Anyone?
I don’t like being shouted at by cartoon characters. Even if they had a valid point, my response to this kind of assaultive advocacy is, has ever been, and always will be…
Bite me.
Ethics Train Wrecks
Plumbing The Depths Of The Great Stupid: I Usually Don’t Continue Reading Articles That Start With First Sentences Like This One, Missing Out On Hilarious Race-Obsessed Delusions…
Before we delve into the substance of the article at issue, let me express my gratitude to author David Kaufman for giving me another opportunity to post a brilliant cartoon by one of my heroes, New Yorker satirist/philosopher/humorist Charles Addams. If you read here often, you have seen his work highlighted periodically because it is so often appropriate. In this case, that cartoon above, which made me laugh out loud when I first saw it as a high school student, immediately leapt to mind when I read that Kaufman believes the little white figures in the “walk/don’t walk” traffic lights represent white people.
Did anyone, at the New Yorker, among its readers, among the millions of people who have seen that creepy but very funny drawing in the best-selling collections of Addams’ mordant humor think for a second that it had anything to do with race? No, because it didn’t, doesn’t, and until quite recently, before The Great Stupid spread hate, fear, darkness and toxic cretinism over the land, nobody would be so woke-mad and brainwashed to see racism in everything that they would come to such a bonkers conclusion. Continue reading
Ethics Quote Of The Week: Victor Davis Hanson
“[W]hen everything becomes racist, then nothing in particular can be racist.”
—Revered conservative scholar and pundit Victor Davis Hanson in his column prompted by the absurd progressive calms that the beating death of young Tyre Nichols by five black police officers was caused by “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.”
Hanson’s piece “Race Everywhere” neatly supports my observation in the previous post that it is time to retire February ‘s designation as “Black History Month” (though “Hot Breakfast Month” can stay). His thesis:
In sum, class, not race, remains the best litmus test of being underprivileged in America. It is no longer synonymous with race. No wonder the identity politics industry now strains to attach prefixes such as “systemic” or “implicit” to “racism,” or “micro” to “aggression,” purportedly to ferret out bias that otherwise is not apparent. Pause to reflect that America is the only successful multiracial constitutional republic in history.To survive in an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile world abroad, the unique idea of the United States requires concord. But national cohesion is only possible through citizens subordinating their tribal interests to a common culture. Only then do they cease being automatons of warring tribes and collectives.
Hanson includes many examples of the fact-immune push to elevate the black race above all others in the U.S. while deliberately reversing our national and societal progress away from segregation and racial hostility, as well as why the movement is neither rational nor responsible. Three that I was aware of include,
On The Plus Side, At Least There’s No Reason To Hold Any Illusions That American Journalists Will Even Try To Be Ethical Journalists In The Foreseeable Future…
It looks like honking will do as much good as anything else.
Former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward interviewed over 75 media leaders to assess how the industry views the concept of “objectivity.”
The message they got was that objectivity was over-rated, and what really matters is diversity. Sure, that makes sense. Not really, but it was predictable. Journalists, Downey and Heyward were told, should include their own beliefs, biases, and experiences to convey “truth.” Journalistic objectivity was either unrealistic or undesirable.
“Objectivity has got to go,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy,” said Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press. USA Today editor-in-chief Nicole Carroll said that she allows reporters to write about their own experiences, so long as the stories aren’t “too biased.”
[That’s signature significance for editorial incompetence. Any bias is too biased.] Continue reading
At Last! A Persuasive Explanation For The Tyre Nichols Police Attack That Doesn’t Involve “White Supremacy”
Radley Balko, the former “Reason” investigative reporter who, as long as he isn’t discussing Donald Trump-related issues, is still a reliable, perceptive and ethical analyst, has a guest essay in the New York Times convincingly arguing that the tragedy was a predicable result of the ““elite” police team fad around the country. “Elite police teams” are, he explains, assembled for the broad purpose of fighting crime waves, and they intentionally operate with far more freedom and less oversight than police officers normally do.
The five officers who terrorized and eventually killed young Tyre Nichols were members of the 10-officer Memphis version of this phenomenon, and were collectively called “Scorpion.” Balko points out that the name is a tell: though the Memphis police force website emphasizes the importance of winning the community’s trust, the theory behind elite police teams is that they should inspire fear.
When I first learned that the Memphis police had shut down Scorpion in response to the Nichols tragedy, my initial reaction was that this was the Barn Door Fallacy, a rush to eliminate what was being blamed for a disastrous event without any evidence that doing so will have a beneficial effect, in order to be perceived as doing something. Balko makes a strong argument that these teams are ticking bombs:
Ivan Provorov, The Sequel: The New York Rangers Score A “Bite Me!”
If I had to guess where a major stand against LGBTQ+ bullying would occur, professional hockey would not have been among the candidates. All it takes, though, is a leader. In an earlier post, Ethics Alarms awarded an Ethics Hero designation and the first “Bite Me!” award to Ivan Provorov, the Philadelphia Flyers defenseman who refused to wear a “Pride”-themed warmup jersey as mandated by the team and the NHL. He knew he would be pilloried for not grovelling to the LGBTQ mob, but stood firm. He said, in effect, to those dictating which causes he must support, “Bite me!”
Now an entire NHL team, emboldened by his integrity, has followed Proverov’s lead. The New York Rangers declined to wear their “rainbow”practice jerseys prior to a home game against the Vegas Golden Knights on January 27th, which had been designated “Pride Night.” The team’s promotions had promised that the players would, but they apparently decided that they were not going to be the organization’s cynical billboards. Not wearing the jerseys does not, as some claimed, constitute a rejection of the LGBTQ+ cause. It is a rejection of forced political or social expression.
