I can’t resist. What were the odds that both famous sets of female conjoined twins would justifiably spark ethics commentary within just three months of each other? And yet here we are…
In January, Ethics Alarms designated Brittany Hansel, the “single” member of the amazing Hansel twins (who, I would argue, are really a two headed woman), an Ethics Hero for the mind-boggling concessions and sacrifices she has had to (and will continue to have to) endure so her dominant sister Abigail can be married. Now comes the news that he oldest living conjoined twins have died at the age of 62.
I’ve been fascinated by the Schappell twins most of my life, since their birth was widely publicized when I was a kid. They were joined at the head and shared 30% of their brains, so obviously separating them was not a realistic possibility. Frankly, I had forgotten about them until this morning: apparently my brain can only handle one set of conjoined twins at a time.
Digression: Is “set” the accepted term? And that question makes me recall a memorable line from “The Simpsons” in a Halloween episode where Bart is revealed to be one half of a good/evil set of conjoined twins. As the Simpsons’ pediatrician, Dr. Hibbard, tells the tale to Lisa (we don’t see much of Dr. Hibbard any more since it was decided that it was racist to have a white actor voice a “black” cartoon character. That, in turn, is one reason I don’t see much of “The Simpsons” any more), the doctor refers to Bart and his brother as “Siamese Twins.” Lisa, pedantic and politically correct as ever, tells him that such individuals prefer the term “conjoined twins,” to which Hibbard replies, “Hillbillies prefer to be called “Sons of the South,” too, but it ain’t going to happen!”
Digression over…back to the late Schappell twins: Their various obituaries are full of head-spinning (something these twins could not do) details with ethics implications:
Just in: part of more than 30 videos released this morning by @COPA_Chicago related to the "exchange of gunfire" resulting in the death of Dexter Reed last month. (Graphic)
NOTE: This is a segment of the video. The full video and all COPA materials are available here:… pic.twitter.com/73JeSAgtQd
…This is the bodycam video of the Chicago police officer who was shot at the start of the "exchange of gunfire" with Dexter Reed, who died.
NOTE: This is a portion of the video released moments ago by @ChicagoCOPA . The full video plus more than 30 other videos and pieces of… pic.twitter.com/hVvzILTe3X
This kind of journalism goes well beyond unethical to near evil.
Here are the bare facts about the death of 26-year-old Dexter Reed on March 21, 2024, after his car was pulled over by Chicago police. He had been arrested on July 13, 2023 and charged with felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. Reed had also been arrested on April 20, 2023 and charged with retail theft. After Reed was stopped on March 21 of this year, he refused to obey officers’ commands, and then started shooting. One shot wounded a Chicago police officer. Four officers returned fire, and Reed died in the exchange.
Over at Newsbusters, Jorge Bonilla argues that “the act of dubbing President Joe Biden in Spanish is tantamount to an act of election interference.”
He cites as evidence Biden’s interview this week about guns as aired on Univision and Unimás this week. Here is what the President said (so far, I haven’t found a YouTube video):
“The idea we don’t have background checks for anybody purchasing a weapon, the idea that we’re going to be in a position where he says that he famously told the NRA that don’t worry, no one’s going to touch your guns if I… From the very beginning, I used to teach the Second Amendment in law school, from the very beginning, there were limitations. You couldn’t own a cannon. You couldn’t… You could own a rifle or a gun.”
This is off the topic a bit, but did you know Donald Trump lies all the time? We require background checks for most gun purchases; the idea that “we don’t have background checks for anybody purchasing a weapon” is a false idea, and communicating it as if it isn’t is called “a lie.” Biden means that people making private purchases of firearms don’t currently have to get background checks. Then he again, as he has repeatedly for years, makes the absolutely untrue statement that “You couldn’t own a cannon.” No, Joe you could, and even lackey fact-checkers like the Post’s Glenn Kessler have called out this favorite piece of anti-Second Amendment fiction. Biden just keeps on repeating it, as interviewers nod their heads like those plastic German Shepherds in the back rear window of cars in the 80’s.
Back to Bonilla’s point: He says that listening to Biden’s weak and hesitant delivery should set off “Oh-oh…this guy is President?” alarms, but the President is protected from that legitimate realization when Spanish-language outlets dub his voice:
Those who watched the TelevisaUnivision interview of Joe Biden on Unimás (as I did, primarily) got English with subtitles. We heard the president in his own voice, speech pattern and mannerisms. We got to hear him trail off several times, and made assessments of his lucidity and cognition. Based on this feed we were able to speculate as to the efficacy of the (alleged) White House medical cocktail team…Those who watched the Spanish-dubbed interview on Univision were deprived of that perspective because of the stellar job done by the interpreter. When dubbed into Spanish, Biden sounds 40 years younger and without cognitive decline. The interpreter’s rich baritone, when transposed onto Biden, leaves viewers with the impression of a president far more vigorous than he actually is.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is dubbing Biden voice in Spanish for Spanish-speaking voters unethical “election interference”?
