Ethics Villain Revealed: Barack Obama [Corrected]

For once, the New York Times is reporting one of those over-heard conversations from an anonymous source who is violating trust to reveal it that harms the reputation and image of a progressive hero, though maybe the Times staff is so far gone that it doesn’t realize the import of the leak.

Former President Barack Obama, the Times revealed, phoned New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani today, November 1. The architect of the foundering progressive take-over of American government and culture spoke with the front-runner for “roughly 30-minutes.” According to the leakers, who spoke “on condition of anonymity” to describe the private conversation, Obama said that he “was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success” beyond the upcoming election. The two (Muslims?) “talked about the challenges of staffing a new administration and building an apparatus capable of delivering on Mr. Mamdani’s agenda of affordability in the city.”

On the call, Obama reportedly spoke admiringly about Mamdani’s campaign. “Your campaign has been impressive to watch,” he told the charismatic communist, according to the sources.

During the campaign (and before it) Mamdani has made it Waterford crystal clear that he supports Hamas and does not believe that Israel has a right to exist. As a watermark of the anti-Semite, he has repeatedly described Israel’s legitimate armed response to the Gazan terror attack of October 7, 2023, as “genocide.” Those not in favor of obliterating Israel might well have regarded these themes in Mamdami campaign for mayor serious missteps. Obama, if the account is to be believed, seems to think being anti-Israel is just hunky-dory, but as we’ve seen, that’s where his party and its most fervent members have been tending for years.

Obama offered to be a “sounding board”—as in coach, mentor, advisor— when Mamdani wins the election, with the two agreeing to meet in person at some point in Washington, D.C.. Mamdani reportedly thanked the former president for the encouragement and told him that he had drawn inspiration for his own recent speech on Islamophobia from Mr. Obama’s speech on race during his first presidential run.

That Mamdani speech was the one in which he implied that voting against him was a sign of bigotry. Yeah, there’s no reason in the world for New Yorkers to be wary of Islam. What did Muslims ever…oh. Right.

A spokeswoman for Obama refused to verify the report, but a spokeswoman for Mamdani said, “Zohran Mamdani appreciated President Obama’s words of support and their conversation on the importance of bringing a new kind of politics to our city.”

You know. Communist politics.

My guess is that Obama is quite ticked off, because this leak almost certainly came from the Mamdani camp, which has seen its candidate’s support dwindle in recent days, though probably not enough.

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Unethical Rant of the Year: MSNBC Left-Wing Propagandist Lawrence O’Donnell

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Lawrence O’Donnell, right up there with the most shameless Axis media hacks in captivity even compared to the rest of MSNBC, usually goes his merry way slamming Republicans, conservatives and President Trump, avoiding inconvenient facts, objectivity and balance at all costs, appealing only to American who don’t want news or fair analysis, just confirmation of their own world view. When people decry the harsh division in American society today, O’Donnell is one of the prime villains, in part because he has been championing “advocacy journalism” ( as in unethical journalism) for so long.

Here’s his Ethics Alarms dossier. The last time I bothered to mention him at all (he’s always biased and unethical: The Julie Principle applies), was last year when I elevated him from mere Unethical Broadcast Journalist to Ethics Corrupter. Yes, I defended O’Donnell once…for being caught on video screaming at the MSNBC staff and shouting “fuck” among other epithets. I don’t think anyone’s most embarrassing private moments should be made “viral.”

However, this time attention should be paid, as Willy Loman’s widow says at the end of “Death of a Salesman.” O’Donnell snapped on the air yesterday and began denigrating Scott Jennings, the articulate, restrained token conservative and Donald Trump advocate on CNN’s on-air team. Jennings does a superb job vivisecting the usually emotional, knee-jerk, woke Trump-Deranged fury that he encounters on the various panels and in the numerous discussions he participates in, providing a much-needed counterpoint on CNN, which has evolved into MSNBC lite: reliably unethically biased, but with occasional outbreaks of non-partisan reality.

For some reason a sole voice of non-Axis perspective on a rival network is deeply offensive to O’Donnell. How dare Jennings defend President Trump? How dare he undermine the perpetual efforts of the news media to destroy him and defeat his policies? The Unethical Rant of 2025 was the result. Here is the whole amazing thing:

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Ethics Alarms Hybrid Day Part 2: Confronting My Biases #24 & Ethics Quiz of the Day: Prop Children

Rachel Campos-Duffy is a regular sofa-sitter on Fox News’ IQ-killing morning show “Fox & Friends.” She is notable for one of the worst voices possessed by any talking head on TV, which is saying something: why someone at Fox hasn’t sent her to a vocal coach is a mystery, and the producers’ failure to make this happen is, I believe, irresponsible and incompetent. But I digress…

As noted in the previous post, October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month. Campos-Duffy has a daughter, age six, with Down syndrome. She is her 9th child with former Congressman Sean Duffy, now Trump’s Transportation Secretary,who resigned from Congress in September 2019 after Valentina Stella Maris Duffy was born. (I wonder who takes care of all those kids, in a two career family?)

