Gender and Sex

JEB! Cheater! Unethical! DISQUALIFIED

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
The plant, overacting...

The plant, overacting…

Donald Trump was speaking  at a Jon Huntsman / The Hill “No Labels” event, a female audience member later identified as Lauren Batchelder posed as a feminist Trump antagonist. You can see the exchange in the video below…

But she was not a typical audience member; she is a paid staffer of a  GOP Senator and a volunteer for the Jeb Bush campaign, as a recent tweet demonstrated.

NH 6

The news media, looking desperately for someone to embarrass Trump, began framing the narrative an a pro-choice audience member who “Trumped Trump.”

A little research, however, showed that Lauren Batchelder is a current staffer for pro-life Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH),  and is currently also working in New Hampshire as a volunteer for the Jeb Bush campiagn.  In other words, she was a plant, she was misrepresenting herself, and this was a contrived cheat to mislead the American people while undermining Trump for the benefit of Jeb Bush.  Batchelder, like any good conspirator, tried to cover up,  deleting her tracks on social media.   The Last Refuge, however, preserved some:

[LinkedIn Profile HERE] [Twitter HERE] [Instagram HERE] [ FaceBook HERE]

The Bush fallback position, not surprisingly, is that she was a rogue staffer, acting on her own. The campaign’s words, however, were more focused on changing the subject. Allie Brandenburger, a spokeswoman for Bush’s campaign, said Batchelder is not a paid staff member ( OK, she’s a volunteer, a distinction without a difference) and attended the convention on her own (or so he claimed), but then immediately tried to change the subject, saying  in an e-mail,  “We can’t help but notice Mr. Trump does seem to be very sensitive about being challenged by women.”

Yes, we understand; That’s why you set this up. This was obviously a talking point, since Tim Miller, Bush’s spokesman, tweeted nearly the exact same thing, saying, “For what its worth, Lauren is not a Jeb staffer but the Jeb staff is amused by how sensitive Donald is to being challenged by women.”

Funny, I’m not amused. At best, Bush, Ayotte and the Republican establishment failed to properly train and supervise a staffer and volunteer sufficiently. More likely, she was given signals, like the IRS was in its illegal sabotage of Tea Party groups, that encouraged her to engage in unethical conduct. Most likely, it was a Nixonian dirty trick by a desperate, flailing, failing candidate. Unless Bush can prove that it was a case of negligent management on his part, and that proof cannot consist of Batchelder falling on her sword, and apologize appropriately to Trump and the public, then we must assume that the worst explanation is the right one.

As before, I consider making Donald Trump appear to be a victim an irresponsible  and incompetent act. As of now, I consider Jeb Bush to be desperate, untrustworthy, and foolish. He has no credibility as a leader, a campaigner, or a potential President.

_________________________

Sources: Washington Post,  Last Refuge

Yoga Class Discrimination Based On Race: It’s Benign Because Gay, Non-White Progressives Are Doing It!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

 

Yoga

“War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”—I wonder how George Orwell missed “Segregation is Integration”? Maybe because that was too obviously ridiculous even for Big Brother to pull off….or so he thought.

Apparently yoga and meditation studios in multiple locales in the U.S. are running “no whites allowed” classes in the interests, say the operators, of making Eastern self-help disciplines more accessible to “people of color” [ I detest this phrase, but I’m quoting] by excluding people of less valued color—that is, whites. The New York Times just published an uncritical profile of such a place in Oakland, by a reporter who shrugged off the fact that she was refused in her request to attend a class because she was too little “of color.” Incredibly, the Times reporter just accepts the Bizarro World logic and utter hypocrisy fed to her as if it makes as much sense as “freedom is slavery” makes to poor Winston after his brain cells have been scrambled by the threat of rats eating his face.

“Specific classes at the center bar white or straight people — in order to be inclusive of some, they exclude others. Those who run the center say that the practice ultimately makes the center community more diverse…Brenda Salgado, the director of the center, said that as part of its diversity efforts, the center has four different sitting groups that meet weekly. “An L.G.B.T.Q.I. sitting group, one for people of color, a Friday open sit, open to everyone — those can fluctuate between 50 or 100, Ms. Salgado said. “We also have the Every Body Every Mind group, for people with disabilities and chronic illness.”

