1. The surprise move has sparked a “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias” spectacular! Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, resigned in protest. “People are shocked, furious, surprised,” said an editorial board member. Wait: why does the staff care so much that the Post isn’t officially endorsing Harris? They care because they are partisan and biased. They want their paper to do everything it can to help Harris and defeat Trump, not to to report the news objectively, and not to be officially neutral. That the staff reacted this way tells us all we need to know about the Post’s trustworthiness, if we didn’t know it already.
2. Endorsements were justifiable when newspapers maintained some semblance of objectivity. In today’s rotting journalism, however, with “advocacy journalism” holding sway and the Post being a particularly flagrant offender (I cancelled my Post subscription because the New York Time was less biased!) an endorsement doesn’t mean what it once did. That was, “We have assessed the candidates and their positions. We now can state our measured conclusion: X is the responsible choice for voters.” Now, an endorsement only means, “We have been favorably reporting on the Democratic candidate while being relentlessly negative about the Republican candidate, and all our reporters and editors are Democrats and progressives. Of course we’re endorsing X.”
1. Are there any videos of Trump supporters acting like this? As with the many episodes of violence against citizens wearing MAGA caps: if the Trump supporters are the Nazis, why is it that the Democrats are the only ones engaging in violence and harassment?
2. I asked this question of a Trump Deranged relative today. The “But Trump…!” answer I got was “What do you call the Capitol riot?” I call it a bunch of idiots trying to remedy what they thought was an attempt to steal a Presidential election through a protest that got out of control. It was not Americans targeting those whose political views did not align with theirs.
It is time to call these two partisan operatives in the guise of professors what they are: hypocrites, hacks, abusers of authority and totalitarian enablers. Naturally, they are Harvard government professors, my college and my major. I already have my Harvard diploma turned face to the wall and on the floor; there’s not much else I can do is burn it. But I consider these two unethical academics—they shouldn’t be called “scholars”—and insult to me, and any readers who are capable of non-Trump-Deranged thought. The New York Times is complicit by repeatedly giving them a platform to sell books and mislead the public.
But that’s the Times: an institutional ethics villain assisting two individual ethics villains. Nice.
I’ve been flagging the indefensible dishonesty and scholarship-as-propaganda of these two since 2018, when they were lionized by the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media) for their Big Lie launching book, “How Democracies Die.” They’ve published more similar screeds since. I wrote in part (If you like, skip to the end of the long quote, but this is necessary perspective for the rest of the post):
“!! The Washington Post just announced it won’t endorse a Presidential candidate. This is not only a victory for Trump, it should send Democrats to their panic rooms. The message is how terrible a candidate Harris is, and the narrative that she is otherwise has collapsed.”
I love this Comment of the Day. It is as perfect an example as we will ever see of a thoughtful, careful, articulate, and civil rebuttal of a post or position here. This COTD, by EA veteran Zanshin, focused on my disgust regarding the New York Times’ self-indicting and desperate attempt to cover for Kamala Harris’s claim that she worked for McDonald’s as a student (you know, part of that humble middle class upbringing) by criticizing Donald Trump for not accepting her word as Discovered Truth. Harris asserting that anything happened is not evidence, based on her well-documented proclivities. In particular, I pointed out that a Kamala Harris résumé that didn’t list her supposed stint as a burgermeister was deceitfully employed by the Times to imply that her claim is true.
I apologize for getting this up a bit late; I didn’t not expect subsequent events, like Trump’s master-trolling of Harris (and the Times) by doing a campaign stunt having him acting like a McDonald’s employee, the absurd tantrum thrown by the Axis over it, Tim Walz whining on “The View” that the stunt was “disrespectful” to Mickey D employees (How?), and still, neither the company nor the Harris campaign has produced any evidence that Kamala’s tale isn’t in the same category as Walz’s claim that he was in combat and Joe Biden’s claim (among others) that his uncle was eaten by cannibals.
The Times appears to be unfamiliar with the concept of “burden of proof.”
I love the comment and admire it, but as I stated in the thread, I don’t agree with it, though it is a “lucid, intelligent, well thought out” argument.
That was my first thought when I read Jack’s statement (promise? warning?threat?) “I have yet to ban a commenter for doing no more than saying the mainstream media isn’t flamingly, ostentatiously, democratically and destructively biased in favor of progressives and Democrats, but the day is coming, and it’s coming fast.”
But the part in above statement regarding Jack’s judgement about the mainstream media is rather broad and at some places even vague. (note 1) And therefore very hard to prove or disprove
So, I decided to set myself a smaller task. Can I find an example in this blogpost where Jack writes negatively about mainstream media while not warranted by the facts. An example that even might suggest that Jack is a little bit biased against the mainstream media.
I think I have found such an example. Bear with me. The example I want to discuss is the one where Jack discusses the text in the Times regarding Ms. Harris having worked at McDonalds or not.
The headline is a bit harsh, you think? It is, but to hell with it.
I find this behavior by Kamala Harris and her cabal incredible, though less so after watching Harris make gaffe after blunder after botch in recent days.
Has-been news anchor but still-kicking Kennedy Maria Shriver hosted a town hall event promoting Kamala Harris in Royal Oak, Michigan. When a woman in the audience rose to ask, “Are we going to be able to ask a question?,” Shriver replied, “You’re not, unfortunately! We have some predetermined questions. And hopefully I’ll be able to ask some of the questions that might be in your head, I hope so.”
What? At this point, any audience member with any self-respect and respect for the democratic process should have walked out, with some bold soul—I would have done it—announcing “That’s a disgrace. All of you are a disgrace, especially you, Vice-President Harris. Come on, everyone, let’s let these people ask each other scripted questions. We’re out of here.”
