Etiquette and manners

Note To Candidate Trump: Civility Isn’t Bullshit

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Today’s “Trump is a terrible person and you have to vote against him even though there is literally no rational reason to vote for Kamala Harris” article is “At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity.” Of course he did. Public discourse and civility, all a part of the crucial ethics value of respect, have plummeted precipitously as Ethics Alarms predicted here and chronicled since, most recently yesterday. Trump has unquestionably been a catalyst for the coarsening of American speech and culture, but as this tag will show you, so many prominent individuals and institutions followed his lead and escalated the rot that blaming Trump alone would be, well, the kind of thing the Trump Deranged do every day.

Naturally, as Vulgarian-in-Chief, Trump couldn’t let himself be reduced to relative civility by Congresswomen saying things like “Let’s impeach the motherfucker!,” iconic actor Robert De Niro getting cheers at events by screaming “Fuck Trump!,” or a coded phrase meaning “Fuck Joe Biden!” being plastered on T-shirts, banners and mugs. Sooooo, as the Times gleefully informs us…

Mr. Trump opened his speech at the airport in Latrobe, Pa., with 12 minutes of reminiscing about the golfer Arnold Palmer, who grew up in the Western Pennsylvania town and for whom the airport was named. His monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis. Moments later, Mr. Trump gave the crowd an opportunity to call out a profanity. He went on to use that four-letter word to describe Ms. Harris. “Such a horrible four years,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Biden-Harris administration, as he surveyed the crowd of hundreds of people in front of him. “We had a horrible — think of the — everything they touch turns to —.” Many in his audience — which was mostly made up of adults but included some children, infants and teenagers — eagerly filled in the blank, shouting, “Shit!” Minutes later, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to vote, telling them that they had to send a crude message to Ms. Harris: “We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice president.”

Oh, nice. That’s the way to make America great again.

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“A Nation of Assholes” Update: “I Fart In Your General Direction” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Back in 2015 when I wrote that having a vulgarian like Donald Trump serve as our national role model (for that is one of the crucial jobs of American Presidents) would spawn “a nation of assholes,” I was tragically correct (“I’m smart! I’m not dumb like everybody says, I’m smart, and I want respect!”). However, I did not foresee how aggressively others in high profile positions—Robert De Niro, Nancy Pelosi, The Squad, Madison Avenue, athletes, Hollywood, journalists, singers and so many more—would rush to assist Trump in soiling our national civility, manners and discourse.

The latest new low—I did not see us reaching this subterranean level —comes from former NFL linebacker and current podcaster Will Compton. He and fellow ex-NFL player Taylor Lewan recently interviewed to Donald Trump on their podcast, “Bussin’ with the Boys.” They asked the once and future President about his sporting participation, and Trump revealed that he had played a little football in his youth.

“I played football, too. I didn’t particularly like it. I played tight end,” Trump said. “I could catch the ball good, but I didn’t particularly like having some guy that was lifting weights all day long and came from a bad neighborhood … and he sees me.”

The two ex-jocks laughed at Trump’s characterization, which of course meant they are racists, since obviously the reference to “bad neighborhoods” was a coded anti-black message. At least this was the narrative the Axis media was certain to adopt, and sure enough, a Washington Post reporter inquired of the pair, “What is amusing about Trump’s remark?” because it had received “a lot of attention online.”

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Oh, Great. It’s Bad Enough That Harvard Is Woke and Incompetent, But Its “Ten Minute Rule” Proves That The University Is Now Stupid As Well

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I at least expected my thoroughly disgrace alma mater to always maintain some vestige of intelligence, as misapplied as it frequently has been lately.

Guess not.

