Humor and Satire

Hump Day Ethics Harrumphs, 8/31/2022: Fake Science, Jumped Sharks, And Failures

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

The Pennsylvania Senate race is an embarrassment to the state, both parties and democracy generally. One of the most important and influential states can’t do better than find two ridiculously unqualified candidates. John Fetterman, the Democrat, is obviously still suffering the after-effects of a stroke: if he had any integrity, respect for the process and sense of responsibility, he would step aside and let someone healthy and mentally able run. (Admittedly, in a nation that elected an obvious dementia sufferer as President, the temptation to shrug off a mere stroke must be strong.) Fetterman has made it clear that he’s going to avoid any debates, because the man has trouble thinking and speaking—a definite problem. Running against him is “Dr. Oz,” whose only qualification that I can detect is that he’s a Trump-endorsed celebrity. Well, he’s also not a stroke victim.

I see today that a new poll shows that Trump’s candidate Herschel Walker has pulled ahead in the Georgia Senate race. Are conservatives and Republican supposed to be excited about that? Walker is less qualified to be a Senator than Dr. Oz.

When do the parties (and the public) get serious about competent government? Or perhaps the better question is “When did they stop being serious about competent government?”

1. Pssst! Great leaders don’t have their governments fall apart apart on their watch. The news media’s lionizing of Mikhail Gorbachev is transparent and absurd. It is like celebrating the superb leadership of King Louis the XVI in France. Gorby didn’t deliberately bring down the USSR, he just never understood that the only way a Communist nation like that can stay intact is with a one-party, totalitarian system. He was a weak, naive, idealistic leader in a place that couldn’t support his ideals, and he failed. Why is he being given a hero’s send-off in the mainstream media? It is one more effort by the Left to refuse to give its detested bete noire, Ronald Reagan, a strong and successful leader, due credit for his greatest achievement.

2. Not having functioning ethics alarms and being stupid too is not a recipe for success. I guess it would also help to be literate in popular culture: seeing “A Simple Plan” or “No Country for Old Men” could be useful. Crypto.com, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, was supposed to send Thevamanogari Manivel of Melbourne, Australia a small refund and deposited $10.5 million in her account instead. Now, running off and spending the money is obviously dishonest and unethical; it also should be obvious that the owners of that much money aren’t just going to let it go. Nevertheless, she indeed took the windfall and started spending it. The mess is now, we are told, “before the courts.”

I have often felt that when a bank or other entity makes a mistake like this, there ought to be some routine reward, a substantial one, if the recipient reports the error rather than taking the money and heading for the metaphorical hills.

Continue reading →

Poe’s Law In “The Great Stupid”: Which Is Satire And Which Is Woke Derangement?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Two stories, both head-explodingly idiotic, both linked to Bizarro World Ethics and pathological virtue-signaling needs in oppressive leftist-indoctrination saturated cultures. One is a gag, the other is a tragedy, yet there is hardly a filament of difference between them in the 21st Century ethics and rationality rot they illustrate.

I read the two in succession by pure coincidence, and Poe’s Law immediately leaped into my mind. Poe’s Law was formulated in 20o5 (by Nathan Poe, not Edgar Allan Poe) and has become an essential concept since. It holds that satirical accounts involving extreme examples of ideological insanity can be impossible to distinguish from actual events, because current ideological extremism defies parody. Let’s cut to the chase, for this isn’t a quiz: the satirical piece was “I apologize for my white baby.”

Continue reading →

“Ignorant, Stupid And With Dead Ethics Alarms Is No Way To Stay In Business, Atlantic Sports Bar & Restaurant…”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

And now for something completely appalling! The Tiverton, Rhode Island eatery posted this meme to Facebook:

Now what?

What occurred after the meme went up was that a local talk radio host called to investigate. She says the restaurant owner told her that he thought the meme was funny and then cut off the call. The employee who posted the gag alleged that he didn’t know who the girl in the photo was.

After the post had been taken down by the restaurant, a contrite apology went up in its place:

Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (And Unethical Quote Of The Month Too!): Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Really…what an idiot. There is no excuse for a political party allowing someone this obnoxious and stupid to run under its banner for Congress. After all, stupid people have a strong majority in many districts, and parties have an obligation to mitigate this democracy-mocking problem by at least trying not to nominate candidates like Matt Gaetz. Ethics Alarms didn’t need his latest embarrassment to make this observation about Gaetz: he already earned it several times over. Just peruse his EA dossier. Gaetz’s most recent mention here for being like he is was in April, and a year earlier I expounded on his creepiness at length, concluding in part,

I have seen enough to conclude that Rep. Gaetz is a creep. I don’t like creeps, and as a general proposition I don’t think creeps should be in positions of influence and power, because you can’t trust creeps. They are ethically “bent”….I know that Gaetz is a creep because he screams creepiness, like his stunt of wearing a gas mask on the floor of the House of Representatives during debate over the first pandemic aid bill, and joining a group of Republicans who forced their way into a closed congressional witness deposition during the run-up to Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. ...Then there’s his revelation last year that he has been living with a 19-year-old non-biological male, un-adopted “son”, Cuban immigrant Nestor Galban, whom he met when Galban was 12 and Gaetz was dating his older sister.

