Family

If “A Boy Named Sue” Had Problems, What’s Chance Does An IT Named Searyl Have?

/ Jack Marshall / 79 Comments

“It’s up to Searyl to decide how they identify, when they are old enough to develop their own gender identity. I am not going to foreclose that choice based on an arbitrary assignment of gender at birth based on an inspection of their genitals.”

—Statement released by Katy Doty, Canadian non-binary transgender activist and mother of Searyl Atli Doty, upon it’s birth.

Let’s stipulate a few things before we get into the muck and mire, as well as the “ick” and “Are you kidding me?”…1. As the mother of Searyl, who I recommend trademark that name quick before a drug company uses it for te latest product that will do something to alleviate some dread disease if a sufferer is willing to risk dozens of equally dread side-effects listed at the end of a TV commercial, Katy has every right to do this

2.Katy’s using her just born child as a political and a political prop. She thus qualifies as a soul-less, radical mother who puts her political obsessions over her obligations to her own child, and a great candidate to be an awful parent.

Good luck, Searyl Atli, but I think you are doomed.

3. That name isn’t going to do the kid—can we agree it’s a kid, Katy?—any good either.  Giving a child anything but a name that will allow him or her to go through life without a  needless and gratuitous handicap nailed to them by parents amusing themselves, grandstanding or turning their offspring into a billboard is a form of child abuse. Being saddled with a name nobody can pronounce—Seerill? See-Ay-rill? See-Ay-RILE? Wait… is this name really an illiterate spelling of Cyril?— or spell will rob anyone of about a thousand hours before they are 60, if they are lucky.

Why would a mother inflict this on a child? Because the mother is a selfish jerk, that’s why.

4. This is grandstanding,  narrow-focused virtue-signaling, and worse. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Neglectful Mom

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

An upstate New York mother allowed her 10-year-old child to shop alone at the LEGO store as she shopped at a different store in the same mall. It appears that the LEGO store’s personnel called the mall’s security, and the child’s mother was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child. The store does have a sign that states that children under the age of 12 must be accompanied by an adult.

Arresting the mother is obviously absurd over-kill. Obviously also, the LEGO store has a right to have whatever policy it chooses regarding unaccompanied children. However the question remains, and is the Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day…

Is it irresponsible for a mother to allow her 10-year-old to shop alone if the mother is shopping in the same mall?

Related questions as you ponder: Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “The Tangled Ethics Of Men, Women, Sexual Harassment, Sexual Discrimination, Romance, Common Sense, And ‘“Vive La différence!”’

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

[I’m especially very grateful to have an inventory of strong Comments of the Day—two more to post after this!–since I woke up today with painful stiff neck that makes everything from walking to chewing painful, and looking down at a keyboard ridiculously difficult.]

In response to fair, reasonable, liberal commenter and mother who had just written that when it came to looking out for her daughters, extreme caution was the rule, meaning that heterosexual men were regarded as inherent potential threats if the were strangers…even the fathers of  her daughter’s friends (maybe even—this is my thought, not hers–a Vice President!).reader Chris Bentley raised several interesting points. As with many Comments of the Day, this one was not strictly on topic; workplace sexual harassment and discrimination was the subject of the post, except on the broad issue of the different genetic wiring of man and women,

Here is CB’s Comment of the Day on “The Tangled Ethics Of Men, Women, Sexual Harassment,Sexual Discrimination, Romance, Common Sense, And “Vive La différence!”:

Having said that, why is it OK  to profile, stereotype, to pass judgement on someone, solely because of their gender, and the statistical likelihood that someone, due to their gender, would cause harm to your daughters, if that specific person has given you no reason to see them a a threat?

Everyone stereotypes, especially when A) the stakes are too high to be wrong; and B) it’s unlikely the “recipient” of our stereotyping will ever know what we’re thinking..and if they do, refer back to A. But we all still do it.

I get that the percentage of people who are pedophiles is disproportionately in favor of men, and any good parent isn’t going to play fast and loose with the safety of their kids, just to appear to be “fair” to a stranger. And it’s okay for women to take precautions when out jogging alone, and they come across a man who, regardless of what they’re doing, make them feel uncomfortable, because, again, disproportionate percentages. In these situations, how you feel when safety is involved legitimately trumps any other possible facts in the situation, of the feelings of the other people involved, because the stakes are too high to be wrong. Continue reading →

The Tangled Ethics Of Men, Women, Sexual Harassment,Sexual Discrimination, Romance, Common Sense, And “Vive La différence!”