Before student group-sponsored speakers at the college are allowed to begin, the following official statement from the administration must now be read to the audience:

“A quick note before we begin—Harvard University is committed to maintaining a climate in which reason and speech provide the correct response to a disagreeable idea. Speech is privileged in the University community. There are obligations of civility and respect for others that underlie rational discourse. If any disruption occurs that prohibits speech the disrupters will be allowed for up to 10 minutes. A warning will be issued to all disturbers at the 5-minute mark explaining that the protesters are disrupting the event and ask them to stop. Any further disruption that prevents the audience from adequately hearing or seeing the speakers will lead to the removal of the disrupters from the venue.”

Brilliant.

How smart do you have to be to figure out what’s wrong with this? Let’s see:

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More VP Debate Ethics: Oh-Oh! Tim Walz Doesn’t Get That First Amendment Thingy…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Does this bother you? It should: It bothers me. And Walz has been saying the same illiterate crap about free speech for years. I don’t want Presidents who don’t understand the First Amendment. It means they are incompetent at least, and dangerous at worst. If I don’t want a President with these deficits, I don’t want a Vice President with them either.

I was late to this particular party because I can only find one transcript of the debate online, CBS’s, and the site demands that I dump my ad-blocker to read it. Bite me. This is public information, and CBS shouldn’t have a monopoly on it: that’s unethical. Journalism has no public interest at heart at all, at least not the outlets I usually deal with.

When J.D. Vance pointed out that Walz had said there is no First Amendment right to misinformation,” Walz interjected “or threatening, or hate speech.”  Why do woke fools like Walz keep saying this? While “True threats”—meaning threats that are accompanied by the means and circumstances to carry them out—aren’t protected by the First Amendment. Misinformation that falls short of fraud or defamation definitely is, indeed outright lies are protected.

“Hate speech” also has full First Amendment protection. Walz, a high ranking member of the Democratic Party, the pro-censorship party, naturally is in favor of gutting free speech, or he doesn’t know what it is. I’m guessing both.

That’s particularly troubling in someone who taught school.

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My Trip To Walgreen’s: A Nation of Assholes, 2024

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

One of the posts I have most frequently referred to was this, in which I predicted that if Donald Trump was elected President, the entire culture would coarsen, become more uncivil, and, in essence, “rot from the head down.” And I was right, though I did not predict that that the Left’s anger at Hillary’s shock defeat and its eight year determination to destroy Trump “by any means necessary” would play such a large role in the process. After all, it was a Democratic member of the House (and a woman!) who said, “Let’s impeach the motherfucker!” It was another one who urged “the resistance” to make themselves obnoxious by confronting members of Trump’s administration on the street. Robert DeNiro, an anti-Trump fanatic, has been the most publicly vulgar celebrity by far and far more MAGA cap wearers have been the victims of assaults and confrontations than purveyors of it: people like Jussie Smollett have had to manufacture pro-Trump attacks.

Then again, the Right is responsible for a popular coded chant that means, “Fuck Joe Biden.”

Whatever the reason, The Coarsening, as it would be called if this were a horror movie, has come. I just did an ethics program for a federal agency that asked me to concentrate on civility, because it was deteriorating there.

All of which brings me to my trip to Walgreen’s today.

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Ethics Quiz: The Offensive… Wristband?

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Apparently a biological male who “identifies as female” plays on the Plymouth Regional High School girls’ soccer team in New Hampshire. When the team played its regional rival Bow High School, some Bow parents, protesting the presence of the player whom they regarded as a danger to the born-female players on the Bow team, wore wristbands like the ones above as a silent protest. The Bow High athletic director had told concerned parents before the contest that “in the wake of a federal judge’s ruling that the term ‘girl’ includes males who identify as female,” he felt he was powerless. (He’s a weenie. If he agreed with the parents, he could simply have his team refuse to play the Plymouth team, accept the consequences, and raise the issue.)

When the parents’ “XX” bands appeared at the game, school officials stopped the soccer match, ordered the parents to remove the wristbands, and even “issued [a] police-enforced ‘No Trespassing order’” against two parents who refused.

