Quizzes

Ethics Quiz: The Icky Question

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Gwendolyn Herzig, a pharmacist who describes herself as a transgender female, testified in support of the gender-altering treatment of minors during an Arkansas state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week. The legislation, S.B. 199, being considered would prohibit physicians in the state from providing most types of such treatment to minors, including prescribing puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy, or from performing transition-related surgeries. (NBC uses “gender-affirming care,” which is both an oxymoron and cover-phrase devised by pro-transexual activists. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!)

At one point, Sen. Matt McKee, a Republican, asked Herzig if she has a penis. You can see the exchange above.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is..

Was McKee’s question unethical?

Whatever you may think of the question, Herzig handled it very well.

I could justify the question was going to credibility and bias. The other side of the argument is that it was needlessly embarrassing to the witness, as well as disrespectful.

I wouldn’t have asked it.

Ethics Quiz: Alec And The Philharmonic [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I did not know that Alec “Quick-Draw” Baldwin, currently criminal charges in New Mexico as a consequence of his fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while filming the film “Rust,” is and has been the New York Philharmonic’s radio host. In writing this,  I am admitting that I haven’t listened to live broadcasts of the orchestra in a long time, probably since Leonard Bernstein was waving the baton. On the other hand, if I knew I had to listen to Baldwin to hear “Peter and the Wolf” again (Lenny’s rendition was big hit when I was 10), I wouldn’t have listened anyway. I can tolerate Baldwin in older films (like “The Hunt for the Red October”) before he became a public asshole, and in more recent movies (like “The Departed,” “Pearl Harbor” and the “Mission Impossible” films) where he is only in a small supporting role: he is, after all, a competent actor (like many assholes). In any other setting, however, if Alec is connected with it, count me out; the cognitive dissonance is too great.

The New York Post reports that despite the actor facing homicide murder charges (two counts of involuntary manslaughter) , the Philharmonic will allow Baldwin to keep his role as the famed orchestra’s  radio host and will remain a member of its board of directors. “He has been an incredibly strong person on the board, and very, very helpful and I think that will probably carry us today,” Charles F. Neimeth, a fellow board member, said in explaining the organization’s decision. “He’s been a strong contributor, both financially and otherwise.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Marie Osmond’s Formula For Responsible Parenting When You’re Filthy Rich

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Pop star Marie Osmond, seen above apparently being eaten by the same plant mass that devoured Barack Obama in his awful portrait that became a source of a scandal narrative, has announced that she will not be bestowing any of her current wealth, estimated to be about $20 million, on her 8 children or 8 grandchildren.

“Honestly, why would you enable your child to not try to be something? I don’t know anybody who becomes anything if they’re just handed money,” she said last month in an interview. “To me, the greatest gift you can give your child is a passion to search out who they are inside and to work. I mean, I’ve done so many things… I love trying. I wanna try everything,” she added.

Further parenting wisdom from Marie, whose plan is to spend what she has with husband Steve Craig and give whatever is left to charity when she goes to that big Osmond Reunion in the sky: “I just think all [an inheritance] does is breed laziness and entitlement. I worked hard and I’m gonna spend it all and have fun with my husband…” and she says she doesn’t want to set the stage for her heirs to fight over her estate. Marie has said that her role model in this conviction was actor Kirk Douglas, who reportedly left none of his wealth, estimated to be three times Osmond’s, to Michael (who was rich already).

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is… Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Condign Justice Or Schadenfreude?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In India, two cock-fighting enthusiasts bled to death at cockfighting events. Both were fatally wounded knives attached to their roosters’ feet.

 Gande Suryapraksha Rao was tying blades to the feet of his prized cock before a bout when his bird,  alarmed by the crowd, flew up and cut Gande’s leg. He bled to death before they could get him to a hospital. In the second incident, a 20-year-old spectator was cut by a bladed bird as he stood near the cockfighting pit. The blade  cut open the man’s hand, and he also bled to death.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is,

Would it be unethical to publicly express satisfaction in the two men’s fate?

…like if I were to write of their demise, “Good!” ?

They are human beings, after all, and cruelty to animals is not a capital offense. Are these incidents really like a bomb-maker blowing himself up by mistake? A bank robber who trips leaving the bank and dies in the fall? A drug dealer who ODs on his own product?

