Race

More Weird Tales From “The Great Stupid”: Neat Pantries Are Racist And Sexist!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Some of the Wokish opinion pieces being belched out of The Great Stupid are so outlandish they transcend being selected as Ethics Alarms “Unethical Quotes of the Month.” A truly deranged quote isn’t unethical so much as it is tragic, even one as brain-melting as this one, from “The Conversation,” a website which risibly claims to provide “academic rigor, journalistic flair.” Yeah, only academic rigor could produce an essay like “Pantry porn’ on TikTok and Instagram makes obsessively organized kitchens a new status symbol.”

Here’s the ‘money quote’, the section that proves beyond all doubt that the only reason to take the time to read this precious, arrogant clap-trap is to gain insight into just how crazy the victim-obsessed Left has become:

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Ethics Quiz: The King Kong Cartoon

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

As Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot faced a humiliating defeat (and blamed racism for her fate), the conservative Townhall Media political cartoonist used the iconic scene from “King Kong” to lampoon her.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the cartoon racist?

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An Unethical Quote Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There are a lot of really unethical people saying some astounding things lately. Such as…

1. Incompetent Elected Official Of the Month Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), who completely beclowned herself in the The House Weaponization Subcommittee examination of Twitter Files heralds Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. She was determined to discredit them for daring to reveal the efforts by her party and its allies to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story and censor critics, and apparently did no research into te topic of the hearings at all, announcing that she didn’t know what “a substack” was and showing complete ignorance regarding Bari Weiss. (Ah, if only she read Ethics Alarms!) Meanwhile, all of a sudden Democrats oppose journalists’ desire to protect their sources.

2. Not included in the video above was an offensive question by serial unethical House hack Debbie Wasserman Schulz, the former DNC chair who rigged the 2016 primaries for Hillary Clinton. She accused Matt Taibbi of profiting from authoring the “Twitter Files” reports, implying that he was motivated by persoanl profit, saying: “After the ‘Twitter Files,’ your followers doubled … I imagine your Substack readership … increased significantly because of the work that you did for Elon Musk.”

These people really lash out when they’re exposed, don’t they?

3. Over to the Republican side: Jenna Ellis, one of President Trump’s lawyers in the post-election push to have the results examined, admitted in Colorado Bar disciplinary proceedings that she deliberately engaged in the following misrepresentations “for selfish reasons”:

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Disney Continues Its Transformation Into The Great Stupid’s Cultural Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Disney’s animated/live action feature “Song of the South” (1946) is, to say the least, not a metaphorical hill worth dying on. The animated sections are excellent, but Walt, for reasons known best to him, decided to ignore good advice from various members of the black community who advised him not to use the movie to romanticize plantation life, with happy slaves singing away in the Land of Cotton where old times are not forgotten. “Song of the South’s” version of the Old South makes “Gone With The Wind” seem like the “1619 Project” by comparison; shame on Walt, who spoiled any chance of Joel Chandler Harris’s American folk tales being preserved in our culture.

Of course, Walt’s lapse of judgment doesn’t mean, or shouldn’t mean, that people who want to see the movie (and the screen legacy of African-American actor James Baskett, who deserves to be remembered) ought to be prevented from doing so. 21st Century Corporate Disney, however, has fully embraced the paternalistic view that big media companies and the government know best, so “Song of the South” has been treated like those photos of old Soviet leaders who fell out of favor: erased, banished. Nope, sorry, can’t see it, folks: it will make you racist, or if you are properly woke, cause an aneurysm, or something.

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Reflections On The First Stupid, Virtue-Signaling Lawn Sign Of Spring….

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

obxoxious sign

For the second time this week I find myself grafting substantial sections of an archived Ethics Alarms post to a new one. (I promise not to make a habit of it.) The occasion is the appearance on one of my Alexandria, Virginia neighbors’ lawn the idiotic sign above. Once again I was seized with the desire to ring the house’s doorbell and cross examine the residents. Can they explain and justify what’s on that sign? I am almost certain that they cannot, just as my other neighbor who STILL displays a medieval suit of armor next to a 5 x 4 hand-made, painted wooden sign reading BLACK LIVES MATTER in block letters could not justify that obnoxious lawn ornament, since it is, after all, more indefensible than ever now that the movement it stands for has been exposed as cynical hustle.

