Lizzie Marbach, a former Ohio GOP official and currently director of communications at Ohio Right to Life, tweeted ,
This upset Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who is Jewish, so he tweeted, twice,
Ugh.
Ethics Observations: Continue reading
Government & Politics
Guest Post: Reflections from the Echo Chamber
by JutGory
A repetitive, if not constant, topic here is whether or not this blog is a right-wing echo chamber that is inhospitable to left-wing or progressive commenters. With the recent hit and run by A Friend and a short visit from Ryan Pell, the topic again was front and center for a brief moment. While one of my recent comments about that suggested that progressives had greater difficulty staying here because they were less inclined than conservatives to follow the rules. Some of those comments can be found here:
I am not sure if that was completely right, but likely not entirely wrong. It is certainly not fair to say conservatives are ethical and liberals-progressives are not. There are ample counter-examples posted on this blog on both points. Then, an alternate explanation occurred to me. The reason why liberal/progressives do not seem to last long here may be because they are not here to discuss ethics; they are here to discuss politics. The topics, while overlapping, are different. Politics presents arguments to win, and facts to spin. We all have “our side,” and the goal of politics is for your side to prevail.
Insufficient Mockery Alert #1: The “Jewface” Controversy
Jonathan Turley likes to begin his posts on oft-visited topics (like speech suppression on progressive college campuses) by reviewing all of his past posts on the matter. If I started this post like that and listed all of the ridiculous, hypocritical, wokey, DEI-inspired casting ethics controversies EA has highlighted, there would be no room for the post itself. But I will supply a sampling…
Let’s see: a black actress can play Anne Boleyn, and James Earl Jones can play the Celtic King Lear, but a white actor is engaged in racism by playing Othello. Hmmm. Gay Hollywood actors (most of them are, after all) can play straight characters, but Tom Hanks apologized for playing a gay character (and winning an Oscar for it) in “Philadelphia.” Lou Diamond Phillips simultaneously asserted that as a Filipino actor he is entitled to play anyone—after all, he has made his living playing Hispanics, South Americans and Native Americans— then in the same interview said “I happen to agree that casting Caucasian people in what are supposed to be ethnic roles is not kosher.”
Yes, it’s Calvinball! The minority communities, supported by progressive DEI fanatics, make up the rules as they go along—whatever keeps whites, heterosexuals and non-disabled actors out of roles. Back in 2019, I designated this “the dumbest casting controversy yet”: that was when Bryan Cranston was criticized for playing a quadriplegic without being actually paralyzed from the neck down. Well, the DEI maniacs have gone way, way beyond that, and conveniently, the most recent ridiculous Calvinball installment is relevant to today’s nonsense.
Ethics Verdict: “Rich Men North Of Richmond”
Cutting to the chase: It’s ridiculous that this standard issue country ballad is a culture war battlefield. Anyone who took the time to watch Ken Burns’ documentary on the genre will immediately recognize the themes, though Anthony’s blue collar anthem is a bit more whiny than most. Jeez, man, stop bitching and do something about it: that’s the American way! Though I guess he is, by exploiting the politicization of everything today to make a lot of money with a song that doesn’t offer anything new or original, just the familiar “Those rich politicians up North don’t care about us hard-working folks, so life is a struggle and it ain’t getting any better.”
Well, I’d rather listen to this than “Imagine.”
Here are the lyrics:
A Canary Dies In An Ethics Culture Mine, And It’s No Surprise That The Mine IS In The State Of Washington
In the city of Federal Way, Washington, Denise Yun is running for the City Council on a platform of protecting businesses from crime. Meanwhile, Nick Rose, a Federal Way Trinity Ace Hardware store owner, apparently caught her attempting to steal multiple hammers from his store by stuffing them into her purse.
