Ethics Train Wrecks

Are Joe Biden’s Media Defenders That Stupid? Do They Think The Public Is That Stupid? Is The Public That Stupid?…And Other Ethically Relevant Questions

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

1. Here is the cutline from the New York Times editorial this morning, as the situation in Afghanistan worsens by the minute: “The U.S. should nudge the Taliban toward inclusivity, not root for their failure.” No, I’m not kidding.

In the letters section, there is no mention of Biden’s lies, his embarrassing bluster, or Afghanistan at all. The other op-eds? Charles M. Blow thinks the most important issue this week is “The Anti-Gay Agenda.” Paul Krugman is concerned that Californians may “throw away” the Leftist paradise bestowed on them by the Democratic Party—you know, a land where shop-lifting isn’t a crime, illegals are legal, and up is down (and vice-versa). (I did not read the column.) The third op-ed is about the threat to a mother’s right to kill her unborn child.

Hey, no need in joining all of those racist/sexist conservatives on Fox News in falsely claiming that the Afghanistan exit is a multi-dimensional human and political catastrophe! One of the ways the media circulates fake news is by how it prioritizes stories and buries developments unhelpful to their favored political party.

2. Eugene Robinson, the African-American Washington Post columnist who is both a Democratic Party hack and an embarrassingly mediocre analyst, writes of the unfolding chaos,

“That is tragic. But it would be true, I believe, whenever and however the U.S. mission ended. The images we’re seeing from Kabul are shocking, heartbreaking and embarrassing. But the real stain on our national honor was in making promises to Afghans that we never had the intention or even the ability to keep. Twenty years of U.S. blood and treasure gave Afghanistan not a secular democracy but its flickering illusion. And history will see this withdrawal, painful as it is to watch, not as ignominious but as inevitable.”

See? Just mouthing a talking point that has been decided upon by the Democratic Praetorian Guard, and that everyone in its media orbit has been instructed to parrot. I’d read the Post reader comments, but that shredder is already looking inviting to my head; I don’t want to take the chance. But I will say, “I told you so!” Remember? Althouse commenter Big Mike knocks Robinson’s garbage out of the park far more effectively than Althouse (this is why she tried banning commenters), writing:

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 8/26/2021: Should We Never Again Use “Never Again!” To Refer To Something That Never Should Happen Again…And Other Matters

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’m not a big Liza Minelli fan, and for over a decade now she has been rather pathetic (perishing early, like her mother, can be a smart career move for some artists), but still: I wonder if her film-ending performance of the title number in “Cabaret” is the most exhilarating solo by a female singer in any movie. It’s substantially the way the song is directed (by Bob Fosse), of course, that makes it so effective, but even so: the moment is a great legacy for Liza even if everything else in her career fades from memory. Just as Saroyan was right that if one human being sings your song, you haven’t lived in vain, creating one unique moment that inspires or uplifts others is a gift to the world.

And Liza’s moment also is a tonic I turn to to get me ready to face the day when the prospect of thinking and writing about ethics makes me want to go back to bed. Like right now.

1. Wait, I thought Joe Biden was supposed to be a nice guy! In an article about Andrew Cuomo’s final days in office, I learned that President Biden, who is a “close personal friend” of the now ex-governor of New York, has not spoken to him since Cuomo resigned two weeks ago. What kind of “close friend” is that? Whether Cuomo was treated justly or not (he was), his life has fallen apart in chunks this month (and began doing so months earlier). This is when friends, real friends, are most essential, and also when fake friends show their true character. Joe Biden’s entire political career has been built on the assertion that he is, whatever other flaws he might have (like being a lifetime chowderhead), a good, loyal and trustworthy person. Well, he’s not. This is hardly the first evidence we’ve seen of that, but it’s signature significance.

2. Is saying something should never happen again really “comparing it to the Holocaust”? This is Thursday, meaning that I get a lot of substack newsletters from pundits who want me to subscribe to theirs. Craig Calcaterra, the baseball writer whose product I will not pay for untilhe stops filling it with opinions on things he knows no more about than most people, filled today’s free offering with (let’s see) 740 words of baseball analysis (not counting brief accounts of last night’s games) and 2, 326 words about Republicans he hates, Billy Joel albums. and, most of all, a local school board member where he lives who wrote on his Twitter account,

“And if we are to truly learn from our mistakes these past 18 months Just as Jews after the horrors of the Holocaust We must declare, and implement laws to assure “Never Again” . . .Never again should we delegate policy authority to those qualified only to provide narrow advice Never again should we willingly sacrifice liberty without objective proof of imminent harm, and an objective restoration plan — in advance . . . Never again should emergency government authority extend beyond 7 days without legislative consent, reconfirmed every 7 days Never again should we blindly follow experts, regardless of the initials after their name, if they don’t provide proof, show their work & admit error . . . Never again should we EVER sacrifice the needs of children to the unfounded fears of adults.”

