Journalism & Media

Sunday Ethics Reflections, 5/5/2019: Whew! Barely Got Three Items In Before My Head Exploded…

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

 

I’m writing this bleary-eyed, in large part because our 15-year-old Jack Russell Terrier chose 3 am  to demand that we play what we call “The Bisky Game” –I don’t know what he calls it—a diversion of his own invention that involves tossing or nosing a dog biscuit at the nearest human, barking sharply two to four times, and demanding that the treat be flipped back to him, whereupon he will reject it by growling, barking, and tossing it back, until some mysterious force tells him that the game is over, whereupon he eats the damn thing. Usually this takes between five and ten tosses, but last night Rugby went for a record, and rejected his biscuit at least 15 times. Finally he ate it, licked my arm for about five minutes–a pre-bedtime tradition— and  went to sleep.  I did not.

1.  Live by bigotry, die by bigotry. “Captain Marvel” star Brie Larson, who got her big break in part because Marvel decided to turn a traditionally male superhero into a female, has pandered to social justice warriors and progressive bigotry in just about every way possible.  During the promotion of the hit film,  she said wanted more people of color to review her films, not white men. [ The ethical position would be to want competent reviewers to review the film, recognizing the competence is color-blind.) She that she doesn’t care what old white men thought of films that weren’t made for  them. She has said that we need more gay superheroes. Funny: as long as I’m being rescued and the world is being saved, I don’t care what the color, gender or sexual orientation of my hero is. How old white man of me.

Now, taking the grandstanding, virtue-signaling actress at her word—almost always an unwise thing to do when dealing with performers, someone has launched a  petition demanding,  “We need Brie Larson to step down from her role to prove she is an ally of social justice and ensure a gay woman of color plays the role.”

As of this writing, the petition currently has nearly tripled  its 3,000 signature goal. Good. Heck, I might sign it . Everyone should be required to abide by their publicly proclaimed principles, though such a rule would mean that Joe Biden would vanish from the face of the Earth. [Pointer: RedState ]

2. From the Ethics Alarms “Denial” and ” What is this ‘Accountability’ thing of which you speak?” files: professors Ethan Porter of George Washington University and Thomas J. Wood of Ohio State University have determined that when comedian Jon Stewart departed “The Daily Show,” its ratings fell, and this, they say, “spurred a 1.1% increase in Trump’s county-level vote share.” This from what passes today for a scholarly  paper, “Did Jon Stewart Elect Donald Trump? Evidence From Television Ratings Data” published in the journal Electoral Studies.

Kyle Smith of “The National Review” points out what should be obvious about this junk science… Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Washington Post’s Hit Piece On Bernie Sanders

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Today the Washington Post presented “Inside Bernie Sanders’s 1988 10-day ‘honeymoon’ in the Soviet Union,” an oddly timed hit piece—yes, I think that’s fair—showing a deluded, middle-aged ,anti-American  politician gawking with approval at the marvels of Communism while slamming his own country and ignoring the obvious signs that the worker’s paradise is crumbling around him. Here’s a sample:

The just-married socialist mayor from Vermont was on what he called “a very strange honeymoon,” an official 10-day visit to the communist country, and he was enthralled with the hospitality and the lessons that could be brought home. “Let’s take the strengths of both systems,” he said upon completing the trip. “Let’s learn from each other.”…As he stood on Soviet soil, Sanders, then 46 years old, criticized the cost of housing and health care in the United States, while lauding the lower prices — but not the quality — of that available in the Soviet Union. Then, at a banquet attended by about 100 people, Sanders blasted the way the United States had intervened in other countries, stunning one of those who had accompanied him.

“I got really upset and walked out,” said David F. Kelley, who had helped arrange the trip and was the only Republican in Sanders’s entourage. “When you are a critic of your country, you can say anything you want on home soil. At that point, the Cold War wasn’t over, the arms race wasn’t over, and I just wasn’t comfortable with it.”

…Sanders had visited Nicaragua in 1985 and hailed the revolution led by Daniel Ortega, which President Ronald Reagan opposed. “I was impressed,” Sanders said then of Ortega, while allowing that “I will be attacked by every editorial writer for being a dumb dope.” At the same time, Sanders voiced admiration for the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro, whom Reagan and many others in both parties routinely denounced.

