U.S. Society

Ethics Wrap-Up: Stupid Confirmation Tricks

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Marx said that history begins as tragedy and ends up as face. Let’s begin with a farce. Here was the headline of a Washington Post Op-Ed today: “The Senate Judiciary Committee mistreated Judge Jackson. I should know.” The author: Anita Hill, the Democratic lawyer and former staffer of Clarence Thomas who ambushed the then-SCOTUS nominee and accused him of unverifiable sexual harassment (for example, she said he once made a joke about a pubic hair on a Coke can in a meeting!), smearing and embarrassing him on national TV. In this latest screed, she’s not analogizing Thomas’s treatment by Democrats to that of Republicans attacking Jackson. It’s the criticism of herself for turning those 1991 hearings into a circus she thinks is telling, for she is black, and…wait, Thomas is also black, and he, like Jackson, was being considered before America for the highest court in the land. But Hill’s a black woman, see, so that justifies the column’s thesis, apparently. She’s a law professor, and that’s the quality of her analogy skills. Let’s hope Judge Jackson is better.

Hill has been making a living off of her unethical attempt to derail Thomas’s career for over 30 years. The only fair response to her at this point is, “Shut up, Anita.”  But at least she made me laugh.

Now that we’ve checked the funny papers, back to the news:

The Senate today confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, with three Republicans adding their support to the unanimous Democratic block, making the vote 53-47.

Ethics observations: Continue reading →

And Now For Something Completely Stupid: “Cracker Jill”

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

The Great Stupid obviously know no bounds.

PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay has announced that “Cracker Jills” is now an official product, because popcorn and peanuts are obviously the way to celebrate women  in sports. The snack will be available in ballparks, and as part of the pandering exercise, PepsiCo will donate $200,000 Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF).

Cracker Jills are no different in substance than the 125-year old classic Cracker Jack snacks, but the packages features five different representations of women on the special-edition bags. They represent the most populous ethnicities  in the U.S. according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, because just representing just one woman to stand for all would be racist, or “exclusive” or something. Continue reading →

Pre-Baseball Season Ethics Warm-Up, 4/6/2022 (Before I Am Distracted For the Next 7 Months)

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The 2022 baseball season starts tomorrow; the Boston Red Sox will play the New York Yankees. This will elevate my mood and lessen my stress until the ned of October, absent unforeseen disasters. It will also provide yet undetermined fodder for ethics posts, for baseball is and ever has been an ethics cornucopia with relevance to the rest of the culture and society. I’ve often considered starting a baseball ethics blog—there isn’t one— but even fewer people would read that blog than this one.

1. The Times spreads misinformation about the Wuhan virus while accusing a doctor of spreading misinformation about the Wuhan virus. Apparently the news media fearmongering about the pandemic will never end. In a front page article earlier this week, the Times told readers that the virus and its close family members have “now killed nearly one million people in the United States.” That’s an inflated figure, how much so we may never know. It does not distinguish between those who died from the virus and those who died with the virus” to the CDC, which set out to maximize fear of the infection so the government could take liberty-squelching measures and get away with it. The next day, the Times had another front page article that provided clues to the previous article’s deliberate deceit: “Covid and Diabetes, Colliding in a Public Health Train Wreck.“ A married couple both got the virus; the woman recovered easily, the man is now confined to a wheelchair. He has diabetes, and the article tells us ” several studies suggest that 30 to 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the United States have occurred among people with diabetes.” Other studies find that that being obese my triple the likelihood of death during the pandemic. Here is the photo from the article:

I find the comparison with how the news media handled AIDs in the 80s fascinating. AID crippled the immune system, and sufferers were often killed by opportunistic infections that they would have fought off before acquiring the HIV virus. Yet these people were always described as AID victims, and their names added to the list of those who had perished “from” AIDS. But when a Wuhan virus infection adds to the health risks of diabetes or obesity, it’s the virus that gets credit for the death—because that’s what the the new media wants the public to fear. Continue reading →

“When Ethics Fails, The Law Steps In”…Or In This Case, Technology

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

That’s part of a feature from a 1920’s magazine about how catchers and pitchers communicate regarding pitch selection in baseball. (I had Earl Smith on one of my favorite Strat-O-Matic teams, the 1922 Giants!) Trying to steal signs so a batter would know what pitch was coming—a huge advantage—was long part of the game and considered legal and fair, as long as the efforts came on the field. Once a team started using  spies in the stands and secret relay systems not involving players, the practice became unethical.

