Here is the group’s announcement:
Observations: Continue reading
History
Naming Ethics: The Gaylord Affair
My short summary of this ethics controversy is: This mother is nuts.
A woman, 24, is due to have her first child in August, and, she says, the first born son of everyone from her side of the family has been named Gaylord since the early 19th Century. She is determined to carry on the tradition, though her husband is horrified, maintaining that to name any boy “Gaylord” is child abuse.
That’s probably overstating it, but just a bit. Gaylord is not a common name (it’s from the Old French gaillard meaning “joyful” or “high-spirited”), but Wikipedia lists 25 famous or accomplished Gaylords, only one of which I had ever heard of, the baseball player on the list (of course). That’s Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, who won over 300 games during a 21 year career in which he was famous for throwing spitballs, an illegal pitch. Perry is one of the three Gaylords on the list who is still alive, including a French long-distance runner named Gaylord Silly.
Now that’s child abuse..
But I digress. The mother says she offered her husband a compromise, agreeing that young Gaylord would go by “Gail” in school “so that he doesn’t have to deal with bullies.”
What? Continue reading
Your Morning Ethics Update On The George Floyd Freakout
I was musing early yesterday about whether calling the current reaction/over-reaction/ exploitation/ “Hey great now we can do all kinds of stuff because nobody will dare say no to us!” to the George Floyd video a “freakout” was excessively denigrating it, trivializing or misrepresenting it. I decided it was all three. By the end of yesterday, I realized I was wrong.
I’ll still use the “George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck” tag on posts emanating from this madness, but ethics train wrecks, situations where virtually anyone who gets involved instantly engages in unethical conduct, are more rational than ethics freakouts, which are almost entirely fueled by emotion, hysteria, hate, present time perspective, and mob mentality.
I haven’t used the description often here, but looking back through the lens of history, I’d list among past freakouts the Salem witch trials, the French Revolution and “The Terror,” World War I, the Holocaust, and the U.S.’s ” Red Scare.” There are others; I’m not looking to compile the definitive list. The definition of a freakout, as opposed to a an ethics train wreck, is partially that once the fever has passed, virtually everyone looks back on the event and thinks, “What the hell? How did that happen? What was wrong with those people?” The other distinguishing factor is that while wise members of a society will contend with each other during an ethics train wreck and try to stop the runaway train, the tendency of the un-freaked during a freakout is to try to keep their heads down, avoid making eye contact, and if confronted with one of the raving, just nod and mutter, “Sure. Whatever you say.”
THAT, as the partial list above demonstrates, is a dire mistake. Ethics freakouts get people killed, and do damage to lives and society that can take decades to repair. Continue reading
The New McCarthyism Of The Left And The Destruction Of Hartley Sawyer
Hartley Sawyer is, or was, a Hollywood actor. 35 years old with many credits, he had hit the big time, and big money, with a regular role on the CW series “The Flash.” He played the superhero “The Elongated Man.” Today he’s unemployed, and likely to remain so. He was fired from the series yesterday.
Was he hard to work with? No. Did he harass cast members? No. Did he come to the set drunk, or masturbate in front of female crew members, or attack a writer, like Thomas Gibson did on “Criminal Minds”? No, no and no. Sawyer wasn’t fired for doing anything illegal, disruptive or even recent. He was fired because someone searched his social media record, and released tweets he made between 2009 and 2014. All the stories about his firing reference “racist tweets,” but the only ones published have been…
- “The only thing keeping me from doing mildly racist tweets is the knowledge that Al Sharpton would never stop complaining about me.”
- “Enjoyed a secret boob viewing at an audition today.”
- “Date rape myself so I don’t have to masturbate.”
The first isn’t racist, or even legitimately offensive. To claim the second would be taboo in Hollywood is so ridiculous it boggles the mind. The third, described in various accounts as being about sexual assault, is an obvious joke. Saying you “date rape” yourself is not advocating sexual assault.
Never mind. In the crazed grip of George Floyd mania, people with empty lives and cruel dispositions are itching to show their power to destroy others by crying “Witch!,” knowing that most of those in authority, any authority, lack backbone, integrity or a working knowledge of the Golden Rule. Continue reading
Ethics Observations On The University Archeologist’s Obelisk-Toppling Tweets
To topple, just read the diagram backwards!
