Humor and Satire

Two Unethical Books: One Not Fit For Toilet Paper But I Want A Crate of the Other

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

What appears to be a controlled experiment to determine “Just how stupid are members of the American public who can read?” the White House risibly claims that Joe Biden “plans to write a book after leaving office giving him an opportunity to try and shape the narrative around his presidency and the tumultuous weeks leading to his historic withdrawal from the 2024 race.” Axios, a card-carrying member of the progressive propaganda machine, writes as if this is credible, when everyone without a see-through head knows it is not. “If the book project comes to fruition, it will be a chance for Biden to lay out, in full, his views on what he accomplished and why he handled the 2024 cycle the way he did,” Axios says. No, it will be a chance for Biden’s spin team, puppeteers, pardoned son and wife to concoct a fantasy worthy of Frank L. Baum.

The Speaker of the House revealed this week in an interview with Free Press that Biden insisted to Speaker Mike Johnson that he never issued an order to freeze new liquid natural gas export permits. Biden had in fact signed it less than a month earlier. Johnson told podcaster Bari Weiss that he believes Biden “genuinely didn’t know what he had signed.” And that account is from January 2024!

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10 Ethics Observations on the White Judge’s Email

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Caroline Glennon-Goodman, a Cook County judge, shared a meme that depicts a smiling black boy and a black child’s leg with an electronic monitor on it, a fake ad for “My First Ankle Monitor.” The judge wrote “My husband’s idea of Christmas humor.” It was supposed to go to a friend, but she sent it to the wrong person, another judge ( #@!%^!& autofill!) Oopsie! That judge reported her and the post became public.

Glennon-Goodman has been reassigned by the Circuit Court’s Executive Committee, and ordered to undergo bias training and will face a state disciplinary investigation. The executive committee wrote that Glennon-Goodman’s alleged actions “may violate the Code of Judicial Conduct” and it said it was temporarily reassigning her and referring the matter to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board “to promote public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

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Snow Day Ethics Warm-Up, 1/11/25

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It’s another snow day in Northern Virginia, but that isn’t stopping climate change hysterics and progressive public policy incompetence apologists from blaming California’s latest wildfire catastrophe on global warming—not L.A.’s incompetent mayor, not the inadequate fire department budget, not the arsonists who may have started the fires, and not LA’s DEI water head, who left a crucial reservoir disconnected, resulting in fire hydrants not functioning.

Department of Water and Power (LADWP) CEO Janisse Quiñones was hired at a $750,000 salary in May, double that of her predecessor. To be fair, she had a background in California fires: she was previously a top executive at electricity company PG&E, a senior vice president at Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) from 2021 to 2023. That’s the company with the power lines that sparked responsible for the second-largest wildfire in California history, Dixie, in 2021. Before that, the company’s involvement in the 2018 Camp Fire resulted in PG&E paying a $13.5 billion legal settlement, although its liability for causing fires was estimated at $30 billion when the company filed for bankruptcy in 2018. It exited bankruptcy in 2020, just in time to hire Quiñones. Hey, but it’s all climate change!….Meanwhile, the discussion over at the Friday Forum (again, sorry for posting it late) about pet peeves and my late wife’s particular objection to using “that” when “who” is correct reminded me of a brilliant limerick that I had almost forgotten.

My strange friends back in Arlington, Mass. used to play a limerick game in which one of us would come up with a first line, the next would add the second line, the third would complete the third and fourth lines that have to rhyme, and my dear, brilliant, witty friend Jay Sylva would always come up with the final line, because he was so good at it. I specialized in first lines, and this time offered, “The man who had eaten my face…” (it wouldn’t have scanned with “that’). The subsequent additions left us with…

The man who had eaten my face…”
Had the nerve to come back to my place.
I said, “Stay a while!
If you’ll cough up my smile…

To which Jay immediately added, to applause and his eternal glory,

I’ll forgive you for not saying grace!”

On to today’s early list…

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Political Cartoon Ethics: Talk About Picking The Wrong Hill To Die On!

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Ann Telnaes, “a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist” (So what?) for The Washington Post, announced that she was resigning after editors rejected a cartoon depicting WaPo’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

On her substack, Telnaes called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer” that was “dangerous for a free press.”