For all but the “open sits,” the expectation is that only people who identify with the target group will attend. (I learned as much when my request to attend People of Color Yoga was turned down.) And for open sits, organizers use a Web application to ensure that white people do not crowd out others. When the spots allotted for white people fill up, registration is capped to save spots for others.”

Oh, naturally: quotas too! Continue reading →

A Bobby Jindal Critic Asks, “Would I Be Uncivil If I Were To Suggest That Somebody Punch This Man Right In His Dick?” Why Yes, I Believe You Would…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
By all means, this should be our model for political discourse...

By all means, this should be our model for political discourse…

Gov. Bobby Jindal, desperately trying to stay relevant in the Republican race to be the party nominee in 2016, weighed in on the Oregon community college shooting with an extensive blog post that shows, if nothing else, that the Fifties live. It’s pretty awful, designating as “root causes” of the violence such Oldies but Stupidees as “glorifying violence” in popular culture (Actually, this one is closer  to 1650), movies, TV shows, music (Run, Tipper! This is your chance!) the decline of religion ( “…we flaunt the laws of God and common decency”—I think you mean “flout” there, Bobby), the decline of the family…you know the list. The problem with Jindal’s rant—other than its exaggerations, poor writing and hysterical tone— is that taking any single event and attributing it to generic causes is demagoguery, and as intellectually dishonest as  blaming the NRA every time someone is murdered with a gun.

The Huffington Post, mocking Jindal’s eminently mockable screed, asked “What about gun violence?” as if Jindal left out the one obvious “root cause.” Is it really necessary to point out that gun violence is responsible for gun violence? But that’s anti-gun code for guns, you see. Guns are responsible for the shootings. Take the evil guns away, and nobody dies! That this facile and deceitful dead end reasoning is so accepted among progressives and liberals that it is considered an obvious truth is depressing, but I digress.

Jindal is also depressing, since the only remedy for violent movies, TV shows and video games is censorship of one kind or another, and you know what the Right will do if it gets that started: TV couples will again be sleeping in twin beds like Rob and Laura Petrie by edict. His lack of logic is depressing too—how does someone like this get elected a governor?—when he attributes alleged conditions like “the family is a mess” to a rampage by someone who might have been raised like Opie Taylor but whose mind just snapped, as they have a tendency to do. Again, a single incident has specific causes. Jindal’s main argument is exactly as exploitative and dishonest as using the Oregon shooting to lobby for gun regulations that wouldn’t have stopped the shooting. Continue reading →

Fordham, Marquette and Brown Revoke Bill Cosby’s Honorary Degrees

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Good.

They want the robe back too, Cos...

They want the robe back too, Cos…

From a Brown University release last week:

“It has become clear, by his own admission in legal depositions that became public this summer, that Mr. Cosby has engaged in conduct with women that is contrary to the values of Brown and the qualities for which he was honored by the University in 1985. On Friday, September 25th, the University’s Board of Fellows held its first regularly scheduled meeting since that information became available. The Fellows deliberated and determined to revoke and rescind the honorary doctorate conferred upon Bill Cosby by Brown University.”

This was the right thing to do, and the three universities—Fordham and Marquette had beaten Brown to the dishonoring of Cosby by a few days— all deserve praise for doing it. No, this verdict isn’t inconsistent with my post condemning Disney’s decision to remove Cosby’s bust in its Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame Plaza. I made it very clear that the problem with that decision was that it involved withdrawing an honor that had nothing do with Cosby’s character, and was one that was earned and still warranted: Continue reading →

1. The NY Times Has A New Author Of “The Ethicist” And 2., Boy, Did He Ever Botch The Dilemma Of The Closeted College Student

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
"NEXT!!!"

“NEXT!!!”

The New York Times Magazine column “The Ethicist,” long authored competently by non-ethicist Randy Cohen, had lost me due to the biased and often unethical answers to his reader’s queries by his most recent successor, Chuck Klosterman. So repellent was Klosterman’s version of the column that I didn’t even notice when the Times sacked Klosterman late last year after one bizarre response too many.

