Government & Politics

Return To “The Odyssey”: Ethics-wise This Is All I Can Say Now, So I Guess I’m Going To Have To See The Damn Thing…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Above is Ben Shapiro’s podcast review of the movie conservative commentators and pundits declared woke and offensive long before it was released. Many also circulated false information to support their position, resulting in this Ethics Alarms post from May, which, thanks to a reminder from Ethics Alarms “gotcha!” master Neil Dorr, I returned to yesterday with a correction. All the reviews are out now, and the majority of them are raves, which doesn’t prove anything in my metaphorical book. (“The Crying Game” got raves. “Don’t Look Now!” got raves. “The Substance” got raves.) I do find Shapiro’s review above brave and encouraging, however. He’s a well known conservative activist and commentator and the creator of the Daily Wire, and still pronounced the film to be a) excellent and b) largely conservative in its perspective. Ben gets ethics bonus points for not following the herd.

Tangent: Ben does not get points for his delivery. Cowabunga, how can someone be peddling a podcast without taking the time to learn how to speak distinctly and clearly? Shapiro doesn’t open his mouth sufficiently when he speaks, he places his voice in his sinuses, and he speaks way, way too fast. I could make Ben three times as effective in a two-hour coaching session. Why doesn’t someone tell him? I found listening to his review excruciating.

But I digress. Christopher Nolan is a cult director who is intermittently daring and regarded as an auteur rather than an ideologue. His initially fame flowed from his Batman films, which posed provocative ethics scenarios. Personally, I thought “Dunkirk” was an inexcusable botch of an important historical film topic, and I haven’t forgiven him for it yet. I was still thrilled to learn that he was tackling Homer’s second-best story, however. “The Odyssey” has long been obscured by Virgil’s rip-off starring Odysseus mimic Ulysses along with stop-action films confounding “Odyssey” with the voyages of Sinbad.

Shapiro isn’t the only conservative critic to undermine the Right’s narrative that the movie is more woke propaganda: Christian Toto, the rightish Hollywood critic, also praised the movie. On the other side, several reliably progressive publications have slammed it. TIME’s critic called the movie an “eye-glazing dud of a movie.” The Economist—not that I care what that Eurocentric leftist pseudo-intellectual rag says about anything,  called Nolan’s film “a very silly adaptation of “The Odyssey”, and was particularly annoyed by the imposition of modern attitudes and conduct on the story. Anachronisms bother me too, but they are so frequent in period films that I tend to give them a pass unless they are really intrusive.

I now have enough information to make some ethics calls before I see the film. I have only paid money to see three films in a theater since Grace died, a) because I am in cash-flow hell, b) because I hate seeing movies alone and c) because seeing virtue-signaling Northern Virginia audiences wearing masks makes me crazy. I will see “The Odyssey,” however.

Ethics points:

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Is This Movie Marquee Clever, Unethical or Just Stupid? It’s Unethical, and Here’s Why…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I guess this is Ambiguous Bigotry Sunday.

Following a theme that began with this morning’s ethics quiz, we now have the viral controversy over the obnoxious Lake Aswego (Oregon) Theater and Cafe marquee for “The Odyssey.”

On social media (and elsewhere), the theater’s owners are being accused of “disgustingly blatant antisemitism” as Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer and senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute put it on “X.” I’m sorry I haven’t kept up on Lake Oswego movie theater marketing trends: apparently this one makes a habit of cheeky, politically provocative or otherwise controversial marquee messages. In February, for example, the theater’s message promoting “Melania,” the Amazon MGM documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, read, “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday.” Amazon pulled the movie from the theater, and the proprietors reacted with a “Who, us?” shrug.

That example is not irrelevant: Lake Oswego is heavily Democratic, reliably voting for Democratic candidates for all federal and state offices. The last time a Republican was favored by voters was in 2016, when it narrowly favored Republican Secretary of State candidate Dennis Richardson while the city and the state went into Hillary Clinton’s column in the Presidential race. Lake Oswego is in Oregon, one of the most fanatically progressive, Democratic and woke states in the union. 80% of Democrats, the Pew Research Center says, hold “an unfavorable view of Israel” as of June 2026, an 11-point increase from 2025.