Oh for heaven’s sake. National Public Radio’s cronies in Woke Journalism Land are stunned that Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published on Substack that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.” Seldom has the “Die Hard” clip above from the Ethics Alarms archive been more appropriate.
Here’s the Ethics Alarms NPR tag, which mostly catalogues the examples of NPR bias and unethical journalism Ethics Alarms has covered, and I’m sure it is still a drop in the metaphorical bucket. NPR was an Ethics Dunce recipient—again— just a few months ago.
NPR is extremely biased; its bias is flagrant and undeniable and has seeped into it programing on virtually every topic for decades. The only thing shocking about an NPR editor publicly admitting this is that anyone who was marinated in the organization’s dishonest and untrustworthy culture would be capable of telling the truth.
I’ve been wrestling with myself over whether to post on this topic, especially after I obviously annoyed my very nice next-door neighbors by making my sentiments known yesterday while they were out on the front yard enthusing over Northern Virginia’s not-quite total eclipse view and offering me magic glasses. But as Popeye so eloquently said often, “It’s all I can stand, cuz I can’t stands no more!”
The ethical issue is a common one raised here: journalism is obligated to make the public better informed, not dumber. The media’s breathless, silly, pseudo-pagan coverage of the eclipse in Indiana yesterday on every news network was, in my view, insulting and horrifying, or should have been.
If you took their outbursts seriously, who knows what else you’ll believe?
Commenter Dr. Emilio Lizardo revealed this morning in the comments to “At Princeton, Students Feel “Unsafe” in the Company of a Conservative Professor” that the policy at issue had already been reversed by the time I wrote about it:
“By April 2, the policy was reversed after an intervention from the club’s Graduate Board. In the seven days in between, debate over the policy rose from the club’s private GroupMe to the headlines of national right-wing publications. Club leadership maintains that the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny.”
So Ethics Alarms can’t claim even a smidgen of credit for the reversal. Nonetheless, the lesson here, as we have already seen elsewhere, is that when organizations and institutions install discriminatory and self-evidently unethical procedures and policies in the name of wokeness, political correctness, aspiring fascism of the far left, DEI or other perversions of core American principles and are quickly exposed, assailed and embarrassed, they usually back down. (Usually.)
A further lesson is that the organizations and institutions know that what they are doing is indefensible except from the “by any means necessary” perspective driving the Left in its crusade to re-make America. They know it, but they try anyway, hoping that any single instance will fly under the metaphorical radar long enough to become institutionalized. When they get caught, their reaction is, “OK, too soon. We’ll hold off on this one for now.”
Their assumption, and it is, frighteningly, probably correct, that the current DEI, Black Lives Matter, open borders, climate change hysteria, anti-free speech…freedom of association…equal treatment under the law and due process wack-a-mole contest it has forced our society into playing will inevitably result in a slow, steady ratcheting-up of anti-democratic practices that become accepted as norms. This is how the public education system became an indoctrination process. It is how the initially admirable goals of affirmative action became the racist practice of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” It is how journalism in the US. became partisan propaganda.
The fact that only conservative publications and news sources treated the Princeton story as “fit to print” and necessary illumination to stop democracy from “dying in darkness” is also significant. This doesn’t mean that the story wasn’t important or objectively worth reporting on. The conduct of the mainstream media in ignoring it proves that its purpose is not to keep the public informed, but to assist the Far Left in laying waste to America’s traditional interpretation of democracy. The Princeton story is important, and the fact that only conservative sources publicized it (only Fox News among the news networks picked it up) doesn’t prove their bias. It proves the sinister, deliberate complicity of the mainstream media as it attempts to keep Americans from realizing what is going on right under their noses until it is too late.
The Princetonian wrote that a debate over the policy arose only after “headlines of national right-wing publications” exposed it. If the story sparked a debate, it means it was a story worth reporting. The MSM didn’t report on the story because the Far Left doesn’t want any debate. In an honest debate they lose, just as they lose on abortion, illegal immigration, and so many other issues. If they felt they could win on the merits, then they would want debate. Instead, their media tries to bury the facts. This isn’t a conservative “conspiracy theory.” It is reality.
Finally, the club’s claim that “the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny” is another damning piece of evidence. Gaslighting, denial, “Jumbo”-ism and “It isn’t what it is” (Yoo’s Rationalization,” #64) mania have become such reflex tools of the Left that comparisons with “1984” are unavoidable. The border is secure. Bidenomics is a success. Inflation isn’t a problem. The President didn’t extol the “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter. He’s as sharp as a tack. The Trump prosecutions aren’t political. January 6 was an insurrection. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
The Princeton student club episode is an important one for American to understand. They can only understand it if they know about it.
Boy I wish I knew how to get the readership here back on the rising curve it seemed to be on in 2016...
As EA columnist Curmie likes to say, and I’m sure he will, “Oh bloody hell.”