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Ethics Dunces: Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson and the Hacks Who Wrote Their Material For The Emmys

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I usually ignore the Emmys unless something especially egregious happens on this perpetually unexciting and predictable awards show. Even the current topic, the rude and unfunny jibes of two C-list show-biz types at the expense of Meryl Streep during the latest installment, isn’t a big deal, just a provocative one prompting several ethics musings on the state of American culture and society.

Presenting the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series ( Streep was a nominee) Rob McElhenney and wife Kaitlin Olson engaged in this scripted banter:

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Ethics Verdict: When Your Town Is Being Overrun, It’s Not Racist To Use The Term “Overrun.”

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

How Orwellian of CNN! When former Trump administration official Tricia McLaughlin explained why residents of Springfield, Ohio was being “overrun” by Haitian immigrants, “CNN NewsNight With Abby Phillip” host Phillip insisted that using words like “overrun” was “part of the problem.” Part of what problem? The problem of letting the American public know exactly what is happening in their country as a result of Biden Administration open border policies? Yes, that is a problem for Democrats, and I can certainly understand how our Big Brother party wants to eliminate words that can accurately explain the situation.

What is the nice word for what’s going on when 20,000 recent immigrants from a third world country and hopelessly messed up culture descend on a struggling town of just 60,000? That’s a 30% influx of completely unassimilated foreigners in a town that is having trouble caring for the people living there already. Is the town being “visited”? No, these arrivals are planning on staying: Springfield must seem like Disney World to someone from Haiti. Are the Haitians enhancing the town? No, because such a large group of new residents lacking familiarity with English and other cultural norms can’t avoid causing serious problems, and they are. “Overrun” is as good a word for what’s happening as I can think of.

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Ethics Quiz: The Onion’s Sick Joke

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

A tweet by the once-dominant satire site “The Onion” has sparked a battle on “Twitter/X” and in the conservative blogosphere:

Your Ethic Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Are the objections by conservatives and Trump fans hypocritical in light of the Right’s widespread mockery of  progressive reactions to  insufficiently sensittive or politically incorrect humor?

“The Onion Thinks It’s Funny Corey Comperatore was Murdered at Trump’s Rally,” protests Legal Insurrection. “The tweet has over 80,000 likes, too. What is wrong with people!?” “The Simpsons'” Krusty the Clown might ask, “Too soon?” The black humor attempt is certainly no more insensitive than the jokes about the Japanese tsunami that got the late Gilbert Gottfried fired as the voice of the Aflack duck, and, I blush to say, I found those both horrible and amusing.

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Come On, Prof. Turley: “Let’s Go Brandon!”= “Fuck Joe Biden!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A student known only as “D.A.” was told last spring by Assistant Principal Andrew Buikema and teacher Wendy Bradford at the Tri County (Michigan) Middle School to remove his “Let’s Go Brandon!” hoodie. The school’s dress code states that school officials can “determine [if] a student’s dress is in conflict with state policy, is a danger to the students’ health and safety, is obscene, [or] is disruptive to the teaching and/or learning environment by calling undue attention to oneself.” Western District of Michigan Judge Paul Maloney ruled that the teacher and the principle were within the standards articulated by SCOTUS in in Tinker v. Des Moines in banning the hoodie.

“If schools can prohibit students from wearing apparel that contains profanity, schools can also prohibit students from wearing apparel that can reasonably be interpreted as profane,” Maloney wrote. (The district had banned shirts with the phrases “Fet’s Luck” and “Uranus Liquor” on them.) Maloney added that administrators and teachers could prohibit apparel that said“F#%* Joe Biden,” for example.

“Because Defendants reasonably interpreted the phrase as having a profane meaning,” Maloney said, “the School District can regulate wearing of Let’s Go Brandon apparel during school without showing interference or disruption at the school….”

The judge is right. Prof. Turley, whose analysis Ethics Alarms usually concurs, is wrong this time, and so is FIRE. He argues in part,

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