days. Of course, if MSNBC was a professional news operation and not a den of hacks, it wouldn’t allow Scarborough back on the air next week.
I nearly posted about Scarborough two days ago, before I saw this clip today. He was featured in the Times piece titled “One by One, Biden’s Closest Media Allies Defect After the Debate.” The main three close Biden “media allies” mentioned were Morning Joe, Van Jones and NYT columnist Thomas Friedman. I was going to write something along the lines of, “Scarborough, Jones and Friedman! Would it be possible to gather an array of less credible, more ethically-revolting weasels? Having allies like them mean nothing, and having allies like them abandon you means nothing. Has the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog ever been more applicable?” Here’s the last addition to Van Jones’ Ethics Alarms dossier: he’s a proven anti-white race-huckster and face-man who cleans up nice for cameras and usually keeps his inner racist at bay so he can keep his lucrative CNN gig. The last time Friedman made the blog was in 2019, when he wrote that President Trump was “protected by big media outlets”! He really wrote that.
Now here’s how the sad Times story begins, talking about Scarborough:
Except for one brief moment of frustration and madness, Ethics Alarms has been consistent in its derision of the concept of reparations for slavery. Illogical, legally unhinged, divisive, anti-democratic and most of all, impossible, this really bad idea, a favorite of get-rich-quick racial grievance hucksters and reality-resistant progressives, still hangs around like old unwashed socks, and no amount of argument or reasoning seems to be able to send them to the rag pile. Recently both California, where terrible leftist ideas go to thrive and ruin things, and New York, which really should be moved to the West Coast, have both at least pretended to endorse reparations for slavery. California’s ridiculous reparations task force has proposed giving $223,200 each to all descendants of slaves in California, on the theory that it will be a just remedy for housing discrimination against blacks between 1933 and 1977. The cost to California taxpayers would be about $559 billion, more than California’s entire annual budget (that the state already can’t afford), and that doesn’t include the massive cost of administrating the hand-outs and dealing with all the law suits it is bound to generate.
Brilliant. But that’s reparations for you! Logic, common sense and reality have nothing to do with it.
Now comes two wokey professors from—you guessed it, Harvard, to issue a scholarly paper published in “The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences,” titled “Normalizing Reparations: U.S. Precedent, Norms, and Models for Compensating Harms and Implications for Reparations to Black Americans.” The thesis of this thing is essentially that reparations for slavery should be paid because “Everybody Does It,” offering variations of the #1 rationalization on the list that don’t properly apply to slavery at all. (What? The descendants of slaves are not like fishermen facing depleted fish stocks?) The paper is being called a “study”: it is not a study, but rather an activist advocacy piece. (I would have bet that both scholars are black; nope, just one is, although I would not be surprised to learn that Linda J. Bilmes signed on just to help Cornell William Brooks avoid the obvious accusation of bias and conflict of interest. And, naturally, at Harvard taking on such a mission, certifiably bats though it is, can only enhance her popularity on campus.)
Why would TIME magazine print such self-evident junk? Oh, I know, I know…it’s about dogs and cats, so it is guaranteed clickbait, she’s written a book, so she must be an “expert” and if you can’t believe an ethicist, who can you believe? “The Case Against Pets” is intellectually dishonest, silly, and violates the Ethics Alarms principle that advocating an impossible course of action is unethical no matter how wonderful it would be if it could happen. (My favorite: pacifism.)
The author is Jessica Pierce, a bioethicist and the author of several books, including the one this thing is obviously meant to hype, “A Dog’s World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans.” Boy, talk about a title signaling a dumb book! Next up: “Imagining the Lives of Dogs If They Could Graduate From Law School.”
Has this woman actually ever owned a dog? She says she has pets: I’m betting that it’s a hissing cockroach. Here are some of her assertions:
Jennifer Sey, once a competitive gymnast on the U.S. Women’s Olympic team, has launched a new clothing line focused on the threat to women’s sports by the woke-driven incursion of “transitioned” or “transitioning” biological males.
Today I'm launching my own clothing brand. It's the only athletic brand to stand up for female athletes and the protection of women's sports.
