Government & Politics

KABOOM! Ethics Dunces: George Clooney and Any Audience Member Who Doesn’t Jeer the End of “Good Night and Good Luck”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I honestly thought this was a joke. As a stage director, I couldn’t believe that a Broadway show—a drama, supposedly— would stoop this low. My head has been in a continuous state of eruption since I found out the report was accurate.

George Clooney has a vanity project on Broadway, a stage adaptation of his well-received 2005 movie about Edward R. Murrow’s high stakes showdown with demagogue Joe McCarthy at the height of his power. He co-wrote the screenplay and directed while also playing a supporting role. Now, twenty years later, Clooney has moved himself into the starring role as Murrow (previously played by a better and more Murrow-like actor, David Strathairn).

The play has been getting luke-warm reviews, but none of the ones I read mentioned this little detail: At the end of the play, which is supposed to be about the importance of a courageous press that “speaks truth to power” and is trusted by the public to be fair and uncorruptible, a giant photo of Elon Musk giving the alleged “Nazi salute” is projected on the backdrop.

It was not a Nazi salute, and the Axis news media that represented it as such proved just how far the profession of journalism has fallen since the halcyon days of Edward R. Morrow. But the photo surely isn’t intended to convey that message. Clooney, or some lunatic, with Clooney’s approval, was trying to equate McCarthyism with the Trump administration, and McCarthy’s totalitarian methods with Musk. It’s such a bizarre and idiotic analogy that I can’t properly critique it because I don’t comprehend the thinking behind it. It is lizard-brain level at best, and I always thought Clooney was smarter than that. (My dog Spuds is smarter than that.)

But reports are that the Trump Deranged Broadway audiences gasp and react as if this is brilliant commentary. I would have walked out. Any decent American or responsible theater-goer should walk out.

I still am hoping this is a hoax.

Can This “Democratic Norm” Be Saved?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

One of the most hackneyed attacks on President Trump is that he violates “traditional democratic norms.” Of course, this is another Democratic Party double standards play: most assertive Presidents ignore some “traditional norms” while forging new ones, and the last Democrati in the White House crushed some surprising traditional norms I thought were secure, like the norm of enforcing immigration laws, and the norm of selecting Cabinet members on the basis of their abilities rather than their EEOC categories, the norm of holding press conferences, the norm of having the elected President actually be the President, and the norm of not dropping out of a re-election campaign once it has begun so the party can install a more promising replacement without the formality of primaries and a democratic nominating process.

A democratic norm that is definitely on death’s door in the Trump Administration is the traditional respect the President has extended to reporters and journalists. Yesterday, President Trump was openly hostile and insulting to CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins when she questioned him in the Oval Office on the deportation of El Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He called her a “low-rated anchor” while insulting her employer, CNN. Passing a question off to Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the President sniped, “Can you just also respond to that question because you know it’s asked by CNN and they always ask it with a slant because they’re totally slanted because they don’t know what’s happening. That’s why nobody’s watching them.” Ouchie! Later in the session, Trump responded to another question about Garcia from Collins by saying, “How long do we have to answer this question? Why don’t you just say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’re keeping criminals out of our country’? Why can’t you just say that? Why do you go over and over …and that’s why nobody watches you anymore! You have no credibility.”

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Got It: Apparently All Criticism Of Progressive Figures Or Positions Is Based Entirely On Hate And Bigotry. Good To Know!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

[I am moved to repost this essay from 2023 upon refreshing my memory about how Taylor Lorenz, the scummy journalist featured in the previous post, habitually accuses critics of misogyny and bias against women whenever they accurately call her what she is, a vile, corrupted hack. I also have been getting quite a few attack emails of late stemming from Ethics Alarms posts, and this is a window into my world.—JM]

