Last week was a very lively one on Ethics Alarms; you’d hardly know it was an “echo chamber.” The uptick in quality may or may not have been the result of not having to argue with a now self-exiled commenter who kept complaining about the process here (and explaining why the New York Times wasn’t really biased because not all of its articles were biased), and having to correct a now banned knee-jerk progressive who believes every bit of spin and fake news that warms the hearts of progressives.

Here are five highlights that you might want to check out if you missed them, but you could just read all the April 7 posts…

• Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: Terms Of Affection And The Second Wife”

From 4/4: A COTD instant classic.

• Morning Ethics Ketchup, 4/5/2022: Ten Ethics Tales, And More Are Still On The Shelf!

From 4/5: More bang for your metaphorical buck: 10 ethics stories instead of just 5. (Special attention should be paid to #5,#9, and #10)

• Wait…WHICH Side Of The Ideological Divide Is A Threat To Democratic Institutions Again?

From 4/7: In which some Democrats and journalists advocate defying the Supreme Court in the interests of democracy. I’m not kidding!

• Let’s Play The Game Everyone Is Talking About: “Idiot Or Con Artist!” Today’s Contestant: Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

From 4/9: No, AOC, you idiot, nobody believes corporations are people….

• The University Of Chicago’s Oxymoronic “Disinformation And The Erosion Of Democracy” Conference

From 4/10: Student questions expose the embarrassing hypocrisy of a “disinformation” conference.

April 11 has a relevant leadership and ethics history lesson for today’s times, and it is also  a nice segue from the previous post involving a mega-jerk. For this, in 1951, is the date where President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur from command of the U.S. forces in Korea.

After MacArthur had assured the President that pushing into North Korea would not bring Red China into the Korean conflict, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops rushed into the North and battled American troops, driving them back into South Korea. MacArthur reacted by demandingpermission to bomb Communist China and use Nationalist Chinese forces from Taiwan against the it. President Truman, finding himself unimpressed with MacArthur’s wisdom and not wanting to expand the so-called “police action” further, flatly refused. MacArthur then engaged in a public lobbying campaign, openly challenging Truman’s decision as well as the traditional civilian command of the U.S. military. Finally, in one of the many gutsy (if not necessarily correct) decisions that marked his tenure in the White House, President Truman fired the popular MacArthur and replaced him with Gen. Matthew Ridgway.  Harry told the nation in a televised address, “I believe that we must try to limit the war to Korea for these vital reasons: To make sure that the precious lives of our fighting men are not wasted; to see that the security of our country and the free world is not needlessly jeopardized; and to prevent a third world war.” General MacArthur was fired, he added, “so that there would be no doubt or confusion as to the real purpose and aim of our policy.”

Truman stuck to his metaphorical guns, even as MacArthur returned to the United States to a hero’s welcome, parades, and declarations from politicians and others designed to undermine Truman’s authority and popularity, which was already on life support. MacArthur was invited to speak before Congress, and gave his maudlin “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away” speech. (You could trigger my old soldier father into a rant by just mentioning MacArthur.) Surprising many, MacArthur did “fade away.”

Good.

1. In ethics zugzwang, Texas blinks. One of the central ethics conflicts in the abortion problem is that a life is a life, and if it is unethically, morally and illegally ending a life to abort an unborn child, it is difficult to justify treating the mother differently from a doctor or anyone else. Gocha Allen Ramirez, a district attorney in Texas, exploded heads all over the state and nation by filing murder charges against Lizelle Herrera, who allegedly committed a “self-induced abortion.” Yesterday he backed down, dropping them. “In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her,” Ramirez, the DA for Starr, Jim Hogg, and Duval counties, said in a press release. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms already featured two telling episodes from the just completed “Disinformation And The Erosion Of Democracy” at the University of Chicago. The first [Item 3, here], widely reported by conservative mews media and ignored by the mainstream media, was the head-blowing answer by Ann Applebaum, leftist historian and pundit for the predictable publications,when asked about  (Speaking of disinformation!) the mainstream media’s deliberate burying and falsely discrediting of the Hunter Biden laptop revelation in the final weeks of the 2020 Presidential campaign. When a student asked a panel about that rather timely topic (since the New York Times and Washington Post both suddenly decided to admit the laptop was genuine), Applebaum said,

My problem with Hunter Biden’s laptop is I think it’s totally irrelevant. I mean, it’s not whether it’s disinformation… I didn’t think Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be President of the United States.

