Jimmy Carter’s funeral was revealing regarding the character and professionalism of the various guests, which included all of the living former and current Presidents, First Ladies and VPs. I wish I could embed videos of all of the interesting interactions among these figures, but WordPress won’t let me. I also wish a single video had the right angles and sufficient length to capture what went on, but if there is such a video, I can’t find it. I will have to make do with links. The revelations…
2024 was a bad year for the New York Times’s ethics advice columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah. “He”The Ethicist” showed unseemly sympathy for the Trump Deranged all year, and not of the “You poor SOB! Get help!” variety, but more frequently of the “You make a good point!” sort, as in “I can see why you might want to cut off your mother for wanting to vote for Trump!” I was interested to see if the inevitability of Trump’s return might swerve Prof Appiah back to more useful commentary on more valid inquiries. So far, the results in 2025 have been mixed.
This week, for example, Appiah thought this silly question was worth considering (It isn’t):
“I am going to tell a brief story about my friend at his funeral. The incident happened 65 years ago. The problem is that I am unsure whether the details of the story, as I remember them, are factual or just in my imagination. No one who was a witness at the time is still living. Should I make this story delightful and not worry about the facts, or make the story short, truthful and perhaps dull?“
Good heavens. This guy is the living embodiment of Casper Milquetoast, the famous invention of legendary cartoonist H.T. Webster. Casper was the original weenie, so terrified of making mistakes, defying authority or breaking rules that he was in a constant case of paralysis. The idea of a story at a memorial service or funeral is to reveal something characteristic, admirable or charming about the departed and, if possible, to move or entertain the assembled. This guy is the only one alive who can recount whatever the anecdote is, so to the extent it exists at all now, he is the only authority and witness. So what if his memory isn’t exactly accurate? What’s he afraid of?
The advice I’d be tempted to give him is, “You sound too silly to be trusted to speak at anyone’s funeral. Why don’t you leave the task to somebody who understands what the purpose of such speeches are?” Or maybe tell him to watch the classic Japanese film “Rashomon,” about the difficulty of establishing objective truth. “The Ethicist,” who shouldn’t have selected such a dumb question in the first place, blathers on about how “everybody does” what the inquirer is so worried about and cites psychological studies about how we edit our memories. Blecchh.
Harris has had, in my estimation, several opportunities to earn Ethics Hero status here in the past, and whiffed every time. Yesterday, she achieved that status by the easiest route imaginable: by simply doing her job, indeed one of the very few requirements of a job that has always been under-burdened by official duties.
Vice-President Harris officiated as the two houses of Congress met in joint session to formally count the Electoral College votes for President and certify the results. “The votes for president of the United States are as follows,” Harris declared, as she was bound to, after each state’s totals were read. “Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes.” When Republican members of Congress rose to their feet to applaud, Harris managed to look non-committal, even if she might have been thinking, “Fuck you all.”
Former President Jimmy Carter died on December 29, so according to traditional protocol, U.S. flags are to fly at half-mast until sunset on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, in his honor. This means that the flags will be signifying national sorrow on January 20, when Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States when the nation, also according to tradition, is supposed to embrace our peaceful transfer of power, our unique system of government, the glorious history of the United States of America, and the hope that should accompany each new Chief Executive into the office where Washington, Lincoln and the rest served our nation.
I’m sure the Axis news media will engage in an orgy of smug satisfaction at the symbolism of the flags signifying mourning upon the return to power of Donald J. Trump. I am similarly certain the the Trump Deranged will similarly puff up their little chests with pride at the condign justice the circumstances have imposed on the MAGA celebrants. Meanwhile, Trump is ticked-off and, being Trump, unable to restrain himself from saying so. On Truth Social, his now superfluous social media platform created when the censors at Twitter silenced his account, the President-Elect whined,
Now guess what kind of speakers were the ones primarily shut down. Hey, take a shot: you’ve got at least a 50-50 chance of being right! \Wow! You guessed it! In fact, the variety of censored speakers and their censors were more ideologically diverse than I expected.
FIRE maintains a “campus de-platforming database.” The free speech advocacy group explains,
“A deplatforming attempt is a form of intolerance motivated by more than just mere disagreement with, or even protest of, some form of expression. It is an attempt to prevent some form of expression from occurring. Deplatforming attempts include efforts to disinvite speakers from campus speeches or commencement ceremonies, to cancel performances of concerts, plays, or the screenings of movies, or to have controversial artwork removed from public display. An attempt to disrupt a speech or performance that is in progress is also considered a deplatforming attempt, whether it succeeds or fails.”
In 2024, its records indicate, there were 164 attempts at this kind of censorship on American campuses; FIRE has the receipts here. It was a record.
It looks like this is going to be one of those topics that I have to revisit every couple of years or so. In 2018, Ethics Alarms challenged the ethics of a state denying permission for drivers to have whatever vanity plates on their cars that their egos, senses of humor, or general sophomorishness dictated. Then I wrote,
“Utah, for examples, bans vanity plates with profanity, “derogatory language,” drug references, sex talk, references to bodily functions, “hate speech,” targeting a particular group, or advocating violence advocates, as well as alcohol references and the number combo “69.” Ethics verdict: None of their business. These are words and numbers, and the state is declaring content and intent impermissible. When I see a car with an obnoxious vanity plate, I’m grateful. This is useful information. Racist or vulgar plates translate into ‘I am an asshole, and want you to know it!'”
