The three Democratic members of the House of Representatives, Pappas, Hays and Gluesenkamp Perez, had the courage and integrity to join Republicans in a successful effort to censure “Squad” Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., for pulling the Cannon House Office Building’s fire alarm in September and, by extension, lying about it outrageously. Earning half-Ethics Hero status were Democratic Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, Glenn Ivey of Maryland, and Deborah Ross of North Carolina, who all voted “present,” helping the Republican motion for censure to succeed. Although he should have been forced to resign, at least this was a public rebuke of Bowman making him the only the 27th lawmaker to be censured by the House out of thousands in four centuries.
That more Democrats couldn’t put aside party loyalty and their blind enabling of inexcusable conduct that violated both the law and House ethics rules is one more black mark on the party’s recent ethics record. Typically and nauseatingly, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. described Michigan GOP Rep. Lisa McClain’s censure motion this way: “We’re all on the House floor wasting time talking about fire alarms. Not the economy, not inflation, not affordable housing, not lowering costs, not the gun violence epidemic that continues to claim the lives of our young people all across America.” What a jerk.
The issue was not “fire alarms” but the ethical duties of members as high elected officials, representatives of their districts, lawmakers and exemplars of law-abiding conduct. Jeffries should have been leading the effort to rebuke Bowman. Leaders like him are why Bowman felt secure in behaving as he did.
Glenn Loury, is an economist, academic, and author who holds the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. Since he is tenured, Loury doesn’t feel constrained by the lock-step ideological conformity so many of his race (he’s black) hew to in the wake of the George Floyd Freakout. In his latest newsletter on substack, Loury writes in part,
Poetic truth “thri[ves] more by coercion than reason,” accusing all who dispute it of complicity with the ineradicably racist system that governs and has always governed the country.
That Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown is one such poetic truth; that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd is, I believe, another. Despite the aptness of Steele’s term, poetic truth is no truth at all, nor is it particularly poetic. It is power masquerading as fact, brute force in the guise of knowledge. The cities that burned across the country following Floyd’s death were expressions of such a truth, as was the incarceration of the police officers convicted of a crime they did not commit. The scramble toimplement race-based policies and quotas, to elevate self-appointed gurus of “antiracism,” and to proclaim, against all evidence, the unreconstructed nature of American society were all tendrils of the same truth, which still threatens to assert itself whenever an incident emerges that fits its preferred pattern.
The cost in life, limb, and property incurred by this particular poetic truth would be bad enough. But I fear that, in the aftermath, when the embers have cooled and Chauvin’s name has been forgotten by everyone save his family, the true danger of the poetic truth of George Floyd will come to fruition.
Later in the piece, Loury quotes John McWhorter, the New York Times pundit: Continue reading →
Hello everybody! Welcome to “Whose the Dictator?” the popular ethics game show! Welcome panel! And here’s today’s challenge…
You see before you two Presidents: one, Joe Biden, a Democrat and current residence of the White House. Next to him is Donald Trump, previously President, and currently seeking to be the candidate of the Republican Party for his old job in 2024. Currently, the mainstream media is calling Mt. Trump an aspiring dictator, based on banter with Sean Hannity at a Fox News town hall. Here’s CBS’s report…as you know, CBS is the most trusted name in news, being the network that gave us Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, and Dan…never mind, let’s stop at Walter:
Former President Donald Trump said Tuesday in Fox News Town Hall that he would not be a dictator “except for Day One” if he is elected to the presidency next year.
In a taped town hall with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity in Iowa, the former president was asked whether he would use the presidency to “abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people” several times.
“You are promising America tonight you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked.
“Except for Day One,” Trump said.
When asked to clarify, Trump said he would use the presidency to close the border and increase oil drilling in the U.S.
“That is not retribution,” Hannity said.
“I love this guy. He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said, ‘No, no, no. Other than Day One.’ We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator,” Trump said.
The Biden campaign immediately pounced on the comments in a campaign email and posted a clip of the exchange to X.
