Humor and Satire

The New York Times Publishes A Feature About Ethics And Doesn’t Mention Ethics Once, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

[Once again, I apologize for the dumb error in Part I, where the Unethical Conduct Score and Jerk Score for #8, “Playing gory video games,“ were both supposed to be zero and I inexplicably had them both as “4.“]

To recap, I am examining the ethical logic—if any— being displayed in each of the 16 sections of the Times piece titled “The Virtues of Being Bad,” rating the combination of unethical conduct described and rationalizing it in a public form from 0 (not unethical at all) to 5 (very unethical) as well as assigning a “jerk score” to each of the authors, writers all, again ranging from zero (not a jerk) to 5 (Jerk-o-rama). Part I covered the first eight; now here is 9-16. Warning: it gets pretty weird from here on…

9. “ I, a responsible parent, feed my kids McDonald’s and other junk food. Not all the time. But I do. And they love it.” Oh, so what? This is the most “unethical” conduct this writer engages in? I don’t believe it. It’s more unethical to accept free publicity in a New York Times feature and do so little to earn it.

Unethical Conduct Score: 0. Jerk Score: 2.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Trump’s Mugshot

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I’ll say right now, up front, I love it. This might be the most appealing, brilliant thing Donald Trump has ever done in the realm of politics. If he came up with that expression himself, bravo. As a director, I couldn’t have devised a better one for him under the circumstances.

What the photo communicates is…

Continue reading →

It’s Come To This: “Liking” A Politically Incorrect, Bad Taste Joke On Social Media Can Get You Suspended In The United States Of America

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Madness.

Rising NASCAR driver Noah Gragson was suspended indefinitely for liking a meme on Instagram. The meme was a pun evoking the “Little Mermaid” song “Under the Sea,” sung in all versions by Sebastian the Crab. It showed the crab with George Floyd’s head superimposed with a reference to his demise, like this:

Too soon? Once his politically incorrect sense of humor was brought to its attention, Gregson was suspended indefinitely by his team, the Legacy Motor Club, and by NASCAR as well. “NASCAR fully supports Legacy Motor Club’s decision to suspend Noah Gragson,” the racing association stated. “Following his actions on social media, NASCAR has determined that Gragson has violated the Member Conduct section of the 2023 NASCAR Rule Book and has placed him under indefinite suspension.”

Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (Well, One Of Them) And Unethical Tweet Of The Month: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Observations:

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Power Line

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The tweet above is a joke, and announces itself as one. What makes the joke especially funny is that it is conceivable that New York’s ridiculous, socialist, Dunning-Kruger victim Congresswoman would really say something like this. That is also why it is extremely important ethically for the satire account’s tweets to make it clear that its output is parody.

The site does that. The account has the handle @AOCpressTwo and the username Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release (parody). Its bio reads, “I’m the boss – you mad bro? (parody)” (www.twitter.com/AOCpressTwo).

However, in conservative website Power Line’s weekly collection of memes, cartoons and jokes covering the previous seven days’ events from a rightish perspective, it includes this version of the tweet:

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week And Worst Apology Of The Month: Doug Dechert

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

New York gossip columnist Doug Dechert (above right), during the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.presidential campaign event for the press that he was hosting, became enraged during a contentious exchange regarding climate change and shouted,

“I’m farting!”

as he did, in fact, fart loudly for the assembled. That’s The Ethics Alarms Unethical Quote of the Week, ironically, because it was completely honest and factual. Later, he provided the Ethics Alarms Worst Apology of the Month, and maybe the year, by telling the New York Post, “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.”

This is also ironic, because it is a straightforward and seemingly sincere apology without qualifications, and yet is still terrible, indeed uniquely terrible, because it doesn’t even fit on the Apology Scale.