Seeing her act suspiciously and spying the glint of something metallic in the woman’s jumbo purse, Rose asked if he could see what she had in there, to which Yun replied, “Absolutely not!” So he reached into her bag anyway, and pulled out one of his hammers. “It was one of my hammers that had a little ACE tag hanging on it. It was a ball peen hammer, so I just grabbed it. And as soon as that happened, she just stormed out of the store,” he said. Taking the rest of the hammers.
Profile In Courage? RFK Jr.’s Revealing Abortion Flip-Flop
Four days ago, rebel Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was being questioned on his abortion views by a reporter from NBC at the Iowa State Fair and said, “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life,” but “once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child.” Kennedy then said he would support a federal ban on abortion after the first three months of pregnancy.
That’s not a very intellectually consistent position on abortion, but it qualifies as moderate and reasonable for a progressive like Kennedy, especially as the Left’s pro-abortion Borg increasingly adopts the frightening position that unborn children should be candidates for extermination right up to birth. Unfortunately, because the Democratic Party now embraces the extreme version of “choice,” Kennedy immediately backed down, turned around, and retracted his statement.
Oh Good JOB, Fulton County! This Is Just What The Public Needs To See To Convince It That The Use Of The Criminal Justice System Against Donald Trump Is Fair, Non-Partisan, And To Be Respected…[UPDATED!]
There goes my head.
This is unbelievable: I saw the story yesterday and ignored it assuming it was a hoax or something. But no.
Hours before a Georgia grand jury handed down a pack of indictments yesterday charging Donald Trump and 18 lawyers, allies and associates with crimes in their efforts to challenge the 2020 election, a document was posted on the court’s website stating that the former President had already been charged. The grand jury hadn’t even voted yet. Oopsie!
The Associated Press, now a consistently biased news source that gives every Trump story as hard a pro-Democratic Party, Trump Derangement spin as possible, notes that this bizarre episode “gave the former president an opening in court and on the campaign trial to try to paint Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ case as tainted and the criminal justice system as rigged against him.” Gee, ya think, AP? Just because the court announced the jury’s decisions before they made it? Boy, those Republicans will pounce on anything!
You know, I try to eschew sarcasm, but only disgust and mockery will do in this case. “There is no evidence that the grand jury process was somehow compromised, or that the document was intentionally leaked by prosecutors or court officials,” says the AP, in a spectacular example of Rationalization #64, “It isn’t what it is.” There’s no evidence—except for the fact that the grand jury’s conclusion was publicized before it was reached! I’d call that rather substantial evidence that the process was compromised and the document was leaked, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t anybody? Wouldn’t particularly those Americans who are convinced that the Democrats have weaponized the legal system to hold power and to imprison the opponent and critic whom they most fear come to that conclusion? Shouldn’t they?
The Ethics Zugzwang Of Trump vs. The Democrats, Part 2: How Can The Same Democratic Party Strategy Be Designed To Help Trump And Hurt Him At The Same Time?
This is not the Part 2 of the three part series I initially planned: I have a laborious post on the way discussing various esteemed lawyers’ analyses of the legitimacy or lack of same in the most recent Trump indictments. But Ann Althouse yesterday flagged a New York Times article headlined “How Trump Benefits From an Indictment Effect/In polling, fund-raising and conservative media, the former president has turned criminal charges into political assets” and commented, “Good. I’m glad this is backfiring. I have never been a Trump supporter, but I hate the criminalization of politics.”
As do I, and as commenters here have made clear, many believe that the best way to punish the Democrats for their unprecedented legal pursuit of the ex-President (which began when he was President-elect in 2016) is to, once again, elect the object of their undemocratic, indeed Soviet-style, assault on democracy as a protest and demonstration of contempt.
That may be appetizing, but at what price? More than once, most recently here, I have analogized the shock election of Trump in 2016 to the climax of “Animal House”:
Electing Trump certainly seemed stupid. Yet it served a purpose, indeed several purposes, just like the “stupid and futile gesture” that is the climax and operatic finale of “Animal House,” when the abused members of Delta House turn Faber College’s homecoming parade into a violent riot…
Voting for Trump was an “Up yours!” to the elites, the sanctimonious media, the corrupt Clintons, the hollow Obamas, and obviously corrupt Democrats like Pelosi and Harry Reid, machine Republicans like Mitch McConnell, and pompous think-tank conservatives like Bill Kristol.
