Etiquette and manners

Why Bob Laterza, It Profits A Man Nothing To Reveal Himself As An Ethics Dunce To The Whole World, But For A Lousy 15 Minutes Of Fame?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Congratulations are due to South Shore Little League manager Bob Laterza. He got his name prominently mentioned in the sports media by verbally attacking baseball mega-star Aaron Judge, immediately setting off a controversy.

Judge’s Yankees played the Detroit Tigers in the MLB Little League Classic at Williamsport, Pa. The Staten Island Little League coach slammed the Shrek-like slugger afterwards, telling the media,“How about turning around or wave to New York and the kids that think you’re a hero? They are the ones who pay your salary.” Laterza alleged that Judge ignored his young players as they shouted his name from 10 feet away.

That’s Judge in the photo above, wearing the 99 jersey in the middle of a mob of admirers at the event.

The only reason the coach’s grandstanding was considered news is that his target was Judge, not only the best player alive this season but also renowned as a model baseball citizen and one of the nicest people ever to play the game, even if he does play for the Yankees. Judge signed autographs and posed for pictures with many Little Leaguers from the various teams attending the game. Laterza criticism was the ultimate cheap shot, acquiring some pitiful publicity for himself by assailing a major celebrity.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.

Judge refused to respond to Laterza’s accusations. It is that kind of abuse from entitled fans and others who believe that baseball stars owe them every second of their time that has prompted many players to announce that they won’t engage with anyone, sign autographs or anything else.

Never mind though. Bob got his name in the sports section.

On Jarren Duran, T-Shirts, LGBTG Bullies, and My Dead College Room Mate

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In an earlier post that few people read (it was about baseball, see) I pointed out the excessive, virtue-signaling punishment handed down by the team on Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. His unforgivable offense was calling an abusive fan a “fucking fag” in a moment of temper during a game. The fan had apparent been ragging on him for the entire game from behind home plate, and the slur was picked up by the Red Sox game broadcast microphones and was audible to viewers. Duran apologized (immediately and well), but was fined and suspended for two games, which, given his status as arguably its best player, harmed everyone on the team while the Sox battle for a play-off slot. I have seen no indication that the fan taunting Duran was in fact gay, so the use of the slur “fag” was apparently just a random insult, but never mind: we are now in the world of censorship, word- taboos and hate speech hypersensitivity. I was called a fag once. I remember my response: “Is that the best you can do?” (It was.)

Duram served his two game suspension, but now he is on the LGBTQ Mafia’s hit list. In The Athletic today, “out” Boston sportswriter Steve Buckley goes after Duran again (no vendetta there!) because he wore the T-shirt above while being interviewed about the incident. You know, because sportswriters never use or hear the word “fuck,” and somehow the T-shirt’s legend means that Duran doesn’t take his outburst that employed a taboo word seriously enough.

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Incident At Harris Teeter

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I just returned from a shopping run for necessities (coffee, milk, peanut butter, dog chews, paper plates…) on a day that I have no time for it, but today is senior discount day, and ten bucks is ten bucks.

Having finished my pathetic widower’s mission, I was in the parking lot unloading my cart while thinking about other things, like how horrible the Red Sox loss was last night, the seminar materials deadline I have today, how I am still such a mess that hearing the sappy finale to “A Chorus Line” (“What I Did For Love”) in the car choked me up.

I was almost done when I noticed that a woman was patiently (and quietly) waiting for me to get my grocery cart out of the way so she could park in the space next to me. “Sorry! Sorry!” I shouted as I moved the cart. After she got out of her car, I went over to her and said, “I am so so sorry for making you wait like that! I was just zoned out and didn’t realize you were there.”

She said, “Sir, the fact that you just apologized made my day. Usually people who do something like that just ignore you; they never apologize. Of course you’re forgiven, but also thank-you, for restoring some of my faith in the human race.”

And she smiled.

Sometimes this ethics stuff pays off…

There is hope.

“It Can’t Happen Here” Item: Belgium Bans Jews From A Competition Because, Well, They Are Jews

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

An international Ultimate Frisbee competition for youths held in Ghent, Belgium last week was supposed to include some Jewish teams. Then an anti-Semitic vandal (was The Squad in town?) spray-painted “Boycott Israhell Now!” near the playing field, so the mayor of Ghent joined with the city’s police to inform the young Jewish Frisbee whizzes that not only were they banned from the event on the field, they couldn’t attend as spectators either. This was in the interests of “safety.”

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Congratulations to Elon Musk, Who Earns a Golden “Bite Me!”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The “Bite Me!” Award that Ethics Alarms hereby bestows on Elon Musk is the honorable and admirable version of the schizophrenic designation as opposed to the alternative handed to Ann Althouse in this recent post. To alleviate confusion, I will henceforth describe what Musk has earned with his tweet above as The Golden “Bite Me!,” which will be awarded here when an individual displays an inspiring level of defiance“in response to being bullied, pressured and threatened into submissiveness” by sending the unambiguous and fearless message, “Do your worst. I believe in what I am doing, and I don’t grovel to mobs.”