I suppose the closest would be #9: “Deceitful apologies, in which the wording of the apology is crafted to appear apologetic when it is not (“if my words offended, I am sorry”). Another variation: apologizing for a tangential matter other than the act or words that warranted an apology.” But the wording is deliberately humorous, raising the suspicion that Doug Dechert isn’t sorry at all, and doesn’t care if everyone knows he isn’t sorry. Moreover, intentionally farting at a public event you organized for a presidential candidate and announcing it, thus turning the event into a fiasco that can only embarrass the individual it was supposed to benefit, is one of those things that can’t be apologized for, like setting someone’s cat on fire.

Come to think of it, Dechert also should be in the running for the Ethics Alarms’ Asshole of the Year title. For more reasons than one.

Continue reading →

Spain Demonstrates Why We Have The First Amendment, And Why The US Must Protect It

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Spain’s Parliament, in its wisdom, has declared dwarf bullfighting illegal. Not because the bulls are treated cruelly, mind you: oh no, that part is fine. It’s the small bullfighters the legislators find intolerable. (That’s a group of them rehearsing above.)

Comic bullfighting shows in which individuals with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, fight with juvenile bulls are now illegal. A new law bans “shows or leisure activities” employing a disability “to provoke public mockery, ridicule or derision.” As a result, the performers who earned their living putting on such shows are now forbidden from plying their craft, and citizens willing to pay to watch them can no longer do so. This is also embarrassing: the same law directs that “people with disabilities will participate in public shows and recreational activities, including bullfighting, without discrimination.”

Spain’s law arises from a failure to distinguish “Ick” from ethics, the same problem that has led some states to try to ban drag shows. There is no question that the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights would absolutely prohibit a law such as the Spanish dwarf bullfighting ban, and we should be grateful for that. The ethical principles embodied in freedom of expression include autonomy as well as intrinsic fairness and the Golden Rule validity of allowing others to have the same right to make their living as they choose without others deciding that because they wouldn’t make the same choices, those choices shouldn’t be available to anyone.

Continue reading →

Small Victories: Relentless Ridicule Beats Back Ludicrous Wokeness At Brandeis

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There is hope!

Brandeis University in Massachusetts published one of those “Oppressive Language” lists, telling students that phrases and words like “ladies and gentlemen,” “policeman,” “picnic,” “people of color,” “rule of thumb” (don’t ask me!) were offensive to somebody, and should be avoided. Also “Take a stab at it,” “trigger warning,” and “beating a dead horse” (Too violent!), and “African-American,” “long time no see,” “lending a deaf ear,” and “handicapped space”.”” (Identity based!) Other examples include “Homeless person, “powwow,” “picnic,” “freshman,”and “mentally ill.”Once the list was publicized, the mockery sent Brandeis’s way was relentless, as well as deserved, even though the taboo list eventually had a disclaimer that the web page “is not a university expectation, requirement or reflection of policy.”

That didn’t help. Making the university look especially silly as well as hypocritical was Campus Reform’s report in June 2021 that Brandeis was still using many of the phrases and terms on the BadSpeak list. “Freshman” and “picnic,” for example, were still turning up in articles, blogs, and department materials. The Brandeis University Teacher Education Program Handbook also used the term “rule of thumb!”

Campus Reform reported last week that Brandeis quietly took down the list.

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring AND You’re A Moron: The Roman Colosseum Vandal

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

First, the moral: Cultural literacy is a life competence obligation both at home and abroad. Now the tale:

I had been planning on a post about the manhunt in Rome for the unethical tourist caught on video carving “Ivan + Hayley 23/6/23” into a brick on a wall of the Colosseum. Authorities went looking for “Ivan;” meanwhile, not only is destruction of natural and historical sites an occasional Ethics Alarms theme, but in this case the video-taker’s conduct was also questionable: he was more interested in taking a viral video than he was in stopping the vandalism.

Continue reading →

From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Can’t handle criticism, can’t take a joke, believes that effective rhetoric that counters their assertions should be silenced.

In short, PETA reveals itself as typical of progressive activists in 2023.