Government & Politics

Unethical Quote Of The Month, “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias” Division–And This Is A Classic!—The New York Times

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

…and by the way,

KABOOM!!!!!

“We found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Biden, beyond hugs, kisses, and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.”

—-The New York Times, in the course of its long -awaited  reporting on Tara Reade’s accusation of sexual assault against Joe Biden. No, really, they really tweeted this. They really did. I wouldn’t make that up…they DID! I’m not kidding! See…?

The right hand side is what you got after the Times figured out that their outrageous pro-Democratic Party bias was not just showing, as it always does, but blinking on and off in blinding neon lights, accompanied by sirens.

No other allegations? Since launching his Presidential bid, , eight women have alleged that Biden either touched them inappropriately or violated their personal space, You know, like this…

In response, Biden issued a classic “non-apology apology,” then later said that he was “not sorry for anything I’ve ever done.” He has also been criticized for commenting on the sexual appearance of young girls and women while campaigning.

In a 2019 article, the Times  wrote that “Biden’s Tactile Politics Threaten his Return in the #MeToo era,” but that was when the paper was pushing Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Now they are stuck with Biden, just like their party.

I suppose it is obligatory to note the  Times emphasized the importance of believing women who accuse powerful men of sexual abuse when the one so accused was a conservative federal judge who did not have a voluminous photographic record of him sniffing, touching, hugging, kissing and groping women in the recent past.

You know, I’m rapidly reaching the point where I’m not going to be patient, civil or understanding—they are hopelessly biased, after all, ergo stupid—when progressives deny  mainstream media bias in the face of this kind of despicable journalism. It’s reaching the Orwellian point of “War is Peace.” It’s also “jumboing’—in fact, I am hereby creating the verb jumbo, meaning to lie to someone’s face, asserting something to be true when the evidence that it is not true is obvious and undeniable. It’s also evidence of ethics rot,

The gloves are off. This was the tipping point.

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 4/11/2020: Law School Indoctrination, The Surgeon General, And One More Mainstream Media Bias Smoking Gun

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Not depressed or crazy yet!

This translated (by Mort Shuman) Jacques Brel song made my mother depressed and crazy, yet she insisted on playing it. She was like that. You know…Greek. I’m really glad that she didn’t live to see this particular ordeal through, because I would have made my folks live with us for the duration, and I would definitely be crazy by now.

I did not know John Denver recorded this; as with everything else he sung, he does a masterful job. He fought depression his whole life, which astounded me, given his public demeanor, when I first learned that. That was before I learned how common and pervasive this terrible illness is. They are not being hyperbolic when they say that a protected lockdown will eventually cause a lot of suicides.

1. One more from “Social Q’s. In the same column that triggered me regarding this issue, there was another interesting query :

Like millions, I am working from home and spending lots of time videoconferencing with co-workers and clients. My boss conferences in from his home office, where, behind his smiling face, hangs a painting of a cyclone tearing through a city. He may be so used to it that he’s oblivious to the bad message it sends. He’s not a friend, but we have a cordial relationship. Should I point out that the painting may upset people?

I am less interested in this question for its ethical issue, which is not worth discussing–“No, you idiot, you do NOT have any business telling someone forced to participate in a video conference that he has an obligation to decorate his home to please other participants  and to avoid “upsetting” the hypersensitive!”—than I am curious about how anyone would get the idea that such an obligation exists. It’s not as if he has a swastika or a Confederate flag hanging behind him, or erotic art, or a historical photograph that could fairly be called unduly provocative.

I find this to be a nascent totalitarian mindset, requiring conformity in all things, and it scares me to death, frankly.

2. The indoctrination problem. I just got the latest copy of the Georgetown University Law Center alumni magazine, and was impressed by how large, slick and professional it has become in the decades since I put together the first issue when I was the GULC Director of Development under Dean David McCarthy. Oh, they changed the name a few years ago: the Dean and I had called it “Res Ipsa Loquitur,” which should come as no surprise to any regular readers here. The real revelation, however, is what a pure progressive and partisan indoctrination factory the school has become. Justice Ginsburg welcomed the incoming class. Nancy Pelosi and Henry Louis Gates ( of Beer Summit fame) addressed  the graduating third year students. New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood successfully  sued the Trump Foundation, so she was worthy of an honorary degree.