Sanders, in turn, said Americans dismissed socialist and communist regimes because they didn’t understand the poverty faced by many in Third World countries. “The American people, many of us, are intellectually lazy,” Sanders said in a 1985 interview with a Burlington television station.

Do read the whole thing. Then explain to me how any party that has substantial numbers of supporters enthralled by someone like this can be trusted…well, to take care of a cat over a weekend. Bernie wasn’t 17 when he acted and spoke this way; it was  31 years ago, but there are no signs that he has changed. He was young leftist fool then, and is an old one now. Yet he is currently second only to clueless old Joe Biden in polls of Democratic Presidential candidates, and worse, his demonstrably bad ideas are the ones most of the rest of the field are advocating to appeal to the young programmed  leftists the colleges are vomiting into the voter pools.

Some related observations: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/3/2019: The “All They Had To Do Is Not Be Crazy, And They Couldn’t Even Do That” Edition [Part II]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I’d recommend reading the Introduction to this two-part post before diving into this. I also recommend holding down the top of your head…

1. You want crazy, I’ll give you crazy... The Washington Post, one of the two loudest media heralds for the  Woke, progressive and nuts, felt it was necessary to raise this question: “Why didn’t Chewbacca get a medal?” As I’m sure you know, Peter Mayhew, the tall actor who played the lovable, if inarticulate Wookie, died yesterday. Thus the Washington Post felt it was newsworthy to discuss whether the Rebels in the original Star Wars were white supremacists or something because the final scene shows Luke and Han wearing medals for saving the galaxy far away but poor Chewbacca with nothing, although he’s obviously being honored too.

We really do have to be trained to see racism everywhere, especially when white bitches like Princess Leia call the shots.

This comes on top of another Post  article by John Broich, who teaches WWII and British Empire history at Case Western Reserve University, and typifies why sending your kid to college today is irresponsible. His position:  “Allied leaders were anti-Nazi, but not anti-racist. We’re now paying the price for their failure.”

Now if I read this right, the logic of the current history-cleansing Left would require that all monuments to W.W. II leaders, generals and soldiers should be hauled down, since they enabled racism. He concludes,

“After Charlottesville, too, social media echoed with variations of the line: “My grandpa didn’t fight the Nazis only for them to return.” And it’s possible that a good many of our grandfathers might have fought the Nazis expressly to oppose their race supremacy. But it’s worth putting this plainly: The Allied leadership did not fight the war over fascist race-nationalism. That was the historical path not taken.”

The allied leadership and its soldiers fought the war to win, and did.  The total defeat of Hitler and Japan sent the most powerful message possible to the public and the world that genocide and race hatred were suicidal ideologies. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/3/2019: The “All They Had To Do Is Not Be Crazy, And They Couldn’t Even Do That” Edition [Introduction]

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Good Morning!

See, I can say still say that because each new day brings promise, even when the previous day was profoundly depressing and ended for me when the Red Sox lost in the 9th on an error and a walk-off home run.

The theme today was unavoidable., and believe me, I try to avoid a imbalance that enables those who want to dismiss Ethics Alarms as a conservative blog, rather than as a neutral, objective blog that has been forced over the past three years to focus heavily on the unethical conduct of “the resistance,” the biased news media, and the Democratic Party. Today, however, the imbalance isn’t mine, but the news.

Today the April economic report shows that wages are up, and unemployment is down. CNN is, I’m sure with clenched teeth, reporting on its poll showing that approval of how President Trump is handling the economy is at 56%. (“Now Congressional Democrats will have to figure out how to destroy the economy” tweets one wag). Another CNN poll finds optimism about the economy the highest it has been in at least 18 years. I know, believe me: polls. Still, one of the most pervasive Big Lies wielded by the “resistance” and the news media is that things are just terrible in the United States. I read some version of this alternate universe in New York Times interviews, features, and book reviews almost every day. You heard it from Joe Biden in his fantasy based video announcing his candidacy. Scott Adams, Dilbert’s creator who is a self-styled “Trump whisperer,” nicely summed up how this Big Lie is going:

“In 2016, if everything the Democrats believed had been true, we would have a depression, nuclear war, prison camps, and an insane Russian puppet as our president. In 2019, if Dems are right about everything they believe, Trump might have almost impeded a witch hunt but didn’t.”