/ Jack Marshall / 144 Comments

Mike Pence would not have a business dinner with Debrahlee Lorenzana. What’s wrong with him?

Many years ago I did a sexual harassment seminar for a New York law firm. Afterwards, the partner responsible for handling the firm’s EEOC and workplace matters told me that my ethics-based approach to the topic wasn’t sufficiently rigorous, since he believed that innocent contact between employees in the firm could spawn lawsuits. “I refuse to travel with female associates,” he told me. “I can’t be sure what they will think is harassment.”

“Wait,” I asked. “So because you’re afraid of being accused unjustly of sexual harassment, you engage in sexual discrimination?”

He sputtered something and left to arrange his sock drawer.

I think of this conversation often. I thought of it when Vice-President Mike Pence was reported as saying in 2002  that he never had a meal with a woman who was not his wife, and was promptly savaged for it by feminists and the news media. Because the new rules and practices of the workplace have developed amid contradictions and rigid doctrine rather than with attention to whether they were workable or not, Pence and that hypocritical lawyer years ago are both victims and victimizers. It is often impossible to know what ethical workplace conduct is.

The New York Times was happy to bash Pence for his candor as part of a requirement of membership in “the resistance,” but then, as is often the case for the schizoid paper, later competently and objectively examined the issue away from politics. A Morning Consult poll conducted for the paper  found that there is widespread fear of one-on-one situations, male-female interactions in the workplace.  About 25% think private work meetings with colleagues of the opposite sex are inappropriate. Almost 2/3  say it is prudent to be especially wary and sensitive around members of the opposite sex at work. A majority of women, and nearly half of men, say it’s unacceptable to have dinner or drinks alone with someone of the opposite sex other than their spouse. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Ferguson Settlement

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

News Item:

The parents of black teenager Michael Brown and the city of Ferguson, Missouri, have settled a lawsuit over his fatal shooting by a white city police officer in 2014, according to a court document filed on Monday. …Terms of the wrongful death settlement between Ferguson and Brown’s parents, Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden, were not disclosed. U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber approved the settlement and ordered it sealed.

“The gross settlement amount is fair and reasonable compensation for this wrongful death claim and is in the best interests of each plaintiff,” Webber wrote. Both James Knowles, the mayor of the blue-collar, largely black St. Louis suburb, and Anthony Gray, the lead attorney for Brown’s parents, declined to comment.

Wait, what?

A thorough investigation found Officer Wilson guilty of no crime, nor did the shooting appear to be the result of officer malfeasance or negligence. Brown’s parents, Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden, meanwhile, took extraordinary measures to stir up racial hatred and anti-police sentiment, not just locally but nationally, sparking deadly riots in Ferguson and elsewhere, and leading to attacks on police. They even made a human rights complaint to the United Nations, based substantially on a lie (“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”) concocted by their son’s friend and credulously reported as fact by the news media. By what theory are Brown’s parents deserving of damages from Ferguson? By agreeing to this settlement, is not Ferguson setting the precedent that any time a black suspect is shot by a white police officer, it is a wrongful death mandating damages?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Was this settlement, whatever the amount, ethical?

I’ll launch the debate by saying that the city probably had no choice but to settle, as the sooner this whole catastrophe can get in the rear view mirror the better off the city will be. In the narrow sense, then, the settlement was in the city’s best interest and the responsible course.

Long term, however, I see nothing but bad results flowing from this result. If Wilson was not wrong, then Brown was at fault. If Brown was at fault, his family should not benefit. If Ferguson paid out a significant amount when its police officer behaved reasonably, then Ferguson just set a precedent that Black Lives Matter could have authored in its dreams.

If a black victim is shot by the police, it is  racism and a wrongful death per se, whatever the facts are.

