Journalism & Media

Not Exactly An Ethics Hero (Recovering Ethics Dunce, Maybe?): Comedy Central’s The Daily Show

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Look! The Daily Show is finally choosing to mercilessly mock not just absurd Democrats, but even absurd Democrats of color! See?

Well paint me blue and call me Smurphy! True, it only took almost four years, and a Republican with such rhetorical handicaps and brain fog would have been skewered weekly, indeed daily, by all of the Axis-allied comedy shows. Think of Dan Quayle, or David Letterman’s nightly mockery of George W. Bush, and Trump, of course. Late night TV has left a lot of big laughs on the metaphorical table, but it was worth it, the writers and comics concluded—“it” being to divide the nation, insult half of all potential viewers, and abandon their supposed mission of being as funny as possible without playing favorites, and politics be damned—to “get Trump” and make the world safe for Woke Fascism.

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Worse Than A Mere “Unethical Quote,” Lawrence O’Donnell’s Rationalization For Theft Marks Him As An Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has all sorts of red flags in his resume. He went to Harvard for one thing, and describes himself as a “European socialist.” At Harvard you can’t major in journalism: you work on the daily paper, The Crimson. O’Donnell didn’t do that: he wrote for the fake news satirical student publication, the Lampoon. O’Donnell became an openly biased and agenda-driven MSNBC news anchor by making TV contacts while writing scripts for TV’s imaginary leftist nirvana White House fantasy, “The West Wing.” Later he was Keith Olberman’s stand-in on MSNBC, which should tell you all you need to know.

And yet…much as I fart in his general direction, as he personifies just how vile MSNBC is and just how self-lobotomizing anyone is who uses it to get their “news,” I am shocked at the degraded character and shame-free embrace of ethical relativism O’Donnell displayed yesterday.

The big news coming out of the “Get Trump!” fiasco in Manhattan was that the prosecution’s star witness Michael Cohen, already a disbarred lawyer and a convicted perjurer, further enhanced his credibility by admitting that he had stolen $30,000 from his employer and client, Donald Trump. Here is how O’Donnell described it:

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“Stop Making Me Defend Justice Alito!”—The Stupid Sequel

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I can’t believe the Axis is still running with the ridiculous attack on Justice Alito because his house had an upside-down flag flying after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. I’m this close to resigning from the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers because so many members—about 75% of the organization is Trump-Deranged—are trying to support the claim that the episode represents “an appearance of impropriety” requiring the Justice to recuse from cases involving the election, trump, or future elections.

Ann Althouse somehow dredged up this follow up by a silly substacker named Chris Geidner who claims to be an “award-winning journalist.’ People actually pay to read what this idiot writes? Clearly, I’m doing something wrong….

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Unethical Quote of the Week: NBC’s “Meet the Press” Host Kristen Welker

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Will you accept the election results no matter what happens?”

—Kristin Welker, “Meet the Press’s” latest star in an interview of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla), demonstrating that she’s not much of an improvement over her Democratic Party operative predecessor, Chuck Todd.

“Will you accept the election results no matter what happens?” If Welker were brilliant, which she is obviously not, I would give her credit for a masterful “when did you stop beating your wife” “gotcha!” question. As it is, I’ll credit her for giving us an invaluable example of how much the mainstream media is committed to enabling an undemocratic Democratic Party.

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In Case You Were Wondering: Yes, the Washington Post Is, In Its Panic, Even More Openly Pimping For Biden Than The New York Times

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

…which, you have to admit, is quite an achievement. It also is terrified of democracy and the just desserts its proper functioning portends, like the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct. For example, I am stunned that the Axis (“the resistance”/Democrats/ the mainstream media) is stooping to try to use a four year-old completely ambiguous incident involving the flying of the distress signal (and upside down U.S. flag) over the Alito home to argue for the Justice’s recusal from any of the Trump cases that may come the Supreme Court’s way. Senator Durbin, among the more shameless Senators, is beating that DOA metaphorical horse; depressingly, some of my Trump-Deranged colleagues in the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers are arguing that the complaint against Alito is valid, even though his wife flew the flag, and if she didn’t nobody can prove otherwise.

Nothing approaches, however, the Washington Post editorial on May 8th in which the paper directly stated in black-and-white that the threat of Donald Trump being elected was so dire that it justifies Machiavellian measures. “So trim your principles, Democrats, and pander away,” the Post concludes. ” Just remember: The only thing worse than playing Machiavelli for a good cause is playing Machiavelli for a good cause and losing.” This monstrosity actually appears to argue that its okay if Biden’s tactics to win the election ends up killing some blacks, as long as Trump is defeated. Collateral damage, I guess.

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I Wonder: Does the New York Times Know That Carol Moseley Braun Isn’t A Persuasive Argument For The Intrinsic Diversity Value of Black Female Senators?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Or does it know but doesn’t want its readers to know?

The Times headline must have been labored over intensely to come up with a phrasing that didn’t read immediately as racially biased, since what is being described is racial bias, if standard “good” racial bias : “Democrats Aim for a Breakthrough for Black Women in the Senate.” The “breakthrough” is electing black women rather than white women or men, meaning that the party is declaring a preference for candidates based on gender and color. Funny, that was called bigotry when I was a lad. But black women are better than white women or any kind of man. Or they deserve success and power more. Or something: I better read my DEI manual again.

But never mind: it was the beginning of the article that struck me like a John Wayne punch in the jaw:

Carol Moseley Braun, one of only two Black women to have been elected to the Senate in U.S. history, was in Paris on Wednesday when she was informed that another Black woman, Angela Alsobrooks, had won the Democratic nomination for an open Senate seat in Maryland.

