Government & Politics

The Last “Snow White” Post (I Promise)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Why is the Cognitive Dissonance Scale the graphic I chose for the final word on Disney’s “live-action” remake of Walt’s biggest and most important hit, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”? (For some perspective, realize that we have the same relationship on the timeline to that film that it had to the Presidency of Millard Fillmore.) It is clear that this cultural ethics train wreck, which EA has been dutifully covering (here, here, here, here here, and here), is now stuck inextricably in cognitive dissonance territory. For most viewers, what they think about the movie will be influenced far more by their biases and what they associate with the movie than the movie itself.

That’s how the scale works, as I keep explaining ad nauseam. If Disney is generally a plus-5 on a ticket-buyer’s scale (once upon a time, Disney would have been a plus-10 or higher on everyone’s scale) and the movie in a vacuum would be at “Meh”-level Zero, Disney would pull the film into positive territory. If Disney is in negative territory already for a different viewer, the film begins with an anchor chained to its metaphorical ankles.

Thus it is hardly surprising to see this as the early returns on the film (which doesn’t officially open in theaters until tomorrow):

Now that’s polarization!

What’s going on here? Well, a lot…

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Seeking Accountability For Giving Anti-White, Anti-American Talking Heads Broadcast Platforms

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The recent head-exploding statement by (finally) fired MSNBC racist Joy Reid would be an Unethical Quote of the Day if it were spewed out of the mouth of most people. Reid constantly said such disgusting things and I reflexively put her racist comments in the Julie Principle files long ago. But what she said in a conversation with fellow racist Ta-Nehisi Coates at a program at Xavier University in New Orleans raises another, broader ethics issue.

Reid said, “When my mother came from Guyana, she realized it is not a land of opportunity for people like us.” That claim, coming from someone with the American experience Joy Reid has enjoyed, is beyond insulting and false on its face: it is also incredibly stupid, even for Reid. When she was finally let go, Reid was making $3 million a year, and had been pulling down a seven figure salary for at least a decade. Her life is powerful evidence that the U.S. is a “land of opportunity” for people like her, meaning, as she did, black people. (It is also obviously a land of opportunity for America-hating, anti-white bigots who will make self-evidently false claims designed to divide the country.)

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Why DEI Must DIE: Exhibit A

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On the bright side, I suppose its reassuring to know that The Great Stupid is even worse “across the pond” than it is here…

Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust, which cares for buildings in the immortal playwright’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, has announced that it wants to “create a more inclusive museum experience.” Therefore, the center of Great Britain’s essential public appreciation of the fact that it was so fortunate to be the birthplace of the greatest writer the world has ever known (unless the Bard was really a visitor from another planet, which has been my personal theory since I had to study “King Lear” in detail in order to direct a production of it) will seek ways to act on the diagnosis that Shakespeare’s works have been used to advance white supremacy.

Yes, these are morons. The legacy of one of the most vital catalysts of Western civilization is in the hands of morons. Now what?

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Ethics Movie: “The Company You Keep”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

2012’s “The Company You Keep” was the last film directed by Robert Redford, which tells you something. Redford is an excellent director but often not a commercially popular one: this movie, about aging Sixties radicals and their slow-dawning realization (or not) that their “movement” was ethically and logically flawed did not do well at the box office, and after his previous ethics movie (“The Conspirator,” which I posted about here) bombed, Redford’s days of getting studios to bet on his work were over.

“The Company You Keep” is not as good as “The Conspirator,” but it is surprisingly relevant in 2025 as we watch the American Left struggling with its hypocrisy, foolish utopianism and increasingly obvious hatred for its own country. Redford plays a former Weatherman (“The Weathermen” was the violent faction of the Students for Democratic Action) who has been in hiding in plain sight since a domestic terrorism action by the group turned fatal. When his long-standing alternate identity as a prominent lawyer is outed by an idealistic young journalist, Redford goes on the run. In the process he encounters former fellow-revolutionaries, some of whom still burn for the cause.

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An Eternal Ethical Dilemma at Arlington National Cemetery

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Once an institution publicly embraces or endorses something that wasn’t that institution’s proper role to endorse, the mistake cannot be remedied without the undesirable result of appearing to reject what should never have been embraced in the first place. The reverse is also true: as EA has pointed out, when the government starts legalizing previously banned substances, it appears that society now approves of their use.

The Trump administration is falling victim to the first version of this phenomenon in its admirable purge of DEI propaganda and practices across the government and its agencies. Naturally, this is being weaponized by the Trump-Hating news media. Today’s example: “Arlington Cemetery Website Loses Pages on Black Veterans, Women and Civil War” at the New York Times.

The story goes on to say, after the deliberately inflammatory title (President Trump is a racist and a misogynist, you know!), that the pages were taken down in response to the administration’s policy of ending promotion of the woke “diversity, equity and exclusion” fad, which is designed to inject “good discrimination” and group preferences into the culture.

The cemetery is operated by the Army, and issued a statement that it is dedicated to “sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism.” The missing pages are being re-drafted. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, accused the Trump administration of trying to erase the accomplishments of women and people of color.

