U.S. Society

Announcement: “Fuck” Has Been Officially Upgraded From Taboo Obscenity to Mainstream Colloquialism

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

This battle was lost long ago.

“Wheel of Fortune” has launched a new “What the Fun?” category because it implies “fuck.” The One Million Moms group is disgusted and outraged. “The once family-friendly ‘Wheel of Fortune’ game show is no more,” its site declared on October 30. “Unfortunately, the recently added puzzle category ‘What the Fun’ aims at a mature, modern audience with insinuated profanity making it no longer suitable for family viewing.”

“It is not the show it was with this implication of the f-word,” it continued. “Parents will have to explain to their children that the primetime program they were once allowed to watch is no longer a clean show.” The page included a link for a petition on which to pledge never to watch the show again unless the category is eliminated. More than 12,500 have signed.

Imagine a life so devoid of meaning and so full of discretionary time that one can organize a campaign to change a “Wheel of Fortune” category.

I have news for the conservative group, and by now it is old news. “Fuck” is now just acceptable naughtiness, and not the taboo obscenity it once was. Ditto “shit.” There are lots of reason why this has happened, and things like “What the Fun” are a big one.

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Open Forum! Round Three?…

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

After a long period of wan responses to the weekly Ethics Alarms free-for all, the last two installments have been historically lively and erudite. I am hoping for another round of equal quantity and quality.

I would like someone to explain to me the strange phenomenon of the EA collective posts, like this one yesterday combining 6 topics to which I would usually devote full individual posts to, attracting such few comments. It is one of the reasons I suspended the practice of doing one of these every day. I know if the MIA veteran EA commenter Eeyore were still roaming this blog, the photo of Sydney Sweeney in all of her—well, something—would have inspired a reaction, and probably a funny one. (I miss Eeyore.)

Anyway, let’s see if you can keep the streak of superb open forums going….

“Ick,” Ethics, or “Woo Hoo!”, and Other Briefly Noted Ethics Matters of Various Weight

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. Sydney Sweeney has been the source of dubious controversies several times this year, most notably when her ad for a jeans company played with the double entendre evident in saying she had great “genes.” Since she’s white and stacked, see that means she’s a white supremacist, or something. The silver see-though dress she wore on a recent “red carpet” launched a different controversy, though also one involving her extreme feminist charms. Conservative pundit Megyn Kelly, hardly one to hide her own curves, declared,

“So she was on the red carpet last night and she decided to show off her number one asset, which, contrary to the American Eagle jeans ad, is not really her jeans, it’s her enormous breasts, which are spectacular. No one would take that away from her. But, controversial opinion, I object to this. I disapprove of the dress she wore because it’s completely see-through. You can see her entire nipples. She reminded me of Kim Kardashian, who overshares and then takes away the thing that is the sexiest, which is every guy’s hope to be the one who actually sees them for real, and leaving little to the imagination.” 

Gee, you can be more articulate than that, Megyn. Let me try to help out. It’s not a flattering look at all, and just coarsens the culture, potentially corrupting young women in the process. The grotesque display reduces a woman, a human being, to just a pair of mammary glands. It’s not just degrading to Sweeney, who has presumably consented to being so dehumanized, it degrades women in general and men who are frozen in the headlights. My verdict is that this is “Ick” more than ethics, but it’s a close call.

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Ethics Observations on the Nov. 4 Election Results

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Never mind the political significance of last night’s pretty much nationwide Democratic Party sweep of the major state and local elections: The password is “ethics,” as they used to whisper on Allen Ludden’s classic TV game show. So let’s look at the ethics…

Observations:

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Ethics Villain Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.)

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“[H]e’s just a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the Earth.”

—-Former Speaker of the House, current House member and Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi, describing Donald Trump and doing her part to amplify hateful partisan rhetoric and point the public toward from political violence.

Pelosi was even challenged on the assertion that the President of the United States is “the worst thing on earth”during her interview with CNN’s Elex Michaelson last night. “You think he’s the worst thing on the face of the Earth?” Michaelson asked incredulously. Worse than war, cancer, child rape, ebola, cannibalism, terrorism, “Fear Factor,” pineapple on pizza and Sydney Sweeney?

