Ethics Dunces

Our Unprofessional Professionals, Our Inexpert Experts: The Ethicist And The Economist

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

One of the most disturbing aspects of the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck was the ugly spectacle of once esteemed professions deciding en masse to ditch their integrity in order to join the “Get Trump!” mob with the cool kids. Historians, lawyers, judges, psychiatrists, scholars, civil libertarians, journalists, educators…yes, and ethicists—all these groups disgraced themselves and breached the one, overarching mandate for those who supposedly labor for the public good: be trustworthy. Then came The Great Stupid, compounding the damage to society and the culture by showing “experts” to be equally unreliable, burdened as they were by crippling bias, political agendas, and flawed skills and assumptions.

Two recent examples highlighted this trend. First up, the ethicist.

Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School, is co-director of the Center for Sports Law & Policy and a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics. She authored a jaw-droppingly lame op-ed for the Washington Post headlined, “Yes, Kamila Valieva should be skating in Beijing.” There isn’t a single valid ethical principle behind her entire, constructed-for-sentimentalists argument.

Her first sentence would normally make me quit reading any opinion piece: “Russian Kamila Valieva is the best figure skater on the planet, she is gorgeous to watch perform and she should be skating in Beijing.” This is the equivalent of “Barry Bonds is a great player and we should ignore the fact that’s he’s a steroid cheat.” An ethicist is openly elevating the most obvious non-ethical consideration seasoned with personal bias, that the author thinks she is “gorgeous” on the ice, over the clear ethical consideration that the skater broke the rules, and had they been enforced, she wouldn’t be at the Olympics at all.

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An Indiana School Allowed Parents To Let Parents Opt Their Kids Out Of Black History Month Lessons? GOOD!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Two Washington Post Ethics Dunce-worthy episodes, back to back!

The Post published this headline as if it was an obvious, res ipsa loquitur, outrage:

An Indiana school planned Black History Month lessons. A letter sent to parents allowed them to opt out.

“Those crazy, racist conservatives again!” was the unstated assumption of the Post’s article. After the consent form…

….was circulated on social media, such an uproar was raised by fans of anti-America indoctrination in the public schools that the school district Superintendent Emily Tracy felt that she had to send a letter to families and staff members, acknowledging the opt-out form and promising that the school district is “gathering more information on the matter” but “In the meantime, know that we support teaching about the facts in our history including historical injustices. Our District is and will continue to be committed to having compassion for all and supporting an education community that will allow all students, staff, families and community members the opportunity to feel welcome.” Continue reading →

The Russian Figure Skater And The Beijing Olympics’ Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Ethics Call

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I suppose it should not be a surprise that these most unethical of all Olympiads (since the Olympics should never have been held in this totalitarian, ethics-free nation to begin with) would feature the most unethical decision imaginable. If I cared one whit about the disgusting charade in China and who wins what, I might really be upset. As it is, I’m just going to point out, dispassionate, the ethics rot on display.

Fifteen-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva  tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned substance that improves athletic performance, in the  urine sample that Valieva submitted at the Russian national championship on Christmas. The drug, known as TMZ, is a heart medication that can increase endurance. But the result was not confirmed and relayed to Russian officials or to her for more than six weeks. Russia’s antidoping agency said it learned of the failed test on February 7. On that day, the teen led the Russians to a gold medal in the team event.

Let’s stop right there. She tested positive for a banned substance, and that should have stopped her from competing in the Olympics. It doesn’t matter why the test results were delayed (the Russians cheat, and have always cheated). It doesn’t matter whose fault it was. Valieva was ineligible, and whenever it was discovered that she was ineligible, the only fair and ethical response was to disqualify her. This also meant that her team would be disqualified, because a disqualified skater helped it win the team event.

Ethics can be hard, but this conclusion isn’t hard. It is obvious and irrefutable. Because she shouldn’t have been competing at all, and would not have been had either someone in Russia not cheated or was incredibly incompetent, the skater had no right to be skating, and any athlete or athlete who would have won had she not been illicitly permitted in the Games has been treated unfairly, robbed, cheated, pick your term.