I had a strange experience last week. After posting Paul W. Schlecht’s estimable Comment of the Day regarding “Do something!” hysterics regarding gun control, I received an off-site email from a reader who complained that Paul mentioning “Uncle George Soros” in a list of the “Who’s Who of Climate Criminal Lefties” employed a “a “phrase universally understood to be an anti-Semitic slur” and that “it is horrible and unforgivable to amplify bigotry in any form but under the banner of Ethics is even worse.” honest, irresponsible and disgusting habit of defaulting to racism, sexism, xenophobia, ageism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of bigotry to deflect legitimate criticism and intimidate as well as demonize those who oppose them. This reflex has become the predominant weapon of the Left in recent years, instead of, you know, things like facts, logic, common sense, history and reality. It has to be broken of this habit, by patriots of good faith and courage who aren’t afraid to say, “F..sorry… Bite me!“

People often write me directly when they are too timid to present a dubious opinion before the tough crowd here. I was very polite and even grateful to the hitherto unknown lurker, and confessed that if “Uncle George” was truly “universally” known to be an anti-Semitic slur, I had missed it, and I asked the guy to enlighten me. He then sent a link to an ADL opinion piece suggesting that conservative and Republican criticism of the billionaire’s copious funding of various progressive groups and causes was all motivated by anti-Semitism.

This ticked me off, and I wrote back,

I assumed that “Uncle George” had some special meaning: clearly, you just mean deriding Soros itself is  anti-Semitic, which is, frankly, bullshit. He’s a billionaire who supports progressive causes, some of them Far Left. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the flip side of the Koch Brothers. It’s his money, and he can do what he wants with it; much of what he wants to do with it is bad stuff in my view, but I don’t see how that has anything to so with his ethnicity.  This line in the ADL piece—“A person who promotes a Soros conspiracy theory may not intend to promulgate antisemitism. But Soros’ Jewish identity is so well-known that in many cases it is hard not to infer that meaning”—discredits the whole article.
 
There’s nothing sinister about Soros supporting the campaigns of really bad prosecutors, but they are still really bad prosecutors. There’s nothing sinister about his spending so much supporting radical environmental groups either, though it’s a waste of money.
 
I know all about Soros and how he’s the Right’s boogeyman, but attributing that to anti-antisemitism is lazy and intellectually dishonest.
 
Did you bother to check to see what I’ve written about Soros? Not much, because I haven’t seen him do anything unethical. I did write one long defense of Soros, at the very beginning of the blog, however. I defended him, and praised him. I wouldn’t change a word today.
 
 

This jerk then writes back, “Your first response to me was that you were “at sea” when it came to Soros, but in your second you said, ‘I know all about Soros’. Sounds disingenuous to me.” I quit reading after that, and also quit being nice. I am happy to engage with fair, serious, sincere readers on my private email account, but oddly, a disproportionate number of those who avail themselves of the opportunity abuse it. So I wrote,

I get it! You’re an asshole.
 
I SAID that I was “at sea” regarding how “Uncle George” was somehow an anti-Semitic slur. I do know all about Soros, and never said I didn’t.
 
You can apologize for this “gotcha!” crap, or stay out of my inbox. I’ve tried to respond to your concerns fairly and politely, and your response is to falsely accuse me of lying.
 
Jerk. Fuck off.

I have to confess that I probably used “fuck off'” as opposed to my usual “Bite me!” because I had been streaming “Succession,” the rich family/cut-throat business politics drama in which literally everyone says “Fuck off!” in almost every conversation, even friendly ones. The bon mot in not really in my repertoire, but after hearing the phase about a thousand times in the span of a few days, it momentarily felt right to me, and it was certainly well-earned. (He did, by the way, indeed fuck off).

I wasn’t going to mention the episode until I saw that my old pal, the Washington Post’s biased-but-conflicted-about -it factchecker Glenn Kessler had issued issue a “Factchecker” column declaring that “incendiary” claims that Soros had “funded” Manhattan’s political hit man qua prosecutor Alvin Bragg (focusing on a tweet by Donald Trump to that effect) were lies. Kessler also asserted that such critiques were motivated by anti-Semitism, writing,

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Ethics Villain Taylor Lorenz

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“You’re going to see women especially that feel like, Oh my God, right? Like, here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart. He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.”