Stephen Colbert is really is beneath contempt. His late night show proudly promoted the guest appearance of Anthony Fauci last week, which is roughly the equivalent of cheering for the Sackler family. This is one of the subtle ways—not so subtle, really—that the media pimps for Democrats and the party’s agenda (“The Government knows best, proles!”) Colbert only has guests that align with the Axis; Nancy Pelosi was another recent guest, and the producers obviously have no interest in presenting anyone who isn’t fully part of the “team.” They also don’t have any interest in entertaining audience members who, having paid attention and having not been brainwashed, know the likes of Pelosi and Fauci for what they are.
Fauci, however, is a far more nauseating and unforgivable object of fawning idolatry than even Pelosi. He’s a certifiable, no-contest ethics villain: incompetent, irresponsible, dishonest, hypocritical, an abuser of power, position and influence, and the perfect poster boy for the fake “Trust the science!” mantra that the Left has weaponized for political gain.
The Pazuzu Excuse is an Ethics Alarms term for when someone, often a public figure or celebrity, is caught on video or on a recording saying outrageous, offensive, career-threatening things. With no reasonable excuse at hand, such miscreants often default to claiming that for some reason what came out of their own mouths was not really “them,” and didn’t represent their “true feelings” or beliefs.
You know, like when sweet 12-year-old Regan, possessed by the demon Pazuzu, shouts out to Father Karras, “Your mother sucks cocks in Hell!” in “The Exorcist.”
The Washington Free Beacon reported (this reflects badly on a woke university and its leadership, so you wouldn’t expect the Washington Post to break the story, would you?) that during a Columbia panel featuring the former dean of Columbia Law School, David Schizer, who co-chaired the university’s task force on anti-Semitism and others, Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College, and fellow administrators Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer of Columbia College; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support, listened to the panel discussion while texting each other with snarky, dismissive comments.
Ugh. These are not the only corporations playing this dishonest and cynical game, as you know. There are so many ethics alarms this junk sets off it’s difficult for me to keep the clanging straight–oooh, can I still say “straight”?
1. The robotic response of companies and organizations falling into lockstep during “Pride Month” (and Black History Month, and…yada yada) has the stench of forced speech about it, like everyone flying swastikas in 1930s Germany. Are the companies afraid not to demonstrate the mandated rainbow obeisance? What does BP have to do with sexual orientations and non-standard sexual practices? Why should a company like that have any input into the conversation at all? Shut up and drill.
2. These phony gestures also indicate obedient mass participation in cultural propaganda and indoctrination. It is an abuse of power and influence, and it doesn’t matter whether the organizations are endorsing kittens or cannibalism. I feel my arm being twisted. I resent it.
3. If these rainbow logos really represented the companies’ values, then they wouldn’t hide them in nations where intolerance reigns. In fact, those are the cultures where the advocacy is most needed and might do the most good.
The bottom line, as those companies’ VPs might say, is that their management and ownership have no genuine values, other than the desire to make money. That’s fine: capitalism works, and the profit motive makes it work, but these facile, empty gestures should be reminders to all that the pandering organizations cannot be trusted or believed whether they are lining up to bow to BLM, DEI, #MeToo, the stupid Wuhan lockdown, or whatever the latest woke fad of the moment happens to be.
24 Hour Fitness, a relatively recent entry into the gym wars, issued this memo to its staff about appropriate attire:
You can’t possibly read that, so here is the good stuff in the May 2023 internal document:
“We’ve committed to creating a more inclusive environment at 24 Hour Fitness, recognizing that we have work to do to become stronger allies in support of those who are impacted by systemic oppression and inequality…
…Currently approved movements and/or social causes, along with approved expressions are:
“Black Lives Matter”/”BLM” (words)
“Pride” and or pride rainbow logo
Juneteenth logo symbol, or date – on Juneteenth (June 19th)
Flag or United States logo – on holidays such as Memorial Day, Flag Day, July 4th, Veteran’s Day, Patriots Day, etc.
Now various organizations are calling for the chain to be boycotted. It asked for this. The place is managed by morons.