In 2017, as exhaustively discussed here in these posts, the Houston Astros used a technology-assisted system of sign stealing to win their division, the American League play-offs, and the World Series. It was one of the three most significant scandals in the history of the sport, trailing only the Black Sox World Series fixing plot in 1919 and the steroid scandal on the Nineties. Baseball, as a sport that values continuity and nostalgia, hates to change, but as with its acceptance of replay challenges to over-turn bad calls by umpires, the sport cannot pretend that technology hasn’t rendered some aspects of the game obsolete. There are too many ways to use technology to steal signs now.

Major League Baseball, following the Ethics Alarms motto that when ethics fails, the law steps in (and usually makes a mess of things), tightened its rules and penalties for illegal sign-stealing, but wisely recognized that rules wouldn’t be enough. Baseball managers, coaches and player are not known for well-functioning ethics alarms, and the financial benefits of cheating can be substantial: several Astros players had spectacular years at the plate in 2017 far beyond what they achieved before or since. All of them are many millions richer for it.

And thus it is that Major League Baseball announced yesterday that teams this season will begin using electronic devices that transmit signals from catchers to pitchers. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Amber Athey, Washington Editor for “The Spectator”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Company officials admitted that the perception of racism was more important than whether or not my tweet was actually racist.”

—Amber Athey, explaining how she was fired as a morning co-host of D.C.’s WMAL’s public affairs show, “O’Connor & Company.”

I will assume (Arguendo!) that Athey’s account is accurate; so far, the executives responsible haven’t denied it.

This is one of those periodic episodes that should be a trivial local story but that reverberates with significance. WMAL, owned by Cumulus Media, is a popular D.C. AM radio station (especially at “drive time”) regarded as “conservative” because it employs conservative talk radio pundits here and there until they cross some invisible line and get fired or driven away. Amber Athey, the Washington editor for The Spectator magazine, was fired from the “O’Connor & Company” morning radio for a stupid tweet on a stupid topic regarding a stupid woman.

Continue reading →

“You Are So Fucked.”

/ Jack Marshall / 64 Comments

I was searching desperately for a YouTube clip of the memorable climax of “Michael Clayton,” in which the soul-dead law firm fixer played by George Clooney reveals to the Machiavellian general counsel of an industrial polluter that he is wearing a wire and that she has just been recorded admitting to murder. I couldn’t find the clip , but that memorable line (The New York Times would have written, “You Are So F-worded,” which just doesn’t work as well, somehow) jumped into my head the second I saw the photos of dead Ukrainian civilians in Bucha, murdered in undeniable war crimes and thrown into ditches.

Putin and Russia are so fucked. Neither can come back from this. The only thing delaying the inevitable is the news blackout in Russia, but that can’t last too much longer. Putin is actually claiming that the bloody corpses are “actors”—Russians may have a self-destructive addiction to dictators, but they aren’t stupid. The latest horrible news from Putin’s unprovoked invasion—as if there hadn’t been too much all ready—clinches it. Russia is now globally reviled, and it won’t come back from that until Putin is dead or standing trial.

Continue reading →

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

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

No ethics warm-up for two straight days leaves me with a big pile of stinking undiscussed and aging issues and events….

1. So much of “in sickness or in health”...Baseball Hall of Fame lock Albert Pujols, recently signed to another multi-million dollar contract to be the St. Louis Cardinals designated hitter, waited a couple of days after his wife Deidre underwent  surgery removing a brain tumor to announce he was divorcing her. “I realize this is not the most opportune time with Opening Day approaching and other family events that have recently taken place. These situations are never easy and isn’t something that just happened overnight,” he wrote in part.  Yeah, I’d put the baseball stuff after the family stuff, Albert. I’m sure this came as no surprise to his wife (at least I hope so), and whatever part of the $344 million he has been paid through the years will definitely help, but especially with five children, letting his wife at least recuperate from a traumatic operation before dumping her would seem to be the more ethical course. Pujols’ reputation is one of being a nice guy; you know, like Will Smith.

2. Watching free speech get “chilled” in real time...at the Grammys—who watches the Grammys?—host Trevor Noah began by promising that the he would be keeping “people’s names out of [his] mouth,” referring to Smith’s shouted demand after he went slap-happy. And he did. Today the New York Times critic approved of Noah not taking “meanspirited swipes.” If Chris Rock’s mild joke about a woman choosing to shave her head for a public appearance is now “mean-spirited,” the Left’s attempt to shut-down all comedy (except meanspirited swipes at men, whites and Republicans, of course, is nearing success.