The issue came up again in 2022. Illinois, in its infinite wisdom, had banned plates reading HATER, COVID, BYOB, and, perhaps on the theory that it meant “drooling basket case,” BIDEN. This time, it is that bastion of free speech repression (one way or another), California, that has decided certain combinations of numbers and letters should be censored as too painful for human beings to bear. The plate was issued and read LOLOCT7. I’ll give you a minute to figure out what the alleged offense was…
Oh, shut up, Barack!
In a speech yesterday at his foundation’s Democracy Forum, Barack Obama demonstrated his abundance of gall by calling for an end to “divisiveness” and for Americans to embrace compromise while building coalitions, something he refused to do as President.
Obama, after pledging to be a President of all the people, “bringing black and white together,”also exacerbated racial divisions like no President before him since Woodrow Wilson, a big Jim Crow fan. He chose to avoid political compromise during his entire term, laying the foundations of the gridlock we have seen since with the enthusiastic assistance of Nancy Pelosi in the House and the now thankfully dead Harry Reid Senate. As a former President, Obama did not extend his successor the same courtesy George W. Bush extended to him, which was to stay on the sidelines and withhold public criticism. He vividly illustrated why the unwritten rule and “democratic norm” in the U.S. has been that former Presidents, as the New York Times stated in 2007, “should speak respectfully of their successors, or at least with some measure of restraint.”
Did you know that Donald Trump doesn’t respect “democratic norms”?
I didn’t see this until I had already put up the previous post about “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks.” If I had, it would have been included. Above all else, the tweet is stupid.
I know, I know…this may be Julie Principle territory. Still, the conduct of the President of the United States is always of special significance, so I am loathe to declare before the second roller-coaster Trump term begins that he will be given an Ethics Alarms pass for the inevitable social media outbursts to come. What is so discouraging, not to mention unethical, about Trump’s Thanksgiving Day tweet is that it shows, again unfortunately, that our soon-to-be 47th President has a flat learning curve, at least in the area of public statements.
There is no reason for Trump to issue a back-handed “Happy Thanksgiving” message, and so many reason not to. He certainly knows that somehow managing to at least alleviate the toxic partisan divisions in America is not only an important task he must face and treat seriously, but also essential to the success of his administration. Trump Derangement is also approaching national health emergency status. What ethical objective can a tweet like that possibly accomplish? The answer is, I hope all can agree, none. Well, none except making Trump feel good. How juvenile and self-indulgent, in addition to selfish. The tweet is essentially gloating, a “Nyah, nyah, nyah!” to his foes. All it does is make them angrier, more hateful, more irrational, and more convinced that all Trump wants to do is inflict revenge on “Radical Left Lunatics.” The substantive goals he has claimed to be seeking will require his full attention; there is no time for such pettiness.
Yet there is it. No self-control, no hint of appropriate priorities, no sense of “I could tweet this, but it would be wrong.” No nation will be respected whose elected leader behaves that way.
This quiz comes from the latest inquiry to “The Ethicist.” I disagree with much of Prof. Appiah’s answer, as I often have lately, but I do concede that the question is worthy of a serious ponder.
On their way out a restaurant, a family group was interrupted by a stranger who had also dined there. He said to the inquirer’s comely daughter-in-law, “With all due respect, you are very attractive.” The inquirer rebuked him saying, “That is wholly inappropriate, sir.” The inquiry continued,
“My cousin snapped at me that it was only a compliment. My sister got mad at me for upsetting my cousin. My daughter-in-law appreciated my reaction but said that she has had “way creepier men say way creepier things to her.” I responded to them all that a stranger has no business commenting on the looks of a person, good or bad, and that this man would never have said a word if any man had been standing with us. Who is right?”
Before I give you The Ethicist’s answer and mine,
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….
Not merely social media chatterers but many others (like Nikki Haley, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Fox News (of course) and CNN’s John Berman, and, if anyone cares, Keith Olberman) are castigating MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who chattered away yesterday about how they had flown to Mar-A-Largo to kiss the ring, or ass, or whatever, of President-Elect Trump. This seemed like a craven reversal of their stance during the entire campaign, one that became more extreme and shrill as Election Day approached, that Trump was a fool, a racist, an enemy of democracy, a threat to the nation, and literally an American Hitler. The pilgrimage to Florida seemed like a craven reversal because that’s what it was. Joe and Mika proved that they are, at heart, “Good Germans.”
Trump has done nothing since his election that would warrant the Trump-Deranged from abandoning their hysterical position, since he had done nothing to justify it in the first place. All the obsequious reversal by the “Morning Joe” duo indicated was hypocrisy and a complete lack of integrity, not that we didn’t already know that. To be fair to Joe and Mika, they work for MSNBC, where nobody knows the meaning of integrity, honesty, or “ethics.” It’s a propaganda arm of the Angry Left. All “Morning Joe” does is follow orders. This spectacular double-reverse backflip in mid-air (I’m mentally humming “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite”) however, is despicable even by MSNBC’s wretched standards.
Ethics Alarms 