Or just listen to the guy.

As in so many other cases, the fact that someone like him could be elected speaks horribly about the voters in his district, the party that nominated him, and the state of democracy generally. His various statements show him to have a scarlet “C” on his forehead.

All of which is a prelude to his most recent episode: saying this to a crowd of Turning Point conservatives yesterday:

“Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

But that’s Matt!

Observations:

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month, Ethics Dunce And Ethics Corrupter: First Avenue In Minneapolis

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wow! Congratulations! An Unethical Triple Crown!

The depressing thing is that I should have to explain to some people what’s unethical about this.

The show, it appears, was sold out. Never mind. People who were not going to be at the show didn’t want people who did to have the chance, and a cowardly, mealy-mouthed, censorship-embracing management didn’t have the integrity or ethical literacy to tell them to learn to live with the reality that everyone doesn’t have to think like they think.

Continue reading →

Just Because Someone Is An Idiot Doesn’t Mean It’s Ethical To Make A Fool Out Of Him: The Roy Moore Libel Suit Dismissal

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New York refused to revive a lawsuit filed by former Alabama Chief Justice and failed Senate candidate from Alabama Roy Moore (and his wife) against  comedian comedian Sasha Baron Cohen. Moore v. Baron Cohen  had its genesis when the “Borat” satirist and actor tricked Moore into traveling to Washington, D.C. to receive a fictional award for supporting Israel and to be interviewed for Israeli TV. It was all a set-up to ridicule Moore on an installment of Cohen’s Showtime production, “Who Is America?”

Cohen presented himself to Moore as an Israeli anti-terrorism expert with a high-tech military intelligence device ( he’s holding it above) that supposedly was able to detect pedophiles. Moore’s Senate run was crushed by credible allegations that he had sought relationships with underage teenage girls: the episode of the program in which the interview aired was introduced with news clips reporting those allegations, including one involving a fourteen-year-old girl at the time. In a cringeworthy confrontation, Cohen’s character waved “the pedophile-detector” over Moore as it beeped loudly. Moore then walked out of the “interview.” Moore and his wife sued for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Dave Chappelle

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I hate to call comic Dave Chappelle a weenie and a political correctness panderer, so instead I’ll settle for Ethics Dunce. He badly miscalculated here.

Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington D.C. had planned to rename its performance theater —I once co-wrote directed a show there!—after alumnus Dave Chappelle for his “ongoing commitment and service to the school.” Chappell, fresh off of his controversial Netflix concert that was attacked for its jokes about transsexual activism, appeared at the school in November and faced a barrage of criticism from predictably oriented students. He challenged opponents of his work and his advocates to compete to raise the most money for Duke Ellington, promising to abide by the winning group’s wishes regarding the performing space’s new name.

Well, his fans out-raised the pro-trans mob, but nonetheless, at the dedication of the newly-named theater this week, Chappelle announced that he would refuse the honor, and declared that the theater would be henceforward called “the Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression.”

Continue reading →

Ethics Point Made

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I try to avoid memes, but attention must be paid  to this photo of his own garden by conservative blogger Charles Glasser. It appealed to me for several reasons:

1. Our home is next to an elementary school with a prominent “Gun Free Zone” notice.

2. Our neighborhood has had a sudden explosion of the bunny population, much to Spuds’ delight.

3. The “Gun Free Zone” is one of the better examples of foolish virtue-signaling, useless regulations regarding firearms, and general incompetence and dishonesty among the anti-gun crowd. Glasser’s sign will have exactly as much deterrence effect as a “Gun Free Zone” sign would have had on any of the school shooters.

4. It demonstrates the value of “Do something!” solutions.

And don’t get me started talking about the armed bunnies…

There are several comments on the post like this one:

“You need to follow that sign up with a response policy. If a bunny does invade that garden, rather than frighten it off or shoot it, you must stand around discussing what to do for at least an hour while the bunny munches away.”

