History

The N.F.L. Is Helping Chuck Klosterman’s Prediction Come True [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

I was going to get this up before the Super Bowl, but it turns out that the issue was further crystalized by the game itself. As happens approximately 50% of the time with this annual spectacle, the game was a yawn, and much of the news coming out of the contest involved the NFL’s deliberate transformation of what was once considered a unifying family cultural event, like Fourth of July fireworks, into a partisan, progressive statement about how America sucks, with expensive TV ads extolling capitalism and patriotism at the same time. That’s message whiplash, and ethically irresponsible.

As the New York Times explained, without criticism, the NFL took a hard turn Left when it put Barack Obama pal Jay-Z, the rap star and impresario, in charge of the Super Bowl halftime show after the 2018 Super Bowl had triggered anger from fans over players “taking a knee” during the National Anthem. The Times, spinning as usual, says that the kneeling was intended to “draw attention to police brutality and social justice issues.”

As Ethics Alarms pointed out at the time, none of the kneelers, including its cynical originator, over-the-hill quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ever explained coherently what they were kneeling about. What “police brutality”? Oh, you know, Mike Brown, whom Black Lives Matters still says was “murdered” on its website. What social justice issues? Oh, you know: it’s time for white people to be discriminated against to make up for slavery. The left-turn was a greed-induced mass virtue signal to blacks, clueless young fans, and Democrats. (It helped that President Trump vociferously attacked Kaepernick and Co., so the kneeling appealed to the Trump Deranged too. (See Dissonance Scale, Cognitive)

The Times:

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Chess Ethics, From Ben Franklin

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, as you know unless you live in a cave. I quit watching all football after the CTE scandal made it clear to me that this is a deadly sport and that the people who make money by paying young men millions to cripple themselves are ethics villains who deserve to spend eternity standing in a boiling lake of guacamole.

I was never that jazzed about football as a game anyway, and knew that the NFL was the most ethics-free sports organization in existence even as the NCAA worked hard to catch up. In addition to being a mob game on the field and off, it requires no intellectual engagement at all and the values it teaches are few. Later today I will post on Chuck Klosterman’s recent claims that the game is doomed, to which I will only note now by writing, “Good!”

I like all games and most sports. I believe that there are seven special games that everyone should learn to play because they all require special skills that are useful in other spheres of life, and teach ethical values as well. Those are, in no special order,

  • Go
  • Poker
  • Bridge
  • Diplomacy
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Scrabble, and 
  • Chess

I will save what each offers us ethically for another essay or six. However the last, which arguably should be first, is the immediate topic here. They used to teach chess in Soviet schools; perhaps they do still. It’s a wise policy. If Americans spent the time they spend watching football playing chess instead, this would be a far healthier country with infinitely stronger critical thinking and life competence skills.

I recently learned that our smartest, quirkiest and most versatile Founder, Benjamin Franklin, was a chess enthusiast. Ben was the ultimate polymath and didn’t have the time or dedication to master a single pursuit that is necessary to become a great chess player. Heck, I don’t understand how he had time and energy to accomplish 25% of what he did in his life. Nevertheless, Ben did take the time to write down his thoughts about the game in the following essay, in which he proposes principles of chess ethics.

I offer it to you now as an alternative to gathering black marks on your soul by supporting the NFL and its sponsors today. Here’s Ben…

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From The “I Did Not Know That!” Files: The History of Crisco

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

A British personal trainer and fitness coach named Sama Hoole posted this on “X”:

1866: Cotton seeds are agricultural waste. After extracting cotton fiber, farmers are left with millions of tons of seeds containing oil that’s toxic to humans. Gossypol, a natural pesticide in cotton, makes the oil inedible. The seeds are fed to cattle in small amounts or simply discarded.

1900: Procter & Gamble is making candles and soap. They need cheap fats. Animal fats work but they’re expensive. Cotton seed oil is abundant and nearly worthless. If they could somehow make it edible, they’d have unlimited cheap raw material. The process they develop is brutal. Extract the oil using chemical solvents. Heat to extreme temperatures to neutralise gossypol. Hydrogenate with pressurised hydrogen gas to make it solid at room temperature. Deodorise chemically to remove the rancid smell. Bleach to remove the grey color. The result: Crisco. Crystallised cottonseed oil.

Industrial textile waste transformed through chemical processing into something white and solid that looks like lard. They patent it in 1907, launch commercially in 1911. Now they have a problem. Nobody wants to eat industrial waste that’s been chemically treated. Your grandmother cooks with lard and butter like humans have for thousands of years. Crisco needs to convince her that her traditional fats are deadly and this hydrogenated cotton-seed paste is better. The marketing campaign is genius. They distribute free cookbooks with recipes specifically designed for Crisco. They sponsor cooking demonstrations. They target Jewish communities advertising Crisco as kosher: neither meat nor dairy. They run magazine adverts suggesting that modern, scientific families use Crisco while backwards rural people use lard.

