Government & Politics

Boy, Is The Pro-Trans Mania Leading Us In Strange Places Or What? Now It Has Conservatives Accusing “The Life Of Brian” Of Not Being Bold Enough….

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Well, I sure didn’t see THIS coming.

When the Monty Python satire “The Life of Brian” was released in 1979, conservative groups, calling it blasphemous, called for protests and boycotts in the U.S. and Great Britain. Now, as two of the living and not-completely-senile members of the comedy troupe, Eric Idle and John Cleese, prepare to launch a stage version of the movie, conservatives are complaining that they aren’t willing to make the adaptation edgy enough.

In one scene that has taken on more significance lately than it seemed to have 40 years ago, a discussion between “People’s Front of Judea” members Stan (played by Idle, on the left above) and Reg (Cleese) involves Stan saying that he wants to be known as Loretta and to have babies. ‘It’s every man’s right to have babies if you want them,” Stan insists. When Reg points out that, as a man, he can’t have babies, Stan protests, “Don’t you oppress me.”

To hear conservatives describe the scene now, one would think it was the funniest scene in the film. It wasn’t even the funniest scene involving the People’s Front of Judea. But I digress: apparently after trial readings of the script for the stage version, Idle and Cleese decided that they should cut the bit.

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Ethics Dunce: Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy [Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There is no way not to take yesterday’s public warning from the nation’s top health official as ominous, indeed sinister. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy expounded on the risks of social media to children and teens, citing possible “harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” The remarkable 19-page advisory, begins by acknowledging that the effects of social media on adolescent mental health are not well understood, and even that social media can be beneficial to “some users.” It then goes on to argue ,“There are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”

And thus the U.S. Surgeon General lays the groundwork for government censorship, despite admitting that there is insufficient hard data to support his conclusions. Parental supervision is not enough for this government, as we have already seen in multiple settings. After all, “it takes a village,” the village that one side of the current culture wars is trying to define includes treating words and expression as “harm” from which people must be kept “safe.” Predictably, the near-completely compliant national news media is behind such government appropriation of parental authority, in this as well as other matters.

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The Problem Isn’t The Poem But The School And The Teachers Who Would Teach It

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Poet Amanda Gorman’s interminable poem “The Hill We Climb,” read by the poetess at Joe Biden’s Inauguration, has apparently been removed from the curriculum of elementary schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida as inappropriate for grade-schoolers. It took an objection from a single parent to get the job done, which the mainstream media thinks is significant—you know, a single complaint is enough to “ban” literature. It is significant, but not in the way they think. It is significant because it shows how few parents are actively engaged in their children’s education and properly on the look-out for political indoctrination in the schools.

The poem is inappropriate for sixth grade and under even if it were taught competently and objectively. I could see the thing being used productively in high school, for example to teach what agitprop is, how events are framed differently by various political factions, or to show what bad poetry is. Unfortunately, using “The Hill We Climb” appropriately requires a level of skill and objectivity most teachers lack, and a degree of trust today’s teaching profession doesn’t deserve.

Now here is the poem:

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Ethics Dunce: Ty Cobb (No, This Is NOT A Baseball Post)

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

That stylish-looking gentleman above is Ty Cobb III, a descendant of the iconic baseball player, himself a rather infamous ethics dunce. I never quite figured out Ty III’s relationship to Ty the First, but that is neither here nor there. I wish I didn’t have to write this post: I know Ty a bit, for we were in the same class at Harvard (where he already was sporting that handlebar mustache), and I knew many of his friends a lot better than I knew him. He is a nice guy, a funny guy, and by all accounts a terrific lawyer. He may have been the best lawyer ever associated with Donald Trump: Ty joined the White House staff to manage legal matters surrounding the Mueller investigation—yes, the Russian collusion scam run by the Democrats, the FBI, and the news media. He reported directly to Trump, and he was extensively quoted during the media frenzy over that disgusting set-up.

