Ethics Alarms Award Nominee

Morning Ethics Warm-Up: Snap Out Of It!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This morning, instead of the usual grainy 1930’s movies TCM usually shows before noon, it was featuring “Casablanca” for some reason. It’s a good thing, because the recent news had me heading for the bridge. As usual, the legendary singing duel at Ric’s between the Nazis and the French put me in a defiant mood, so I decided it was a good time to bring back the incredible Mirielle Mathiue and one of her signature performances of “La Marseillaise.” I’m a big fan of “The Star Spangled Banner,” but as inspiring national anthems go, this is the gold standard.

Now I feel better, and will at least until I finish this post.

1. You want racial conflict? This is how you get racial conflict. One benefit of the warm-up format is that I can write as little as possible about things that would make me up-chuck if I had to compose full posts about them. Following on the “systemic racism” myth, Oakland, California is launching a guaranteed income experiment called Oakland Resilient Families. 600 families in the city will receive $500-a-month payments over the next 18 months “to eliminate racial wealth inequalities.” Oakland’s guaranteed income program is only for low-income black, indigenous, and people of color, or BIPOC, families.

Whites cannot apply. If Oakland’s whites are poor, they have no excuses. They are just lazy, useless losers, I guess.

Families must apply online in the coming weeks and months in order to enter a pool of potential recipients, from which eligible families will be randomly selected to receive the cash payments.

I don’t have to explain what’s unethical about this, do I? Or what’s stupid about it? Or irresponsible?

In related news, a Kentucky mother is in custody on murder charges after her 2-year-old son overdosed on fentanyl while she slept. She had bought the drug with her stimulus money.

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Unethical? Uncivil? Unprofessional? I’m Not Sure What This Is, But I Am Sure No Competent Mayor Would Do It..

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

mayor_of_charlottesville_03-24-2021-1

Walker is the Mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia.

And they said Donald Trump posted inappropriate tweets…

After that delightful ditty was taken down by Facebook, the Honorable Mayor posted the whole poem, of which she is apparently proud, on Twitter:

mayor_of_charlottesville 2

Either she is having a nervous breakdown, of the citizens of Charlottesville are the most incompetent voters in the nation. I’m desperately searching to find another example of an elected official publicly announcing that he or she hates the city she has vowed to serve. It is a per se breach of loyalty and civic responsibility.

She is ethically obligated to resign. I’m sure she can support herself with her poetry…

Rainy Day Ethics Puddles, 3/24/2021:

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

1 Shut up or be funny. For some reason, the fact that Monday’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers’ included a gratuitous and facile lecture by the host about gun control legislation was plastered all over the progressive news media as if he had begun speaking in tongues or channeling the ghost of Emily Dickinson. I hate to be a spoil sport, but who cares what Seth Myers thinks about gun control? He’s a comedian and a comedy writer, and has been nothing but since college. Again, he has no brief to lecture anyone on that topic: he has his job to be funny, and the show he hosts is, theoretically at least, a comedy show. Did Julia Child ever lecture her PBS audience about U.S. nuclear policy while explaining how to cook an omelette? No. Did Walter Cronkite ever break into knock-knock jokes during The CBS Evening News? Never. Did Andy Williams ever pause in the middle of “Moon River” to deliver his analysis of a Presidential campaign? Absolutely not.

Myers has a right to his opinion, as sophomoric and echo chamber-nourished as it may be (he was pimping for “common sense gun laws,” which is what people say when they have no idea what laws will stop the criminal use of guns, but want us to “do something”), but it is arrogant and presumptuous to perform a bait and switch on his audience, which doesn’t come to his show for public policy wisdom. If they do, he has an ethical obligation to make it clear that they shouldn’t. As far as I can tell, Myers knows zilch about law, guns, government, or the Constitution, yet he presumes to use a vehicle awarded to him only because of an alleged gift for topical humor (personally, I don’t see it) for political advocacy.

Be funny, get educated, run for office, or shut up, Seth. And incidentally, there are not mass shootings “three or four times a week” and never have been. In a single atypical week, there were two mass shootings, and no Constitutional gun laws are likely to have stopped either of them.

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Ethics Hero: Dave Cieslewicz. Sort Of…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Mayor Dave

Dave Cieslewicz is an ex-mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, one of the more super-woke college towns, though they are all super-woke these days. Avid reader and commenter Steve Witherspoon nominated him for the Ethics Hero honor because he wrote a recent post on his blog rejecting Critical Race Theory. I initially misread Steve’s email to say that the post was from the current Madison mayor. Now that would have been courageous: students with pitchforks and torches would have gathered outside her home the second such a post hit the web. No, Cieslewicz, a he not a her, was mayor a decade ago, long before the shadow of The Great Stupid fell across the land.

I have some trouble designating anyone an ethics hero for stating what should be obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together. Dave Cieslewicz calls himself a moderate, which only shows what is regarded as a moderate in Madison: he’s a hard progressive in almost every respect. He’s just not a racist, anti-American progressive, the most visible species in 2021.

Does not being an anti-white racist and saying so out loud in a hotbed of Marxism like Madison qualify someone as an Ethics Hero now? I guess so.