The fact that the emails on the laptop seemed to suggest that Joe Biden’s coke-head, ne’re-do-well son, in the course of his influence peddling, offered direct assistance from his father and even implied that Joe profited from his under-the-table deals was irrelevant to the election and not newsworthy? Fascinating! That should have opened up a great discussion, but panel moderator David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s advisor and campaign manager, cut the topic off the second “United States” had left Applebaum’s lips.

Writing on his blog, Prof. Jonathan Turley was aghast (I also should have devoted a whole post to this): Continue reading →

And neither does the law.

Ethics Alarms first flagged this perfect example of the Facts Don’t Matter phenomenon here, on Valentine’s Day. Amir Locke, an aspiring hip-hop artist, was asleep on a sofa in an apartment where he was staying as a guest when Minneapolis police burst into the room on a no-knock warrant. Understandably alarmed, the groggy young man, who was not involved in the crime that was the subject of the police search, tentatively raised his (licensed and legal) revolver from under the blanket. One of the officers, seeing the gun, fired his own weapon, killing Amir.

Because of the presumption that the police are all racist murderers seeking to kill innocent blacks, a Black Lives Matter core position especially in Minneapolis where George Floyd died, protesters shouting “No Justice, No Peace” again flooded the streets. It didn’t matter that any objective examination of the facts, including a film of the shooting, made it clear that neither the officer nor the victim had done anything wrong. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a professional race-baiter since his days in the U.S. Congress, predictably made an inflammatory statement that was a pure appeal to emotion:

Amir Locke’s life mattered. He was a young man with plans to move to Dallas, where he would be closer to his mom and — he hoped — build a career as a hip-hop artist, following in the musical steps of his father.

Of course his life mattered, but the statement was a deliberate call for civil unrest. It doesn’t matter how unfair it was that Locke was dead: the officer, Mark Hanneman, committed no crime, and if Ellison couldn’t discern that, then he has no business being a state attorney general. (He has no business being a state attorney general.)

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I’m not going to play out the entire TV game show trope, but you get the idea. That was the first thing that jumped into my head when I read the astounding AOC tweet above from yesterday, that would have justified many other standard Ethics Alarms categories: Unqualified Elected Official, Ethics Dunce, Unethical Tweet, Unethical Quote, or just KABOOM!, since it is head-exploding that a Democratic lawmaker would either have such an infantile understanding of corporate law or, in the alternative, deliberately try to confuse the generally ignorant public with such per se misinformation.

I will point out now, as a tangential matter, that Twitter hasn’t removed the tweet nor suspended AOC’s account, though her statement is straight-up false, and a more consequential and undeniable falsehood than most of those resulting in the platform’s removing commenting privileges from others.

Fact: Neither the Republican Party nor any lawyer, judge or non-ignoramous “believes corporations are people.” OAC’s outrageous framing on an important legal doctrine has become popular on the Left, from demagoguing politicians to propagandizing comics like Stephen Colbert ever since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which confirmed that the rights of free speech applied to associations of people as well as people themselves. Continue reading →

The Board of Governors for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences decided that the consequences for actor Will Smith’s attack on comedian and presenter Chris Rock during the 94th Oscars telecast should be and now will be for Smith to be banned from all Academy events, including the Oscars, for a decade—10 years.

Smith, who had already resigned from the Academy last week and promised to accept whatever punishment the Academy handed down, responded with a statement saying “I accept and respect the Academy’s decision.”

The Academy announced,

The 94th Oscars were meant to be a celebration of the many individuals in our community who did incredible work this past year; however, those moments were overshadowed by the unacceptable and harmful behavior we saw Mr. Smith exhibit on stage. During our telecast, we did not adequately address the situation in the room. For this, we are sorry. This was an opportunity for us to set an example for our guests, viewers and our Academy family around the world, and we fell short — unprepared for the unprecedented.