On May 2, 2018, Cobb announced that he was retiring as White House special counsel, and later that year, said that he did not think the Mueller investigation was a “witch hunt,” later saying in an ABC News interview on March 5, 2019, that he thought Mueller was “an American hero.” I almost blew my ethics whistle then; I didn’t: I should have. As a lawyer the public identified with President Trump (though his client was the office, not the man), Ty’s apparent vouching for the investigation was bound to be taken by the public (and certainly the news media) as a hint that someone on the inside with legal expertise knew Trump was guilty. I know I looked at it that way.

Now he’s done it again. Cobb told the news media that the “feds are coming fast” for Trump, and predicted that the investigation into the his alleged mishandling of classified documents will land him in prison. Spewing his opinions like an oil gusher, Cobb said,

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Ethics Quote Of The Month: Blogger Andrew Sullivan

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“If gay men and lesbians want to return to liberal politics, to protect gay children, and to win back the sane center, we are going to have to disown and distance ourselves from this nihilist extremism.”

—Legendary Blogger Andrew Sullivan, in a tortured substack critique of the current pro-trans fad and its consequences on children, gays and society.

Sullivan is tortured by a lot of things, being trapped in cognitive dissonance hell as a religious and essentially conservative pundit has been driven into the arms of Democrats by his hatred of Donald Trump and Republican opposition to gay marriage. Nonetheless, he is a smart analytical thinker who writes like an angel, and his essay “The Queers Versus The Homosexuals,” arguing that “the erasure of gay men and lesbians” is going to be the inevitable result of the current trans activism madness, is very much worth reading even in its truncated form, since the whole thing is only accessible to Andrew’s subscribers. (If I had the discretionary funds to pay for any substack essayist, Sullivan would probably be as good as anyone.)

A selection of some of his other points to ponder:

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So It’s Come To This…

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Now there’s a well-reasoned, articulate, rational, persuasive argument! My rule of thumb is that when advocates have to descend into chanting, shouting and sloganeering, they have no legitimacy, and neither do their positions. (If a position’s advocates can’t do better than that, their position is a fantasy.) They have also forfeited respect and the right to be taken seriously.

Another “Great Stupid” Milestone: Mayor Adams’ Plan To Stop Shoplifting

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

If you are not fully informed in Ethics Alarms lore, the term “The Great Stupid” for the ridiculous period Western Civilization is trying to survive came from a lucky conversation your host had many decades ago with futurist Herman Kahn, then generally regarded as the smartest man alive. One of the topics we discussed was the Sixties, and Herman observed that throughout history there have been periods where whole cultures suddenly forgot the lessons of the past. This resulted in what in retrospect looked like extended periods of stupidity, with people and governments engaging in destructive conduct and embracing wildly foolish policies until they re-learned what they had forgotten, usually after catastrophic results. I am quite confident that Mr Kahn would agree that this is just such a period.

New York City mayors have been major players in the most recent descent of stupidity across the land, and while Mayor Eric Adams couldn’t be a worse mayor than his predecessor if he just lay on his office rug twitching, he certainly tries. Recently, as his city (like so many Democrat-run metropolises) grapples with an exploding crime rate, Adams announced the following plan to deal with rampant shoplifting:

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“As [the WaPo’s Philip] Bump wrote when he was falsely accusing Barr, “it is the job of the media to tell the truth.” This would be a good time to start.”

—-Prof. Jonathan Turley in an epic defenestration of Washington Post Democratic Party propagandist Philip Bump

The Washington Post continuing to publish columnist Philip Bump’s “advocacy journalism (aka. lies) tells us as much about that once respectable paper as MSNBC continuing to provide a platform for Al Sharpton (and Joy Reid, and Chris Hayes, and Lawrence O’Donnell, and Joe Scarborough…). Bump distorts facts and sets out to disorient Post readers, which is, I was taught in journalism class, the opposite of what newspapers are supposed to do. “But he’s a pundit, not a reporter!” you protest? Fine: as the saying goes, he is entitled to his opinion, but not to his own facts.

