language

Madison Square Garden/New York Knicks Ethics [ Updated ]

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The New York Knicks finally won an NBA Championship after over half a century, bringing to a happy end one of the longest current fan base frustrations in professional sports, but also a series of ethics messes arising out of Madison Square Garden.

There were some post-victory ethics botches outside of the Garden last night. I don’t understand why winning a sports contest is provocation for a riot. I get the drunken fool effect, but even so: there were no riots in Boston when the Red Sox broke their 86 year-long World Series blight, “The Curse of the Bambino.” Gee, I wonder how many of those Knicks fans will be sent to jail for long periods on the theory that they threatened an “insurrection.” After all, President Trump made it clear that he was rooting for the Knicks. Wait, that’s it! The rioting was Trump’s fault!

Here’s an incomplete list…

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Ethics Quiz: “Ick!”or Ethics [Hello Fresh’s Anal Sex Ad]

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

Nice.

I guess I had to post about that, though I wish I didn’t have to. I feel, and I always have felt, that being “proud” of how you have sex is like being proud of how often you have to visit the bathroom. It’s desperate and stupid, as well as gross.

That ad, and so much else our grovelling to the LGBTQ community has burdened society with, demonstrates how pernicious slippery slopes are. Because ancient taboos held that gay people should hide themselves in shame, some genius decided our society should declare that what one chooses to do with their naughty bits should swing to the other end of the spectrum and be a source of “pride.” No, it shouldn’t. In my experience, only mega-jerks boast about how and where they choose to have sex. I don’t care. It’s none of my business. If I’m interested, I’ll ask, and since I’m not and never will be, I won’t, so shut the hell up.

Hello Fresh has now exposed its marketing department as tasteless and pandering, like all those cowardly, pusillanimous companies that slobbered all over Black Lives Matter. I remember a late night D.C. horror movie TV host got himself fired for suddenly talking about smegma between reels of “The Brain From Planet Arous.” I thought his outburst was hilarious, but it didn’t belong on TV, and that was the end of “Gore DeVol.” This ad should be the end of Hello Fresh if there’s any justice in the world, and we know there isn’t.

I’m going to ask anyway, though I know my answer…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the Hello Fresh “Pride” ad alluding to anal sex just in terrible taste and icky, or is it unethical, as in wrong?

________________

Pointer: Willem Reese

Update on the Update: “Trump Derangement Update: A Conversation With a Sufferer”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This post, which attracted a surprising amount of traffic for a sleepy Sunday, was also the target of cherry-picking criticism from some quarter, because that’s what progressives, Democrats and the Trump Deranged do when they can’t debate fairly on the substance.

“Your friend never ends up on substantive outrages? Not one? Ever?” “Does that mean the discussion always ends up on non-substantive outrages and never substantive outrages?” The theme of the post was clear to anyone willing to consider it. A numbered point in the post also immediately became a current news flashpoint: I wrote,

4. The discussion keeps coming back to the Capitol riot and the fact that Trump keeps claiming that he “won” the 2020 election. My response is that it’s quite possible that he did win in 2020, though unlikely, and that nobody should care what he says he believes. (I suspect that Trump keeps saying this to drive people like my friend to the edge of madness.)

Now, see, let me be clear because there are readers out there incapable of fairly absorbing the issue. I regard the fact that Trump keeps saying that he won the election as non-substantive. It’s trolling. I regard his motivation for saying this very substantive. The Trump Deranged’s fury over his style and trolling technique is emblematic of how they (and the Axis that has indoctrinated them) are unwilling to focus on the serious, indeed dangerous, destruction of public trust that the Left’s assault on election integrity has inflicted on the nation. Here is a perfect example of where the reflex news media deflection to “Republicans pounce!” in order to distract the public from the unethical Democrat conduct that caused them to “pounce” is blazingly obvious.

When Trump walked out of the “Meet the Press” interview yesterday, the catalyst was his accusation that the primaries in California for Mayor of Los Angeles and Governor were rigged, just as the 2020 Presidential election was rigged. “Meet the Press” hostess Kristen Welker immediately, her face contorted with anger…

…took the Axis position: “You have no evidence!” But there is evidence. It is mostly circumstantial, but it is still evidence:

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“Swinging Dick” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

In a case involving a spa for women that refused ​service to a transgender woman, Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke’s dissented from ‌the full court’s decision not to review the spa’s claims that a Washington state anti-discrimination law violated its constitutional rights. (You know, Washington state. It was discrimination not to allow a biological male who had decided he was now female to join and all-female spa and undress in a women’s locker room.) VanDyke’s dissent begins, “This is a case about swinging dicks.”

