Government & Politics

Sorry, I Can’t Let This Pass: The Number Of Women Accusing Gov. Cuomo Of Harassment Or Worse Just Jumped from 7 To 37

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Cuomo billboard

Yesterday evening, noting the the “Love Guv’s” accusers had risen to seven, I wrote, I thought in jest, “Oooh…Bill Cosby must be getting worried!” Now the Cos, who has over 50 women who say he drugged and molested them, really might wonder if Cuomo is a threat to his record. For The Independent reports,

A New York Magazine report outlines 30 new women accusing Andrew Cuomo with a litany of various allegations. As a result, several say they had to go to therapy, take anti-depressants, and call a suicide hotline….One of Cuomo’s speechwriters accused him of “racialized abuse” and said that she was only hired to “fill a quota”. Accuser Ana Liss, 35, told New York Magazine “started pursuing mental-health services when I was there because I thought I was going crazy. My parents thought I was going nuts”. “I was angry and crying all the time, and I went on Lexapro,’ she added. ‘I did call in to a suicide hotline because I felt like such a friggin’ nobody.”

The sudden jump in accusers is a surprise, but not the mounting total. After accuser #2 came forward, I wrote, “[T] he acid test for sexual harassment (and worse) is whether there are additional victims who come forward after the first one breaks the silence. Cuomo is now up to two. It’s a safe bet there are more.” Mark that as one more fact that the mainstream news media withheld that readers here were alerted to.

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Ethics Dessert, 3/12/2021: Goodbye “Jimmies”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

IceCreamJimmies

1. Have you been following the Taylor Lorenz affair? Let me see if I can bring you up to date without spending more time than is justified, since she is, all things considered, trivial. She is a New York Times culture and tech reporter who has botched things up enough to be fired under previous standards of journalism (which now has no standards.) She has been repeatedly caught fabricating claims about public figure: in the last six weeks she twice publicly lied about Netscape founder Marc Andreessen: once claiming she overheard him he used the word “retarded” in a Clubhouse room (he hadn’t, but so what if he had?) and later accusing him of plotting with a white nationalist to attack her, which also didn’t happen. She also often uses her platform with the Times to attack private citizens by accusing them of harboring non-acceptable beliefs. Last week, she took to Twitter on National Women’s Day to claim victim status, writing on Twitter,

“For international women’s day please consider supporting women enduring online harassment….it is not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I have had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life…No one should have to go through this.”

This, in turn, triggered Tucker Carlson, in his Fox News show, to refer to Lorenz in a segment on how powerful people like Meghan Markle got away with playing victim. He mocked Lorenz’s tweets in light of her position as a star reporter for the Times when much of the nation is out of work. “Lots of people are suffering right now,” Carlson said. “But no one is suffering more than Taylor Lorenz.”

The Times, incredibly, accused Carlson in a public statement of unleashing “a wave of harassment and vitriol” at “a talented New York Times journalist,” and concluded with, “Journalists should be able to do their jobs without facing harassment.”

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Ethics Heroes: “Critical Race Theory” Victims William And Gabrielle Clark

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Clarke

Gee, we seem to be having a lot of race-bullying and race-based indoctrination stories here of late. Well, don’t blame me. Blame those perpetrating it for the advancement of their political and cultural power, and the cowards and weenies who are making it easy.

Today we have an episode from Democracy Prep, a public charter school in Las Vegas, Nevada. William Clarke attends the school. He lives with his mother, Gabrielle (above), who is biracial. She works at a local fast food restaurant. All Democracy Prep seniors are required to take what is clearly a Critical Race Theory and intersectionality-based class called Sociology of Change. In that “re-education” class, William and all the other students, were told to openly declare their race, gender, religious, and sexual identities. The next step was to attach negative labels to those identities, after which students were instructed to “undo and unlearn” their “beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that stem from oppression.”  

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And Still More From The Unethical World Of Academic Enforced Wokism…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Censored

1. The Georgetown Law Center scandal, the scandal being that the school has fired a professor as racist for saying out loud what the institution has known for decades (that admitting black students with significantly fewer markers of law school success that the rest of the student body means that a disproportionate number of affirmative action admittees end up on the low end of the grading curves–duh...) has been covered by none of the law profs I usually look to for their timely opinions on such matters. Even Prof. Turley, whose blog has been relentless in defending free speech on campus, has been silent. Ann Althouse, so far at least, has preferred to write about such throbbingly important topics as Eddie Izzard’s preferred pronouns. TaxProf Blog, by Pepperdine Law School Dean Paul Caron, and Prof. Jacobson’s Legal Insurrection have also, so far at least, not weighed in on the firing of adjunct Sandra Sellers and the suspension of adjunct David Batson.

