U.S. Society

Wait, How Can Rebeca F. Rothstein Still Be Employed As A Middle School Teacher? Why Are Parents Allowing Her To Warp Their Children? I Don’t Understand This At All…[Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

This story is incomprehensible.

Rebeca F. Rothstein apparently still works at North Bethesda Middle School in the Montgomery County School District despite posting on social media that “‘as a teacher I wish we could do more with our students like teach anti-racism and how to be kind people. Does anyone else feel like… we can skip the math, skip the science, like we’ll do that next year. Maybe this year we focus on teaching our youth how to be anti-racist.” Elsewhere she posted about providing “Marxist literature” to her students. “Fuck capitalism,” she wrote, and in another post shared that she was “tired after a long day of indoctrinating students.” In a video she put on TikTok, Rothstein said,

“I had to un-brainwash myself from capitalism in order to fall in love with socialism and communism. If everyone had the same amount of money, then money wouldn’t be worth anything.”

Wow. I sure want a teacher with that kind of keen insight teaching our next generation!

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Monday Ethics Warm-Up, 3/13/23: “It’s All Over! What’s The Point?” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Republicans pounced” on the discovery that aging juvenile climate scold Greta Thunberg had deleted the above tweet since, you may have noticed, either humanity has not been wiped out five years after her warning, or, if doom is imminent, we might as well be comfy and have fun while we wait for the inevitable. No, it’s not a “gotcha!”; it’s a mandatory “you’re a demagogue, a fake dealing, you traffic in fraudulent science and hysteria, and we’re on to you” statement that is long overdue.

This is an example of the kind of ethics-related items that get lost when I go too long without warm-ups and similar collection posts. Last week I inadvertently deleted a file of topics on the metaphorical Ethics Alarms runway, and I’ve been trying to reconstitute the file since.

Jane Fonda, who now sports pink hair as befits her finally unmasked little old lady status, provided another nearly-missed item, when she told the fawning idiots of “The View” that her solution to the proliferation of anti-abortion laws around the country”, the communist, anti-American activist declared that “does involve murder,” in addition to “marching and protesting.” After it appeared that some people, even from the progressive camps, had a problem with this, Jane resorted to Rationalization #55,The Joke Excuse, or “I was only kidding!” Whether she was kidding or not (the women on “The View’s” panel weren’t laughing) similar “jokes” aimed at progressive policy-makers have been used to justify censorship and even criminal investigations. I think her earlier comment in the segment was even more telling, when she said,

“We have experienced many decades now of having agency over our body, of being able to determine when and how many children to have. We know what that feels like. We know what that’s done for our lives. We’re not going back. I don’t care what the laws are. We’re not going back. It’s true. It’s the truth. We’re not going to do it. We’re going to fight.”

Talk about insurrections! When hard-liners on gay marriage like Mike Huckabee suggested that “God’s law” dictated defiance of the Supreme Court, critics (like me) correctly condemned that approach. On “The View,” Fonda’s unethical rejection of  the judicial system prompted Sunny Hostin to say that Fonda was set to “get a Nobel Prize very, very soon.” The frightening thing is that the way the Nobel Peace Prize is deteriorating, she could be right.

If “The View” was a legitimate public interest news show and not a coven of biased dim-bulbs, someone should have asked Fonda to clarify her position. Is she saying that “agency” over her body justified taking an innocent human life? If not, is it that she regards unborn children as not human, or not lives? Or does her advocacy of “murder” to reinstate that “agency”apply to the unborn? Anyone making extreme statements like Fonda’s must be required to defend them, but they seldom are.

1. While we are on the topic of “insurrections”: I noted yesterday that the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences choosing smug leftist asshole Jimmy Kimmel as the Oscars host contradicted the stated goal of avoiding political polarization and luring the alienated half of the country back to the broadcast after years of insulting it. I read that Kimmel had been sternly instructed to go light on politics—you know, because he’s such a trustworthy guy. Predictably, this ass went ahead and snarked anyway, in his introduction to the Best Editing category, “Anyone who has ever received a text message from their father knows how important editing is.  Editors do amazing things. Editors can turn 44,000 hours of violent insurrection footage into a respectful sight-seeing tour of the Capitol. Their work is underappreciated.” Not to belabor the obvious, but in an actual insurrection, the man designated by the judge at sentencing as its symbol won’t be found in any footage being led around by police. Continue reading →

Not Quite An Unethical Lawsuit, Just An Unusually Stupid One

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Some slick lawyers somehow talked some dumb and greedy jocks into launching a class action suit against Ivy League colleges because—get this-–they don’t have athletic scholarships. The Hail Mary lawsuit argues that Brown, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell Universities, Dartmouth College, and the University of Pennsylvania have illegally conspired to limit financial aid by banning athletic scholarships.

They also ban chess scholarships, Gilbert & Sullivan scholarships, and cooking scholarships, incidentally.

