Quizzes

Let’s Play “Wait, Was That Racist or Not?”!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Hi there, everyone! It’s time to play the exciting ethics game that’s sweeping America: “Wait, Was That Ethical or Unethical?”! As you know, contestants are asked to decide whether an ambiguous statement or action was racist or not!

“Are you ready, contestants? Then let’s play, “Wait, Was That Racist or Wasn’t It?”! Introduce our subject for Round I, Johnny!”

“Sure thing, Jack! Meet Dixie Walker! Dixie was a star baseball player who died in 1982. He won a batting championship and a runs-batted-in title, and he played in two World Series and four All-Star Games. He is most remembered, however, not for his impressive exploits on the baseball field but as the player who led the campaign to keep Jackie Robinson from joining the Brooklyn Dodgers and integrating the game.

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Ethics Quiz: The “Impossible” Wheel of Fortune Puzzle

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Devoted fans of the long-time TV game show “Wheel of Fortune “—“You know, morons!”— are enraged, as least based on the uproar on social media, because the puzzle board above foiled a competitor in the “bonus round,” costing him a car.

David Shepard of Atlanta, Georgia, was the unfortunate contestant. The pop culture media seems to think it’s relevant that he’s a cancer survivor. It isn’t. If the puzzle was unfair, then it was just as unfair whether he was cancer survivor, Sydney Sweeney, a convicted felon or Eric Swalwell. The amplified fury is another example of “toxic empathy,” as well as ethics ignorance.

But back to the issue at hand:

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is that puzzle unfair?

I can’t tell you the answer, because if you know it on your own, it will probably influence your answer to the quiz. According to TV Insider, fans of the show are screaming that “nobody uses that word” and that it was part of a conspiracy to avoid giving away a $50,000 Audi. I didn’t solve the puzzle in the time allowed ( I tried before my coffee) but I certainly know the word. “Have you ever heard that phrase? Let us know in the comments,” asks TV Insider.

Take me now, Lord.

And it’s a word, not a “phrase.”

On the side of the protesters as much as I can stand to be, that puzzle reminds me of the gag in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” where the mystical keeper of “The Bridge of Death” asks three easy questions of one of King Arthur’s Knights (“What is your name? What is your quest? What’s your favorite color?”) then replaces the color question with “What is the capital of Assyria?” for Sir Robin (who is magically flung into the gorge) and “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” for King Arthur.

Nonetheless, it is a real word, and the show never promised that its puzzles could all be solved by people who never progressed beyond Junior Scrabble…

Post Script: According to the AI bot I just asked, the average airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow is about 24 miles per hour, or 11 meters per second. Of course, that answer could be completely made up, and I don’t care enough to check.

Ethics Quiz: Robo-Bathrooms?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Big Apple’s Communist, anti-Semitic Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week (yes, that kind of intro is called “poisoning the well,” and I don’t care) announced that the first two high-tech modular bathrooms (of 17) that the city ordered earlier this year from Throne Labs are now on city streets. The rest of the restrooms will come online soon.

Wait, what? How does a bathroom come “online” ? This is how: The new public toilets can only be accessed by texting a number via a smartphone or by using special tap cards, which will be distributed by non-profit organizations in the community. There is strict 10-minute time limit on the things. A speaker inside the room will announce via bot that pooping-time is running out. Next the desperate user will hear in English and Spanish, “Attention: Your use time has expired! The door is opening now!” Then the door will slide open, exposing the user to the world. If someone doesn’t vacate the robo-bathroom at that point, Throne Labs personnel will get an alert to investigate, and if, necessary, call the police.

This system is allegedly necessary because NYC, which no longer observes the “broken window theory” and will not arrest someone for relieving themselves in public, decided that the public urination problem was becoming…serious. But how many public pissers have smart phones?

When I told a friend about this innovation today, he said, “There’s got to be something unethical about that.“

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it?

Ethics Quiz: Sydney Sweeney (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Sweeney, the shapely and bold young actress who already angered the Left with her jeans/genes ad that supposedly dog whistled white supremacy, is now getting attacked by the Mad Left for the video above. She’s objectifying female athletes, you see. Or something. Because women athletes have never used sexual attractiveness to promote themselves and their sports…

Hey, how did pro-golfer Paige Spiranac get in there? Away with you, Devil Woman!

Now where were we? Oh yes, Sydney Sweeney….

