Ethics Train Wrecks

The Pitzer College “POC Only” Roommate Wanted Ad [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments
"Now THAT's not racism. Why do you honkies have so much trouble understanding this?"

“Now THAT’s not racism. Why do you murderous honkies have so much trouble understanding this?”

A roommate-wanted notice posted on Facebook by a Pitzer College student has turned into yet another racial controversy. The student, along with two Pomona College students,  were seeking a fourth to join them in an off-campus house. The notice included “POC only” –person of color only—and this got them immediately called out as racists by some other students.

The ad is not racist. The text reflects a bias, as in “preference,” but that isn’t necessarily racism. Everyone has freedom of association in this country, or should. Human beings are more comfortable with those whom they perceive as being more like them. There is nothing wrong with that, but even if there is, it is human nature. There is nothing to be done about it, and there shouldn’t be anything done about it other than to help each other understand that tribalism is divisive and  a pre-programmed bias that we should fight, because getting past it makes us better neighbors, members of society and human beings.

Still, I don’t want to live with someone who doesn’t want to live with me, but who is going to accept me into a living situation based on a feeling of obligation. A house seeking someone else to share the rent isn’t a public accommodation, and there is no ethical principle demanding that the roommates can’t or shouldn’t specify the kind of individual they think would best complete the group. What if the other three are all white, and are seeking someone different from them to make the house more diverse? Is it equally offensive if the ad sought an athlete, or someone overweight (who wouldn’t make the three hefty roomies feel unattractive), or a good student, or an actor, or someone with a good sense of humor? Why? Such requirements are not a per se indication of anything but personal preferences, and personal preferences aren’t racism.

Is the “POC only” addendum unethical? Technically, it fails Kant’s “what if everybody does it?” test,  for if everybody did it, white students would have nowhere to live. There you have an example of where Kant’s Rule of Universality is worth musing about but often isn’t applicable. Some conduct is ethical despite Kant because the idea that it would become universal is too ridiculous. I want to live with a baseball fan. I don’t want to live with someone who is going to be listening to punk rock. If three roommates can look for a female fourth, or a gay fourth, or a Spanish-speaking fourth—and they can without nicking any ethics principles at all—then they can insist on racial or ethnic qualifications too.

Is it better ethics to be accepting of all equally? Sure it is. But not exhibiting exemplary ethics isn’t unethical. Again, it’s just human.

There is more to the story however. When some students commented on Facebook that the notice was racist, the replies from the students posting it and others expanded the controversy.

The Claremont Independent, a student paper that covers all five of the Claremont colleges (as well as two graduate schools), of which Pitzer is a member, published some of the comments, and they show the anti-white animus and double standards now roiling race relations in the U.S. Continue reading →

Sarcasm-Tainted Observations On The Milwaukee Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 94 Comments

Milwaukee riots

From CNN:

Angry crowds took to the streets in Milwaukee on Saturday night to protest the shooting death of an armed man by a police officer hours earlier.
Protesters burned several stores and threw rocks at police in the city’s north side, leaving one officer injured. Smoke and orange flames filled the night sky. The incident started Saturday afternoon when two officers stopped two people who were in a car in the north side, according to the Milwaukee Police Department.

Shortly after, both car occupants fled on foot as officers pursued them, police said. During the chase, an officer shot one of the two — a 23-year-old man who was armed with a handgun, according to authorities. “He (officer) ordered that individual to drop his gun, the individual did not drop his gun,” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said. “He had the gun with him and the officer fired several times.”

The man died at the scene. It’s unclear whether the second occupant of the car is in police custody.

First Observation: The dead man, the armed suspect, the man whose death was the spark for the violence, was African-American. CNN’s report doesn’t mention that at all! Why? Is the information unimportant? In fact, it is the most important feature of the incident. It pains me to say it, but riots don’t happen when white citizens are shot by police, whether the victim was armed or not. CNN’s coverage is political correctness and cowardice, not journalism. A critical fact was omitted because it is unwelcome, not because it is superfluous.

This is news manipulation and misrepresentation by omission. This is unethical journalism.

