Ethics Heroes

Ethics Hero: Jack Black

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I took a while to research this story before awarding Black, an actor/comic/ musician with a reputation for being a genuinely good guy, an EA Ethics Hero designation. After checking various sources, I am now persuaded that he deserves it.

Black has apparently made enough money as a movie actor that, like Kevin Bacon, Gwyneth Paltrow and a few others, he can indulge his musical inclinations and modest talents and get people to pay to see him performing with a band. That would be Tenacious D, a comedy-rock duo Jack Black shares with Kyle Gass. Tenacious D was in Sydney as part of a tour, and Black brought out a cake at the ICC Sydney Theater on Sunday to celebrate Gass’s 64th birthday. He asked Gass to “make a wish,” and Gass said, “Don’t miss Trump next time!”

The video of the crack went viral. Black, who appeared to laugh at the line (he’s been featured at Biden fundraisers), had a statement posted on social media two days later saying he “was blindsided by what was said at the show,” and that he “would never condone hate speech or encourage political violence in any form.”

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Ethics Heroes: New York Times Readers

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Who would have thought that New York Times readers could do such a terrific Peter Sellers impression?

Paul Krugman, once a Nobel Prize winner, now the very model of a modern progressive hack, issued his contribution to the current “Protect Joe Biden!” hysteria among pundits and journalists. It’s called “Why You Shouldn’t Obsess About the National Debt,” and if this won’t get the Nobel people to demand their prize in economics back, nothing will.

The intellectual dishonesty of the piece is stunning even for Krugman—I remember how an old friend favorably posted one of Krugman’s columns to Facebook and the scales fell from my eyes making me realize that the old friend was an idiot and had always been one—and the rationalizations he uses to shrug away the $34 trillion national debt are breathtaking in their audacity. Some examples:

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Busted! MIT’s Anti-White Program Exposed As the Illegal Discrimination It Is and Was Designed to Be

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Bravo to Prof. William Jacobson’s Equal Protection Project. Its civil rights complaint filed against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exposed the flaming racial discrimination engaged in by the Creative Regal Women of Knowledge, or “The CRWN” program. (Nice acronym-making there, MIT. I’d let the folks at Harvard try the next one while you stick to equations…) Jacobsen’s blog, Legal Insurrection, announced the complaint in a post, MIT Program Open Only To “Women of Color” Challenged By Equal Protection Project As Violating Civil Rights Laws,a week ago. After it received considerable local publicity, MIT tried to weasel its way out of the scandal by changing the way the program is described on its website, as you can see above.

Are they really that dense at MIT? Do its lawyer really think an announcement that says, “This program is designed to exclude white women, but we can’t stop you if you’re white and are determined to take part in a program where you’re obviously not welcome” complies with anti-discrimination laws. Can you imagine a college program described as one “designed to inspire white women” and “to support and celebrate” whites, but adding that its “open” to non-whites too causing anything but an uproar?

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Ethics Heroes: 13 Federal Judges

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Thirteen federal judges—appellate Judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, Matthew Solomson of the U.S Court of Federal Claims, District Judges Alan Albright and Matthew Kacsmaryk, Stephen Vaden, who sits on the United States Court of International Trade; plus judges David Counts, James W. Hendrix, Jeremy D. Kernodle, Tilman E. Self, III, Brantley Starr, Drew B. Tipton and Daniel M. Traynor—have all announced in a letter to Columbia University’s president, that beginning with the entering class of 2024, they “will not hire anyone who joins the Columbia University community—whether as undergraduates or law students.”

“Since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas, Columbia University has become ground zero for the explosion of student disruptions, anti-semitism, and hatred for diverse viewpoints on campuses across the Nation, ” the letter begins. “Disruptors have threatened violence, committed assaults, and destroyed property. As judges who hire law clerks every year to serve in the federal judiciary, we have lost confidence in Columbia as an institution of higher education. Columbia has instead become an incubator of bigotry. As a result, Columbia has disqualified itself from educating the future leaders of our country.”

After suggesting measures that need to be taken to restore trust in the institution, the judges conclude, “Recent events demonstrate that ideological homogeneity throughout the entire institution of Columbia has destroyed its ability to train future leaders of a pluralistic and intellectually diverse country. Both professors and administrators are on the front lines of the campus disruptions, encouraging the virulent spread of antisemitism and bigotry. Significant and dramatic change in the composition of its faculty and administration is required to restore confidence in Columbia.”