The featured interview in the issue: Justice Elena Kagan. A new Workers Rights Institute has been launched.  Invited to serve on a panel about “Challenges to the Rule of Law,” was George Conway. The school just dedicated its “green spaces” to Democratic D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. There is a major article about our obligation to guarantee the health of “migrants,” the current cover-word of choice meaning “Illegal immigrants.” Of course, there’s a climate change activist piece, an anti-nationalism piece, and a pro-diversity piece. Continue reading →

On The Recent Steele Dossier Revelations: An Open Letter To An Un-Named Former Ethics Alarms Commenter, Written In Disappointment And Disgust

/ Jack Marshall / 100 Comments

Dear You Know Who You Are,

As you remember, well over a year ago you staged a grandstanding, insulting exit from participation on this blog, declaring that I had “drunk the Kool-Aid.”  Your false claim was provoked because I had successfully navigated through  lies, calculated disinformation and lawbreaking—engineered by those within and without the U.S. government—to conclude that a coordinated effort had been and was underway to overthrow the elected President of the United States. At this point, the fact that your accusation was based on your own blindness and bias is not subject to rational denial or debate.

I knew that at the time, of course. I also felt, and feel, that for you to behave that way, in public, here, was a personal as well as a professional betrayal. We had, I thought, a cordial and mutually respectful relationship. We had exchanged details about the high and low points of our lives face to face.  We are in the same field and profession. I trusted you.

I have provided you some slack in my ultimate judgment on your character because I know that, as we say here often, bias makes us stupid, even the best of us. I have seen this particular bias make many people, even some smarter than you, as difficult as it may be for you to conceive of that, both stupid and  destructive, apparently without a glimmer of self-realization. I recognize that it the phenomenon is, at this point, indistinguishable from an illness, one triggered by emotion and group-think. Thus I am, up to a point, sympathetic, just as I am regarding so many of my Facebook friends who figuratively make asses of themselves every single day  because they are addicted to “likes” and peer approval. Some of them are even lawyers, but you know…lawyers. That is a professional group, along with historians, politicians, historians, scholars, psychiatrist, educators and, of course, journalists, that has broken its duty of trust with the public as it joined a dangerous and unconscionable effort to break our democracy. Continue reading →

Pandemic Ethics Potpourri: Spring Cleaning, Chapter 1

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

My files of potential and ongoing ethics stories and issues involving the Wuhan virus outbreak are stuffed to overflowing. I’m not going to have time to do the full posts many of these deserve, and the rest risk dropping into oblivion. Here is the first of several collections that will at least flag issues while allowing me to keep current…

1. Golf and the virus…

  • Three Massachusetts golfing enthusiasts, blocked from the links in their own state , were charged with misdemeanors in Rhode Island after going to extraordinary lengths to sneak into that state to hit the little white balls around. Rhode Island has issued a directive requiring all travelers to quarantine themselves for 14 days after entering the state. Gregory Corbett, 51, Tyler Pietrzyk, 22, and Nye Cameron, 22, determined to make it to the Meadow Brook Golf Course drove from Massachusetts to the smallest state, changed cars in a McDonald’s parking lot, and proceeded to the golf course with Rhode Island-issued plates to the club.
  • Right: right, we’re all in this together. Here’s Michigan Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel in two tweets:

2. When the going gets tough, the tough get race-baiting. Black Americans are experiencing a significantly higher percentage of infections and deaths than other demographic groups, especially in big cities. There are many likely reasons for this, but this one is infuriating: Continue reading →

The Hydroxychloroquine Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ever since those two idiots (or maybe one dead idiot and a diabolical spouse) used fish tank cleaner to try to protect themselves from the Wuhan virus and the news media tried to claim the President killed the dead one by recommending the drug (though not the fish tank cleaner), this has been one of those situations where it is impossible to separate legitimate information from the news media  vendetta against Trump and what the actual situation is. Journalists really can’t help themselves; here are Peter Baker, Katie Rogers, David Enrich and Maggie Haberman, the Times’ regular Trump character assassins, in what is supposed to be a news story:

“Day after day, the salesman turned president has encouraged coronavirus patients to try hydroxychloroquine with all of the enthusiasm of a real estate developer.”

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Did the Times ever, even once, call Obama the “community organizer-turned President”? How about “the former enthusiastic pot smoker” turned President?

