I’m going to give Justice Jackson the benefit of the doubt. Anyone, even a distinguished judge, can have a bad day and say something that just doesn’t come out right. Still, it must be said, her contribution to the many analogies and hypotheticals being tossed around in the Supreme Court during the oral argument of 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the case where a web designer claims that forcing her to create a wedding website for a same-sex couple violates her First Amendment Rights, was jaw-droppingly bad. Frightening, even.
Justice Neil Gorsuch had correctly noted that the objection at issue was not based on the status of the same-sex couple, but instead, the message that the business owner did not want to send. The question isn’t the “who” Gorsuch said, but the “what.” Exactly. And that’s why CNN’s headline on the case,“Supreme Court conservatives seem to side with website designer who doesn’t want to work with same-sex couples” is false and misleading. Lorie Smith has been very clear that she will work for anyone; she just won’t make same-sex wedding websites. It’s not “Who,” but “What.”
Now consider Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s rejoinder. Pay attention, please:
In my view, this is the gold standard of Christmas carols. Nobody know for certain who write the soaring melody. It might have been Handel.
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I apologize for the various WordPress glitches of late. They are fooling around with the software again. Now, on every draft post, I have to put up with idiotic suggestions from the platform on what to write about. Just now, it was, “Are you more of a night or morning person?” Get off my screen, you meddling fools! I don’t need your pedestrian input to find inspirations for an ethics blog’s content.
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The Twitter censorship story reminded me again of how biased, cowardly and dead wrong the left-ish commenters and silent readers here were over the past few years to flee Ethics Alarms because it accurately, fairly and objectively figured out how unjustified and sinister their favorite party’s treatment of President Trump, how contrived and rigged the Russian collusion investigation was, how destructive the two partisan impeachments were, how dangerous the mainstream media’s transformation into a propaganda weapon had become, and how ethically rotten their favorite party was. Ethics Alarms was right, they were wrong, and if even one of the self-exiled who pulled themselves up to their full height, stuck their defiant chins in the air, and accused me of “drinking the Kool-Aid” had an atom of courage or integrity, they would apologize and ask to have their commenting privileges restored. Instead, they remain enablers of the attacks on individual rights and democratic institutions by their apathy, acquiescence, and denial. People are always accusing me of being “upset” about the ethics issues we cover here. I almost never am. This, however, pisses me off.
1. Hopeless, but admirable.…Since Google has traveled from “Don’t Be Evil” to Big Tech ethics villainy, a new search engine has been launched, Freespoke, as a non-totalitarianism-enabling alternative. The problem with all of these competitors, like DuckDuckGo, is that they just aren’t as reliable. Still, I’ll give this one a chance. Here’s a good sign: a search for”ethics blog” turned up Ethics Alarms on the first page, 7th in line. On Google, the same search placed Ethics Alarms on the sixth page, after many sites that receive far less traffic and several that are functionally dead, like the Legal Ethics Forum, which once was one of my favorite resources. Its last post was last January, yet its two pages ahead of EA. Gee, I wonder why that would be? Looks like I can’t blame all of the reduced traffic here on pusillanimous wokesters… Continue reading →
This is going to be only one post when it ought to be about five. I’m restraining myself; here is another example of a story that has me in a self-flagellating mood because I have so mismanaged my life, time, opportunities and talents that I am reduced to fulminating futilely on an obscure blog that does nothing to effect any substantive change, at a period in our culture’s journey when ignorance and malevolence threaten the nation’s essence. Meanwhile, the likes of Alyssa Milano, Milo Yiannopoulos, and social media “influencers ” have millions of followers who heed their “wisdom.” Continue reading →
So far, not surprisingly, the mainstream media isn’t covering the story encompassed by Musk’s internal records about how Twitter helped bury the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. It is continuing to concentrate on Kanye West’s Nazi affection and his banning by Musk as its Twitter story of the day. This reflects poorly on Trump, you see. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!
Today Musk sent the relevant Twitter records to ex-Rolling Stone substack journalist Matt Taibbi, who tweeted lengthy Twitter-burst about what they show. I hate reading those 10 part Tweet-streams, so here is what they say put together:
“Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.'”
As in this attachment, from Musk’s documentation:
Taibbi continued,
“Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However… This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives…there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen” that the federal government had a role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop …the decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde [That’s her above] playing a key role. …Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.”This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams: Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy.
They just freelanced it,’ is how one former employee characterized the decision. ‘Hacking’ was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
Ethics Alarms barely touched on the wide and deep topic of Christmas music last year, relegating it to a “warm-up” intro and a re-post from 2015, so in the interests of tradition as much as anything—and the holiday season is all about tradition, after all—Here comes an ethics post, here comes an ethics post, right down Ethics Post Lane!
1. Unethical Lyrics
A. There are several sub-categories here. One which only fits the single Christmas song I just referenced, “Here Comes Santa Claus,” which is a lyric that violates the unwritten but important Christmas Music Separation Clause, which holds that a song can be about the religious holiday or it can be about Santa Clause and the secular holiday, but mixing the two is forbidden. Early in the song, one that Gene Autry wrote and sang, children are told to say their prayers, suggesting that if they don’t, Santa will not drop by, and then the song ends:
He’s a miracle come to all if we just follow the light So let’s give thanks to the Lord above, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight!
I bet you thought I was going to complain about “Santa Claus Lane,” didn’t you?