“What’s Going On Here?”: The 8th Grade’s Speaker Of The House Snub

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

It is fair to say that no primary school class of any grade level would have snubbed a Speaker of the House by boycotting a scheduled meeting with him or her ten years ago, twenty years ago or ever. That this happened last week is worth paying heed to, and worthy of careful consideration. It is another symptom of a seriously ill culture, society and democracy.

Half of the D.C. field-tripping 8th grade from South Orange Middle School, about a hundred students, rejected their photo op with Speaker Paul Ryan, and were allowed to wait in the parking lot while Ryan greeted the other half.

What’s going on here?

What’s going on here should be easy to diagnose. The vicious, anti-democratic partyism, partisan incivility and hatred that has poisoned public and private discourse that has moved the United States toward governmental paralysis and the worst societal division since the Civil War is being passed on to the next generation. Anyone who cheers this as a positive development is a lousy, unethical citizen. It’s that simple.

The snub is 100% the product of irresponsible and ignorant parents, aided and abetted by incompetent teachers, seeded by the open warfare and excessive rhetoric of political leaders, though not, ironically enough, by Paul Ryan. Ryan has always comported himself, in this office and his previous one as an ordinary House member, by traditional statesman standards. He is polite and respectful, indeed was too much so  when Joe Biden snorted, rolled his eyes, sneered and interrupted him repeatedly during the 2012 Vice-Presidential debate. Ryan is a gentleman and a professional. He has also dedicated himself to public service and the best interests of his country as he sees it, like all honest elected officials, at great personal sacrifice. As Speaker of the House, a job he did not seek but accepted because he was needed by the institution, Ryan has immense responsibility and daunting challenges. Nobody has to agree with his political views, support his initiatives, or hesitate to criticize, lobby, advocate or vote against what he does or tries to do. Every responsible and civil American, however, should respect him for serving the nation as best he can. As for children, and that is what 8th graders are, they have only one duty: be respectful to the elected leaders of their towns, states and nation. Yes, every single one of those leaders.  Children have neither the standing nor the knowledge nor the wisdom to be otherwise.

Matthew Malespina, one of the grand-standing 8th graders who waited in the bus, was interviewed by ABC about why he snubbed the Speaker of the House. “It’s not just a picture,” the indoctrinated, arrogant kid told the reporter. “It’s being associated with a person who puts his party before his country.”

Gee, I wonder where he learned that empty phrase? What do you mean by this, Michael? Members of both parties belong to them because they believe their party’s governing philosophy is in the interests of the United States. Give me an example of Ryan “putting his party before his country” that doesn’t mean “if Republicans cared about the country, they’d be Democrats.”

Explain the complexities of fixing the evident flaws of Obamacare while not creating unacceptable risks to the health care system. Tell us how you would have negotiated the ethical dilemma of either supporting your party’s Presidential candidate whom you believe to be unqualified, or risking splitting your party and giving control of the government to an opposition party that you believe is pushing the nation in dangerous and untenable directions.

Go ahead, you’re 13, you know everything. What’s your plan? Tell us how you would begin fixing the crumbling infrastructure, a multi-trillion dollar task, without raising taxes to crushing levels or pushing the national debt over the brink. Tell us how the U.S. should help its poorest citizens without making them permanent government sycophants. Tell us how society can take away money earned by corporations and wealthier citizens without destroying the incentive to innovate, take risks, create jobs.

You know nothing. It’s very likely that the parents who have been programming you know nothing as well other than party-fed talking points, but at least they are adults in a democracy, and empowered to be part of government even though our broken news media and education establishment has left them below the minimal level of civic literacy for the process to work as designed.

“The point was, ‘I don’t want to be associated with him, and his policies and what he stands for,'” said Elissa Malespina, Matthew’s mother, a smug hyper-partisan fool who undoubtedly agrees with the attitude of the Georgetown professor who refused to work out in a gym that had a member whose views she found offensive. No, Elissa: a photo is a photo, not an endorsement, just like using the gym didn’t make the professor an honorary white supremacist. But I’m sure you’ve carefully discussed the competing issues of shunning, pluralism, democracy, the political advocacy system, governmental theories, Locke, Rousseau, Jefferson, Hamilton, Burke with your impressionable son, right?

Just kidding. We know what you have been doing since November is telling your child along with anyone else who would listen that Donald Trump is an illegitimate President and anyone who supports him in any way has enlisted in Evil’s Legions, which of course includes the Republican Party and Paul Ryan. Nice work.