The Rangers had no right to promise a public endorsement of any particular cause by the individual players. The players had no obligation to rescue the team from an unethical and irresponsible promise that amounted to false advertising. The team still “prided” the night like crazy: it announced a charitable donation to a group that supports homeless LGBTQ+ youth, Madison Square Garden was illuminated in rainbow lights during the game. Broadway star Michael James Scott, openly gay, sang the national anthem. Andre Thomas, the co-chair of NYC Pride and Heritage of Pride, took part in the ceremonial puck drop. Fans received a Pride-themed fanny pack, while the pinwheel ceiling and panels on the outside of the Garden were illuminated in the rainbow colors.
Still More Evidence That No One Who Cares About Individual Liberty, Freedom of Expression And The Increasing Threat Of Totalitarianism In The US Should Live In California Voluntarily…
With AB 2098, California’s legislature passed a bill that would punish doctors offering “false information” on the Wuhan virus and its offspring. It okayed direct government action to punish speech based on content, and was obviously unconstitutional. Naturally, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law anyway: he doesn’t believe in the Bill of Rights, his party doesn’t, and apparently the California voters that keep voting for him and officials like Adam Schiff don’t either. Their state has devolved into a kind of Bizarro World gradted to the rest of the country, a place that increasingly rejects the underlying values and principles the United States was built on, and increasingly, basic logic as well. Here’s a meme that appeared on Powerline’s always entertaining “The Week in Pictures,” which I heartily recommend:
That’s not even satire. It’s just true, and emblematic of how ethically inert the entire stat has become.
The new law prevents doctors from providing “treatment or advice” “to a patient” “related to COVID-19” when that treatment or advice includes (1) “false information” (2) “that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus” (3) “contrary to the standard of care.” Threatening disciplinary action (such as the loss of one’s license to practice) the law sends “a chilling message to physicians to toe the line.” in Prof. Turley’s words. Though a first year law student would quickly see the measure was unconstitutional, California has California-culture judges. In McDonald v. Lawson one of them held the law to be just fine. Now, however Judge William Shubb (E.D. Cal.) in Hoeg v. Newsom, another challenge to the law, has granting an injunction against its enforcement. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Philadelphia Flyers’ Ivan Provorov…And Introducing “The Bite Me”
NHL player Ivan Provorov, a Philadelphia Flyers defenseman, has declined to wear a “Pride”-themed warmup jersey as mandated by the team and the league, which has been pandering hard to the LGBTQ mob.
“I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay to true to myself and my religion.” Provorov says. He is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, which holds a traditional position on gender and sexuality. Flyers coach John Tortorella has defended Provorov’s position.
He should. The “Pride” jersey is a political statement, and no American—or Russian!—should be required to make any political statement against his or her will. The NHL is out of line, unethical, and wildly so.
Naturally, wokism being what it is (totalitarian), Provorov is being attacked by activists and members of the media, because so many people are weenies and will fold like an origami swan if anyone criticizes them. NHL Network’s E.J. Hradek said that if the player will not “assimilate” —that is, knuckle under to the mob– he should instead go fight for Russia in Ukraine. “If it bothers you that much, there’s always a chance to leave, go back to where you feel more comfortable,” said Hradek. “I understand there’s a conflict of sorts going on over there, maybe get involved.”
Proverov is a better American than Hradek. Continue reading
From The Ethics Alarms Mailbag: “Why Do You Insist On Calling Covid “The Wuhan Virus”?
Because that’s what it is?
I’m actually grateful for the question, because I have become more adamant about resisting the deliberately deceptive misnomer for the virus as time goes on and more information becomes available. In 2020, when the pandemic was just starting to wreck the United States’ on many levels, it was pretty obvious that the virus had its start in the Wuhan province of China. Whether it was from a lab or the (disgusting, third-world level wet markets) was and still is uncertain, but Wuhan is where the first recorded case emerged, and where the pathogen took first hold in December of 2019.
Early on in 2020, then-President Trump and some media sources referred to the virus as the “Wuhan virus” or the “China virus,” and these useful and descriptive terms were quickly declared unfair, inaccurate, and “racist.” by the Left. Part of the motivation was, I believe, to suck up to China, a corrupt and dangerous nation that too many businesses and industries (like Hollywood and the NBA) view as a profitable target for unprincipled pandering, Another aspect of the linguistic cover-up was to, as usual in the age of The Great Stupid, choose censorship and public confusion in the quixotic and bizarre effort to make certain groups feel “safe” (as in “safe from reality”). Because there are morons who will bully and mistreat Chinese-Americans as “punishment” for a disaster they could not be rationally blamed for, the widiculous woke decreed that the origins and true responsibility for the pandemic must be obscured by technical jargon. Continue reading
These Are Poisonous Fruit Of Squandered Trust
A just-released Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey concluded that 49% of American adults believe it is likely that Wuhan virus vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths. Twenty-eight percent think it’s “Very Likely” that the side effects of the vaccine have been deadly to many in contrast with 37% who don’t believe that a significant number of deaths have been caused by vaccine side effects. Fourteen percent are not sure, the usual group that isn’t sure of anything.
You can question the accuracy of this poll or all polls, you can believe that the vaccine skeptics are hysterics, you can believe that these numbers are in large part the result of “misinformation.” However, there is no question that even if they are inaccurate, the numbers show a shocking level of distrust in the pandemic vaccines, and, by extension, vaccines in general as well the health professionals and elected officials who have promoted them. When asked if there are legitimate safety concerns surrounding the shots, or whether doubts have been seeded by conspiracy theorists, 48% said there that concerns are valid. Only 37% indicated that false conspiracy theories were behind the public’s fears.
Glenn Reynolds, the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law and one of the most widely read conservative blogger, has it exactly right, writing, Continue reading
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