Contrary to all predictions, we got our 8 ft, real, live Christmas tree, and it didn’t cost any more than last year. The hero was 40-year neighbor Ted West, who grabbed what we needed at his annual church Christmas tree sale which sold out in less than two days.
It was between Bing and Johnny Mathis for the Christmas season musical kick-off. It had to be Bing.
1. When taste alarms don’t work…Here’s a mall Christmas display.
How do these kind of things slip by?
2. Speaking of slipping by… The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that a jury room in Giles County named after the United Daughters of the Confederacy and decorated with a Confederate flag as well as a portrait of Jefferson Davis mandated the reversal of a jury conviction of a black defendant for aggravated assault. The defendant objected on the grounds that the jury could not hold fair deliberations in such a room. Though the the trial court disagreed, but the appellate court threw out the verdict, concluding that …[b]ecause the defendant established that the jury was exposed to extraneous information or improper outside influence and because the State failed to sufficiently rebut the presumption of prejudice, the defendant is entitled to a new trial.”
I guess they have really suggestible juries in Tennessee. I cannot imagine my deliberation on a a jury or on anything being influenced by the name of the room I was in or what was hanging on the walls. Prof. Volokh notes,
Juries have deliberated in this room for more than four decades. Presumably, every black defendant convicted in that courtroom can now object and secure a new trial. The Court did not address this issue. And other courts in the state, and probably throughout the south, may have similar deliberation rooms, or even courtrooms. If these opinions catch on, countless convictions will be vacated.
The Ethics Alarms verdicts are that a) it is ridiculous that the jury room wasn’t purged of Lost Cause propaganda decades ago, and b) the court’s ruling is irresponsible virtue-signaling. Continue reading →
Black Lives Matter is promoting a boycott of all white citizen-owned businesses, urging supporters to buy “exclusively from Black-owned businesses’ through New Years. “Move your money out of white-corporate banks that finance our oppression and open accounts with Black-owned banks,” the group said on Instagram.
“Racism” and “racist” have both been watered down to near meaningless by the Left’s wielding of them as all-purpose weapons against critics, but under any definition, setting out to harm a business because of the race of its owners is racist to the core.
Extradimensional Cephalopod, as is his (it’s?) wont, chose to approach the question of what to call the pandemic virus (I am unalterably devoted to calling it what it is, as a deadly pathogen that developed in China and allowed to infect the world BY China “the Wuhan virus” in order to ensure that accountability, blame, and, if possible, liability attaches now and forever) by seeking an ethical process that has applications in other contexts. Below is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Is It Too Late To Call It “The Wuhan Virus” Or Better Yet, “The China Virus”?
Recent news has reinforced the unavoidable conclusion that China is a corrupting influence on the world and it culture. Disney, which like so many, indeed most—all?—major corporations has no ethical principles it is willing to lose profits from hewing to if at all possible, censored an episode of “The Simpsons” that satirized the nation and its government. Disney eliminated the episode from the package it sold to Chinese media. Let’s be clear: this means that Disney is assisting China in government censorship of creative expression arising in Disney’s own nation, and also assisting China’s totalitarians in controlling the minds of its population. I regard the “Covid” cover word being used to avoid connecting this regime with the disaster its habits created to be a similar form of complicity.
Now here’s “the Squid”: I’ll be back ever so briefly when he’s finished:
November 29 marks the anniversary of the world making a firm choice in a position of ethics zugszwang, as the United Nations voted in 1947 to partition Palestine and create an independent Jewish state. Things have never been peaceful or, apparently, resolvable since. Jews and Arabs had been arguing over the region since the first decade of the 20th Century, as both groups wanted the British-controlled territory. The Jews had come from Europe and Russia establish a Jewish state in their ancient homeland. The native Palestinian Arabs wanted to stop Jewish immigration and set up a secular Palestinian state. In 1929, violence between Arabs and Jews broke out, and Great Britain attempted to limit Jewish immigration to appease the Arabs. The Holocaust spurred many Jews to entered Palestine anyway, however illegally, and in the 40s the Jews were the terrorists, attacking British forces in Palestine. When the U.S. sided with the Zionists in 1945, Great Britain gave up and handed its dilemma over to the United Nation, which on November 29, 1947, voted to partition Palestine.