The writer is Jewish, by the way. Calcaterra uses the “offensive comparison” as a version of ad hominen attack to excuse him from the task of rebutting the writer’s substantive arguments and appeal to emotion, which is why I would never evoke the Holocaust in such a context simply as a matter of advocacy strategy. However, the school board member wasn’t comparing the genocide of 6 million Jews to pandemic totalitarianism, but stating that similarly absolutist policy prohibitions are appropriate after what we have learned from the past year and a half. There are a lot of things the U.S. has done that deserve a “Never again!” label—electing an obviously progressive dementia case as President, for example. Critics of the label are obligated, though, to deal with the reasons for making that claim, and should not be allowed to get away with “How dare you insult the victims of genocide by comparing what befell them to electing Joe Biden!”

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Speaking Of Big Buts, The Unethical Quote Of The Month: Dr. Anthony Fauci

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Fauci

“I know I respect people’s freedom, but…”

—-Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Chief Medical Advisor to the President

Fauci was talking about the need for everyone to get vaccinated, but it doesn’t matter what he was talking about. When government officials, whether they are elected or not, follow statements like “I respect people’s/personal freedom/liberty/rights with the word “but,” that’s all Americans need to hear to know that the speaker does not respect our freedom, liberty or rights, and that not only he or she cannot and must not be trusted, no government that continues to employ such an official can be trusted either. Continue reading →

Monday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 8/23/2021: Farewell Everly Brothers And Other Problems

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Don Everly has died, and that’s the end of the Everly Brothers (Phil died years ago), one of the most influential and perhaps the most harmonious singing group of all time. The unique sympathetic vibrations that only sibling singers seem to be able to achieve is a marvelous metaphor for the ethical benefits of teamwork and trust.

This date also marks the demise of another famous duo: despite worldwide demonstrations in support of their alleged innocence, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for murder in Massachusetts in 1921 .On April 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree was shot and killed along with his guard. The murderers, who escaped with more than $15,000, were described by witnesses as two “swarthy Italian men.” Sacco and Vanzetti were arrested and charged with the crime. The men carried guns and lied to the police, but neither had a previous criminal record, and they definitely didn’t get a fair trial by modern standards. Prejudice against Italian-Americans was strong, and suspicion of anarchists was stronger. The pair was convicted on July 14, 1921, and sent to the electric chair on August 23.

A TV dramatization of their case, written by Reginald Rose (who authored “Twelve Angry Men”) made a huge impression on me as a child, and sparked the first stirrings of my interest in the law. In 1961, a test of Sacco’s gun using modern forensic techniques proved that it was his gun that killed the guard; he, at least, was guilty, but there was little evidence to implicate Vanzetti in the killing. To make this ethics train wreck complete, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis ignored the evidence of Sacco’s guilt and issued a proclamation exonerating both Sacco and Vanzetti and proclaiming that no stigma should be associated with their names.

Typical of Dukakis.

1. Accountability? What accountability? “Sources”—and I stipulate that un-named “sources” are untrustworthy—tell various news outlets that “President Biden isn’t inclined to fire any senior national security officials over the chaos in Kabul unless the situation drastically deteriorates or there’s significant loss of American life.” That sounds as likely as it is depressing. The reluctance of American Presidents to fire subordinates for gross incompetence has become the norm rather than the exception, and the trend ensures that our government, whoever is the President and whatever party is power, will continue to decline in competence and trustworthiness. Consider President Bush’s refusal to fire any of those responsible for the botched intelligence regarding Iraq’s WMDs, and later Abu Ghraib, or my personal favorite, Barack Obama’s refusal to acknowledge the gross incompetence of Kathleen Sebelius, his Secretary of Health, after her inexcusable reliance on a flawed website to launch the Affordable Care Act.

Dumber still is the qualification “unless the situation drastically deteriorates or there’s significant loss of American life.” Morons. Morons! Whether the situation gets worse or not is pure moral luck; it doesn’t change the utter incompetence of the Afghanistan abandonment. Imagine a babysitter who gives a toddler knives to play with, and a parent whose reaction is, “Well, the kid wasn’t hurt, so there’s no reason to fire her.” That is literally what the reasoning at the White House is…if “sources” are accurate.