How likely is it that the marquee in a place like Lake Oswego, was deliberately praising “the Jews” (You know, as in “the Jews made a heroic odyssey”to Canaan”) as opposed to cheekily denigrating them? Not bloody likely at all. Is the message an innocent comparison of the endless warring between Israel and Palestinians to the Trojan War? If so, then why only mention “the Jews”?

The online debate has seen a suspicious effort to deflect the real issue by arguing over whether “the Odyssey” was really before “the Jews.” Does the theater mean the actual voyage (there probably wasn’t one), or Homer’s poetic description of it? That’s not the real issue, and the debate over it is pedantic sophistry. The issue is whether the marquee is anti-Semitic, designed to appeal to anti-Semites (you know, progressives and Democrats), and cleverly composed to do so while giving the theater and fans of the smear plausible deniability.

The answers are yes, yes, and yes.

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Ethics Villains: Fordham University School of Law Professor John Pfaff and Georgia State University Professor Anthony Michael Kreis

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Has any conservative law professor—there aren’t many, but I can think of a few—ever argued that scholars, lawyers and legal commentators who advocate positions disfavored on the professor’s side of the ideological divide should be punished and “forced to recant” their stated opinion? If there has been any example of that, I must have missed it. Fordham University School of Law professor John Pfaff, however, did exactly that after the Supreme Court, in Trump v. Barbara, held that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship.

After the decision, Professor Pfaff went on BlueSky—I regard posting on that platform prima facie evidence that the poster doesn’t believe in pluralism and freedom of speech— to announce his contempt for and desire to discipline any law professor who disagreed with his obviously unchallengeable analysis of the issue, writing,

“There MUST be repercussions for the lawprofs who advanced such untenable arguments. Their behavior is — and I mean this literally, not dehumanizingly — parasitic. They exploit norms of collegiality and presumptions of integrity to advance trash. Which undermines the work of ALL of us.”

Those “untenable arguments” and “trash” were supported by four Supreme Court Justices in the minority, but never mind. The fascists of the Left believe that it is in the best interests of society to enforce “goodthink” and punish “wrongthink;” to prevent dissent and open civic discourse from threatening its power.

Pfaff was responding to similar sentiments posted by Georgia State University Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, and he’s an Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development. In his BlueSky posting, Kreis wrote that he considered it loathsome that any Justices disagreed with what he, like Pfaff, considers the only position on birthright citizenship that it is honorable and legitimate to hold:

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Ethics Quiz: The “Protected Species”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

For a sports league that few care about and fewer watch, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sure gets into a lot of ethics controversies. Take this one, for example:

The WNBA suspended Toronto Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello without pay for one game after she referred to black Atlanta Dream star Angel Reese as a “protected species” in a remark that was picked up by a hot mic during a game.

In the Dream’s 111-92 win over the Tempo last week a Toronto player had a foul called on her after an offensive rebound tussle involving Reese. As the foul call was being reviewed, Brondello yelled at the referees, “Angel…she’s a protected species!” The WNBA announced the next day that Brondello must sit out the Tempo’s next game, and won’t be paid for it, adding,”The WNBA expects all coaches and team personnel to uphold the highest standards of professionalism and respect that are fundamental to our league.”

Brondello, who is white, had issued a written apology earlier, reflexively groveling so she wouldn’t be cancelled as a racist in a league where 81% of the players are “of color.” She wrote,

“Angel, I’m sorry. Last night, in the emotion of the moment after Nyara’s injury, I used a phrase that I shouldn’t have used, and I take full responsibility for that. My frustration was with the officiating, but my words unfairly put the focus on you. I also understand that my words carried an impact beyond what I intended, particularly for Black women in our league, and I’m deeply sorry for that. I’ve spent my career competing with, coaching and learning from incredible Black women. I regret that my words caused hurt to a community I respect so deeply. I have a lot of respect for you as both a player and a person, and I sincerely apologize to you, your teammates, and the Dream organization for my comment.”