This morning Campos-Duffy brought her daughter onto the show as she spoke about Down Syndrome, its various ranges (Valentina is a high-functioning sufferer), and the challenges of raising these children. Her daughter was dressed up elaborately as “a flamingo dancer,” as the astute Fox hostess put it, and squirmed distractedly on the sofa next to her mother while paying no attention to her surroundings or what her mother was saying.

Campos-Duffy spoke about her child in such remote terms that I wasn’t sure that the little girl was her child. I half expected Valentina to blurt out, “I’m right here!” The spectacle reminded me of Jim Fowler’s visits to the Johnny Carson “Tonight Show,” when he would talk about a boa constrictor, stork or a pangolin while Johnny mugged and it crawled all over him.

At one point Valentina wondered away, off camera, while her mother was taking about her, and Rachel laughed uproariously. “See? She’s toilet trained!” Campos-Duffy said mysteriously as her two male colleagues also yucked it up at whatever the little girl was doing.

At one point, Mom asked Valentina a couple of questions, which the girl answered “yes” and “no.” Wow, she does tricks!

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Bullying? Capricious? Stupid? Ominous? Autocratic? Whatever Trump’s Punishing Canada For Ontario’s Anti-Tariff Ad Is, It’s Unethical

Last week, President Trump called off trade negotiations with Canada because the government of Ontario, one of the nation’s provinces, released a deceptively edited advertisement using former U.S. President Ronald Reagan to criticize American tariffs.  It was the beginning of the Ontario provincial government’s public relations campaign in the U.S. opposing tariffs, which of course have been a prominent feature of Trump 2.0.

In a typically restrained response, Trump erupted in fury against the spot, using all caps to call the ad “FAKE” as he announced the suspension of trade negotiations with Canada.  “Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED,” Trump wrote on his personal social media platform Truth Social.

Ugh.

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Breaking Ethics News: There’s a Major NBA Gambling Scandal! (Gee, What a Surprise…)

(Of course, the obligatory…)

Here is the latest report, from the New York Times (gift link!).

Right now I don’t care about the details, which are just emerging. The point is that this was 100% inevitable as soon as the professional sports leagues got into metaphorical bed with the online gambling companies. Ethics Alarms has warned about this many times (here, for example). I couldn’t justify using the “I’m smart!” clip from “Godfather 2” (my usual “I told you so!” introduction) this time, though, because even Fredo would have seen this coming…especially in pro basketball.

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Ethics Meltdown at American Family Field: Who’s The Ethics Miscreant? A Test…

Shannon Kobylarczyk (above, from the phone video that became her undoing) was attending one of the National League Championship Series games between the Dodgers and the Brewers at American Family Field when her interaction with another fan altered the course of her life.

Ricardo Fosado, an out-of-town visitor from L.A. who favored the Dodgers, engaged in a little friendly needling with Sharon, a passionate Brewers partisan, when the Los Angeles team took the lead. (The Dodgers eventually won the 7-game series, sending them to the World Series, which begins this week.) “Why is everybody quiet?” he asked.

Kobylarczyk was in no mood for gloating. She shouted at Fosado: “Real men drink beer, pussy!” and threatened to call I.C.E. on the apparently Hispanic spectator. She then told the man in front of her that he should sic immigration enforcement on Fosado. Now he was annoyed. “Call ICE! Call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran, baby girl. War veteran, two wars. ICE is not gonna do nothing to me. Good luck!” he said.

Why do we know all this? Because someone in the crowd who should have been watching the game and minding his or her own business was recording the whole confrontation.

Kobylarczyk escalated: she went to stadium security and reported Fosado for disrupting her baseball experience, or something. They ushered him out of the stadium citing “public intoxication.”

The team is the Milwaukee Brewers, mind you.

But wait! There’s more! The asshole who videoed the episode put it on social media, where it went “viral.” This resulted in Kobylarczyk being labeled a racist, so her company, a Milwaukee-based recruitment and staffing outfit called the Manpower Group, fired her ( she was the associate general counsel) and issued a standard virtue-signaling announcement to take credit for standing up for “a culture grounded in respect, integrity, and accountability.” Then Kobylarczyk was forced to quit the board of directors at Make-A-Wish Wisconsin, which also issued a statement condemning her. Naturally the Brewers also had to get into the act, so they released this statement:

“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark.” 

Then the team banned both Fosado and Kobylarczyk from the ballpark forever. Yeesh! Talk about a mini-Ethics Train Wreck!

The candidates for Worst Ethics Dunce is this mess are:

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Sic Transit Gloria: Lindsay Lohan’s Record For “Worst Excuse Ever” Drops to Third Place

Back in 2007, when Lindsay was young, hot and seemingly had a long career of Hollywood stardom stretching out before her, I awarded the actress the championship for most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever. She had just been arrested for driving intoxicated and possession of cocaine, which had been found in the pocket of her jeans. Lindsay’s professions of innocence were that 1) she wasn’t driving her own car and 2) “These aren’t my pants!”