Businesses that have nothing to do with politics should keep politics out of their business, advertising and workplace policies. This is especially true if those running the business have only rudimentary understanding of basic principles of democracy and the English language. You cannot tell employees what “movements” are “approved” and claim to be “inclusive.” Having “approved expressions” is also offensive to democratic principles and values.
Worst of all is the head-exploding policy of approving symbols promoting anointed sexual orientations and a racist, Marxist scam year’ round, but limiting attire sporting the American flag to holidays. Hey, can I whistle “God Bless America” while I’m doing curls if it isn’t the Fourth of July, or only “Lift Every Voice and Sing”?
“When the going gets tough, the tough get unethical.”—Me. Also, in election year 2024, Machiavellian and disgusting.
These are repulsive people. When I saw the Rolling Stone headline, “Justice Alito Caught on Tape Discussing How Battle for America ‘Can’t Be Compromised,'” I thought, “Oh-oh.” Then I read the story. Alito was tricked by a left-wing James O’Keefe imitator (Ethics Alarms’ verdict on O’Keefe’s methods and conduct has been consistent and unequivocal from the beginning: he’s an unethical journalist, dishonest and untrustworthy, whose methods have occasionally uncovered hidden agendas that can’t be ignored) posing as a conservative admirer at an event. Attending the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner on June 3, Lauren Windsor, a progressive documentary filmmaker, introduced herself to Alito as a religious conservative. Then she proceeded to ask him leading questions and offer her own “opinions.” What she learned was that Alito was nice to strangers, and that with a stranger who seemed to admire him in a social setting, he chose to be agreeable rather than confrontational.
Here is the exchange: Windsor approached Alito at the event and reminded him that they spoke about political polarization at the same function the year before (who knows if they did or not, but if Alito didn’t remember, he wasn’t going to argue about it). In the intervening year, she told Alito, her views had changed. “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end,” Windsor said. “I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.” Alito’s reply: “I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”
You will see from this that the Rolling Stone headline is misleading and deceitful. Alito’s comment could have been made from either side of the ideological spectrum: it shows agreement with neither side. Moreover, it begins “You’re probably right,” which could easily mean, “You’re full of crap, but you’re welcome to your opinion, and I’ll make you feel like a Supreme Court Justice agrees with you because I’m a nice guy and now you can tell your friends, ‘Justice Alito agreed with me!'”
I have often wondered about this phenomenon, reflecting back on my lucky hour-long conversation with Herman Kahn when he was widely regarded as the smartest man alive. He was an unpretentious, kindly, engaging individual, and throughout our conversation made me feel like I had expressed theories and ideas that he thought were perceptive and valuable. Maybe he left that meeting and told a friend, “Boy, I was just trapped talking to an idiot for an hour!” But he made me feel good, which is an ethical thing to do.
And I wasn’t secretly recording him so I could leak to the Washington Post my comments as his revealed beliefs.
Next Windsor told Alito: “People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that — to return our country to a place of godliness.”
“I agree with you. I agree with you,” Alito replied. Rolling Stone adds at that point that he “authored the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which reversed five decades of settled law and ended a constitutional right to abortion.” Oh! I see. Alito voted to end Roe “to return our country to a place of godliness” ! He’s a religious fanatic! He helped end Roe because of his religious beliefs!
Read the words, as Sir Thomas More might say. All Alito says is that he agrees that people need to fight for what they believe. He doesn’t even say that he believes in God. He also just says, “I agree with you. I agree with you,” which under those conditions might mean, “Now, nice talking to you, but stop monopolizing my time and let me meet some other people.” There is no rhetorical smoking gun in this conversation and nothing illuminating or newsworthy, except perhaps that the desperate left is stooping to emulating an unethical conservative fake journalist to discredit the U.S. Supreme Court, and unfairly victimizing Joseph Alito for the third time in two weeks.
These are, I repeat, disgusting people.
The New York Times, I must note, was hardly better than Rolling Stone. It also treated this manipulated, unethically recorded and ambiguous conversation as news worthy, and had a deceitful headline of its own: “In Secret Recordings, Alito Endorses Nation of ‘Godliness,’ Roberts Talks of Pluralism.” That implies that Alito (and Roberts) were aware of the recordings, and worse, Alito did NOT endorse a nation of “godliness.”
Ethics Alarms 