As I’ve mentioned here before, the official talking point buzzword is that the President “touted” the drug, which is only available by prescription. Some experts, not infected with the Trump Hate virus, have had a reasonable reaction to his optimism. for example,Dr. Joshua Rosenberg, a critical care doctor at Brooklyn Hospital Center, told reporters,

“I certainly understand why the president is pushing it. He’s the president of the United States. He has to project hope. And when you are in a situation without hope, things go very badly. So I’m not faulting him for pushing it even if there isn’t a lot of science behind it, because it is, at this point, the best, most available option for use.”

Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency order late last month allowing doctors to administer it to coronavirus patients if they saw fit. Many have seen fit. David Lat, the founder of the legal gossip site Above the Law, itself a virtual card-carrying member of the resistance, declared that the drug had saved his life during his hospitalization for the Wuhan virus. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Ann Althouse…And Some Astoundingly Unethical Quotes That Make Her Point

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Does the press have any responsibility for tearing down Trump’s credibility right when we need it? I’d say they should be scrupulously careful not to do any of the ordinary political partisanship that had already badly infected journalism. There’s a lot of ruined credibility out there. Everyone ought to be trying to crawl back toward the truth. I think Trump — in his daily briefings — has been “appeal[ing] to common values and emphasiz[ing] moral standards and solidarity.” But the Trump-hating media will not help him do this. They’re looking for ways to blame him, to worsen his credibility. Why not help?”

——Bloggress Ann Althouse, reacting to one more New York Times Trump-hate piece, this one called “Trump’s ‘Light at the End of the Tunnel’ Is a Delusion;”yesterday’s (by Obama’s disinformation chief, Susan Rice) was “Trump Is the Wartime President We Have (Not the One We Need)/He should start leading with the decency and resolve that we deserve. I’m not holding my breath” 

The answer to Ann’s rhetorical question is “of course they do,” and I mainstain hope that a sufficient number of citizens will hold them responsible for an unprecedneted breach of tradition, duty and common sense. Attacking and undermining any leader in the midst of a national challenge is irresponsible and dangerous, yet virtually all of the mainstream media is not only doing it but doing it with increasing intensity. (The exception is Fox News, which is condemned for not pitching in.) Continue reading →

Noonish Ethics Warm-Up: Everyone’s Gone To The Moon, But They Aren’t Going To Zoom

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Hello?

The Jonathan King hit from 1965 (most people think was originally sung by Chad and Jermy, who covered it) sounds profound but it’s not; King, who wrote the song in college, later admitted that he was satirizing Dylanesque lyrics intended to have great portent, but in fact he meant nothing in particular. The song sounds timely now, doesn’t it? Yesterday, while taking a walk, my whole Alexandria neighborhood was eerily empty and silent. I started singing loudly as I walked as my own small rebellion, but I didn’t think of King’s song until I got home.

1. The ethics breach is “incompetence.” Imagine having a niche business, waiting for your big break, then you get the break, and botch it. That’s Zoom. When schools, colleges and other organizations were forced to resort to online conferencing platforms, Zoom was a ready-made solution: easy to download, single click-access.

It was, as the saying goes, not ready for prime time. The easy access allowed easy hacking and the new phenomenon of “Zoombombing,” where anonymous assholes—yes, this is another time when the term is fair, apt, and necessary—entered conferences and classes uninvited with with pornography or worse. Zoom was  also caught sending user’s analytics data to Facebook, even if the user didn’t have a Facebook account. There were other privacy issues. Many school districts have suspended classes using Zoom.  Google just banned  the use of the Zoom teleconferencing platform for employees, citing security concerns. [UPDATE: So has the U.S. Senate.] Now many potential users, including me, are looking elsewhere.