“I do, yeah, I do,” Pelosi, who is a disgrace, responded, doubling down. “Because he’s the President of the United States, and he does not honor the Constitution of the United States. In fact, he’s turned the Supreme Court into a rogue court. He’s abolished the House of Representatives. He’s chilled the press.” 

Why, says Nancy, the President has chilled the press so much that CNN broadcasts disgusting and denigrating hyperbole by his political foes! (Did you know that Donald Trump lies all the time?)

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Ethical Quote of the Week: Actress Jennifer Lawrence

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“I don’t want to start turning people off to films and to art that could change consciousness or change the world because they don’t like my political opinions,” she added. “I want to protect my craft so that you can still get lost in what I’m doing. And if I can’t say something that’s going to speak to some kind of peace or lowering the temperature or some sort of solution, I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I don’t want to make the problem worse.” 

—-Actress Jennifer Lawrence, finally, in her maturity, figuring out that it’s not part of an artist’s job to be public pundit, and that abusing celebrity in that fashion risks undermining that artist’s professional mission.

Lawrence prefaced her remarks by saying on The New York Times’  The Interview podcast,“During the first Trump administration, I felt like I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. But as we’ve learned, election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for. So then what am I doing? I’m just sharing my opinion on something that’s going to add fuel to a fire that’s ripping the country apart.”

And, may I add, as it would be expecting a lot for a Hollywood star to mention this, her opinions regarding politics and social issues deserve no more attention that that of the local barfly, and conceivably less.

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Nah, There’s No “Deep State”…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Among the furious “It isn’t what it is” gaslighting that the Mad Left routinely engages in—“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!”; “Nah, Biden wasn’t suffering from dementia in the White House, he was sharp as a tack!”; “Nah, Kamala Harris wasn’t a DEI nominee!”; “Nah, there’s no such thing as the Antifa!” and so on, and so on—the Trump Deranged refuse to admit that there is an embedded progressive “Deep State” (and often not so deep) that set out to sabotage Trump in his first term and to do everything possible to prevent his re-election in 2020.

One of many metaphorical smoking guns regarding the efforts of the Deep State was the organized effort by U.S. intelligence officials to make certain that the evidence of Biden family influence peddling on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop was discredited and avoided by the Axis media prior to the 2020 election. Shortly after The New York Post’s broke the story in October 2020 51 then current and former intelligence officials signed an open letter challenging the authenticity of the laptop.

Though they had no direct knowledge of the situation, the 51 abused their positions, authority and intelligence credentials to undermine The Post’s reporting weeks before the 2020 election. Politico’s headline was typical of how the letter was interpreted by the news media and the public :“Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” Twitter banned the Post’s story from its platform. During the second 2020 presidential debate held on October 22, 2020, Joe Biden repeated the narrative, saying, “Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan!” (Fact check? Of course not.) Biden later repeated the claim in a “60 Minutes” interview held on October 25, 2020. No fact check then, either. Mission accomplished! The letter did its job (it worked) and Biden was elected.

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Unethical Quote of the Month: Un-Named California Lawyer

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

Gail Herriot is Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights since 2007. She is a conservative, so much of the civil rights racket (“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Eric Hoffer) objects to her existence.

Herriot recently posted the following jaw-dropping letter that she received from a member of the California Bar:

Dear Ms. Heriot,
 
This letter serves as a formal cease and desist demand regarding your ongoing, public, and targeted efforts to undermine and harass the Black community and its advocates for equity, in direct violation of state and federal civil rights laws and your ethical obligations as a member of the bar.
 
Your activities—including those publicly associated with the California Foundation for Equal Rights (CFER) (among others) and campaigns explicitly opposing Black-focused equity —constitute racial targeting and harassment under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 1981, and applicable state hate crime and anti-discrimination statutes. Such conduct is not protected expression when it rises to the level of coordinated intimidation or bias-based obstruction of legally protected programs. It is particularly egregious that your public campaigns have focused solely on efforts benefiting the Black community, while remaining silent on or even supportive of state and federal allocations to other racial or ethnic groups. 
 