But the real coup happens in 1948. The American Heart Association has $1,700 in their budget. They’re a tiny organisation. Procter & Gamble donates $1.7 million. Suddenly the AHA has funding, influence, and a major corporate sponsor who manufactures vegetable oil.

1961: The AHA issues their first dietary guidelines. Avoid saturated fat from animals. Replace it with vegetable oils. Recommended oils: Crisco, Wesson, and other seed oils. The conflict is blatant. The organization issuing health advice is funded by the company that profits when people follow that advice. Nobody seems troubled by this. Newspapers report the guidelines as objective science. Doctors repeat them to patients. Government agencies adopt them into policy. Industrial cotton-seed oil, chemically extracted and hydrogenated, becomes “heart-healthy” while butter becomes “artery-clogging poison.”

1980s: Researchers discover that trans fats, created by hydrogenation, directly cause heart disease. They raise LDL, lower HDL, promote inflammation, and increase heart attack risk more than any other dietary fat. Crisco, as originally formulated, is catastrophically unhealthy. This takes 70 years to officially acknowledge. Procter & Gamble’s response: Quietly reformulate without admission of error. Remove hydrogenation, keep selling seed oils, never acknowledge that their “heart-healthy” product spent seven decades actively causing the disease it claimed to prevent. Modern seed oils remain. Soybean, canola, corn, safflower oils everywhere. Same chemical extraction process. Same high-temperature refining. Same oxidation problems. Just without hydrogenation so trans fats stay below regulatory thresholds. These oils oxidise rapidly when heated. They integrate into cell membranes where they create inflammatory signalling for months or years. They’re rich in omega-6 fatty acids that promote inflammation. They’ve never existed in human diets at current consumption levels. But they’re cheap. Profitable. And the food industry has spent a century convincing everyone they’re healthy. The alternative, admitting that industrial textile waste shouldn’t have been turned into food, would require acknowledging the last 110 years of dietary advice was fundamentally corrupted from the start. Your great-grandmother cooked with lard because that’s what humans used for millennia. Then Procter & Gamble needed to sell soap alternatives and accidentally created the largest dietary change in human history.

We traded animal fats that built civilisations for factory waste that causes disease. The soap company won. Your health lost.

I have no idea if this is all true, partially true, a matter of dispute, or complete fantasy. But I bet RFK Jr. likes it. The story, which certainly has the ring of truth, also raises the issue of trusting science and experts, especially when business interests and money are involved.

My personal favorite use of Crisco was when people would mix it with food coloring and sugar and call it “frosting.”

That Tears It: I’m Heading To The Woodchipper…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

On Facebook just now, two brilliant women I have long admired, loved and respected posted the following on Facebook:

…One quoted FDR about the President as a “moral leader.” This was intended by my friend as a knock on Trump. She obviously knows next to nothing about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He cheated on his devoted wife for most of their marriage, ultimately dying with one of his mistresses. He locked up Japanese American citizens in arguably the worst civil rights breach of any American President. He helped the Holocaust to proceed by allowing anti-Semites in his Cabinet to foil the efforts of Jews to escape Nazi Germany. FDR condemned Eastern Europe to decades of brutal Communist rule in gratitude to Stalin. Roosevelt also allowed himself to be elected four times, the last time when he knew he was dying: an odd choice to use in contrast to a President being accused of being a “king.”

FDR was a great President in many ways, but few of our leaders were less interested in morality or ethics than Roosevelt.

.…The other poste that she read Kamala Harris’s book and found it inspiring. I don’t even want to talk about that one…

Frank Thomas Feels Insulted By The Chicago White Sox Black History Month Graphic. He Should Be.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

After the Chicago White Sox posted the above graphic to honor “momentous firsts for the White Sox organization related to Black History Month,” White Sox slugger and Hall of Fame member Frank Thomas, “The Big Hurt,” posted bitterly on “X”: “I guess the black player who made you rich over there and holds all your records is forgettable!”

Petty? Childish? I don’t think so. If you look at the graphic, Frank Thomas appears only a virtual footnote, an afterthought following the recognition of Dick Allen, nowhere near as great a player as Thomas and certainly not the credit to the game that Frank was, as the Chisox’s first black MVP. Yet if the purpose is to honor standout African -American members of the team over its long history, Thomas’s record should have earned him top billing.