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Gee, What A Surprise: The FBI Finds No Evidence That The Jan.6 Capitol Riot Was An “Insurrection”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

shocked face

There’s the “shocked face” of the once popular commercial featuring a talkative and opinionated infant. (The kid must be 40 by now, but his expression is immortal.)

Yet another Big Lie that the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance”/ Democrats/ Mainstream media) wielded shamefully for a disgusting amount of time is tumbling down. From Reuters:

“The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials. Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations. “Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Lincoln Brown

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Taliban abuse

I try to keep my true rants to a minimum, as they are unseemly for one in my role. I also try, not quite so successfully, to tamp down my occasional impulse to write, “I told you so!” It really helps me a lot when a web pundit like Lincoln Brown, a former talk show host and conservative columnist, writes pretty much exactly what I am feeling.

Brown’s essay titled “Dear Leftists, I Hope You Can’t Live With Yourselves” is what I have been dreaming of posting on Facebook for my 200 or so left-biased Facebook friends, some of them real friends I once thought better of as well as a few relatives, who would write mouth-foaming screeds about President Trump’s emails but who have maintained absolute Facebook silence on the Afghanistan disaster other than to post a meek and deflecting, “I think it was time to get out of Afghanistan, right everybody?” Brown’s whole post is the Ethics Quote of the Month, but here are some highlights:

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The Times Afghanistan Editorial

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

new yorktimes

The New York Times’ editorial on the debacle in Afghanistan is many things. Mostly, it is schizophrenic. The paper’s unshakable bias and determination to serve as the Democratic Party’s Pravda constantly leads the editors into self-contradiction and hypocrisy. They know they have to be critical, but they feel they have to be supportive at the same time. This is a case study in how bias not only makes one stupid, but how it also makes integrity impossible. Here is the whole thing; I’ll break in when appropriate:

“The rapid reconquest of the capital, Kabul, by the Taliban after two decades of a staggeringly expensive, bloody effort to establish a secular government with functioning security forces in Afghanistan is, above all, unutterably tragic. Tragic because the American dream of being the “indispensable nation” in shaping a world where the values of civil rights, women’s empowerment and religious tolerance rule proved to be just that: a dream.“

This is more anti-American nonsense. The United States has successfully advanced all of those values and more by simply existing and thriving. It undermines those values, and our unique founding principles, when it appears weak, incompetent, and feckless.

“This longest of American wars was code-named first Operation Enduring Freedom and then Operation Freedom’s Sentinel. Yet after more than $2 trillion and at least 2,448 American service members’ lives lost in Afghanistan, it is difficult to see what of lasting significance has been achieved.“

The Times gets this right.

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Comment Of The Day: “‘Kill A Western Cultural Institution, Wear Its Skin’: The Case of Classical Music”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Orchestra2

Ethics Alarms’ resident musician has a fascinating Comment of the Day humming with informative observations, and best of all, it has nothing to do with the Wuhan Virus vaccine

Here is David Rohde on the post “‘Kill A Western Cultural Institution, Wear Its Skin: The Case of Classical Music”…

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Jack, it makes perfect sense that you bring Heather Mac Donald’s very long, two-part screed to your readers’ attention. It’s gotten a lot of notice in the music world. Personally I respect Ms. Mac Donald’s place in the overall cultural and political discussion, whether I agree with her writings or not. I’ve noted either her research or simply her references to the variables of two-parent families and basic levels of educational attainment as fundamental explainers of personal achievement, independent of ethnic background. Her views are part of the overall discussion in America today, or should be.

All that said, her big article about classical music is flawed in at least three ways. Here are those issues:

1. A lot of the article confuses music with musicology. The latter field has been kind of nuts for a while, extending way back before last year. The principal educators of today’s and tomorrow’s performing artists are not theoretical musicologists. They’re a combination of distinguished performers themselves and effective pedagogues, often combined in the same person. I’m not going to excuse some of the crazier things that have recently come out of Juilliard and elsewhere, but conservatory education remains very rigorous and performance-focused, indeed arguably too much so given the supply-demand imbalance for classical music talent.

