Captain Compliance brings ethics reliance!

After I wrote here that I was inclined to return to Twitter once it stopped partisan censorship and double standards, commenter Michael West asked if I would keep the same handle, “Captain Compliance.” I realized I had never featured my alter ego, the visitor from the distant Ethics Planet who ethics-bombed corporate meetings, conventions and retreats to inculcate eager managers and employees in workplace ethics. I portrayed the always masked Captain primarily under the auspices of Altria, which even sent me to try to inject ethics into the operations of its subsidiary R.J. Reynolds. (It did not go well.) I created the character as one of the “out there” options for introducing Altria’s new compliance program, and, to my amazement, they bought it. (They were especially impressed that I shaved my head for the role.)

That photo was part of a feature on the Captain in the D.C. bar’s magazine, showing CC as he burst into a local home to point out some neighborhood ethics. Now the Captain is all but forgotten…did he really exist? Has he gone to the Ethics Planet for good? Nobody knows.

But I still have his costume, should he decide to return…

1. Some progressives, it seems, have just nightmares, not dreams. Here is how the New York Times reviewer began her critique of the new revival of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth”:

[H]ave human beings really proved their worth? We have brought the world calculus, the sonnet, no-knead bread. But think of what we have inflicted: environmental devastation, species collapse, atrocities of various complexions. Humans keep surviving. We’re fit that way. But when you think about it — should we?

Once, I would have dismissed such a reflection as reviewer gamesmanship, but now I wonder. The Left’s recent tantrums and excesses have made me wonder if progressives are permanently and irredeemably unhappy, literally dissatisfied not only with their nation, its culture and and their heritage, but also with humanity and life in general. The Times reviewer praises the director for reversing the ultimately optimistic view of Wilder’s 1942 comedy. She muses, “The stage blooms with a thousand flowers, and when characters traverse that meadow, it feels like a dream. Do we really want to wake from it? When “The Skin of Our Teeth” first opened, in 1942, the world wobbled on the threshold of disaster. Now, it seems, we are wobbling again.”

Yes, she really compares 2022 to World War II. Well who can blame her? The mask mandate was overturned! Elon Musk might let Donald Trump back on Twitter! Republicans are requiring voters to prove they are who they say they are! The Supreme Court is about to rule that nascent human beings can’t be killed if they are more than 15 weeks old!!!! People seem to resist the international dictatorship that will eliminate capitalism and individual liberties to save humanity from a fiery death in ten years! Well, 20 maybe. OK, a hundred at the most…

Of less import, but significant nonetheless, the Times critic notes that

[I]n most productions, the Antrobuses are white, but here they are Black, which lends that choice particular resonance, twisting the knife of human cruelty. This strategy doesn’t warp the play so much as deepen it.

I have never seen a production of “The Skin of Our Teeth” in which the Antrobus  family, the play’s stand-in for the human race, wasn’t multi-racial. But as we have all learned after the George Floyd Freak-Out, everything is “deepened” and improved by replacing white people with black people. Jake from State Farm! Vice-Presidents! Supreme Court Justices! Continue reading →

Today is the anniversary of a heart-warming ethics story that seems especially bitter today. Worse, it had a terrible ending.

1983 on April 25, Russian leader Yuri Andropov released the letter he had written to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Maine. She had sent him a letter the previous December asking if the Soviet Union was planning to start a nuclear war. Andropov’s response assured her said that Russian people wanted to “live in peace, to trade and cooperate with all our neighbors on the globe, no matter how close or far away they are, and, certainly, with such a great country as the United States of America.” He added, “Yes, Samantha, we in the Soviet Union are endeavoring and doing everything so that there will be no war between our two countries, so that there will be no war at all on earth.”

It was a propaganda and public relations stunt, of course. President Reagan had the Soviets on the defensive as the Cold War was at another peak; he had called the USSR an “evil empire,” and was increasing defense spending. Sending a kind, avuncular letter to a fearful child was a no-brainer. The adviser who came up with the idea probably got extra food rations.

Smith accepted Andropov’s invitation and flew to the Soviet Union with her parents. The episode turned her into an international celebrity and an adorable advocate for peace. Smith had natural charm and charisma, allowing her to be an appealing speaker and to begin an acting career, landing a role on TV series. She also wrote a children’s book, all of this before she was out of junior high.

In August 1985, Samantha Smith died in a plane crash at the age of 13.

1 Just bite me, Microsoft. Microsoft Word now has a “diversity” category in its document editing softwear. It just told me that I shouldn’t write “Mrs.” and that the “correct” word was “Ms.” I was writing about a domestic abuse lawsuit, and “Mrs.” was the appropriate title. Political correctness policing isn’t “proofreading.”

