Actually, when we first heard of David Leavitt, a gaming writer with delusions of grandeur, the Ethics Alarms verdict was not that he was an ethics villain, because the particular misconduct that sparked that 2020 post wasn’t quite dastardly enough (or maybe I was in a charitable mood). That was after he had found a mislabeled electric toothbrush (priced at $0.01 rather than $100) at Target, and when the checkout employee refused to sell the item at what was obviously an erroneous price and the store manager backed up the clerk, David went on a full-bore campaign of vengeance on Target.

“This [Target] manager Tori is not honoring the price of their items per Massachusetts law,” tweeted Leavitt, including the young manager’s photo. He called the police on the manager, and said he was prepared to take her and the store to court. Recognizing an ethically-dead progressive determined to harass evil corporations, disgusted observers started a GoFundMe page that raised $28,000 to cover the victimized manager’s inconvenience. The law Leavitt cited but never bothered to check in fact says that an obvious pricing error, one that qualifies as “gross,” isn’t enforceable. I wrote in part:

Leavitt is being an asshole, in technical terms. He knows the price posted was a mistake. A decent, fair, rational citizen would accept that, alert the store that it needs to fix the label, and stop at that. Maybe such a citizen will get some kind a reward from the store (this once happened to me). Instead, this epic jerk goes, in the immortal words of Marsellus Wallace in “Pulp Fiction,” “Medieval on Target’s ass,” and its poor manager too. His rationalization for his appalling behavior, and this is rich, is that he can’t afford to go to the dentist, so, presumably, he believes this entitles him to steal an electric toothbrush from Target…

I also wrote that I almost felt sorry for David because he had made a national fool of himself. I don’t feel sorry for him after his latest example of ethics rot. He obviously learned nothing, and indeed has decided to step a notch, several, in fact, from asshole to Ethics Villain.

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I really hate to do this, because there is a lot to write about, but I’m going to have to open up the blog to reader commentary early this week. I took a nasty fall in a (poorly lit, dangerous) hospital parking lot two days ago, and now have a bruise the approximate size of South Dakota in my sitting area, bowling ball-level swelling, and skinned fingers on both hands. In order of painfulness, I’d rank them sitting, bending over (I had to get my son to tie my shoes), getting into the car, lying down, walking and typing. Standing still isn’t too bad. Plus I’m commuting back and forth to that hospital.

I hope I can figure out a way to get out some posts—you would not believe how long this pathetic entry took and how many times I had to re-arrange the pillows.

Thoughts...

• That Columbus sketch was recorded in 1961. Was Stan Freberg ahead of his time , or what?
• Boy, Paul Fries did a great Orson Welles impression!
• Ethics Alarms has blown hot and cold on Columbus Day; you can read (or reread) the negative take from nine years ago here. Still, he was a brave man and a visionary, and attention must be paid.
• And yet in the daily feature “This Day in History” for today, Columbus isn’t mentioned, perhaps because the “New World” was sighted on October 11. The stupid Monday holiday rule makes no sense when it is linked to an actual event with an established date. Columbus’s big moment at least deserves the right date.

1. Elon Musk can’t take over soon enough for me. Twitter, right on cue, proved its totalitarian inclinations by banning this tweet on the pretense that it was “misinformation”:

It wasn’t misinformation, just information that upsets a progressive, vaccine Nazi narrative. Eventually Twitter was shamed into reinstating the announcement, but it doesn’t matter: again, this is signature significance. A trustworthy platform doesn’t do this, not even once. Prof. Turley on his blog was astute enough to remind us that years ago, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was asked how Twitter would balance its efforts to combat misinformation with wanting to “protect free speech as a core value” and to respect the First Amendment. He responded that the company is “not to be bound by the First Amendment” and will regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.” Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.” Got it. [Pointer: Steve Witherspoon]

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It took quite a few mistakes, varieties of wrongful conduct, incompetence and negligence to kill Phil Paxson. He was driving home from his daughter’s ninth birthday party in Hickory, North Carolina, using a GPS to guide himself through a dark and rainy night. But the GPS hadn’t been updated for a while: Phil was going to get around to it, but never did. The GPS directed him to take a bridge that was no longer there: it had been washed away in a storm nine years ago. It still wasn’t repaired because the state of North Carolina and the city of Hickory couldn’t, or wouldn’t, agree on who should pay for it.

While they were debating, kids kept stealing the warning signs and barriers, like the young Addams Family son above. There was no barrier or warning as Phil drove along, following the dulcet tones of the GPS lady.

So he plunged into the river to his death on September 29, 2022.

The Unibomber would have something to say about our dependence on technology, and how dangerous it is to rely on machines. Relying on government bureaucracies is even more dangerous. Apparently we also can’t rely on families, schools, churches and society to install the most basic ethics alarms in our young, like the one that pings when they think, “Hey, that ‘STOP! Bridge Out!’ sign would look cool in my room!”

Phil Paxon was killed by an excess of trust.

Nice.

Northeastern University’s law school this week erroneously emailed 205 current applicants and nearly 4,000 more who had applied the previous year with an offer of admission for its 2023 class.

The Boston school discovered the mistake and sent a follow-up “Oopsie! Never mind!”email several hours later, blaming “a technical error.” “The school of law deeply regrets this unintended mistake and is taking steps to ensure that it will not happen in the future,” the university said in part.

Oh! Well, that’s okay then, as long as you’re taking steps! Nope…not good enough, not nearly. There are some mistakes that simply cannot be excused, because one simply cannot allow them to happen. Telling anxious applicants for a coveted position or benefit that they have been accepted when they have not is a blatant one, and the remedy should be, in cases like this, to be accountable and follow through on the promise of the mistaken message. For one thing, such a tradition would guarantee schools are more careful.

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Come into the Light! All are welcome!

…which reminds me: interestingly, the professional listserv where I and another lawyer were reprimanded and threatened for daring to express non-conforming opinions in a forum where the previous president feels it necessary to include “he,him” to his posts went almost silent yesterday, The Day After. There were just three timid offerings as opposed to the usual 15-40 in what is usually a very active platform. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I’m pretty sure what looked like a sudden drop-off in enthusiasm was noticed. Good. Maybe it will spark some introspection from the would-be censors.

I belong to a distinguished legal association—I bet you can guess the field– that one would expect to understand the importance, indeed the necessity, of encouraging open discourse that is welcoming to divergent points of view. Yet yesterday, when I and another lawyer dared to make observations that varied from official progressive cant, the president of the organization, no less, reprimanded us for making comments others on the list found “offensive.” She then posted the listserv’s rules and standards which, as with all such things, were completely subjective, and translated to, in the words of my similarly reprimanded colleague, opinions that conform to the consensus here are acceptable; those that do not are uncivil and subject to censure. Finally, in a remarkable display of self-indictment, she told my colleague that continued publication of non-complying positions and arguments would result in his losing professional referrals.

That’s called “a threat.” It’s also called “chilling speech.”

To the target of this reprimand’s credit, he responded (no weenie he): “I guess I’ll just have to down-size then.” I would have opted for the less elegant “Bite me,” and will, if I have the opportunity in the future.

This is no right-wing conspiracy theory. This is what is going on in all the professions now. I know that there are many lawyers on the list who have been cowed into silence, and shame on them. The only way to fight nascent totalitarians is to fight them.

And that’s the way it is.