But wait! There’s more. Continue reading →

Facebook And Instagram Leap Down The Slippery Slope To Thought-Policing

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Facebook has banned right-wing activists Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, Joseph Watson, white supremacist Paul Nehlen,  Jones’s company, Infowars, and  Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

And yes, it is unethical. And frightening. The irony is that Facebook says that the ideas promoted by these mostly fringe figures are “dangerous.” Nothing any of them say or write are anywhere nearly as dangerous as promoting censorship based on content and political viewpoint.

It doesn’t matter that all of the political and opinion figures Facebook banned from its two social media platforms are assholes, bigots and hate-mongers—I can’t say for sure that all of them are, since I only bump into any of them when I take a wrong turn on the Information Superhighway, as Al Gore liked to call it. I can say for sure that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan meets that description, just as I can say for sure the media spin that he is “right wing” is ridiculous. If he’s so far right, why have so many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including the only-recently resigned co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, met with him, posed with him, and generally given him legitimacy?  Barack Obama posed with him too, though that photo was stored in the media memory hole until he was safely elected President.

Oh, I get it: only conservatives spread hate, ergo Farrakhan must be a right winger.  I suspect that the real reason Farrakhan was on the initial list of banned users was so Facebook could claim, when challenged, that it wasn’t just banning  advocates for the far right.

Progressives and their allies need to get their stories straight.

Let me get back to the first sentence: for a major source of communication in our society to permanently censor anyone based purely on the ideas and opinions they advocate is unethical, and is a serious threat to freedom of expression in the United States. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, May 2, 2019: Low, Lower, Lowest

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Six computer crashes already, but I’m going to get this %$#*&@ post up if it kills me, and I’m STILL calling it a “morning” warm-up.

1. Speaking of %$#*&... Senator Lindsay Graham used “fucking” on both CNN and Fox News, live, coast-to-coast. He was quoting former from one of FBI agent Peter Strzok’s texts, to illustrate the anti-Trump bias among those investigating him, as well as Hillary Clinton.  “Trump is a fucking idiot,” Graham read. He added, “Sorry to the kids out there.”

Good for him. If the word is relevant to a legitimate issue, and part of a quote or an example, then use the word. The principle is the same as when professors of linguistics or social studies utter the word “nigger” to raise questions about the way the word itself is used in society.

2. Unethical industry seeks guidance from unethical organization. So desperate is American horse racing to reverse its precipitous decline that leaders in the sport are seeking guidance from PETA.

That will work out well, I’m sure. Any time a business seeks guidance from an outside group that really doesn’t care about whether the business lives or dies, the end is near….not that this is a bad thing in this case. Horse deaths have been increasing across the country, and the anger of animal rights activists is threatening the very existence of “the sport of Kings.” California is close to banning the sport already. The use of drugs to keep sick and injured thoroughbreds running until they drop and the use of whips are the main sources of contention.

The popularity and profitability of horse racing has been falling for a long time. ONce, it ranked with boxing and baseball as one of the three top professional sports in the nation. Those days are gone for ever. Meanwhile,  more than $15 billion was bet on races in 2002; last year,  the total was $11 billion. In 2002, nearly 33,000 thoroughbred foals were registered as racehorses.  19,925 were registered last year.

Like boxing, horse racing appears to be doomed by its very nature The NFL, it it looks really hard, should be able to see its future, or lack of it. The process takes an infuriatingly long time, but people do become more ethical as time and experience accumulates. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/1/2019: May Day! May Day!

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Good morning to you,

me, not so much…

I’m ticked off at myself this morning for being cripplingly anxious. I have a looming appointment with a specialist later today regarding a medical issue that could be minor or, in a worst case scenario, could be “curtains.” My father taught me better than this: my anxiety is completely irrational. If I dropped dead tomorrow, I would have no basis for complaints; as Clarence tells George Bailey, I’ve had a wonderful life. Regrets? I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention….

1. About the cultural literacy test...To be fair, I’m going to put up a second test that requires recognizing the name and significance of various figures rather than identifying photographs. They are indeed two different kinds of knowledge, although some of those in the current test are also iconic images. I tried to include some visual clues when I could: the guy with the cigar was famous for his cigar, and that basketball player is an iconic basketball player. The complaints about the figure holding the gun are fair, but literally every other photo I could find of him gave his identity away. Commenter Zoltar’s scoring method of taking half the points when he knew why the person was famous or important but couldn’t fetch the name was justified.