“You may think that swinging dicks shouldn’t appear in a judicial opinion,” the judge continued. “I hope we all can agree that it is far more ​jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus Spa — some as young as 13 — to be visually assaulted by the real thing.”

Twenty-seven judges denounced VanDyke’s comments as “vulgar barroom talk” that could undermine public trust in the ⁠courts, including my old Georgetown Law Center classmate, Circuit Judge M. Margaret McKeown, who wrote separately that VanDyke’s “crass” language served only to distract from what she said was a routine case involving discrimination in public accommodations.

“It is certainly not a case involving ‘woke regulators’ and ‘complicit judges’ out ​to harm ‘women and young girls,'” she wrote.”Those assertions describe a case entirely different from the one presented to the panel.”

I hate to disagree with my distinguished classmate, especially since she’s judge and I’m just a…hell, I don’t know what I am. But the case was indeed about “swinging dicks.” Here’s the first paragraph of the decision:

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files:

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Nice.

I’d say that qualifies as an unethical tweet, wouldn’t you?

It doesn’t matter what the Democratic Party’s social media account was responding to, does it? (Stephen Miller referred to Democratic Party candidate for Texas governor as “trans.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that..) What does matter is that the party that has (often justifiably) condemned Donald Trump for immoderate social media posts, lack of self-control in his rhetoric and an addiction to ad hominem attacks stooped well below anything Trump has ever tweeted with a “Sopranos-esque” “Shut up you ugly fuck!”

That doesn’t mean the President won’t eventually go that low, but for the nonce, I really don’t care to hear anyone from that party (or that pimps for it, like, you know, the news media) criticizing the President for unpresidential language.

The tweet also tells us, as others have, what the character and attitudes of young Democrats are. If you don’t like mis-installed ethics alarms of current Democrats and progressives, just wait for the ones coming up the ranks.

In related news, Chicago’s WGN reports:

“An alderperson for the City of Waukegan was charged after allegedly mailing in a vote on behalf of her dead mother. Dr. Sylvia Sims Bolton was charged with knowingly falsifying election material, a felony, and disregarding election code, a misdemeanor.The investigation began in March, according to the Lake County clerk’s office.According to election records, a vote by mail ballot for Mary Sims, her mother, was issued and mailed by the Lake County Clerk’s Office on Feb. 5.On Feb. 12, the Lake County Clerk’s Office processed the cancelation of Mary Sim’s voter registration after receiving notification of her death record from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The ballot was returned on Feb. 26

During a review, election officials identified that the voter’s death record had been processed prior to the return of the ballot. After evaluating the returned envelope and confirming that the ballot had been submitted after the voter’s recorded date of death, the matter was escalated internally and reported to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office for investigation.

Bolton is accused of voting for her mother after she had passed away. She surrendered Wednesday morning.

‘The safeguards and verification procedures in place within our election system worked exactly as intended,’ said Anthony Vega. ‘Our staff followed established protocols, identified the irregularity, and immediately coordinated with law enforcement to ensure this matter is thoroughly investigated. Protecting the integrity of our elections remains our highest priority.’

The investigation did not uncover any facts linking the above allegations to her city duties as an alderperson.”

Gee, I wonder what party the “alderperson” belongs to? Since the media report doesn’t say, I’m assuming she’s a Democrat. (She is.) And how ironic that the only person who uses the mail-in ballot system to cheat happens to be an elected official!

Okay, I’m being arch. The Democratic party likes cheating and gaslighting. Just as Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary said under oath that the Southern border was secure and the entire party (as well as its media enablers) insisted that President Biden was “sharp as a tack,” it has claimed for years now that there is “no evidence” of widespread voter fraud and the more secure election procedures are “a return to Jim Crow.”

You Know That Ridiculous “100 Best Vocalists” List? The Guardian says “Hold My Beer….”

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Well yes, John, I’d say that’s a fair and accurate assessment.

Read the Guardian’s explanation of how they got this list. It’s even worse than the list itself, but it does explain the bias creating this mess with this single phrase: “Atwood’s horribly prescient The Handmaid’s Tale.” Prescient? I guess I missed the U.S. turning women into involuntary full-time baby machines.

This is a DEI list, and not a very smart or informed one. No Mark Twain, because “Huckleberry Finn” has been cancelled. Jack London was too much of a toxic masculine writer for these weenies, I guess. “Treasure Island” is too full of men and boys too. “The Three Musketeers” is nowhere to be found; nor is “The Count of Monte Christo.” The women in “Ivanhoe” are too girly. But knee jerk political correctness kicked three of the very best novels, all written by women, off the list: “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Gone With The Wind,” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” almost certainly the most influential and important American novel ever written. Humor is pretty much verboten, unless it’s anti-war humor (“Catch 22”). P.G. Wodehouse wrote the funniest novels of all time: the problem with including him would be picking which were the best. Yes, ancient odd-ball novel “Tristram Shandy” is on the list: I challenge anyone to claim it has even half the outright belly laughs of Wodehouse at his best.