“Donald Trump has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s reelected and tonight he said he will be a dictator on day one. Americans should believe him,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said.
The report didn’t bore anyone by discussing why “drilling, drilling, drilling” suggests dictatorial conduct or aspirations, or what the statutory authority is for the President closing the border legally and constitutionally, but, as you know, panel, the American voter is already fully cognizant of and sophisticated in its knowledge of these things, thoroughly educated on the President’s role in constitutional government and the limits of Presidential power thanks to the excellent training in civics that our public school system provides. Besides, everyone knows what Trump is like and what his real motives are, right?
Following pressure from stockholders, AT&T reluctantly produced a report comparing its campaign contributions to its stated (woke, naturally) “values.” Surprise! While publicly proclaiming its left-approved virtues, the company gave millions to politicians holding opposing views.
From 2018 to 2021, AT&T donated at least $574,500 to the politicians who crafted and passed Texas’s voting reform legislation and at least $99,700 to Georgia Republicans who helped pass the law Joe Biden called “Jim Crow on steroids.” Now, neither law was actually a restriction on the right to vote, but the company has pandered to progressives who believe both laws are, posturing as an ardent supporter of “voting rights” as defined by the Left. This is a deceitful metaphorical tightrope to walk.
In AT&T’s 2020 Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Report, CEO John Stankey said one of the company’s “core values” was “gender equity and the empowerment of women.” Most women interpret that to mean support for Roe-style abortion rights, but from 2018 to 2021, AT&T donated $301,000 to the sponsors of Texas’ restrictive abortion law, and after it was passed an signed, gave $50,000 directly from its corporate treasury to the Texas Senate Republican Caucus which unanimously voted in favor of the abortion regulations, and $30,000 to House Speaker Dade Phelan (R), a champion of the bill.
In 2022, the majority of members of Congress given donations by AT&T opposed the “Dream Act,” though the company had previously proclaimed its support for the illegal immigration-supporting measure.
I can’t avoid it this time: the episode comes too close on the metaphorical heels of Curmie’s examination of biased and misleading reporting (here and here) and the post about the desperate AUC (the Axis of Unethical Conduct) settling on declaring Trump an American Hitler as its best shot at keeping him out of the White House if they fail at “locking him up.”
What happened next was so similar to what was described in my post that it’s almost comical. In an Iowa town hall with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump was asked about the current scare-mongering narrative that he was going to be a dictator. Trump, who apparently can’t stop himself from trolling, said,
“He says, you’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said no, no, no — other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling (for oil). After that I’m not a dictator.”
And how was that quote relayed on multiple outlets? “Trump says he’ll be a dictator from Day One.” See? He admits it!Aaron Rupar, the same shameless hack I mentioned in the earlier post, tweeted, “Trump admits he plans to do some dictatorial things on “day one” of his second term.” Rupar’s a dishonest asshole, but he’s not stupid. He knows that what Trump was describing isn’t “dictatorial,” but he exploited, as usual, Trump’s inflammatory language.
The executive branch has statutory power to close borders under certain circumstances. If Trump used that power, it wouldn’t be “dictatorial,” it would be legal and backed by democratically- determined laws. If the President doesn’t have statutory power to do something, he can’t do it. As for “drilling”: all Trump can do is lift Biden’s executive orders blocking drilling. The measures he’d be eliminating were no less “dictatorial” than his orders cancelling them. The President can’t order private companies to drill (or else what, shoot the executives?). So once againTrump was being careless in his rhetoric, thus throwing raw meat for his foes in the media and the Trump-Deranged to freak out over. And, of course, they took the bait.
Trump enjoys doing this, even though it fuels the hysterical and biased coverage of everything he says or does, even though it increases political divisions in our society. He’s having fun giving the news media what it wants, and they have no scruples or restraint either. The rest of the country are victims.
We have almost a year of this to go. Isn’t that great?