University of Alabama at Birmingham archeologist Sarah Parcak tweeted detailed instructions on how to bring down an obelisk over the weekend, using 12 detailed tweets as George Floyd rioters in the college town tore down a statue of Charles Linn, a Confederate Navy captain and one of the founders of Birmingham . She then coyly suggested that “there might be’ an obelisk in downtown Birmingham,” and that the obelisks “might be masquerading as a racist monument.” There is, in fact, a Confederate monument in Birmingham, and it is an obelisk. Sure enough, it was targeted by rioters.
The esteemed professor began by saying her comments were a public service announcement.
“PSA For ANYONE who might be interested in how to pull down an obelisk* safely from an Egyptologist who never ever in a million years thought this advice might come in handy,” she wrote. “There might be one just like this in downtown Birmingham! What a coincidence. Can someone please show this thread to the folks there…Just keep pulling till there’s good rocking, there will be more and more and more tilting, you have to wait more for the obelisk to rock back and time it to pull when it’s coming to you. Don’t worry you’re close!… WATCH THAT SUMBITCH TOPPLE GET THE %^&* OUT OF THE WAY IT WILL SMASH RUN AWAY FROM DIRECTION. Then celebrate. Because #BlackLivesMatter and good riddance to any obelisks pretending to be ancient Egyptian obelisks when they are in fact celebrating racism and white nationalism.”
Observations: Continue reading
Applying The Ethics Alarms 12 Question Protest Ethics Checklist To The George Floyd Freak-Out, And A Thirteenth Question
Of course, when a protest turns into violence, arson, rioting and looting, that protest has lost any claim to ethical legitimacy. Let’s (mostly)ignore that Woolly Mammoth in the room, however, to try to assess the George Floyd protests from as positive a perspective as possible.
Here’s the checklist:
1. Is this protest just and necessary?
Outside of the locale where the incident took place, the protests were neither just nor necessary. They were only necessary in Minneapolis if there was a real chance that the police involved would not be held accountable. There was no reason to assume that in the brief time before the mobs gathered and the chants began.
2. Is the primary motive for the protest unclear, personal, selfish, too broad, or narrow?
As in most such cases, the primary motive was and is incoherent. “Expressing outrage” is by definition too broad to be productive. “Justice” does not mean what the protesters seem to think it does.
3. Is the means of protest appropriate to the objective?
No, if the objectives are a fair trial and due process under the criminal justice system, which it should be. If anything, the protests undermine those objectives.
4. Is there a significant chance that it will achieve an ethical objective or contribute to doing so? Continue reading
Ethics Observations On CNN’s Don Lemon’s Irresponsible And Unprofessional Rant
Don Lemon’s whole career is a cautionary tale on too many levels to list. Once a promising broadcast journalist blessed with screen charisma and valuable tribal connections (as a black, gay man), he could have evolved into a major positive figure in his industry. Unfortunately for him, Lemon was indulged, and pampered, and allowed to fall back on cheap emotionalism, flawed critical thinking and demagoguery, because, essentially, his ratings were good. His performance as a CNN anchor has now deteriorated to the level of a petulant child whose parents no longer have the sense or the power to rein in his outrageous behavior.
Last night Lemon reached his professional nadir, indeed a professional nadir for all of broadcast news. The closest analogy I can think of is the fictional Howard Beale’s famous rant in Paddy Chayefsky’s masterpiece “Network,” and that was satire. One of Don Lemon’s tragedies is that he takes himself so seriously, and yet his utterances are so utterly banal and devoid of wisdom or enlightenment.
I wish I could start with Lemon’s projectile logorrhea and give it the thorough deconstruction it deserves, but I doubt many readers will be able to last until the end of his unhinged gibberish and have the energy to do anything but take a nap, or maybe an overdose of strychnine. A competent, professional news organization would suspend or fire a host who threw self-restraint to the winds and unloaded such offal on its audience, but then, this is CNN, which has abandoned journalism standards, particularly involving Lemon.
I think the other comparison I see with Lemon’s astounding outburst is the famous dying speech of gangster Dutch Schultz. It was stream of consciousness gibberish too, but Schultz had an excuse: he had been shot, and The Dutchman was none too stable anyway.
All in all, I’d rather listen to Dutch.
Lemon’s rant is signature significance for an individual of untrained cognition and inadequate education who thinks he has wisdom to convey but doesn’t. For anyone to regard it as anything else is also signature significance, for a weak and biased mind. Here are just a few of the features worth noting…Lemon’s masterpiece will be right along.