B. Insulting lyrics. The ethical value being trashed in these songs is respect. Any time a Christmas song lyric makes the listener think, “Wait a minute, does the singer think I’m an idiot?” the lyricist has crossed a line. In this ugly category:
“Little Saint Nick,” a Beach Boys effort by Brian Wilson, contains the lyric, “Christmas comes this time each year.” This annoyed me the first time I heard it, and has ever since. Yeah, Christmas comes at Christmastime. When else was it going to come? Mike Love actually sued to be given joint credit for this song.
“Holly Jolly Christmas,” the Burl Ives ditty by Johnny Marks, contains another statement of the obvious:
That’s not exactly the sign I saw stuck on the rear window of an automobile with Virginia tags that was in front of me for about 20 miles last month; the one I had to look at had the heart in place of “love.” I also couldn’t find anywhere online that sells such a thing, which is encouraging.
I found myself wondering what kind of person would display that message. It is virtue-signaling of the worst variety, simultaneously obnoxious, arrogant, stupid and self-defeating. It is self-defeating because there is nothing virtuous about someone who would proclaim “I love an autistic child.” What does this jerk want, applause? Pity? “Awwwwwww!”? Continue reading →
Yet this is what progressives and Democrats increasingly argue for to solve problems.
Exhibit #1: David Brooks
It hard to believe that David Brooks was once considered to be a conservative. Spend enough time in the New York Times culture, apparently, at least if your character, principles and integrity are as weak as David’s seem to be, and you will emerge from your chrysalis as a new, collectivist, proto-totalitarian.
Here’s Brooks on PBS talking about what he’d like to see installed to address gun violence:
President Biden spoke about red flagging, that you would find somebody you think is potentially dangerous, and we would be able to — authorities would be able to go in and take guns away.
That would take a gigantic cultural shift in this country, a revamping of the way we think about privacy, a revamping of the way we think about the role government plays in protecting the common good. I think it’d be something I think would be good not only for — to head off shootings, but good to live in a society where we cared more intimately about each other.
And I would be willing to give up certain privacies for that to happen. But, for many Americans, that would just be a massive cultural shift to regard community and regard our common good more frankly, in a European style. I think it would benefit our society in a whole range of areas, but it’s hard to see that kind of culture change to a society that’s been pretty individualistic for a long, long time.
Observe what “conservative” pundit Brooks is advocating here. The government decides someone is “dangerous” and can then take away Second Amendment rights. What would stop the government from taking other rights away that it might believe are “dangerous” in the hands of someone it fears? This is pre-crime. This is open-ended government control over individual liberty based on subjective standards. And David Brooks says he’d “be willing to give up certain privacies for that to happen,” because he knows that he would probably not be a target of such government oppression. After all, he’s now on the “right’ side.
The United States, he says, is “pretty individualistic,” meaning too individualistic, by European standards. Yet the United States of America was created expressly to reject the limitations on individualism placed on its citizens by European cultures and governments.
I’m preparing the annual Ethics Alarms Christmas music post, and thus thinking about holiday songs and performances. I think my top three performances in this realm of all time would be, first, Judy Garland’s rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” then Bing Crosby’s recording of “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” and Harry’s contribution to the Christmas canon above. I had a long drive last week and listened to the Sirius “Christmas Traditions” station. It’s depressing—I know I’ve mentioned this before—everyone you hear is dead. That can’t be a good thing for getting people into the Christmas spirit. I started playing a game: how many songs with dead singers would play before a currently living singer would show up? Fourteen songs went by, and then jazz artist Nancy Wilson popped up. Oooh! I was pretty sure she was still alive! Nope. I checked; Nancy checked out in 2018. The one living singer who has been played repeatedly so far is Johnny Mathis. He’s 87.
Hang in there, Johnny.
1. It’s really kind of amazing…these people flagrantly display their double standards and cynicism, and pay no price for it. Integrity? What integrity? House Democrats just picked a new leader in the House, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi stpping down (finally!) at the end of this term. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is the new power. Apparently the fact that he has been an outspoken “election denier” in the past (at least that’s what Democrats call it when Republicans question an election’s legitimacy) and Jeffries has been tapped immediately after the party made “election denial” a litmus test for fascism going into the midterm elections doesn’t bother anyone at all. Jeffries repeatedly denied the results of the 2016 presidential election, claiming that it was illegitimate and stolen.
“The more we learn about 2016 election the more ILLEGITIMATE it becomes,” Jeffries tweeted in 2018, referencing Trump defeating Hillary Clinton. “America deserves to know whether we have a FAKE President in the Oval Office.” In 2020, he called out Trump, saying, “history will never accept you as a legitimate President.” That the Republican Party couldn’t wipe the metaphorical floor with these liars and incompetents last month shows its rank incompetence. No wonder Democrats don’t even try to hide their hypocrisy.
The report from ABC News is rife with significance and illumination. Sayeth the network, a bulwark of the biased mainstream media propaganda machine, in its headline, “Twitter ends enforcement of COVID misinformation policy: Twitter is no longer enforcing its policy against misinformation about COVID-19.”
If one had to choose a single topic about which it is ridiculous and hypocritical for the news media to complain about alleged “misinformation,” I can’t imagine a more perfect one than the pandemic. The ABC story is unintentionally hilarious in its resolute refusal to acknowledge reality, thus qualifying as misinformation, disinformation, or perhaps just “typical unethical journalism deception” itself. ABC’s self-own is also useful, as it provides one more example, as if more were necessary, of how desperately the Axis of Evil (you know by now, I hope: “the resistance”/ Democratic Party/ mainstream media” anti-democracy team) needs to see Elon Musks mission to rescue free speech and the dissemination of non-conforming opinions and embargoed information fail.
Ethics Alarms 