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/26/2022: Mug Censorship, A Scientist Is Cancelled, And Happy Birthday Duke!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison on this date in 1907, in Winterset, Iowa. His family eventually moved to Glendale, California, where he grew up and attended USC on a football scholarship. Through a series of events too complex to write about here, Wayne found his way into movies and eventually devoted his career to the mission of creating of an iconic American male hero. That creation, which included some dark elements as well as admirable ones (See “Red River,” “The Searchers” and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”) that still has a strong influence, and I believe an overwhelmingly positive one, on the culture.

In this he was assisted by two of the greatest of American film directors, Howard Hawks and John Ford, but creating “John Wayne” was Marion Morrison’s life’s work, to the extent where he refused to shoot a character (who has shot him and was running away) in the back in his final film, “The Shootist,” stating that it would violate the principles “John Wayne” stood for.

The man was not the character and didn’t claim to be. He was well-read, preferred to wear sports jackets and slacks, loved chess and by Hollywood standards—not a high bar admittedly— was an intellectual. Wayne once said that he never though of himself as John Wayne and still had “Marion Morrison” locked in his brain. They called him “Duke” in his pre-Wayne days, so he preferred that name off camera.

There are only five genuine Hollywood icons: Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire and John Wayne, and despite efforts to “cancel” him, Wayne remains the most vibrant, influential, and visible of the group. When I was teaching ethics to lawyers in Mongolia, the judges and lawyers knew virtually nothing about American culture, but they knew (and admired) John Wayne.

Mission accomplished.

1. I’m old enough to remember when it was conservatives who were always trying to censor free speech...apparently many triggered Democrats on social media are demanding that the websites that sell this mug be shut down, or that the mug be censored “like those racist Dr. Seuss books.”

Continue reading →

Thursday Ethics Theorizing, 5/19/2022: Book Banning, Another George Floyd Victim, And A Lucky 911 Botch

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I don’t put many Ethics Alarms posts on my Facebook page. The bubble there is so overwhelmingly lazy-leftist and Trump-Deranged that the responses just make me sad and depressed about the state of public discourse and my social circle. I posted about Kamala Harris’s “working together” attack, and predictably two (lawyer!) friends immediately defaulted to “but Trump!” The response that really annoyed me, however, was to my link to the tattooed baby story. Two relatives (one is 94, so she gets a pass…kind of) complained that “with all the problems and threats” (you know, like the threat that a spectacularly incompetent performance by the entire Democratic Party might cause voters to look elsewhere for leadership, which, of course, will doom democracy…but I’m just guessing) the nation is facing, why care about a woman using her baby as a self-promoting human canvas? My answer is simple: unethical conduct matters whether it is big or small, and it’s my job to do what I can to explore both. The site is called Ethics Alarms, and alarms are dulled and muffled when so-called “trivial” ethics abuses are shrugged off. (See: the Rationalization List) In addition, almost none of the over 300 friends (I’m slowly paring it down: more than a hundred gone since January) on my list ever bother to read the blog, which would help save their imperiled brain and values if they did. I cover seven to ten issues every day, more than 50 topics a week. There have been over 14,000 posts on Ethics Alarms in about eleven years; I assume that readers would be bored or worn out if we only explored the big stuff, and even if they wouldn’t be, I would.

1. Remember, the political right is untrustworthy too... After Virginia Beach schools voted two books  from their libraries’ shelves following a school board member’s complaints, Virginia Beach attorney and State Delegate Tim Anderson is representing a client suing Barnes & Noble for making the book accessible to minors, because it is “obscene.” This is just one more sign that if Republicans get the power they crave their most extreme party members will work day and night to make them just as seem just repulsive and fanatic as the Democrats are behaving now. Book banning is as much as an assault on free speech as the current progressive mania, censorship. Book stores are already endangered species: making them responsible for what minors buy there like a 7-11 selling beer will finish them off. Parents should be thrilled that their kids are reading at all. The law suit is a goner, but it will waste a lot of time and money while making the public dumber just by its presence. [Pointer: valkygrrl]

2. Thanks, HBO, but I got my fill of George Carlin while he was alive…“George Carlin’s American Dream” will premiere on HBO this weekend, and my sock-drawer is calling. Carlin is a resurgent hero again among the Woke, which is appropriate. His leftist political comedy was often just as shallow and pandering as what we (when I say “we” I mean “not me”) hear from virtually all comics today who have full membership in the Progressive Propaganda Club. He called golf “racist.” I just heard a spectacularly unfunny environmentalist rant in which he claimed that he rooted for natural disasters because humans deserved them. Continue reading →