That ought to have been the immediate decision. Instead, Olympic “arbitrators” (Arbitrators are supposed to have impeccable ethics alarms, and not the ethical instincts of Hillary Clinton. Who are these fools?) ruled that Valieva not only wouldn’t be disqualified but could continue competing, but that any medals in any event in which she places the top three will not be awarded. The question of who wins what medal, and whether Valieva wins any, will wait until after her doping case is definitively settled, which may take months. 

Ethics Dunces. Irredeemable cowards. Morons. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce, China Olympics Ethics Train Wreck Division: Mark Wrighton, President Of George Washington University

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I wonder how the Board of George Washington University felt as it watched its newly hired President make a complete ass of himself. This is what is technically known as “a bad sign.” His botched and ominous response to his first test also may well be signature significance for a political correctness addled boob. We shall see.

Last week, well-conceived satiric posters, appearing to promote the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing until one looks closely, began going up on dorm doors and elsewhere around the Washington, D.C. university campus. The artwork pointedly depicts Chinese athletes in “events” representing human rights abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government. In one poster, a biathlon competitor points her rifle at someone who is blindfolded and wearing the Uyghur flag. Another shows a snowboarder atop a surveillance camera. The posters were created by a Chinese dissident artist based in Australia.

The George Washington University Chinese Students and Scholars Association, a local chapter of a Chinese student group overseen by the Chinese Communist Party, reacted true to their corrupt culture while adopting one of the worst habits of ours. It attempted to censor the posters, calling them “seriously racist”—they learned that trick from Democrats here— and said the art “insulted China” in an email to students last week and a letter to university officials, including GW President Mark Wrighton.

“Racist” and “insulted China”—you know, like calling a pandemic virus that China unleashed on the world a Chinese virus was racist and insulted China. Indeed, The student group was most upset by the poster that shows a Chinese curler pushing a Wuhan virus instead of a curling stone. Good.

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Ethics Villain: Garrett Epps

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The mail has been favoring “Ethics Villain,” which I have used before, as the proper designation when Ethics Dunce is too mild, and luckily the opportunity has arisen to try it out.

Garrett Epps, a legal scholar of note who has taught at several major law schools, authored a piece for The Washington Monthly with the headline, “Donald Trump Promised He Wouldn’t Nominate a Black Woman to the Supreme Court.” No, this isn’t one of those too-common examples of a publication placing a click-bait headline on an article that doesn’t fit it. Epps himself writes, right up front, “On May 18, 2016—and again in September of that year—Trump promised his supporters explicitly that, if elected, he would not appoint a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

That is a lie. Flat out, straight up. And Epps, a lawyer and law professor, unquestionably knows it’s a lie. Later in the same article, he even contradicts his own statement, writing, “Trump said nothing about excluding Black female judges. He just did it.”

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Don’t Censor The Anti-Police Mob, Do Expose, Reject And Condemn Them

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Susan Sarandon proved with this ugly, stupid and unethical tweet that she is another talented artist, like Robert DeNiro and so, so many others, whose work has to be separated from their ill-informed, ignorant, politically-warped and outrageous personal opinions in order to tolerate it, never mind enjoy it. Sarandon is and always has been one of our very best film actresses, but my Cognitive Dissonance Scale is going to make it very hard for me to watch her performances after this.

The photo in the retweet shows the NYPD police gathered to honor slain NYPD Detective Jason Rivera. Officer Rivera and his 27-year-old partner Wilbert Mora died answering a 911 call from a mother in Harlem who said her son had verbally threatened her. They walked down a hall in the apartment and the son jumped out and opened fire, fatally wounding both officers. The outpouring of grief and professional respect from the New York police was traditional, appropriate and necessary. Continue reading →

“Ethics Dunce” Doesn’t Quite Do New York Mayor Eric Adams Justice

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Help. I need a new designation. Long ago, I began using Ethics Dunce to describe individuals whose ethics alarms failed to work when they were most needed, resulting in clearly unethical and indefensible conduct. Later, EA began using the label “Fick,” after the recently departed Leroy Fick, to describe someone who was unethical and defiant about it. Since the American Left began going, as Bill Maher said recently with unusual perspicacity, “mental,” “Ethics Dunce” has seemed increasingly inadequate.

