Race

Three Word Summary of “Working at Anheuser-Busch, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement”: “It was D.E.I.”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“The principles that built great American companies are simple: Hire the best people, serve your customers well and let merit and financial results determine success. While expanding opportunity and making employees feel welcome are worthy goals, how D.E.I. policies were carried out often strayed from these foundational principles and might have even created other forms of discrimination.”

It might have even created other forms of discrimination! Gee, ya think?

In a jaw-dropping example of the “Tell me something I don’t know” variety of journalism, the New York Times gives us “Working at Anheuser-Busch, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement” (Gift link!). Anson Frericks tells us that water is wet with the solemnity of a doctor announcing a cancer diagnosis. He was shocked–shocked!—when his company, having announced its commitment to “DEI,” turned down a beneficial distribution arrangement with another company because “being associated with Black Rifle was too politically provocative, especially in progressive circles.” This, in 2022, two years after the beginning of the George Floyd Freakout, made Anson realize that his employers were more interested in virtue-signalling to the Looney Left than selling beer.

What did he think “diversity, equity and inclusion” was going to mean?

Continue reading →

The Merle Oberon Story, or “Sometimes Those ‘Historic’ Oscar Nominations Aren’t So Historic After All” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

In 1936, Merle Oberon, best known today because of her co-starring role opposite Laurence Olivier in “Wuthering Heights,” became the first Asian actress to get an Academy Award nomination, for her role in “The Dark Angel.” But in 2023, Michelle Yeoh was widely hailed as the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences’ first Asian Best Actress winner. That is because Oberon hid her ethnicity from journalists and the public for her entire career in order to have a career at all. It worked: in addition to getting the much-sought role of Kathy in “Wuthering Heights,” Oberon played Anne Boleyn (in the Charles Laughton classic, “The Private Life of Henry VIII”) at a time when non-traditional casting was unheard of.

Oberon died of a stroke in 1979; it wasn’t until four years later that it was revealed that she had been born in Bombay, India, the daughter of an Indian woman who had been raped by a white man. Written before the secret was revealed, the Times obituary seems naive in retrospect: “A diminutive 5 feet 2 inches tall, Miss Oberon was of an almost exotic beauty, with perfect skin, dark hair and a slight slant to her eyes that was further accentuated by makeup.” Almost!

Continue reading →

Regarding Those “Adults in the Room”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Boy, THAT quote didn’t age well…

House Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (MA) joined Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA), and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (CA) for a press conference in May of 2023 that began with Clark declaring, “It is Democrats who’ve been the adults in the room. It is Democrats who’ve prioritized Americans over political gamesmanship.”

Last night I rewatched “All the President’s Men.” I was struck by how similar Nixon’s attempts to cripple potential Democratic Party challengers resembled the various unethical measures taken by President Obama’s minions and President Biden’s puppeteers to bury Donald Trump, but that’s a different topic. What I was immediately impressed with was how an archival film of Nixon’s State of the Union Address in 1972 showed the entire audience consisting of both parties of both houses of Congress rising and applauding the President as he entered the chamber. They did this because Nixon, as divisive and loathed as he was by the American Left, was the goddamn President of the United States, had been elected by the American people, and it was every member of Congress’s duty to show the office due respect.

And it still is. Today’s Democrats (and, tragically, their Trump Deranged supporters), however, choose to behave like spit-ball shooting grade-schoolers, debasing the nation and its institutions in the process. Jonathan Turley said yesterday that when he was a House leadership page, every member of the House of Representatives would have voted to censure a Congressman who behaved like Al Green, because, quite simply, his disgusting conduct deserved condemnation and it was crucial for Congress to insist of standards of decorum. Today’s Democratic House members saluted Green as a martyr, and behaved like the student protesters of the Sixties. You know, adults.

Here are a few other notable examples of Democrats and their anti-Trump cult followers behaving like adults in the past few days:

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce (Again): Georgetown Law Center Dean William Treanor

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[Psst! It’s Georgetown University Law Center, not “school.” The Hill and other lazy publications keep calling it the law school, which was what the institution’s name was before it moved from the Georgetown campus (in Georgetown, a picturesque section of D.C.) to Capitol Hill near all the courts, including the Supreme Court. If you saw the place, you would know that “center” is an appropriate description. The name was the inspiration of then Dean Paul Dean, visionary, a respected lawyer and talented fund-raiser. He was also a good friend of mine as well as a cherished mentor]

William Trainor has been criticized on Ethics Alarms before notably during this fiasco, when he punished an incoming faculty member, Illya Shapiro, for daring to question Joe Biden’s wisdom of narrowing his choice of Supreme Court nominees to fill a vacancy to women of color, the same criteria that worked out so, so well with Kamala Harris. Following the lead of his radically indoctrinated students (it’s supposed to be the other way around), the GULC dean suspended Shapiro pending…well, something, and then after letting him twist slowly in the wind for months, finally let him back into the fold whereupon Shapiro quite properly told him to take his job and shove it, as I would have under like circumstances.