“This is CNN.” Continue reading →

Tales From The “Bias Makes Us Stupid” Files: Is It Possible That The News Media Really Thinks That Donald Trump’s Latest Stupid Blather Is More Newsworthy Than Hillary Trading State Department Favors For Foundation Contributions

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Media bias

In a statement that is mindblowing for its shameless ethics ignorance, Slate editor Josh Voorhees wrote,

“The latest batch of State Department emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure, released Tuesday, further highlights the occasionally overlapping interests between the agency and the Clinton Foundation. The messages, which don’t directly involve the Democratic nominee herself, aren’t going to overshadow Donald Trump’s ongoing self-immolation—nor should they—but they are worth a closer look.”

“Nor should they?”

Nor should they?

By what possible set of warped values could the latest inanity from a Presidential candidate who constantly says silly, inarticulate and ultimately meaningless things the second they pop into what we generously call “his brain,” be more worthy of public attention than revelations that the other candidate for President used her position in the State Department for the enrichment of herself and her family?

The former is a well-established idiot free-associator idiotically free-associating with the same results he always gets. Why is this news? It is only news because the news media, knowing well that Trump just utters  jokes, ad-libs, random observations, musings, insults and all sorts of other things that adults never say in public because his confused and disoriented fans enjoy them, intentionally treats them as serious statements of a serious person, when they know very well he is not. The latest of these is the Trump assertion that Obama is “literally” the “founder of ISIS.” It is as newsworthy as if Trump said “Obama is literally a tree frog.” OK, everyone knows this isn’t true, and that Trump is a babbling fool. Got it. Next? Yet this non-story gets absurd attention: like at ABC News, The National Memo, Business Insider, Fox News Insider, Politicus USA, Washington Post, Raw Story, The New Civil Rights Movement,  Daily Kos, The Times of Israel, CBS New York, RT, Balloon Juice, New York Magazine, Guardian, Independent Journal Review, Mother Jones, NBC News,and Mediaite.

Before that, it was media hysteria over Trump’s bizarre “Second Amendment people” crack being a crime, which Popehat neatly debunks here. Ken White’s  opening statement is also enlightening: “Donald Trump, against all advice and rumors of pivot, will continue to be Donald Trump.”

Exactly. Which means his continuing to say stuff that mature and responsible people don’t say is not legitimate front page news.

Ah, but it provides an excuse not to explain to the public how stunningly corrupt Hillary is and has been. That is the objective, and an biased and unethical objective it is. Continue reading →

Wait, I’m Confused: I Thought Racial Segregation Was BAD….

/ Jack Marshall / 142 Comments

segregation

Two of these stories in one week—something’s  happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, however.

I’m sorry, I start channeling old Sixties songs at times like this.

Not one but two colleges have advocated segregation in their policies this week:

  • Hampshire College explains on its website that it allows students to reside in “identity-based” housing communities, provided they have a “unique social identity” that has “historically experienced oppression,” arguing that such residences “give support to members of our community with social identities that have been historically marginalized in this country, and strive to counter systemic oppression.” The Massachusetts school’s confident  promotion of such living arrangements “arises from our commitment to fostering diverse, socially just, and inclusive communities.” An  informational booklet explains that “identity-based housing is an institutional structure designed to assist members of historically oppressed groups in supporting each other,” and “helps to create an added level of psychological comfort and safety for those who choose to live in those spaces, often providing the foundation for those students to be able to engage fully in the greater community.”

Translation: Black students don’t want to live with whites, but prefer “their own kind,” because whites are viewed as potentially dangerous. And that’s okay! Continue reading →

Observations Regarding Donald Trump’s Most Recent Idiotic Ad Lib

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments
Just more of the same...

Just more of the same…

The statement, which has dominated social media and news commentary since burped out by Trump during what he calls “a speech” yesterday:

“Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know…”

Observations:

1. Trump’s juvenile and inarticulate habit of expressing half-formed thoughts as they occur to him requires him to figure out what he has said after the fact, as he is now with his latest blather. This is no different from his infamous “rapist” remark, his complaint about the “Mexican” judge, and so many, many others. When a competent adult makes a mistake with dire consequences, he or she typically adjusts future conduct accordingly. Not this idiot. This kind of thing will happen over and over again, almost daily, until the election. This was obvious too, years ago. Good job, Republicans. You disgust me.