—–The infamous Ethics Villain Taylor Lorenz, on CNN yesterday, saying (again) how admirable cold-blooded murderer Luigi Mangione is for killing  UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by shooting him in the back.

Ethics Alarms has paid little attention to the unethical rantings of Lorenz, who was fired from the New York Times for publishing slanderous material, hired by the Washington Pots (which has no ethical standards), and now is on her own. The Times once described her as a “talented journalist,” which also tells you all you need to know about The Times. I have put Lorenz in the same metaphorical isolation cell with perpetually unethical pundits like Elie Mystal, Jot Reid and Jimmy Kimmel, “Julie Principle” cases so obviously devoid of decency that 1) they aren’t worth criticizing and 2) they serve as useful markers of a friend’s lack of standards: if he or she can listen to or read what these awful people spew into public discourse without thinking, “Wow, what a lunatic!” said friend is beyond ethics rehab efforts.

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Ethics Quiz: Pronouns Again

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

The New York Times says that reporters who contact Trump Administration officials to request statements or quotes on significant events or policies do not get a response to their emails if their signature includes their “preferred pronouns.” This has not been officially confirmed as administration policy, but Trump press spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told the paper that policy it is, saying, “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios. Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story.” Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and spokeswoman for the Department of Government Efficiency, answered an inquiry on the topic, “As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts.” Trump’s presidential campaign account on X also claimed, “It is official White House policy to IGNORE reporters’ emails with pronouns in the signature.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is that policy, if that is the policy, fair and ethical?

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The Lawyer Disability Conundrum

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I frequently discuss lawyers continuing to practice under temporary disabilities, like bad colds, flues, serious pain (like migraines) or painful injuries. The lines are blurry indeed, but if a condition causes a lawyer to be sub-par in serving a client’s needs, the client should be informed, and the lawyer should be prepared to either delay the matter or find a replacement. Progressive disabilities, like age-related declines in stamina and cognitive ability, also have to be taken seriously by an ethical lawyer and dealt with responsibly in the best interests of clients.

Missouri has a rule that allows for a court to suspend a lawyer after an adjudication of disability or incapacity. This week the Missouri Supreme Court summarily suspended a lawyer after the lawyer had been found disabled by a Social Security judge. She has medical issues affecting her eyesight, back, and hands,and she also suffers from chronic migraines. Her lawyer insists that her judgment has not been affected, and that she is still capable of competent and zealous representation of her clients. The applicability of the Americans with Disabilities Act is obviously an issue.

The suspended lawyer cites the precedent of Paul Alexander, a recently deceased Dallas lawyer who specialized in ADA cases. He graduated from the University of Texas School of Law. Alexander had polio as a child, which rendered him a quadriplegic. He used an iron lung except when a case required him to leave his workplace in a wheelchair and practiced law for more than 40 years typing on his personal computer using a device he held in his mouth. Alexander also painted and wrote a book.

Presumably his clients were aware of his disability ans consented to his representation of them despite his disability. Presumably also, he would have been suspended in Missouri. Still, is the proper standard to be applied to all lawyers reasonably embodied by Paul Alexander, who was an outlier by anyone’s definition?

It’s Come to This: Yesterday’s Incompetence Is Today’s Brilliant Innovation

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

When I saw the photo above and followed the reports like this one…

… I was certain that I had posted on an almost identical story a few years ago. And I had…with one significant difference.

The photo above comes from the Montgomery Township in Pennsylvania, where authorities have introduced wavy lane patterns on some streets. The regular lane patterns have been replaced by curved and zig-zagged lines. Montgomery Township officials explain that the erratic lane margins are their solution to too many speeding automobiles on some of the most trafficked streets. They are “traffic-calming measures.” “Our Highway Safety Officers and Traffic Engineers have determined that this is the best course of action for the area to ensure the safety of the local residents,” Montgomery Township police wrote in a Facebook post.