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Ethics Dunce: The Boston Red Sox (and Anyone Who Agrees With What They Just Did)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

As I alluded to in an earlier post today, Boston Red Sox star Jarren Duran was caught on a mic in yesterday’s loss to the Houston Astros snapping at an obnoxious Fenway Park fan who was taunting him at the end of a frustrating game for the outfielder. You won’t learn this from any media covering the incident, but Duran said, “Shut up, you fucking fag.”

There is no question that baseball players say much worse in their private interactions with each other, including on the field, but because this was picked up electronically, and because Duran knew that the Red Sox, maybe even more than the rest of Major League Baseball, are lapdogs to all progressive activist groups, immediately issued an abject apology, saying, “During tonight’s game, I used a truly horrific word when responding to a fan. I feel awful knowing how many people I offended and disappointed,” the grovel continued. “I apologize to the entire Red Sox organization, but more importantly to the entire LGBTQ community. Our young fans are supposed to be able to look up to me as a role model, but tonight I fell far short of that responsibility.”

Then he leaped to his death off of the top of the famous Fenway left field wall. Kidding. “I will use this opportunity to educate myself and my teammates and to grow as a person,” Duran concluded.

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J.D. Vance Demonstrates the Ethical Remedy For Partisan Media Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

J. D. Vance made the rounds of the Sunday morning TV shows, and neatly demonstrated why he will be an asset to the Republican ticket in the exchange above with CNN’s biased dim bulb Dana Bash.

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A Symptom of Creeping Totalitarianism: The Left’s Embrace of Newspeak

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

In the appendix to his novel “1984,” George Orwell explained the principles of “Newspeak,” the mandated lexicon of Big Brother’s dystopian society. The idea behind Newspeak was to prevent free thought and speech by limiting the public’s vocabulary to the point that “wrongthink” was impossible. Maybe nobody reads “1984” any more, and maybe the public is just as ignorant, apathetic and gullible as our political elite count on its members being. It still amazes me that the proliferation of “Newspeak” in the media and political discourse doesn’t create appropriate awareness that the U.S. is being pushed into a totalitarian regime. There is active censorship of certain words and ideas because our Dark Lords think they will upset us (or risk undermining partisan cant). Abortion? What’s that? There is only “reproductive health.” Sex-change operations and hormone treatment for minors? What are you talking about? We have “gender-affirming care.” There’s no illegal immigration, just “newcomers,” and you always want to welcome newcomers!

And so on.

Some words are so upsetting that the news media literally won’t publish them even if a story can’t be understood as a result. Yesterday Boston Red Sox star Jarren Duran, having a rough game, was taunted by a fan and caught on a live mic retorting, “Shut up, you fucking fag!” The Boston papers, however, couldn’t let their readers know what the outfielder said, because it might upset them. So the statement was published as “Shut up you (expletive) (expletive.)”

This is the Orwellian culture progressives are slowly but surely constructing for us, if we let them.

There is no apparent stopping place on the slippery slope. The Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle, one of our most left-addled communities, has an exhibit on the rock band Nirvana that informs visitors that the band’s leader, Kurt Cobain, “un-alived himself at 27.”

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“The Ethicist” Weighs In On Mandatory Kitchen Remodeling

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I was going to ignore this until the issue of giving money to homeless people came up on a thread about the “hero” who made sure the illegal immigrants sneaking into the U.S. didn’t risk dehydration in the process.

The ubiquitous “Name Withheld” asked Prof. Appiah whether it would be uethical to give a friend down on his income and luck the money to remodel his kitchen, which is in dire need or repair, but to make the gift conditional on the struggling friend only using the money for that purpose. Apparently NW’s partner wants to attach strings to the financial “gift,” and “Name Withheld” doesn’t. The couple have been periodically giving their struggling, single-dad friend donations to help him make ends meet for some time.

How hard is this? If you want to make certain your gift is a kitchen remodeling—who is “Name Withheld,” Betty Crocker?—you say: “I am giving you a new kitchen. Here’s the number of a good contractor; have him send the bills to me. Just keep the cost within X dollars.” If you give someone money, the money is the gift. Sure, you can say, “Now, I’m giving you this so you can remodel that dump of a kitchen,” but you can’t say, “If you use the money for anything else, then I’ll want it back.”

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Ethics Quiz: The Google AI Olympics Commercial

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Google pulled that ad after a wave of criticism on social media.

Is the ad encouraging children to use AI instead of writing their own messages and letters? Is it an invitation to cheat in school? Does it suggest that robots are better at expressing genuine human feelings than humans are? Is having someone, or something, write your fan letters to a personal hero a cop-out? A lie?

Is the commercial “Ick!”, unethical, or just ominous?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is that Google AI ad irresponsible, corrupting—unethical? Did an ethics alarm fail to sound that should have?