U.S. Society

Ethics Dunces: Cynthia Kwiecinski

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Bullies, toxic language police, mean-spirited feminists, and, to be blunt but appropriately so, assholes, Kwiecinski and Colby are the co-chair and executive assistant respectively to the Easthampton Schools committee that offered long-time school principal Vito Perrone the position of superintendent. When Perrone sent an email to the two after his selection addressing them as “Ladies”…

…the two ladies were so offended by what they termed an unforgivable “microaggression” that the job offer was rescinded. Kwiecinski told Perrone that using “ladies” as a greeting was hostile and derogatory. Moreover, “the fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.'” In the email, Perrone had opened up the question of whether he could get higher pay and more sick days, since the total package Easthampton Schools had offered represented a pay cut from his current job. That, however was not cited as a reason for the withdrawn offer. Just a single word. That’s how the Left rolls these days. So many previously common and harmless words are taboo that it’s difficult to express some things. (And that, you know, is the point.)

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If You Can’t Write A Clearer Law Than Tennessee’s Anti-Drag Statute, It Deserves To Be Overturned

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

A federal judge in Tennessee, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker, temporarily blocked the state’s new law supposedly designed to protect children from the evils of drag shows. He entered a restraining order before the law, signed by Republican Governor Bill Lee, was scheduled to go into effect two days ago, because he ruled that it was probably unconstitutional—vague, and overbroad.

Good, because it’s a terribly-written law. Observe:

SECTION 1. Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 7-51-1401, is amended by adding the following language as a new subdivision:
“Adult cabaret performance” means a performance in a location other than an adult cabaret that features topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers, regardless of whether or not performed for consideration..”

SECTION 2. Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 7-51-1407, is amended by adding the following language as a new subsection:
(c)
(1) It is an offense for a person to engage in an adult cabaret performance:
(A) On public property; or
(B) In a location where the adult cabaret performance could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.

That’s all you need to read. The challenge to the law is quite right: it’s a First Amendment violation. As Rolling Stone’s John Freeman wrote, Continue reading →

Jim Palmer Endorses The King’s Pass

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Jim Palmer, Hall of Fame pitcher, sometimes serves as the color man on Orioles broadcasts. He’s pretty good at it too, especially when he is analyzing the pitching. During yesterday’s Red Sox-O’s game, which I had to watch on the Orioles network because the Red Sox feed was blacked out, Palmer was talking about Sox slugger Rafael Devers becoming the first batter in MLB history to b called because he wasn’t ready for the pitch under the new pitch clock rules. His gaffe undermined a burgeoning Sox comeback rally in the 8th inning.

“It kind of left an empty feeling, and I’m not even for the Red Sox, “Palmer said. “I mean, you’re in the stands, you paid all that money, and your best hitter is called out because he’s looking at the pitcher a second or two too late. I understand why we’re doing it, but boy, it was disappointing.”

Essentially what Palmer was arguing for, though while not having his most articulate moment, was Rationalization #11, the King’s Pass, also known as “The Star Syndrome.” It makes sense that Jim would favor the Star Syndrome, where a team’s best players get away with misconduct that get third-string catchers released, since he was undoubtedly the beneficiary of it during his long and successful career. But it’s unethical thinking like that that causes NBA refs to hold back on fouls on star players in close games (and why I don’t watch the NBA any more). A few months ago, I heard another baseball “expert” say that umpires shouldn’t call batters out on close checked swings to end a one-run game. That’s advocating a system when rules are enforced differently depending on when they are violated, at the discretion of the umpire. Such a system resembles Calvinball, and such a sport has no integrity. Palmer also seemed to be suggesting that Devers should get a break because he’s a star, but an ordinary hitter should not.

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Ethics Quiz: The Comic Strip’s Hidden Message

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Yikes.

In February, 2019, venerable ( and usually funny) Sunday comics feature “Non Sequitur” included a hidden message tucked into the corner of a strip . Cartoonist Wiley Miller had scrawled, barely legibly, “Go Fuck yourself, Trump.”

This led some newspapers that had run the strip to cancel the comic permanently. Most, however, did nothing: the strip is still running in, for example, the Washington Post.

Dallas Morning News editor Mike Wilson said that Miller was going “around his editors and even his own syndicate to publish something he must have known we wouldn’t accept. We’ll have no trouble finding a better way to spend the $8,000 we would’ve paid for that strip.” For its part, Kansas City-based Andrews McMeel Syndication, which distributes “Non Sequitur,” apologized, saying,

“We are sorry we missed the language in our editing processIf we had discovered it, we would not have distributed the cartoon without it being removed. We apologize to ‘Non Sequitur’s’ clients and readers for our oversight.”