That’s funny: back in 2022, an Ethics Alarms “Res Ipsa Loquitur” post featured this, from Hollister, California:

In that instance, the wavy lines were definitely not by design. Hollister Mayor Igancio Velzaquez explained, “It just comes down to the contractor. Somebody didn’t read the plans correctly. It was not designed to look very odd.”

You may agree with me that the intentional eccentric lines look like a mistake, and the the accidental lines in Hollister look intentional, but that is neither here not there.

And I’m with Hollister. If there’s too much speeding an a section of a street, put up speed limit signs with reduced numbers. Pull over drivers. Up the fines for speeding. Speed humps are a lousy way to control traffic, but they are better than this nonsense. Heck, why stop at wavy lines? Try broken glass! Puppies in glass cages in the middle of the road! Land mines! Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but why not set up fun obstacles, and make the street like a miniature golf course?

Ethics Verdict: The President’s Executive Orders On Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is easy: irresponsible, petty and stupid.

President Trump signed a pair of executive orders directing that there be federal investigations and other sanctions against high-profile administration critics from his first term. The first is former homeland security official Miles Taylor. He’s the jerk who wrote the anonymous New York Times op-ed in 2018 boasting about how he and others were working behind the scenes to sabotage the first Trump term. describing an internal resistance to Trump in his first term. The other is Christopher Krebs, the former head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), who worked to oppose Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was “fixed” and “stolen,” and was was subsequently fired.

In the case of Taylor, the President implied in his remarks that he engaged in “treason,” which is a stretch, to put it lightly. Krebs was fired: that should have been punishment enough. In either case, Trump has bigger fish to fry, as the saying goes, and these orders do nothing to advance his agenda.

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Why Hasn’t This Been a Headline Yet?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

My Wuhan Virus-phobic friends and relatives pooh-poohed my assertion that the pandemic death statistics were being hyped and inflated by the news media and the CDC to keep the public terrified and in doors (and, quite possibly, unable to participate in a fair election.) For all I know they still don’t believe it, in part because the infuriating hasn’t been shouted from the roof-tops. A lead story on ever news network and a headline in every newspaper would be appropriate. It shouldn’t take all that, of course: I figured out we were being conned when the New York Times started running scare obituaries about 92-year-old black women who were “killed by Covid” while they were also suffering from cancer, high blood pressure and diabetes.

I had, frankly, forgotten about the fact that the news media still hasn’t taken responsibility for their unethical fear-mongering until I stumbled upon this, from July 18, 2023, in the 17th paragraph of a New York Times subscriber newsletter piece called “A Positive COVID Milestone” by David Leonhardt. He was one of the worst of the Times’ progressive op-ed writers until he was demoted. Leonhardt wrote: “The official number [of Wuhan deaths] is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had [the] virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death….CDC data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.”

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Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Ethics Alarms Friday Forum…

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Last week’s open forum was wild, man, and I hope today’s can be as lively.

Based on the early returns, there’s a lot to bloviate about in the ethics world. The amateur golf champ playing in the Masters was caught pissing into a creek on n the 13th hole at Augusta National golf course. Pennsylvania judge Sonya McKnight was just convicted of shooting her sleeping boyfriend in the head. (Seems awfully judgmental…). Almost all Democrats in the House voted against the bill requiring voter ID in Federal elections. Yes, their determination to prove the cognitive dissonance scale wrong continues apace! A black Congressman tried to discuss issues with a Trump-Deranged white female and was called a “race traitor”…

…and we learned that after VP JD Vance’s March visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, issued a gratuitous email to the base’s personnel stating that he did not speak for her of the base. What an idiot. (She was fired.) Finally, we have this stupid incident, in which Frontier Airlines let a woman fly to Puerto Rico with her “emotional support parrot” but wouldn’t let the bird on the return flight. (Gift link.)

Be careful. It’s stupid out there…