U.S. Society

And Yet Another Baseball Great Chooses Money Over His Team, Fans, Integrity and Honor…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Over the weekend, I got to watch (again) the nauseating spectacle of Detroit Tigers firstbaseman Miguel Cabrera disgracing his own legacy as one of the greatest players of all time. A guaranteed first ballot Hall of Famer with over 3,000 hits and more than 500 career homers, Cabrera is no longer even a passable performer at age 40, and hasn’t been since 2017. That year and every year since, Cabrera has been paid an average of $30 million a season for production that the Tigers could have gotten from a mediocre minor league journeyman playing for the Major League minimum salary. All weekend, the TV broadcasters were blathering on about what a wonderful human being “Miggy” is. If he were really wonderful, he would have retired as soon as he realized he was stealing his salary and hurting his team in the process.

Cabrera has graciously announced that this will be his final season, as if he had any choice in the matter. His long term contract is up: he’s squeezed over $200 million out of it without having a single season worthy of his reputation or his salary. He has one (1) home run this season, with less than a third of the schedule to go. The year he signed his contract, he hit 44.

But Cabrera isn’t the subject of this post; I already complained about him and other greedy, fading players here. There’s a worse offender in baseball now, believe it or not. The current miscreant is St. Louis starting pitcher Adam Wainwright, who had announced before this season that it would be his last. [Wainwright, by the way, has one of the more varied and interesting Ethics Alarms dossiers among pro athletes.] He is 41, and not only are 40+-year-old pitchers who still belong in the Major Leagues rarer than star sapphires, Wainwright’s 2022 season at 40 was not a harbinger of optimism, though he still was getting batters out, albeit not as he once had. But Adam Wainwright has pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and only them for 17 years , winning just short of 200 games along the way. He is regarded as a hometown hero to Cardinal fans, who also wanted him aboard for one more campaign because they had reason to think their perennial play-off team had a real chance to get to the World Series again in 2023, and nothing is more valued on such teams as a grizzled old veteran who has been through the wars before.

It was a good theory, anyway. Unfortunately, Wainwright was done, through, cooked, out of pitches and excuses. This season his earned run average is almost 9 runs a game, which means he is pitching batting practice to the opposition. A starting pitcher without a long-term contract and with no reputation as a team legend is usually cut if he can’t keep his ERA below 6; under 4 runs a game is good, under 4.5 is considered acceptable. But 8.78, which is what Wainwright has delivered in 15 starts? A decent college pitcher could do that well, maybe a top high school pitcher too. And for this consistent failure, Adam Wainwright is being paid $17,500,000.

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KABOOM! How Can A Company—A CANDY Company No Less!—Possibly Think This Packaging Is Responsible?

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Well, there goes my head again, and I really need it this weekend.

Hold on to yours: this really and truly is one of the “Pride” packages for Mars Inc.’s Skittles:

I don’t understand how this could happen in a major corpoation. In a pluralistic society, it is unethical for products and services to deliberately polarize the public, politically, socially, in any way whatsoever. True, the temptation for rainbow-colored Skittles to try to exploit the LGTBQ propaganda for marketing purposes must have been strong for some marketing execs with the cranial depth of a walnut shell, but the fact that sane parents don’t want their kids proselytized by their candy shouldn’t be that hard to grasp.

If the type is too small for you to read, the legends somewhere under the rainbow include “Joy is Resistance” and “Black Trans Lives Matter,” both of which are semi-incoherent, but the intent is clear. (Is the character with the sunglasses supposed to be in drag? What does “skate & live” mean? Is skating on the rainbow a metaphor for embracing an LGBTQ identity?)This is the equivalent of forced political speech, and the force is being applied to children. Holding that package sends an unintended message, weird as it is, and once that political message is associated with the brand, eating Skittles at all becomes a political act.

