Etiquette and manners

Ethics Dunce <Sigh>: President Trump. Again.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Having just posted an ethics quiz about whether it is ethical to make nice people’s heads explode, I now have to deal with the latest example of President Trump doing exactly that.

It’s not a tough call. There is no up-side to deliberately offending devout Catholics, many of whom are Hispanic, a group that is significantly supporting the President’s efforts to enforce the border. In that respect the meme is another unforced error and an instance of incompetent leadership. The gag—yes, ye Trump-Deranged, it is a gag, and the President isn’t really stating that he wants to be Pope—is not worth the fallout. Trump has too many important missions that require as much popular support as possible to deliberately poke any group in its metaphorical eye just for fun.

We know the President is an asshole. He doesn’t have to keep reminding us.

Ethics Quiz: Victor Davis Hanson’s Head-Exploding Pro-Trump Essay

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Over at RealClearPolitics, conservative scholar and pundit Victor Davis Hanson has an essay that I fervently believe is spot-on regarding what he calls “the Trump counter-revolution.” Of course I do: it tracks exactly with what I’ve been writing here for more than a decade, the primary difference being that Hanson’s views carry a lot more weight than mine do. The “money quote” in the essay, its conclusion:

Enraged Democrats still offer no substantial alternatives to the Trump agenda.

There are no shadow-government Democratic leaders with new policy initiatives. They flee from the Biden record on the border, the prior massive deficits and inflation, the disaster in Afghanistan, two theater-wide wars that broke out on Biden’s watch, and the shameless conspiracy to hide the prior president’s increasing dementia.

Instead, the Left has descended into thinly veiled threats of organized disruption in the streets. It embraces potty-mouth public profanity, profane and unhinged videos, nihilistic filibusters, congressional outbursts, and increasingly dangerous threats to the persons of Elon Musk and Trump.

All that frenzy is not a sign that the Trump counterrevolution is failing. It is good evidence that it is advancing forward, and its ethically bankrupt opposition has no idea how, or whether even, to stop it.

Oh, those words give me a BINGO! orgasm. I am now in the processes of fighting the impulse to post Hanson’s essay on Facebook, knowing full well that it will lead to mass fury among 90% of my friends, have me unfriended and cancelled, even cause some associates to pull out of a major theatrical project I’m involved in. Posting it would run directly into Cognitive Dissonance Scale reality.

And yet…I put up with far more triggering (for me) content from them literally every day without protest. I don’t cancel them or unfriend them, any more than I reject friends and relatives when they have contracted a pernicious disease. Do friends let friends remain tunnel-visioned, bubble-bound, biased and ignorant?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Should I post Hanson’s essay on Facebook, knowing that it will change the minds of no one, except perhaps changing the minds of valued friends to conclude I am not fit for human contact?

Yecchh! Pooey! Instant Ethics Train Wreck In Minnesota…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Nothing but dunces, villains and fools in this tale….

1.Unethical catalyst: In Rochester, Minnesota, a state that has gone certifiably nuts, home of the George Floyd Freakout and a government headed by Knucklehead Tim Walz while voters send anti-Semitic Rep.”Fuck you!”Omar to Congress, a woman named Shiloh Hendrix was at the playground at Soldiers Field Park when she found a young black child looking through her 18-month-old son’s diaper bag. The kid is a nascent thief and needs more attentive parenting.

2. First identifiable unethical adult: Hendrix, who upon discovering the invasion of her personal property called the child a “nigger.” That’s signature significance in 2025—indeed at least since the 19th Century. She’s a low-life racist, a blight on society, and deserves to be shunned and reviled. To Hell with her.

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Ethics Quiz: The Complimentary Dessert

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

My friend had dinner recently with his wife to celebrate their 38th anniversary at the hotel that hosted their wedding reception. The staff at the restaurant made a big deal over them, and they also gorged on a six-course meal.

At the end of the dinner, the waiter offered them a dessert, compliments, of the house. My freind said that at that point he and his wife felt like Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’ “The Meaning of Life,” so they declined. But, he asked, would it have been unethical to accept the gift without planning on consuming it there, and to ask for a box to take it home?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Would it?

Both my friend and I agreed that it would be crass and thus unethical to accept a gift intended to put an exclamation point on a celebratory meal only to wrap it up in a doggie bag. My mother, as I told him, would have accepted the offer in a heartbeat and asked for a box to accompany the dessert without any qualms at all. My sister, the metaphorical apple that doesn’t fall far from the tree, quickly took our late mother’s point of view when I asked her just now: free food is free food.

What do you think?

Oh-Oh! President Trump Violated Another Norm!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Setting a new low in seeking reasons to criticize the President it and its readers love to hate, the New York Times devoted a full article (“Trump’s Blue Suit at Pope’s Funeral Draws Attention”) to President Trump’s choice of suit to wear to the Pope’s funeral. Get this:

President Trump, it seems, is fully committed to going his own way when it comes to international relations — even during the funeral of a pope. On Saturday, as he joined other world leaders to pay his respects to Pope Francis, he stood in St. Peter’s Square among President Emmanuel Macron of France (who was wearing black), Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain (in black), President Javier Milei of Argentina (in black) and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy (in black). Mr. Trump? He was wearing blue.
And not even dark, midnight blue, but a clear, sapphire-like blue, with matching tie. Amid all the black and Cardinal red, it popped out like a sign.
The choice did not grossly violate the dress code for the event (which reportedly called for a dark suit with a black tie for men). Prince William also appeared to be wearing blue, though a shade closer to navy, and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. wore a blue tie. But Mr. Trump’s look certainly skirted the edges.