What’s going on here? Please, please tell me they are not afraid of this topic. I am especially surprised at Althouse, who is retired, and has little to fear professionally.

2. At the University of South Alabama, three professors were suspended after a six-year-old photos “resurfaced” showing them in “racially insensitive” Halloween costumes. Then-Mitchell College of Business dean Bob Wood was dressed as a Confederate general, professors Alex Sharland and Teresa Weldy were seen posing with a noose and a whip…

Alabama Halloween

As they bounced around social media, the pictures prompted expressions of great harm. “That makes me feel like since other cultures are starting to come here, that they don’t want us here or we’re unwanted because they want it to stay a PWI or a predominately Caucasian institution,” said student Samantha Longmire.   “We have Black students on campus, how do you think that makes them feel? Do you care about your students,” said student Chante Moore.   

Seriously? Seriously? A Halloween costume as a Confederate soldier is a threat, but a vampire costume is fine? These rules don’t make any sense at all, and those rules weren’t even outlined vaguely in 2014. Shaland is dressed like an English judge—how does that have racial implications? He’s a hanging judge, presumably. What does the whip mean? I have no idea—it looks like a cat-o-ninetails to me. They used that on ships, not plantations. There’s one in “H.M.S. Pinafore”! Weldy doesn’t even seem to be in costume. Wood and Sharland, both tenured, apologized. They are cowards, and are enabling the erosion of our rights while supporting the rising totalitarian effort to control thought and expression. Weldy, who is not tenured, has refused to apologize.

Good for her.

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Ethics Verdicts: The Georgetown Law Professor’s Comments Were Careless But Not “Reprehensible,” And The Law Center Dean’s Statement Implying Her Comments Showed “Systemic Racism” Is Reprehensible…And False

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

This, I would remind you, is why the emphasis of the first Ethics Alarms post on this mess involving my former employer and alma mater was that GULC adjunct professor Sandra Sellers was culpable for the inevitable results of her unintentionally public candor for incompetently broadcasting her private observations over an online conferencing platform. I predicted that she was a goner once the school’s black student organization saw a grandstanding opportunity (and if it wrecks a lawyer’s reputation and career–so what? After all, she’s just another racist white bitch…), and I was right, in part because I know what the Law Center has become in recent years.

I also predicted a groveling apology from Sellers rather than the ringing defense of her observations that might have been helpful in both clarifying her comments and exposing the Law Center’s spectacular embrace of Rationalization #64, “It Isn’t What It is.” Poor, weak, technologically inept–but not wrong!–Sellers sent the Washington Post a copy of her grovel, which could have been drafted by a computer. She apologized for the “hurtful and misdirected remarks,” carefully chosen words indeed. Her remarks were “misdirected” because they were intended only for another professor, not the universe, and they were “hurtful” because they created a student relations crisis for Georgetown—which it has thoroughly botched. Sellers also said in the letter

“I would never do anything to intentionally hurt my students or Georgetown Law and wish I could take back my words. Regardless of my intent, I have done irreparable harm and I am truly sorry for this.”

Well, I give her some credit for declining to say that she didn’t mean what she said, or that what she said was untrue. Some. In essence she apologized for what I had written was the problem with her statement: it was careless to let it be witnessed by people who would—mostly deliberately— misinterpret it. Her carefully composed non-apology was clever, but it doesn’t help. The school’s statement, through GULC second-in-command Dean Trainor, was despicable—unfair and cowardly. It called the episode indicative of “structural issues of racism” (Translation: Sellers is a racist) and “explicit and implicit bias.”

Yes, a dean of a major law school declared on behalf of that law school that accurate observations involving student education are racist, presumably because they don’t advance a convenient but false progressive narrative. He also suspended the law professor Sellers was talking to because he didn’t meet his “bystander responsibility” and confront her over her non-racist statement as if it were racist.

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Some Enchanted Evening Ethics, 3/11/2021

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The New York Times this week referred to the “killing” of George Floyd, which presupposes what the trial of Derek Chauvin is taking place to determine. This is disgraceful journalism. The more I consider the trial, the clearer it seems that this is an unethical show trial, devised to keep the mob at bay, punish a white cop by putting him through an ordeal, and putting off the inevitable mindless riots as long as possible. Potential jurors are already saying that they are frightened. A mob shouting for “justice” was outside the courthouse yesterday during jury selection. Chauvin can’t get a fair trial; not in Minneapolis, not anywhere. The news media and the riots made certain of that.

