U.S. Society

Joy Reid, Harvard, Althouse, And Affirmative Action

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Straining to engage in her trademark “cruel neutrality,” esteemed blogger Ann Althouse stepped up to defend MSNBC’s Joy Reid and stepped in it, as the idiom goes, in the process. Ann defended Reid, claiming that she never said or implied that she was admitted to Harvard because of affirmative action.

“I think Ramaswamy is distorting (or, less likely, not hearing and understanding),” Ann wrote in part. “…She says she got high grades and test scores in high school, but she wouldn’t have thought to try for Harvard if Harvard hadn’t come out to her small, majority-black town and recruited. She was strongly encouraged to apply. The Supreme Court hasn’t changed the power of schools to recruit in places like hers. Reid never says her scores and grades wouldn’t have been enough if she were not black.”

Uncharacteristically, Althouse didn’t do her homework. In the MSNBC segment, Reid was basically regurgitating her blog post saying the same things, and that was headlined, “I got into Harvard because of affirmative action. Some of my classmates got in for their wealth.”

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Monday Ethics Catch-Up, 7/3/2023: More SCOTUS Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

July 3 is a major date in U.S. history, slammed as it is between the epic significance of July 2 and 4 in the birth of our nation, and representing the crucial final day in the battle of Gettysburg, which in retrospect we can see as the critical moment when that nation was preserved as one.

Pickett’s Charge and the too little noted role of Gen. George Armstrong Custer have many ethics lessons to teach: the annually re-posted Ethics Alarms essay on those topics are here.

1. Get woke, go broke, and make someone else pay the price…Disney has been taking multiple hits as a result of its current mouse-eared masters determination to take sides in the culture wars, a one way ratchet that as Bud Light and Target (among others) have discovered, there is no way to backtrack or repent. Now it appears that its latest summer blockbuster attempt, “Indiana Jones and the Graying Temples of Doom” or whatever the misbegotten project is being called, is having approximately the same level of audience interest as, say, a sequel to “Body Heat” featuring the now 200 pound Kathleen Turner. When the most positive movie reviews say, “It really isn’t as bad as everyone expected,” you know there’s a problem. So how is Disney fixing the problem? By gutting the other businesses it owns! ESPN and National Geographic are the latest victims. Meanwhile, there are no signs that Walt’s wounded cultural icon is retreating to the neutral position it should have maintained all along.

2. Gaslighting from the Times (again). The more I think about the Times headline, “With Supreme Court Decision, College Admissions Could Become More Subjective,” the worse it seems. Is the Times telling us that using the color of an applicant’s skin as a determinant was being “objective”? Is it implying that anyone is arguing that deciding among many more qualified applicants than Harvard can hold (that’s why God made Yale!) is possible without considerable subjectivity? This is one more example of how the SCOTUS decision is being distorted in order to mislead the 99% of American who either won’t read the decision or won’t understand it if they do. It’s really a pretty simple ruling. Colleges can make their choices on the basis of many subjective judgments, but U.S. law and the Constitution forbid discriminating on the basis of race.

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Soledad O’Brien’s Unethical, Useful Affirmative Action Tweet, And Related Matters…[Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Gee, it’s nice to have the smug, biased, poisonous Soledad O’Brien to kick around again. The unethical broadcast journalist of color who left her news show-hosting role with CNN in 2013 to cash in with podcasting and other syndicated ventures that spared the general American public by keeping her toxic influence limited, sent that outrageous tweet above in response to an Asian American women’s expressed satisfaction that college applicants who looked like her could no longer be legally handicapped when they apply to educational institutions.

It’s reassuring to know O’Brien hasn’t changed; after all, so little seems reliable or permanent any more. Her offensive and obnoxious tweet also neatly illustrates one important side benefit of the Supreme Court’s opinion last week striking down racially biased admissions policies, aka “affirmative action,” at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The reactions to the ruling during the Woke World freakout are revealing so much about so many of its ethics dunces and villains. We should all be grateful.

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On The Trail Of The Great Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

These signs were allegedly posted yesterday in response to the Supreme Court’s hay trick yesterday. If genuine—and who knows?—‘s staff the owner of the establishment is a medical miracle, apparently living without a brain. As simultaneous virtue-signaling and IQ 80 signaling, this is special. Let’s see: the Supreme Court did not rule that businesses can discriminate. How will the store’s staff identify “Trump supporters”? How often does a church walk in a store to buy anything? Do churches even fly flags? I’ve never seen one.

Bias makes you stupid, but it can’t make someone this stupid unless he or she is well on the way already.

Celebrities Abusing Free Speech, Case # 708,666,213,45 (Since 2017): WNBA Player Natasha Cloud

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

(Of course, the number in the title above is just an estimate. It might be more.)