Miller’s explanation was essentially “Oopsie!” He said he had entered the vulgarity in the corner when he was angry with then-President Trump, and forgot to remove it. He wasn’t trying to sneak the insult by anyone.

Okaaay. Do you believe that?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

What is the fair and responsible punishment for Sunday comics cartoonist who does what Miller did?

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Comment Of The Day: “Got It: Apparently All Criticism Of Progressive Figures Or Positions Is Based Entirely On Hate…”

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

JutGory, on the post, “Got It: Apparently All Criticism Of Progressive Figures Or Positions Is Based Entirely On Hate And Bigotry. Good To Know!

***

The Left seems obsessed with hate. They seem to see it everywhere.

I am not sure from where this form of argumentation comes.

Are they quick to accuse so that they cannot then be accused?

Is it an argument deployed because it is one that cannot be defended against?

Do they actually think that is what people are motivated by?

Is it a convenient straw-man argument?

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Ethics Villain: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, And Other Observations On The Trump Indictment

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

Last week’s indictment of Donald Trump, engineered by a hard-Left partisan Manhattan D.A. who had made his intentions known when he was running for office, didn’t change any of the ethical calculations here that were recorded when that indictment seemed imminent almost two weeks ago, or in the update, when it appeared that Alvin Bragg might have lost his nerve and decided to be an ethical prosecutor after all, here. I reviewed both posts to see if I would change anything, and I would not, but the final line of the March 18 essay still resonates: “The indictment will remind people of why he won in the first place.” Bragg’s exercise in politically-driven law enforcement will drive far more voters to Trump than it strips away. This makes his actions as politically and pragmatically irresponsible as they seem to be legally and ethically indefensible.

It is necessary to include the caveat “seem to be” because we haven’t seen the indictment yet. Maybe Bragg has legitimate cause (other than “he’s a bad guy and must have done something illegal”) to bring criminal charges against the ex-President, though virtually no unbiased legal analyst with any legitimacy thinks that’s likely. If he does, then his pursuit of Trump may be unwise, and its passion may be fueled by bias, but it is not unethical.

From another perspective, however, even if there were valid and legitimate reasons to charge Trump in this case—and I will be surprised if there are—if there ever were a situation where prosecutorial discretion and restraint were screamingly called for, this is it. The ripples and waves emanating from this indictment and, heaven help us, the arrest and trial will cause so much havoc in our political system, legal precedents, societal divisions, and national discourse that it cannot even be quantified or predicted. They could easily result in Donald Trump being elected again, or arguably worse still, in Joe Biden being re-elected. Whatever happens as a result of Bragg’s conduct, it is certain to be bad for everyone except, maybe, the fanatical Trump Deranged, who have already demonstrated a willingness to destroy the Constitution, the Rules of Law, democratic institutions and ethical standards to get their prey.

Also:

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Got It: Apparently All Criticism Of Progressive Figures Or Positions Is Based Entirely On Hate And Bigotry. Good To Know!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

I had a strange experience last week. After posting Paul W. Schlecht’s estimable Comment of the Day regarding “Do something!” hysterics regarding gun control, I received an off-site email from a reader who complained that Paul mentioning “Uncle George Soros” in a list of the “Who’s Who of Climate Criminal Lefties” employed a “a “phrase universally understood to be an anti-Semitic slur” and that “it is horrible and unforgivable to amplify bigotry in any form but under the banner of Ethics is even worse.” honest, irresponsible and disgusting habit of defaulting to racism, sexism, xenophobia, ageism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of bigotry to deflect legitimate criticism and intimidate as well as demonize those who oppose them. This reflex has become the predominant weapon of the Left in recent years, instead of, you know, things like facts, logic, common sense, history and reality. It has to be broken of this habit, by patriots of good faith and courage who aren’t afraid to say, “F..sorry… Bite me!“

People often write me directly when they are too timid to present a dubious opinion before the tough crowd here. I was very polite and even grateful to the hitherto unknown lurker, and confessed that if “Uncle George” was truly “universally” known to be an anti-Semitic slur, I had missed it, and I asked the guy to enlighten me. He then sent a link to an ADL opinion piece suggesting that conservative and Republican criticism of the billionaire’s copious funding of various progressive groups and causes was all motivated by anti-Semitism.

This ticked me off, and I wrote back,

I assumed that “Uncle George” had some special meaning: clearly, you just mean deriding Soros itself is  anti-Semitic, which is, frankly, bullshit. He’s a billionaire who supports progressive causes, some of them Far Left. That’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s the flip side of the Koch Brothers. It’s his money, and he can do what he wants with it; much of what he wants to do with it is bad stuff in my view, but I don’t see how that has anything to so with his ethnicity.  This line in the ADL piece—“A person who promotes a Soros conspiracy theory may not intend to promulgate antisemitism. But Soros’ Jewish identity is so well-known that in many cases it is hard not to infer that meaning”—discredits the whole article.
 