2. Speaking of masks...

• Roland Martin, one of the more obnoxious of the CNN stable of race-baiters, outed himself as a full-fledged pro-mask wacko with this photo…

…and the tweet, “I don’t give a damn what some grossly unqualified Donald Trump judge said, I’m double masked and wearing goggles on this Nashville to DC flight,” Martin tweeted. “I had COVID in December. Y’all can KISS MY ASS about me not wanting it again. And any fool saying they don’t matter is a damn liar.”

And the goggles, you ass? Meanwhile, social media sleuths quickly found another photo of Martin two weeks ago in a group where neither he nor anyone else was masked. As for U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, her credentials as a legal scholar are impeccable. Martin is an unethical journalist who knows nothing about the law, but he can brink Donald Trump into any subject.

• Physician Dr. Kavita Patel, an NBC News medical contributor,told viewers that you should bring extra face masks with you when flying and pressure the people sitting next to you on the plane wear them.
• Now, as they so richly deserve to be, mask requirements are finally completely without integrity, consistency  or rationale, with different rules for types of transportation and different cities and contradictory policies everywhere you look. The closest thing CNN has to a moderate, occasionally objective news host, Michael Smerconish, actually said on the air that it made no sense for the Biden Administration to be appealing the end of the public transportation mask ban while preparing to end Title 42, the legal authority for contagion-related expulsions of illegal aliens and migrants. Ya think?

3. Gee, can you think of any other reason, you lying, cowardly hack? In an interview on “60 Minutes” FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed that there was a 59% increase in the murders of police officers in 2021, with 73 officers killed.  CBS News’ Scott Pelley asked what caused the surge of homicides, and Wray said, “Certainly the pandemic didn’t help. There’s a variety of ways in which that contributed to it.”

The fact that the mainstream media, the Democratic Party’s mayors and officials and BLM-bootlicking corporate lackeys spent months painting police as murderous racists had nothing to do with it, of course.

4. Aaaand  one of the states that helped get some of those police killed just saw passed a law banning the word “marijuana” from official state law and documents. Democratic Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill into law in March. Why, you ask? Listen to the bill’s sponsor: “The term ‘marijuana’ itself is pejorative and racist,” Washington state Representative Melanie Morgan (D) said during testimony regarding the piece of legislation she  sponsored. “As recreational marijuana use became more popular, it was negatively associated with Mexican immigrants,” she said. “Even though it seems simple because it’s just one word, the reality is we’re healing the wrongs that were committed against Black and Brown people around cannabis.” There is not now nor has there been in my lifetime any negative racial implications to the word “marijuana,” and I hereby pledge to never again uses any synonym for the corrupting and destructive drug. Marijuana it is, and nothing but. I request that all EA commenters observe this custom as well.

5. BREAKING! Elon Musk has taken over Twitter. Once that’s final, I will one again get on the platform, which I ditched in protest of its ham-handed, partisan double standards.

Musk is a weird guy whose ethics are suspect, but this is a positive development for free speech and social media accountability.

That was the ethics week that was…

Here are five highlights from the previous 7 days’ commentary…

• From 4/23: Expert? EXPERT? Fauci Doesn’t Even Comprehend The Government He Works For!

More evidence that Dr. Fauci is a blight on the government and the nation.

• From 4/23: Rep. Cawthorne And The Cross-Dressing Future Congressman Principle Question

Ridiculous Congressman, complex issue…

• From 4/21: DeSantis Strikes Back: Ethics Dunce Disney Gets The Legal And Ethical Consequences It Deserved

The first of many posts related to this still-roiling controversy.

• From 4/20: Observations On The Great “Libs Of TikTok” Affair And Doxxing Ethics

An epic instance of a bad and biased journalist and an unethical enabling newspaper

• From 4/18: Two From The Ethics Alarms “I Don’t Understand This At All” Files…Part I: The Birthday Party Freakout

Come for the party, stay for the link to Part 2…

Today is Easter in the Greek Orthodox Church. Different calendar, you know. Our family, with my mother a member of that church and my father a Methodist, celebrated Easter on the Roman Catholic date (unless the two Easters converged, which sometimes happens), presumably to allow my sister and I to be in sync with the wider culture’s Easter celebrations, and also because dying eggs many colors was a lot more fun than dying them all deep, dark red, which is the Greek custom. The Easter egg is symbolic of the tomb Jesus was in before the Resurrection; dyeing eggs red symbolizes Christ’s blood. Cracking a dyed egg is supposed to symbolize Jesus emerging from the tomb. On Greek Easter, everyone plays tsougrima (“clinking together)”with the red-dyed eggs. One player holds a red egg and taps it against another player’s egg, and the loser is the one whose egg cracks. Then the Easter egg warrior with the unbroken egg uses the same end of his or her egg to try to crack the other end of their opponent’s egg. While the participants do this, one says “Christos Anesti!” (“Christ has risen!”) and the other celebrant responds “Alithos Anesti!” (“Indeed He has risen!”). The Marshalls played the egg game with the regular multi-colored Easter eggs, and on non-Greek Easter. My mother never explained the symbolism of it all to us; she just liked cracking eggs. I assumed everyone did it, Greek or not. As in all competitions, Mom was ruthless at tsougrima.

