It was a very lively weekend here at Ethics Alarms, though few but the most hardy regulars chose to partake in it (as usual on weekends). Meanwhile, a backlog of impressive proportions started clogging the canal, so I have little choice but to do a multi-issue post despite my pledge to cut down on them (too much time to write, too few readers).

Among the weekend’s joys for me was a barrage of insulting and woke-intense attempted comments from a single ideologue, attacking nine separate posts with standard issue progressive talking points and “it isn’t what it is” rants. I especially enjoyed being called a racist because I wrote this in the post about ESPN’s Stephen A Smith:

If anyone would be thrilled to excuse black culture malignancy by crying “systemic racism,” it would be Smith. Instead, the amazing number of shootings in Chicago over the Memorial Day Weekend prompted Smith to ask the black community: “When are we going to look at ourselves when it comes to black people being killed in the streets of America?”

The destructive nature of American black culture has been a topic of scholarship and analysis by researchers, social scientists and pundits for more than 50 years. It may be unfashionable to speak plainly on the topic (as Smith was trying to do), but using the racist label to avoid addressing the problem by denying its existence is part of a tragic trend. No, his comment(s) never made it out of moderation. On this post, he called me an extreme right “denialist” for calling Ireland’s cow slaughtering plan absurd. Again I ask, “Who are these people? How did they get this way? Can they be helped?”

1. Wait, what? Self-checkout machines in Big Box stores, coffee shops, bakeries, airports and sports stadiums are suggesting to customers that they leave a 20% tip, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. Unbelievable. I refuse to use the damn things because a) half the time they don’t work 2) I don’t trust them 3) they are putting people out of jobs 4) I enjoy interacting with human beings behind counters, so I wasn’t aware of this emotional extortion attempt (which is now ‘5)’ on my list. This is a scheme for companies to pass off the burden of paying employees on the customer rather than increasing employee salaries. Despicable. Here’s a tip: Bite me!

2. Curmie Corner: Over at his own blog, Curmudgeon Central, Ethics Alarms commenter Curmie has posted a superb, many faceted, provocative essay about Pink Floyd’s former composer-bassist Roger Waters and his problem with German police for wearing a “Nazi-style uniform” at a recent concert in Berlin. This is the kind of deep ethics dive I wish I could do more of, and, as you may have noticed, Curmie is a deft writer who, unlike your host, avoids typos. You will want to read “Roger Waters, Pink, Nazis, and Freedom of Speech.”

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I’m just glad this didn’t happen in the United States. France and weenies go together like…well, the U.S. and wieners, and if this could happen here, please don’t tell me until tomorrow. I’ve already thrown myself in a woodchipper once today.

In less hyperbolic terms, I can’t understand this crazy ethics episode at all.

No.16 seeds Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi of Japan were playing a doubles match in the French Open today, a set down to Czech Republic doubles team of Marie Bouzkova and Sara Sorribes Tormo, but winning the second set, 3-1. Kato slammed the ball to the opposite end of the court between points, inadvertently hitting the ball girl, who burst into tears. Chair umpire Alexandre Juge issued a code violation warning, but that wasn’t enough for Bouzkova and Tormo, who insisted that the Japanese women be disqualified because—get this—the ball girl was crying.

They shouldn’t even have been warned! Here’s the rule: players “shall not violently, dangerously or with anger hit, kick or throw a tennis ball within the precincts of the tournament site except in the reasonable pursuit of a point during a match (including warm-up)”

When told by the umpire that it was an accident, Sorribes Tormo protested, “She didn’t do it on purpose? She’s crying!” “And she has blood,” Bouzkova added, prompting the umpire to go to check on the ball girl, who was sobbing away. Then he consulted with the tournament referee and the Grand Slam supervisor Wayne McEwen, went back up to his chair on the court, and announced the end of the match. Sutjiadi and Kato were disqualified. Many in the crowd jeered. Kato apologized and was in tears as she left the court.