The title for this two-part edition of Curmie’s Conjectures refers to a song by the Irish punk band the Boomtown Rats, “Don’t Believe What You Read,” which includes not only the title admonition but also lines like “I know most what I read will be a lot of lies / But you learn really fast to read between the lines.”Part I of this exercise attempted to suggest something of the parameters of the problem. As Jack suggested in his introduction to that piece, it’s not an exhaustive list of the various forms of journalistic chicanery, but I hope it served as a representative sample.
Here in Part II, I’ll attempt the daunting task of examining strategies to “read between the lines” and come at least a little closer to the truth of what happened in a given situation. So, what to do? How do we determine if that less-than-objective source we’re reading actually has this one story right, especially if it’s the only source about a particular story? Boy, do I wish there was an easy answer to this one. That said…
The most effective means of ascertaining the truth, of course, is to get different perspectives on the issue. I think I’ve mentioned both here and on my own blog that when I was in England doing my MA (at the time “Don’t Believe What You Read” was released, as it happens), I’d alternate between reading the Telegraph, which leaned right, and the Guardian, which leaned left. If the former said “X but Y,” thereby suggesting that Y was the more important point, the latter would likely say “Y but X.” But whichever paper you read, you’d know that X and Y, though perhaps seemingly in opposition, were both true, and both worth knowing about.
Of course, both the Telegraph and the Guardian were, whatever their political perspectives, both reputable news sources. That’s a statement that would be difficult to make about many of the most prominent news media in this country in the 2020s. Equally importantly, as suggested in Part I, the problem is often that we hear only from one perspective.
There are three possibilities for why this should occur. One, which is (alas!) probably the least likely, is that both X and Y editors make an honest decision that a story is or is not newsworthy. Or X media outlet knowingly runs with a story that is either grossly distorted or fabricated altogether. Or outlet Y, knowing the story casts their team in an unfavorable light, ignores it, hoping it will just go away. At some point it becomes untenable to try to ferret out the true motives; the truth of the story may be a little easier to discern, although there are no guarantees.
[I am particularly grateful for this installment of Curmie’s Conjectures because it assuages my guilt a bit. As longtime readers here know, I occasionally promise posts that never show up, or do, but so long after the promise that it’s embarrassing. Years ago, I promised a post defining and examining all journalistic tricks that I classify as “fake news,” and I use the term broadly to include misleading headlines, burying the lede, omitting key information thatundermines the writer’s agenda, poisoning the well and other techniques. I started the thing, got frustrated and overwhelmed, and never finished it. Here Curmie doesn’t exactly present what I intended, but he touches on much of it, and as an extra bonus, he wrote it more elegantly than I would have (as usual). JM.]
I doubt that this blog has ever before turned to punk rock for ethics advice, but Boomtown Rats composer/frontman (and Live Aid impresario) Bob Geldof had it right in a song that’s probably more relevant today than it was 40+ years ago: “Don’t Believe What You Read.” Well, not uncritically, at least. At our host’s suggestion, I’m about to enter the fraught territory of trying to decide if a story published by an obviously biased media outlet might, this time, just be accurate.
It’s difficult of late to find a news source that only leans in one direction or the other, rather than proselytizing for the cause. The news networks and major newspapers have carved out their market shares based on feeding their viewers and readers what they want to be fed. Whether the advent of Fox News was a trigger or a reaction is up to individual interpretation, but there’s absolutely no doubt that we’re now in an era in which news as reported is determined largely by editorial positioning, rather than the other way around.
It’s inevitable that, to steal a line from another of my favorite musicians, Paul Simon, “a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.” Fighting our own biases is not made easier by the knowledge that learning from experience and confirmation bias are opposite sides of the same coin. If a story appears only on Fox News and the Drudge Report, or only on AlterNet and MSNBC, there’s an excellent chance that the indignation is feigned and the actual events are something of a nothing-burger.
But “usually” is not “always.” As a society, we’re well aware of the tale of the boy who cried wolf and the miraculous last-second basket from well past half-court. We nod and smile at the suggestion that stopped clocks are right twice a day.