The Jews got more than half of Palestine, despite constituting less than half of the population. The Palestinian Arabs fought the newly empowered occupants, but the Jews prevailed, not only securing their U.N.-granted share of Palestine but some of the Arab portion as well. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel declared its official existence, and the the next day, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq attacked. They chose…poorly. The Israelis again prevailed, and again expanded their territories at Arab expense, taking Galilee, the Palestinian coast, and a strip of territory connecting the coastal region to the western section of Jerusalem. The Palestinians have never abandoned their goal of eliminating the Jewish state, and after so many decades, the chances of a peaceful and permanent resolution of this hundred-year-old ethics train wreck are approximately zero.
Meanwhile, Happy Hanukkah, and remember the Maccabees!
1. Note from The Great Stupid. In a new holiday-themed Peloton commercial, a modern Scrooge discovers his best self by peddling away. Awakening, he rushes to the window, just like in the Dickens tale, and shouts to the juvenile in the street, “What day is it, child?” Child? Everybody knows that the line is “What day is it, boy?” Ah! But because all commercials and casts must have a requisite number of black actors, the lad was black, and even Scrooge can’t call a black individual boy, even if he is a boy. So the “Christmas Carol” parody, which is the whole point, is knee-capped for political correctness. This director’s advice: either be bold and cast a white kid to play the white kid in the story, or ditch the concept entirely. Or…
…cast two white actors in a two-character TV ad. Now that would be revolutionary!
2. Did I miss Hillary Clinton taking over the Salvation Army? The Salvation Army’s solution to being called on it’s CRT embrace: deny, deny, deny. Also: lie. Indignantly!
As Ethics Alarms noted a few days ago, two internal Salvation Army documents, a guidebook titled “Let’s Talk About Racism” and another called the “Study Guide on Racism” fully endorse the “anti-racism” pro anti-white racism theme. “In the absence of making anti-racist choices, we (un) consciously uphold aspects of White supremacy, White-dominant culture, and unequal institutions and society,” the first document states—you know, like casting a black kid as Scrooge’s new friend. From the latter: White people are guilty “unconscious bias” and “unwittingly perpetuate racial division…We must stop denying the existence of individual and systemic/institutional racism. They exist, and are still at work to keep White Americans in power.”
I feel “Bite me!” rising up my gorge into my mouth even as I type that.
The Salvation Army is shocked—shocked!—that anyone would think it’s playing race games. In a perfect Jumbo, the group responded, “Critical Race Theory? What Critical Race Theory?”
“…[S]ome individuals and groups have recently attempted to mislabel our organization to serve their own agendas. They have claimed that we believe our donors should apologize for their skin color, that The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society, and that we have abandoned our Christian faith for one ideology or another. Those claims are simply false, and they distort the very goal of our work….” The Salvation Army occasionally publishes internal study guides on various complex topics to help foster positive conversations and grace-filled reflection among Salvationists. By openly discussing these issues, we always hope to encourage the development of a more thoughtful organization that is better positioned to support those in need. But no one is being told how to think. Period.”
Except that both of the documents tell employees how to think… like Ibram X. Kendri.
The next part of the denial is hilarious…
In this case, the guide “Let’s Talk About Racism,” was issued as a voluntary resource, but it has since become a focus of controversy. We have done our best to provide accurate information, but unfortunately, some have chosen to ignore those efforts. At the same time, International Headquarters realized that certain aspects of the guide may need to be clarified. Consequently, for both reasons, the International Social Justice Commission has now withdrawn the guide for appropriate review.
Translation: “OK, you caught us!”
The explanation, perhaps even more than the anti-white play-books, makes it clear that this is a charity that no longer can be trusted.
The Times has compiled its list of the “best books of the last 125 years” as part of the celebration of the 125th anniversary of its Book Review Sunday supplement. Readers are invited to vote for their favorite on the list of twenty-five.
I’d make this an ethics quiz, but I think it’s too potentially important to treat as a jump ball. This is the kind of extreme mess that threatens free speech, especially when on entire political party is searching for an excuse to ban “hate speech,” once they have defined it just well enough to constrain political opponents.
