This could easily be a Babylon Bee satire, but unfortunately it isn’t.
Professional race-baiter and ethics villain Al Sharpton responded to the routinely bombastic and semi-grammatical Truth Social post by Donald Trump by going on MSNBC and saying, “Donald Trump, himself…using the word “riggers” – Is this the kind of party the Republicans want to show the country that they are?”
During a speech at a high school gym in Windham, New Hampshire, former President Donald Trump was discussing recent polls that show him leading—Trump loves polls, ratings, IQ scores—- when he referenced former (and disgrace) New Jersey governor Chris Christie. “Christie, he’s eating right now,” Trump riffed. “He can’t be bothered.”
That guy Trump is a regular Mark Twain with that rapier wit of his.
Someone in the crowd picked up on Trump’s erudite insult, to which our ex-President responded to the laughs of the assembled, “Sir, please do not call him a fat pig! I’m trying to be nice. Don’t call him a fat pig. You can’t do that.”
What a terrible human being.
I don’t mean Rudy Giuliani. Maybe the former mayor of New York City really did harass and “sexually assault” Noelle Dunphy, seen above with Rudy, after he hired her (she says) in January 2019 when the old prosecutor was 75 years old. Even if that is true—and, frankly, no man over 60 these days is likely to be able to avoid committing legal harassment, as in creating a “hostile work environment,” working closely with a young woman who is looking for offenses to protest (See: Joe Biden, the late George H.W. Bush, and too many others to count.)—Giuliani is at least partially the victim here. Use the wrong word and it’s pervasive sexism; touch a shoulder without consent and it is “assault.” Yes, there is no excuse for men of any age not to keep up with the evolution of ethics in this area and others, but kindness, compassion and the Golden Rule dictate a reaction other than lying in wait for an opportunity to exact revenge or worse, exploit a past relationship for current personal gain.
Rudy is currently under attack from all sides, primarily as part of an organized effort to punish the allies of Donald Trump, particularly the lawyers. Already named as a co-conspirator in the latest indictment of Trump, Giuliani is in the process of being disbarred in the District of Columbia on the theory that he “helped destabilize our democracy” and “done lasting damage” to the oath to support the U.S. Constitution that he had sworn when he was admitted to the bar. [No further comment from me: I have a conflict in this matter] Dunphy or her lawyer decided that this was the perfect time to pounce, with Giuliani already being savaged in the news media like anyone who doesn’t publicly reject Trump. So she not only chose now to sue him, she also included embarrassing quotes the old man made when he thought the two were alone and his comments were private.
She was, you see, secretly recording him.
And thus we have today’s New York Times headline, “Giuliani Maligns Jews and Women in Transcript Filed in Harassment Case.” What was the comment that “maligns Jews”? This:
“Jews! They want to go through that freaking Passover all the time. Man, oh, man. Get over the Passover. It was like 3,000 years ago. OK, the Red Sea parted. Big deal. Not the first time that happened.” Says the Times, “In another portion, he engaged in a derisive discussion of the size of Jewish men’s genitals.”
Sexism? “In another transcript, Mr. Giuliani says that he is physically aroused by Ms. Dunphy’s intelligence, adding, ‘I’d never think about a girl being smart. If you told me a girl was smart, I would often think she’s not attractive.'”
When I read this astoundingly mendacious story in the Times, the first thing that I was reminded of was the memorable moment in “Plain Trains and Automobiles” when John Candy confidently tells a dubious state trooper that his burned out, roofless wreck of a car is “safe to drive.” (This goes right into the Ethics Alarms Clip archive.)
President Biden has repeatedly insisted that he has no knowledge of his son Hunter’s various sleazy business schemes, and that Joe never discussed Hunter’s money-making activities with him. Yet yesterday, in his nearly five hours of closed-door testimony to the House Oversight Committee, a former business partner of Hunter’s, Devon Archer, revealed that President Biden met with and spoke to his son Hunter’s international business associates on about 20 occasions as Hunter sought consulting deals (translation: lucrative influence and access peddling arrangements).
Hilariously, Archer claimed that the Joe Biden was not party to any of his son’s business deals. You see, Hunter Biden was just trying to sell the idea that he could provide access to his powerful father—by providing access to his powerful father. He was claiming that he could influence his father by showing that he could persuade him to pick up the phone, drop by and shake hands. Yet, reports the Times, Democrats on the panel insisted that it wasn’t what it was, by definition.