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I can’t stand it. All sides are too stupid to breathe or too cynical to be tolerated. This is the kind of thing that drove Sweeney Todd to serial killing. I think I’ll just ask my neighbor Ted to feed me through his woodchipper, like Steve Buscemi in the memorable moment above from “Fargo.”

A Utah state law passed last year allows school districts to remove “pornographic or indecent” books from school libraries. Someone in the Davis School District, seeking to demonstrate the law’s over-reach, submitted a complaint about the King James Bible, arguing the text was “pornographic by our new definition.” The complaint was treated as if it were made in good faith, and the Bible was duly pulled from elementary school libraries, thus making Utah conservatives look ridiculous.

Which was the whole idea. And which they are.

I admit to having a low threshold of tolerance for idiots, but still: State Sen. Todd Weiler (R), who sponsored the obscene book law in the Utah Senate, said he hoped the district’s decision would be overturned, but he called the Bible’s removal a “fair trade” for the removal of other books containing what he described as “explicit X-rated content.”

That’s a good policy: let’s barter for books! The Right gets to throw out “Catcher in the Rye,” and the Left gets to throw out “Founding Brothers,” about all those racists who founded the nation.

Gah. First, nobody’s banning books, nor are they, as the Washington Post claims in typical spinning style, restricting what students read. Parents still have the right and power to let their children read anything on the planet, from “Huckleberry Finn” to “Sexus,” Nexus,” and “Plexus.” The issue is whether parents should be able to limit what their children read in school, now that the trustworthiness of teachers and school administrators is legitimately open to question, and ideological and sexual indoctrination are rampant. It is a valid issue.

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“What’s going on here?” Good question: even more appropriate than usual. Who started this ethics mess may never be known, but who is responsible for it getting out of control is clear.

This adorable group, the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir…

based in Greenville, South Carolina, had toured Williamsburg, Virginia before coming last week to Washington, D.C., to visit key historical and governmental sites. The group was about to sing the National Anthem in National Statuary Hall when Andrew Tremel, the visitor operations manager at the Architect of the Capitol, halted them. But David Rasbach, the founder and director of the choir, told Tremel that congressional offices had granted permission for the group to perform, so Tremel relented and gave the okay. Video of the debacle, however, shows Rasbach cutting off the singers in the middle of the “Star Spangled Banner’s” fourth verse of the song. A female Capitol Police officer had directed a congressional staffer to stop the performance. Rasbach told everyone who would listen that she informed him that such performances are considered demonstrations, and that demonstrations in the U.S. Capitol are banned (as many jailed January 6, 2021 protest participants will now attest).

She also said, allegedly, that some people were or would be “offended” (by little children singing their nation’s patriotic anthem in the U.S. Capitol. You know, like in “Doctor Strangelove”: “Gentlemen. You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”).

The Capitol Police dutifully rose in defense of one of its own, saying in a statement:

“Recently somebody posted a video of a children’s choir singing the Star-Spangled Banner in the U.S. Capitol Building and wrongfully claimed we stopped the performance because it ‘might offend someone. Here is the truth. Demonstrations and musical performances are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol. Of course, because the singers in this situation were children, our officers were reasonable and allowed the children to finish their beautiful rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. The Congressional staff member who was accompanying the group knew the rules, yet lied to the officers multiple times about having permission from various offices. The staffer put both the choir and our officers, who were simply doing their jobs, in an awkward and embarrassing position.”

Oh no you don’t, said Rasbach. “That is not true—he did not lie to anybody,” the director said of the congressional staffer. Rasbach said that the female officer put her hand down, directing the staffer to stop the performance. Indeed, the video shows that the choir was not allowed to finish, as you can see at the 2:26 mark in the video below…

🚨The Rushingbrook Children's Choir sang the National Anthem in Statuary Hall. a Capitol Police officer stopped them mid-song. Capitol Police claims they didn't stop the choir. The choir director tells the whole story in my exclusive interview here. 🚨https://t.co/ZRNbWy75la pic.twitter.com/ijiq4pw3X8

— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) June 2, 2023

After he had directed the choir to stop singing, Rasbach says he spoke to the female officer and asked her, “How do you think this is going to affect these children? Their first time visiting their Capitol and then they have this disappointment.” Her response, he claims: “She shrugged her shoulders, saying, ‘They sounded beautiful, but… They can go outside and sing.”

