Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring Because They Were Installed Upside-Down And Backwards…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

There’s not a lot one can say about this astounding story or that needs to be said, but it still must be told because the head-exploding incident demonstrates just how completely ethically inert some alleged adults in authority can be. From there we must consider how our culture is failing if anyone could be raised in it for 22 years and do what Arlisha Boykins did.

That’s her above, taking a free throw in a basketball game. That game was being played by the Churchland High JV team, on which the players were 13-to 15-year-old girls. Arlisha was the assistant coach of that team—as I noted, she’s 22-years old—and when one of her team’s players who is 13 had to miss a game, Boykins masqueraded as her, wearing the player’s uniform and taking her place on the court for a January 21 contest.

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The Great Stupid Is Now Officially An Existential Threat To American Civilization, Because, As The Dodo Proved, Things Really Can Be Too Stupid To Live…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Morons. Everywhere I look, morons.

This isn’t funny any more, if it ever was. I was pondering whether reports that an organization called The Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance is demanding that Apple Music and Spotify remove the Aretha Franklin 1968 song “Natural Woman”  from their playlists because it “perpetuates multiple harmful anti-trans stereotypes,” since “there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ woman.” The group claims that the song “has helped inspire acts of harm against transgender women.” 

Really? I’d like to see the citations for that. I know I want to run amuck with a machete every time I hear “Imagine,” but Aretha never made me feel violent.

I couldn’t believe this story could be true, until I encountered this story, which is even dumber.

Last year, Mars Wrigley changed the shoes of some of its cartoon M&M’s characters that appear in TV ads. Conservatives were upset. Let me repeat that: some conservatives were upset because of a change in the design of anthropomorphic animated candies’ shoes. Tucker Carlson  criticized the character makeovers as “Woke M&M’s.” Slow news day, Tucker?

M&M’s marketers had  re-shod the green “female” M&M’s high heels with flats and replaced the intimidating brown “female” M&M’s stilettos for smaller heels.

 

Tucker pounced! “M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and totally androgynous,”  Carlson said on his show. “Until the moment when you wouldn’t want to have a drink with any one of them. That’s the goal. When you’re totally turned off, we’ve achieved equity. They’ve won.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero And 2022 Ethics Alarms Award For Most Ethical Website Of The Year: Legal Insurrection

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The instances of schools and other institutions violating core American principles in pursuit of the correct radical woke agenda—which I would summarize as obliterating the unique ethical culture of the United States of America while an apathetic public shrugs with its metaphorical finger up its nose and the biased mainstream media provides cover—are proliferating with frightening speed. The only remedy is rapid action, exposure, and sufficient condemnation to make these dreadful revolutionaries back down and either give up or regroup, to be slapped down again another day. That was what Prof. William Jacobsen’s courageous blog Legal Insurrection did when the Providence, Rhode Island, Public School District attempted two measures that were discriminatory—you know, the “good” kind of discrimination.

The District tried to inflict an “Educators of Color Meet Up” program in which white educators were excluded from attending by the explicit terms of the announcement and a sign up form that listed only non-white races and ethnicities. The Legal Insurrection Foundations sent a letter to the planned venue for the event, putting the owners on notice of the non-discrimination provisions of the Rhode Island Public Accommodations law. The school district moved its location and changed its sign up form and event description after being exposed,

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How Jolly! The White House Has Figured Out That Virtue-Signaling Policies With No Tangible Benefits But Substantial Negative Consequences Are Not In The Nation’s Best Interests…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an infuriating news item!