Here’s The Athletic:

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Comment of the Day: “Baseball Ethics Quiz: The Hug”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

If I have learned one thing writing Ethics Alarms since 2009 is that I don’t know anything, particularly regarding which posts will spark the most interest or the most lively debates. I never expect the usual volume of commentary on my baseball ethics posts (the first ethics post I ever wrote, on the old Ethics Scoreboard, was on baseball: Pete Rose), but yesterday’s quiz regarding Red Sox pitcher Peyton Tolle’s impulsive hug of an opposing player as he applied an inning ending tag spawned commentary that raised some aspects of the incident that I never considered.

Best of all was this Comment of the Day by AM Golden, on “Baseball Ethics Quiz: The Hug.”

[Oh: I’m from Old School Boston. I have always been uncomfortable with hugs of any kind, from any one, for any reason. I have learned over the years when to submit and also when taking the initiative in a hug is expected of me and therefore only polite.]

***

For transparency purposes, I have to disclose that I am a big fan of hugging.

It took a very long time for me to realize that not everyone likes to be hugged, though. Also, that there is a time and a place to hug people.

A workplace setting, for example, that wants to be taken seriously might want to discourage hugging among colleagues and, especially, between superiors and subordinates. An employee that wants to be taken seriously might decide that hugging people in the office undermines that goal. One never knows how another person may react to spontaneous hugging, after all. It might be welcomes, it might be spurned, it might give you an unwanted love interest or it might get you reprimanded by HR.

During a baseball game, a player is expected to be professional. Is it any different from being in a boardroom, a classroom or an examining room?

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Finally “The Ethicist” Has Found A Legitimate Topic Again: The Dementia Victim’s Spouse

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In fact, I’ll make this one an Ethics Quiz.

I don’t need to extensively quote the letter inspiring the column. A woman whose much older husband is now consumed with dementia and unable to function or recognize her asks if it would be ethical for her to seek an intimate relationship while remaining married to her husband and serving as his caretaker. “I have a lot of working years and child-rearing years ahead of me…and I find myself desiring physical and emotional intimacy with a partner,” “Name Withheld” writes.

No, it wasn’t Jill Biden. At least, I don’t think so…

If you have been reading my periodic posts involving Kwame Anthony Appiah’s ethics advice in the Times “The Ethicist” column, I’m sure you can guess his response. Hey girl, go for it! No harm no foul! Your man is a veg, and you’re stuck with him: why not live a little in the meantime?

Ok, that framing may be a bit unfair, but it’s still where Kwame comes out. Without saying he’s necessarily wrong, I have several problems with that knee-jerk response.

If that’s the verdict with one serious debilitating illness, why not others, like cancer or ALS…or, to reference something I’m very familiar with, alcoholism? Is the distinction that the demented spouse doesn’t know his or her spouse is having affairs? Hey Ethicist Man, what happened to “Ethics is what you do when no one’s looking”?

I do know that my wife frequently said that if I cheated on her if she became seriously ill, she would come back from the grave and haunt me like Tevye’s grandmother in “Fiddler on the Roof.” And she wasn’t kidding.

Then we have the reverse situation famously experienced by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She stepped down from SCOTUS in 2005 to care for her husband, John Jay O’Connor, after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis. His condition progressed to the point that he required full-time care and he was moved into an assisted living facility in Phoenix. There his mind deteriorated to the point where he no longer remembered or recognized his wife, and he fell in love with a fellow Alzheimer’s patient. Justice O’Connor was supportive of the relationship, saying, at least in public, that she was thrilled and relieved that her husband was relaxed, happy, and comfortable in his new reality. Later, he became engaged to an ottoman.

(Okay, I was kidding about that last part. )

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Do you agree with “The Ethicist” that stepping out on your demented spouse is ethical?

Ethics Quiz: The “Incestuous” Candidacy

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Troy Jackson, the latest un-democratically selected candidate being offered to the public by Maine Democrats, is the Great White Male Hope for the unprincipled party as it tries to take over the U.S. Senate “by any means necessary.” You will recall that he became a necessary means after much-heralded lying, Nazi woman-abuser Graham Platner was revealed to be…well, a lying, Nazi woman-abuser. Oopsie!