That’s depressing. I thought Ethics Heroes were supposed to lift our spirits.

Cieslewicz writes in part,

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Exclamation Points, 3/16/21: Duh! Whoa! Yay! Gag! Asshole!” (Item #1)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

AngryJudge

The following Comment of the Day by long, LONG time commenter Michael West is especially welcome: there’s nothing I like better than a long, erudite COTD when I feel terrible and every moment not seeping is an ordeal. For a lot of reasons, I was way behind on my usual dental care last year, and the piper must ne paid: I have two toothaches, a related sinus infection and headache, and now face three extractions next week that wish could be in the next minute. My situation is just one more fun benefit of the lockdown, drastic, sot-in-the-dark precaution that had still unmeasurable benefits and many, many costs that have still not been quantified.

But I digress. People citing the Bible as authority for dubious ethical principles or, in the case sparking the COTD, unethical conduct has always been a pet peeve of mine even before I started thinking about such matters as a career. The example abused by Don Lemon was even on the Rationalization List: #6, The Biblical Rationalizations.

As a special treat, Michael ends by taking on “Walk a mile in another man’s shoes.”

Here is his erudite Comment of the Day on the first item in the post, “Ethics Exclamation Points, 3/16/21: Duh! Whoa! Yay! Gag! Asshole!”

***

Oh look, someone who hasn’t cracked open a Bible in decades hopes to lecture Christians or Jews on Judeo-Christianity!

Here’s the whole passage from Matthew-

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets. Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

This comes from the famous Sermon on the Mount.

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NBC News May Be An Ethics Dunce, But Jordan Fuchs Is An Ethics Villain

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Shunning

When we last left the Washington Post’s fake quote debacle, the paper had identified Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs as the source of a false account of then-President Trump’s phone call to the state’s investigator into irregularities in the 2020 election. Both Fuchs and Post blogger Erik Wemple were channeling Dan Rather “ethics,” arguing that Fuch’s lie that the President said “Find the fraud!” was inaccurate but true.

Now we learn, after someone checked the record, that at least one of the media sources had in fact unwittingly allowed Fuchs to verify her own lie, and claimed it had received a confirmation of the Post fake news from “a source familiar with the conversation.”

CNBC reported the following on January 9, the same day as the Washington Post story:

NBC News has confirmed The Post’s characterization of the Dec. 23 call through a source familiar with the conversation. Georgia’s Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs told NBC News: “We can confirm the events in the Washington Post story.”

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3/17/21 Ethics Wind-Down, 3/18/21 Wind-Up…Featuring “The Song Of The Year”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Wind-Up

There’s nothing quite like a flaming tooth-ache to spark an early-morning post…

1. Corporate incompetence, Indian-style: The Cleveland Indians knee-jerked themselves out of their history, traditions and name by somehow concluding that the Black Lives Matter rioting obligated them to abandon “Indians” just because the NFL Washington Redskins had capitulated to political correctness thuggery. Like all of baseball and most of professional sports, the team decided that signaling progressive virtue was more important than their fans. And like the Redskins, the team prepared to to go through the 2021 season without a new name…just nothing, as in “Cleveland Baseball Club,” or something similarly generic. Because of the unseemly, unnecessary and unplanned rush, the Cleveland Whatsis-es also made it difficult to come up with a new name. Changing a team name is a large and expensive mess, because the name and logo are on everything from the team’s merchandise to websites, sponsorship deals, and the ballpark. Trademarks are needed to protect them. “Advice for anyone doing any product: Before you make it public, file,” Andrew Skale, a San Diego-based trademark attorney told the New York Times.

“The U.S. trademark office offers this kind of unique ability to file when you haven’t started using it, so take advantage of that,” Skale said. “Because I’ve seen when people that have issued news releases about new products and haven’t filed yet, and then they have problems later because some idiots decided to squat on them.” Or maybe not such idiots. Because of the Ex-Indians moral panic, many of the names the team could have chosen based on its history and culture will be now be expensive.Trademarks were filed by squatters after Cleveland’s first announcement for “Cleveland Baseball Team” (from someone in Georgia), “Cleveland Baseball Club” (from a company in Ohio), “Cleveland Guardians” (from someone in New York), Cleveland Rockers (from someone in California), Cleveland Natives and Cleveland Warriors (though even the Ex-Indian aren’t so stupid as to wade back into Native American controversies again), and most of all, the Cleveland Spiders, which has been an early favorite. That was the name of the team. That was the name of the team for ten years, 1889-1899, when baseball players looked like this…

Spiders

The No-names are fighting some of these filings, because the Trademark Office tends to disfavor squatters. It all could have been avoided, though, if the team hadn’t wushed to be woke, thus joining The Great Stupid.

I wonder if “Spider McBaseballfaces” has been taken…

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(PSSST! Columbia! Just Because You’ve Held Segregated Graduation Ceremonies Before Doesn’t Make Holding Them Now Any Less Unethical)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Lavender graduation

The news stories yesterday in various conservative sources that Columbia University would be holding six segregated graduation ceremonies based on ethnicity, income, and sexual orientation in fealty to “multiculturalism” sounded like a Babylon Bee gag to me, except that it isn’t funny. The story also seemed to epitomize The Great Stupid in so many ways, but something stopped me from rushing to the keyboard and writing a KABOOM! story. I don’t know why: this week has had one news flash after another showing the Left has not only gone bonkers, it is no longer trying to hide it.