2. Even knowing that Trump says things extemporaneously with no more thought than a frog gives to catching a fly, the news media (and of course the Clinton campaign) intentionally are treating it was if it were a solemn scripted statement developed over days of careful consideration. The Clinton campaign can be forgiven: any political campaign would do this when an adversary makes a fool of himself. The news media, however, is intentionally reporting the comment as something it’s not. It was not a call to assassinate Hillary. It was just an ad-lib that popped into Trump’s alleged brain. Was it a bad joke? A “speako”? Who knows? Trump definitely doesn’t know. Whatever it was, the comment was not a serious, substantive statement, though certainly not something a responsible or trustworthy individual would utter in public. And, of course, Trump is 100% accountable for it, and all the disruption it causes, as he will be for the hundreds of similar irresponsible ad libs he makes between now and November.

3. Much more substantive news could and should be covered by the news media, including newly released Hillary Clinton e-mails that show the extent to which she used her position and her staff in the State Department to enrich the Clinton Foundation. This is pure corruption, a true outrage, and a smoking gun. But we know that the news media is rooting for Hillary, so Trump’s comment–did I mention that he’s an idiot?—give journalists an excuse to allow Clinton’s actual misconduct slip under the radar, while they obsess about The Donald’s addled musings. Although the fact that Trump is an irresponsible fool is something the public needs to know, they also have a right to know that the woman they have to elect to protect the nation from Trump is perhaps the most corrupt and dishonest individual ever to be this close to the White House.

4. Trump’s latest self-created controversy is signature significance. No trustworthy, competent, intelligent candidate for high office would or could be so undisciplined, inarticulate, and impulsive to allow something like this to issue from his mouth, in public, on video. Those who are defending him in this instance are proving themselves to be untrustworthy, or incompetent, or both.

________________________

Sources:  Daily Kos, Mother Jones, Politicus USA, Washington Post, Raw Story, Taylor Marsh, Common Dreams, Boing Boing, Occupy Democrats, The American Spectator, The Atlantic, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, The New Civil Rights Movement, Vox, Mashable, Media Matters for America, Mediaite, Washington Free Beacon, MichelleMalkin.com,  Althouse, Esquire, BizPac Review, The Times of Israel, Occupy Democrats,  twitchy.com, NBC News, KTLA, Politicus USA, ABC News, The Week, The Democratic Daily, Politico, Deadline,  CBS Pittsburgh, CBS Los Angeles

 

The Olympic Games Are An Ethics Train Wreck, And Have Been For Quite A While

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Olympic mascots

The 2016 Rio Games Opening Ceremony was the apotheosis of a rotting tradition that has lost the slightest resemblance to its so-called ideals. The Olympics are a TV spectacle justified by dollars now, using fake and dubious values to obscure the obvious.

Some moments that gave my ethics alarms twinges last night—

  • Political propaganda. It’s sporting event, not a PSA for climate change regulations. Shut up and play. Or perhaps “Shut up and cheat” is more accurate.
  • Speaking of cheating, the ceremony featuring Tom Brady’s Brazilian model wife as a special effect was jarring, but maybe that’s just me.

This was all just yucky frosting on the unethical cake, however. Before the Games began, the continuing corruption of the Games was again approved when the IOC announced that 270 Russian athletes would be allowed to compete despite a major doping scandal last year that indicated that the Russians routinely cheated, and that there was no reason to presume that any Russian athlete wasn’t. Never mind: the desire for ratings—the US vs. Russia!—and/or bribes paved the way.

Meanwhile, the swimmers are competing in raw sewage. Ocean water along Rio de Janeiro’s famed beaches are contaminated with bacteria and viruses, so much so that the World Health Organization  warned athletes participating in open water sports to not swallow water, to cover any open wounds during competition and to wash off immediately after exiting the water. Why is the US subjecting its athletes to this kind of peril? Why are any of the nations?

I don’t watch football players damage their brains while the NFL pays them to do it, and I’m certainly not going to cheer young athletes risking brain eating amoebae so NBC can sell beer for Anheuser Busch.