1. Wouldn’t you expect the host of a major network’s news show to have some knowledge of history? Lemon refers to the riots as “unprecedented.” Of course, they aren’t. The civil rights riots of 1967 and 1968 were equally destructive. The Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. The riots during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. These riots may be even less justifiable than some of those, but the forces at work are similar. One of the primary tools of fearmongers and demagogues is to scream, “It’s never been this bad before!” It is a naked appeal to ignorance, from the ignorant.
Later, Lemon contradicts himself and references the Rodney King riots, which tells us that he has no idea what he’s trying to say. What a pro!
2. Lemon: “Perhaps this is some sort of mechanism for a restructure in our country or for some sort of change in our country for us to deal with whatever we need to deal with in this country.” Rioting and looting is a mechanism? “Some sort”? “Whatever we need to deal with in this country”?
If you can’t add anything more trenchant than that, a) what are you doing on a news desk?, and b) shut the hell up.
3. Lemon: “I actually don’t know — I am at a loss for words as a person sitting here guiding you through this. I really don’t know what to say at this moment except for this is America. This is where our country — this is what it has come to right now.”
What is, you babbling fool? What? If you don’t know what to say, then get off the air and let someone with the wit God gave a tortoise and the professionalism of, oh, Jerry Springer take over. This is the equivalence of a fire fighter standing by a burning building and crying, “Oh, it’s all so terrible!” “Oh, the humanity!” would be an upgrade. “Guiding” us through this? How is this pitiful blather guidance?
4. Lemon: “This is actually quite sad to watch and it is an indication and it’s indicative of the pain and sadness in this country of people who feel they have no other alternative but to exhibit this behavior in our country. No other option. When you have nothing to lose, you have nothing to lose.” They have no other alternative but to burn down businesses and loot? Lemon is actually saying that! More facile and indefensible logic would be difficult to imagine.
5. Lemon: “We all need to come together because if we can’t live together as Americans, then what do we have? Do we even have a country anymore? This is unbelievable what is happening here. Unbelievable.”
Oh, why don’t you just start screaming and tearing at your garments, you silly, petty, impotent man?
6. Lemon: “When did this country get out of control? When did we lose control of this country? When did we cease to be a country — a group of people who wanted to at least live together in spite of the differences? Because of our differences. Isn’t that the whole reason for the thing? That we are here because we want — because we are different. That we’re supposed to try this grand experiment and let’s not forget, if anyone judging this, I’m not judging this. I’m just wondering what is going on because we were supposed to figure out this experiment a long time ago. Our country was started because — this is how — the Boston Tea Party. Rioting.”
Ugh:
- It’s not “out of control,” you hysteric. You are.
- You, your network and your industry have been working around the clock to divide the country since the 2016 election. How dare you ask that question?
- The Boston Tea Party was not a riot. It was a clear-cut example of civil disobedience with a specific point of protest. . About a hundred colonists destroyed about 45 tons of tea over three hours. No buildings were burned, and no establishment was looted. I am aware of no source, contemporary or recent, that refers to the protest as a “riot.” This is the level of historical perspective CNN feeds its viewers
7. Then, of course, we get the partisan fake news. Lemon actually says that no Republicans have called for calm, despite the sentiments expressed here, here, here, here, here, and here, among many others.
Well, that’s enough for me: the thing is self-indicting, a res ipsa loquitur for the ages. Journalism just doesn’t get any more useless, incompetent, self-indulgent or unprofessional than this.
Buckle up! Continue reading
Comment Of The Day: “Saturday Morning Ethics, 5/30/2020: Burn, Baby, Burn Nostalgia”
Belfast, Minneapolis…whatever.
Steve-O-in NJ has authored another of his periodic epics, this time in response to the George Floyd-triggered civil unrest, finding an analogy in the long, ugly history of civil upheaval in Northern Ireland. For once, I’m going to show some restraint and let a Comment of the Day speak entirely for itself.
Here is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Saturday Morning Ethics, 5/30/2020: Burn, Baby, Burn Nostalgia”:
In 1969, which is outside living memory for a lot of folks now, the long-standing civil rights issues in Derry, Northern Ireland, came to a head in a series of demonstrations by nationalist Catholics and unionist Protestants, which resulted in violence by both sides against both sides, due to the anger and hate they possessed. The RUC, not yet the highly trained force they would become, initially did not handle it too well. The action quickly took on the character of an outbreak of civil war, with the throwing of Molotov cocktails, the use of CS gas, and ultimately firearm discharge (this was before police in Northern Ireland were armed as a matter of course). In two days it looked like the city would be torn apart, and the rioting only stopped when the Prince of Wales’ Own Regiment of Yorkshire landed and forced the sides apart. Miraculously no lives were lost, although about 350 police officers and about a thousand riot participants were injured. That’s before we even talk about fires and property damage.
