language

Talking Dog Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I must confess that one reason for this post is to entice one of Ethics Alarms’ stars, the perceptive and sharp metaphorical-penned Mrs. Q, into commenting, since she is our resident canine authority (among other things).

The New York Times recently published a feature [Gift link!]about a new fad among dog-owners: multi-colored buttons one can lay out on one’s floor. The buttons can be set to emit the dog-owner’s voice saying a single word like OUTSIDE, WATER, PLAY, FRIEND, AFRAID, WALK, BALL and so on. Dogs learn to step on the buttons to emit the desired word…

Voilà! Talking dogs.

Well, maybe. Researchers disagree whether the dogs are really using the buttons to communicate or just giving a Skinnerian response when they figure out that, for example, pressing a particular button will result in a treat. Dogs using the buttons are all over YouTube and other platforms on the web: that’s Bunny the Sheepadoodle above, who supposedly makes complex remarks and even existential ones, like “DOG WHY?”

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Cultural Literacy Note: “Drinking the Kool-Aid”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The Daily Mail headline is beyond stupid—-“People are only just realizing the dark origin of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ phrase”—-but sharp-eyed commenter Other Bill was quite astute to draw it to my attention (Thanks, OB) with an email this morning.

Apparently several historically and culturally illiterate whipper-snappers on social media expressed surprise at the “dark origin” of the common phrase “he (or she) drank the Kool-Aid” to describe someone who has been gulled into believing something false or dangerous. Yet this gap in the younger generations’ knowledge shouldn’t be surprising. Oh, there was a movie about the horrible incident and it is one of the best examples of the dangers of cults. But the Jonestown mass suicide of the 918 American followers of cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana occurred almost 50 years ago, in 1978. As unusual and shocking as it was, the poisoned powered drink massacre is not the kind of event likely to be covered in history courses: schools barely cover World War I. How would someone under the age of 50 come to know about the event?

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Silly Ethics Dunce: NBC Sports

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It almost seems absurd to mention this trivial ethics misdemeanor when discussing a soulless, greedy TV network that happily promotes a sport that sends young men onto its fields to maim their brains so team owners and sponsors can make millions. Yet somehow this level of moronic rote wokeness deserves our attention.

Here is part of what the election last month was a reaction against. Let’s hope NBC and the equally disgusting National Football League are tardy enough reading the metaphorical room that they both lose audiences, popularity and millions. I know it won’t happen. But I’m a dreamer…

Jayden Daniels, the quarterback of the Washington Commanders, set a record last night as he led his politically correctly named team into the NFL play-offs while breaking the old record for most rushing yards by a rookie quarterback. A Washington QB had held the previous record too: Robert Griffin III ran for 815 yards in his rookie year (2012), and Daniels topped him with 830.

So NBC quickly put that graphic up that you see above, but not before blotting out the name of Griffin’s team when he was playing…the REDSKINS!

NBC had to protect the delicate sensibilities of Sunday night football fans who thrill to see players break bones and crack skulls, making sure that their viewers wouldn’t suffer psychic trauma by being reminded that the Commanders once had a racist name, or so the Mad Left decreed. Thus it made sense to a news organization that it should misrepresent history, tamper with evidence and sacrifice truth to satisfy progressive crazies—you know, like it has done regularly for years now—and as PBS was doing tonight until I couldn’t stand watching any more, running a documentary about what a great President Jimmy Carter was.

Nah, airbrushing away a team name on a jersey is petty censorship. I know it. I also know that a news organization that will bother lying about something nobody cares about won’t blink at lying when it advances its own interests.

Vanity Plate Ethics, 2024 Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It looks like this is going to be one of those topics that I have to revisit every couple of years or so. In 2018, Ethics Alarms challenged the ethics of a state denying permission for drivers to have whatever vanity plates on their cars that their egos, senses of humor, or general sophomorishness dictated. Then I wrote,

“Utah, for examples, bans vanity plates with profanity, “derogatory language,”  drug references,  sex talk, references to bodily functions, “hate speech,” targeting a particular group, or advocating violence advocates, as well as alcohol references and the number combo “69.” Ethics verdict: None of their business. These are words and numbers, and the state is declaring content and intent impermissible. When I see a car with an obnoxious vanity plate, I’m grateful. This is useful information. Racist or vulgar plates translate into ‘I am an asshole, and want you to know it!'”

