Government & Politics

Museum Ethics: The Draft-Dodging Playboy and the Wright Bros. Plane

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The old TV show “Naked City” used to intone at the end of every episode, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” There are far more than eight million ethics stories in our country’s rich and surprising history. This is one of those, and I pass it along to you.

The Franklin Institute, a museum in Philadelphia inspired by the work of Ben Franklin and dedicated to the study of science, exhibits a plane built in 1911 by the Wright brothers. It was, they say, a gift from Grover C. Bergdoll, a strange man with a strange history who was once an infamous national figure but who is now forgotten.

He was a wealthy playboy who was heir to  a Philadelphia beer brewing fortune. He dodged the Great War draft in 1917, failing to report for military service. He was already known for his irresponsible conduct, taking flying lessons from Orville Wright and buying a plane from the Wright brothers that he used to buzz buildings among other stunts. He had  multiple accidents and traffic violations in automobile as a teenager, and served two months in jail after a head-on crash in 1913. Since he was rich and well known, the government decided to an example of him to discourage draft-dodgers, It  distributing wanted posters with his face and name, and when the soldier who supposedly was drafted to take Bergdoll’s place died in combat,  the New York had a front page headline, “Died Hero in Battle in Bergdoll’s Place.”

The story gets stranger. Bergdoll was finally captured in 1920 after an ongoing manhunt, and sentenced to prison for five years. He escaped after less than a year. He convinced authorities to temporarily release him from prison to  help them find a “pot of gold” that he claimed to have buried. Bergdahl escaped while his two U.S. Army escorts became distracted (they were playing pool at his family mansion), fleeing in his chauffeur-driven car to Canada, from which he travelled to Germany. He married there, but often returned secretly to the United States. Reported sightings of Grover were headlines news.

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Unethical Tweet Of The Week: President-Elect Donald Trump (Sigh!)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I didn’t see this until I had already put up the previous post about “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks.” If I had, it would have been included. Above all else, the tweet is stupid.

I know, I know…this may be Julie Principle territory. Still, the conduct of the President of the United States is always of special significance, so I am loathe to declare before the second roller-coaster Trump term begins that he will be given an Ethics Alarms pass for the inevitable social media outbursts to come. What is so discouraging, not to mention unethical, about Trump’s Thanksgiving Day tweet is that it shows, again unfortunately, that our soon-to-be 47th President has a flat learning curve, at least in the area of public statements.

There is no reason for Trump to issue a back-handed  “Happy Thanksgiving” message, and so many reason not to. He certainly knows that somehow managing to at least alleviate the toxic partisan divisions in America is not only an important task he must face and treat seriously, but also essential to the success of his administration. Trump Derangement is also approaching national health emergency status. What ethical objective can a tweet like that possibly accomplish? The answer is, I hope all can agree, none. Well, none except making Trump feel good. How juvenile and self-indulgent, in addition to selfish. The tweet is essentially gloating, a “Nyah, nyah, nyah!” to his foes. All it does is make them angrier, more hateful, more irrational, and more convinced that all Trump wants to do is inflict revenge on “Radical Left Lunatics.” The substantive goals he has claimed to be seeking will require his full attention; there is no time for such pettiness.

Yet there is it. No self-control, no hint of appropriate priorities, no sense of “I could tweet this, but it would be wrong.” No nation will be respected whose elected leader behaves that way.

 

Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks [Repaired]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“It’s The Great Stupid, Charlie Brown!”

1. I saw that meme on Facebook today. Is that the kind of misinformation social media platforms are supposed to censor, or is there value in learning that one’s Facebook friend is a moron?

2. On today’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast on NBC, three separate hosts mispronounced “Rockettes.” One called them the “Rockets,” another said “Rockeets,” and a third said “ROCK-ettes, with the accent on the first syllable. The Radio City Music Hall iconic kick-line dancers have been part of the parade for decades, and NBC has had broadcast rights for the event all year. Yet their “journalists” couldn’t bother to check to see what the perennial act is called? (Or learn to read?)