The first ethics problem with celebrities mouthing off in public about matters they know nothing about is that they have an undeservedly out-sized metaphorical megaphone. The second problem is that foolish adults and immature kids think that someone being rich and famous means that that they possess special skills and powers of perception beyond whatever expertise it was that made them that way. It’s the “they must be smarter than I am, because they’re richer/more famous/more successful than I am” fallacy. The third problem is that so many celebrities in this category believe their own hype, and really do think their opinion is more valid than the average guy on a bar stool.

The fourth ethics problem is that the news media reports what these Dunning-Kruger Syndrome victims say, which is the journalistic equivalent of spraying deadly viruses via aerosol cans in a crowded stadium.

Today’s example of this ugly, persistent, and probably unpreventable phenomenon is the WNBA Washington Mystics Natasha Cloud, who is generously called a “star” in most reports. (She’s averaged 7.5 points a game.) I question whether any WNBA player qualifies as a star, but that’s just me.) She’s been shooting off her mouth since May, when she told the Philadelphia Inquirer :

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The Affirmative Action Demise Freakout

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

In some respects the Left’s reaction to Students For Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College is more disturbing, if less hysterical, than its response to the elimination of Roe v. Wade. The near complete disregard for Constitution and the principles it represents being displayed is stunning, and a warning. Robert Kennedy, Jr., who may be a wacko regarding vaccinations but who is as about as representative of the current state of the Democratic Party and Woke World as an individual can be, was usefully specific, tweeting,

“Regarding the Supreme Court banning affirmative action in higher ed — I know many Americans feel that purely race-based decisions are unfair. However, this feeling misses important context. The effects of racist policies going back centuries are now self-perpetuating. Affirmative action understands this and uses race-based policies to undo the effects of racist policies. ‘Color-blind’ admissions tend to favor those who are already in the circle of privilege. It favors those who grew up in affluent, educated households. Wouldn’t you like to invite in those who have been left out in the cold?”

And there it is. “It’s  okay, in fact the right thing to do, to deliberately violate the Constitution and ignore U.S. law if it serves ‘the greater good’ and our judgment regarding the needs of social justice.” That has become the entire operating philosophy of the Democrats. It can be seen as one that would open the door to unlimited totalitarian abuses. This is why the First, Second and Sixth Amendments, the Equal Protection Clause, Due Process and the entire Constitution itself are under sustained attack to undermine it in the eyes of an ignorant public we allowed to grow to adulthood without ever being adequately educated about the importance of the Founding documents. Bobby Jr. explains: if Constitutional restrictions favor the “wrong” people, then to hell with the Constitution. The direct line from his reasoning to government censorship of speech should be obvious (but since the news media won’t draw that line, or is too inept to do so clearly, it won’t be to the dim Americans who need to see it most.

RFKJ’s last argument, “Wouldn’t you like to invite in those who have been left out in the cold?” is a another classic hide-the-ball, bury-the-lede, “its isn’t what it is” con. He is really asking the tribal interests that support his party, “Wouldn’t you like to have a fist on the scales giving your race/ethnicity/sex a permanent advantage in everything you do?

We should be grateful to Kennedy for being comparatively honest. President Biden, who hasn’t read the decision, had the gall to say, “This isn’t a normal Court,” again darkly suggesting malign intent—from its enforcement of the Constitution, its duty. Journalists and pundits are giving us a vivid picture of what we can expect in the upcoming election campaign with deceptive, misleading or written-for-morons headlines like:

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This Is How The Dean Of Berkeley Law School Teaches Ethics To His Students…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Nice. Violate the law, ignore basic fairness, and honesty, but as long as you don’t tell anyone and can’t be caught, it’s okay.

Chemerinsky is a well-established partisan hack whose legal commentary is almost always polluted by his leftist agenda, but this was low even for him. Do you ever wonder where unethical lawyers come from?

Classes like his.

And professors like him. Yale Law School’s Dean, Georgetown Law Center’s Dean, and others supposedly overseeing the training of tomorrow’s legal professionals have similarly made it clear with their actions and words that ethics are secondary to their political and social agendas. None have done so quite as flagrantly and smugly as Chemerinsky, however.

From The Pro-Abortion Side, An “It Isn’t What It Is” Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The advocacy for abortion has always relied heavily on Rationalization #64, “Yoo’s Rationalization” or “It isn’t what it is;” indeed abortion is one of the unethical tactic’s most prominent domains. For abortion isn’t a matter of “choice,” but rather a controversy over when and to what extent society should tolerate the killing of one human being (or millions) for the benefit of another. Calling the issue “a woman’s choice” is deliberate obfuscation.

Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut—and I will wrestle my hands to the floor to avoid typing some obvious and well-deserved characterizations of the woman—recently made the head-exploding argument that abortion was squarely supported by the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.

No, she really did. I’m not making this up! This was stated on social media by an elected official who is obligated to uphold the public trust. Here’s Rose:

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From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Analyzing this would be like shooting dead fish in a barrel, but by all means, go ahead if you want to.