3. Calling the Humane Society and the ASPCA! Martha Stewart announced that her four dogs killed her cat when they “mistook her for an interloper and killed her defenseless little self.” Did the dogs sign a statement to that effect? Her four dogs constituted a pack, and making a cat try to coexist with a pack of dogs is irresponsible. What really happened, I’s surmise, is that the cat and one of the dogs had what would have normally been a brief altercation, and the pack instinct kicked in for the other three. Continue reading →

And One More Thing…Addendum “To More Web Laziness, Negligence and Incompetence: “The Saddest Songs In History”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I went downstairs to eat lunch and realized that I couldn’t leave Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” out of the discussion started in the last post.

It may not be one of the 40 saddest songs of all time, but I know this: Marlene Dietrich’s performance of the anti-war ballad was the most emotional performance of any song I have ever witnessed in my life. She used “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” as the encore in her concerts, and the combination of her unique voice, amazing face, and what we know of her activities during the war, made the whole package overwhelming.

Here it is, essentially the same performance I saw live, almost 20 years later.

More Web Laziness, Negligence and Incompetence: “The Saddest Songs In History”

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I know, I know: these slideshows are clickbait. That’s no excuse for presenting what is supposed to be a definitive list when you haven’t done any research, talked to anyone with more perspective than you, or bothered to even think hard about what you are doing.

A web hack named James Cannon purported to have a slideshow of the 40 “saddest” songs “in history,” —someone may have even paid him for it—but as is usually the case with such stunts, “history” meant the obscenely narrow band of this guy’s experience, Because he didn’t know what he was talking about, he had to resort to filler, including songs that aren’t sad by any standard, like “It’s a Wonderful World,” while somehow missing classic songs that are world famous as heart-breakers. like, for heaven’s sake, “Danny Boy,” written by English songwriter Frederic Weatherly in 1913, and set to the traditional Irish melody of “Londonderry Air.” The song is still played at funerals, which would be a big hint, if Cannon performed a modicum of due diligence before making readers culturally and musically ignorant.

My objective isn’t to argue about all 40 songs; he’s as welcome to his list as I am to mine. But if your category is “history,” you can’t limit the field to recent pop music, which is, with a few (and seemingly arbitrary) exceptions what he does. You can’t make the list he purports to have made and completely stiff country western music, which is famously sad. This Hank Williams classic isn’t on the list of 40, for example:

Continue reading →

Three Ethics Metaphors: The Rise, The Presidency And The Fall Of Donald J. Trump, Part III: And This One Applies Equally To Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I bet everyone has forgotten about this series, which began on Ethics Alarms almost a year ago. I haven’t.

The first metaphor for the Trump Presidency was that of the passengers in an airplane navigating a storm voting to let a dog (in some versions, a chimp) try flying the craft. The metaphor was apt, and it’s still apt, even though moral luck worked its magic, and not only did the plane not crash, the dog turned out to a better pilot than anyone could have predicted. It was still irresponsible for this country to permit a man with Trump’s well-documented character flaws and proven proclivities both and executive and a human to be given such control over the destiny of the nation.

The second metaphor was from “Animal House”:

As I wrote:

A segment of the population decided that the system was rigged against them, that Democrats and Republicans were both involved in a massive, decades long con in which their primary goal was not to do what was in the public interest, but what was most likely to keep them in power and eventually line their pockets, and that their voices were not just being ignored, but that they were being insulted while being ignored. The so-called “deplorables” were mad as hell, and they weren’t going to take it any more. Voting for Trump was an “Up yours!” to the elites, the sanctimonious media, the corrupt Clintons, the hollow Obamas, and obviously corrupt Democrats like Pelosi and Harry Reid, machine Republicans like Mitch McConnell, and pompous think-tank conservative like Bill Kristol…It’s idiotic, but the message isn’t. It’s “Animal House”! and “Animal House” is as American as Doolittle’s Raid….In Germany, The Big Cheese says jump and the Germans say “How high?” In the US, the response is “Fuck you!” Obama never understood that…. I love that about America. And much as I hate the idea of an idiot being President, I do love the message and who it was sent to. America still has spunk.

Continue reading →