The issue came up again in 2022. Illinois, in its infinite wisdom, had banned plates reading HATER, COVID, BYOB, and, perhaps on the theory that it meant “drooling basket case,” BIDEN. This time, it is that bastion of free speech repression (one way or another), California, that has decided certain combinations of numbers and letters should be censored as too painful for human beings to bear. The plate was issued and read LOLOCT7. I’ll give you a minute to figure out what the alleged offense was…

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Megyn and Mika and Joe, Oh My! Three Ethics Dunces

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Not merely social media chatterers but many others (like Nikki Haley, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Fox News (of course) and CNN’s John Berman, and, if anyone cares, Keith Olberman) are castigating MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who chattered away yesterday about how they had flown to Mar-A-Largo to kiss the ring, or ass, or whatever, of President-Elect Trump. This seemed like a craven reversal of their stance during the entire campaign, one that became more extreme and shrill as Election Day approached, that Trump was a fool, a racist, an enemy of democracy, a threat to the nation, and literally an American Hitler. The pilgrimage to Florida seemed like a craven reversal because that’s what it was. Joe and Mika proved that they are, at heart, “Good Germans.”

Trump has done nothing since his election that would warrant the Trump-Deranged from abandoning their hysterical position, since he had done nothing to justify it in the first place. All the obsequious reversal by the “Morning Joe” duo indicated was hypocrisy and a complete lack of integrity, not that we didn’t already know that. To be fair to Joe and Mika, they work for MSNBC, where nobody knows the meaning of integrity, honesty, or “ethics.” It’s a propaganda arm of the Angry Left. All “Morning Joe” does is follow orders. This spectacular double-reverse backflip in mid-air (I’m mentally humming “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite”) however, is despicable even by MSNBC’s wretched standards.

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In New York, Dishonest Progressive Math: Not Charging Commuters As Much As Was Originally Proposed Saves Them Money

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What is this? Gaslighting? Misdirection? Whatever it is, it’s unethical.

But typical.

“I always have and I always will fight to put more money in the pockets of everyday New Yorkers,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, as she imposed a new 9 dollar commuter toll on New Yorkers who drive into the Manhattan business district. How is a new toll that will go into effect in January 2025 for the first tine saving New Yorkers money by putting more money in their pockets? It isn’t.

Follow closely, now. The original “NYC congestion plan” was supposed to cost $15 when it was proposed, but the plan was suspended by Hochul until after the election, because she was afraid it would cost her party votes. Now that the election is safely over in the state, she’s reinstating the plan, but at a lower cost. Nonetheless, lowering the cost of a new state expense being imposed on commuters isn’t putting more money in anyone’s pocket but the state’s. The new toll takes money away from commuters, just not as much money as was originally announced.

I’m not evaluating whether the toll is a responsible and fair policy; I don’t care. I do care about the apparently never-ending “It isn’t what it is” addiction of elected officials who try their damnedest to confuse and mislead the public. Hochul is literally saying to the public, “Be grateful that I’m not taking more of your money than I might. Why, it’s almost like I am giving you money!”

No, charging commuters more than nothing, which is what they had been paying to come into Manhattan, is taking money, not giving it. War is Peace, and the state taking your money is putting money in your pocket, because it could be taking even more.

Got it.

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Sources: NYT 1, 2, and 3.

Stop Making Me Feel Like a White Supremacist!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The phenomenon has been intruding on my consciousness for some time, but I never focused on it before. Last week, I had occasion to call up the young man selling Verizon high speed wireless whom I wrote about in this post. He called me “Mister Jack.” It suddenly struck me that other black men whom I have dealt with in a service context have called me that. In fact, the Verizon tech who switched me over from Comcast also addressed me as “Mister Jack.” As I thought about it, I recalled some black women who have used that name as well, like one of my mail carriers.

If any white person has ever called me “Mr. Jack,” I didn’t notice it. The name reminds me of “Gone With The Wind.” If someone calls me “Mr. Marshall” and I expect to have further contact with them, I tell them my name is Jack. I’m not sure what to do about “Mr. Jack;” it’s formal and informal simultaneously, but worse than the dichotomy, it sounds obsequious and submissive to my ear.

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Unethical Website “Above the Law” Provides a Vivid Example of What Americans Voted Against This Week.

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I keep banishing “Above the Law,” (ABL) the wildly unethical partisan and woke-biased legal gossip site, from my email and it keeps sneaking back in. This story, by Kathryn Rubino (who once concocted an alleged “scandal” about me), is so outrageous it is beneath the site’s previous bottom of the barrel lows. I didn’t think that was possible. Impressive.