RealClear Energy informs us…

…the Department of Energy quietly released a report highlighting the positive economic benefits of developing the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, an energy project canceled by President Biden in the hours following his inauguration….Released without a formal announcement, the DOE’s report points out that the pipeline would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had an economic benefit of between $3.4 and 9.6 billion….Yet with one stroke of his pen, Biden slashed the project and instead focused his efforts on costly “green energy” goals. As a result of his executive action, 11,000 pipeline workers were promptly laid off…

Now, everyone except hard-core climate change fanatics—and maybe poor Joe— knew that closing down the pipeline would have no salutary effects on global warming or conservation. The Obama administration had essentially admitted that shutting it down would be largely symbolic but otherwise pointless (like all climate change grandstanding). Never mind: the pipeline was killed anyway just as Biden had promised to do on “Day One” during the 2020 campaign.  If they could have voted, the 16-year-olds would have gone for Biden. Continue reading →

KABOOM! I Just Read AGAIN The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Website Section On “Whiteness”….How Can That Racist Offal Still Be Up? [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The official position of the Smithsonian Institution is apparently that white people are a blight on humanity. My head exploded after the first time I became aware of this, in a post that generated a lot of excellent comments in 2020. Like a fool, I assumed the outrageous text (and the chart that earlier post focused on) had been removed. I was wrong.

It’s time to revisit the issue, especially since my head just exploded again.

Here’s a sample of the woke, Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, “1619”-style racist drivel (and libel) that appears on the website of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the “Nation’s Attic’s” most recent major addition. I know most attics have creepy , smelly stuff in them, but this should not be tolerated.The page headlined, “Whiteness” reads in part,

Whiteness is also at the core of understanding race in America. Whiteness and the normalization of white racial identity throughout America’s history have created a culture where nonwhite persons are seen as inferior or abnormal.

This white-dominant culture also operates as a social mechanism that grants advantages to white people, since they can navigate society both by feeling normal and being viewed as normal. Persons who identify as white rarely have to think about their racial identity because they live within a culture where whiteness has been normalized. 

Thinking about race is very different for nonwhite persons living in America. People of color must always consider their racial identity, whatever the situation, due to the systemic and interpersonal racism that still exists.  

Whiteness (and its accepted normality) also exist as everyday microaggressions toward people of color. Acts of microaggressions include verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs or insults toward nonwhites. Whether intentional or not, these attitudes communicate hostile, derogatory, or harmful messages.

Since white people in America hold most of the political, institutional, and economic power, they receive advantages that nonwhite groups do not. These benefits and advantages, of varying degrees, are known as white privilege. For many white people, this can be hard to hear, understand, or accept – but it is true. If you are white in America, you have benefited from the color of your skin….

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DeSantis, The NHL, And The Duty To Confront (Link Fixed!)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

When corporations, organizations, institutions or professions show that they don’t have functioning ethics alarms, it is incumbent upon those of us who do to sound those alarms for them. Loudly. Forcefully. In a timely fashion. That is the only way to preserve and strengthen an ethical culture.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just demonstrated how this is done. Let’s pay attention, shall we?

The National Hockey League, like all of the professional sports keen to pander to what it sees as predominant social trends if it will mean better media coverage, announced that it will hold a job fair called  “Pathway to Hockey Summit” on February 2 during its 2023 All Star Game festivities in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The idea was to cater to and seeks to attract “diverse job seekers who are pursuing careers in hockey.” Naturally, the whitest of all sports decided that to virtue-signal properly and suck up to the Diversity Equity Inclusion Nazis, that meant that white men need not apply, well, except veterans. They were okay.

“Participants must be 18 years of age or older, based in the U.S., and identify as female, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic/Latino, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and/or a person with a disability. Veterans are also welcome and encouraged to attend,” the published event description stated.

Ah, but it was a Florida event, and Florida is governed by a mean, tough, white guy who insists that anyone under his watch must follow the Constitution. That’s Governor Ron DeSantis, whom the mainstream media is recently painting as “worse than Trump.” The governor’s press secretary released a public statement saying,

“Discrimination of any sort is not welcome in the state of Florida, and we do not abide by the woke notion that discrimination should be overlooked if applied in a politically popular manner or against a politically unpopular demographic. We are fighting all discrimination in our schools and our workplaces, and we will fight it in publicly accessible places of meeting or activity….[the NHL must] “immediately remove and denounce the discriminatory prohibitions it has imposed on attendance to the 2023 ‘Pathway to Hockey’ summit.”