It is a responsible, powerful, and much needed response, both to the institution and the students who have demonstrated both an absence of critical thinking and judicious temperament as well basic respect for their fellow students, liberal education, and the law.

Now do Harvard.


Addendum to “The Supreme Court, the ‘Suicide Pact,’ and Ethics Zugzwang”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Thinking about that last post and the issues it raises as I was walking Spuds in the rain just now took me to an epiphany, and an embarrassingly late one.

Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was more important and crucial than I realized then. It was only one gutsy and maybe prescient act in an otherwise short and undistinguished Presidency, but it delayed the current crisis for half a century.

The conventional wisdom is that Nixon would have been prosecuted for his Watergate involvement, and that the event would have been a divisive and traumatic spectacle that a nation just getting past the Vietnam debacle could ill afford. That wasn’t what was going to happen, though, I now realize. (And I have never read or heard anyone acknowledge this.)

Had he been charged with any crime, Nixon would have immediately claimed immunity just as Trump is now. For the rest of his life, Nixon routinely said that “if the President does it, it’s not illegal.” What would the Supreme Court have ruled in 1975? Here is the Court then:

Chief Justice Warren Burger
William J. Brennan
Potter Stewart
Byron White
Thurgood Marshall
Harry Blackmun
Lewis F. Powell
William H. Rehnquist

The only two reliable liberals on the Court were Marshall and Brennan, but the conservatives were more moderate and less doctrinaire than today’s SCOTUS majority. I have no idea what that group would have done with the immunity issue, and I’m glad we didn’t have to find out.

Thanks, Jerry.

And Now an Ethics Post About ANOTHER Set of Conjoined Twins…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I can’t resist. What were the odds that both famous sets of female conjoined twins would justifiably spark ethics commentary within just three months of each other? And yet here we are…

In January, Ethics Alarms designated Brittany Hansel, the “single” member of the amazing Hansel twins (who, I would argue, are really a two headed woman), an Ethics Hero for the mind-boggling concessions and sacrifices she has had to (and will continue to have to) endure so her dominant sister Abigail can be married. Now comes the news that he oldest living conjoined twins have died at the age of 62.

I’ve been fascinated by the Schappell twins most of my life, since their birth was widely publicized when I was a kid. They were joined at the head and shared 30% of their brains, so obviously separating them was not a realistic possibility. Frankly, I had forgotten about them until this morning: apparently my brain can only handle one set of conjoined twins at a time.

Digression: Is “set” the accepted term? And that question makes me recall a memorable line from “The Simpsons” in a Halloween episode where Bart is revealed to be one half of a good/evil set of conjoined twins. As the Simpsons’ pediatrician, Dr. Hibbard, tells the tale to Lisa (we don’t see much of Dr. Hibbard any more since it was decided that it was racist to have a white actor voice a “black” cartoon character. That, in turn, is one reason I don’t see much of “The Simpsons” any more), the doctor refers to Bart and his brother as “Siamese Twins.” Lisa, pedantic and politically correct as ever, tells him that such individuals prefer the term “conjoined twins,” to which Hibbard replies, “Hillbillies prefer to be called “Sons of the South,” too, but it ain’t going to happen!”

Digression over…back to the late Schappell twins: Their various obituaries are full of head-spinning (something these twins could not do) details with ethics implications:

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Ethics Hero: The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In a 20-0 vote, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA for short), the governing body for small colleges, ruled that it was unfair to allow transgender athletes to compete against biological women in women’s sports. The NAIA now becomes the first college sports organization to have the courage and integrity to make such an obvious and necessary rule to protect women’s advances in athletic, as the other groups, like the NCAA, waffle, stall, engage in double-talk and duck the issue while female athletes are hurt.

Yesterday the National Organization for Women, which has betrayed women in this controversy in order to keep its Far Left creds burnished, quietly took down its tweet of last week claiming that “White supremacist patriarchy”was behind objections to cheaters like Lia Thomas (above) dominating female competitors in college competitions. South Carolina’s women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, similarly bowing down to Woke World and making no sense in the process, blathered that “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play.” Wags on social media had fun musing about what “vice-versa” meant in that statement: “If you consider yourself a sport and want to play women”? (Staley’s an idiot.)