There are a few variations on the theme of biased journalism. The first, editorializing in a news story, is generally the easiest to spot and the easiest to counteract. If there are words like “communist,” “Nazi,” or “un-American” to describe a US politician, or phrases like “unborn children” or “reproductive freedom,” you’re reading an editorial, whether the article identifies itself as such or not. There’s nothing wrong with editorializing; it’s what I do here and on my own blog, after all. But I also try to not to suggest that what I write is completely objective.
Another variation on the theme, and a personal pet peeve, is what I call a Schrödinger sentence, because it is simultaneously true and not true. For example, I’ve seen a whole lot of conservative commentary on this blog that “progressives want X.” (“X” in this context, of course, has nothing to do with what Elon Musk renamed Twitter.) True, there are enough progressives who advocate for X to make the noun plural, but I’m a progressive, and I’m a big fan of not-X. The implication—or, rather, one possible implication—of the sentence is that in order to be a progressive, one must want X. That is no more true than suggesting that all conservatives believe in Jewish space lasers. And I really resent being told what I believe.
In the latest “Dr. Who” adventure on the BBC (if you don’t know about this long-running cult scifi show, google it), Sir Isaac Newton is played by an actor of Indian heritage:
This raises several issues, most of which Ethics Alarms has delved into before:
1. Does it matter? As Curmie declared in his Comment of the Day regarding my post about another BBC production in which Anne Boleyn was played by a black actress…yes, it does, but it depends on the context and the objective of the casting. The major consideration in any non-traditional casting is whether it works, meaning that the casting isn’t distracting, that it adds something to the work beyond being just a gimmick. (The black Anne Boleyn was a gimmick.) In Curmie’s opinion, almost nobody was likely to see the black actress in the role and think, ““I didn’t know Anne Boleyn was black.” I am less certain of that assumption in the case of a brown Isaac Newton.
Ethics duncery, abuse of influence, cowardice, bias…oh, lots of things.
The president of the American Bar Association, Mary Smith, leaped onto the careering Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck on behalf of the organization she leads, issuing a statement two days after the October 7 terrorist attack on music festival attendees in Israel that said,
“The American Bar Association unequivocally condemns the attacks of Hamas on Israeli citizens that have killed hundreds. The kidnapping of helpless civilians by Hamas—including women and children abducted at gunpoint—for use in Gaza as hostages and human shields violates international laws. Brutal attacks on civilians are never a solution to disputes or a justifiable way to air grievances. Israel and the Palestinians have had long-running disagreements and differences, but that in no way justifies the actions of Hamas. The state of Israel has the right to exist, and its citizens are entitled to live in safety and peace. The ABA calls on both sides to show restraint to spare the lives of the innocent people caught up in these attacks. The ABA also calls for all hostages to be released and for all parties to stop hostilities and settle their disputes in a peaceful and legal fashion and with the rule of law.”
For a lawyer (and the supposedly most prestigious lawyer organization), that’s an astoundingly self-contradictory statement. Despite giving lip service to the obvious definition of a terror attack on civilians as unjustifiable, the statement goes on to claim that Israel has no right to respond to the attack as an act of war, calling for a “peaceful solution” while implying that any armed response will breach “the rule of law.” Then she struck again on October 17, writing that the ABA,
Last month, actress Susan Sarandon became a deserving casualty of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck after she spoke at at a pro-Palestinian rally and said that American Jews feeling threatened by the pro-Hamas protesters, demonstrators and rioters (like the Cornell students who had to hide in their dorms)were “getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence.” This epically stupid comment got her dropped by United Talent Agency, whose management is Jewish. As I noted here, “the agency concluded, probably accurately, that Sarandon’s comments diminished her value to them, and perhaps having a pro-terrorism client might deter more rational artists from seeking their aid.”
Apparently Sarandon, who has progressed through her romantic lead stage into and out of her mother role stage and now is getting grandmother parts isn’t quite ready to hang up her acting spurs, and decided that she had made a potential career-ending mistake that needed fixing. So she has now issued this apology:
Your first Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of December is…
Is her apology sincere, trustworthy, and sufficient?
Ethics Alarms 