There’s nothing sinister about Soros supporting the campaigns of really bad prosecutors, but they are still really bad prosecutors. There’s nothing sinister about his spending so much supporting radical environmental groups either, though it’s a waste of money.
 
I know all about Soros and how he’s the Right’s boogeyman, but attributing that to anti-antisemitism is lazy and intellectually dishonest.
 
Did you bother to check to see what I’ve written about Soros? Not much, because I haven’t seen him do anything unethical. I did write one long defense of Soros, at the very beginning of the blog, however. I defended him, and praised him. I wouldn’t change a word today.
 
 

This jerk then writes back, “Your first response to me was that you were “at sea” when it came to Soros, but in your second you said, ‘I know all about Soros’. Sounds disingenuous to me.” I quit reading after that, and also quit being nice. I am happy to engage with fair, serious, sincere readers on my private email account, but oddly, a disproportionate number of those who avail themselves of the opportunity abuse it. So I wrote,

I get it! You’re an asshole.
 
I SAID that I was “at sea” regarding how “Uncle George” was somehow an anti-Semitic slur. I do know all about Soros, and never said I didn’t.
 
You can apologize for this “gotcha!” crap, or stay out of my inbox. I’ve tried to respond to your concerns fairly and politely, and your response is to falsely accuse me of lying.
 
Jerk. Fuck off.

I have to confess that I probably used “fuck off'” as opposed to my usual “Bite me!” because I had been streaming “Succession,” the rich family/cut-throat business politics drama in which literally everyone says “Fuck off!” in almost every conversation, even friendly ones. The bon mot in not really in my repertoire, but after hearing the phase about a thousand times in the span of a few days, it momentarily felt right to me, and it was certainly well-earned. (He did, by the way, indeed fuck off).

I wasn’t going to mention the episode until I saw that my old pal, the Washington Post’s biased-but-conflicted-about -it factchecker Glenn Kessler had issued issue a “Factchecker” column declaring that “incendiary” claims that Soros had “funded” Manhattan’s political hit man qua prosecutor Alvin Bragg (focusing on a tweet by Donald Trump to that effect) were lies. Kessler also asserted that such critiques were motivated by anti-Semitism, writing,

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Giving The Devil His Due: It’s Time For Baseball Say “Sorry” And “Thanks” To That Bastard, Charles O. Finley

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Charles Oscar Finley (February 22, 1918 – February 19, 1996), better known as Charlie O. Finley, was easily one of the worst owners of a major league baseball team in history, and that’s saying something, because it is a repellent batch. He probably falls just below #1, Charles Comiskey, the greedy and abusive owner of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” largely responsible for his players deciding to take bribes and throw the World Series. (See “Eight Men Out,” one of the ten best baseball movies).

Finley was an insurance mogul who purchased the Kansas City Athletics and eventually moved the team to Oakland, creating a territorial conflict with the San Francisco Giants that violated MLB rules, but he was allowed to do it because Finley threatened to cause havoc with a lawsuit that challenged the game’s immunity from antitrust laws.

That wasn’t the first time Finley was obnoxious and detructive, and it was far from the last. A loud, toxic narcissist, he tried to be the focus of attention on his teams, especially in Oakland, where a crop of talented young stars (Reggie Jackson, Ricky Henderson, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers and more) made his team one of the great baseball dynasties. Finley underpaid them and treated all of his players like servants; his abuse was a catalyst for the power of the Players Union and the eventual institution of free agency. Dick Williams, his Hall of Fame manager, quit after a World Series, saying that he would rather leave baseball itself than work for a bastard like Finley.

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Update On The Anthony Broadwater Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

New York State will pay $5.5 million to Anthony Broadwater, who spent 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of raping the Alice Sebold, a best selling novelist and author, when she was a college student in 1982. He was finally released in 1999. The $5.5 million settles Broadwater’s lawsuit, filed after his rape conviction was vacated in November 2021 by a state court judge.

The justice system in Broadwater’s case certainly malfunctioned badly, as the Times story linked above explains. The main responsible party, however, was Sebold, who not only sent the innocent man to prison with a false accusation and identification, but profited by doing so. She wrote two books, one her successful novel “Lovely Bones,” based on the rape, and an earlier book “Lucky,” an account of her rape and the subsequent identification of Broadwater as her rapist. Sebold passed Broadwater on the street and contacted the police saying she might have seen the man who had raped her. That placed him in the maw of a system determined to pin the rape on someone. She later identified him in court as her rapist.

When Broadwater was released, as I previously noted in this post, Sebold attempted to salve a guilty conscience by issuing an apology on the website Medium, which said in part,

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