Today, the Board of Governors convened a meeting to discuss how best to respond to Will Smith’s actions at the Oscars, in addition to accepting his resignation. The Board has decided, for a period of 10 years from April 8, 2022, Mr. Smith shall not be permitted to attend any Academy events or programs, in person or virtually, including but not limited to the Academy Awards.

We want to express our deep gratitude to Mr. Rock for maintaining his composure under extraordinary circumstances. We also want to thank our hosts, nominees, presenters and winners for their poise and grace during our telecast.

This action we are taking today in response to Will Smith’s behavior is a step toward a larger goal of protecting the safety of our performers and guests, and restoring trust in the Academy. We also hope this can begin a time of healing and restoration for all involved and impacted.

Observations:

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Hmmm...I wondered where a determined conspiracy theorist here got the idea that we couldn’t know if the Ukrainian military killed the photographed “war crimes victims,” deposited them in mass graves and then blamed Russia. The commenter’s unlikely fantasy may have been based on an argument attributed to Tucker Carlson–in a fake quote circulated by Ethics Alarms-certified Fick Joe Walsh, the former GOP Congressman, on Twitter.

On April 4, Walsh sent the tweet above to his inexplicably numerous followers, seemingly showing that Carlson was repeating Russian propaganda in its denial of war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine. Just about everyone who wanted to condemn Carlson quickly assumed Walsh’s tweet was accurate. (I wouldn’t trust Joe Walsh to tell me the right time of day.) Newsweek did a partial rundown:

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I’m wracking my brain to explain why there are a significant number of skeptics out there who want to give Putin and Russia “the benefit of the doubt” and who will wait for “an investigation” before they will conclude that Ukraine is the victim in this deadly invasion and that  the country and its leader, Zelenskyy (are we supposed to include the extra “y” or not?) are hoaxing the world. I understand the talking heads like Tucker Carlson, who are dead-eyed opportunist’s who only care about controversy and ratings. I understand the isolationists (this includes Carlson as well), who think they have to make Zelenskyy a villain so the U.S. isn’t drawn into a war with Russia. But I don’t understand the rest of the “let’s not be so hard on Putin: all of what we hear and read may be Ukraine false-flag operations and propaganda” gang, some of whom were flushed out by this post. Since the “Putin is a victim” claim makes no sense whatsoever (like the Putin excuse, “I had to invade because NAZIS!!!”), I have some theories:

• The super-skeptics have been so damaged by the increasing vidence of media fake news and propaganda accompanied by exposed lies by all sides of the political spectrum, highlighted by the pandemic Ethics Train Wreckthat they literally don’t believe anything now. Anything. They are victims of ethics rot across our institutions and our culture. Unfortunately, disbelieving everything creates fear and paranoia.. It also presumed the kind of mass, bi-partisan conspiracy that is impossible to hide.
• They are Super-Trumpers, who, because Donald said some nice things about Putin and because the media sued the Russia collusion hoax to cripple his Presidency, the cognitive dissonance scale pushed them to excuse Putin.
• It is an extreme backlash to the news media’s sanctification of Zelenskyy, who has taken several anti-democratic measures and is probably using his position to get rich, because the leaders of most Second World nations like Ukraine do.
• The skeptics are Russian agents.
• They’re nuts.

Any other explanations?

1. Everything is seemingly spinning out of control! Apparently more pro tennis players are smashing or throwing their rackets. Recent episodes on the tour have come close to injuring officials, ballboys and girls and spectators, so the game is increasing penalties. Two statements in the recent Times story about the topic bothered me:

• “Long accepted as an entertaining idiosyncrasy of the sport…” Who goes to tennis tournaments to see some asshole throw a racket? When I played competitive tennis, throwing a racket was an automatic forfeit, plus the mark of an infantile jerk. When did that change? I guess it’s Donald Trump’s fault.
• “Racket-smashing tantrums have long been accepted as part of the game. Like hockey fights, they are a way for players to blow off steam. But as the broader culture becomes less tolerant of public displays of anger, and with an increasing number of close calls on the court, racket smashing suddenly no longer seems like an entertaining idiosyncrasy.” Who says the broader culture has become less tolerant of public displays of anger? That’s an assertion without evidence, especially after the Will Smith episode.

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