[The final straw:  An inquirer  went to a Starbuck’s  wanting to buy a regular over-priced cup of coffee, but when the woman in front of the customer  ordered a pumpkin-spice latte  and received a coupon for a free drink because the shop was out of it, “NAME WITHHELD” ordered a pumpkin- spice latte to get the free coupon. Was this ethical, he/she/it asked?” Klosterman’s answer: “No. You’re a liar and a low-rent con artist. And you live in a community where pumpkin-flavored beverages are way too popular.”  Now, “No” is correct, but it’s a great question, and deserving of a serious analysis rather than whatever that was from the ex-Ethicist. The coupon was a nice gesture to someone who had come to the Starbuck’s wanting a specific beverage and was disappointed—a store should not be tantalizing customers with products they don’t have to sell, essentially setting up a bait and switch. The coupon was an ethical “We’re sorry,” but also made the employee vulnerable to anyone who decided to misrepresent his real intent in order to get a free drink later. Yes, taking advantage of this opportunity to the detriment of the store is unethical, because the inquirer took an appropriate gesture clearly intended for a specific situation and exploited it. It was not illegal, however, and was  not a con. I would compare it to the scenario where a computer glitch has resulted in an airline selling tickets online for absurdly small amounts, and travelers rush to take advantage, rationalizing that mistake or not, the opportunity is there and they can legally grab it.]

Now the Times has a new author of “The Ethicist,” after experimenting with a new format in which a podcast including him and some other commentators hashed over ethics hypotheticals and then the podcast was transcribed and published in the Sunday Times magazine. He is Kwame Anthony Appiah, who teaches philosophy at N.Y.U.  This week Appiah’s  first solo, so I would normally say that it’s too early for any fair assessment, but boy, did he ever botch the September 2 podcast. He botched it so badly that I can’t see myself paying much attention to anything else he writes. It was an ethics disaster.

A college student asked if he could ethically lie to his anti-gay father about his sexual orientation so Dad would keep paying the student’s tuition. The father is suspicious based on some clues during his son’s high school days, and has made it very clear to his son that if he is gay, he would not only withdraw all financial support but also reject him entirely. “Questions about my sexuality are inevitable whenever I come home,” the inquirer wrote. “My father has demanded I produce archives of all emails and text messages for him to review, although I have successfully refused these requests on the grounds that he has no claim to my adult communications.”

He asks, “Is it ethical for me to continue accepting financial support for my education and my career that will come from it? Could I continue to lie to accept the support and one day disclose my sexuality and pay him back to absolve myself of any ethical wrongdoing?”

The correct answer is “Of course not,” and it amazes me that anyone would think otherwise. The second part of the question is an especially easy ethics lay-up: the steal now, pay back later scheme, also known as “the involuntary loan,” or “I meant to pay it back!”, is pure rationalization, and its existence proves that the writer knows damn well that what he’s doing is wrong, and just wants someone to tell him that it’s OK.

Astoundingly, Appiah and his podcast buddies (Amy Bloom, a novelist and psychotherapist, and  Kenji Yoshino, an  N.Y.U. law professor) tell the inquirer that it is OK, because, it is clear, they are advocates for gay rights and don’t appreciate anti-gay bigots. Thus they amass nothing but rationalizations  and outright unethical arguments to justify the student’s ongoing deception. As a philosopher who knows better, Appiah should have been correcting his colleagues. Instead, he enables them, because gay advocacy trumps honesty and ethics. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Pope’s Smoking Gun”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican Ambassador, now residing under a bus...

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Vatican Ambassador, now residing under a bus…

The blatant dishonesty of Pope Francis posing as an apolitical moral authority while engaging in outright political advocacy before the U.S. Congress, as he accepted accolades from manipulative partisans who have no interest in religion but who nonetheless were delighted to exploit his influence for their own purposes, was nauseating. Nearly as nauseating was the furious attempts by Catholics as well as these Pope fans-of-convenience to spin his comments and his conduct in support of Kim Davis, and by extension, her rejection of gay Americans and the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

After several days of stonewalling, the Vatican decided on a strategy that should be familiar to anyone who follows U.S. politics: make a lesser official the scapegoat. The difference, of course, is that because this is the Pope, we are supposed to accept such standard duck-and-cover strategies as (heh) the gospel truth. I was preparing to write a post about the furious spinning going on to excuse the Pope’s inexcusable conduct when the Vatican spoke up, and Rich in Ct did an excellent job analyzing the ethics carnage.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, The Pope’s Smoking Gun. I’ll be back at the end: Continue reading →

Observations on the Great Baseball Game Sorority Selfie-Shaming Affair

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Screen-Shot-selfie girls

I was going to skip this one as too stupid even for my intrigue, but the combination of baseball, selfies, privacy, the generation gap, The Golden Rule, cultural rot…and those pictures above… is too much to resist.