And, of course, the limitations on the event were discrimination, though the kind that progressive revolutionaries, Marxists and Democrats believe is good discrimination—you know, like Harvard’s discrimination against white and Asian-American college applicants. Good, I tell you! But like most pandering businesses, organizations, institutions and professions, the National Hockey League can only move the metaphorical cultural needle in unethical directions if nobody pays attention and the majority of Americans shrug and decide, “Ah, so what? We have bigger problems.” At least, these blights on society and deniers of core American values are only inclined to take the risk if they are sure they can get away with it without paying a substantial price.

And thus it was that, faced with someone who was clearly not about to ignore their unethical conduct or let them get away with it, the National Hockey League immediately backed down. They didn’t even try to defend their discriminatory event. They were only sucking up to bigots for cash and compliments because they thought it would be easy. It’s not as if they thought it was right: the cynical, self-serving, none-too bright people who run the NHL, like the cynical, self-serving none-too bright people who run most things, unfortunately, don’t care about what is right and usually can’t figure out what that is without some forceful guidance anyway.

In a laughably dishonest statement,  the NHL has announced that the “original wording of the LinkedIn post associated with the event was not accurate.” “The Pathway to Hockey Summit is an informational and networking event designed to encourage all individuals to consider a career in our game – and, in particular, alert those who might not be familiar with hockey to the opportunities it offers,”  the NHL now says, after  deleting the original event posting last night. The job fair is open to anyone ages 18 and older.

That’s what they always intended, they say. If you believe that, did you know that hockey pucks taste like licorice?

The United States is in the dangerous cultural state it is now in because the public ignored ethics rot and powerful influences against our nation’s foundational principles in education, politics, journalism, academia, entertainment, and literature while those influences took hold over many decades. We left it to others to deal with, and the others we trusted were weak, apathetic and corrupt themselves. It is a principle of ethics that each of us has a duty to confront and oppose unethical actors when we can. It may be too late, and we may have waited too long.

We’ll never know unless we try, however.

“The Great Stupid” Lurches Toward PEAK Stupid!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

What happens when The Great Stupid reaches “Peak Stupid”?

Oh, it will be spectacular. People will over the U.S. of all ages and political affiliations will suddenly realize what they have been accepting and tolerating. They will realize that they have been doing to society, the culture and the nation the equivalent of shooting a nail bun directly into one’s skull because it seemed like a good idea at the time. They will be simultaneously humiliated, embarrassed, remorseful and angry.

And it’s coming my friends. It is coming because the purveyors of the Great Stupid will keep trying out more and more ridiculous tactics and stratagems to attain their desired Orwellian utopia until they reach the inevitable tipping point. Based on today’s developments, it is coming soon.

Guess what word Woke World has decided to ban as racist.

Come on, guess.

It’s field. As is “Field of Dreams,” “Lilies of the Field,” and “Flanders Field.” As in “take the field.” As in “What field are you in?” and “Let’s do some field research.”

Here is the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work proving that it is run by lunatics and can no longer be regarded as a place of serious instruction or rational thought:

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Romeo and Juliet’s Ethical Unethical And Really, REALLY Late Law Suit

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

It is hard not to be cynical about the news that Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, the now-aged stars of the Oscar-winning 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet,” are suing Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse over the dreamy, artsy nude scene that was included in Franco Zeffirelli’s hit. When I told my wife about it, her snap reaction was “I guess they need money.”

It’s fair conclusion, especially regarding Whiting, who never had much of a career after the great success of “Romeo and Juliet.” Hussey, at least, worked pretty consistently after her debut, among her credits being a classic horror film, the ahead-of-its-time slasher flick “Black Christmas” which introduced “The calls are coming from inside the house!” to our cultural vernacular.

The first thing I thought of was the California statute of limitations, forgetting that California has temporarily suspended it for child sex abuse, in part because of an emerging Hollywood scandal involving child stars. The suspension has spurred new lawsuits and the revival of others that were previously dismissed.