This was a Confederacy of Ethics Dunces, beginning with the audience of weenies who don’t have the guts or gumption to reject an obvious insult. Then we have…
….Shriver, who said she agreed to moderate the event as a “concerned citizen” but also as a journalist. If she were really a concerned citizen, she’d be concerned that the Democratic Presidential candidate has refused to explain her policy positions or even to specify how she would be different from President Biden. As a journalist, she had an obligation not to be complicit in yet another Harris incompetence cover-up operation. Shriver proved that she is neither a concerned citizen nor a journalist. She is just a partisan hack, and fully complicit in her party’s efforts to bypass democratic norms to stay in power.
I’m almost glad Arnold cheated on her.
…Liz Cheney, who was backing Harris at the phony town meeting (I’ve been to real town meetings in the real town, the largest in the U.S., of Arlington, Massachusetts. They let you ask your own questions in real town meetings. Presumably I don’t have to explain how unethical Cheney is.
…and, of course, Kamala Harris, coward, liar, phony.
Today I saw another Harris-Walz sign, this one particularly obnoxious as it read, “Harris Walz. Obviously.” Really? Obviously? How can anyone with self-respect leave that thing on their lawn after…
….”60 Minutes” had to fake an interview answer for Harris to save her from her own gibberish?
…she stiffed Catholics by ducking out of the Al Smith dinner?
…she insulted Christians at a rally by telling them they were in the wrong place?
…and now this, still hiding from tough questions and refusing to respect voters’ right to know what the hell they are voting for?
I don’t understand these people. The very least we should demand of our elected officials is that they respect us.
Because, you see, much as I try to present myself as otherwise, I’m a sap. All year I’ve been reading about how the WNBA’s players are discriminated against because they don’t get anywhere near the money that their male counterparts do, that pro women’s basketball was surging in popularity, that finally it was sinking in that women were just as good at the game and fun to watch as the NBA’s freaks, and that social justice had arrived at last.
Nah. The WNBA lost 40 million dollars this past season, and that with its player earning what they skills were worth based on the demand to see them. Feminists and social justice trolls have been trying the same scam as they worked with some success in soccer, claiming that the higher men’s compensation was based on discrimination. No, it was based on reality: supply and demand, popularity, and biology.
To hell with Wolf and all his shows— “Law and Order,” the “FBI” series, “Chicago Med,” “…Fire,” “…P.D.” I could take, barely, the perpetual sympathy for illegal immigrants and appeal to open-border sentiment, but now I am convinced Wolf is a malign force, not just an active member of the Axis of Unethical Conduct but an unscrupulous agent of personal destruction.
Yeah, I know: it won’t make any difference, and I can’t change anything. But at least I’ll be able to look at myself in the mirror.
I just watched “The Long Arm of the Witness” episode 6 from “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” on season 22 (2021). It was an hour-long assault on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, putting his public victimization by a politically motivated accuser from his distant past in a damning and malicious who conveniently had a recovered memory of a sexual assault that had no witnesses, at a party she couldn’t identify, in order to discredit a distinguished judge because the Left didn’t want another conservative on the Court.
I sure didn’t see this designation coming! Trump is not prone to ethical outbursts. Maybe it’s even deserving of an Ethics Hero nod, under the circumstances. Here’s the quote:
“She seems to have an ability to survive, because you know she was out of the race, and all of the sudden she’s running for president. That’s a great ability that some people have and some people don’t have. She seems to have some pretty longtime friendships. And I call that a good thing. And she seems to have a nice way about her.”
—Donald Trump, upon being asked by a young woman at the Univision town hall, “What are the three virtues that you see in Vice President Kamala Harris?”
The Trump-Deranged among you will say, I’m sure, that this was not a sincere response, but a calculated one desigend to win over voters. You will say that because you are literally incapable of believing anything good about the man.
But I see that as a genuine expression of admiration from someone who knows what the job of political leaders requires, and who admires perseverance under adversity and stress, because he has experienced those things first hand. He realizes that having genuine long-time friendships in politics is rare and a sign of good character.
I don’t know where he gets the idea that Harris has a “nice way about her,” but its his assessment, not mine.
Trump answered that way, moreover, as Harris and her party are increasingly making the demonizing and the denigrating of Donald Trump personally as their main, last ditch pitch for voting Democrat in the election.
I honestly didn’t think he had it in him to say something like this. Tit-for-tat is part of Trump’s operating philosophy. If you say something bad about him or cross him, you’re terrible. If you help him out or do what he wants, you’re a great person and friend.
There may be a bit more depth to Trump’s character and world view than I have perceived over the years.
A usually astute and beneficent friend of long-standing posted that on Facebook recently.
I’d love to know what Marxist Ethics Corrupter wrote it, so I can hold him or her up to the derision, contempt and shunning such a sinister argument deserves. The obvious smoking gun in the statement is “what society needs to know.”
Who determines what society needs to know? Current public schools, administrators and teachers have concluded that society needs to know that the United States was based on slavery, that its Founders were villains, that U.S. is currently a racist nation that citizens “of color” cannot succeed in without special assistance, that sexual identify is fluid and that socialism is the only morally defensible form of government.
None of that belongs in a public school curriculum. Public school exists to teach skills and critical thinking: it should no more be teaching political cant than religion. The totalitarian who issued that poison above is advocating indoctrination, and worse, indoctrination by people who I don’t know, trust, or believe have the education, perspective or intelligence to decide what “society needs to know.”
Ethics Alarms 