In a now viral video clip, about a dozen comely members of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority attending the Arizona Diamondbacks-Colorado Rockies game this week were put on camera to serve as fodder for TV broadcasters Steve Berthiaume’s and Bob Brenly’s ridicule. The reason they were on camera is that it was an unusually attractive bevy of maidens, and that they were engaged in something that could best be called a selfie orgy. It went on and on as the announcers snickered, saying things like…

“Do you have to make faces when you take selfies?”

“Wait, one more now. Better angle. Oh, check it. Did that come out OK?”

“Here’s my first bite of the churro. Here’s my second bite of the churro.”

“That’s the best one of the 365 pictures I’ve taken of myself today!”

“Welcome to parenting in 2015!”

“Every girl in the picture is locked into her phone. Every single one is dialed in. They’re all just completely transfixed by the technology.

“‘Help us, please! Somebody help us!'”

As the internet weighed in, the girls found themselves being defended by most commentators, at least by most commentators under 40.

Observations: Continue reading →

Consider: The Fact That People Are Attacking This Ad As Sexist And Racist Is A Big Reason Donald Trump Is Leading In The Polls…

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

It’s called advertising …. to men who like looking at beautiful women.

The Horror.

If this video advocates unethical conduct, I’d appreciate someone telling me what it is. No, treating the problem of illegal immigration as a joke is not the same as arguing that it is a joke. Try again.

Thank you.

________________________

Pointer: Instapundit

Ethics Quiz: The Memories Pizza Stunt

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Memories Pizza, you will recall, rushed to let everyone know that it supported Indiana’s short-lived “Let’s discriminate against gays” law, which Pope Francis would have approved of, apparently.  The poor, naive little establishment, which was about as likely to cater a gay wedding as a White House state dinner, became the immediate target of social justice warrior bullies, who nearly succeeded in running them out of business.

On September 25, 2015, comic Robin Trevino, a member of the gay theatrical ensemble GayCo, drove to Walkerton, Indiana, bought pizzas at  Memories Pizza, , and served Memories Pizza to all the guests at his September 26, 2015 same-sex wedding reception, then released a video to alert the world that Memories Pizza had unknowingly catered a gay wedding  after all.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Was it ethical to do this?

Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Presents With Sorrow: The Worst Ethics Conflict Of All

/ Jack Marshall / 76 Comments
Dan Quinn's not a soldier any more because he disobeyed orders...and stopped a man from raping a kid in Afghanistan. War is hell.

Dan Quinn’s not a soldier any more because he disobeyed orders…and stopped a man from raping a kid in Afghanistan. War is hell.

An ethics conflict occurs when two unquestionable ethical values demand opposite results in the same situation.

An impossible ethics conflict is when the typical priorities of duty require the worst outcome.

This is an impossible ethics conflict.

Interviews and court records reveal that the American military command has ordered American soldiers and Marines not to intervene in Afghanistan when they observe Afghan military commanders and soldiers raping boys, even when the abuse occurs on military bases. The local practice is called bacha bazi, (“boy play”).  The  policy aims at avoiding conflict and maintaining good relations with the Afghan police and militia units that the United States has trained to fight the Taliban. It also embodies the theory that the U.S. should not  impose its cultural values on other nations. Pederasty is widely accepted in Afghanistan, and being surrounded by young teenagers, a.k.a. male rape victims, is mark of social status for powerful men.

Imagine how bad the Taliban must be if these are “the good guys.”

Asked via e-mail about this American military policy by the New York Times, the American command spokesman in Afghanistan, Col. Brian Tribus, replied, “Generally, allegations of child sexual abuse by Afghan military or police personnel would be a matter of domestic Afghan criminal law…there would be no express requirement that U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan report it,” with the exception of when rape is being used as a weapon of war.

Well, we certainly can’t have that. The response ducks the ethical issues entirely. Continue reading →