I checked the score of the photos I felt culturally literate Americans ought to be able to identify, and the total was 40. Let’s check the most recent poll…ah! 21 of the 46 results so far met that benchmark. And someone score a perfect 125! My score was only 118…

I felt a little guilty about including the old movie star, but she was the inspiration for the test. Her Academy Award-winning turn was on TV, and she has always been a favorite of mine, as well as legendary with film buffs for her comic technique. I wondered how many Americans recognize her today, for once she had one of the best known faces in the nation. And what a face it was! Continue reading →

Oh, I Can’t Let THIS Pass! Unethical Quote Of The Week: White House Correspondents’ Association President Olivier Knox

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“February 2017 is when the President called us the enemy of the people. A few days later my son asked me, ‘Is Donald Trump going to put you in prison?’”

—Olivier Knox at last week’s White House Correspondents Dinner.

At the same dinner, “entertainment” Ron Chernow—will he trade in his historian gig for stand-up? I can see it now—Laugh with the Hysterical Hystorian!—said in one of his funnier lines,

“H.L. Mencken once warned of a political system that would ‘keep the populace alarmed by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’ We simply cannot allow the press to become an imaginary hobgoblin exploited for political gain.”

Great irony, Ron! The press has just completed nearly three years of trying to frighten the public by claiming that the President stole the election and is a Russian agent, but it’s the President who is alarming the public with “an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.'” HAHAHAHAHAHA! Good one!

Well, as someone who has written some comedy routines, I agree that it’s important to know your audience. In this case, that means knowing your audience is smug, arrogant, lacks self-awareness, and afflicted with permanent delusions of virtue.

But back to Knox. The device he stooped to use is known (here)as the Amy Carter Maneuver, when an adult places words in his child’s mouth for dramatic effect. Surely you recall Jimmy Carter’s infamous gaffe in his debate with Ronald Regan, when he said,  “I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry — and the control of nuclear arms.”  Amy was 13, and most viewers found the device nauseating. Continue reading →

Afternoon Ethics Points, 4/30/2019: New Developments In Old Stories

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Pardon if I sound distracted—I’m still giggling about Kate Smith.

1. Kate, Robert E. Lee and the King of Pop. It’s ironic that this comes up as I am debating on Facebook with rabid Robert E. Lee statue-topplers, because this episode perfectly illustrates why they are wrong, and not just wrong, but stupidly and obnoxiously wrong. No historical figure is honored for everything in his or her life. They are honored for their importance, influence, good deeds, finest moments and best traits. The growing totalitarian mob on the Left wants to erase the memory of anyone who failed to meet their current standards of virtue decades or even centuries before those standards existed, when many of the standards  are unreasonable even now.

Great achievers are, with the tiniest sliver of exceptions, flawed, strange, obsessed and abnormal people, and those who would hold them to impossible levels of perfection guarantee a hollow culture, a sanitized and boring history, and a shallow society.

Thus I found myself surprising myself by sympathizing with the decision of an elementary school in Hollywood to keep Michael Jackson’s name on its auditorium, despite the growing likelihood that he was a child molester, as the Los Angeles Times reported. The majority of parents and staff of Gardner Street Elementary School, which Jackson briefly attended, voted to keep his name above the auditorium. Ick, but maybe that was the right decision. Jackson was a great and influential performer, and that’s what he’s honored for. Continue reading →

More Ethics Notes On The New York Times Anti-Semitic Cartoon

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

  • The main lesson of this episode (which was discussed here in the fourth item) is that the New York Times culture is so ideologically and politically biased and one-sided that even an obvious breach of taste, decency and ethics like this cartoon can slip by the deadened ethics alarms.

The American Jewish Committee said in response to The Times’s editors’ note after pulling the drawing,. “What does this say about your processes or your decision makers? How are you fixing it?”

The Times can’t fix it.

  • One Times columnist, the politically schizophrenic Bret Stephens, wrote that “in another age, might have been published in the pages of Der Stürmer,” the infamous anti-Semitic tabloid published during Germany’s Nazi regime. “The problem with the cartoon isn’t that its publication was a willful act of anti-Semitism. It wasn’t.” Stephens continued.

“The problem is that its publication was an astonishing act of ignorance of anti-Semitism …. at a publication that is otherwise hyper-alert to nearly every conceivable expression of prejudice, from mansplaining to racial microaggressions to transphobia.” Continue reading →