Riiight. The cartoon shows Jeff Bezos and other media figures prostrating themselves to Trump, which is not only untrue, it’s juvenile. That cartoon could have been published in a middle school newspaper. The Post has had a succession of knee-jerk, shrill progressive scolds as political cartoonists in an unbroken line since the partisan-biased Herb Block was also a “Pulitzer Prize winner”—- you know, like the Post was for its false reporting on the Russian Collusion hoax. Like Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times were Pulitzered for creating the anti-America propaganda screed called “The 1619 Project.”

Ethics Alarms has long maintained that political cartoons don’t warrant presence on editorial pages because 90% of them or more communicate grade-school level political sophistication through the jaundiced eyes of artists lacking education, perspective and critical thinking skills. That drawing above illustrates the Ethics Alarms position nicely.

Telnaes is throwing a hissy-fit because she isn’t allowed to publish an obnoxious and simple-minded cartoon—it also isn’t remotely funny—attacking her employer with a cheap shot. The Trump-Deranged, progressives and Democrats on the Post—that is, 98% of the staff, were triggered because Bezos chose not to have his paper endorse Kamala Harris, the worst candidate a major party has run for President since, oh, maybe Horace Greeley in 1872, except that Horace was smarter than Kamala and he never waffled on his positions, which were a matter of record.

It would be a different if the cartoon the artist is so determined to see promoted was interesting, trenchant, original or clever, but it isn’t. The baseball equivalent would be a .216 hitting player quitting his team because the manager chose to leave him off the line-up card.

I Don’t Understand This Story AT ALL, I Don’t Understand the Biden Administration At All, I Just Don’t Understand…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

From Israel news sources: “Despite heavy pressure from the United States, Israel refuses to allow the transfer of weapons to the security forces of the Palestinian Authority (PA)…According to a report from Army Radio, the U.S. requested that Israel approve the transfer of AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition and armored vehicles. After discussions among security officials, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi decided to recommend the political leadership not approve the transfers….Under the terms of the [Oslo] Accords, Israel must approve the transfer of heavy weaponry to PA security forces, which occasionally confront terror group members that are armed with superior weapons smuggled with Iranian assistance…

“Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council and the chairman of the Yesha Council, praised the ‘correct decision’….’Transferring ammunition and weapons to the enemy, especially during wartime, is complete madness and a breach of security for the citizens of the State of Israel….The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization – and a terrorist organization should be defeated,’ Ganz declared.”

Ya think?

My favorite quote is “Transferring ammunition and weapons to the enemy, especially during wartime, is complete madness.” Whether or not the Palestinian Authority is fairly described as a terrorist organization, the official position of all the various Palestinian organizations, convoluted and unstable though they are, is that Israel has no right to exist.

I will admit to the possibility that I am missing something, but it seems to me that pressuring Israel at this time to hand over weapons to any Palestinian group is as responsible as pressuring them to make the official language of their nation Swedish and have Israelis wear their underwear on the outside.

Just because the President is demented doesn’t mean we should try to make other countries behave irrationally too.

Unethical…But Funny! The Googly Eyes Public Art Vandal

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The City of Bend, near Portland, Oregon, is being plagued by a mystery vandal who has been affixing googly eyes to the public art around the city. Above is his improvement of “Big Ears” by John Halko; another is Zebold’s “Orb 1″…

You will not be surprised to learn that his enhancements are generally popular with the public. Nevertheless, the city is not amused. Eight artworks have been given eyes reminiscent of the villain in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and the city announced on social media that removing the googly eyes has cost about $1,500 so far in labor and the process of removing the adhesive without harming the art. “While the googly eyes placed on the various art pieces around town might give you a chuckle, it costs money to remove them with care to not damage the art,” the City of Bend said in an Instagram post.

Now, some cities regard what could be called vandalism as itself art, as in the cases of urban paintings of walls and and buildings by graffiti artists. True, the googly eyes do unjustly interfere with the artist’s intent, and this is unfair as well as a Golden Rule breach. After all, what would Leonardo think if this..

… was the fate of his masterpiece?