“Regardless of whether considered as a restraint on the price of education, the value of financial aid, the price of athletic services, or the level of compensation to Ivy League athletes, the Ivy League Agreement is per se illegal,” the lawsuit states.

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Time-Warp Ethics: Observations On “The Cher Show” (1975)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Observations:

  • The song “I’m a Woman,” by famed songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, was written in 1962 and was once considered a standard. Is it politically incorrect today, since the entire definition of “woman” has been thrown into ambiguity and disrepute? I would say that it can’t be performed today. Is that reversible? Should it be?
  • The opening “girl-talk” between Welch and Cher is truly cringey. It’s hard to imagine U.S.culture returning to a point where that would be considered cute, except as satire. Both Raquel (who died this year) and Cher were famously capable and tough pros–maybe they were engaging in satire at the time…satire that reinforced sexist stereotypes while mocking them.
  • Brava to Cher for being willing to appear in that costume next to Welch. That’s generous performing and the mark of an ethical (and confident) host. She was willing to highlight her guest’s assets even they overshadowed her own. Many divas then and now would never tolerate such an unflattering comparison.
  • The Citizen Free Press, which dug up this clip today, fatuously introduced it by asking “Does Raquel have a better voice than Cher?” Morons. Talk about no good deed going unpunished: This is what Cher gets for picking a number for the two to perform that has a tiny range right in Welch’s vocal wheelhouse. Again, Cher was letting her guest shine at her own expense. No, Raquel Welch did not have a better voice than Cher, or one that was nearly as good. However, the video shows that she was capable of filling more than the sex symbol pigeon-hole she was stuck into by Hollywood for most of her career.
  • She could dance, too. (Cher could not.) This clip of Raquel giving her all to entertain the troops in Vietnam is a reminder that she too could be generous:

Twitter Ethics: The Dilemma Of The Asshole Tweeter

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Behold the tweet sequence above from the Twitter user who calls himself “BullshitSquared,” who is all in a huff because Twitter’s bots flagged a content-free ad hominem joke tweet and he hasn’t had his privileges restored for a month. Now he’s quitting the platform. Good.

Musk has to somehow stop Twitter from becoming such a cesspool of obscenity, racism, sexism, homophobia, stupid comments and useless invective that nobody serious wants to hang out there. At the same time, he needs to avoid censoring content—actual opinions, facts, assertions and ideas. This sounds easy, but it is very hard. It might be impossible.

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Ethics Observations On The Stanford Students’ Abuse Of Judge Duncan [Updated!]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I suppose on the plus side the recent debacle at Stanford Law School might make graduates of Yale Law School, Harvard and Georgetown Law Center feel a bit better about the utter ethics rot that has infected their alma mater. That’s really extreme “glass half full” reasoning, however. This past week, the Stanford Law Federalist Society hosted Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at an event during which he was scheduled to speak about law and judging on the Fifth Circuit Appellate Court, discussing “controversial cases handled by the Fifth Circuit that present difficult issues because the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on them is in flux,” and taking questions from students afterwards. But mob of students set out to harass and insult him so that he could not speak. When Tirien Steinbach, Stanford’s Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, took the podium to supposedly urge the students to respect the right of speakers to represent views they object to and the right of fellow students to hear them, she sided with demonstrators.

It is undeniable that an increasing number of our most elite educational institutions seek to “educate’ students in the methods and ideology of anti-democracy, endorsing and encouraging the use of tactics that intimidate speakers and prevent the free advocacy of ideas as well as the unimpeded expression of thoughts and opinions. That this is occurring at elite law schools ought to set ethics alarms ringing, as well as liberal culture survival alarms.

I know this is no surprise, but the New York Times has not deemed the episode worthy of reporting to its readers.

Here is a nine-minute video that will give you a sense of what occurred. The flashing neon orange warning light is Steinbach. When she should have stepped in and made it clear that the conduct of the students was unconscionable, an embarrassment to Stanford, and breach of academic freedom and the principles of free speech, she chose instead to throw metaphorical kerosene on the fire. Over at Powerline, Stephen Hayward writes,

If Stanford law school genuinely cares about free speech, Tirien Steinbach should soon be looking for another job. … there were five law school administrators present who [also]did nothing. They should be summarily dismissed, too.

I concur. We shall see, but holding one’s breath in anticipation of this result would be perilous.

The most thorough description of what transpired is here, on David Lat’s substack, in a detailed essay titled “Yale Law Is No Longer #1—For Free-Speech Debacles: Congratulations, Stanford Law, you’re the new poster child for intolerance.” Lat’s reporting makes it very clear that this conclusion is warranted. Lat, incidentally, is a reliably progressive legal commentator who has been embarrassed by the mutation of his creation, “Above the Law,” into an anti-free expression, anti-American nest of far-Left propagandists like Elie Mystal. His condemnation of Stanford’s handling of the debacle is being widely quoted, and because he is far from a conservative shill, is having an impact.

