I don’t understand the latest chapter in Columbia’s anti-Semitism scandal at all. I don’t understand how anyone connected to the university can look at themselves in the mirror after this. I don’t understand how alumni and donors can tolerate it. Most astounding of all, in its shameless embrace of The King’s Pass, Columbia University has managed to make Harvard look like an ethics exemplar by comparison.
No, I don’t understand.
OK, I should get this out of the way up front: I’m unalterably biased against any 77 year old man who wears his hair like that, if indeed that is the professor’s real hair, which I doubt.
Then there is the fact that a vast majority of historians are Trump Deranged or have otherwise migrated into the progressive propaganda camp. Presidential historians are particularly shameful in this regard, and one of the worst is American University Professor Allan Lichtman. He was all over the TV this weekend, chasing another 15 minutes of fame as a commentator on the Democratic Party’s Joe Biden problem from an alleged historical perspective. The Big Whoop about Lichtman is that he has developed a formula that predicted the results of nine of the 10 most recent presidential elections, so that is supposed to make him an expert. It doesn’t. To begin with, his system doesn’t have “the incumbent can’t think or talk clearly any more” feature.
Once again we are faced with the despicable ethics violation of an alleged authority making her readers dumber and more ignorant. And, once again, the example falls in the category of someone unqualified to read a Supreme Court opinion declaring what the holding means without understanding it.
Tressie McMillan Cottom is a 2020 MacArthur “genius” grant recipient who opines in the Times and elsewhere on culture, “higher education, work, media and inequality”(she is black, so I guess that’s mandatory). Her credentials do not justify her writing this in her latest essay:
“[T]he Supreme Court finally weighed in on presidential immunity. There is no other way to read its decision than as a signal that whoever owns the Republican Party also owns the power to break the law.”
That’s funny, because there is no possible way to read that ridiculously misrepresented decision to mean that at all. If she’s read the decision, then she’s lying or incompetent. If she hasn’t read the decision, then her ethical breach is worse. Continue reading
That was the President of the United States, not just a grown man but the democratically elected leader of our government, in response to the question posed by George Stephanopolos last night in the interview designed to calm American fears that Joe Biden is not capable of doing his job.
How diminishing, damning, desperate and depressing.
Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Once again, I am resolving to ding any commenter who comes here to argue that the news media is, as that damning headline and banner has the nerve to suggest by the “Support” button, “Independent Fact-based Journalism.”
The White House’s reliance on today’s pre-taped [!!!!], pitifully short (30 minutes? Seriously?) Biden interview with Democratic Party operative George Stephanopoulos to put everyone at ease is more flaming evidence that this administration is convinced that the public is too stupid to metaphorically come out of the rain. So what if Biden can get through a single, carefully planned interview with a friendly, indeed complicit, talking head? That interview last week was signature significance. A trustworthy, fit leaders doesn’t have a “bad night” like that, even once. Equating not having a “bad night” once with the significance of having one is so mild-meltingly stupid that it competes vigorously with the other ridiculous attempts to minimize the epic irresponsibility of Biden running for a second term in the White House. “So he babbled and froze and faded out and gaped like a grouper: He doesn’t always do that!” This is like arguing, “So he had a massive heart attack—he doesn’t always have heart attacks!” And the news media is actually running with this talking point like it isn’t the stupidest thing making making Kamala Harris Vice-President.
[UGH! I just saw this disgraceful “It isn’t what it is” piece. How can these hacks look themselves in the mirror?]
NOTICE of CORRECTION: For some reason, that link was mistakenly to the debate transcript. That wasn’t where it was supposed to go, though the transcript is also infuriating—check Biden’s worst answer, the one that ends with “we beat Medicare.” The transcript makes it seem like Biden’s answer was half-comprehensible, which it wasn’t. At all. But the linked article is to a Baltimore Sun column [“Biden’s debate performance a B-, not a bomb”] where the shameless tool of a gaslighter blames the whole disaster on Biden’s alleged “stutter.”
Incidentally, is anyone working today? I am, but it sure seem like I’m the only one….
I started reading a column in the Huffington Post that Ethics Alarms commenter Cornelius Gotchberg linked to today, and got almost half-way through it before I realized it wasn’t satire. But, horrifyingly, “It’s Time For The Biden Campaign To Embrace AI” isn’t satire. And now we know what kind of ethical limitations Democrats and progressives place on their tactics as they desperately try to save Joe Biden and their own metaphorical necks.
None. No limits at all. By any means necessary. The ends justify the means. In what this dangerous party has become, it’s Machiavelli and Big Brother all the way down.
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:
Morons.
Just as the Far Left plays into the worst conservative stereotypes about them with demands like abortion right up to birth and open borders, the Far Right parodies itself with Constitution-defying laws like Louisiana’s requiring the Ten Commendments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Now Oklahoma says, “Hold my beer!”with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters announcing in a memo today that every Oklahoma school must teach students the Bible the 2024-2025 school year. “The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a press release unveiling the mandate. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”
There is no chance, none, zip, nada, that this obviously religiously motivated law will stand up to judicial scrutiny. This is pure grandstanding.
Sorett has revealed himself to be the most despicable, incompetent and untrustworthy leader of a prestigious U.S. college, an astounding achievement when you consider the competition.
Silly me, I thought the original story was as bad as it could get. How wrong I was. To recap this post, during a Columbia panel on the campus’s anti-Semitism, Sorett, the Dean of Columbia College, exchanged mocking and derisive texts about the panelists statements about how the pro-Hamas protesters had poisoned the educational environment for Jewish students with the vice dean and chief administrative officer of the college, the dean of undergraduate student life; and the associate dean for student and family support. Unfortunately for all of them, another attendee behind one of the texters took incriminating snap shots of the cell phone screen that revealed the dismissive texts.
After being busted, Sorett tried the Pazuzu Excuse (‘what I said or did wasn’t really me!’) which is bad enough, but “the rest of the story” is worse. This creep fuzzed over the fact that he was part of the texting orgy in his original statement after the texts were revealed, and then put the other three administrators on leave! Nice. The least he could have done was show some solidarity with his fellow anti-Semites and suspend himself. As the highest ranking member of the gossip group, a strong argument can be made that he ratified and enabled the offensive discussion. In fact, I’ll make it: he was more accountable than the three administrators he punished.
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:
Ethics Alarms 