As I wrote on the same theme right after the election,
“Americans got tired of being pushed around, lectured, and being told that traditional cultural values made them racists and xenophobes. They decided to say “Screw that!” by electing a protest candidate whose sole function was to be a human thumb in the eye, because he was so disgusting to the people who had pretended to be their betters. Don’t you understand? It’s idiotic, but the message isn’t. It’s “Animal House”! and “Animal House” is as American as Doolittle’s Raid….In Germany, The Big Cheese says jump and the Germans say “How high?” In the US, the response is “Fuck you!” Obama never understood that…. I love that about America. And much as I hate the idea of an idiot being President, I do love the message and who it was sent to. America still has spunk.
But you can’t keep justifying repeats of the same stupid and futile gesture. Eventually, you have to get serious. (The Capitol riot was a more literal emulation of Delta House’s protest, but even more stupid and futile.) That so many people are actually considering a sequel is evidence of just how difficult it is to determine what the “right thing to do” is when ethics zugzwang looms. It can’t be the right thing to let the strategy adopted by the “resistance”/Democratic Party/mainstream media alliance (aka. “The Axis of Unethical Conduct,” or AUC) in the 2016 Post-Election Ethics Train Wreck succeed, but if the cure—re-electing Trump, another thumb in the eye— isn’t worse than the disease, it’s still reckless, risky and irresponsible.
So now what? The Ethics zugzwang theme is magnified by the competing theories about what the Democrats hope to accomplish by prosecuting Trump for anything they can think of. Is it as simple as trying to use the justice system to remove him from the field? Is the AUC really that stupid and naive? Of course this strategy enhances Trump’s status with those inclined to support him, just as the bogus impeachments did. Nah, it must be that the Left is playing three-dimensional chess…you know, like the deranged Custer of “Little Big Man…
I really don’t know what’s going on, and the many commenters on Ann’s post don’t agree either. For example….
“Painkiller”
“Painkiller,” the new Netflix series about the origins of the opioid crisis largely created by the despicable machinations of the Sackler family and Perdue Pharma, could not be better timed. Just three days ago there was another development in the fall of the Sacklers, as the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the implementation of the 2021 $6 billion deal in federal bankruptcy court that would have blocked future opioid lawsuits against family members, who added to their vast fortune by creating and peddling OxyContin to complicit doctors and unsuspecting members of the public.
OxyContin was introduced in 1995 as Purdue Pharma’s breakthrough drug for chronic pain. The company employed an unethical marketing strategy that family scion Arthur Sackler had pioneered decades earlier, lobbying doctors to prescribe the drug and increase its dosage by dangling gifts, free trips to “pain-management seminars,”( aka all-expenses-paid vacations), paid speaking engagements, and ego-stroking visits from comely sales reps with cheerleading credentials.
Apparently Obama Is Gay: Does It Matter?
“In regard to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life. You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination,” Barack Obama, 21, wrote to ex-girlfriend Alex McNear in November 1982. The suddenly sensational 1982 letter resurfaced when Obama biographer David Garrow gave a provocative interview on his subject.
“My mind is androgynous to a great extent and I hope to make it more so until I can think in terms of people, not women as opposed to men,” Obama wrote. “But, in returning to the body, I see that I have been made a man, and physically in life, I choose to accept that contingency.”
Oh. Wait, what?
McNear dated Obama when they both attended Occidental College in Los Angeles. She redacted the revealing paragraphs, and the letter came to be owned by Emory University somehow. Emory guards the letter and doesn’t permit it to be photographed or removed. Garrow’s friend Harvey Klehr transcribed the long-hidden paragraphs by hand and sent them to the historian, who then included them in his Obama-fest,“Rising Star.”
What’s going on here?