In Cullman City, Alabama, the school board’s president’s son, who attends the school district’s high school, posted a video to SnapChat in which he could be seen and heard chanting “White power!” and “Kill all the niggers!” The video has been widely circulated among students. The parent of a black student who saw the video has demanded the resignation of Amy Carter (no, not THAT Amy Carter; don’t be silly), the school board’s president. The parent is also demanding that the school take action against the student. “Cullman City Schools would clearly punish our son if he made a video threatening the white students of Cullman High School,” she wrote in an email. “My son is one of a handful of black children in the school. Tell me how he wouldn’t be threatened by KILL ALL THE Ns?! Explain to me how this is not a threat.”
Well, I can answer that last part. Under First Amendment case law, the “true threats” doctrine holds that allegedly threatening speech cannot be punished unless the government can prove that the speaker meant to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual. A chant on a video posted on social media that mentions no specific student will not qualify as an actionable threat. Her previous question is tougher. The school and the town itself has a reputation for racial hostility toward blacks. The mother of the black student says her son has repeatedly been subjected to racist remarks during his four years as a student in the district. I see good reason for the video to be unsettling in that context.
On the other hand, I’m getting awfully tired of the “they wouldn’t treat a black adult/child this way if he/she did X” argument, which is almost never challenged even when it’s bigoted nonsense, as in the race-based attacks on the Rittenhouse verdict. It’s more presumed racism, and a cheat, a device to avoid making a solid argument.
Above is a comic I never heard of (but one with a regular platform), grandstanding over the Ritterhouse verdict as she reveals that she either has no idea what the facts are in the case, or is deliberately hate-mongering by sending lies into the public consciousness. She tells us that she takes her responsibility to “tell people what they need to know” seriously, and then tells them what isn’t true. “It’s not OK”, she says with great emotion. “For a man to garb a rifle, travel across state lines, and shoot three people and walk free.” In fact, it’s not “OK” for anyone to deliberately misstate the key facts of a controversial episode to the many ignoramuses who may be listening and are likely to be misled.
Rittenhouse did not “grab a rifle” and cross state lines. The law says that it is “OK” for someone—regardless of their race— to defend themselves with deadly force if they reasonably believe his life is at stake. Then she goes on to outright racism, claiming that whites have “always” escaped consequences when they engage in murder. She calls the judge and jury racist, for participating in a trial that acquitted a white man for shooting three other white men.
She seemed like an excellent introduction to this list of similarly dishonest, ignorant or hateful people showing their lack of fairness and critical thinking skills as they descended into hysteria and ugly rhetoric…because so many on the Left are receptive to it. This is not about a difference of legitimate opinion when Americans of note or in positions of influence and responsibility engage in inflammatory declarations based on a false description of what occurred.
Certainly the news media, even more than usual, played its “enemy of the people” role to the hilt, but its flagrant false reporting on the Jacob Blake shooting was four months ago. There is no excuse for anyone with integrity and responsibility still talking about the Kenosha police shooting “an unarmed black man” or representing Blake as anything other than a dangerous outlaw who was engaged in a crime, and justly shot. Because there was no racism or police brutality involved, the protests and riots supposedly prompted by the episode were contrived and based on incompetent (or intentionally incendiary) reporting. The subsequent narrative, that Rittenhouse was opposing “racial justice” and thus a “white supremacist” because he (foolishly, recklessly) sought to mitigate the destruction caused by an ongoing riot (triggered by an incident that only was “racist” in the overheated minds of the reporters and race-hucksters) cannot be defended.
The fools and dunces whose statements are noted below are shooting off their mouths (or social media accounts) in defiance of reality. As Bari Weiss points out in her substackessay (Pointer: John Paul),
To acknowledge the facts of what happened that night is not political. It is simply to acknowledge reality. It is to say that facts are still facts and that lies are lies. It is to insist that mob justice is not justice. It is to say that media consensus is not the equivalent of due process.
And, I would add, it is to say that just because politicians, celebrities, pundits and your Facebook pals are taking a position that literally makes no sense and is based on extreme bias and fantasy is not justification for following the parade.
Below is an incomplete list of the “Facts Don’t Matter” mob. Not surprisingly, I didn’t particularly respect any of these people even before they beclowned themselves in this ethics train wreck. Even so, there are serious problems in the culture (and the educational system) when so many default to gullibility, confusion, miserable logic and emotion. The unethical reaction to the Rittenhouse verdict is, perhaps, more significant than the verdict itself.