Thomas played for the White Sox from 1990–2005, winning back-to-back American League MVP awards (1993–1994) and now holds franchise records for home runs (448), RBIs (1,465), and walks. He tied Ted Williams on the lifetime homer list with 521, and ended his career with a .301 lifetime batting average in an era when .300 averages have become rarer every year. Thomas has the highest on-base percentage of any modern player who wasn’t Barry Bonds, as in “a freak steroid mutation that pitchers were afraid to pitch to.”

Thomas isn’t just the greatest black player in White Sox history, he is the greatest player in White Sox history of any color or ethnicity. But Thomas’s snub by his team is even more outrageous than those facts suggest.

Chicago is one of the eight original teams in the American League, meaning that the franchise has been operating as a major league team since 1901. Of the eight, only the White Sox can boast that a black man was unquestionably its greatest player.

The greatest Boston Red Sox player was Ted Williams. The New York Yankees: Babe Ruth; the Cleveland Indians: Bob Feller or Nap Lajoie; the Detroit Tigers: Ty Cobb; Washington (now Minnesota): Walter Johnson ; St. Louis (now Baltimore): Cal Ripken; Philadelphia (now Las Vegas, previously Kansas City and Oakland): Jimmy Foxx. All white. Frank Thomas stands alone as the sole black star to dominate an American League franchise over 125 years. If the idea is to honor “firsts,” he is the first black star in the league to achieve the status of all-time franchise great.

So the Chicago White Sox, seeking to celebrate Black History Month, minimized the impact, contributions, achievements and reputation of its greatest player, even though he is black.

Frank Thomas regards that as a slap in the face, and I don’t blame him.


Ethics Briefs, #2: Suck-Up Cabinet Meetings

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

As I stated in the first installment, today I’m forced to post piecemeal what would normally be an ethics warm-up with 4-6 items.

2. I suggest that if Republicans are sick of the Axis “autocracy” trope, they should persuade the President to have his cabinet meeting feature less egregious boot-licking.

The first Cabinet meeting of 2026 was just partially broadcast, and like the previous 2025 installments, it was wall-to-wall happy-talk by Trump’s appointees, all telling everyone around the table and, of course, TV viewers how successful, bold and brilliant “this President” has been.

Yecchh.

This is neither credible, admirable, or professional. The ostentatious obsequiousness naturally raises questions: Are they afraid? Have they been ordered to act like lackeys? Why? Is the President’s ego so fragile and in need of affirmation that he has to be told how wonderful he is?

The revolting display reminds me of how the Politburo would stand and applaud when Stalin entered the room and everyone was afraid to stop because the first member who did was frequently shot. Eventually they had to install a bell to signal when the applause should commence and when it should cease.

I think the Cabinet’s sucking-up is insulting to Americans. I certainly am insulted by it. I am quite capable of deciding whether “this President” is doing a good job or not.

Bite Me, “Doomsday Clock”!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

If anyone or anything ever deserved an Ethics Alarms “Bite Me!,” it’s the ridiculous Doomsday Clock and the pompous, biased, fear-mongering scientists who set it.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set the clock each year since 1947, and to say it does not have a sterling record, whatever standards one uses, would be an understatement. Well, I’ll take that back: they have a sterling record for being wrong. Still, once again the thing is in the news. “The ‘”‘Doomsday Clock'”‘ — a symbolic clock that supposedly represents how close humanity is to global catastrophe according to “experts” — “has moved closer to midnight,” ABC News tells us. “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced Tuesday that the clock is now 85 seconds to midnight, with midnight representing the apocalypse.”

That’s the closest its ever been! AAAAIIIIIIIIII!!!

[Watch out now, you have to click on “2” below to keep reading…]

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Jeez, Conservatives! Ever Heard of the Ethical Virtues Prudence, Proportion, Self-Restraint, Respect and Fairness?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

How about “priorities”?

Who would have guessed that Otter would become a conservative? The Rule of Law is under organized, well-funded attack in this country, states are defying federal law and law enforcement, elected Democratic officials are telling citizens that the national government is the Gestapo and should be violently opposed, the news media is paving the way for two years of Congressional obstruction, and conservatives are organizing…against gay marriage?

A coalition of 47 conservative organizations is launching a campaign to challenge the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, declaring same sex marriage to be a civil right. Wow, what great timing. The Democrats are intent on packing the Supreme Court already, the news media is fear-mongering daily about what the Evil Republicans have in store, and just in time for the mid-term elections, which already are looking like an open door to an impeachment orgy and a return to open borders and weenie foreign policies, conservatives decide to metaphorically die on a hill for a cause that is both futile, unpopular and unethical.

Among these deluded obsessives are Them Before Us , the American Family Association, the Colson Center for Biblical Worldview, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family,the Christian Medical and Dental Association, Live Action, the Ruth Institute, the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, and family policy nonprofits across the country, representing Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and others.