Little did everyone involved know this was the beginning of the 37 year conflict that would be known as the Troubles and see the British Army’s longest deployment in the form of Operation Banner. The first few years were particularly ugly with ongoing low-level conflict and no-go areas for the authorities. Finally after 1972’s Bloody Sunday (which everyone talks about) and Bloody Friday (22 IRA bombings in less than an hour and a half) which no one talks about, the British Army launched Operation Motorman to reclaim the no-go areas. The IRA was not equipped for open warfare like that, and quickly melted into the countryside, there to reorganize into the terrorism cells that would have a hard time doing anything too big or coordinated, but also be hard to root out and destroy, getting money, arms, and whatever else needed from those sympathetic to the cause or just looking to weaken an American ally.
The rest is history, and it has been relegated to the history books since 1998, when the IRA realized that, although a determined minority can often get their way, this wasn’t one of those times. It wasn’t 1922 anymore, the Cold War was over, outside aid was drying up, and the idea of one insurgency defeating the UK and establishing a united Ireland was a pipe dream. Continue reading
Comments Of The Day: Ethics Dispatches From The Sick Ward, 5/26/2020: Arg! Yechh! [#1]
It took a while, but my complaint about the advertising world’s bizarre decision to make pirates the sole politically correct genre for innocent childsplay finally generated the intriguing commentary I hoped it would.
Here are two Comments of the Day on the topic, breached in Item #1 of the post, “Ethics Dispatches From The Sick Ward, 5/26/2020: Arg! Yechh!”
First up, Isaac:
Ethics Dispatches From The Sick Ward, 5/26/2020: Arg! Yechh!
Ugh.
I was supposed to be all better yesterday, and instead I took a step back.
Sorry.
That photo above is from the last scene in “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” after all of the comedians and Spencer Tracy have ended up in the hospital with horrible injuries following their self-created disaster on an out-of-control fire truck ladder at the supposedly hilarious climax of the Sixties epic chase comedy. The film-makers were very creative in their uses of bandages, casts and traction, but even as a kid, I was struck by how it just isn’t possible to make injuries seem very funny.
1. Since everyone is watching as much TV now as I usually watch routinely, I’ll mention this: have you noticed that several commercials show parents playing pirates with their kids? Did you ever play pirates with your parents? Have you ever seen anyone play at being pirates?
The reason this is being forced on the culture as a thing is that political correctness has robbed kids of almost all fantasy outlets, so someone decided that pirates were safe and inoffensive–especially since Disney had to remove the rapey stuff from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” rides. (Pirates are actually murderous thieves, today as always; what a weird safe haven to choose!)
In “Parasite,” Oscar’s Best Picture last year, the little South Korean son of the wealthy family was obsessed with playing “Indians,” complete with feathered headdress and arrows. I wonder if this feature would have disqualified an American film for cultural insensitivity. American kids can’t be cowboys anymore, since they were genocidal; soldiers are taboo, as are cops and robbers; even space invaders are verboten, since they involve guns. As my friends and I discovered long ago, you can try to play superheroes but they don’t leave you much to work with. Sword and sorcery games, like acting out fairy tales, trip on too many anti-feminist stereotypes.
I wonder what the next generation will turn out to be like, absent any symbolic fantasy villains and conflict to instruct their play. Pirates are not the answer, and again, I doubt any kids are playing pirates like the imaginary families in Bounty commercials. The iconic pirate novel “Treasure Island,” once a standard assignment in grade school, has been purged from the canon—too male, or something. (It’s still a terrific book.) The other classic with pirates is “Peter Pan,” and that one is in the process of being scrubbed and gender-twisted beyond recognition. There still are Johnny Depp’s weird pirate movies, I guess, though his drunken, bumbling pirate slob anti-hero seems unlikely to inspire normal kids into flights of fantasy.
Our culture just is not in competent hands, and what the end result will be, nobody knows.
2. I’m not sure if this is unethical, exactly, but something’s definitely wrong… Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 
Now here’s Pirate Comment of the Day #2, from Jeff: Continue reading →