Not including Tolkien is inexplicable (and I don’t even like his writing); similarly, the greatest novels that engage children while reaching adults as well were cut: “Wind in the Willows,” Watership Down,” and especially the two Lewis Carroll classics, “Alice in Wonderland” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” both among the cleverest, most original, most quoted and influential novels in the English Language.

Meanwhile, one entry on the list, “The Turn of the Screw,” isn’t even a novel. I thought the vocalist list was absurd because it was lazy and ignorant, but “The Hundred Best Novels of All Time” is even worse, because it is overtly political. “Never has such a list been more needed,” The Guardian says. Why would incompetent, biased, misleading lists ever be “needed?” Amusingly, the explanation of this thing starts with the correct assessment in its very first sentence: “[C]ompiling a list of the greatest novels of all time is an impossible task.”

Here is the stupid list. Go crazy…

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An Unpleasant Reminder Of Why Ethics Alarms Holds That Editorial Cartoons Are Unethical (and Outdated) [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

This:

[The revision referred to in the headline is that I changed the phrase “political cartoon” to “editorial cartoon” throughout the essay. My fault: that was what I meant and still mean when I use the term “political cartoon.” Obviously that confused people: I apologize. “Doonsberry” is a political cartoon; so were “Pogo” and “Li’l Abner.” They were cartoons about politics, and their primary purpose was to amuse. Editorial cartoons, like the one above, are supposed to be treated seriously, like editorials. That’s what this post is condemning. I’m an idiot for not realizaing I was confusing the issue.]

As I wrote in 2017, it’s time, long past time, really, for editorial cartoons to be sent to the ash heap of history.

To clear up any confusion: I’m not a huge fan of memes, but I’m warming up to them a little because they are unequivocally graphic jokes, intended to be outrageous, satirical, maybe offensive but always funny. Editorial cartoons evolved as artistic punditry; they might use humor, but their ultimate goal was to make serious, trenchant, ideally witty observations on the political scene while appearing in newspaper editorial pages.

With very, very, very few exceptions, editorial cartoonists are artists who are partisan one-trick ponies.They are neither as smart or as analytical as they think they are. The template for these would be Herb Block, the mysteriously acclaimed Washington Post editorial cartoonist, who thought he was being clever by always drawing businessmen with huge bellies and smoking long cigars, or making Richard Nixon look like an axe-murderer.

That shameless cartoon above was posted with approval by an old friend of mine, a history professor at an elite college. To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement. How many things are wrong with that thing? The mind boggles. The juxtaposition of the flag-raising over Iwo Jima and the majority opinion in Louisiana v. Callais makes no sense. The implication that the long-needed judicial holding that a 60 year old law crafted to deal with conditions in the Southern states in 1965 no longer is relevant to those states in the 21st century is somehow pushing the nation back 160 years is temporally, historically, factually and legally gibberish. True, it is a pictorial equivalent of the Democrat’s House leader’s meltdown, as the ridiculous Hakeem Jeffries ranted, “Because we know this unprecedented assault on black political representation, the likes of which we have not seen since the Jim Crow era, the ghost of the Confederacy has afflicted the United States Supreme Court majority and is invading and haunting the nation right now! ” That, however was, or should be, an embarrassment to all Democrats and black Americans with a 6th grade education.

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As Predicted, Virginia Democrats’ Dishonest and Unfair Gerrymandering Referendum Was Just Struck Down As Unconstitutional

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Good.

It was a disgraceful power-grab, made worse by deceitful wording that called “fair” a device that was intentionally unfair. I declared the referendum illegal on the basis of its deceptive wording, but that turned out to be a moot point, since the process by which the monstrosity made it to a special election was tainted as well.

The Virginia Supreme Court’s majority opinion is almost contemptuous of what Democrats tried here, and contempt is justified. Fake moderate Democratic Governor Spanberger decided to support an effort to make a 50-50 Democrat-Republican state all Democrat in Congress, and had the gall to allow a referendum on the redistricting call that “restoring fairness.” I’d like that referendum language to be used by Republican as exemplifying this sick party’s anti-democratic delusion: anything that doesn’t advance Leftist agenda items is by definition “unfair”—as well as racist, sexist, cruel and fascist, depending on the issue.