But wait! There’s more!

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What a mess.

Blinded by wokeness and desire to pander to typical Californians (if not typical baseball fans, which is, after all, their market) the Los Angeles Dodgers invited the group ‘The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence’ to the team’s Pride Night this year, coming up fast on June 16. The group mocks religious objections to certain sexual practices and orientations by satirizing religious imagery and employing cross-dressing. They have been fairly described as flamboyantly anti-Catholic drag queen nuns. Recognizing that this may not have been the wisest move (a low level LGBTQ staffer seems to have sneaked the group on to the list of invitees), the Dodgers retracted the invitation. You know what that meant: there were screams of bigotry and protest from left-wing activists, including a teachers’ union that warned that refusing to honor the drag queen nuns “will lead to more deaths.” That’s the ticket these days: anything short of full endorsement of fringe sexual groups makes one complicit in theoretical hate crimes. Being weenies, Dodger officials went into full grovel mode. They offered their “sincerest apologies to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and their friends and family.”

Now religious fans and Catholic groups are upset. This is a binary situation: the Dodgers can be targeted by the anti-religions, LGBTQ+ zealots as bigots, confident that local news media will support them, or it can honor a group that is openly hostile to people of faith. Good job, Dodgers!

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May 29 is the anniversary of the moment when, at 11:30 a.m. in 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, became the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the exclamation mark of Hillary’s remarkable and ethically admirable life. He was the first admittee into The Ethics Alarms Hall of Heroes as an Ethics Hero Emeritus. His story is republished (from the defunct but still available Ethics Scoreboard), here.

1. About that cartoon…Ethics Alarms mentioned the hypocrisy of the despicable Memorial Day Weekend cartoon inflicted on the nation by the Washington Post, which ham-handedly compared Republicans to fascists authoritarians. Authoritarians hold power by fearmongering and falsehoods, and any defender of cartoonist Ann Telnaes‘s juvenile drawing (using the hallowed graves at Arlington National Cemetery as a cheap prop) will have to explain away Chuck Schumer’s nicely-timed slap at the single branch of the government which currently stands in the way of the numerous Biden Administration incursions on the Constitution. In Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Court unanimously held that the EPA had exceeded its authority (as a part of the executive branch, that means the Biden Administration) by forbidding an Idaho couple from building on their build on land near Priest Lake under the Clean Water Act. The court said that the land does not constitute a wetland under the CWA, and made it crystal clear that the words of the statute demanded that decision. Yet even though the decision was unanimous, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader attacked the decision this way on Twitter: “This MAGA Supreme Court is continuing to erode our country’s environmental laws. Make no mistake—this ruling will mean more polluted water, and more destruction of wetlands. We’ll keep fighting to protect our waters.” Two Obama appointees and Biden’s SCOTUS appointee joined in the ruling, but Democrats want to represent the unanimous decision as “MAGA.” In this case, at least, it was—if MAGA means not allowing the government to break laws and exceed its authority because it has decided it’s for “the greater good.” The White House also attacked the decision, neatly avoiding the matter of all 9 justices concluding that the EPA was violating the law and infringing on the property rights of American citizens. “It puts our Nation’s wetlands – and the rivers, streams, lakes, and ponds connected to them – at risk of pollution and destruction, jeopardizing the sources of clean water that millions of American families, farmers, and businesses rely on,” wrote Joe’s puppeteers. It’s all Trump’s fault! These MAGA fanatics like Justice Sotomayor seem to think that the government, which knows best, should follow laws before doing by edict what it deems wise!

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