Race

Ethics Dunce, Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Division: The Alabama State Marching Band

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Trayvon-band-tribute

The worst ethics train wreck within memory is slowly coasting to a halt, but there are still some who are determined to jump on board. The latest passengers are the members of the Alabama State Marching Band, who somehow felt that a salute to “Trayvon” was appropriate half-time fare at a college football game.

It  isn’t.  The band is abusing its position, visibility and responsibilities by using the half-time show for political commentary, even if the commentary is ignorant, incoherent, and vague. Football fans do not come to games to have their faces rubbed in racially divisive controversies, and the band has no business inflicting its views, whatever they may think they are, on a captive audience.

The university can’t trust a band that would do something like this, and should suspend its performances for the next game or so to make the point, lest future fields feature “BOMB SYRIA,” ” YAY ABORTION” or “LEGALIZE METH.”

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Facts and Graphic: AL.com

Ed Asner’s Important, Troubling And Bewildering Theory

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments
"Oh, Mr. Grant!"

“Oh, Mr. Grant!”

I really don’t know what to make of this, but I think it means something, and whatever it is, it’s important to remember and learn from it. Now if I could only figure out what it is.

Here is what Ed Asner, the elderly “Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Up” actor—he was also a bad guy in one of my favorite John Wayne Westerns, “El Dorado”—said in response to an interviewer’s question about why the Hollywood anti-war left was staying out of Obama’s self-made Syria controversy, in such marked contrast to its vocal opposition to the Iraq invasion (Where have you gone Janeane Garafolo, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you…OOOOO! ).

Spake Ed:

“A lot of people don’t want to feel anti-black by being opposed to Obama.”

Now, Asner has long been a vocal member of the Hollywood liberal activist community. Presumably, he still is well-connected and knows something about the culture and political pulse in Tinseltown. So I want to know: What can we glean from this ridiculous statement? What does it mean? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Jeff Shesol

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“Berg is not uncritical of Wilson’s biggest lapses — his tolerance of segregation, his suppression of civil liberties and his “highly questionable” actions (or paralytic inaction) after the stroke he suffered in 1919, during his grueling campaign to win Senate approval of the League of Nations.”

—Former Clinton Speechwriter and author Jeff Shesol, in his Washington Post book review of historian Scott Berg’s new biography of Woodrow Wilson, “Wilson.”

All right, he was a racist, but he was GREAT racist, right, Jeff?

All right, he was a racist, but he was GREAT racist, right, Jeff?

There is a nasty piece of dishonesty in this quote, all the more sinister because it slides right by, altering your understanding of history and reality without you even knowing it. (Is it any surprise that Shesol wrote speeches for Bill Clinton?) Did you catch it?

It is the phrase, “[President Woodrow Wilson’s] tolerance of segregation.”] Continue reading →

And Here’s Why The Supreme Court Majority Was Right In Shelby v. Holder…

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments
Ok, if you don't buy the theory that they hurt the public schools, how about this: they're racist!

Ok, if you don’t buy the theory that they hurt the public schools, how about this: they’re racist!

In its much maligned decision in Shelby v. Holder, the Supreme Court declared that the Justice Department could not interfere with state legislative decisions affecting voting rights based on 60 year old data about racist practices prior to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Federal government should not be able to over-ride the will of the people and its elected legislatures without a compelling and overwhelming interest, and allowing the large list of states designated as subject to the Act invited abuse of power. What kind of abuse? This kind:

The U.S. Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to stop the Louisiana from distributing school vouchers to poor black families in any district that remains under a desegregation court order. Over 600 public schools are affected. The argument of Holder’s Justice Department  is just as ridiculous as it reads: it is that “many of those vouchers impeded the desegregation process.” You see, if black children are able to go to better, private schools thanks to the vouchers, the percentage of whites to blacks in failing but desegregated public schools will go up, “impeding” desegregation. Can’t have that! What citizens would want politicized, absurd bureaucrats who reason like this second-guessing their legislature?

As the Washington Post noted in an incredulous editorial it called, pulling no punches, Justice Department bids to trap poor, black children in ineffective schools: Continue reading →

Ethics Mega-Dunces: The Republicans

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments
"You're right, Abe; they're all rock-heads. I'd like to beat some sense into them with a big stick, but I have no arms."