Of course he did.

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Why Is So Much of the Public Ignorant, Badly Informed, Confused and Stupid? THIS….

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I had several other posts on the runway (including a Kennedy Center Symphony crowd booing J.D. Vance: stay classy, you patrons of the arts!, but with the developing theme today of The Great Stupid, I couldn’t resist this one. We began with a moronic “influencer,” proceeded to a state-appointed adviser who thinks she’s a reptile, and now an apparently respected black journalist named Karen Hunter.

For some ridiculous reason (that’s the second time I’ve used that intro: it’s a quote from “The Pirates of Penzance”), I was sent an email by SiriusXM about “host SiriusXM host Karen Hunter’s podcast today.” It featured loudmouthed, race-obsessed sports commentator Stephen A. Smith, who because he always drags politics into everything, is now being treated like an expert on politics.

What follows is the exchange during the podcast that was sent to entice me into becoming a follower, springing from Hunter’s questions about “buzz” around Smith being a possible Presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2028. To his credit, he said that the idea was absurd, but I’m more concerned with what this radio host said:

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Peak “Great Stupid” in Oregon (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I heard some mocking talking heads on Fox News joking about this yesterday and it made no sense to me at all, so I ignored it. Then I found out what had provoked all of the giggling about turtles.

The state of Oregon has appointed JD Holt to an Oregon Mental Health Advisory Board. JD says her pronouns are “they/them/terrapin.” She/they/it is not kidding. So she is out of her frickin’ mind.

From Fox News: “JD Holt, who also goes by “JD Terrapin” on Facebook, is one of roughly two dozen “consumers” on the OHA’s Consumer Advisory Council (OCAC). The council, established by administrative statute, is appointed by OHA Director Dr. Sejal Hathi, who was appointed by Gov. Tina Kotek (D, of course.) The purpose of the OCAC is to advise Hathi on the state’s provision of mental health services, including through investigations and reviews of current practices.”

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Observations on a Jobs Graph

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

That provocative graph above is brought to you by Apollo Global Management.

It purports to reveal what proportion of new jobs added each year since 2016 were in the private and public sectors. I have no way of telling whether the numbers are accurate, whether the manner of presenting them is fair, and whether Apollo has an agenda in presenting them this way. I guess that’s the first ethics observation. It is now impossible to trust news accounts, statistics, analysis, surveys, studies and data, no matter where it comes from. We can add this to the fact that photographs, films, recordings and videos are also untrustworthy.

But here are some more observations on the off chance that the numbers are correct and can be trusted:

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, (D-Mich)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The neck-and -neck race to be the worst member of the House was narrowed down considerably last week after such worthy contestants on the GOP side as Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene were lapped by all of the Democrats who beclowned themselves during President Trump’s “Address to the Joint Session of Congress,” aka. “The State of the Union.” But “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib (above), already a strong favorite of the Las Vagas oddsmakers to win “Worst Member of Congress Alive,” seemingly swept aside her fellow Squad members, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell, Al Green, Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the motley crew they as if they were flies on her face by being the only member of the House to vote against the Subterranean Border Defense Act.

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Ethics Quote of the Day: Prof. Jonathan Turley

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“If you view conservatives judges and justices as “lawless,” then every decision that they issue can be construed as a “crisis” in failing to adopt your own interpretive approach.”

—George Washington University law professor and lawyer Jonathan Turley

I decided to ignore the recent open letter signed by approximately 950 law professors declaring the second Trump administration a “Constitutional crisis,” because it was so obviously a mass exhibition of both “bias makes you stupid” and the overwhelming partisan slant of the legal profession, upon which Ethics Alarms has commented many times. The letter is the equivalent of the infamous one in 2020 signed by all those national intelligence experts who wanted everyone to know that the Hunter Biden laptop was really Russian disinformation, but the current letter is worse. Lawyers, as professionals, are required to be trustworthy. Trustworthy lawyers don’t put their names on legal misinformation and political propaganda like this latest “Trump is a dictator” attack. (The American Bar Association has issued a similar statement.)

I’m glad I waited and let Professor Turley eviscerate these disgraces to the law and academia. Cruelly, he has more influence, visibility and credibility than little ol’ me. In his blog post and column for The Hill titled “Panic politics: Law professors’ umpteenth ‘constitutional crisis’ falls flat”, Turley neatly points out,

  • “The latest letter follows a familiar pattern that has played out like a political perpetual motion machine since the first Trump impeachment. It works something like this: A legal academy composed of largely liberal academics announces a “constitutional crisis” caused by conservatives, and then a largely liberal media runs the story with little scrutiny or skepticism. On most echo-chambered media sites, the public rarely hears an opposing view.”

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! On my Facebook page, lawyers and even a couple of professors regularly proclaim as fact that President Trump is “defying” the Constitution.

Biased, ignorant and Trump-Deranged is no way to practice law, son.

Read the whole thing, but here are some more excerpts: Continue reading →