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The Ethics Zugzwang Of Trump vs. The Democrats, Part I: Comment Of The Day On “Today’s Res Ipsa Loquitur Donald Trump Moment”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

In his Comment of the Day, Chris Marschner, among Ethics Alarms’ most articulate and astute commenters, writes, “Please excuse my rambling rant.” No excusing is necessary: Chris was using a stream of consciousness technique to express that frustration many—I’m tempted to say anyone paying attention—feel as they face the prospect of having to choose between the reckless and untrustworthy creep who is the likely Republican nominee, and an insatiable, power-lusting Democratic Party that in its has made it crystal clear that it no longer respects the American mission, the Constitution, or much else.

His post was well-timed: I’ve been planning an examination of the ethics zugzwang Donald Trump’s legal problems (and the Democratic Party’s criminalizing of politics) citizens like Chris now find themselves in. That’s Scylla and Charybdis above: Odysseus had an easier choice deciding which would be more disastrous than what we might face in November of 2024.

Chris Marschner’s Comment of the Day will be Part I of a three part series, and here it is, triggered by the post, “Today’s Res Ipsa Loquitur Donald Trump Moment.”

***

You have changed my mind: I will not vote. Screw it.

There are no suitable candidates. You have lying Biden, who tells a gold star mother he brought his own son back in a flag draped coffin during the dignified transition of remains, and the other candidates are just asking for money and not giving me a different alternative. We have D.C. judges sitting in on Trumps arraignment. Why did Judge Amy Berman Jackson and other federal judges feel it necessary to be present in the courtroom for this arraignment other than to send a message? But all we seem to focus on is the stupid shit Trump says.

How ethical was it for Trump’s legal team to be given 1 day to respond to a late Friday motion to prevent Trump from getting discovery by Jack Smith’s team when the typical time frame is apparently 14 days and Trumps team pleaded for 3 days? Why are we not discussing the ethical dimensions of such judicial conduct? I don’t care if Trump is a mass murderer; when our judicial system is abused against the rights of an accused we have bigger problems than Chris Christie’s feelings. If it is unethical to behave as Trump does when his adversary makes a point to harm him, then we should also be discussing the ethics of Christie, who starts the fights.

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What Can Be Done About The Hunter Bidens?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Yesterday the House Oversight Committee released bank records showing that Hunter Biden received payments totaled more than $20 million dollars from Russian, Ukrainian, and Kazakh oligarchs while Joe Biden was Vice-President. The redacted bank records indicated that Hunter and his business associates got lucrative payments from Burisma Holdings, Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, and Kazakhstani businessman Kenes Rakishev, among others. Yet Hunter Biden has virtually no skills or special qualities that would justify any payments at all, much less millions, except for one: he’s the son of Joe Biden.

Obviously these payments were meant to, at very least, endear these parties to the then Vice-President in hopes that the unearned bounty would create a bias in their favor. At worst, they were bribes one-step-removed.

In my view, it cannot be argued that the payments did not create an appearance of impropriety for Joe Biden, and colorable conflicts of interest as well.

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KABOOM! The Progressive Propaganda Media Is This Desperate To Stop RFK, Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

This is pretty funny, actually, or would be, if we hadn’t seen similar tactics used repeatedly against the previous President of the United States.

Here’s what Robert Kennedy, Jr. tweeted in its entirety:

Since the assassination of my father in 1968, candidates for president are provided Secret Service protection. But not me. Typical turnaround time for pro forma protection requests from presidential candidates is 14-days. After 88-days of no response and after several follow-ups by our campaign, the Biden Administration just denied our request.  Secretary Mayorkas: “I have determined that Secret Service protection for Robert F Kennedy Jr. is not warranted at this time.” Our campaign’s request included a 67-page report from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.

Got that? Okay, now what about that tweet seems sinister to you, other than what RFK Jr. is alleging?