“You’re right, Abe; they’re all rock-heads. I’d like to beat some sense into them with a big stick, but I have no arms.”

Not a single invited member of the Republican leadership accepted an invitation to attend the official March on Washington anniversary event yesterday.

This is practically all that needs to be said. That fact alone is sufficient to show an appalling lack of leadership, respect, common sense, common purpose, values and priorities within the highest reaches of the party.

Everyone had a “good reason,” of course—Boehner, Canter, McConnell, McCain, Romney, both Bushes,  But the excuses don’t matter. A responsible, intelligent, public minded, fair and  statesmanlike political organization would have made certain that a representative delegation attended, and prominently so. How or why no major Republican figures were present is irrelevant. If the commemoration of the March on Washington, Dr. King’s iconic and transformative speech, and the cultural transformation of America that they helped achieve are as important to the party as they must be--because of the GOP’s origins, because of what it represents, and because, dammit, Republicans are Americans, then attendance was mandatory. They manage to make it to the State of the Union and Presidential inaugurations, because they recognize it as important to do so. They should be able to recognize that showing solidarity with the  Democrats, African-Americans and the public on the core principle of equal rights for all is even more important. Continue reading →

Thanks, Lenddo, For A Brave, New…Crummy…World

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
I hate you, Jeff, and I hate your friends.

I hate you, Jeff, and I hate your friends.

Some ideas that brilliant young people have in the technology field should have remained unthought, and if thought, promptly rejected on the grounds that however clever and profitable, they will make the world a crummier place. This is one of those ideas:

From CNN Money we learn that Lenddo, a new financial lending companies (apparently none of the brilliant young people work in the marketing department—Lenddo???)  has figured out that one’s Facebook friends, and how friendly you are with them,  are a revealing indicator of your credit worthiness. If one of those FB friends is late paying back a loan to Lenddo, their data indicates that it means you are more of a credit risk than if that friend was right on time. Not only that, if the delinquent friend is someone you frequently interact with on the social network, it means you are even more likely to be a deadbeat.

“It turns out humans are really good at knowing who is trustworthy and reliable in their community,” happily crows Jeff Stewart, a co-founder and CEO of Lenddo. “What’s new is that we’re now able to measure through massive computing power.”  Fascinating, Jeff!

You suck. Continue reading →

Ayo Kimathi And The Freedom To Hate

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

center_image

Ayo Kimathi, an African-American, is an acquisitions officer for Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( a section of the Department of Homeland Security), and has been, apparently without incident, since 2009.  He also operates and authors a web site, War on the Horizon, which predicts an “unavoidable, inevitable clash with the white race,” and explains how to prepare for it.

The latter fact is none of the government’s business, nor yours, nor mine, and certainly not that of Sarah Palin, who in her own inimitable style of making ignorance catchy and cute, exclaimed on her Facebook page, “His side ‘job’ running the ‘War On the Horizon’ website was reportedly approved by supervisors. Really, Fed? Really? Unflippingbelievable!”

No, it’s not. You can scour the government regulations and ethics requirements all you want—I have (Palin hasn’t.) There is nothing in them that prohibits a government employee in the Executive branch from espousing any political position he pleases, or that bans outside activities that do not interfere with the duties of the employee or constitute a conflict of interest. Nor should there be. As I read the rules, Kimathi had no obligation to ask permission to run his website, because his supervisor had no authority to stop him.

It is called freedom of speech, my friends.

Deal with it. Or rather, cherish it. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Colin Powell

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments
I will file this under "disillusionment."

I will file this under “disillusionment.”

Another prominent African-America leader lept on board the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmmerman Ethics Train Wreck Sunday, when General Colin Powell aided and abetted the increasingly successful effort by divisive activists to re-write the history of the George Zimmerman trial into an example of a racist all-white jury freeing the murderer of a black man in defiance of the evidence and justice.