There were other instances when Trainer allowed his institution to be more woke than responsible; he is largely the reason my Law Center diploma is turned face to the wall in my ProEthics office. Here is an episode that didn’t directly involve the Dean but that occurred on his watch.

Now comes another skirmish. Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin sent a letter to GULC last month asking if the Law Center had eliminated its commitment to DEI. “At this time, you should know that no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship, or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize DEI will be considered,” Martin wrote.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Symbolic Pardon

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I should have come up with this quiz without a nudge from Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk, but I didn’t. I am ashamed.

Conservative gadfly and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro called on President Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the white, former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murder in the 2020 death of George Floyd in a petition published on Shapiro’s website. (I don’t think it was murder, and I don’t think murder was ever proven, much less “beyond a reasonable doubt”.)

In his entreaty to the President, Shapiro declares, “We write to urge you to immediately issue a pardon for Officer Derek Chauvin, who was unjustly convicted and is currently serving a 22-and-a-half year sentence for the murder of George Floyd and associated federal charges.”

Shapiro accurately describes the incident as “the inciting event for the BLM riots,” which he says “set America’s race relations on their worst footing in recent memory.”

Most importantly, Shapiro says that the guilty verdict was tainted by the “massive overt pressure on the jury to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence or any semblance of impartial deliberation,” and that elected officials “pre-judged the outcome of the trial and took to national media to create pressure on the jury to go along with their preferred narrative.”

This, in my view, should be beyond dispute. I last posted on the way Chauvin was sacrificed in December of 2023, here. “Under these circumstances, there was no opportunity for blind justice to work, and a man is now rotting in prison because of it,” Shapiro concludes.

I concluded in part,

“The contrast between how Chauvin has been treated and the wall of protection erected around the black Capitol Hill cop who shot and killed an unarmed (white) January 7 rioter in 2021 is striking. From the beginning, the case against Chauvin lacked convincing intent, causation, or proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I keep seeing in various documentaries regarding other “true crime” stories rote statements by lawyers, prosecutors and judges about how in the United States, all citizens are presumed innocent and treated equally. If this equal treatment can be withheld from Derek Chauvin, and it has been, then it can and will be withheld by others who are deemed sufficiently unpopular. As [Professor Glenn] Loury writes, the result tells us that “the deep epistemic corruption at the heart of the affair will become, if it goes unchallenged, imperceptible to future generations, simply more evidence that the world is as the poetic truth has determined it to be.” Who will challenge it now? Who has the integrity and courage today to stand up for justice a “racist” who was profitably used as the excuse to advance such marvelous revolutionary movements as critical race theory and “diversity, equity and inclusion”?

Chauvin was convicted in two separate trials, state and federal, and is simultaneously serving a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights along with a 22.5-year state sentence for second-degree murder. He has tried to appeal his conviction numerous times, including to the Supreme Court. He has no plausible avenues to pursue now except a pardon.

Shapiro argues in a video that although Trump cannot pardon Chauvin in the state murder case, it is important for Chauvin be pardoned on federal charges anyway.

“Make no mistake—the Derek Chauvin conviction represents the defining achievement of the Woke movement in American politics. The country cannot turn the page on that dark, divisive, and racist era without righting this terrible wrong,” Shapiro said in the letter. Elon Musk, not knowing when he should “tend to his own knitting,” posted about Shapiro’s petition on Twitter/X yesterday saying, “Something to think about.”

OK, I’m thinking.

Your first Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of March, 2025, is…

Should President Trump pardon Derek Chauvin?

Continue reading →

American Students Are Falling Behind In Basic Academic Skills: How Can This Kind of Curriculum Be Justified?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

A news article in today’s New York Times [Gift link!] begins thusly:

“Late last fall at the Hugo Newman School in Harlem, two social studies teachers handed out pages of hip-hop lyrics to their seventh graders, and then flicked off the lights. The students appeared surprised. They had been studying ancient matriarchal societies, including Iroquois communities that had women as leaders. Now, their teachers were about to play the song ‘Ladies First’ by Queen Latifah and Monie Love. The teachers instructed their students to highlight any lyrics that reminded them of the Iroquois women, who were known as the Haudenosaunee Clan Mothers. Although they did not know it, the middle schoolers were in the midst of their first lesson of ‘Black Studies as the Study of the World,’ a curriculum that rolled out in September and is now available to every New York City public school.”

“In New York, we are trying our best to be Trump-proof,” the Times quoted Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York City Council, as saying in a recent interview. “We are doing everything we can to protect the curriculum.”

The obvious question is “Why?” Protect the curriculum from straightforward standards that ensure that the average student leaves high school with the core skills necessary for success in work and life? By its very nature, bombarding middle school students with lessons on “matriarchal societies”—an elective college course if there ever was one—is political in both nature and intent.

Continue reading →

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Resurrection Church Oakland (PCA) held this event last week.

In related news, spectacularly unethical Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis sent an angry letter to Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee today. She is furious that the committee is quite appropriately investigating the degree to which her part of the “Get Trump!” lawfare last year was orchestrated and coordinated with the Biden Administration.