1. Self-portrait of a self-promoting weenie. Stacy Dash, whose major acting achievement was “Clueless’ 25 years ago, became a darling of the Right and Fox News as a black, female conservative and Trump supporter bucking the Hollywood lockstep. Celebrities, especially B-listers, are always suspect when they take a position that garners publicity. Stacy thought she had a profitable niche. Now that it’s clear that niche has dried up, Stacy has decided it’s time to launch Stacy 2.0. Read this, if you can, without rolling your eyes so hard they come out your ears…

“I’ve lived my life being angry, which is what I was on Fox News. I was the angry, conservative black woman. And at that time in my life it was who I was. I realized in 2016 that anger is unsustainable and it will destroy you. I made a lot of mistakes because of that anger There are things that I am sorry for.Things that I did say, that I should not have said them the way I said them. They were very arrogant and prideful and angry. And that’s who Stacey was, but that’s not who Stacey is now. Stacey’s someone who has compassion, empathy…God has forgiven me, how dare I not forgive someone else. I don’t want to be judged, so how dare I judge anyone else. So if anyone has ever felt that way about me, like I’ve judged, that I apologize for because that’s not who I am…I’m not a victim of anyone. Working for Fox at the time, that was my job. I did my job from the place I was at. Stacey now would never work at Fox, would never work for a news network or be a news contributor.”

As for her vocal support of President Trump, Dash said, as a cock could be heard crowing three times, “He is not the president. We have a new president. Being a supporter of Trump has put me in some kind of box that I don’t belong in. But he’s not the president. I’m going to give the president that we have right now a chance.”

Good luck with the reboot, Stacy. But you’re pathetic and desperate, and have the integrity and loyalty of Tessio in “The Godfather.”

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Coke Commands Its Lawyers To Discriminate: Can’t Do That, And The Law Firms Should Refuse (But I Bet They Won’t)

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Coke Coercion

This is a major development with narrow implications in the field of legal ethics, but potentially wide-ranging importance in the society as a whole.

We are just now learning—after all, you wouldn’t expect the news media to report this kind of sinister, reverse-racism bullying, would you?—that the general counsel of Coca Cola issued an open letter to the law firms representing it. [Full disclosure: I have taught legal ethics seminars for one of them] The letter decreed that these firms “commit that at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from Black attorneys.” You can read the letter here. Here are the edicts:

Coke demands

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Tuesday/Wednesday Ethics Sandwich, 3/9-3/10/21: Movies, Megxit, Major And More

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Dagwood sandwich

1. Worst “review” of the Year, and other Megxit Ethics Train Wreck developments :

  • I hate to end one day (and start another) with something so nauseating, but a Times “Critic’s Notebook” entry by Salamishah Tillet titled “Taking On Royal Life’s Racism” (online, “Prince Harry Finally Takes On White Privilege: His Own”) is both incompetent and dishonest. This is no review. It is a black studies professor with an agenda using a media stunt by Oprah Winfrey and the breakaway Royals to serve as her own soap box. Using a mixed-race American who achieves some success in a difficult profession (performing), then marries a British prince with the automatic money, glamor and influence that status confers as an example of racial persecution is ridiculous on its face. This is a confirmation bias classic for the ages: the black feminist activist saw what she wanted to see in one of the worst possible settings to see it. The “review” could have been written before the interview was broadcast; I bet most of it was.
  • The U.K.’s media regulator ( that is,censor and political correctness enforcer) Ofcom is investigating Piers Morgan because 41,000 people wrote to complain about the then-ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” host stating the obvious about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s joint whine with Oprah Winfrey. On “Good Morning Britain”, which Morgan quit mid-show after being attacked by his co-host, Morgan said he did not believe Markle’s statement that she had approached the Royal family for help because she had suicidal thoughts, and was turned down. “Who did you go to? What did they say to you? I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she said…I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report,” Morgan said. Neither would I, especially when such tales were attached to no details whatsoever. Morgan is a media low-life to be sure, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t right in this case. It’s a problem, though, when the most vocal and accurate critic of a manufactured narrative is so easily discredited.
  • In the U.S., the Left will sanctify the Duchess of Sussex because she’s female and blackish, thus meaning that to question her word or character is per se racism. (She’s like a Kardashian with superpowers). The Right is mostly anti-monarchy, so any harm she does to the Royals is regarded as a plus. One poll indicates, however, that the British public is less gullible: Meghan is now the least popular Royal, even behind Jeffrey Epstein pal and likely defiler of under-age girls Prince Andrew.

It’s only because the Brits are racists, of course.