Jackson has little in his record or character to suggest fitness to serve as a U.S. Senator, but what conservative critics are focusing their fire on is this, as the New York Post reports:

“Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson is in a long-term relationship with his high school sweetheart — who is also his second cousin, according to a new report. Jackson, 58, and Lana Pelletier share two adult sons and the same great-grandparents, according to Thursday’s report by independent journalist Steve Robinson, who notes that such relationships are both legal under state law and not uncommon in the rural North Maine Woods region, near the Canadian border.While Jackson, a onetime logger and the former president of the Maine State Senate, has described Pelletier as his wife in the past, locals tell Robinson the couple has never been legally married.

“Jackson grew up in the village of Allagash (population 237 as of the 2020 census) and attended nearby Fort Kent High School with Pelletier.According to geneological records unearthed by Robinson, Jackson’s maternal grandmother — Albertine Pelletier O’Leary — and Pelletier’s paternal grandfather — Louis A. Pelletier Sr. — were siblings, making Jackson’s mother, Colleen McBreairty, and Pelletier’s father, Louis Jr., first cousins.Since 1985, Maine law has prohibited marriages to an individual’s parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, aunts, or uncles.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of this Weekend:

Is this a legitimate campaign issue?

Legal Insurrection concludes, “All Maine Democrats had to do after Platner dropped out was find a normal person to take his place. It’s amazing that such a simple task was a challenge.” The conservative site reposts many contemptuous tweets, such as conservative pundit Jim Treacher’s…

OUT: Third Reich

IN: Second cousins

and Stephen L. Miller’s “The plan? We convince them to drop an abusive Nazi and then replace him with someone married to his own cousin.”

My view? I find this the kind of right wing “gotcha!”pearl-clutching that loses conservatives credibility. It’s mainly (Mainely?) Ick rather than ethics. He didn’t marry his cousin, he sort-of married his second cousin, which isn’t illegal incest in Maine or as far as I can find, anywhere else. Franklin D. Roosevely married and had children with his distant cousin (you’ll notice that they had the same last names). Thomas Jefferson and John Adams married third cousins; John and Abigail’s line was eventually stuffed with geniuses and high achievers. I have a long-time friend (well, she used to be a friend until Trump Derangement caused her to cut me off, and I was a particularly good and generous friend…grrrrrr!) who chose her first cousin as her third husband, which my late wife found disgusting. They were past the children stage; I found it interesting but hardly scandalous.

Ethics Quiz: The “Protected Species”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

For a sports league that few care about and fewer watch, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sure gets into a lot of ethics controversies. Take this one, for example:

The WNBA suspended Toronto Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello without pay for one game after she referred to black Atlanta Dream star Angel Reese as a “protected species” in a remark that was picked up by a hot mic during a game.

In the Dream’s 111-92 win over the Tempo last week a Toronto player had a foul called on her after an offensive rebound tussle involving Reese. As the foul call was being reviewed, Brondello yelled at the referees, “Angel…she’s a protected species!” The WNBA announced the next day that Brondello must sit out the Tempo’s next game, and won’t be paid for it, adding,”The WNBA expects all coaches and team personnel to uphold the highest standards of professionalism and respect that are fundamental to our league.”

Brondello, who is white, had issued a written apology earlier, reflexively groveling so she wouldn’t be cancelled as a racist in a league where 81% of the players are “of color.” She wrote,

“Angel, I’m sorry. Last night, in the emotion of the moment after Nyara’s injury, I used a phrase that I shouldn’t have used, and I take full responsibility for that. My frustration was with the officiating, but my words unfairly put the focus on you. I also understand that my words carried an impact beyond what I intended, particularly for Black women in our league, and I’m deeply sorry for that. I’ve spent my career competing with, coaching and learning from incredible Black women. I regret that my words caused hurt to a community I respect so deeply. I have a lot of respect for you as both a player and a person, and I sincerely apologize to you, your teammates, and the Dream organization for my comment.”

Reese, meanwhile, couldn’t resist the urge to play victim and to imply that either everyone knows that Brondello is a bigot or that white people in general think of blacks as a separate species. She piled on thusly on “X”:

Nice. What Brondello should have said about Reese was “She’s an asshole.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was it fair and responsible for the WNBA to suspend Brondello for calling a black star a “protected species”?