It is not damaging enough that progressives are trying to turn the U.S into an ideologically segregated society where citizens of varying opinions can’t work and play civilly together, and where every citizen respects the leaders chosen by our elections, as they must if democracy is to function. They are determined to spread this cultural poison to the next generation before they have the ability to think for themselves.

This is what the conduct of the South Orange Middle School’s 8th grade means, and that’s what’s going on here. It is one more ugly, harmful and perhaps permanent side effect of the “resistance”—including much of the media and Democratic Party—rejecting democratic principles and institutions because they didn’t create the results the Left wanted this time.

Now that’s putting party before country.

We Now Have Definitive Proof That Hillary Clinton Was Engaged In Blatant, Illegal Influence Peddling

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

The Office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has confirmed that Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State,  made a personal call in March 2011 to  pressure—my sourcesays says “demand”—that Bangladesh’s prime minister  restore Dr. Muhammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner, to his previous position  as chairman of the country’s most prominent microcredit bank, Grameen Bank.  The bank’s nonprofit, Grameen America, which Yunus chairs, had donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. (Gee, I wonder why.) 

There is a recent video of Hasina explaining this episode to her Parliament.

To be clear, it was illegal for Hillary Clinton to use her position and influence with the U.S. government to assist any donor to  her spouse’s charitable foundation, and if you really think it was just her spouse’s, I have a perpetual motion machine for sale that you might like. She also knew it was illegal. Federal ethics laws require government officials to recuse themselves from matters that have an impact on their family’s business. 

Federal laws prohibit bribes, too.

Yunus had been disqualified from serving in the position, but had illegally served anyway, and collected a salary,  for a decade past the statutory limit. After complaints were filed, he was terminated by order of the high Bangladesh court. So not only was Clinton delivering a political favor bought and paid for by a Clinton Foundation “donation,” she was asking the Prime Minister to break her own nation’s laws.

This is real, stinky, high-level, low-class corruption. There is no other way to describe it. Clinton was using her position with the U.S. government for personal profit, and abusing the public trust by doing the bidding of foreign nationals in exchange for cash. Moreover, you know and I know that this could not have been some weird one-off aberration due to Hillary’s interest in Bangladesh. If she did this once there, she did it in other instances. I cannot emphasize enough how serious conduct it is. It is as unethical, venal and dirty as public service gets.

This was your candidate, Democrats. This was your champion, feminists. This was your standard-bearer, liberals. This is the woman whose defeat has sent you into the maw of madness, progressives. Now what?

Hillary Clinton was unfit to serve by virtue of her conduct and her character; I said so for many months, and this is smoking gun evidence. I will be watching to see who among her supporters and cheering section has the integrity to admit it.

I admit: the story shocks even me.

Let’s see if the revelation by the Prime Minister makes the headlines in the news shows, the Times and the Post. Let’s see how the Clinton machine tries to spin it.

You know they will.

 

Aaron Hernandez And The Weird Legal Doctrine Of Abatement Ab Initio

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The predator priest, the corrupt CEO, and the murderous Patriot, all innocent because they’re dead….

Massachusetts judge Judge E. Susan Garsh ruled that the state’s law required her to vacate the 2015 murder conviction of former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez. Because Hernandez’s appeal was pending when he committed suicide in his cell, she said,  the common law doctrine known as abatement ab initio applied: a defendant’s death before an appeal erases his conviction. Prosecutors argued that Hernandez’s purpose in hanging himself on April 19 was to to void his conviction, but Judge Garsh responded that she was bound to follow state law anyway, especially since Hernandez’s motives were unknown. She had presided at the trial in which a jury found Hernandez  guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the murder of semi-professional football player Odin Lloyd.

The fact that some legal and ethical puzzles have proven unsolvable despite troubling lawyers, judges, legislators and scholars for decades (and sometimes centuries) is one of the best proofs I know for The Ethics Incompleteness Principle, which holds that no rule or principle makes sense in all circumstances, and that human beings are incapable of articulating perfect laws and rules that will work as intended in every case. Abatement ab initio is a classic example.