When did the Olympics start churning my stomach? It may have been when the U.S. started using NBA stars in the basketball competition, and relishing the opportunity to beat amateur Angolan players 154-12. Yecchh. It may have been when I learned how the female gymnasts were kept sprite-like long into their teens by inhibiting their puberty, and how many young gymnasts were sexually molested on their way to Gold.  Or when I listened to some of my scuzzier male friends explain what they liked about watching them…. Continue reading →

Hillary’s New Tactic: When Caught Lying, Resort To Gibberish

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Yesterday in Washington, D.C., Hillary Clinton took questions at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She was asked by NBC’s Kristen Welker to explain her jaw-dropping lie on Fox News Sunday a week ago, when she claimed  that FBI Director James B. Comey had said all of her statements had been “truthful,” when anyone who heard Comey’s public statement or Congressional testimony could see that he actually stated that her public statements—for more than a year—were not true. Incredibly, Clinton had no coherent or credible answer for this, though she had to know—didn’t she?—that the question would be asked.

Her answer began with this:

“I may have short-circuited it, and for that I will try to clarify.”

On “The Honeymooners,” Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) used to stutter out, when confronted with his own whopper or otherwise trapped, “Huminahuminahumina…” “Short-circuited” is as meaningful as that. It’s gibberish, but just as obviously means “you caught me lying through my teeth, and I don’t have a good explanation.” Ralph, however, was a humble, none-too-bright bus driver, and not running for President, so the standards in his case can be relaxed a bit.

(Please also note Clinton’s equivocal “might.” )

Ralph always followed  “huminahuminahumina…” with facial expressions and body language showing silent humiliation, and then an abject apology. Hillary, being Hillary, just started lying again. The AP fact-checked her response, and determined that she had trotted out the same shifting, mendacious assertions we have heard so many time before. Concluded the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, 

Er, what? What Clinton appears to be saying is that Comey said that everything she said to the FBI was truthful (he did) and since she said publicly exactly what she said to the FBI, therefore everything she said was truthful.

Oh, so that’s what “short-circuited” means! Continue reading →

Obama’s Iran-Contra Moment

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

fake-ransom-note1

As you should know by now, the Wall Street Journal reported…

“The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.

The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi….Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo….But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible….Iranian press reports have quoted senior Iranian defense officials describing the cash as a ransom payment. “

Isn’t this, then, the equivalent of paying ransom for hostages? Continue reading →

Snap Out of It! A Crucial Integrity Check For Responsible “Never Hillary” Voters

/ Jack Marshall / 131 Comments

In a less than a week, all of the rationalizations used by the desperate, in denial “Never Hillary” and “Never Democrat” voters have crumbled under the crushing weight of Donald Trump’s epic unfitness to lead. In the comment threads on Ethics Alarms and elsewhere, these otherwise sane and rational individuals have insisted that they would either vote for Donald Trump, increasing the chances of him being able to do to the United States—and maybe the world— over four years what he has done to the Republican Party in less than a year, that is, wreck it, or vote for a third party, essentially abdicating responsibility to protect the nation from Trump in order to bleat “Don’t blame me!” when the inevitable awfulness of a Hillary Clinton administration is fouling the air. Continue reading →

More Unethical—But NICE!— Police Tricks

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
This nice officer appears to be lobotomized, which at least gives him an excuse for his conduct...

This nice Halifax, VA. officer appears to be lobotomized, which at least gives him an excuse for his conduct…

The politically-fanned hatred and distrust for police has seemingly caused the profession to lose its bearings entirely. We have the Ferguson Effect in major cities, where police avoid proactive law enforcement for fear of getting in any confrontations with  African Americans, and now the desperate efforts of police to be loved is starting to spawn the Police As Cuddly Do-Gooders movement.

This will not end well.

Last week on a hot Friday in Virginia, Halifax police pulled drivers over to—SURPRISE!— hand out ice cream instead of tickets, and captured some of the reactions on camera. Officer Brian Warner said his officers “just wanted to spread some summer sweetness in the community.” They had patrol cars  equipped with coolers of ice cream, and they stopped about 20 motorists, handing out cones instead of tickets after the drivers were convinced they were being stopped for infractions.

Awww!

Warner, I’m afraid, is an idiot. Stopping a car to do anything unrelated to police work is an abuse of power and authority, and unethical. It doesn’t matter if it’s a well-intentioned abuse of power, or a nice abuse of power. It’s wrong, and I would make the case that it’s also illegal, no matter how nice it is.

I’m glad I wasn’t caught on camera, because my message would have been this: Continue reading →