Many of the assertions and actions we have seen aren’t the result of malfunctioning ethics alarms, they arise from a deliberate attempt to redefine what is right while abusing power, position and influence to do so. “Dunce” is too mild; dunces can’t help themselves. The new breed are nascent totalitarians: should I add “Totalitarian of the Month”?

It’s a good thing I didn’t bother to reassemble my head yesterday, or this would have undone all my hard work:

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It Reveals The Dire State Of U.S. Higher Education Culture That Dean William M. Treanor Of Georgetown University Law Center Isn’t The Most Unethical Law School Administrator Of The Past Year (It’s Close, Though…)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That distinction still has to go to Yale Law School Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Yaseen Eldik and Associate Dean of Student Affairs Ellen Cosgrove, who persecuted, and and threatened a student in this infamous episode last Fall. Their victim is a student, which gives them an edge over Dean Treanor whose target is Ilya Shapiro, GULC’s newly hired director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and vice-president of the Cato Institute.

Just two days ago, I described Shapiro’s foray into the debate over President Biden’s looming Supreme Court nomination, which will have to be a black woman because race and gender are more important to the Far Left than qualifications, ability and experience in the branch of the government that protects the Constitution, but mostly because Joe promised he would while in Full Pander Mode as he fought for his party’s nomination to oppose President Trump in 2020. Shapiro issued a series of tweets that were crystal clear to anyone reading them rationally and honestly, making his case that Biden should be nominating Justice Breyer’s replacement on the basis of qualifications, ability and experience. A careless choice of words, however—this was Twitter, after all—gave race-baiters and progressive censors an opportunity to pounce, and they did.

Shapiro was accused of being a racist (of course); the law schools black student association demanded he be fired (also of course); and GULC’s ostentatiously woke Dean capitulated to the anti-free speech and anti-academic freedom mob, announcing yesterday to me and other “alumni/ae”, as the marvelous Dean I worked for, the late David McCarthy always called them…

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Golden State Warriors Owner Chamath Palihapitiya

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay. You bring it up because you care and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care. I’m just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line.”

—–Golden State Warriors owner Chamath Palihapitiya, in an interview.

This statement, classic signature significance, neatly explains why the National Basketball Association remains metaphorically in bed with the brutal regime in China, why the Biden Administration refuses to hold the country responsible for its role as an international outlaw (and inflicting its virus on our population,economy and the world), and if you change just one word, why the United States allowed Hitler’s Final Solution to proceed as far as it did.

Give credit where it is due: at least Palihapitiya is being honest. As for his fellow owners, we can see that they feel exactly the same way through their conduct, but prefer not to say so out loud. It might cut down on the profits from souvenir NBA jerseys. Continue reading →

It’s Only January 11, And Yet This Might Already Be The Ethics Story Of The Year: The Nazi-Loving Police Chief

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This story made my head explode, and for once, it was worth it. I LOVE this story! It touches on so much…idiocy,incompetence, dead ethics alarms, unions, a soupçon of “The Producers,” incredible excuses and more—I don’t want to give away the one detail that made me laugh out loud yet. And perhaps best of all, it comes out of Washington state, one of the epicenters of The Great Stupid.

I am going to try to relate the tale without giggling, and then I’ll have some observations at the end. Alert: my telling may contain a bit of sarcasm here and there. I’m sorry. I can’t resist.

In Kent, Washington, a King County suburb of Seattle, Mayor Dana Ralph (D) apologized profusely to her city in a 30 minute video. Why? Well, she admitted that her administration badly mis-estimated what the public’s reaction would be to the town’s decision not to fire Assistant Chief Derek Kammerzell, and to instead suspend him for two weeks while allowing him to treat the time off as a vacation, meaning that he was paid. You can understand why the mayor and her staff would be blindsided by the outrage; after all, all Kammerzell did was show every sign of being a Nazi.

All right, that may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. An investigation that began in September of 2020 after a complaint lodged by a member of the police force determined that Kammerzell, a 27-year Kent police veteran, Continue reading →