Imagine if someone like Lat had been entrusted with the January 6 riot footage instead of established Fox News conservative ideologue Tucker Carlson. Yeah, yeah, I digress, but those defending McCarthy’s decision are suffering from tunnel vision.

Back to the topic at hand:

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Wait, What? I Want To Know How CBS Can Justify This Headline…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Interesting.

I don’t know about you, but I sure am sick of abortion advocates refusing to deal with the core issue of whether an unborn child is a human life and an individual with a right to that life no matter how much it may inconvenience the people who brought it into existence, or just “part of the mother’s body” that she has the right to choose to remove, like a tumor, wart or bad tooth. The mainstream news media has been four-square in favor of the latter convenient boot-strapping argument with all of its intellectual dishonesty.

So how does CBS explain referring to the death of an “unborn child” as a murder? If it is murder to kill an unborn child, all other murder statutes hold that it is murder no matter who does the killing, since the UBC cannot consent to its own death. One can’t use violence as the distinction, because to the aborted unborn child, abortion is violence. There is a legitimate distinction to be made regarding when it is fair, honest and just to regard an unborn child as a human being with the right to have a chance at life, but CBS has skipped over that issue completely.

I want to hear the CBS explanation for how it can support killing unborn children when Democrats, progressives and feminists call for it, but call the act murder when it’s done in a shooting in Germany.

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A Final (I Promise!) Academy Awards Note On The Topic Of Hilarious Incompetence With A Big Scoop Of “Bias Makes You Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This made my head explode. It’s still exploding.

The New York Times has a poignant article today headlined, “With Its Future at Stake, the Academy Tries to Fix the Oscars (Again).” It begins, “The awards telecast has been losing viewers for years. New leadership wants to reverse that starting Sunday, and ensure the financial well-being of the organization.” The article goes on to explain how new leadership at the Academy realizes that desperate measures need to be taken to regain the interest and trust of the audience. It goes on to say,

To secure a distribution contract of similar value when its deal with ABC expires, the academy must reverse viewership declines. A less lucrative deal could imperil some of the organization’s year-round activities, including film restoration. “This is so important to the livelihood and future of the organization that we better confront it,” Ms. Yang said….

The academy is hopeful that Nielsen’s ratings meters for the Oscars will tick upward on Sunday. Big musical stars, including Rihanna, are scheduled to perform their nominated songs; Lenny Kravitz will perform during the “In Memoriam” segment. Lady Gaga will be absent, though, with Oscars producers saying on Wednesday that she was too busy filming a movie to perform her nominated song from “Top Gun: Maverick.”

The nominee pool for best picture has never before included more than one billion-dollar ticket seller, according to box office databases, and this year there are two. “Top Gun: Maverick” collected $1.5 billion, and “Avatar: The Way of Water” took in $2.3 billion. The front-runner for best picture, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” generated $104 million in ticket sales. (Viewership tends to increase when popular films are nominated.)…“It should be about unity and celebrating this industry,” Mr. Kramer said. “People are still consuming movies. People love movies. Perhaps they’re doing it on streaming more than they did a few years ago. But our art form is as relevant as ever.”

Oh…the article casually drops in this bit of information, almost as an afterthought:

Jimmy Kimmel will return as the host on Sunday…

KABOOM!

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Open Forum: Spring Cleaning Edition!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

It may be that Spring is officially ten days off, but here in Alexandria, Virginia, Dogwoods are blooming, the Bradford Pears have exploded with brilliant blossoms, the cherry trees have popped, and I’m worrying about the Red Sox (who are undefeated after eleven Spring Training games, meaning that they must be really bad). Damn climate change!

I thought it was a rather turbulent week ethics-wise, and I know that, as usual, a lot was missed here. It was another one of those weeks that I found myself full of self-loathing for not figuring out how to make ethics more profitable without making it unethical—ye olde “ethical vs non-ethical considerations dilemma.

That’s enough blather from me, though: You’re on!

Disney Continues Its Transformation Into The Great Stupid’s Cultural Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Disney’s animated/live action feature “Song of the South” (1946) is, to say the least, not a metaphorical hill worth dying on. The animated sections are excellent, but Walt, for reasons known best to him, decided to ignore good advice from various members of the black community who advised him not to use the movie to romanticize plantation life, with happy slaves singing away in the Land of Cotton where old times are not forgotten. “Song of the South’s” version of the Old South makes “Gone With The Wind” seem like the “1619 Project” by comparison; shame on Walt, who spoiled any chance of Joel Chandler Harris’s American folk tales being preserved in our culture.

Of course, Walt’s lapse of judgment doesn’t mean, or shouldn’t mean, that people who want to see the movie (and the screen legacy of African-American actor James Baskett, who deserves to be remembered) ought to be prevented from doing so. 21st Century Corporate Disney, however, has fully embraced the paternalistic view that big media companies and the government know best, so “Song of the South” has been treated like those photos of old Soviet leaders who fell out of favor: erased, banished. Nope, sorry, can’t see it, folks: it will make you racist, or if you are properly woke, cause an aneurysm, or something.

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