Incidentally, it was considered unethical to strike an opponent’s egg in the side rather than the end, and doing so meant you forfeited the game.

1. “Go woke, go broke,” or at least become irrelevant. The stock plunges of both Disney and Netflix are at least substantially related to their imposing progressive and partisan propaganda on the substantial percentage of their market that doesn’t want to have such positions rammed down their metaphorical throats. Honors-bestowing organizations like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Nobel Prize have seen the perception of their credibility and integrity fall mightily after attaching political requirements to their awards. Now an open letter signed by dozens of professional journalism organizations, nonprofits, and labor unions asks the Pulitzer Prizes to require newsrooms to participate in the News Leaders Association’s annual diversity survey (or similar) by 2024 in order to be considered for their journalism awards. I have no doubt that the Pulitzers will capitulate to this plan to make only left-driven organizations eligible for honors in journalism, for the prizes are already heavily tilted ideologically: recall that the New York Times and its racist reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones were rewarded for the fake history-spreading “1619” project. On the other hand, because of that and similar fiascos, the Pulitzers have lost much of their sheen already.

Continue reading →

Yikes.

Weatherford College pitcher Owen Woodward was kicked off the team after he attacked the opposing player who had just hit a home run off him.

Weatherford College said in a statement, “The WC student in question will face potential disciplinary action from the Office of Student Services up to and possibly including expulsion. The Weatherford College Police Department is also investigating the incident and has taken statements.”

We are shocked and disappointed at what happened in our game today,” the team’s coach said in a statement. “We do not condone this type of behavior. We have worked hard to build a program with the highest of standards. We are completely embarrassed by this incident, and we apologize to North Central Texas College and the fans of WC baseball. This type of behavior cannot be tolerated.”

Why yes, tackle baseball has never really caught on.

Even Ralph Branca, who was the pitcher in this most crushing of all home runs, didn’t stoop to that…

 

1. NPR reported that “DeSantis wanted to punish Disney. Repealing its tax status may hurt taxpayers instead. The bill will undercut Disney’s autonomy, but it could impose a steep cost on Orange and Osceola counties, where the theme park is located. The two counties would inherit the Disney district’s debts, which officials say would result in higher taxes.” This theme was echoed—talk about echo chambers!–all over the mainstream media, and it appears to be nonsense, an attempt to undermine the decision and to mislead the public. “Officials” turned out to be a single Orange County Democrat, so the plural was fake news as well as a dishonest appeal to authority. In addition, the only entity certain to see a tax hike as a result of the loss of Disney’s special status will be Disney because its tax break is gone. And why would Florida be on the hook for Disney’s debts? Disney borrowed the money, and Disney still has the cash to pay them off. [Source: Don Surber]

2. On the incompetence and irresponsible conduct front, Disney’s action’s mandate this standard Ethics Alarms clip in reference to the company’s woke CEO…

Since it impetuously shot off its public declaration of opposition to the Florida Parental Rights Law, Disney’s stock has dropped precipitously, costing the company nearly $50 billion in value. This hurts stockholders obviously, and constitutes a needless self-inflicted wound. Continue reading →

More than a year since the 2020 election, the mainstream media’s statement as fact that there were no reasons to question the integrity of the Presidential vote elected Joe Biden, and that the continuing insistence by Donald Trump that the election was “stolen” is a lie are still virtually daily features of the news. It was the main topic in the unethically edited Piers Morgan interview of Trump this week. Meanwhile, the “Trump has set out to destroy Americans’ trust in elections!” mantra is the linchpin in the “Republicans are an existential threat to democracy!” Big Lie that has become one of the handful of desperate messages the Democratic Party will use to try to avoid disaster in November.

Trump’s conviction (he’s may be mistaken, but he’s not lying) that the election was stolen is currently being weaponized by the Democratic House to show that the Jan.6 riot at the Capitol was an attempted coup (while their two partisan impeachments were not), and that his supporters in the GOP were accomplices in an “insurrection.”

Intrinsic to the narrative is the sub-narrative that Republicans are gullible zombies who believe whatever Trump tells them to believe, and that there is no evidence whatsoever to support suspicions about the election, though in crucial states voting laws were loosened illegally, insecure “drop-boxes” were widely employed, and mail-in ballots made undetectable vote manipulation ridiculously easy….never mind the successful efforts by social media platforms and the mainstream media to bury significant news that would hurt Biden’s support.

You know: no reason to be suspicious whatsoever. Continue reading →