But like so many records, this one was short-lived. In 2012, The Smoking Gun reported that in Wisconsin police responded to a domestic abuse call to find Mrs. Michael West [Note: NOT the spouse of the Ethics Alarms commenter] bleeding from her face and saying that her husband Michael beat and tried to strangle her. Confronted by the officers, Mr. West (above, next to Lindsay) explained that he was innocent. A ghost did it.

That pushed Lindsay to second place, and those standings held for another 13 years…until this month. Brian and Sara Wilks [above] of Houston, Texas were at Miramar Beach with their four children on October 11when they left their baby alone under a tent for about an hour as they walked up the beach with their more mobile offspring. Officers responded to reports of an unattended infant on the beach, and witnesses told police that the baby had been left alone while the family wandered off. When Brian, 40, and Sara, 37, returned to the scene they found police waiting as some charitable bystanders took care of the infant. Mom and Dad admitted to placing the child under the tent for a nap before leaving with their other children.

Their explanation of how an infant ended up alone on a public beach for more than an hour?

They “lost track of time.”

You know: it can happen to anyone! And up go the Wilkses to the top of the “Worst Excuse Ever” rankings. Sorry Lindsay.

Ethics Observations on Another Progressive Academic Meltdown

On his usually excellent blog, Prof. Jonathan Turley tells readers about Derek Lopez, a teacher’s assistant and graduate student at Illinois State University. This jerk—-signature significance!—was caught on video attacking a Turning Point USA table on his campus and verbally abusing the conservative students manning it. The 27-year-old Lopez says to the students as he overturns their table, “Well, you know, Jesus did it, so you know I gotta do it, right? Thanks, guys, have a great day!”  Then he tears down a TPUSA flyer on a nearby bulletin board.

He was later arrested. Will he be fired? He should be, but don’t bet on it. He is a part of a dangerous ideological movement in this country that believes that violence and the abuse of political adversaries is justified as the “means necessary” to remake America. He is not an aberration.

Ethics Observations:

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This Is How Websites Get Blacklisted on Ethics Alarms: “Not The Bee’s” #22 Rationalization Orgy

“Not the Bee” is a conservative commentary site that, in the spirit of The Libs of TikTok, highlights supposedly outrageous news from the political Left. It is already on thin ice with me as a source of ethics stories, in part because its tendency to mix politics with Christian proselytizing is an irritant. Another problem, which the issue at hand illustrates, is that apparently in the proprietors’ jaundiced eyes, the Right can do no wrong.

In this story, much discussed in the Axis media (of course), it was revealed that a disturbing number of leaders in the Young Republican organization are preening, juvenile assholes who think praising Hitler, joking about rape and killing Jews, and making racist slurs is funny or acceptable. These were captured in a leaked series of group chats that, it is fair to day, did not cast the future leadership of the GOP in an encouraging light, nor did it help disabuse progressives of their incessant narrative, highlighted by the previous sort-of President…

…. that Donald Trump, MAGA, conservatives and the Republican Party are aspiring fascists driven by “toxic masculinity.”
I wrote of the revelation in part, “Smoking guns are no less damning whenever they surface. Politico writes, “The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening.” I don’t see how anyone can quibble with that.”

So Not the Bee, said, in effect, “Hold my beer!” “The primary point of debate is not whether the comments were morally wrong, but whether or not it should be a national news story,” it intoned. What? It certainly is a national news story, as it casts a harsh and appropriate light on the culture in some of the dark corners of the conservative movement and the mind of its participants as well as its leadership. So did the reaction of NTB, which mirrors the reflex instinct of the Axis, which is that any scandal involving Democrats is a “nothingburger.” You know, like Hunter Biden’s laptop, evidence that Obama helped orchestrate the Russian Collusion hoax, evidence of witnesses called by Liz Cheney et al. to suggest Trump incited the J-6 riot being coached, Fulton County’s DA using her pursuit of Donald Trump to fund a tryst with her adulterous lover, Joe Biden being accused of rape by a Senate staffer, more recently the astounding number of progressives who cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and so on, ad infinitum.

Not The Bees’s device? Why, go right to #22 on the Ethics Alarms Rationalization List:

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The Demon Pazuzu Appears To Be A Democrat…

…since he (it?) sure has been speaking for a lot of Democratic Party candidates…if you can believe its (his?) alleged victims.

Of course, you can’t.

In California, the leading candidate to replace Gavin Newsom as governor, Rep. Katie Porter, has been bedeviled by emerging videos of her abusing staffers, refusing to tolerate probing questions from interviewers, and generally acting like a witch on wheels (It’s Halloween!) Porter and her political allies insist that these clips don’t show “the real Katie,’ which is comforting, since that demon impersonating Porter just stops short of spewing green vomit.

Then there is Jay Jones, who in his passionate apology last night (during a televised debate between the two candidates for Attorney General in Virginia) characterized his extended discourse on how much he wants to murder his political opponents and see their children dead as a “mistake.”

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