I am also wrestling my typing finger to the floor to avoid posting on Facebook,

“I would expect my various lawyer friends who supported this indefensible measure despite its obvious legal and ethical flaws to admit their betrayal of fellow Virginia citizens, including their friends like me, and apologize or at least wear paper bags over their heads in shame. But I know they won’t, because they made it quite clear that they felt distorting Virginia’s election results and disenfranchising Republicans and conservatives is justified because they hate the elected President of the United States. That attitude was and is disgusting, and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.What happened to you?”

Comment of the Day: “The New York Times Is Shocked—SHOCKED!—That Anyone Would Think It Discriminates Against White Males!”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

A short COTD for a change—Michael R., whose first comment was on this post in 2009, not long after Ethics Alarms was launched, has made a trenchant observation that seems obvious once you read it, but had never occurred to me in this degree of clarity.

His comment follows yesterday’s post about the New York Times being sued for discriminating against a white, male job applicant. The paper is denying it, of course, but as I asked in the post, “Does anyone believe that the woke, left-biased, victim-mongering, knee-jerk Democratic New York Times, after declaring that its staff was “too white” and “too male” has not been systematically discriminating against whites and men?”

Interestingly, Ann Althouse offered a poll to her readers on exactly that question…

…and here are the results as I write this:

Michael’s observation slapped me across my metaphorical face with the realization that approving of “good discrimination” is the result of the societal embrace of the Golden Rationalization, “Everybody does it,” in epidemic proportions. This is ironic, because the same unethical reasoning is what supported slavery and, after that, routine anti-black discrimination and prejudice for so long.

I worked in the administration of an institution that was all-in on “affirmative action”-–note that this is one of the great cover-phrases of all time, like “pro-choice,” allowing something that is unethical and illegal to be framed as something else—in the late Seventies when it took the culture by the throat. The institution was Georgetown Law Center, which is still committed to the self-contradictory policy Michael R.’s comment focuses upon: you may recall that its Dean essentially dismissed a new faculty member for daring to suggest that Justice Jackson, the DEI nomination of Joe Biden, was taking the place of more qualified candidates.

There was once a utilitarian argument for affirmative action; indeed I made it myself once upon a time. But a nation founded on equal justice and individual responsibility cannot maintain integrity while accepting any form of racial and gender discrimination without end. The fact that so many of our friends, relatives and colleagues can’t figure this out points to a widespread lack of ethical analytical skills. It is, I think, the same faulty and unethical reasoning that has spawned the rationalization of illegal immigration.

Here is Michael R’s Comment of the Day on the post, “The New York Times Is Shocked—SHOCKED!—That Anyone Would Think It Discriminates Against White Males!”

* * *

I have tried to explain why racially discriminatory programs are wrong to people at my institution, but it just doesn’t work. It is impossible to get them to understand that they can’t discriminate based on race. Most of them have grown up in a world where the courts have ruled that race-based discrimination is permissible. Explaining to them that it was illegal the whole time is just incomprehensible. I mean, it does seem implausible that every single federal and state court in the entire country ruled that the law that said you can’t discriminate based on race ruled that you could discriminate against SOME races. Explaining that they never made it legal, they just ruled it was permissible makes it worse. How can judges give people permission to violate the law for 60 years?

Remember, the Milgram experiment showed that as few as 10% of the population is capable of critical thinking. Most of those people are dismissed as troublemakers by society for their crime of critical thinking.

Fairness Test: “What’s Going On Here?”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The short video clip above shows Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar referring to World War II as “World War Eleven.” The clip has been reposted by numerous social media accounts and has collectively drawn millions of views. Some versions leave out the Congresswoman quickly correcting herself and smiling at her own gaffe.

Omar’s “speako” has also spawned many memes, like…

All in good fun…except that if Donald Trump made a gaffe like that my Trump Deranged Facebook friends would be screaming that it was time to invoke the 25th Amendment. I am willing to accept the protests of Democrats that Omar’s incident was a forgivable momentary botch with no greater significance and not proof that she misunderstands Roman numerals or lacks a basic knowledge of history…if they stop using Trump’s occassional verbal stumbles as evidence that he is demented.

And you know they won’t.

On the other hand…what the hell? How can someone who has read anything about World War II and seen the numbering as often as educated Americans do—what, hundreds of times? Thousands?—make that mistake? Several years ago, a local news hostess was fired after making the same error; the assumption was that she must be an idiot. Maybe because my sister and I were immersed in World War II history, lore and memorabilia from the time we could speak, this particular gaffe seems particularly weird to me. If Omar pronounced “USA” as “ussa,” would it be reasonable for us to shrug it off as a mistake any member of Congress could make? This is an elected official, after all, whose American bona fides are tad shaky.

Now, now, Jack. You have exonerated Obama for saying there were more than 50 states, and yourself for mixing up this guy…

….with this guy…

so let’s not jump to conclusions about Rep. Omar just because she has said her first duty is to Somalians.