“Rather than honor and uphold the oath you took, you have chosen to expend your time attempting to bully me, which is a complete waste of your time,” Willis wrote. “Might I suggest that instead of attempting to disrupt this office’s work protecting the people of Fulton County, that you celebrate Black History Month by visiting children in your district to teach them about the many contributions African Americans have made to this country—including those who have advanced democracy by successfully advocating that this nation live up to its ideals that everyone is equal before the law and everyone has the right to have their voice heard through exercising their right to vote. That would be a much more productive use of your time.”

___________________

Pointer: Not The Bee.

Is “The Three Amigos” Really Racist, or Have I Just Been Brainwashed?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

I am proud to say that I thought “The Three Amigos” was a largely unfunny and lousy movie when I saw it the first time…this, despite the fact that I generally admire John Landis as a director of comedies (he will always have a place dear in my heart for directing “Animal House”), and although I generally appreciate the talents of the movie’s stars, Steve Martin and Martin Short (Chevy Chase not so much). For some reason it has been showing repeatedly on MGM+ of late, and upon re-watching the thing after my sock drawer was in order, I found another reason to hate it other than its annoying tone and its predictable gags. This time around, the film seemed egregiously racist.

Oh no! Have 40 years of relentless bludgeoning by political correctness, hyper-sensitivity and wokism taken over my brain? When I first viewed the film (which Wikipedia tells me was ranked 79th on Bravo’s list of the “100 Funniest Movies,” a factoid that only reaffirms my long-standing belief that Bravo is useless), that thought never occurred to me for a second.

One of many films that borrows heavily from the Western classic (and ethics movie) “The Magnificent Seven,”—others include “A Bug’s Life” and “Battle Beyond the Stars” along with a pretty bad remake, with Denzel Washington standing in for Yul Brenner—“The Three Amigos” (the film’s score is by the same composer who scored “The Magnificent Seven”) tells the tale of three incredibly white silent movie stars who end up rescuing a town of substantially helpless and poor Mexicans. The town’s tormenter is “El Guapo,” the evil leader of the most ugly, stupid, dirty and brutal band of Mexican bandits in silver screen history. All right, maybe the Mexicans in “The Wild Bunch” are worse, but the white guys in that bloody film are hardly what you’d like to see your daughter bring home to meet the family either. Naturally the three white guys prevail, despite their collective IQ of about 210, for an average of 70 each (it actually breaks down to 85 for Martin’s character, with Short at 70 and Chase at 65).

Continue reading →

New York Magazine Is Caught Manufacturing Fake Evidence Of “White Supremacy”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Once upon a time, the news media would get away with this kind of blatant dishonesty.

The story itself that New York Magazine used this deceptively cropped photo to introduce (The Cruel Kids Table: Out late with the young right as they cultivate cultural domination”) states that “Almost everyone is white” after beginning the story by quoting a party attendee as observing, “Have you noticed the entire room is white?” Promoting the piece, the NY Mag X account wrote that the story was about “the young, gleeful, confident, and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on the rest of America.” This was a hit piece about a supposedly all-white conservative influencers Trump inauguration party, yet the party’s host was black Gen Z Republican strategist CJ Pearson. Others pointed out, like black conservative pundit and “influencer” Rob Smith, also a guest at the party, that there were many Hispanics, blacks and Asians there. He posted this photo…

Continue reading →

Of Hollywood Hubris, Bait and Switch and Flat Learning Curves: Just What We Need, a Woke “Gone With The Wind” With Space Invaders

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I don’t know, Dana, I really don’t.

I have no idea what’s going on here. On a website called “Gone With The Wind (2025)” we get puffy blather about a stirring, high budget re-make of the politically incorrect classic, still the most successful movie of all time, ready to open at the end of 2025. It stars black Scarlett (Zendaya) and a black Rhett Butler (John Boyega). The site does not permit copying or screen shots. The director is Barry Jenkins, whose output so far has been only stories about social justice, racism, and black protagonists. The site’s description, however, tells us that this is a “Gone With The Wind” remake that will bring “fresh perspectives and contemporary sensibilities (oh-oh!) to this “modern adaptation.”

Although the web page is headlined “Gone With The Wind” (2025) Official Trailer, no trailer to the new film is on it. Several versions of the trailer for the original 1939 version are there to see, however.

Puzzled, I searched for a trailer for “Gone With The Wind” (2025), and got …

…. the trailer for “Gone With The Wind : Invasion!” Is that really a movie? Is it a spoof? Is the website a tease (that is, unethical fake or hoax) that pretends the new film is a remake? And what the hell is this:

Please rank in order of commercial viability: A GWTW starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Rhett and Megan Fox as Scarlet, a woke remake, and one with invading aliens. It’s a tough assignment.

I would normally assume that no one in Hollywood is so stupid as to make a woke update of “Gone With The Wind,” but then there were recent re-makes of “The Ten Commandments” and “Ben-Hur,” both of which bombed like the siege of Vicksburg. I assume that there are enough stupid people in Hollywood to make a science fiction version, since they got away with “Cowboys and Aliens” (barely) starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in 2011.

Whatever is going on, it’s wrong.