The President says so many ridiculous, garbled and alarming things that there is no justification for fabricating examples. In so doing, the conservative media simply duplicates the unethical treatment of Biden’s predecessor by the mainstream media, in which journalists and pundits attacked him for statements that they intentionally misconstrued though their intended meaning was clear and benign to anyone assessing them in good faith. That conduct by President Trump’s critics was dishonest and despicable. Yet here is the Right, doing the exact same thing.
Yecchh.
“HE’S FINE, HONEST: Biden claims ‘we ended cancer as we know it’ and says there’s ‘no difference’ between a broken arm and a mental breakdown.” was the entry by conservative pundit Stephen Greene in Instapundit. The link was to the Daily Mail, whose headline was similarly misleading: “We ended cancer as we know it’: Biden raises eyebrows with stunning claim during speech on mental health treatment where he said there’s ‘no difference’ between a broken arm and a mental breakdown.”
Biden was speaking during an event on Tuesday at the White House to promote insurers expanding access to mental health coverage. He did not say that there was “no difference” between a broken arm and a mental breakdown. He said that both maladies were serious health problems that should be be equally covered by health insurance. The President was not asserting that clinical depression or a psychotic break were the same as breaking a bone, but that mental and emotional illness have not been covered by insurance to the extent that physical injuries have, and there is no good reason for it.
He’s right. I worked on an NIH task force examining the inadequate treatment of depression, caused in part by the lack of sufficient medical insurance. Joe’s statement, as quoted by the Mail—-“And folks, you know, I don’t know what the difference between breaking your arm and having a mental breakdown is. It’s health – there’s no distinction ‘We must fulfill the promise of true mental health parity for all Americans now….”— is typically inarticulate, but one can only misinterpret his message if one is determined to, fairness and logic be damned.
Frequent commenter Other Bill gets credit for the headline as well as the pointer to a telling, if ridiculous, story.
Oregon State University researchers had circulated a survey regarding LGBTQ students in STEM to engineering undergrads. As described in the scholars’ paper, published in the Summer 2023 edition of the “Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies,” many of the students surveyed resented the questions about their gender as well as the premise of the research, and demonstrated their disapproval by entering gag and satirical responses to request for their gender and ethnicity.
Among the answers:
I almost missed this kerfuffle completely. Of all people, one of my most reliably Democrat-supporting friends raised it, beginning by saying. “I know this is not something a good progressive is supposed to say or think, but….
…why in the world is it ‘racist’ to say ‘colored people’ but politically correct to use the term ‘people of color’ when by the undeniable rules of English, they mean exactly the same thing?”
She continued, “And how can anyone belonging to an organization called ‘The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’ accuse someone of being a racist for saying it?”
Arizona Republican Rep. Eli Crane was arguing for his amendment to the defense budget and policy bill, as he wants to prohibit the Pentagon from requiring participation in DEI training or the use of ” race-based concepts” in the hiring, promotion or retention of individuals. In the course of debate, Crane said “My amendment has nothing to do with whether or not colored people or black people or anybody can serve, okay? It has nothing to do with color of your skin… any of that stuff.”
Recognizing a “gotcha!” when she saw one, black Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, an enthusiastic member of the racist Congressional Black Caucus, demanded Crane’s words be stricken from the congressional record. “I am asking for unanimous consent to take down the words of referring to me or any of my colleagues as “colored people,'” said the dues-paying member of the NAACP. Crane wanted to amend his comments to “people of color,” but Beatty insisted that she wanted his words stricken. Censorship is, after all, her party’s way, and no Republicans had the guts to object.The chair ordered Cranes entire statement stricken by unanimous consent.
Beatty then worked to exploit the gaffe for all it was worth, writing on Twitter: “I am still in utter and disbelief that a Republican uttered the words ‘colored people’ in reference to African-American service members who sacrifice their lives for our freedom… I will not tolerate such racist and repugnant words in the House Chamber or anywhere in the Congress. That’s why I asked that those words be stricken from the record, which was done so by unanimous consent.” Then the Ohio Democrat told CBS that Crane’s explanation that he “misspoke” was a lie. “He didn’t misspeak,” Beatty said. “He said clearly what, in my opinion, he intended to.”
In other words, he intended to use a racist slur.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
There is hope!
Brandeis University in Massachusetts published one of those “Oppressive Language” lists, telling students that phrases and words like “ladies and gentlemen,” “policeman,” “picnic,” “people of color,” “rule of thumb” (don’t ask me!) were offensive to somebody, and should be avoided. Also “Take a stab at it,” “trigger warning,” and “beating a dead horse” (Too violent!), and “African-American,” “long time no see,” “lending a deaf ear,” and “handicapped space”.”” (Identity based!) Other examples include “Homeless person, “powwow,” “picnic,” “freshman,”and “mentally ill.”Once the list was publicized, the mockery sent Brandeis’s way was relentless, as well as deserved, even though the taboo list eventually had a disclaimer that the web page “is not a university expectation, requirement or reflection of policy.”
