Gender and Sex

“Alleged” News Bias: ABC’s David Muir Joins The The Hilaria Baldwin Ethics Lionel Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Gomez-s-Train-Wreck-addams-family

All aboard!

Caught by Newbusters:  ABC’s David Muir referred to Alec Baldwin’s tweet calling Daily News reporter George Stark a “toxic little queen” as an “alleged slur,” while omitting any mention of Baldwin’s follow-up tweet announcing that the actor would “put my foot up your f–king ass, George Stark, but I’m sure you’d dig it too much.”

Alleged slur?

Baldwin’s slur isn’t alleged, it’s preserved in screen shots all over the internet. Muir’s claim that the obvious slur is only alleged can only mean “toxic little queen” in the context of an exchange alluding to the male target enjoying violent anal penetration can be reasonably interpreted as anything else. It cannot.

I didn’t notice—did ABC also refer to Paula Deen’s admitted use of the term “nigger” as an “alleged slur”? If it did, I apologize: Muir isn’t biased…he’s just an idiot, following ABC’s idiotic policy. But if it did not—-and it didn’t-–then Muir’s  effort to go easy on a fellow liberal’s bigotry is just one more of the little bits of proof of how left-biased the news media is that slips out periodically if one is objective and paying attention.

Of course, the Democrats and liberals among us who benefit from having the news slanted to support their candidates and issues only see alleged media bias when these smoking guns appear—just as Muir sees “toxic little queen” as an alleged slur.

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Pointer and Sources: Newsbusters

Graphic: Largescalecentral

 

GLAAD Joins The Hilaria Baldwin Ethics Lionel Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

model_trainwreck2

Ethics train wrecks can develop at any time, though sometimes the participants and the incidents involved limit the results to small-scale ethics damage. Let’s call these “Ethics Lionel Wrecks,” in honor of the model train sitting in a cardboard box in my basement. This week’s tale of Hilaria Baldwin’s mistimed tweets defines the genre.

The progression:

1. George Stark Starts the Train

This one began when the pregnant wife of actor/ pitchman/liberal blowhard/ bully Alec Baldwin was called out by the Daily Mail for tweeting trivial, giddy messages during the funeral of recently departed actor James Gandolfini. That would have been certifiably disrespectful conduct in the rare sub-category of Funeral Ethics; indeed Ethics Alarms certified it. The problem is that Mail reporter George Stark was wrong.

Salon explained that the error was caused by “a technical glitch on Twitter that reflected GMT instead of ET…an analysis of the source code of Hilaria Baldwin’s tweets reveals that she tweeted between 11 am and 2 pm, as opposed to 8 am to 11 am. The Daily Mail has stated that “the tweets did appear accurately timed on mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads,” but “the only way MailOnline was able to establish the REAL time the tweets were sent was by viewing the twitter web page source code, something almost no normal member of the public would ever do.”

I have no idea what the hell that means, but I was one of the people who relied on Stark’s report, which seemed convincing, with screen shots of the tweets themselves and their timestamps. Was he unethically sloppy, as Baldwin and others have claimed, or was this just an excusable mistake? Twitter is new enough that there may be some justification for not checking the source code before using the time stamp to conclude something from a tweet: I can’t determine whether there is a journalistic protocol for this at the Daily Mail or elsewhere. Before a reporter attacks the conduct of a pregnant woman at a friend’s funeral, he would presumably be obligated to be certain of his facts, since readers, like me, will assume that he was. If this really was, as Salon says, a freak Twitter glitch, then Stark was unlucky rather than unethical.

2. Ethics Alarms rides the rails Continue reading →

Blaming God For An Unfair Decision

/ Jack Marshall / 77 Comments
"Yes, I agree, Patrick; I've been thinking the same thing. Paige needs to be playing field hockey. Let it be written. Let it be done."

“Yes, I agree, Patrick; I’ve been thinking the same thing. Maddy Paige needs to be playing field hockey. Let it be written. Let it be done.”

Maddy Paige is a 12-year-old girl from Locust Grove, Georgia who was the starting defensive tackle for her sixth grade football team at Strong Rock Christian School until the school’s head, Patrick Stuart, decided that the order of the universe depended on his implementing a new policy declaring that “Middle school girls play girls’ sports and middle school boys play boys’ sports.”

For all the benefits and wisdom a conservative approach to public policy can add to society’s progress, conservatives will always erode their credibility and trustworthiness by their tendency to stubbornly insist on unjust and arbitrary rules because “that’s just the way it’s always been.” This will be the impact of  conservative opposition to gay marriage, now officially shown to be futile by the Supreme Court’s DOMA rejection yesterday on Due Process and Equal Protection grounds under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment, and it is the lesson to be harvested from Stuart’s fatuous move. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Angry Man

The other day I chanced to meet
An angry man upon the street —
A man of wrath, a man of war,
A man who truculently bore
Over his shoulder, like a lance,
A banner labeled “Tolerance.”

And when I asked him why he strode
Thus scowling down the human road,
Scowling, he answered, “I am he
Who champions total liberty —
Intolerance being, ma’am, a state
No tolerant man can tolerate.

“When I meet rogues,” he cried, “who choose
To cherish oppositional views,
Lady, like this, and in this manner,
I lay about me with my banner
Till they cry mercy, ma’am.” His blows
Rained proudly on prospective foes.

Fearful, I turned and left him there
Still muttering, as he thrashed the air,
“Let the Intolerant beware!”

— Poet Phyllis McGinley, quoted in the comment thread on the Volokh Conspiracy’s post about the Supreme Court decision this week in Glowicki vs. Howell Public School District. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Judgmental Judge

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments
"I'm sorry, Miss McBeal, would you repeat that? I lost my train of thought..."

