Humor and Satire

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.

Ethics Quiz: “Erica Marsh” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The tweet above has “gone viral” with its seemingly approving statement of the underlying arguments being raised in protest of yesterday’s SCOTUS decision ending affirmative action in universities. Conservative pundits and wags are using it to mock the hypocrisy and racism of progressives, some apparently believing the tweet is sincere, others believing it is satire but treating is as genuine anyway. The low-IQ quadrant of Woke World like the tweet because its denizens can’t detect its glaring idiocy; the smarter segment is outraged at the tweet’s blood-drawing power, and reacting like this:

Before I pose today’s ethics quiz question, here are a few things to consider:

Continue reading →

Dispatches From The Trans Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

[ Rose’s breast-baring at the White House will serve as the regular graphic accompanying this topic in the future, because it perfectly symbolizes the attitide of these activists toward the public,

The Tran Ethics Train Wreck was made official back in February, and in retrospect Ethics Alarms should have designated it much earlier. An ethics train wreck is a continuing and evolving situation involving ethics issues and dilemmas that entice anyone becoming involved in them to end up looking foolish at best, misguided at worst, and in between, subject to anger and abuse. Latest developments:

  • The University of Wyoming’s Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority is being sued for allegedly changing the definition of ‘woman’ to accept a trans member, a biological male with equipment intact who is 6’2″ and 260lb. She has been accused of ogling her “sisters” with a full erection, among other issues. The suit alleges that the sorority’s leadership  bullied and intimidated member to accept Artemis Langford. The current and altered sorority rules only require  that a member “identify” as female. KKGs lawyers argue that the definition of “woman” has evolved since the sorority’s founding 150 years ago”The term (woman) is unquestionably open to many interpretations,” the sorority’s filing claimed. I question whether a law suit can prevail here, as clear as it seems that the complaining members were subjected to a bait-and switch. If they cannot get the sorority to agree to a policy they find tolerable, and if they really have been subjected to bullying, I suggest that they quit.

  • AMC Theaters  canceled screenings of a documentary film showcasing the experiences of de-transitioning transsexuals following an aggressive campaign by a group called the Queer Trans Project which sends “Build-a-Queer kits” to “transitioning” LGBTQ+ individuals. The kits include chest binders and tucking tape The online activist group encouraged protesters to send letters to AMC executives to block the screening of the documentary titled “No Way Back: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care.”  The film shares the stories of five young transsexuals regretting their decision to cross gender lines as well as critical commentary from medical experts. Once AMC announced that it would not show the film, the group posted: “We did it! Our community’s swift action is a testament to the power of advocacy and the importance of raising our voices against harmful content. Your collective efforts have made a significant impact, and the decision to pull No Way Back from AMC theaters is a step towards fostering a more inclusive and respectful environment. Thank you for your dedication and commitment to creating positive change.” AMC claims that the decision was based entirely on poor advance ticket sales.
    And absent leaked documents or emails, there is no way to determine which story is true, or if reality is some mixture of both. The activist group would try to take credit regardless the actual impact of its lobbying, and AMC would never admit to suppressing speech and art because of political pressure.

  • This doesn’t help: New Hampshire’s first transgender state representative, Stacie-Marie Laughton has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of distributing child sexual abuse images. Laughton’s girlfriend was also arrested on the same day on one count of sexual exploitation of children, and one count of distribution of child pornography. She was working at a daycare called Creative Minds and is accused of taking pictures of the children in her care. 

That’s quite a role-model you have there, Trans World! Continue reading →

‘Live From Ethics Alarms, It’s FRIDAY OPEN FORUM!’

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

On a rainy June 1st in1975, President Gerald Ford slipped while walking down the Air Force One boarding stairs after landing in Salzburg. The caught-on-camera incident became a PR problem for an already controversial and unelected President seeking a full term the old fashioned way. The writers for newly-minted late night satirical skit comedy show on NBC, Saturday Night Live, know comedy gold when they saw it, turned Ford’s alleged clumsiness into a signature gag, with break-out show star Chevy Chase playing Ford and including elaborate pratfalls in many of the SNL “cold opens.”

Exactly 43 years after Ford’s fall, Joe Biden, who makes Ford look like one of the Flying Wallendas by comparison, took a Chevy Chase-like face plant on stage at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado yesterday. This poses an immediate integrity test for SNL, or would, if the show had not completely abandoned integrity when it decided to leave Barack Obama essentially unscathed for eight years. If I were producing SNL, I’d bring back Chevy and have him introduced as Biden in the cold open…and that would be enough (and it would be all that would be realistically possible, as Chase ruined his back by all those falls as Ford.

What are the odds? I’m not curious enough to watch the show, as I have not since it became a full-time Democratic Party attack machine, but Joe’s tumble had me thinking about it.

But I digress. There is plenty in the ethics jungle to talk about, so get to it.

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.-NY)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Amazingly, this is the first time New York’s communist wacko Congresswoman, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been designated an Incompetent Elected Official of the Month. Since her election, re-election and re-re-election, she has been honored here with (let’s see…) two Ethics Dunces, two Unethical Quotes, three Unethical tweets, and an over-all assessment as an ethics villain when she could have scored an Unqualified Elected Official, Ethics Dunce, Unethical Tweet, Unethical Quote, and a KABOOM! with a single blazingly moronic tweet. Ethics Alarms did award her a special Incompetent UNelected Official Of The Month in July of 2018 when she was first running for office. This was after she uttered the kind of brainless nonsense we are now accustomed to, saying that “Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs.”

Continue reading →

Boy, Is The Pro-Trans Mania Leading Us In Strange Places Or What? Now It Has Conservatives Accusing “The Life Of Brian” Of Not Being Bold Enough….

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Well, I sure didn’t see THIS coming.

When the Monty Python satire “The Life of Brian” was released in 1979, conservative groups, calling it blasphemous, called for protests and boycotts in the U.S. and Great Britain. Now, as two of the living and not-completely-senile members of the comedy troupe, Eric Idle and John Cleese, prepare to launch a stage version of the movie, conservatives are complaining that they aren’t willing to make the adaptation edgy enough.

In one scene that has taken on more significance lately than it seemed to have 40 years ago, a discussion between “People’s Front of Judea” members Stan (played by Idle, on the left above) and Reg (Cleese) involves Stan saying that he wants to be known as Loretta and to have babies. ‘It’s every man’s right to have babies if you want them,” Stan insists. When Reg points out that, as a man, he can’t have babies, Stan protests, “Don’t you oppress me.”

To hear conservatives describe the scene now, one would think it was the funniest scene in the film. It wasn’t even the funniest scene involving the People’s Front of Judea. But I digress: apparently after trial readings of the script for the stage version, Idle and Cleese decided that they should cut the bit.

Continue reading →

More Big Brother “Whack-A-Mole”: The Woke Censors Come For Jeeves And Bertie

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The good news is, as we are periodically reminded, this isn’t the U.K. (Thank-you, George, Tom, John, Paul and Ben!). The bad news is that the totalitarian virus embedded in The Great Stupid is contagious, and far greater threat to civilization than any pandemic. Great Britain has reached a level of unethical literary censorship—for the greater good, to eradicate “WrongThink,” you know—that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

I thought the effort by British publishers to re-write the works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming was just a temporary outbreak, and that the miscreants had received so much ridicule and criticism that the madness had been contained. As is so often the case, I was tragically wrong. Now these ethics villains have come for…I can’t believe I am writing this…P.G. Wodehouse.

Continue reading →