Citizen Free Press has taken over the conservative news aggregator title from the once ubiquitous Drudge Report, after the latter went pseudo-woke and virulently Trump-Deranged. CFP is conservative and Trump-lovin’ all righ; it’s headline links are also frequently juvenile (“Nancy Pelosi should have kept her pie-hole shut!”). Now we know that nobody connected with the website 1) knows more about theater, drama and Shakespeare than the average Frisbee and 2) doesn’t know what DEI means despite constantly complaining about it.
The linked story tells us that a West End production of “Romeo and Juliet” in London will feature a white actor as Romeo and a black actress as Juliet.
Non-traditional casting has been flourishing in the theater at all levels since at least the 1970s, and creative casting and conceptions of “Romeo and Juliet” are among the most common and varied of theatrical practices. Casting a mixed race couple in that classic tragedy is almost as routine now as casting two white lovers. (I saw a production with that mix just last year). There have been professional versions with two men as R&J, two women, two “non-binaries.” There have been production in which the doomed lovers are played by septuagenarians. The Montegues and Capulets have been transported to China, the African Plains, the hillbilly Appalachians a la Hatfield and McCoys, and galaxies far, far away.
Some of these wild re-workings of the ancient script have been good and even great. Do the right-wing dufusses who run the site not know about the obscure musical called “West Side Story,” in which “Romeo,” aka “Tony” is white, and “Juliet,” or “Maria,” is Puerto Rican? That “DEI” version premiered in 1957.
To sum up: there is nothing “DEI” or even novel about mixed-race casting of “Romeo and Juliet,” or any Shakespeare play, for that matter.
Jeez, conservatives…you really have to get out more. Try to keep up. That was pathetic.
White House correspondents are constantly stealing things from Air Force One. In February, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Kelly O’Donnell , felt compelled to send what was described as a “terse email” to her colleagues reminding them taking items like embroidered pillowcases, wine glasses, whiskey tumblers, blankets and gold-rimmed dinner plates “reflects poorly” on the press corps as a whole.
Really? I did not know that! Who would have guessed? Thanks, Kelly!
Actually, O’Donnell’s warning received no responses at all, reportedly, though one member of the press corps apparently returned a pillowcase he had pilfered.
Politico reports that this has been going on for a long time, with reporters stealing taxpayer purchased items with the Air Force One insignia on it being treated as a “rite of passage.” “On my first flight, the person next to me was like, ‘You should take that glass,’” one current White House reporter told Politico. And then the corrupting correspondent “was like”—OK, guess the rationalization.
Come on, guess! I’ll give you 30 seconds….
Time’s up! Politico quotes thusly: “They were like: ‘Everyone does it.’” Ah yes, the #1 Rationalization of them all, and the watermark of the ethically unlettered, “Everybody Does It.” Politico: “Several colleagues of one former White House correspondent for a major newspaper described them hosting a dinner party where all the food was served on gold-rimmed Air Force One plates, evidently taken bit by bit over the course of some time” and ” Reporters recalled coming down the back stairs after returning to Joint Base Andrews in the evening with the sounds of clinking glassware or porcelain plates in their backpacks.”
Politico apparently thinks this is all hilarious, ending its story with a facetious, “Are you IN POSSESSION OF AIR FORCE ONE DINNERWARE? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.“
We receive our information about the work of our President and his staff through the filter of people without even rudimentary ethics alarms: arrogant, unprofessional, untrustworthy and self-indulging assholes.
The just can’t help themselves. In “Revisiting Florida 2000 and the Butterfly Effect,” New York Times reporter reminds readers (or as I would prefer to ssay, “whines”) that “the evidence is strong that Al Gore would have won had it not been for an infamous ballot design in Palm Beach County.” The Times will not, when Jimmy Carter dies, reminisce that “the evidence is strong” that if Jimmy Carter had not used the single Presidential debate against Ronald Reagan to appeal to the authority of his then 13-year old daughter Amy regarding nuclear proliferation, Carter would have been elected to a second term,” but then that wouldn’t have given the hypocritical paper an opportunity to claim, falsely and with complete knowledge that the claim was false, that Reagan’s history-altering election wasn’t legitimate. Nate Cohn, one of the rising leftist propagandists in the Times stable of dishonest pundits, does pivot to that claim regarding George W. Bush’s election.
The “Get Trump!” cabal is beginning to remind me of nothing so much as the Terminator as described by Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) to a skeptical and terrified Linda Hamilton in the scene above. “That Terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It can’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.” One of the main reasons that I wish the country had some safer and more reasonable option than Trump with whom to seek refuge from the totalitarian-aspiring Democrats’ blundering attempts to remake American society into some kind of socialist hellscape is that again, the “resistance,”/Democratic Party/mainstream media alliance (the Axis of Unethical Conduct) will be spending his entire term of office in furious efforts to to deny Trump the power and prestige of the Presidency while turning as much of the public as possible against him irrespective of his policies, actions or accomplishments. They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They absolutely will not stop.
Ethics Alarms 