“I’m sorry, Miss McBeal, would you repeat that? I lost my train of thought…”

Circuit Judge Royce Taylor in Murfreesboro, Tennessee is being excoriated by some as being sexist or at least presumptuous for daring to broach the topic of attorney attire in the courtroom, specifically female attorney attire. In a memo, he noted that the topic had arisen in recent Bench/Bar Committee meeting, and wrote,

“The unanimous opinion was that the women attorneys were not being held to the same standard as the men. It was requested that the judges require all attorneys to dress professionally. I have advised some women attorneys that a jacket with sleeves below the elbow is appropriate or a professional dress equivalent.”

What? An elderly male judge presuming to tell female professionals what they should or shouldn’t wear?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz:

Is it fair and respectful for judges to require female lawyers to adopt the same dress standards as male lawyers in the courtroom? Continue reading →

The Deadliest Rationalization Of All?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

woodys excuse

All rationalizations can be deadly and have been. History and human nature teach us, however, that “Woody’s Excuse,” #22 on the Ethics Alarms Rationalization list, can hold its own with any of them when it comes to tallying up pain, ruined lives, and death. This is “The heart wants what the heart wants,” the comedian, actor and acclaimed director’s personal pass for his seducing and marrying a girl who was, in essence, his adopted daughter.

Today the Washington Post carries the grim final act of a story so terrible that it crosses into the realm of black humor. A veteran Labor Department lawyer, married, with an impeccable record, was found dead in his cell after being arrested and charged with violently attacking a co-worker with whom he had become infatuated. The story is full of weird U-turns of phrase; for example, the judge called the lawyer, charged last week with first-degree burglary while armed and third-degree sexual assault relating to the June 5 attack, a “wonderful person in most respects”—-that is, “most respects” beside the implications of his breaking into a woman’s home, punching her in the face (or spraying her with mace,) then trying to incapacitate  her with a stun gun, handcuffing her hands behind her back and knocking her to the floor. The victim was so badly injured that a plate had to be surgically implanted in her face.

Other than that, Judge, you’re right: he was a hell of a guy. Continue reading →

Emmy Ethics: Honoring Elmo, Or Honoring A Child Molester?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

kevin-clash1

I am assuming, based on the fact that this story was featured on the conservative muckraking website Brietbart, that some people think it is inappropriate to award three Daytime Emmys for children’s programming to Kevin Clash, the Muppets puppeteer whose career as fuzzy red monster Elmo on Sesame Street ended with a series of child molestation accusations.

If I am right, these people are dead wrong. Clash is an artist, and a talented one. Whether or not the allegations of his having illicit contact with under-aged boys are true, and none have been tested in court, his skill in manipulating and voicing the cutest and most vulnerable of the Muppets is beyond debate. The Emmy has never been nor claimed to be a character award. An Emmy recognizes excellence in television, in this case children’s programming, and it doesn’t make a smidgeon of difference if an artist is a child molester, a bank robber, a cannibal, a Nazi or a Billy Ray Cyrus fan—if he or she delivered the best artistic product, the honor is deserved.

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Spark, Facts and Graphic: Breitbart

Hold On, Taylor Bigler: First Get Into A Bikini And Answer The Question, THEN We’ll Discuss Whether It’s Fair To Mock Miss Utah

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
By all means, her views on social policy should determine her place in the MIss USA competition...

By all means, Miss Utah’s views on social policy should determine her place in the Miss USA competition…

Every year some columnist or internet wag attempts to perpetuate the dumb bimbo stereotype and get cheap laughs in the process by calling attention to a beauty pageant contestant’s incoherent or fatuous answer to a question in the interview round. On rare occasions, the ridiculed response is jaw-dropping and genuinely funny, appropriately triggering fears that “Idiocracy” is upon us. However, the nonsensical curvy-contestent answer flagged by Daily Caller entertainment editor Taylor Bigler had a perfectly good excuse: the question was impossible to answer. Continue reading →

Actor Patrick Stewart (“Captain Picard”) Is A Father’s Day Ethics Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The video is self-explanatory.

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Pointer: Alexander Cheezem

 

 

 

And The Jumbo, Desperately Incredible Excuse Division, Goes To….Rodger William Kelly!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Clockwise from Left: "These aren't my pants!"..."A ghost did it!"..."I was just trying to revive her!"..."Elephant? What elephant?"

Clockwise from Left: “These aren’t my pants!”…”A ghost did it!”…”I was just trying to revive her!”…”Elephant? What elephant?”

There is no question that Rodger William Kelly deserves his Jumbo Award, the Ethics Alarms honor periodically bestowed on “an ethical miscreant who continues to try to brass his or her way out of an obvious act of ethical misconduct when caught red-handed and there is no hope of ducking the consequences.” But there is a legitimate issue over whether his explanation to the  St. George, Utah police regarding why he had sexual intercourse with his unconscious, 29-year-old female neighbor becomes the new champion as the most ridiculous excuse ever.

To refresh you memory, the current champ is Michael West, the Wisconsin wife-beater who swore to police that his bruised and bloody wife had been attacked by a ghost. He dethroned long-time champ Lindsay Lohan, who began her long, sad descent by explaining to police, when she was still a movie star and caught with cocaine on her person after a vehicle arrest, that she was wearing someone else’s pants. 

I think West’s short reign is over, however. Kelly told officers that he found the woman passed out in front of her apartment and, concerned for her welfare, he brought her inside his own apartment. There he changed her clothes and put her on his bed, and tried to “warm her” by laying down next to her, hugging her, and then, as a desperate measure since nothing seemed to be working, inserting his heat-emitting penis into her to try to “raise her temperature.”  Later he tried more conventional CPR. He’s not a rapist. He’s a hero! Continue reading →