Leadership

Ethics Dunces: Yankees Manager Aaron Boone and Centerfielder Trent Grisham

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

You don’t expect me to pass up a chance to chide the New York Yankees, do you? Especially when they really deserve it…and this episode has larger significance, I think, although I always think baseball has larger significance.

When I saw the video of the play above, I didn’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a major league player loaf like that on a play. The culprit was Yankee center fielder Trent Grisham, who is no callow rookie; in fact, he has won a couple Gold Gloves for his fielding. It occurred during the ninth inning of Friday’s eventual 8-4 Yankee loss to Cincinnati; the Pinstripes have been losing a lot lately, indeed they appear to be in free-fall after a spectacular start. (Good.)

Yankee fans noticed, and booed Grisham lustily. Yankee social media commenters, already upset because of the team’s recent losing ways, piled on after the game. Best-selling author and podcaster Eric Sherman probably summed it up best, tweeting, “What in the world was [Manager] Aaron Boone waiting for there in the dugout? Trent Grisham should have been yanked from the game immediately. A missed opportunity for Boone to set an example for a team that has underachieved the last month. Wow.”

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‘Why Columbia, It Profits a University Nothing To Give Its Soul For The Whole World… But For An Ethics Villain Like Dean Josef Sorrett?’

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I don’t understand the latest chapter in Columbia’s anti-Semitism scandal at all. I don’t understand how anyone connected to the university can look at themselves in the mirror after this. I don’t understand how alumni and donors can tolerate it. Most astounding of all, in its shameless embrace of The King’s Pass, Columbia University has managed to make Harvard look like an ethics exemplar by comparison.

No, I don’t understand.

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Unethical (and Pathetic) Quote of the Week: President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“No one said I had to.”

That was the President of the United States, not just a grown man but the democratically elected leader of our government, in response to the question posed by George Stephanopolos last night in the interview designed to calm American fears that Joe Biden is not capable of doing his job.

How diminishing, damning, desperate and depressing.

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Update: Josef Sorett, Dean of Columbia College, Is An Ethics Villain

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sorett has revealed himself to be the most despicable, incompetent and untrustworthy leader of a prestigious U.S. college, an astounding achievement when you consider the competition.

Silly me, I thought the original story was as bad as it could get. How wrong I was. To recap this post, during a Columbia panel on the campus’s anti-Semitism, Sorett, the Dean of Columbia College, exchanged mocking and derisive texts about the panelists statements about how the pro-Hamas protesters had poisoned the educational environment for Jewish students with the vice dean and chief administrative officer of the college, the dean of undergraduate student life; and the associate dean for student and family support. Unfortunately for all of them, another attendee behind one of the texters took incriminating snap shots of the cell phone screen that revealed the dismissive texts.

After being busted, Sorett tried the Pazuzu Excuse (‘what I said or did wasn’t really me!’) which is bad enough, but “the rest of the story” is worse. This creep fuzzed over the fact that he was part of the texting orgy in his original statement after the texts were revealed, and then put the other three administrators on leave! Nice. The least he could have done was show some solidarity with his fellow anti-Semites and suspend himself. As the highest ranking member of the gossip group, a strong argument can be made that he ratified and enabled the offensive discussion. In fact, I’ll make it: he was more accountable than the three administrators he punished.

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This Headline Tells You Everything You Need To Know About the Progressive Wing Of The Democratic Party…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Jamaal Bowman. This Jamaal Bowman. The lying idiot who pulled a fire alarm to stall a floor vote in the House of Representatives and flagrantly lied about it, claiming he thought the “Pull” handle on the wall was there to open the door. After security footage showed him taking down the signs that contradicted his absurd story. And this Jamaal Bowman. He’s a star in the firmament of progressive Democrats. What must the rest of the metaphorical sky look like?

Yet the story quotes Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) saying, “I cannot think of a single race that better exemplifies the battle, frankly for our democracy, between everyday people choosing their representation and big money coming in and choosing it for them.” Yes, there we have the strange progressive definition of “democracy”: a member of Congress who stoops to sabotaging a legislative vote that his forces will lose, who lies about it, and who is given The King’s Pass by colleagues like AOC when he should have been prosecuted and censured. It’s not big money making the voters’ choice easy between Bowman and his Democratic primary foe, who is trouncing him in the polls. It is the inescapable fact that Bowman is incompetent, dishonest, unprofessional, not very bright, and a Hamas ally.

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Father’s Day Morning Nausea, 2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Waking up this Father’s Day [Thanks, Dad, for 1) being such a terrific, selfless father 2) for continuing to be an inspiration, a role model and a guide during my highs and lows (like now), and everything in-between 3) for loving my wonderful mom and showing it so brilliantly to everyone, especially her, without interruption for almost sixty years; 4) for somehow saving so much money on a modest salary to hand over to my sister, me, and the three grandchildren through sacrifice and smart investing, because without it I would be living in a cardboard box right now, and 5) for surviving the Battle of the Bulge] to the near certainty that my son (who informed me last week that he would like me to refer to him/her/they as my daughter, Samantha. OK! ), is almost certain to ignore this rather contrived holiday (which is fine with me), a mystery in my yard in which someone or something keeps pulling the 15-foot-long heavy plastic, 7″ diameter tubing, installed to send runoff from the gutters into the garden rather than into my home’s foundation, off the down spout and dragging it into my neighbor’s yard, and another fight with a customer service rep, who, I swear, spoke exactly like Andy Kaufmann’s character on “Taxi” but faster than an auctioneer—yes, this IS a long sentence!—I sat down with Spuds to talk myself out of seppuku, drink a cup of coffee, and check what nonsense the various news networks were spouting.