Reese, meanwhile, couldn’t resist the urge to play victim and to imply that either everyone knows that Brondello is a bigot or that white people in general think of blacks as a separate species. She piled on thusly on “X”:

Nice. What Brondello should have said about Reese was “She’s an asshole.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was it fair and responsible for the WNBA to suspend Brondello for calling a black star a “protected species”?

Zach Dean, a pan-sports commentator for Outkick, the conservative sports commentary website absorbed by Fox New, pronounced the suspension wrongful and even dangerous. He wrote in part,

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Now THIS Is An Unethical Prosecutor!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Ray County (Missouri) Prosecutor Camille Johnston, 46, had “inappropriate sexual affairs “with three men, including a defense attorney representing several criminal defendants in cases prosecuted by Ray County, and Juan David Gutierrez an illegal immigrant accused of sexually assaulting another woman.  The third unethical sexual relationship was with yet another defendant in a criminal case, and Johnston fired the employee who discovered it.

Yikes. Even the late Steven Bochco didn’t dream up a prosecutor that sex-crazed, and all of his lawyers were in perpetual heat.

Johnston’s fling with Gutierrez was her masterpiece, however. Get this: Gutierrez was being prosecuted in Ray County, but this Ray County prosecutor gave him the keys to her car so he could flee to Florida, where she joined him on her vacation!

Johnston, the filings against her state, was guilty of an “obvious appearance of a conflict of interest” —- “Appearance”???? — had “forfeited the office of prosecuting attorney.” 

Yeah, I’d say that’s fair.

As soon as Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway filed documents to remove Johnston from office, a judge approved a preliminary order suspending her. 

I don’t understand this story at all. Did the woman have a psychotic break? How can someone rise to the level of prosecutor, or for that matter pass the bar after graduating from law school, who is capable of behaving this way? Maybe she learned she has only a year to live, and decided to go out with a bang…well, several bangs I guess. I would have guessed that she was hideous or something and desperate for a date, but she’s not. My next guess would have been that she was so sexually alluring that defendants and colleagues were constantly courting her, but that isn’t evident either. How could this happen?

And yet, over the past 20 years, I have been stunned and disillusioned by the low level of professional ethics of so many prosecutors, who are supposed to maintain exemplary ethics. I suppose having sex with anyone in pants is, all in all, not as unethical as knowingly prosecuting an innocent defendant, and that ethical breach is a lot more common than going on vacation with an illegal who assaults women.

__________________

Pointer: Young Bill

Dear NPR: I Guess Your Listeners Like Being Lied To But I Don’t, So Stay The Hell Out Of My In-Box…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One way you can tell with 100% certainly brainwashed (or dishonest) progressives is if they complain about NPR and PBS losing their government funding. It is the watermark of “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” gaslighting. This morning I received an unsolicited and unwelcome exhortation in my email inbox from the propagandist above, insulting my intelligence by seeking my money by telling me…

A billion-dollar hit to our industry is enough to make any Chief Financial Officer sweat. And that’s exactly what happened to public media one year ago today, when Congress voted to eliminate federal funding.  My job as NPR’s CFO isn’t just to balance the books; it’s to protect a vital public asset. Today, I’m asking you to take action with me.

The NPR Network cannot back down on our mission because we know that millions of people rely on this trusted journalism and programming. And, I am so grateful that we don’t need to back down because supporters like you stand with us. Our strength – and our independence – has always come from you, the public. The NPR Network continues because the public decides it will. 

I can tell you firsthand: you can’t run a world-class, independent newsroom on hope. A free press doesn’t just happen.  Public media needs growing, reliable financial support to fuel essential reporting and build what’s next.  Now is the time to give. Not just for yourself, but for our collective right to know the facts. Your donation of any amount is needed. Every dollar makes a difference.

Power to the public,

Daphne Kwon

P.S. When you make a donation to support this essential public service, you declare that you value access to the facts, for all.

“Access to all the facts”!