Here, let me give you some time…

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Comment Of The Day: “First Open Forum Of August!”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Michael West, who used to weigh in here far more frequently than he has been able to in recent years, issued a well-timed commentary in last week’s Friday open forum. It’s a perfect intro, if a bit ironic, to a post I’ll get up today if climate change doesn’t kill us all about the intractable reaction some have had to yesterday’s heresy that Donald Trump has officially jumped the legitimate Presidential candidate shark. The recent ban-ee actually sounded like Trump, warning me of dire consequences should I not succumb to his arguments and dance to his off-key tune.

Here is Michael West’s Comment of the Day on the most recent open forum:

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On the widening worldview dichotomy, objectivity and debate:

Can a progressive commenter ever last here anymore?

The complaints that this is a conservative echo chamber have some practical merit – in that most of the commenters here have a libertarian or conservative lean. The progressives all left, mostly of their own accord, many because their own assertions painted themselves into logic corners from which all they had left was the vitriol that eventually got them banned.

Therein lies the question – can a progressive commenter last here without admitting that their entire train of thought has gone off the rails? And once a progressive commenter does have that realization – can they honestly remain progressive anymore?

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Comment Of The Day: “MAGA Loyalists: Do You REALLY Believe That Anyone Who Makes A Public Threat Like This Can Be Trusted To Be President?…”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I am proud to present an epic Comment of he Day by A M Golden on the post, “MAGA Loyalists: Do You REALLY Believe That Anyone Who Makes A Public Threat Like This Can Be Trusted To Be President? Because He Can’t…Ever.” It is wise, wide-raanging and nuanced, so I’m not going to waste your time with an introduction. Just read, think, and enjoy.

***

As the saying goes, “When someone tells you who they really are, believe them.” We have enough evidence to see with our own eyes and ears who Trump is and who he is not and that should not be relevant to who Joe Biden is and who he is not.

This entry, the previous one in the latest installment of the “Nation of Assholes” series and the one before that about Rudy Giuliani’s untrustworthy secret recorder have all coalesced in my mind this weekend as I have spent several days wearing myself out over planning for a pop-culture convention next week by following other conventions in other cities on social media to determine how the shows are accommodating the guests’ requirements under SAG-AFTRA’s strike rules and what that means for how I should approach any celebrity guest I wish to meet.

I get tired of holding the hands of new convention-goers who don’t understand the rules, ask for clarification and end up not following my advice. I get tired of veteran convention-goers who think they have the right to get around the rules. For entitled people who cut lines, who try to sweet-talk the guest into extra perks and who make little to no effort to ask polite, intelligent questions. They make everything harder on everyone else. Celebrities won’t want to attend these things if people don’t understand or respect boundaries. I have too many stories to recount of fans acting like inconsiderate asses and those stories are from before the pandemic.

We are already an entitled enough culture that treats celebrities like commodities, as if buying a movie ticket or following a TV program requires that anyone who appeared in the same owes us unlimited time, an autograph, a selfie, a kidney… One of the best things about the strike is that it’s finally becoming somewhat public knowledge that most actors aren’t millionaires.

We treat others like us even worse. Not only do we not put most of our fellow citizens on pedestals, but we don’t even afford them the basic respect of treating them the way we would want to be treated. As long as there’s something in it for us, I guess…

Somehow, qualities of character, such as honesty, integrity, patience, kindness, self-control (sorry, I think I wandered into the Fruits of the Spirit from the Bible) seem to have been lost very quickly. We are a mess as a culture and there’s a lot of blame to go around, not least because we have forgotten the Golden Rule.