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“Gee, What A Surprise: Pot Isn’t Good For Teenagers”…The Sequel

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the same vein as the rueful post from two days ago, Ethics Alarms offers this excerpt from today’s Sunday Times without further comment, because none should be necessary…

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More On Disgraced Ex-U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins: “The Dark Underbelly Of The Intersection Of Politics And Media”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Fortunately, Boston still has surviving conservative competitor of the dominant Boston Globe—you know, that heroic newspaper portrayed in “Spotlight.” If it didn’t, it’s quite likely no news media sources would publicize the disturbing unholy alliance between the corrupt U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins, a brazenly unethical prosecutor pushed into power by the Democratic Party, and Massachusetts’ most influential news source.

The Boston Herald may be struggling, but it performed a public service by revealing the Globe’s alliance with Rollins, whose fall Ethics Alarms discussed here. The conservative paper cursed to try to survive in a one party city and state reports today,

“No mercy. Finish him,” Rollins demanded to Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo in one of their text exchanges about Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden, whose campaign they were trying to torpedo….The two conspired – with the Boston Globe as willing accomplice – to tilt the Democratic D.A. primary in Arroyo’s favor by trying to smear Hayden to show he was somehow under federal investigation, texts and emails show….The Globe actually ran three stories about Hayden using Rollins as an anonymous source.

...That’s why it’s so important for reporters to know the personal agendas of anonymous stories and to check out everything they tell you. Journalists like to think of themselves as using lofty ethical standards but when it comes to political or investigative journalism the sausage-making can be unseemly. The Rollins probe has slimed an untrustworthy press and feeds into why an already cynical public hates and doesn’t trust the media.

The twin investigative reports about Rollins also showed how dangerous it is for the public and media to glorify and lionize public officials. When Rollins threw herself an elaborate swearing-in ceremony over a year ago at the federal courthouse in Boston, both Democrats and Republicans rushed to praise her as a “trailblazer” – as the Boston Globe called her – and predicted greatness for her.

Amusingly, one of those who was effusive in her praise for Rollins was Massachusetts’ spectacularly unethical Democratic Senator, Elizabeth Warren, aka “Fauxahautus,” who raved, “She has the values, the vision, and the courage to be an outstanding US attorney!” Among Rollins’ values was blatant politicizing of the law for Democratic gain as well as her own.The Herald notes that Rollins would have probably gotten away with her unethical election tampering and remain a U.S. Attorney today if she hadn’t attended a Democratic Party fundraiser where a Boston Herald reporter saw her and reported her presence.That flagrant ethical breach, for which Rollins falsely claimed claimed she had prior approval, triggered the ethics investigations by the Inspector General and Office of Special Counsel that ended her tenure.

Now that she has resigned in disgrace, the Globe is back to playing objective journalism again, issuing stories and columns condemning Rollins. It has not, of course, condemned its own complicity in her machinations.

The lesson of this relatively under-reported scandal is that while the Russian Collusion hoax, as revealed by the Durham Reports, was a national collaborative effort by Democrats, corrupt government officials and the biased news media to tamper with democracy, the same rotten alliance is hard at work undermining democracy at the state and local levels as well. What is desperately needed is a non-partisan watch-dog organization that fingers and exposes news media corruption, awarding the opposite of the Pulitzers (which, being politically biased themselves, has not retracted its awards to the Washington Post ad New York Times for their false and partisan coverage of “Russiagate.”) Such negative awards would have to be monthly rather than yearly, so frequently do journalists today engage in propaganda and disinformation.

Maybe Elon Musk, if he has any money to spare after his sputtering efforts to restore free speech to Twitter, can install such a system. Exposure and shame seem to be the only weapons we have against “the enemies of the people.”