In 2021, New York Times’ woke propaganda agent Amanda Hess was given a rare slot on her paper’s front page to opine on the sign above, which was apparently the beginning of the the viral Announce to your neighbors that you’re a smug, simple-minded idiot!” epidemic. Ethics Alarms has had several posts about similar signs, but I did not realize that I had missed Patient Zero.

Hess’s analysis by turns informed readers that the sign has “curious power” (to make me detest the homeowner?); that the mottoes are “progressive maxims” (so progressives really are that facile and shallow!), that “Donald Trump is out of office…But nevertheless, this sign has persisted” (Oh! It’s all Trump’s fault?), that the sign is “directed at the adults in the room, reminding them of their own mission” (Really? Open borders? Man-boy love? Anti-white discrimination? Marxism? Why is a sign aimed at adults so naive and childish? ), that it is “the epitome of virtue signaling: an actual sign enumerating the owner’s virtues. There is something refreshing, actually, about the straightforwardness of that.” (There is something refreshing about smug idiots placing signs on their laws that say, “I am a smug idiot”?).

I learned other things from that article:

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Why Punish Dilbert For His Creator’s Rant?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ethics Alarms discussed the weirdly illogical, emotional and intentionally inflammatory reaction of cartoonist/pundit Scott Adams based on, of all things to freak-out over, a poll by Rasmussen that was even more unreliable than most polls, which is saying something. The fact that I assumed something like the resulting backlash would occur and that Adams should have expected it doesn’t make the reaction any less unethical.

Hundreds of newspapers have now stopped printing the popular workplace satire comic strip. The statements of the San Antonio Express-News, which is part of Hearst Newspapers, and the USA Today Network were typical. The Express-News said that it will drop the Dilbert comic strip “because of hateful and discriminatory public comments by its creator.” USA Today tweeted that it will stop publishing Dilbert “due to recent discriminatory comments by its creator.”

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“The Great Stupid” Across The Pond: We Helped Save Roald Dahl’s Children’s Books From The Censors; Now They’re Coming For OO7

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

…who might soon be called “008” to soothe readers offended by the number seven. Seven deadly sins, seven dwarves, that creepy Morgan Freeman movie with Gwinneth Paltrow’s head in a box…it’s a touchy number, you have to admit.

I’d like to think in some tiny way Ethics Alarms helped spread the news of the despicable bowdlerizing of Dahl’s classics that resulted in his publisher backing down and adopting the New Coke solution to a fiasco: the anti-authors’ rights business announced over the weekend that it will henceforth offer “Dahl Classic” along with the vandalized “New Dahl.” Yeah, let’s see which sells more copies. There was hardly time to pop the champagne, however: we then learned that Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are being re-written for “modern readers“to omit alleged “racist language” and “racial references.” The censored novels will be published in April to mark the 70 years since “Casino Royale,” the first in the series, was published.

There’s nothing quite like honoring an author by defacing his most famous works. At least they’re leaving “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” alone. I think.

The indefensible conduct comes after Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, which owns the rights to Fleming’s work, commissioned a review by “sensitivity readers.” The British really don’t get that freedom of speech and expression thingy, do they? Neither does the rest of the world beyond our shores and porous borders. Now watch: U.S. progressives will argue that once again, the United States is out of step with its betters by not censoring literature and movies with the same wild abandon that it pulls down statues.

The disclaimer accompanying Fleming’s reissued novels, echoing Dahl’s publisher Puffin, will read: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”

If Ian Fleming “might be considered offensive” to the political correctness police, imagine what’s going to happen to Mark Twain.

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On Rasmussen’s Terrible Poll, Conservative Media Spin, And Scott Adams’ Self-Cancellation

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ugh. Polls.

Some misguided fool at the conservative polling operation Rasmussen Reports convinced the gang to ask 1,000 randomly chosen Americans two questions:

1. Do you agree or disagree with this statement:  “It’s OK to be white”?

2. Do you agree or disagree with this statement:  “Black people can be racist, too”?

Question #1 is unforgivable—incompetent, irresponsible, unethical. “It’s OK to be white” was designed as parallel “gotcha!” linguistic retort to “Black lives matter,” an equivalent to “When did you stop beating your wife?” What does it mean? Agreeing with “It’s OK to be white” might mean, “I reject the premise behind Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory!” It also could mean, “Of course it’s okay to be white; any other position is racist.”