Appearing on “Face the Nation,” the former Secretary of State said that he thought the jury’s verdict “will be seen as a questionable judgment on the part of the judicial system down there,” adding that he didn’t know if it would have “staying power.” Powell’s comment was an especially pusillanimous fog on the issue, not explicitly endorsing  the criticism of the verdict—“Now I never said it was questionable, just that it will be seen that way,” the General can claim—but appearing to support it nonetheless. How weak, irresponsible, and disappointing. Continue reading →

Ethical Quote Of The Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“It’s a terrible idea to go looking for incidents  where the killers are black and the victims are white and to exploit them in what seems like an effort to undo the distortions. I saw this happening earlier this week over the Christopher Lane murder, I labeled it “counter-Trayvonistic,” which was a too-subtle way to say: Don’t fight skewing with skewing in the opposite direction….Trayvon Martin — an individual human being — was used by demagogues to score points about the suffering of black people in America, but this is not a game, and it is delusion to imagine that there is a need to score points on some imagined other side. This is not a game. There is no score. And we are all on the same side.”

—–Law prof/ blogger Ann Althouse, reacting to the effort in conservative circles to assert that recent high-profile black-on-white incidents of violent crime were racially motivated, as a “tit-for-tat” response to the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman distortions.

Uh, let's NOT ask the President about the thrill killing of Christopher Lane. After all, Jesse Jackson already said that it was "frowned upon"...

Uh, let’s NOT ask the President to give us his thoughts on  the thrill killing of Christopher Lane. After all, Jesse Jackson already said that it was “frowned upon”…

Prof Althouse is exactly right. Tit-for-tat is always an unethical and ultimately destructive response, abandoning the moral high ground and lowering ethical standards so that the good guys and villains are indistinguishable. In this case, it is especially wrong-headed, because the tactic also exacerbates the racial divisions that the Martin-Zimmerman lies and misrepresentations were cynically designed (by some, at least) to widen.

Althouse goes on to say, Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of The Month: Martin Luther King III

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“The vision preached by my father a half-century ago was that his four little children would no longer live in a nation where they would judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. However, sadly, the tears of Trayvon Martin’s mother and father remind us that, far too frequently, the color of one’s skin remains a license to profile, to arrest and to even murder with no regard for the content of one’s character.”

–— Martin Luther King III, the son of the martyred civil rights leader and humanist, speaking in front of the Lincoln memorial before thousands gathered on the National Mall  to commemorate the upcoming 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington, and his iconic “I have a dream” speech.

The passage was despicable and inexcusable, an insult to his father’s legacy and all of the courageous and sincere Americans, black and white, who have worked hard and effectively this past half-century to make remarkable progress toward the society that Rev. King envisioned.

“The tears of Trayvon Martin’s mother”  have exactly nothing at all to do with racial profiling or a “license to murder.” King’s son, proving once again that greatness of character and mind is seldom passed on to succeeding generations, chose to engage in divisive, misleading and cheap rhetoric that undermine his father’s goal of bring the races together. In this he was certainly consistent with the motivations of the event’s organizers, prominent among them Al Sharpton, whose paycheck and existence on the national scene depends on furthering the illusion of widespread racial discord, prejudice and injustice.

Even allowing for the excesses of oratory, the younger King’s speech deliberately misrepresented the historical, legal and factual record, which is this: a mixed-race citizen was pre-judged to be guilty of racism and murder by the color of his skin, and then demonized in order to provide a rallying point for a race-based political agenda. The civil rights establishment, aided by a complicit media and irresponsible politicians, distorted the facts of a tragic encounter so effectively that most Africans-Americans believe the lies rather than the facts, and bullied a politicized prosecution into bringing a criminal case to trial it could only win by jury intimidation, for it did not have sufficient evidence. Against all odds, a courageous jury embodied the best of the American justice system by properly acquitting an unpopular defendant who could not be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, a standard that is crucial to maintaining racial justice in the courts. Despite this inspiring display of character, the organizers of today’s event, its supporters, and most of those in attendance, have chosen to judge those jurors as biased, comparing them to the bigoted jurors in the Emmett Till murder trial, based on the color of their skin.

How immensely hypocritical, destructive and sad.

Martin Luther King propelled the cause of racial harmony and justice forward on August 28, 1963.

Today his son made pushed that cause backward to-day in favor of hate, suspicion, and ignorance, 50 years later.