By pure coincidence, shortly after reading that garbage I saw that Newsbusters had posted some of the transcript of NPR’s anchor A Martinez (he humbly doesn’t claim to be THE Martinez) interview Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn) regarding President Trump’s recent televised speech. Highlights, as the Axis hack repeatedly invited the Democrat to attack the President and provided no balance or skepticism whatsoever:

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Ten Ethics Points On Trump’s “Prime Time Address”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

1. The President has gotten much better at delivering speeches from a teleprompter which means that he’s worked on it, something neither George W. Bush or John McCain had the commitment and diligence to do. Trump was always better when riffing, but that led into interminable, unfocused rants, like his infamous 2024 nomination acceptance speech. Last night’s speech was, for Trump, remarkably crisp, succinct, and well-delivered.

2. As he was starting off, making the speech feel like a State of the Union message, I could see in my mind’s eye all the “lies” that the Axis fact-checkers would complain about this morning. I wish the President didn’t have to describe everything he views as an accomplishment in hyperbolic terms, as a superlative: “the best,” “the greatest,” “the biggest.” Surely he must know that the habit automatically invites skepticism: if some achievement really was the best, Trump would have a difficult time getting anyone to believe it. Isn’t there an advisor, a friend, a supporter, someone who could tell him this is a self-defeating approach?

3. My vote for the most unethical hyperbole last night: “This country was dead.”

4. The President was pointed as he brought out into the open the Deep State sabotage and the mainstream media propaganda that has hindered both of his terms. Good.

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Unethical (and Stupid) Ethics Quote of the Month: Minnesota Gov. Tim “Knucklehead” Walz

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”

—-Minnesota Governor and all-time worst major party Vice-Presidential candidate ever Tim Walz, complaining about the deportation of Tou Lue Vang, an admitted and convicted child rapist and illegal resident, after Vang was pardoned by Walz.

I first wrote about this disgusting tale here, after Walz pardoned a Laotian child-rapist who had his legal resident status revoked 20 years ago because of the conviction. Walz made it clear that his pardon was designed to foil the Administration’s deportation efforts, though there could be no serious argument that a child rapist qualifies as a “good illegal immigrant” even under pro-open borders logic that there is such a thing.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had Vang deported anyway, as he had the power to revoke his latest deportation-blocking status, and off he went: So long, farewell, Auf Wiederseh’n, goodnight!

That offensive, idiotic quote was Walz’s defense of his unethical pardon and critique of Rubio’s action. Those were supposedly rhetorical questions, but the answers are the opposite of what Walz appears to believe…which, when one considers that we are talking about the deportation of a man who had repeated sex with a 10,11,12 and 13 year old girl over four years and shrugged it off as normal in his “culture,” raises all sorts of different disturbing questions.

“Did deporting a serial child rapist make us any safer?” How could it be otherwise? “Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable?” Walz is presumably talking about Vang’s children. If by “more stable’ he means “less vulnerable to sexual abuse,” the answer to that one is also “yes.” But incredibly, Walz managed to top the idiocy and ethical obtuseness of his first two questions with his third: “Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?”

To begin with, I must mention that Walz is almost as English language-challenged as the boob who picked him as her running mate. I’m guessing he meant, “Is deporting Vang more fair and just than giving him a second chance after his one mistake?” For there is no improving on the bonkers and demonstrably false idea that it is wrong to judge people based on their worst day, when that day is sufficiently damning. That idea is irredeemable: it enshrines a rationalization to insulate wrong-doers from accountability.

Governor, let me introduce you to the the concept of signature significance. It holds that a single act can be so significant that all by itself that act stands as a legitimate basis on which to assess the character of the individual performing it. Raping a child is as convincing an example of signature significance as one could imagine. Child rapists, even those who engage in it only once (which is almost never the case) are not good people, good citizens, or good immigrants, legal or illegal. Walz’s “worst day” delusion doesn’t even apply to Vang, for he raped his young victim again and again over a four year period. That’s a lot of “worst” days. Did Walz even know whom he was pardoning?

The comment also attempts to minimize the seriousness of child rape. It isn’t as if Vang drank so much he lost control once or had a psychotic break: he sexually abused a child repeatedly. Walz’s attitude is evidently, “Okay, so he raped a little girl. Haven’t we all done things we regret?”

The man is an ethically-addled moron….and the Democratic Party nominated him to be “a heartbeat from the Presidency.” Think about that.