Oh, bite me. Skirted what “edges?” This rates a Kaufman on Ethics Alarms. That is a situation where my concern about the controversy at hand equals George S. Kaufman’s famous description of how interested he was in the complaint by aging crooner Eddie Fisher (father of Carrie) that he was having trouble meeting and dating young women. The famous wit and playwright said (on a live panel TV show),

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Comment of the Day: “From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Gee, What a Christian, Presidential, Sincere and Uniting Easter Message!”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

It has long been the position of this website that only a cynical and contrary God could have contrived to put the United States of American in a position where a volatile, unpredictable and ethically flawed figure like Donald Trump is its only avenue of rescue from the anti-American and totalitarian aspirations of the modern Democratic Party. This means that for the next four years I, and anyone who is similarly perceptive, must exist in a state of continual dread. Will this President engage in a disastrous unforced error or definitive breach of leadership conduct that will result in such public revulsion that the Machiavellian Left can again get its metaphorical clutches around America’s throat? This keeps me up at night, and, to be blunt, anyone who doesn’t see this as a constant threat from which there is no relief until the 2028 election is living in a dream world.

Thus I was pleased and relieved to read Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day on my post expressing personal revulsion at President Trump’s self-indulgent and completely gratuitous Easter message, rotten Easter egg if there ever was one. Here’s Ryan…

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Gee, What a Christian, Presidential, Sincere and Uniting Easter Message!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I know, I know…The Julie Principle.

Even so, as I said in brief summary of Rep. Mace’s uncivil and disrespecful treatment of a constituent who dared to imply criticism of her representational, “This doesn’t help.”

Once upon a time, Presidents chose their words carefully for their public pronouncements. I defy anyone to explain how the Truth Social rant above can accomplish anything positive. I place it in the same category as the Trump Hate outbursts by the likes of Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff or Jasmine Crockett, all of which are designed to inflame rather than to unite, except that a President should be held to higher standards than members of Congress.

The only question in my mind is whether exploiting the holiest of Christian holidays to barf out insults and declarations of personal pique is less revolting, more revolting, or about as revolting than President Biden’s use of the day last year to issue a pandering, celebratory proclamation about “Transgender Day of Visibility.” I score Trump’s message as worse, as in “more unethical,” because its language is, though typical of this President, still inappropriate for any resident of the White House. (Trump issued a similar message last Easter, but he wasn’t President them. That’s a material distinction, or should be.)

It is also, like Biden’s message, stupid and incompetent. Trump has a challenging agenda and a tough road ahead; his personal popularity is crucial to achieving that agenda, and there is no way these kinds of self-indulgent outbursts can do anything but alienate potential supporters.

Ethics Dunce: Rep. Nancy Mace (Res Ipsa Loquitur Division)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This doesn’t help. The Speaker of the House needs to insist that his party members adhere to basic standards of dignity, civility and decorum both in the House and in public. Mace is a repeat offender. She’s an embarrassment to her party, her district, Congress and the nation. Behold….

Ethics verdict: the Representative is 100% in the wrong in this confrontation. To say Mace was looking for a fight is an understatement. There was nothing inappropriate or uncivil in this constituent’s demeanor or rhetoric. For Mace to immediately stereotype him because he appeared to be gay was obnoxious; for her to resort to crude language, especially in a public setting, is indefensible.

Finally, for Mace to post this incident as if it is something to be proud of is profoundly disturbing. She appears to be seeking cognitive dissonance points with homophobics.

What did this Democrat (if he indeed is a Democrat) say that marked him as “nuts”? He was being civil, and it was Mace who acted like she was angry at the man’s very existence.

I challenge anyone to offer a justification or excuse for her conduct. (Hint: There isn’t any.)

Can This “Democratic Norm” Be Saved?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

One of the most hackneyed attacks on President Trump is that he violates “traditional democratic norms.” Of course, this is another Democratic Party double standards play: most assertive Presidents ignore some “traditional norms” while forging new ones, and the last Democrati in the White House crushed some surprising traditional norms I thought were secure, like the norm of enforcing immigration laws, and the norm of selecting Cabinet members on the basis of their abilities rather than their EEOC categories, the norm of holding press conferences, the norm of having the elected President actually be the President, and the norm of not dropping out of a re-election campaign once it has begun so the party can install a more promising replacement without the formality of primaries and a democratic nominating process.

A democratic norm that is definitely on death’s door in the Trump Administration is the traditional respect the President has extended to reporters and journalists. Yesterday, President Trump was openly hostile and insulting to CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins when she questioned him in the Oval Office on the deportation of El Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He called her a “low-rated anchor” while insulting her employer, CNN. Passing a question off to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the President sniped, “Can you just also respond to that question because you know it’s asked by CNN and they always ask it with a slant because they’re totally slanted because they don’t know what’s happening. That’s why nobody’s watching them.” Ouchie! Later in the session, Trump responded to another question about Garcia from Collins by saying, “How long do we have to answer this question? Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country’? Why can’t you just say that? Why do you go over and over …and that’s why nobody watches you anymore! You have no credibility.”

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Ethics Quiz: Pronouns Again

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

The New York Times says that reporters who contact Trump Administration officials to request statements or quotes on significant events or policies do not get a response to their emails if their signature includes their “preferred pronouns.” This has not been officially confirmed as administration policy, but Trump press spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told the paper that policy it is, saying, “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios. Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story.” Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and spokeswoman for the Department of Government Efficiency, answered an inquiry on the topic, “As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts.” Trump’s presidential campaign account on X also claimed, “It is official White House policy to IGNORE reporters’ emails with pronouns in the signature.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is that policy, if that is the policy, fair and ethical?

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