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MAGA Loyalists: Do You REALLY Believe That Anyone Who Makes A Public Threat Like This Can Be Trusted To Be President? Because He Can’t…Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 82 Comments

Astounding. It’s not astounding that the former President thinks this way, it’s astounding that he is so devoid of ethics alarms, self-restraint, common sense and an understanding of the justice system that he would post such smoking gun evidence that he is a dangerous bully with the instincts of a badly-raised child. Donald Trump actually and truly posted this threat yesterday, in all caps as usual, on his social media site, Truth Social:

That’s the tipping point for me, and it should be for any sane American. I believe that it is existentially crucial that the increasingly anti-democratic Democrats be punished for their unethical conduct and totalitarian aspirations over the past eight years. I would vote for almost anyone over Joe Biden after his complete capitulation to the Dark Side, but “almost anyone” does not include, for example, Putin, Dracula, Diane Feinstein, Rob Reiner, Mitch McConnell, or Cujo…or Donald Trump. Not after this. Hillary Clinton jumps in front of Trump after this. So do some others on that list.

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New From The “Nation Of Assholes”: Movie Theater Of Assholes

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Back in 2015, Ethics Alarms sagely predicted that an election of Donald Trump as President would begin a death spiral of American manners, civility and societal comity. It proved to be a lot more accurate than any cliamte change predictions so far, but it was still too optimistic. As EA has documented since, all ends of the political spectrum have devoted themselves to trashing respect, manners and decorum since 2016. Yes, Trump has been a catalyst, but so has “the resistance,” Democrats, Black Lives Matter and popular culture. And the destructive pandemic lockdown: don’t forget that.

We continue to discover the breadth and width of the unanticipated carnage of that dumb policy, from children who can’t read to the horrible “ghost runner” in Major League Baseball extra-inning games. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports:

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 8/4/2023: “Good Morning!”…To Lizzo, Joe, Hunter, And More

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Good ethics history and bad ethics history on this date. The Good: in 1936, U.S. Olympian Jesse Owens gave a metaphorical “Bite me!” to Adolf Hitler, winning the second of his four gold medals (in the long jump) in Berlin, which had been carefully framed as Nazi Germany’s “master race” showcase. The Bad: this is also the date, in 1944, that the Nazi Gestapo seized 15-year-old Anne Frank and her family from their hidden hideaway in an Amsterdam warehouse.They had occupied the small space with another Jewish family and an unmarried Jewish man since 1942 with the help of Christian friends who brought them food and supplies. Anne spent much of her time in the secret annex working on her now immortal diary. After their refuge was discovered, Anne and all of the others but her father perished in the Nazi death camps.

Even today, more than 80 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, hardly a day goes by that some aspect of World War II isn’t directly relevant to unfolding events. Yet the war is barely taught in our schools: television and movies are the primary tutorials, and I doubt the rising generation is flocking to their WWII fare. This is not new, for my curricula through high school included little of substance on the most important historical event in the last 300 years (at least), and there was no requirement at Harvard, even for a government major like me, to study the World War II period in college.

I consider myself fortunate that my father, for whom the war was unquestionably the defining experience of his life, frequently used family meals when I was a child to discuss WWII history—except for his own combat experiences.

1. Lizzo may be “Hypocrite of the Year”! Lizzo…you know, this woman…

… the defiantly obese pop singer who has promoted herself as a champion of body positivity, is being sued by three of her former who allege that she subjected them fat-shaming as well as sexual and racial harassment. Of course these are allegations only, and if there ever was a lawsuit that seemed to demand a quick settlement to make it go away, this would be it. But the singer seems to be inclined to fight the action, which is admirable if she is innocent, but still likely to be unwise. When a celebrity’s carefully crafted image of virtues is shattered by such contrary claims, it often causes a dam of silence to break, as happened to Ellen Degeneris (who turned out not to be the super-nice lesbian she pretended to be) and Bill Cosby (who…well, you know.) This seems to be happening to Lizzo. Triggered by news of the lawsuit, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison, who tried collaborating with the singer on the 2019 documentary “Love, Lizzo,” piled on. “In 2019, I traveled a bit with Lizzo to be the director of her documentary. I walked away after about 2 weeks … I was treated with such disrespect by her. I witnessed how arrogant, self-centered, and unkind she is.”

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