Abatement is the dismissal or discontinuance of a legal proceeding “for a reason unrelated to the merits of the claim.” It is available in both a civil and  criminal context. Traditionally, the death of a criminal defendant following conviction  but before an appeal can be made mandates abatement. The effect of  the doctrine is to discontinue all proceedings  and to dismiss the appeal as moot, overturn the conviction, and dismiss the indictment. The deceased defendant reverts back to his status before being charged. In the eyes of the law, he is innocent…again. Continue reading →

From The Ruddigore Fallacy Files: “60 Minutes” Seeks Sympathy For Another Deported “Good Illegal Immigrant”

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Earlier installments regarding the deportation of “good” illegal immigrants are here, here, here, and here. We are cursed to hear about these until the stars turn cold.

“60 Minutes” showed viewers the sad story of Roberto Beristain, an illegal immigrant deported to Mexico after being in the U.S. for nearly 20 years. This was part of the news media’s ongoing anti-Trump assault, as well as an effort to pull at the public’s heartstrings while paralyzing its brains.

The CBS news magazine gathered Beristain’s family and friends in Granger, Indiana so they could express their frustration that someone with no criminal record like Roberto could be separated from his wife and children, who are all citizens.

“It just feels wrong,” Kimberly Glowacki said. Michelle Craig said she voted for President Trump, but did so because he promised to deport dangerous criminals. “This is not the person he said he would deport,” she said. “The community is better “for having someone like Beristain in it.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. While the President emphasized that the nation’s passive enforcement of illegal immigration allowed dangerous criminals to enter the nation, he never suggested that “good illegal immigrants” should be allowed to break our immigration laws with impunity, as long as they became law abiding illegal citizens. What did Michelle think the wall was all about? Did she think it would somehow let good illegal immigrants in while stopping the “bad hombres”?

Beristain was as much of a border-jumper success story as the there is, a former cook and new owner of a popular Granger restaurant , “Eddie’s Steak Shed,” that employs about 20 people.  He had no criminal record in the U.S.. He entered the U.S. in 1998 illegally but had been issued a temporary work permit, Social Security number and drivers license under the Obama administration, an irresponsible policy that sent a “Illegals Welcome!” message to the world. The Trump administration, to its credit, has ended this cynical nonsense. If you are here illegally, you are subject to deportation at any time, and should be. The argument that by being a “good” illegal after you get here somehow erases the fact that you shouldn’t be here is what has been named “The Ruddigore Fallacy.” To refresh your memory: Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On Bill Maher’s Incest Joke About Ivanka Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

This is my favorite photo of Bill Maher. It captures the essence of his charm, his manners and his wit so perfectly…

Following the (much deserved and still not sufficient) criticism of Fox News’ Jesse Watters’ leering “joke” about Ivanka Trump’s handling of a microphone, HBO’s Bill Maher gave conservative critics an opportunity to trot out the  “we have standards, where are yours?” accusation against liberals when the host of “Real Time” made suggestive gestures while talking about how the First Daughter “helps” President Trump.

“What do you make of Ivanka and her efforts to sort of humanize her father?”, the comic asked guest Gabe Sherman ( a writer, book author, Fox News critic and a vocal one regarding Watters’ incivility). “We see all this misogyny at Fox News [ KABOOM!, incidentally. If there is anyone on earth other than the President more ethically estopped from accusing someone else of misogyny, it’s Maher, who flings “cunt” and “twat” at women he disagrees with and who cheered Bill Clinton’s exploitation of Monica Lewinsky on the grounds that “he works hard, and he deserves it”); we see it in Donald Trump himself. A lot of us thought, Ivanka is gonna be our saving grace.” Then, as he mimed Ivanka masturbating her father, Maher continued, “When he’s about to nuke Finland or something, she’s gonna walk into the bedroom and—”Daddy, Daddy…’Don’t do it, Daddy!”‘

This most recent vulgarity by Maher as his audience of hateful left-wing boors hooted on cue even moved the progressive tool Daily Beast to complain that “if liberals are going to castigate Donald Trump for his boorish, sexist behavior, they shouldn’t behave in a similar fashion” —a point that is too little and far too late in the case of proudly boorish, sexist Bill Maher.

Ethics Observations: Continue reading →