Big mistake.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: President Joe Biden (Alternate Headline: “What a Shameless Asshole!”)

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“We must face a simple truth.To protect America as a land that welcomes immigrants, we must first secure the border and secure it now.”

—President Biden, outrageously adopting Donald Trump’s long-standing position that he party has condemned as racist and “xenophobic” because his poll numbers are looking bad.

Seldom has the “Die Hard” clip (from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive) been more appropriate or infuriating. For more than three years, Joe Biden’s administration deliberately signaled to aspiring alien lawbreakers that they would be wink-winked into the United States despite defying immigration laws, let free to run amuck if that’s what they chose to do, and law enforcement would look the other way. Officials like Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas gaslighted the public by insisting the border was secure when anyone with eyes or a camera could see it was anything but. An estimated 2.5 illegals have entered the country across this “secure border.” Awakening to the reality that the majority of the American public doesn’t view that as “a Great Replacement Conspiracy,” but simply as incompetent, irresponsible, dangerous and wrong—you know, like Donald Trump said in 2015 as he launched his (quixotic, everyone thought) candidacy for the Presidency and was tarred as a racist for it?—suddenly, Mirabile Dictu!, Biden is singing a different metaphorical tune.

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When Does “Correcting” a Presidential Speech Transcript Become Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Mediaite, a political website that has an interesting approach to bias—about 80% of its writers are mouth-foaming progressive, Trump-loathing propagandists, but it mixes in a few neutral and conservative reporters for contrast—revealed that the White House made an unusual number of significant alterations to the official transcript of President Biden’s recent speech to the NAACP.

At the very beginning of the speech, Biden said that President Obama had sent him to Detroit during the “pandemic.” (“When I was Vice President, things were kinda bad during the pandemic…”) ““Pandemic” was changed to “recession” in the White House transcript. Biden then told the NAACP he was “humbled to receive this organization.” No, he hadn’t been given the whole organization, just an award from it. The White House crossed out “organization” in the transcript and corrected it with “award.”

Biden said, “We’re cracking down on corporate landlords who keep rents down,” which was the opposite of what he intended to say, or so we are told. “We’re cracking down on corporate landlords to keep rents down” the White House changed the transcript to state as Biden’s message. Biden also called those who took part in the Capitol rioting “erectionists” which was changed to “insurrectionists.”

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In the Hallowed Halls of Congress, Ethics Dunces, Dolts, and Disgraces All Around

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

A House Oversight Committee meeting was pondering whether Attorney General Merrick Garland be held in contempt of Congress when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), responded to a question from Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) by saying, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.” Stay classy, MTG! (In truth, MTG has never been classy). “That is absolutely unacceptable,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interjected, proving that she’s not wrong all the time. “How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person?”

Greene then turned her wit, such as it is, on AOC, asking, “Are your feelings hurt?” “Oh, girl? Baby girl,” Ocasio-Cortez replied, trying hard to sink to the ridiculous Republican’s level, “Don’t even play.” Then Greene asked Ocasio-Cortez, “Why don’t you debate me?,” and AOC snapped back, “it’s pretty self-evident.”

I wonder what she was referring to? Jean Kerr once wrote that it was folly to argue with a six-year-old because you would inevitably start sounding like one.

“You don’t have enough intelligence,” shot back Greene, eschewing the more sophisticated, “I’m rubber and you’re glue” bon mot.

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Unethical—But Revealing!—Quote of the Month: Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College, London

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Remember: Trust the scientists! They know best…

“If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate.”

—British vulcanologist and climate scientist William J. McGuire, “Bill” to his friends, cheering on human death in a tweet he quickly removed after colleagues advised him “Uh, Bill? We’re not supposed to say things like this out loud…”

Of course, the professor might have been saying that the economically disastrous measures being proposed and in some cases adopted by foolish governments like the Biden administration won’t affect the climate sufficiently to make a difference, so the whole movement is futile, irresponsible, based on speculation, and, to be blunt, stupid, but of course he wasn’t. No, this scientist, who is among those we are supposed to trust and obey—you know, like the health “experts” who crippled the economy, our society and the educational development of our children based on guesses about the Wuhan virus that were represented as fact?—believes that the only way to avoid a climate catastrophe (and we all want to do that, right?) is to have millions of people die as soon as possible, one way or another. A plague is a good way! Or we could just execute them, like Mao did. Of course, he shouldn’t be one of those sacrificed for the greater good, because his life is too valuable.

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