The actors, both seniors now, claim director Zeffirelli tricked and bullied them into doing a nude scene despite giving them assurances that they would not have to bare themselves on screen. The director reportedly told the two teens (Hussey was 15 at the time; Whiting 16) that without the tasteful nudity the film would lack artistic integrity. Solomon Gresen, who represents the pair, says in explaining the suit,

“Nude images of minors are unlawful and shouldn’t be exhibited.These were very young, naive children in the 60s who had no understanding of what was about to hit them. All of a sudden they were famous at a level they never expected, and in addition they were violated in a way they didn’t know how to deal with.”

The actors’ spokespeople now say that the lawsuit comes so late because Hussey and Whiting were afraid that suing earlier would adversely affect their careers (regarding Whiting: What career?) and that no one would believe them. A lot of people won’t believe them now, either: in a 2018 interview, Hussey defended the brief view of her breast. “Nobody my age had done that before,” she said, adding that Zeffirelli shot it tastefully. “It was needed for the film.” In a another interview the same year, Hussey said that the scene “wasn’t that big of a deal. And Leonard wasn’t shy at all! In the middle of shooting, I just completely forgot I didn’t have clothes on!”

So we come to the question that so often must be answered to assess an ethics controversy: “What’s going on here?”

Some answers:

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Stop Making Me Defend The National Football League!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In a new low for reflex race-baiting, Daily Beast columnist Ernest Owens, a reliable progressive hysteric, accused the NFL of being racist because the league took more than an hour to suspend and postpone yesterday’s Monday Night Football game after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed after making a tackle.  Hamlin, 24, went into cardiac arrest on the field and remains hospitalized in critical condition.

“One would have thought the game would have immediately been cut short. After such a drastic shift in energy and spirit, surely the game would be called without a doubt,” Owens wrote. “It would take an hour after Hamlin was first administered CPR for the NFL to officially postpone the game after first attempting to suspend it. Yes, after all of the chaos, the league thought it was practical to have the traumatized players continue to play….It would be one thing if Monday’s incident was a rare drop of the ball from the NFL, Instead, it’s another reminder of how incompetent this multibillion-dollar institution has been to its players, who are mostly Black.”

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING! There it is! The obligatory race-baiting! Hamlin is black, so the time it took to make a decision to end and postpone a nationally televised football following his medical emergency must have been motivated by racism, even though no NFL game had ever been suspended and postponed following an injury no matter how serious. The only games that have ever been cancelled and rescheduled at all since 1930 involved player strikes, and those games had not begun. One would think that a white player’s injury had previously caused a game suspension in the past for Owens to even suspect that NFL officials took too long to make their decision because of race.

No, he’s just a shameless, race-baiting asshole. It’s as simple as that. Continue reading →

The Associated Press’s Stunning Corruption [Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The corruption, bias, and ethical void within the mainstream media is now difficult to overstate. The latest revelation is so damning, 95% of the media isn’t reporting it, since it points to the ethics rot of one of its most esteemed members. This is the news media’s recent tactic to avoid being exposed as the lying, manipulating propaganda agents they and their partisan allies in Big Tech and social media are. Hide the facts

The Associated Press, the august and once respected newswire service, accepts donations to fund its climate coverage. In 2022, the AP received $8 million in donations to fund its climate doom reporting, with money coming from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, all climate change alarmists. The AP isn’t alone: what it calls philanthropy-funded news is a trend, with other news sources accepting charitable funds as well. The Salt Lake Tribune, The Seattle Times and the New York Times are also accepting grants from interest groups.

Yes, non-profits are interest groups.

The $8 million over three years allows the AP to hire 20 more “climate journalists.” AP News Vice President Brian Carovillano says without giggling that the money comes “without strings attached” and asserts that funders have “no influence on the stories conducted.” He’s lying. He’s unquestionably lying: if I give a publication 8 million dollars to hire ethics specialists to report on the importance of ethics, those hires are certain to influence the publication’s content. Is there any chance the “climate journalists” will write stories about how so much climate science is speculative, politically-slanted hooey? I think not.

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