Or are these deaths condign justice that should be hailed far and wide to send the message that the underlying conduct is intolerable?

__________________

Pointer: JuGory [I had miscredited this, then corrected it and botched the edit. Sorry to all.]

Ethics Quiz: Seriously, Mona Charen?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Mona Charen is, I think it’s fair to say, a Trump-Deranged conservative pundit. I recall her faintly from the days of CNN’s Capital Gang,which ended its run in 2005. She was one of the designated conservatives on the weekly panel after Pat Buchanan left, back when CNN wasn’t quite so left-biased and at least pretended to care about ideological balance. The election of Donald Trump sent her wandering in the wilderness with the likes of Bill Kristol and George Will, a bitter Never-Trumper, and now she edits that nest of Never-Trumpers, The Bulwark. Charen isn’t an idiot, or at least shouldn’t be: she’s an honors graduate of Columbia back when that meant something and a lawyer. And yet she wrote this for Time: “We Elected Biden to Be Better Than This,” which begins with the head-exploding assertions….

In 2020, America elected Joe Biden to be not-Trump—a role for which he seemed well-suited. In 2016, the country voted for burn-it-all-down upheaval. Trump was the tribune of those who felt betrayed and misled and mistreated. Four chaotic years later, alarmed voters fled into the arms of an aging former vice-president and senator—a man they had twice rejected as a presidential contender—who seemed the personification of the steady hand.

No one expected Biden to be transformational or extraordinary, but we did need him to be the anti-Trump in the most important ways. We needed him to be sober and responsible, to play by the rules, and to uphold the primacy of law and procedure. And he delivered. President Biden freed the country and the world from the tyranny of tweeted insults, conspiracies, threats, lies, fantasies, and reversals. And while naturally some will criticize his policies, Biden has conducted the presidency with dignity. He has gone some way toward restoring a sense that the system, whatever its flaws, is basically sound.

This Ethics Quiz is a bit different than most. I’m not asking what the ethical course is, or whether particular conduct is ethical.

The Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this…

Is Mona Charen lying, or is she a ‘useful idiot’?

It is flat out impossible that any astute, long-time observer of Washington could believe that statement absent some kind of cognitive impairment.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Christmas Eve At Kamala’s

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

They aren’t “migrants,” they are illegal immigrants, breaking the laws of a nation where they don’t belong. They are, however, people.

About 130 illegal immigrants, fresh from Texas, were off-loaded from buses in front Vice President Kamala Harris’s home on one of the coldest Christmas Eves ever in Washington, D.C.

They arrived after a 36-hour journey, many without clothes or blankets to gird against the weather, though non-profit groups arrived to coordinate travel and housing and provide food, coats, gloves and shoes to cope with the sub-twenty degree temperatures. The buses were sent by the Texas Division of Emergency Management, directed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

“They have been doing that for a few months now; it’s all for the spectacle,” a pro-illegal immigration activist told the New York Times. “The cruelty is the point. It’s awful to use people in this manner, for political reasons.”

Kant held that it is unethical to “use people” for any reasons. Then again, Vice-President Harris, charged with dealing with the administration’s border-crossing fiasco, has agreed with the Department of Homeland Security that the border is secure. Washington, D.C. is blandly repeating that talking point, and the news media is spinning it.

We had a similar ethics quiz in September, and many of the issues are the same, but I regard the distinction between sending the border-jumpers to the charming and elite resort of Martha’s Vineyard in the Fall and busing them to D.C. to arrive in freezing December weather material.

Your Ethics Alarm Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is Abbott’s shipping illegal immigrants from sunny Mexico to freezing Washington unethical?

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz Of The Day: “Gotcha!” Or “Benefit Of The Doubt”?

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

That’s yesterday’s Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, titled “Some Theme’s Missing,”, above. Does the pattern of the letter squares remind you of anything? Given that December 18 is the first night of Hanukkah, many found the resemblance of the puzzle to a Nazi swastika…disturbing. Sinister even.

Republicans pounced. New York Times-haters pounced. Donald Trump Jr. pounced, on Twitter. Israel’s Israel National News thought it notable that the swastika crossword was published following what it deemed an anti-Semitic op-ed by the Times the day before, warning that Benjamin “Netanyahu’s government…is a significant threat to the future of Israel — its direction, its security and even the idea of a Jewish homeland.”