Zach Dean, a pan-sports commentator for Outkick, the conservative sports commentary website absorbed by Fox New, pronounced the suspension wrongful and even dangerous. He wrote in part,

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Ethics Quiz: The Weenie King

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I read about King Charles renouncing his traditional title and, I must confess, shrugged. Then a couple of well-regarded commenters suggested an EA post on the matter, so I rethought the issue.

In an annual review published for 2025-2026 reported by the U.K.’s Telegraph last week, the King who was previously been both “Head of Nation” and “Head of the Church of England and Defender of the Faith” was revealed to now be “Head of Nation” and “Supreme Governor of the Church of England who protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation.”

“What is the king trying to say with this shift?” asks the conservative Western Journal. Its answer: “That the United Kingdom is not Christian, and that her monarch represents a non-Christian people — Muslims.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it ethical for the King to do this, cowardly, just pragmatic or does it really matter at all?

In considering this, and I am strongly pulled to the last alternative, one must remember that Charles has always been drawn to progressive positions, and that, unfortunately, he is not very bright. The King is also hanging on with his metaphorical fingernails to a position that his own people increasingly see as anachronistic and superfluous, undercut by a royal family that has enmeshed itself with increasing acceleration in one scandal and embarrassment after another, some of which he participated in.

Ethics Quiz: “The View”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The recent visit of Vice-President J.D. Vance to “The View,” one of the rare occasions when the panel of ignorant, Trump-Deranged women deigned to host a non-progressive that they weren’t ready to drool over, brought into sharp focus what is so wrong with the ABC “news” program. Here are “highlights” from that episode on June 16. Note the thoroughly professional and even-handed attitude of the “news commentators”:

[Vice President J.D. Vance was beginning to answer a question from co-host Sara Haines]

ANA NAVARRO: And you actually say in the book – You talk about this. You talk about this struggle in the book.

VP J.D. VANCE: I do. Of course.

NAVARRO: You talk about moral tradeoffs that result in favoring a strict migration policy without dehumanizing anyone. But listen, over 50 people have died in ICE custody. There are thousands of children, 6,200, that are being held in places like Dilly Detention Center that people that have visited — I don’t know if you have — talk about the subhuman, infrahuman conditions, the lack of clean water, the lack of medical attention, lack of education. I would urge you as a Christian and as a father to visit those detention centers where the children are being held, and make sure that the conditions are up to the values that we hold in this country.

JOY BEHAR: Let him answer.

[Applause]

VANCE: You have thrown a lot at me and I see we have 30 seconds left here, but let me say –

NAVARRO: You are the vice president. You can go long.

VANCE: I’d like to pick up on this theme because I think it’s really important. We do have to strike a balance, of course, between enforcing our laws. We don’t want to dehumanize people. That is the balance. Look, law enforcement – What I’d say about this: law enforcement is always inherently not a very pretty process. Especially when you dealing sometimes with violent people, with people who are resisting arrest. Some of the people that I have been told by the media were completely peaceful, have never violated any laws, you look actually look into the record and find out that those people were actually being violent or they did have a criminal record. They had a sex traffic conviction.

SUNNY HOSTIN: The majority people don’t have criminal records, the majority of people that ICE is rounding up and taking out of their homes from their families, they are separating families, they’re using children as bait, the majority are not criminals!

[Applause]

VANCE: But can I respond to that? Guys, let me just say this. Okay. So, you talk about the children. Here’s what I’d say: do we know that during the last administration we had tens of thousands of children who were sex trafficked by the cartels, who were brought into our country in profoundly dangerous and predatory conditions —

HOSTIN: Talk about this administration!

VANCE: But here’s the point, unless you enforce the border, you invite that conduct. You think that our immigration policies are inhuman based on the reporting of one person with a political bias. What I’m telling you is that it’s inhumane –

NAVARRO (interrupting): It’s not one person.

VANCE: – to allow cartels to sex traffic people across our border.

[Crosstalk]

NAVARRO: And you guys have done a great job of closing the border.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Please hold on.

VANCE: I appreciate that.

(…)

[Loud crosstalk as Vance finishes an answer to a question from Goldberg]

GOLDBERG: No, no! Let me do my follow-up! Let me do my follow-up! Because you were talking about people. What did black people do to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color? And you know how hard it is. You have folks of color in your family.

VANCE: Sure.

GOLDBERG: So, when you see things — the Emmitt Till stuff coming down or them doing all kinds of removal of information of black heroes, how do you — how does that sit with you?