A tax partner in a major law firm (his name isn’t necessary, since the issue is ABL’s abuse of him, not the lawyer himself) engaged in a dispute over the management of his apartment building and the behavior of fellow residents. ABL’s breathless headline, “Biglaw Partner Drops Slur In Dustup With Neighbors.” ‘Oh oh,’ I thought, as did many other readers. “He must have called someone a ‘nigger.’ That’s going to get him in trouble with the firm.”

That wasn’t the slur, however. He emailed a complaint that read, “The retarded tenants of 6W opened the fire alarm door to my terrace.”

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Obama’s Clever Fake Magnanimity

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m sorry, but to those who are saluting the allegedly classiness of our 44th President, I say “Fool me once, shame on him, fool me 2,576 times, he can bite me.”

Now make no mistake: Obama know how to fake virtues he doesn’t have, and that’s an important leadership skill. Most Americans probably think he really was trying to be a “President for all Americans,” when he was in fact one most disastrously divisive Presidents in our history. He knew how to act Presidential: if only Donald Trump had that skill (or wanted to have it), he might be far more effective. On the other hand, enough people figured out Obama’s act (and Hillary’s, and Biden’s, and Bill Clinton’s, and Joe Biden’s, and Kamala Harris’s…) that they decided that an open vulgarian that didn’t pretend to be something he isn’t (like nice, kind, respectful, dignified, civil, even-tempered…well, ethical, frankly).

There are several tells in the statement, which, of course, is being fawned over as if Michelle and BO didn’t attack Trump personally when they played cavalry to Kamala’s ill-fated metaphorical wagon train to the White House. Obama suggested that Trump was senile, which takes quite a bit of gall for any Democrat, considering that they pretended that Joe Biden was solving Rubik’s Cube blindfolded for years when he really belonged in a home with a drool cup. I don’t call that “good faith and grace.”

But my favorites were the words he used on Kamala and her pathetic campaign.

In the theater world, a constant ethical dilemma is what to say when you go to a friend’s show and the show, or the friend’s performance, stinks on ice. Books have been written about this problem. “I’ve never seen you better!” is a classic response; pure deceit, of course, but effective. “That was memorable!” is another. Obama chooses his words carefully, and the carefully chosen deceitful word he used for Harris’s disastrous campaign was “remarkable.” It was remarkable all right: remarkably inept and ineffective. Before that, Obama calls Knucklehead and Harris “extraordinary.” Same trick. Actually, in theater circles, using more than one of these deliberately two-edged superlatives is considered risky, but I don’t think Obama cares: he has plausible deniability.

Finally, he says, “he couldn’t be more proud.” That one’s a version of the theater classic, “I couldn’t have enjoyed the show/your performance more!” (My personal favorite variation, “I’ve never seen you better!”)

Oh yeah, this guy’s good.

Note To Candidate Trump: Civility Isn’t Bullshit

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Today’s “Trump is a terrible person and you have to vote against him even though there is literally no rational reason to vote for Kamala Harris” article is “At a Pennsylvania Rally, Trump Descends to New Levels of Vulgarity.” Of course he did. Public discourse and civility, all a part of the crucial ethics value of respect, have plummeted precipitously as Ethics Alarms predicted here and chronicled since, most recently yesterday. Trump has unquestionably been a catalyst for the coarsening of American speech and culture, but as this tag will show you, so many prominent individuals and institutions followed his lead and escalated the rot that blaming Trump alone would be, well, the kind of thing the Trump Deranged do every day.

Naturally, as Vulgarian-in-Chief, Trump couldn’t let himself be reduced to relative civility by Congresswomen saying things like “Let’s impeach the motherfucker!,” iconic actor Robert De Niro getting cheers at events by screaming “Fuck Trump!,” or a coded phrase meaning “Fuck Joe Biden!” being plastered on T-shirts, banners and mugs. Sooooo, as the Times gleefully informs us…

Mr. Trump opened his speech at the airport in Latrobe, Pa., with 12 minutes of reminiscing about the golfer Arnold Palmer, who grew up in the Western Pennsylvania town and for whom the airport was named. His monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis. Moments later, Mr. Trump gave the crowd an opportunity to call out a profanity. He went on to use that four-letter word to describe Ms. Harris. “Such a horrible four years,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Biden-Harris administration, as he surveyed the crowd of hundreds of people in front of him. “We had a horrible — think of the — everything they touch turns to —.” Many in his audience — which was mostly made up of adults but included some children, infants and teenagers — eagerly filled in the blank, shouting, “Shit!” Minutes later, Mr. Trump urged his supporters to vote, telling them that they had to send a crude message to Ms. Harris: “We can’t stand you, you’re a shit vice president.”

Oh, nice. That’s the way to make America great again.

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