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Ethics Observations On The 2024 Presidential Election Spin

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The facts: As of this date, Trump has about a 1.5% edge in the popular vote, and a decisive win, 312 to 226 over Harris in the Electoral College. By any analysis, it was a very close election. A single percentage point of votes flipping would have given Harris the popular vote lead, though her winning the Electoral College would have required pinpoint distribution of those votes.

What is a fair and ethical interpretation of this? Who’s lying, spinning, exaggerating or telling it like it is?

1. Today stories came out about Harris’s staff saying that internal polls showed her behind Trump from the start, and that they knew everything would have to break right for her to win. This in part is the campaign ducking responsibility: if Harris lost by only 1.5%, obviously she could have won. They are saying, absurdly, “It wasn’t our fault, the deck was stacked against us!” Harris ran a terrible campaign, and still came close. If she had run a better campaign, and got better advice (that she paid dearly for) that 1.5% would have been within reach. If she had competently answered a soft-ball question she got on “The View,” for heaven’s sake, that might have been enough. Or if she had agreed to the interview with Joe Rogan (and not fallen flat on her face, which is a big if). If she had not chosen The Knucklehead as her running mate. Any of these might have allowed Harris to prevail despite everything else.

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‘Nah, There’s No Deep State!’ Res Ipsa Loquitur At The State Dept. Proves Otherwise

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Among the many dishonest arguments that have been flying around in the mainstream media, that is, the Democratic Party’s “Get Trump!” propaganda arm, is that the efforts of the incoming administration to clear government bureaucracies of untrustworthy lifetime workers is inherently sinister. After all, we are told, these are virtuous, experienced, ethical and non-partisan specialists in their fields who show their patriotism by working for every President with equal verve, cooperation and the determination to follow the will of the people. That’s a lie, and the previous Trump administration showed us (and Trump of course) how much of a lie it is.

Nonetheless, the news media continues to advance the myth. Why? Because they want an entrenched progressive Deep State to undermine conservative policies and Republican Presidents, especially Trump. That’s why.

We have Representative Darrell Issa to thank for blowing a whistle on recent flagrant evidence of the Deep State at, appropriately enough, the State Department.

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Why American Journalism Is Ethically Clueless And Doomed In One Rant….

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I wish I could find a video of Axios CEO Jim VandeHei‘s embarrassing rant at the recent National Press Club gala that wasn’t tricked up like this one, but it’s sufficient to make the point. Naturally, Axios called the thing “inspired” and the assembled hack propagandists at the Press Club applauded like seals. He passionately defended “fearless reporting,” meaning with no fear of accountability. “Everything we do is under fire!” he warned. Yes. That’s because what you do so often is destructive, reckless, incompetent and biased. It should be under fire.

“I hate this damn debate about,‘ Oh, we don’t need the media,’ he said last week night as VanderHei and co-founder Mike Allen accepted the Fourth Estate Award for “lifetime achievement.” “It’s not true!”

Let me explain, Jim: we don’t need the unethical, arrogant media we’re currently stuck with, which is untrustworthy and dangerous. “But at the core of that is maybe transparency, maybe a free press, maybe the ability to do your job without worrying about going to jail, maybe the ability to sit in a war zone and tell people what’s actually happening!” Oh, bite me.

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Paging Moral Luck! Paging Moral Luck!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Judge S. Kato Crews, a progressive appointee by President Biden to the U.S. District Court in Colorado, refused to allow an injunction against the San Jose State women’s volleyball team from including a biologically male “transwoman” (above) to compete with the team in a women’s volleyball conference tournament this week. He ruled that appellate and Supreme Court precedents clearly establish that the protections of Title IX and the 14th Amendment apply to transgender individuals.