The  company’s CEO and founder now says he’ll make his product harder to use to improve Zoom’s safety and security. Good luck with that. I suspect this is a Barn Door Fallacy situation. Business competence requires you be ready for that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and if it arrives and you’re not, you not only might not get a second chance, you don’t deserve one. Continue reading →

Good JOB Everybody! The U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt Affair Becomes The U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The last time we visited the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, things seemed ready to slip into relative calm. Yes, the captain has breached policy and navy protocol as well as the chain of commend, but he had received the necessary punishment that he had to know was coming. His gambit had worked, focusing sufficient media and public attention on ship’s plight to goad the Navy into acting with more compassion and dispatch, getting the Wuhan-infected sailors off the carrier and into treatment. The Acting Navy Secretary had made the proper, if unpopular call, and the President had backed him up. Yes, the mainstream media was stirring the pot and making it seem like the captain had been unfairly punished—didn’t the cheers of his crew prove that?—but the public is used to this dance by now: the “Whatever the President and  His Appointees Do Is Wrong Waltz.” Here was how the Times, the national “paper of record,’ described Captain Crozier’s firing yesterday, for example:

“Mr. Modly’s response last Thursday was to fire Captain Crozier, accusing him of circumventing the Navy’s traditional chain of command by copying more than 20 people on the emailed letter.”

Fake news. The use of the word “accuse” falsely suggest that there was any doubt in the matter. Crozer did circumvent the Navy’s  chain of command by copying more than 20 people on the emailed letter, ensuring that it would reach the public. This was a major breach of security and military procedure, a firing offense in every branch.

And of course it was deliberate.

But I digress. The inability of the Times and virtually every other  news source should be an assumption by now. That’s a different Ethics Train Wreck. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Covidiot Or Responsible Leader?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The mayor and her hairdresser…

Remember the gag in the original Batman movie, after the Joker poisons some soap and cosmetic products and news anchors go on the air looking like hell? This story reminded me of that.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has just recently pivoted to race-baiting as a strategy for getting through the pandemic—nice— was forced into defending getting a $500 haircut in defiance of her own state’s  stay-at-home order.  Lightfoot had appeared recent in a public service announcement urging Chicagoans to stay home to save lives. She also spoke to her city’s women specifically, saying “Getting your roots done is not essential.” I would interpret this as “Forget about vanity: this is a national crisis.” Hairstylists and barbers are not on Illinois’ list of essential businesses and must be closed during the Wuhan virus outbreak.

Nonetheless, the Mayor had the city pay a hairdresser 500 dollars for a private hair-cutting session. If there was ever the appearance of a “laws are for the little people,” this episode is it.

The Mayor’s defense is that  because she’s “the face of this city,” maintaining her appearance is a special and necessary exception.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is..

Is the Mayor’s explanation and conduct ethical?

Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Unethical Headline Of The Week, ‘Nah, The News Media Isn’t Promoting Fear And Panic” Division'”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

It’s not often that I post a comment that is mostly links and quotes as a Comment of the Day, but Dr. Emilio Lizardo (That’s his real name, by the way..KIDDING!) performed a real service by gathering this information in one place as a follow-up to the “Unethical Headline” post of last night.

II fear I buried the lede in that one, so some more follow-up is coming. Just two points, and I’ll turn it over to the doctor. Comparing the Wuhan virus outbreak deaths to greater numbers involving routine, yearly, largely unavoidable deaths in the US is a dishonest way to minimize the significance of the current threat. This device is used by the “save the economy, let ’em die” advocates, who are multiplying among conservative commentators. It was also the despicable strategy used by apologists for the terrorists after 9-11, like Michael  Moore, though comparing the number of  weekly auto fatalities with bomb attacks that murder 3,000 Americans is self-evidently moronic.

On the other side, comparing the current epidemic deaths to wars is an equally dishonest strategy of those trying to make the  current situation as terrifying as possible to promote fear and facilitate political gain.

These are two sides of the same unethical coin. (And now you know what the graphic above means)

Now here’s Dr. Lizardo’s Comment of the Day—his first, I think– on the post, “Unethical Headline Of The Week, ‘Nah, The News Media Isn’t Promoting Fear And Panic” Division’.”

I’ll be back for one comment at the end.

Unethical? Nah! And, of course, it’s not personal; it’s business. Not.
And this narrative has been taking place for a week or so:

NYT “News Analysis” – 1 April

“Under the best-case scenario presented on Tuesday, Mr. Trump will see more Americans die from the coronavirus in the weeks and months to come than Presidents Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon saw die in the Korean and Vietnam Wars combined.

The lowest estimate would claim nearly as many Americans as World War I under President Woodrow Wilson and 14 times as many Americans as Iraq and Afghanistan together under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/us/politics/coronavirus-trump.html Continue reading →