Like the classic film starring my favorite comedy team, this is more funny than scary. And it couldn’t happen to a more deserving news organization.
An online NPR article and a tweet promoting the story reported that Michelle Wu, just elected as Boston’s first woman and first person of color mayor, had disappointed some activists with her victory.
“While many are hailing it as a major turning point, others see it as more of a disappointment that the three Black candidates in the race couldn’t even come close,” the story, like the tweet, read. This being The Great Stupid, NPR was quickly accused of being racist. Trapped like a rat, NPR’s Boston affiliate apologized and said it had deleted the tweet which was “causing harm”, though all it had done is report, and accurately, the reaction of others in the city, notably the black community. “We realize we don’t always get things right the first time,” it groveled, saying that the “tweet/headline misrepresented the story.” No, what NPR was really apologizing for is reporting the story, which exposes the fact that black race-activists only care about one race, their own. They did see Wu’s victory as a disappointment. NPR’s sin was telling the truth, instead of being a reliable propaganda organ and spinning the story to the satisfaction of those who want to avoid letting on that the conservative criticism of the Left’s race obsession is legitimate. What “harm” had the tweet done? The harm was not following the approved script and hiding the ugly hypocrisy at the core of progressivism.
Bad progressive lapdog! BAD!
“The story is still Asians vs. Blacks for some unknown reason. The ‘tweet/headline’ was hardly the issue,” one outraged Bostonian tweeted. Unknown reason? Harvard and other elite colleges are rejecting better qualified Asian-American applicants to admit Blacks with lesser credentials. A disproportionate number of the attacks on Asian-Americans hyped by the media was at the hands of Blacks.
Now the updated tweet says that “many were hopeful Boston would finally elect its first Black mayor,” with “Black activists and political strategists” left having to “reflect on what they can learn from the 2021 campaign season.” But they weren’t disappointed that Boston didn’t elect a black mayor, you see?
No, I don’t either. What NPR correctly noted is that “many” in Boston and elsewhere in Progressiveland care about color more than character and ability. Continue reading →
I personally decided that Ben &Jerry’s outrageously expensive ice cream for the Woke and Wonderful would never cross through Marshall doors when it created a flavor honoring partisan hate-monger Stephen Colbert. The company’s cynical political pandering has only gotten worse since. Perhaps the most nauseating aspect of the company’s pose is that it’s obviously a marketing plan to appeal to ice-cream loving progressives. The real Ben and Jerry sold off the brand years ago, like any good socialists, accepting millions to allow a multi-national corporation to pretend it’s the founder as it spouts simple-minded leftist talking points. This tweet, however, charged into Ethics Alarms Popeye territory…
Nothing thrills the soul of this ethicist more than a terrific legal ethics controversy leaping off the page in his morning newspaper on a Saturday morning. Better still, it involved, not the Kyle Rittenhouse trial but that other trial, the one really involving racist vigilantes—the trial of the three white men who shot black jogger Ahmaud Arbery as they attempted to make a “citizen’s arrest.”
Kevin Gough, the lawyer who represents William Bryan, one of the three men accused of murdering Arbery, asked Judge Timothy R. Walmsley to ban “high-profile members of the African American community” from the Brunswick, Georgia courtroom. The lawyer argued that the presence of the Rev. Al Sharpton at the trial last week could be “intimidating” to jurors. “We don’t want any more Black pastors coming in here,” Gough said.
The New York Times this morning headlined its story in the print edition “Cantankerous Lawyer At Arbery Trial Crossed Over A Line, Critics Say.” (The online edition’s version is bit more restrained: “Lawyer for Man Accused of Killing Ahmaud Arbery Draws Scrutiny.”) Of course, all lawyers for defendants in high-profile cases draw scrutiny. Fake news!) Interestingly but hardly surprisingly, the Times print headline is misleading. What “critics” say Gough crossed a line? Well, that would be Al Sharpton and another black pastor. The word “critics” implies objective observors who are disinterested parties. But that’s the Times these days. Sad, really.
Then the Times spends the rest of the piece, 21 paragraphs worth, telling readers what a loose cannon Gough is. Does the article ever bother to explain the legal, ethical and factual justifications for Gough’s request? Not at all. That’s not just sad, that’s journalism malpractice. Incompetence or deliberate disinformation? It’s Hanlon’s Razor time!
Ethics Alarms 