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Ethics Hero: J.K. Rowling, or “Now THAT’S How to Practice Civil Disobedience!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Scotland’s has passed a bonkers hate crime law that went into effect this week. It makes it a crime potentially punishable by up to seven years in prison to “stir up hatred” regarding age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and “variations in sex characteristics.” The law would be such a flagrant violation of the First Amendment in the U.S. that even Democrats would be embarrassed to vote for it, but Scotland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, has been hit particularly hard by The Great Stupid. (This would be a propitious time to say a silent but heartfelt “Thanks, guys!” to Tom, Ben, George, John and the rest of the much maligned Founders.)

Being is an especially good position to do so, J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, has decided to lead the principled opposition to the unethical law. Yesterday, as the crime of “stirring up hatred” went into force, Rowling publicly defied it by listing a convicted rapist, several ex abusers and trans activists in a post on Twitter/”X,” asserting that they were all, in her view, men.

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Ethics Hero: Brittany Hensel

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I wrote about the Hensel twins—that’s Abigail, the bride, above on the left, and Brittany, the maid-of-honor (I’m assuming) on the right—back in 2012 after the conjoined twins agreed to star in a reality show. The post was titled, “Are Freak Shows Unethical? Because They Are Back.” In the post I confessed my sadness that the twins, whose amazing story I had followed since they were todlers, had cashed in and allowed themselves to be exploited:

I first learned about Abigail and Brittany Hensel many years ago in a Life magazine feature about the remarkable  conjoined twins, who to all observers appear to be a two-headed girl. That article talked about how accepting and protective their community was of Abigail and Brittany’s privacy and dignity, and how, except for the fact that they shared a single body, the twins were happy and well-adjusted. Later, when they were teens, there was a documentary about the girls on one of the network news magazines. Again, they seemed smart, lively and and normal by any standard, not just for a “two-headed girl.” They spoke enthusiastically about wanting to have careers and families, and sounded like any other teenager. I found the story both hopeful, inspiring and depressing, especially when Abigail said that she wanted to be a commercial airline pilot and Brittany said that she wanted to be a lawyer. How, exactly, were they going to pull that off?

Now the twins are young women—or a young two-headed woman?—and have apparently made the decision to become professional human oddities. They will be starring this month in a new reality show about their daily life and special problems. We can rationalize the show as an inspiring weekly demonstration of the strength and determination the twins must muster to overcome their disability and to try to lead normal lives, but let’s be honest: this is a modern freak show, no more, no less. As engaging and courageous as Abigail and Brittany are, the primary appeal of the show to the vast majority of viewers will be the fascination of watching a real, live, two-headed girl go through life….Yes, I wish I could have read that they had graduated from law school and started a law firm, or married two wonderful, normal guys who love them and are able to deal with the fact that it is biologically impossible to have sexual relations with only one twin at a time, since they have just one set of genitals between them. It was not going to happen, though, and as the reality of their options dawned on the girls in adulthood, they came to a rational decision: cash in. People are going to gawk at them anyway, they might as well get rich from it if they can….

Now comes the news that one of the twins, Abigail Hensel, got married and has been married for more than two years. Yikes. What’s that like? The HBO series “Tales from the Crypt” had a very funny episode about this situation, but the real life complications are mind-blowing, particular, as I noted in the earlier post, the twins share a single set of sex organs. They have to cooperate to live: one twin controls the left side of what appears to be their single body, the other controls the right side.

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Ethics Hero: The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I know what many of you are going to say. The Washington Post is an unalloyed ethics villain. It has distorted facts and editorialized in news reports. It employs indefensible partisan propagandists like Philip Bump. It even “stood by” Bump’s false reporting when Prof. Turley exposed it.The paper played a substantial role in rigging the 2020 election by deliberately slanting its reporting against then-President Trump and in favor of Joe Biden. It is unquestionably an unethical, biased, partisan news source.

That, however, makes its editorial titled “Donald Trump deserves his day in appeals court” all the more remarkable and praiseworthy. The ridiculous and obviously politically-motivated New York civil case verdict against Trump that originally required him to post an unprecedented $464 million bond in order to appeal it has been mocked and condemned in the conservative media. It should have been, for it is transparent effort to cripple the putative GOP Presidential nominee financially so he is handicapped in his campaign against President Biden. Most of the Trump Deranged, in contrast, have cheered the result. As a certifiable Trump-detesting news organization, however, the Post’s call for fairness and due process for their frequent target carries more weight and persuasive power than any argument appearing in the New York Post, the Washington Free Beacon or Fox News.

Highlights from the editorial:

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