Disagreeing with the statement might mean, “I see what you’re doing there: trying to weasel out of white society’s obligation to recognize the intrinsic injustices it inflicts on black citizens!” Or it might mean, “I hate those honky bastards! They’re all the same: evil.” Without defining terms, no poll is legitimate.

Rasmussen should be ashamed of itself.

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On Andrea Mitchell’s Anti-DeSantis Lie And Aftermath: A “Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Was I dreaming, or was Andrea Mitchell once a relatively trustworthy journalist? Was it working at MSNBC that rotted her professionalism away completely, as with poor Chris Matthews?

Because this is disgusting.

Last week, on her pompously titeled show “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Mitchell asked Kamala Harris, “What does Governor Ron Desantis not know about black history and the black experience when he says that slavery and the aftermath of slavery should not be taught to Florida schoolchildren?” Florida’s governor never said that, not has he advocated that, nor has any other Republican official or pundit not now residing in a padded cell. That’s a deliberately dishonest Democratic, anti-DeSantis, pro-Critical Race Theory talking point designed for consumption by lazy, gullible and uninformed citizens.

Harris might have won a bit of respect had she corrected Mitchell, but she’s an unethical hack too, so naturally she acted as if it was a fair question.Or she didn’t know it was nonsense: with Harris its hard to tell.

DeSantis’s press secretary was on the job, tweeting,

Indeed it does. From the  state requirements,  guidelines DeSantis supported and approved: Continue reading →

Update: “Vermont Law School’s Craven Art Censorship”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Slavery mural

UPDATE: The Ethics Alarms post below ran in 2021. Now the revolting controversy is back in the news: the Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont still seeks to remove the artwork above and below depicting the history of slavery in the U.S. As I wrote in 2021, the school simply capitulated to irrational, power-seeking student complaints alleging a racist message being conveyed by anti-racist art. To his credit, the artist has fought back, and the school has wasted resources intended for education to support the worst kind of mindless race-hucksterism.

At the end of the post, it noted that the case was headed to an appellate court, and it finally reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, where the two sides presented arguments on January 27. For two years, the law school has covered the paintings with white panels suspended just above their surface so as not to damage them, pending the outcome of the court appeal.

I still think Kerson is likely to lose. I do not see how a Court can compel a school to display an artwork it doesn’t want to display. The federal law at issue says artists can prevent modification of their work if the change would harm their “honor or reputation.” The law school says that covering the murals, even permanently, is not a modification. An attorney representing the law school states simply, “If you own a painting, of course you have the right to decide whether or not to display it.”

The white artist, Sam Kerson argues that his reputation will be scarred if his work is falsely treated as “racist.” “He must suffer the indignity and humiliation of having a cover put over his art,” his lead attorney, argued to the Second Circuit.

Nothing much has changed since the 2021 post, but some of the quotes cited in the New York Times article this week are demonstrate how thoroughly race issues have become unmoored from rationality and fairness:

  • “If someone is saying to you, ‘How you’re depicting me is racist,’ for you to live in your own ignorance, and further aggravate the situation — now you’re showing us who you are,” said Yanni DeCastro, a second-year student. [In other words, if someone claims your art is racist, disagreeing with that assessment is racist.]
  • “We need to stop protecting white fragility,” said another student. [Another transparent tactic to ban disagreement with race hucksters! Kerson isn’t uncomfortable talking about race: his painting is an invitation to face racial history. It’s his black critics who are “fragile.”]
  • The same student told the Times:  “The mural is covered, but what’s really changed? What is the plan to ensure that students of color feel safe and welcome?” [Yes, students are threatened by a covered painting. What kind of lawyer can someone like this become? My guess: a poor one.]
  •  A second-year student told the Times: “What is real to me is a painting to you The artist was depicting history, but it’s not his history to depict.” [Only blacks can write about, make movies about, or paint pictures regarding black history. Why wouldn’t the converse also be true, then?]

Here is the original post:

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