That didn’t help. Making the university look especially silly as well as hypocritical was Campus Reform’s report in June 2021 that Brandeis was still using many of the phrases and terms on the BadSpeak list. “Freshman” and “picnic,” for example, were still turning up in articles, blogs, and department materials. The Brandeis University Teacher Education Program Handbook also used the term “rule of thumb!”
Campus Reform reported last week that Brandeis quietly took down the list.
I’ve been meaning to deal with this major example of progressive rhetorical legerdemain for some time, and like so many of my aspirations, it had fallen prey to my short attention span and disorganization. Today AM Golden, in reviewing “Old Indy” or whatever the movie is called, asserted that it wasn’t “woke” but said the meaning of that word was elusive.
It really isn’t. “Woke” began in ebonics (the politically-correct term for careless and defiant bad English embraced by the urban African-American community is apparently now “African-American Vernacular English” or AAVE, yet another example of the Left’s “it isn’t what it is” addiction. AAVE is just poor grammar that makes the speaker sound uneducated) and described someone who had seen the light (Hallelujah!) about racial injustice and how the United States is intrinsically racist. Rev. Wright, Barack Obama’s mentor, was preaching “wokeness” when he told his congregation “God damn America!”
Gradually white progressives appropriated the term and made it more general, so that while Black Lives Matter could claim the mantle of “wokeness” for a while (until its real nature as a Marxist, manipulative scam started dawning on sufficient numbers of observers), “woke” came to mean the enlightened realization that the entire progressive agenda, from abortion on demand to reparations to trans-athletes clobbering biological females in sports to income redistribution to crippling the economy while pretending we are preventing a climate change Armageddon to letting illegal immigrants swarm across our borders without consequences to declaring shop-lifting a non-crime to eliminating voter identity requirements to making “hate speech” a crime.…I can go on like this forever, but I’ll stop now…are all “on the right side of history” and undebatable, correct, good and virtuous, and anyone who dissents is, well,
…what Joe said.
—Vice-President Kamala Harris on June 24 referring to the U.S. Supreme Court on the anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. ruling that finally overturned Roe v. Wade.
This wasn’t the usual infantile babbling that characterizes most of Harris’s public appearances: Ethics Alarms has pledged to skip most of those in fealty to the Julie Principle. That quote is far worse, more significant and sinister. It’s so unethical and outrageous that I initially didn’t believe she could have been referring to the Supreme Court: most of the mainstream media accounts and even the edited videos left out the context of that outburst, so, giving the Vice-President of the United States the benefit of the doubt and assuming that surely, surely, she could not be framing a duly rendered majority ruling on the U.S. Constitution by the independent branch of the government charged with that duty by the Founders in such an ignorant, misleading and inflammatory manner.
She was, however. In fact, she had made the same fatuous, irresponsible and obnoxious statement before, a year ago, and is apparently so proud of her demagoguery that she deemed it worthy of an encore. I thought, and hoped, that her “How dare they?” was at least in the context she placed it in this past January, but no. (That is also an unethical and despicable bit of demogoguery, notable for Harris’s characterization of the famous statement in Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece as “A promise we made in the Declaration of Independence that we are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Huh. Sounds funny. Isn’t there something missing there? Something that unborn Americans might think is important? I’m sure I’ll think of it in a minute…
But no. I could find no news report that placed this “How dare they?” in the context Harris placed it last week, but a video I can’t embed, available here on the Washington Post website, makes it clear.
In order to make such a dangerous statement, Harris has to also mislead the public into believing that, as she falsely said in January and periodically since, the United States Supreme Court “took away… a fundamental right, a basic freedom from the people of America.” Whatever one thinks should be the law or laws regarding abortion, it was never “a fundamental right, a basic freedom.” It was a Court-made right, and the Supreme Court isn’t empowered to make rights. “Fundamental rights” are the enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights and the subsequent amendments, passed by Congress and the states, in the Constitution. Roe was a bad, political, incompetent decision that most legal scholars, even those who favor abortion, admitted was wrongly decided. (If she ever had chosen to be candid about the issue, it is likely that even the sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg recognized this.) Roe survived for so long because a parade of Justices lacked the votes and guts to overturn it.
Ethics Alarms 