“Praise the Lord,” she said with relief and surprise. “That’s wonderful.”

…“It’s been a long time coming,” said Ms. Moseley Braun, who became the first Black female senator when she was elected from Illinois in 1992 and now serves as chairwoman of the United States African Development Foundation. The second, from California, is now the vice president, Kamala Harris. A third, Laphonza Butler, Democrat of California, was appointed to fill a vacant seat, but is not running for re-election.

Ah, Carol Moseley Braun! (That’s her above.)The first, “historic” black female Senator was, not to beat around the bush, a serial crook, protected by the corrupt Democratic establishment under Bill Clinton, and now by the New York Times, because anything that undermines the DEI, “good discrimination” narrative isn’t news “fit to print,” or in this instance, history fit to print.

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I Hate to Say “I Told You So,” But I Told You So: Tucker Carlson Had Shown Himself To Be Exactly What Ethics Alarms Said He Was…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

… a smug, narcissistic, ethics-challenged, unprincipled, Machiavellian demagogue who helps pollute our civic discourse rather than enhance it. Of course, Tucker had already proved that, but because he was fairly articulately bloviating cherished right-wing talking points and arguments every night on his top-rated Fox News show, conservatives and Republicans were blinded to his rather obvious flaws. (Do I have to post the Cognitive Dissonance Scale again? Nah, I’ll just link to the tag this time…)

Upon the arrival of Carlson’s 100th show since Fox News fired him (one more example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons), several publications have noted that Carlson’s focus has descended into cheap tabloid territory as he desperately seeks publicity, clicks and eyeballs. Of course he has. Carlson doesn’t need the money (he’s a trust fund kid and has a net worth estimated at $30 million); he could easily maintain whatever integrity he had and present serious, useful analysis from the conservative side on whatever platform he used as he waits for his Fox contract to run out. Nah, he wants fame and power. Sooooo….(From Unherd)

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Stop Making Me Defend Justice Alito!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Ugh. The old “public officials are responsible for keeping their wives in line” canard, which for some reason is only applied to conservatives by the mainstream news media. Or we could file this under “Hail Mary attempts to get the Supreme Court’s conservative Justices to recuse themselves so SCOTUS won’t strike down the totalitarian Left’s conspiracy to “get” Donald Trump by any means necessary, and law, ethics and democracy be damned.”

A New York Times headline yesterday shouted, “At Justice Alito’s House, a ‘Stop the Steal’ Symbol on Display.” Wow, what symbol was that? It was an upside-down American flag, seen flying over (much reviled, almost as much as Clarence Thomas) Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s house for a few days in January 2021. Because the flag was up in the period between the January 6 riot at the Capitol Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Times infers that the flag meant that Alito thinks the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump.

Of course the Times dredged up some unethical ethics experts to deceive their readers about the seriousness of this. “Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot,” writes the Times, ostentatiously avoiding mentioning the names of the experts who said, as I would have, “What? This is nothing!”

“It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Professor Amanda Frost at the University of Virginia law school. This is “the equivalent of putting a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in your yard, which is a problem if you’re deciding election-related cases,” she said.

Uh, no it’s not, but that analysis is the equivalent of the professor wearing an “I am a partisan hack!” sign on her forehead.

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Friday Open Forum: Try To Be More Astute Than The Washington Post (It Won’t Be Difficult)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Before turning the stage over to all of you (on Fridays “all” is hyperbole), I have to let you gawk at this, smoking gun evidence 1) of why I stopped getting the Post delivered to my front lawn; 2) that bias makes you stupid, and by “you” I mean especially Trump-Deranged Washington Post pundits; and 3) that the mainstream media thinks Americans are morons. Note the giggly, lowest common denominator tone of this piece of junk.

This is a gift article from me, meaning you don’t have to pay for it like I do. Its title is “How in the world is Trump’s trial not hurting him?” How in the world can even Washington Post Trump-hating columnists ask such a stupid question?

Well, you can muse on that mystery if you choose. I have a Serbian/Canadian podcast on conflicts of interest to do, and no, I’m not joking.

Alternate Realities in the Manhattan Trump Trial, Except Only One of Them Is Real…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Donald Trump for 34 felonies that are exactly one misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations has run is not just an unethical case, it’s a revealing one. It should let the objective members of the public know, if they have the opportunity and inclination to pay attention, just how undemocratic and trustworthy the 21st Century mutation of the Democratic Party has become.

“Dangerous” is also an adjective that belongs in that sentence.

I’ve been beginning mornings lately jumping back and forth between the coverage of the trial on CNN and MSNBC—you know, the Pravda channels—and Fox News, which would be claiming that Trump was as innocent as the driven snow even if he were as guilty as O.J. It is astounding how completely divergent the impressions one is given from the Left and Right sources are—that, and horrifying. The public has no reliable way to get the information it needs to figure out “What’s going on here?” because all of the coverage is agenda-driven. Very few members of the public have the time (or education) to puzzle it out either.

Interestingly, Abe’s observation—the one that begins, “You can fool some of the people…“—again seems to be holding true, and God Bless America for that. A recent poll suggests that a majority of the the public regard Democrats and the Biden administration as the true existential peril to American liberties and freedom, and not Donald Trump. Might it be that the spectacle of four dubious prosecutions in Democratic Party strongholds by Democratic prosecutors all taking place in an election year and aimed at putting the likely GOP nominee and former President behind bars before an election the Democratic resident of the White House looks poised to lose suggests a slight totalitarian bent, mayhap? Perhaps? Ya think?

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