For example: In 2021 and 2022, the State of California directed substantial funding—over $165 million—to AAPI anti-hate initiatives, a commendable effort to address rising hate incidents against Asian Americans.
 
In 2024, the California Legislature authorized over $300 million in support for Holocaust survivors and members of the Jewish community, recognizing their suffering and need for continued support.
 
Despite these allocations, your campaigns have not targeted or criticized these initiatives—only those aimed at repairing centuries of harm done to Black Americans, who remain the most frequent victims of race-based hate crimes nationwide according to federal data. Your selective and racially targeted opposition to Black equity initiatives, combined with your public standing as an attorney, member of a federal civil rights commission and educator, magnifies the discriminatory impact and constitutes a pattern of bias-based harassment under both state and federal law.
 
Accordingly, you are hereby ordered to immediately cease and desist from any further direct or indirect harassment, public misinformation, or racially targeted advocacy directed toward the Black community or programs designed to support it. Continued actions of this nature may result in:
 
Formal referral to state bar disciplinary authorities for violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct concerning bias, harassment, and discrimination; and
 
Referral to appropriate civil rights enforcement agencies for investigation under state and federal hate crime and civil rights statutes.
 
Please provide written confirmation within ten (10) business days that you have received this notice and that you will comply fully with its terms.
 
Warmest Regards,

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Ethics Quiz: The Third Candidate

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

New York City, which has not had a competent mayor since Michael Bloomberg, is about to punch itself in the face and elect Communist, anti-Semitic, charismatic demagogue Zohran Mamdani as its latest fiasco. One aspect of the perfect storm that is about to allow the City That Never Sleeps to fall into an abyss of its own making is that Mamdani is running in a three-way race, which often helps elects a candidate who would lose in a two-person race. Another is that the only viable alternative to Mamdani is disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, who in addition to killing hundreds of rest home residents by stashing Wuhan virus victims in close proximity to them, whereupon they sickened and died, was a serial sexual harasser. I wouldn’t vote for the guy to be dog-catcher. There is at least a chance, however, that as mayor of New York Cuomo will make a good faith effort to redeem himself and not leave the Big Apple a smoldering pile of broken dreams. With Mamdani’s proposed policies, disaster is a near certainty.

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Ethics Dunce: The Los Angeles Dodgers (Not Really)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Normally this kind of item would be in a potpourri post, but I’m being pulled hither and yon today, so I may be putting up some minor matters piecemeal.

Dodger pitching icon Sandy Koufax was a spectator at all three of the 2025 World Series games at Dodger Stadium last week, including the epic 18 inning Game 3. However, his seating in Game 5 was the object of some controversy. The Dodgers were called out by Mets announcer Howie Rose, among others.

“How does Sandy end up in the second row?” Rose asked on social media. “Maybe those are his permanent, personal seats but Sandy Koufax takes a back seat to no one. Especially at Dodger Stadium.” Others were infuriated that Koufax would rank supposedly lesser seats than celebrity hucksters Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who were also at Game 5 in the seats in front of Sandy.

I like to see American taking the opportunity to denigrate the Renegade Royals: it seemed especially timely given the stupid “No Kings” rallies and L.A.’s position as Trump Derangement Central. Yeah, why not sit the Royals in the bleachers? Behind a pole, maybe! (There are no obstructions in Dodger Stadium.) But the complaint made no sense for many reasons.

  • As even Rose noted, those are Sandy’s regular seats.
  • I speak from experience: at the field box level, the front row is inferior to a few rows higher. Harry and Meghan’s seats were inferior to Sandy’s
  • Magic Johnson, like Koufax an LA sports icon, was in the same row as Koufax—and he’s a part owner of the team.

Still, bashing the Royal Family still feels a lot more American to me than when everyone was salivating over the late Princess Diana. This is progress.