This group of bitter-enders should be joining principled conservatives in critical, winnable battles instead of focusing their time, trumpets and resources on an issue that has not only been settled but settled ethically. The right to same-sex marriage cannot be reversed without cruel and massive upheavals of lives and families, never mind giving the Left something else to riot about. Such a movement also guarantees the alienation of libertarians, who already line up with the Left regarding open borders.

The stubborn foes of the right to marry have laid out a three-prong strategy: “returning marriage policy to focus on the parent-child relationship; changing public opinion by emphasizing how same-sex marriage and other forms of family breakdown harm children; and mobilizing Christian churches to take a stand for protecting children.”

Hmmm, let’s see:

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How Paul Anka Proved Harry Truman Right…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I am not a big fan of Paul Anka or his work, so I considered the new documentary on his career a default choice this morning since ice is on my satellite dish and the channel selection on Direct TV was severely limited. But it’s true: you learn something new and useful almost every day, and often in the least expected places.

I did not know, for example, that Anka wrote “Johnny’s Theme,” the now iconic music that Johnny Carson walked onto the stage to at the start of his version of “The Tonight Show.” But it’s how it ended up as Carson’s entrance music that hammers home an ethics lesson.

When Johnny Carson was preparing to take over from Jack Paar as the host of “The Tonight Show” in October 1962, he ran into Anka, whom he had worked with in a TV special. Carson mentioned to Anka that they needed a new theme, so the pop star composer of “Put Your Head on My Shoulder,” “Puppy Love” and the theme to “The Longest Day” repurposed the instrumental arrangement for “It’s Really Love,” a song recorded by his one-time girlfriend Annette Funicello (not one of Annette’s hits) and sent a demo to Carson.

Johnny phoned Paul and thanked him for the offer (and said he and Ed McMahon loved the tune) but said that “Tonight Show” bandleader Skitch Henderson had “his nose out of joint” (does any one use that phrase any more?) because Carson wanted to use a melody written by a “20-year-old kid.”

So Anka suggested that Johnny Carson write new lyrics to his song and that they call it “Johnny’s theme,” which would then be the composition of the “20-year-old kid” and Henderson’s boss. Brilliant! Henderson had to consent to the song’s use every night, and it was Johnny’s walk on music for 30 years until Carson handed over the show to Jay Leno.

Carson’s name on the song meant that he got half the royalties, which averaged $400,000 per year: Carson’s cut was $200,000 a year for lyrics that were never heard or sung. “Johnny’s Theme” had been played more than 1,400,000 times by the end of the Carson’s show’s run. Anka says that Carson admitted he was embarrassed to make all that money for nothing, but the singer shrugs and smiles about it. Johnny got a great theme, and they both made money.

My favorite Harry Truman quote, perhaps my favorite ethics quote by any President and right up there with Winston Churchill’s immortal, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm,” is:

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

I don’t know if Paul Anka was familiar with the quote or even if he knows about it yet, but his solution to the “Tonight Show” dilemma is as good an example of Harry’s wisdom in practice as we are likely to see.

[Still waiting for WordPress, or someone, to tell me how to get page breaks in posts under their new %$^&#@ block system…]

Ethics Quiz: The Despicable Representative From The Great State of South Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is a bit of departure from the usual Ethics Alarms quiz. I’m not going to ask whether conduct is ethical or not, or what the ethical response is to a particular conflict or dilemma. No, I’m going to ask what a fair and proportionate description would be of the latest vile, racist crap emitted by this serial hate-mongering demagogue.

That’s Rep. James Clyburn—recognize him? He took credit for getting Joe Biden nominated in 2020, and thus has blood on his hands from the carnage out country has suffered from four years of governance by faceless, unelected woke bureaucrats pulling the strings of a senile President. Gee, thanks, Jim!

Check out Clyburn’s EA dossier, easily one of the most damning short of Nancy Pelosi or the late Rep. Barbara Lee. Clyburn’s 85 now, and an “icon,” because he marched with Martin Luther King (but then so did Marion Barry). But he’s always been an flagrant anti-white racist and hyper-partisan liar. Nonetheless, Clyburn topped himse;f while appearing in “The View,” which itself is showing symptoms of dementia. He told the ignorant ladies, and the even more ignorant viewers who watch their daily idiocy, that the modern GOP is trying to bring back slavery. “Anything that’s happened before can happen again,” Clyburn said, as the Trump Deranged of “The View” sat rapt, as if at the feet of the Buddha. “They were trying to set up a process that will allow this country to return to what it was in 1876 when the election got thrown into the House of Representatives and they were able to overturn what Abraham Lincoln and the Congress had done successfully getting rid of slavery. That is what they’re attempting to do today. I get sick and tired of hearing people say this ‘it’s never been like this before,’ Yes, it has!”

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