A key factor in the decision seems to be that the plaintiffs, which are the other colleges in San Jose State’s conference, a current co-captain of the San Jose team, other former players and the recently-suspended assistant coach, should have filed the suit earlier. The conference’s transgender participation policy has been in effect since 2022 and four conference opponents and one non-conference opponent forfeited games against San Jose State beginning in September.

“The rush to litigate these complex issues now over a mandatory injunction,” Crews ruled, “places too a heavy burden on the defendants”—the Mountain West Conference and its commissioner, two administrators at San Jose State, the school’s head volleyball coach and the board of trustees of the California State University System. That’s a reasonable judicial call under most circumstances, but the judge and the entire pro-trans movement in the U.S. is now at the mercy of moral luck. That is the annoying life reality that random occurrences out of the control of decision-makers have a way of retroactively defining a decision as either prudent and wise or reckless and wrong. Crews’ decision neatly tees up the perfect conditions for moral luck to settle the trans athletes in women’s sports controversy

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A Show Of Hands, Now: Who’s Shocked That A “Technology Misinformation” Expert Used A.I. Generated Fake Information?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

geewhatasurprise. But as Mastercard would say, this story is priceless.

Professor Jeff Hancock is founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, and his faculty biography states that he is “well-known for his research on how people use deception with technology.” Apparently he knows the subject very well: Hancock submitted an affidavit supporting new legislation in Minnesota that bans the use of so-called “deep fake” technology in support of a candidate (or to discredit one) in an election. Republican state Rep. Mary Franson is challenging the law in federal court as a violation of the First Amendment (which, of course, it is). But Democrats don’t like the First Amendment. Surely you know that by now.

But I digress…

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Unethical Cartoon of the Month

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is one of the times I miss our once-frequent cartoonist commenters, the apparently retired King Kool and the now completely Trump Deranged Ampersand. What a snotty, insulting, arrogant and stupid cartoon that is. I’m not sure where it cane from: my guess would be The New Yorker.

Just because the unethical assertion that voting for Donald Trump (or against the spectacularly awful Kamala Harris, the totalitarianism, censorship and anti-Semitism-supporting party she represented or the incompetent Biden administration) means you are deplorable, “garbage,” a racist, a sexist or a fascist comes in a cartoon doesn’t mitigate the vile nature of the statement. I’m sure the cartoon will be defended by the claim that it is mocking people like the speaker in the drawing.

Sure.

Whoa! “The View” Has Had To Issue 36 “Legal Notes” So Far This Year

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The imposition of “legal notes” on “The View’s” panel of bigots, incompetents, liars and fools received a lot of attention last week because there were four of them, as ABC’s lawyers were quick to force clarifications on potentially defamatory statements by Sunny Hostin and the rest of the coven. Because I don’t watch the show ( because anyone who does is risking permanent brain damage or a stroke), I assumed this was a new development. The indispensable Axis media watchdog Media Research Center, which monitors this leftist clown act so I don’t have to, reports that in fact Whoopi’s gang has had to read 36 such disclaimers so far in 2024.

The ladies of “The View” seem to think this is funny. It’s not. The fact that so much of what they bleat on this daily show, which is, incredibly, categorized as a news program on ABC, has to be corrected in real time lest the network be subject to law suits is indisputable evidence that the cast is incompetent, lazy and vicious, and that ABC is irresponsible to allow them to remain on the air.

Condign justice may be coming Disney’s way: ABC News is being sued by Trump over on-air comments made on “Good Morning America” by co-host (and Clinton-allied hack) George Stephanopoulos when he kept asking Rep. Nancy Mace to comment on how Trump had been “found liable for rape.” Trump was not found liable for rape in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll even after New York stacked the legal deck against him as part of the Democrats’ lawfare strategy. ABC’s lawyers have so far failed to get the lawsuit dismissed and it is entering the deposition phase.

Asks PJ Media columnist Rick Moran regarding “The View” panel, “Is it that they feel so entitled that the truth shouldn’t matter, or are they so stupid they think that just because they believe something, it must be so?”

I’m pretty sure the answer is “Both.”