Ethics Quotes

An “Enemy of the People” Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Over at PJ Media, conservative writer David Strom provides a vivid overview of just how complicit the mainstream media has been in assisting Democrats and the White House as they deceived the public, both to elect Joe Biden President and protect him from suspicions that he was not able to do his job. “A Short History of the Coverup” should have been published in the New York Times; if that paper were a serious pursuer of ethical journalism and “all the news that’s fit to print,” it would make a thorough investigation of this scandal its top priority. It didn’t and it won’t, however, because that would involve implicating itself.

Strom writes at one point, “We can’t let them off the hook. We need America to face the fact that the media really IS the ‘enemy of the people.’ I hated that phrase in 2020; I think it is 100% true now. I was wrong.” Good for him; at least he admits it. This comment of Trump’s, one of his most important, is regularly used by the “Trump is Hitler” chorus to show that he’s an enemy of democracy. To the contrary: the enemy of democracy’s enemy is democracy’s friend. Ethics Alarms flagged Trump’s undiplomatic remark as spot on immediately, I will point out, patting myself heartily on the back.

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Ethics Dunce and Unethical Quote of the Month: NYT Columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

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 →

Unethical (and Pathetic) Quote of the Week: President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“No one said I had to.”

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.

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Ethics Villain: “Morning Joe” Scarborough, But You Should Have Known That Already

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

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:

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And Still More Post-Debate Ethics! [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The <gasp!> apocalyptic news was the New York Times posting an editorial board statement telling Biden he has to go “for the good of the country.” Of course, the Times can’t be expected to accept a share of responsibility for saddling the U.S. with Biden by burying the credible account of a staffer who claimed he raped her, hiding the Hunter laptop story until the success of Joe’s basement campaign was cinched, and generally serving as an uncritical Democratic Party cheering section when it counts. The Times also let the completely discredited Lincoln Project take a typical shot at Trump in its op-ed pages. And a silly one: the Project’s mouthpiece said that Trump botched the debate because he didn’t “lay out a positive economic plan to appeal to middle-class voters feeling economic pressure” (Sure he did: get Joe Biden out of the White House! Works for me!) and reverse himself on abortion, saving “young girls” from having to “endure extremist politicians eager to criminalize what was a constitutional right for two generations.” No woman is in danger of ever being imprisoned in the U.S. for having an abortion. Dumb prosecutors will do dumb things, but that’s no reason to ignore the critical issue at the core of the abortion problem: the delicate human lives abortion enthusiasts want to ignore. In the debate, Trump focused on that. It wasn’t a mistake.

As for the Times board, it dutifully parroted the official DNC talking points about Trump’s lies and “lies,” as if Biden wasn’t spitting out whoppers himself when it was possible to figure out what he was saying. The Times also used the latest trope from the Axis: Republicans should consider replacing Trump. Sure, that makes sense. If Biden was a complete vegetable and still beating Trump in the polls, is there any chance that Democrats would replace him as their nominee? Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!

More:

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Ethical Quote of the Week: Nate Silver

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

All of the below, from his web newsletter “The Silver Bulletin,” in which Silver reveals what his current system of handicapping elections currently foretells regarding the 2024 election. Nate is supposed to be part of the Left’s pro-Democrat, pro-progressive, pro-Biden propaganda machine, so his usual allies are furious with him for “following the science. He writes in part, explaining the results above,

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Ethical Quote of the Month: Heritage President Kevin Roberts

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

“That’s sweet. They’re illegal aliens.”

—-Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, “torn between two morons,” as Mary MacGregor might sing, on an MSNBC segment when informed that “we don’t use the term ‘illegal’ for undocumented individuals.”

No weenie he! If only every thinking person confronted with this standard “it isn’t what it is” dodge by open borders advocates responded with similar force. Unfortunately the best part, “That’s sweet!” was muffled by the cross-talk.

Symone Sanders-Townsend is trying hard to catch up to Joy Reid as MSNBC’s most repulsive ideologue. Imagine: Bernie Sanders actually employed this woman as his spokesperson! While discussing an illegal immigrant’s rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, what Sanders-Townsend is most concerned about is describing him in a manner that hides the criminal’s actual status. How can anyone of sound mind and ethical orientation respect people like this, much less vote for the party they are working for?

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Ethics Quote of the Week: CBS’s Margaret Brennan

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“What exactly do people think they are supporting?”

—“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan, inexplicably expressing astonishment at a the CBS poll result above.

Why isn’t this an “Unethical Quote of the Week”? I call it an ethics quote because it has both ethical and unethical implications and vibrations. For one thing, the question should be asked and answered, even if she, and civically literate citizen, should be able to figure it out. It is disturbing, and speaks of bias and incompetence, that Brennan’s tone suggested that she really didn’t know the answer. Asking the question was still the right thing to do.

The people in the majority are supporting, Margaret, the concepts, core to any nation, that laws should be obeyed, that breaking laws should have consequences, that borders should be enforced, and that those who defy our immigration laws should not benefit from doing so, meaning that they must lose the advantages and benefits their defiance has acquired for them.

What is disturbing is that only 62% comprehend this, and, apparently, Brennan doesn’t.

Unethical Quote of the Month: President Joe Biden (Alternate Headline: “What a Shameless Asshole!”)

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“We must face a simple truth.To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”

—President Biden, outrageously adopting Donald Trump’s long-standing position that he party has condemned as racist and “xenophobic” because his poll numbers are looking bad.

Seldom has the “Die Hard” clip (from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive) been more appropriate or infuriating. For more than three years, Joe Biden’s administration deliberately signaled to aspiring alien lawbreakers that they would be wink-winked into the United States despite defying immigration laws, let free to run amuck if that’s what they chose to do, and law enforcement would look the other way. Officials like Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas gaslighted the public by insisting the border was secure when anyone with eyes or a camera could see it was anything but. An estimated 2.5 illegals have entered the country across this “secure border.” Awakening to the reality that the majority of the American public doesn’t view that as “a Great Replacement Conspiracy,” but simply as incompetent, irresponsible, dangerous and wrong—you know, like Donald Trump said in 2015 as he launched his (quixotic, everyone thought) candidacy for the Presidency and was tarred as a racist for it?—suddenly, Mirabile Dictu!, Biden is singing a different metaphorical tune.

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Ethics Hero: George Mason Prof. Jeremy Mayer [Link Fixed!]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

This sort of thing shouldn’t warrant an Ethics Hero designation, it really shouldn’t. If substantial numbers of public experts, pundits, opinion-leaders and academics were all open-minded, professional, civil, lacking hubris and arrogance, capable of taking criticism without taking it personally—I could go on—Prof. Mayer’s cordial and collegial visit to Ethics Alarms to continue a discussion I began ( a bit more nastily than I should have, but, sigh, that’s me all over) by criticizing a column he authored for that Weekly Reader of daily newspapers, U.S.A. Today, would have been nothing remarkable.

But most of the people I write about here are not like that, and members of our academic bastions particularly these days are simply not in the mood to do what Prof. Mayer has done this week, engaging in good humored and provocative discussions with members of the EA commentariat on this post. This has been a gift to the readers here, and also shows class, guts, respect, humility and confidence.

I still am convinced that the professor is dead wrong about Biden being able to drop out at this stage and not trigger a catastrophe for his party even worse than what it faces by allowing him to run. In fact, I wish I could think of an amusing wager to make with him: maybe he’ll have some ideas.

And I wonder what he thinks of Monty Python….