VANCE: What exactly are you talking about, Whoopi because you just –

GOLDBERG: I’m talking about –

[Audience reacts negatively]

VANCE: Emmitt Till was the kid –

GOLDBERG: I can tell you —

VANCE: No, no. I want to know what she’s — I want to respond to your actual point.

GOLDBERG: In a lot of the – um

HOSTIN: Museums?

GOLDBERG: Museums –

[Crosstalk]

GOLDBERG: There’s so many. You know, where they’re taking down the actual history that happened in this country. Slavery happened. All kinds of stuff happened. And it seems that it has been very easy for this administration to remove that and also to denigrate black folks who have worked their behinds off to get this American dream. How – I mean, you know better!

[Applause]

VANCE: Let me – So, Sunny, that was actually very helpful intervention because I think the story you are talking about is where allegedly the administration is holding back the appointments of people based on skin color.

HOSTIN: I’m talking about a host of things. I’m talking about black history getting erased from public spaces. Black voter districts are being dismantled. Black leaders are being sidelined from our ranks. Where do Americans of color fit in this vision?! Because it doesn’t seem like we fit!

VANCE: I think, Sunny, my view –

[Applause]

NAVARRO: And if I may, since October of last year there’s been something like 6,668 refugees allowed in the country. All but three were white South Africans.

HOSTIN: South Africans.

VANCE: So, first of all, I’m very skeptical of that number because we have a lot of different immigration pathways in the United States of America. But let me just address Whoopi’s point. Look, first of all, you asked the question; and maybe you don’t believe this coming from me, but I think everybody is welcome in our political coalition. Frankly, even if you didn’t vote for us, everybody is welcome in our country so long as you are an American citizen, with the duties and the legal obligation and rights to be here.

GOLDBERG: Right.

VANCE: But let me just give you an example. Okay, so you say we’re anti-minority or anti-black —

GOLDBERG: NO, I didn’t say that! I asked. See.

VANCE: Okay, fine. Fair. Fair.

GOLDBERG: Don’t start any stuff with me man. Don’t get me in trouble.

[Applause]

Don’t start that stuff with me.

VANCE: I misinterpreted your question.

GOLDBERG: That’s all right.

VANCE: But let me answer your actual question there. What I’m saying, I think — Okay, look at Washington, D.C. One of the most Democratic and one of the blackest – by share of population – blackest cities in the United States of America, has seen a radical decrease in violent crimes and sexual assaults and murders. We have tried to take the crime issue seriously in part because we believe everybody, whether you are black or white or rich or poor, deserves to live in a safe neighborhood.

GOLDBERG: But why was – why does the crime – where does the crime step in? This is not about crime. This is about —

HOSTIN: 300,000 black women lost their jobs!

[Crosstalk]

GOLDBERG: This is about human rights, sir.

VANCE: What you are saying is, we have to do more on the economy.

HOSTIN: And black history has been erased from public spaces!

VANCE: Black history is not erased from public spaces.

HOSTIN: That is true.

VANCE: That is not right.

[Crosstalk]

VANCE: I’m telling you, we celebrate black history. We celebrate all American history in this administration. You guys might be skeptical of this, but I promise you it’s true.

NAVARRO: Can I ask you about a specific piece of black history?

GOLDBERG: He’s gotta – I gotta –

NAVARRO: Do you think the attack on Michelle Obama –

GOLDBERG: I have to go to break! [Claps her hands] ANA, GOD PLEASE!

NAVARRO: – should have been condemned by the White House?

GOLDBERG: We have more with Vice President J.D. Vance when we come back.

Don’t do that!

(…)

VANCE: I do think — in a subtle sometimes, sometimes in a more profound way, I think our country has become more anti-family and more anti-child. It’s harder to travel. It’s harder to go to restaurants.

[Crosstalk]

BEHAR: All right, we only have 10 seconds, do you want –

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Mr. Vice President, we know you grandchild is – or your CHILD is arriving.

VANCE: No grand babies yet.

FARAH GRIFFIN: Not yet. We’re very excited for you and Usha, and we wanted to give you a View onesie!

VANCE: Thank you. I appreciate that. We will put this on. We’ll send you guys the photo.

GOLDBERG: His new book Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith is available now. Scan the QR code on your screen to purchase a copy. And we will be right back.

VANCE: Thank you, guys.

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