The non-rhetorical questions raised by Walz’s latest indefensible outburst:

  1. How did someone like this get to be a state governor?
  2. Who among his voters can defend their votes?
  3. Nick Arama writes at RedState: “Anyone who thinks like this should not only never be Vice President, but he should never hold any position that requires any kind of judgment ever.” Can there be any doubt about that assessment?
  4. Why would any thinking American trust a party that ran someone like Walz for national office, or a party that would nominate for President someone who thought this guy was an able and qualified public servant?

Ben Franklin’s Curse

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The House this week passed a measure, the Sunshine Protection Act, that would set America’s clocks to daylight saving time permanently once it clears the Senate and is signed into law by the President. The bill itself raises no ethics issues at all: it is the reactions to it and the reasons, real and alleged, for those reactions that ping ethics alarms.

The headline is tongue-in-cheek, incidentally. Most of my life I heard that Daylight Savings Time was Ben Franklin’s idea. Ben was an amazingly prolific innovator and out-of-the-box thinker, but he was not the originator of the practice, so we can neither blame him nor praise him. Another myth is that DST was implemented for the benefit of farmers. Actually, farmers have been one of the strongest opponents of DST because the factors that influence farming schedules, like dairy cattle’s readiness to be milked, are dictated by the sun, so clocks going back and forth just complicates things. In general, Retailers, sports, and tourism interests like daylight saving, while agricultural and evening-entertainment interests do not.

Personally, I just want one time in place all year, because the changeover is traumatic for me whenever it happens. I have a long list of screw-ups, missed deadlines and meetings on my record. I bet no year has ever passed without one.

Like so many policies, the Daylight Savings Time tradition has had and continues to have all manner of unintended consequences, and those are controversial too. There is some data that shows that crime and accidents are reduced by DST, but precise causation issues make such data inherently dubious. A 2017 analysis of 44 studies concluded that DST leads to electricity savings of 0.3%, but we now know, or should, we can’t trust studies because we can’t trust the reseachers who perform them. Ditto for a 2017 study in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics that estimated that “the transition into DST caused over 30 deaths at a social cost of $275 million annually,” primarily by increasing sleep deprivation. Another study claimed that hospitals see a 24% increase in heart attacks and a 6% increase in fatal crashes each year when the time changes.

President Trump has advocated permanent Daylight Savings Time, so that’s enough for the Axis of Unethical Conduct to oppose it. Predictably, the Washington Post rushed to publish “Why standard time is better for your health than daylight saving time: A proposed bill would make daylight saving time permanent. But standard time is actually better for your body, according to science.”

According to science! Even the Post’s readers tended to agree that this take was hooey. A typical reaction:

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Today’s “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Note [ADDED: A Special Rebuke To A Banned Commenter]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The story is sad but not exactly one that should inspire much sympathy. From the AP report:

“A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said….The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi…”

Let’s be clear, now: a man was eluding law enforcement officials when he ran across a “busy road” and was hit by a truck. There are exactly two possible parties responsible for that death: the man running across the road, and the truck driver. There is nobody else to blame, and finding the truck driver responsible requires a quite stretch. Here is how the Associated Press characterizes the fatality, however:

“It was the third death in a week involving encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, following shootings in Texas and Maine…It was at least the 10th death involving encounters with immigration agents since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation campaign last year.”

That is pure deceit and indecent false framing. In cases where an individual dies at the hands of ICE agents, justifiably or not, the conduct of the agents can be fairly considered factors in the deaths. However, an individual who resists arrest and recklessly flees into the grill of a truck has not been killed by ICE, nor is ICE responsible for the death. The dead man would be alive if he obeyed law enforcement, as anyone in this country is obligated to do. He chose to run into traffic; ICE didn’t make him do that.

Never mind, though. You know we’ll be reading diatribes from the open borders fanatics that the dead man had a family, and was a respected member of the community, and he is dead because of Trump’s Gestapo. The Associated Press (and others) enable these advocates for illegal immigration with their deliberate anti-ICE and Trump Deranged spin. Naturally, other agents of pro-illegal immigration propaganda will add this death to the total that we will see repeatedly cited to show how “brutal” the enforcement of our immigration laws are.