The publication also posted a poll asking readers if the puzzle’s design was “intentional Nazi imagery or an unfortunate coincidence?” Of the 440 votes, nearly 85% deemed the symbol to be deliberate.

Continue reading →

A Language Ethics Quiz: Regarding “Groomer”

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Conservatives have been using the word “groomer” this year to describe advocates of teaching school children (as young as third grade in some cases) about LGTBQ sexual practices and relationships, while presenting them in a positive light. Targets of the word have ranged from defiant LGTBQ teachers exposed by The Libs of TikTok, to libraries promoting drag readings for kids, to the advocates for “gender-affirming therapy” for teens and younger without parental approval, to Disney’s recent obsession with injecting gay sexual issues into its films and TV offerings.

R.L. Stoller objects. He says he is a “child liberation theologian” (?), and a child and survivor advocate with “a Masters in Child Protection”—okey-dokey, let’s take that as genuine authority arguendo. He objects to the use of “groomer” in the current trend, writing in part,

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Cartoonist’s Regret

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

                                        Hell’s video store

Sometimes Ethics Alarms is on these matters quicker than anyone; sometimes it takes a while. Two years ago, retired “Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson confessed that the above cartoon was the only one he could think of at the moment that he felt he should apologize for. He wrote,

Ace Ethics Alarms commenter JutGory alerted me to Larson’s lament, which had been recalled in this recent post on the site “Screen Rant.” I tended to find that the cartoonist’s apology reflected well on his  ethics alarms, as did the Screen Rant pundit, who wrote,

In the end, he put his ego aside and admitted he unfairly judged the movie and criticized it without ever seeing it. The Far Side creator sharing his mistake shows that even the most talented and self-aware cartoonists can accidentally cross a line without initially realizing it. Thankfully, after seeing the movie for himself, Gary Larson understood an apology was warranted for the Far Side comic.

Jut, however, has a different take. He wrote,

It was a joke that landed well because of popular sentiment at the time it was made. Thinking about it another way, what if he saw Ishtar at the time and liked it?  He could still make the same joke because it would resonate with the public.  It would still be funny. I guess the real question is whether comics are bound by the same rules as a critic.  A critic should know what it is criticizing.  A comic is going for a laugh.  And, to the extent it was an “unfair” joke (I am not sure it is, as the movie had a widely-known bad reputation), is an apology necessary.  Most jokes are “unfair” to some extent.  But, does that, in itself, require an apology.  From a critic, yes; from a comic, no.

Ooooo, I think I may have to agree with Jut.

Maybe.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Does Gary Larson have anything to apologize for?

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: A Horse By Any Other Name…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

In the pantheon of 2022 “Wait…WHAT?” headlines, “Help! I’m So Embarrassed by the Name of My Daughter’s New Horse!” is an instant classic. This comes by way of a query to Slate advice columnist “Dear Prudence,” and you have to pay to see what wise ol’ Prudence decrees. Well, I’ve read enough of Prudence’s advice over the years and have been unimpressed. I don’t care what she thinks; I care what you think (and what I think, naturally). Here’s the letter:

My 10-year-old daughter is a horse girl. She’s outgrown her first pony, so we just bought her a new horse. This horse was priced right, he’s the perfect size, age, and temperament, and he’s trained in what she wants to do—we seriously could not have found her a better horse. Except for one thing. He’s an almost entirely white Pinto, and his registered name is [Farm Name] White Flight. I don’t want to know what his breeder was thinking. My daughter thinks it’s beautiful. But I would be embarrassed to have my child showing on a horse with this name, and I want to officially change it, or at least call him by another name. I’ve explained the meaning of “white flight” to her, but she still thinks it’s a perfect name for a white showjumping horse and says she wants to use it to mean something good, instead of something bad. How can I convince her to rename her new baby? Would it be too mean to say either the name is changed, or the horse is sold and she can’t have another one?

—Whitest Problem Ever

Ah, the problems of families who can afford to buy their child two horses before she’s eleven! But I digress…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

“Is there an ethical obligation to change the name of the horse from “White Flight”?

Continue reading →