2. The article is not really fair to the Sphinx Organization. One of the things that Sphinx does is to deal with the same overwhelming problem of expenses for families of limited means that you see in sports such as baseball and soccer. This time of year they bring in, for example, string players – yes “black and brown” ones – to top schools and institutions for intensive education and opportunity for rehearsal and performance experience. An example of someone who came out of the Sphinx Organization is the fantastic violinist Melissa White – yes that’s her name. Melissa has performed in our region at the Phillips Collection in D.C. and the Richmond Symphony, and she has numerous recordings to her name with the Harlem Quartet (which actually performs a huge range of traditional classical and other, adventurous music). And as you know, I believe it is completely valid to assert that, just as in other fields of employment, classical music employers should assess the whole person and what they can bring to an institution, even if their performance chops are obviously the primary criterion.

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Comment Of The Day: “Comment Of The Day: ‘Theater Ethics Meets Pandemic Ethics…’”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

It has been a hugely informative and entertaining knockdown, drag-out comment battle over vaccine hesitancy the last few days on not just one but two posts on the topic. It’s time to add another. One irony of long comment threads, which make me happy as a blog proprietor, is that many readers don’t have the patience to pick through them. I’m sometimes guilty of that myself.

This Comment of the Day by Ryan Harkins on Humble Talent’s own provocative (to understate it) Comment Of The Day on my post, “Theater Ethics Meets Pandemic Ethics: If I Were Still Running My Theater Company And We Had A Large Cast Show In Production…” deserves to be highlighted. Here it is (and I forgive Ryan for not calling the virus by it’s rightful, earned non-partisan name.)

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First, I want to take exception to conflating hesitancy to take the COVID-19 vaccines and anti-vaxxers. There’s a huge difference between being skeptical about one particular vaccine and being skeptical about all vaccines. And conflating the two blurs the issues and dismisses out of hand legitimate arguments and concerns.

I stand in an odd position, because I oppose getting any of the COVID-19 vaccines, and I have been vaccinated. I took the double doses of the Moderna vaccine when it became available at my workplace. Was it to protect my family (my wife is pregnant with our fourth)? Not at all. We’re all healthy, and the odds of the coronavirus having any effect other than a harsh cold for my household is surprisingly small. Was it because my workplace pressured me into it? No, though I will cite that the 14 days paid sick time goes away if I snag a sufficiently large batch of SARS-CoV-2 and I’m not vaccinated.

So why did I get the vaccine? At the time, I believed it the right thing to do to help the efforts of reaching herd immunity. So what has changed since then? Let’s consider my thinking, meandering as it is.

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Comment Of The Day: “Theater Ethics Meets Pandemic Ethics…”

/ Jack Marshall / 127 Comments

I was getting ready to write about Sen. Rand Paul’s manifesto above ( he really is a libertarian, isn’t he?) when Humble Talent’s Comment of The Day, on the post “Theater Ethics Meets Pandemic Ethics: If I Were Still Running My Theater Company And We Had A Large Cast Show In Production…”

Perfect timing, and my favorite kind: it saved me the effort of writing a post. This should open up the pandemic and vaccine debate nicely, and get it out of the constricting limitation of live theater.

Heeeeeeere’s Humble…!

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I find these Covid threads just… really tedious.

I have found common cause with the American left on precious few issues in my lifetime, and I often find that even when I agree with them, they put the issue forward in the most obnoxious and useless way possible: They mock, they demean, they use bad arguments, and even when they’ve come to the right conclusion they rarely understand the source material. It’s frustrating.

But on this one discrete topic…. I understand mocking anti-vaxxers.

Sorry guys, if you’re in the vaccine skeptic group… You are being dumb. Your body your right, yada yada yada. Sure. You have the right to be dumb. Just because it’s your right to be an idiot doesn’t shield you from the consequences of being an idiot. And while telling you that you’re an idiot, pressuring you not to be an idiot, and there being consequences to being an idiot might harm your tender egos, America isn’t going to end.

The reason why I feel on this one discrete topic, mocking anti-vaxxers, particularly American anti-vaxxers is appropriate is because there was no convincing you. On this topic, more than any other in recent history, you are completely information resistant.

“Well Jeff! Look at Israel, they’re having a spike right now, and most of their cases are breakthrough cases, how do you explain that?!?!”

Because everyone is experiencing a spike right now, international travel isn’t completely locked down, the vaccines were never sold as being 100% effective and as new variants come out the efficacy is only going to lower, and because more than 95% of Israeli adults are vaccinated. So when anyone in Israel gets Covid it is orders of magnitude more likely that the case will be a breakthrough than a non-vaccinated case.

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