Still, most public art is hideous, and there is no question that googly eyes would improve a lot of it. You may recall that the statue of the defiant little girl secretly placed in front of the angry bull sculpture on Wall Street was allowed to remain because the public appreciated the image of the bull being confronted by the saucy child more than it did the bull by itself.

If the purpose of public art is to please the public, maybe the googly eyes should be put to a vote. Maybe googly eyes present a palatable compromise with the statue topplers! Instead of tearing down Robert E. Lee’s statues, why not give him googly eyes instead?

OK, it was just a thought….

Obnoxious and Unethical Post-Election Reaction #1: Comedian Jim Gaffigan

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Shut up and be funny, Jim.

Jim Gaffigan can be a funny stand-up comic, but whoever it was at CBS who invited him to write a political op-ed piece should be fired. Here it is, with a few comments from me…

“How are you holding up? Are you over it? I’m over it. I’m fine. At least, at times I think that. It’s obviously not what I wanted but that’s life. I’m not going to lie. It been an adjustment, but the world continues to spin.”

It’s an election, you fool. Just because you hang out with people who are Trump Deranged and think anything short of woke insanity, mandatory political correctness and free “gender-affirming care” for illegal immigrants in prison is fascism doesn’t mean this or any election is something you have to “hold up” after. This kind of talk spreads panic, paranoia, division and craziness. Shut up.

“And I’m an adult. I have children that are counting on me. I mean, they don’t listen to me, but I can’t just curl up in a ball and mope.”

Then you’re not an adult.

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On Art, Conspicuous Consumption, Bananas and More

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I missed this pre-Great Stupid story in 2019, when it was a harbinger of stupid things to come, and so missed it again this year, when it was back in the news a few days ago. It wasn’t too long ago that Fred and Pennagain reliably alerted me to ethics stories around the web that I otherwise might have missed. A few of you do send me story ideas regularly, but something like this shouldn’t slip through the cracks.

“This” is this (Source of that movie quote?): Absurdist artist Maurizio Cattelan taped a banana to a wall at an art show in 2019 and called it “Comedian. He claimed that it was intended to force critics to consider how modern “art” is defined, but it just as easily have been a publicity stunt or a con. My wige considered Jackson Pollock paintings no more “art” than bananas taped to a wall. Performance artist David Datuna ripped the banana off the wall and ate it, so Cattalan just taped another banana to another wall. The New York Post recreated “Comedian” for just $5.75, but, see, because the Post isn’t an “artist,” that didn’t count.

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A Non-Ethics Note For An Absurd Day

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Since yesterday’s trivia quiz was so well received, I’m also going to begin today with more non-ethics light-heartedness, sort of. [The answer to that trivia question is Carl Switzer, better known by his “Our Gang” character’s name, “Alfalfa.” It was a trick question in that I deliberately asked about what actor “appeared” in two of the Ethics Alarms Christmas classics that have a viewers guide published annually here (the third is “Miracle on 34th Street). Switzer, his career as an adult actor sinking fast, is the high school student who makes George Bailey and Mary fall into a gym swimming pool while they are doing the Charleston in “IAWL” It’s also his face in the photo (above) of the Haines Sister’s brother, “the Dog-Faced Boy” who served with Bing and Danny in the army. Switzer wasn’t credited for that “appearance.” A couple of commenters alluded to the answer by saying that they were sure “our gang” at Ethics Alarms could come up with the answer, and that there was “a grain of truth in that.” Grain, alfalafa…get it?

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Unethical Cartoon of the Month

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is one of the times I miss our once-frequent cartoonist commenters, the apparently retired King Kool and the now completely Trump Deranged Ampersand. What a snotty, insulting, arrogant and stupid cartoon that is. I’m not sure where it cane from: my guess would be The New Yorker.

Just because the unethical assertion that voting for Donald Trump (or against the spectacularly awful Kamala Harris, the totalitarianism, censorship and anti-Semitism-supporting party she represented or the incompetent Biden administration) means you are deplorable, “garbage,” a racist, a sexist or a fascist comes in a cartoon doesn’t mitigate the vile nature of the statement. I’m sure the cartoon will be defended by the claim that it is mocking people like the speaker in the drawing.

Sure.