2. Is there a media critic in the United States that isn’t a partisan hack? David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun certainly fails the test. Imagine writing a column titled “If Fox News wants to be a political tool, it should be treated as such and not given access meant for journalists” after the performance of all the other news organizations from 2016 on and expecting to be taken seriously. Has the mainstream media ever committed itself to a single partisan political objective more brazenly than the propaganda campaign against President Trump? Zurawik’s claim is either delusional or a lie aimed at the deluded….of which there are many.

3. White House dog ethics. Apparently the mysteriously reported “incident” that resulted in President Biden’s two German Shepherds being banished to Delaware was more than a mere nip: the victim of a bite by Major, a rescue dog, was really hurt. “There Will Finally Be Dogs in the White House Again,” was the headline in Harper’s in January, over one of many stories cheering the fact that the new “normal” President would have a dog, unlike the weird, mean, non-animal lover on the way out. In truth, the modern White House is no place for a dog—too stressful, too many visitors and strangers— and many First Pets have been acquired as PR props rather than out of genuine love for canines. Getting a rescue dog is admirable, but they often come with behavioral problems and special sensitivities that must be addressed, or they can be dangerous. My sweet rescue dog Spuds, for example, has night terrors, and woe be to any human that wakes him up while he’s recalling past abuse.

4. Governor Cuomo is now up to SIX accusers! Who could have predicted…oh, right. I did. But I’m sure it was all just a misunderstanding, like the Governor says. Sarcasm aside, I doubt Cuomo is a threat to Bill Cosby’s total, but I didn’t expect the Cos to top 50 either.

Added: Various conservative blogs and commentators are chiding Kamala Harris, who led the unethical smearing of Brett Kavanaugh as a sexual predator based on a vague high-school incident, for not weighing in on Cuomo’s alleged conduct. Harris is a two-faced hypocrite for sure—she agreed to run with a serial sexual harasser whose wrongful conduct is a matter of photographic record—but it is not a VP’s place to get involved with state government issues.

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Gullibility And Media Brainwashing Check: If You Believe This, You’ll Believe Anything

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The Washington Post claims that “The first crisis of the Biden administration could be looming: America may have a president, the first in generations, who is impervious to impressionists.”

Riiiiight.

This is a topic I know a little bit about, having written, produced, directed and performed in satirical political reviews both professionally and otherwise for decades. I’ve also followed Saturday Night Live until relatively recently. If I hadn’t already abandoned the show as tired, biased and hopeless, Alec Baldwin’s inept and unfunny Trump impression would have driven me away.

It’s easy to come up with a funny impression of Joe Biden. Hell, I could do it: even if it wasn’t very good, it would be better than Baldwin’s Trump. There is one reason and one reason only that comedians are reluctant to mock Joe Biden: he’s a Democrat, and political satire today goes one way only.

The same hypocrites were afraid to make fun of Barack Obama, who was a cornucopia of mockworthy traits and tics for anyone with the guts to exploit them. The Post would really have us believe that any comics drew blood with an Obama impression, or even tried? Ah, but they were terrified of being called racists. (Has there ever been anyone more easy to ridicule than Maxine Waters? How about Sheila Jackson Lee? Have you ever seen them skewered?) TV comics today are, much like the mainstream media—pure partisan agents. They don’t want to be funny as much as they want to signal their virtue.

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More On Why Minneapolis Is Headed For Rodney King Level Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Rodney King Riots Timeline

I have to believe the prosecutors in the George Floyd murder trial know that they are just marking time to but off a repeat of the 1992 Rodney King rioting in Los Angeles, and probably worse.

We know, or should, that former officer Derek Chauvin is not a racist, other than the fact that he is white. This may be enough to make him a presumed racist according to Black Lives Matter and Democratic Party cant, but not under the law. The news media has been diligently searching for Mark Furmin-like racist comments in Chauvin’s past, and if they haven’t found any by now, I think it’s unlikely that there are any to be found.

We know, or should, that Chauvin did not intend to harm George Floyd. He definitely wanted to make Floyd uncomfortable, because he was angry at his perp for resisting arrest. Nobody has argued seriously or persuasively that the officer intended to kill him.

Finally, we know, or should, that it is possible, even likely, that Floyd’s death was caused by his own careless ingestion of prohibited substances, including an overdose of fentanyl.

With these facts, my knowledge of prosecutorial ethics tells me that without the influence of other factors that should not be factors at all, a competent and responsible prosecutor would not charge Derek Chauvin. It is very likely that a verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be achieved before a fair and competent jury, and prosecutors are forbidden from attempting to convict defendants while hoping that a dumb and emotional jury fails to weigh the evidence properly. If a prosecutor doesn’t think, based on the evidence, that an individual is guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, then no charges should be brought. That is exactly the situation regarding Chauvin and the death of George Floyd.

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