So I went to Columbia sources (unlike, say, Fox News) to clarify “What’s going on here?,” and part of what’s going on is that conservative media and social media are misrepresenting the story, but not what’s wrong with Columbia’s conduct. What’s wrong with the story is that it isn’t news. The University has been doing this—segregated, group-identification ceremonies— for quite a while.

I haven’t checked to see if the groups or their names have changed: in 2021, the six are called the “Latinx Graduation,” the “Black Graduation,” the “Asian Graduation,” the “FLI Graduation” (for “first-generation and/or low-income community” students), the “Native Graduation” for Native-American students, and…I kid you not… the “Lavender Graduation” for the LGBTQ students.

“Lavender Graduation’? Really? Heck, why not the “FABULOUS! Graduation”?

If this were a new disgusting and embarrassing innovation for what is supposed to be an elite educational institution, I would have designated it as the perfect embodiment of “The Great Stupid” : separating groups in the name of inclusivity, segregating groups while celebrating the diversity of the whole, returning to “separate but equal” while demanding civil rights. But it is not new, and therefore not news.

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A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Spectacular! The Washington Post Says,”You Know That Story About Trump Pressuring The Georgia Secretary Of State to “Find The Votes” To Flip The State? Never Mind. It Was All A Lie.” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Trump phone call

Gee, thanks. I guess this means your paper is trustworthy, right?

You know, I’m getting a little angry about this. Not at the news media: I figured out long ago that it was making up negative stories about President Trump, so when it ran “scoops” with anonymous sources like this one, I assumed that it was as likely fake news as not. You may note that I didn’t even bother to comment on this story when it was reported, although that was partially because it was almost immediately swallowed by the January 6 riot and the second impeachment debacle. No, I’m getting just a little bit disgusted with friends and relatives who continue to claim, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the mainstream news media did not repeatedly and intentionally hype, exaggerate, manufacture and otherwise publicize misleading and false stories for the explicit purpose of turning public opinion against President Trump to assist the Democrats in gaining power. The latest example, which was revealed today, is just another in a long, long trail. But it’s a major one.

In January, the Washington Post reported that then-President Donald Trump, still trying to undo the presumed results of an election he believed was stolen from him, “urged Georgia’s lead elections investigator to ‘find the fraud’ in a lengthy December phone call, saying the official would be a ‘national hero.’” There was a single anonymous source who supposedly “confirmed” the details of the private conversation on an audio recording, and this was enough for the Post.

Watch “All the President’s Men” again. This wasn’t considered enough verification when the Post went after Richard Nixon.

Other news sources quickly reported the same outrageous conduct, claiming they had independently verified the story. Several said that “Trump is heard on an audiotape pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to ‘find’ votes to overturn Biden’s win. ” But the reporters didn’t hear that audiotape. They were relying on someone who said they had heard it. This is why hearsay is not admitted into evidence in trials.

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Getting The Week Off To An Ethical Start, 3/15/2021! LBJ’s Doubts, Fake News, And second Acts

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Today in ethics history, on March 15, 1964, President Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to urge the passage of a voting rights bill. Johnson declared that “every American citizen must have an equal right to vote, a right supposedly guaranteed by the Fifteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War but foiled by many states that erected barriers based on race such as literacy and character tests and outright intimidation. “Their cause must be our cause too,”Johnson said, referring to Africa-Americans. “Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

It is a propitious time to consider LBJ, because a newly published book has revealed that his wife Lady Bird had to talk him out of quitting not long after his voting rights bill had become reality.

Johnson dictated his ideas for a withdrawal statement to his friend, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas while in the depths of depression. “I want to go to the ranch. I don’t want even Hubert to be able to call me,” he told his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. “They may demand that I resign. They may even want to impeach me.” The First Lady ultimately talked her husband him through that period, allowing him to complete the final three years of his term. She wrote about the episode in her diary, she ordered the entry kept secret for years after her death.

I was not aware that Johnson was prone to clinical depression. Now I’m curious about how many of our other Presidents were. I was aware of three before Johnson—Pierce, Lincoln and Teddy. I’m sure there are more. Leaders, however, must not reveal their doubts and failures of confidence.

1. I believe this is called “putting the cart before the horse...” From the Boston Globe:

US officials have arrested and charged two men with assaulting US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 attack, but they do not know yet whether it caused the officer’s death.

Ah, how they want to be able to say that the rioters in the “armed insurrection” in which nobody had a gun (and that wasn’t an insurrection) killed Brian Sicknick. This mission has taken on extra urgency since the mainstream news media keeps saying, even now, that Sicknick was “killed” in the riot or by rioters. Yet as the Globe admits, as of today, this claim remains a lie, or if you prefer, fake news.

My experience is that reminding Facebook friends of this fact drives them bonkers.

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