More than 10 years ago I wrote about Kristina Rei, 22, of St. Petersburg, Russia. She wanted to look like Jessica Rabbit, the cartoon character, so she got herself a pair of huge—lips.She has undergone over 100 silicon-injection procedures, and considers it just the initial step in her quest to look like Roger Rabbit’s Toon wife from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”. ” At the time, I asked whetherit ethical for a plastic surgeon to give her the ridiculous lips she coveted, since plastic surgeons are subject to the Hippocratic Oath like other doctors. My own position then and now, was that it is unethical, though I tried to give both sides of the issue.
“If Kristin can eat, drink and breathe with her mega-lips,” I wrote, “and there is no risk that they might explode, killing everyone near her, the decision to do what she wants is probably ethical, at least by medical ethics standards. The fact that her Chap-Stick costs will be astronomical is not the doctor’s concern, however.” Nevertheless, I concluded that “a plastic surgeon who assists a patient, especially one so young, in disfiguring herself to this extent is unethical. Autonomy is to be respected always, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Kristin’s lips are so far beyond reason that a plastic surgeon debases his profession by assisting in what can fairly be called self-mutilation.”
My bias regarding fake puffy lips does not involve such extreme disfigurement; indeed most would agree that young women getting their lips puffed up isn’t disfiguring at all. However, it is increasingly becoming apparent to me that this particular form of supposedly aesthetic enhancement is becoming a norm, and a harmful one.
The Ethics Alarms “Worst Excuse Ever” list of champions gained a new member this week.
Meet Merlin Lu.
Merlin Lu, a 21-year-old moron, has been charged with a hate crime, arson and other offenses after he set a cross on fire on June 9 in a Chicago park, police said. Lu admitted to a TV station this week that he was responsible for the the cross burning in Grant Park, but insisted that it was not a hate crime or intended to emulate the cross burnings the Ku Klux Klan infamously used during the Jim Crow era to terrorize blacks in the South.
Lu appeared in court Thursday on four felonies and four misdemeanors, including a hate crime, property damage and burning a cross to intimidate. He insists that he was protesting President Donald Trump and Christian nationalists, and had no intention of expressing racist hate for blacks, Catholics, and any of the symbol’s original targets. “I did know about this historical relevance beforehand. But I didn’t know the severity, how racially motivated it may seem from what I did,” Lu said of a burning cross. “Cause my protest has nothing to do with race.”
Lu’s defense attorney, Alexander Michael, told the judge that Lu was exercising free speech in a “foolish manner.” You mean like expressing himself in a manner that didn’t come within a mile of expressing what you meant? This reminds me of a bit in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” the Sondheim musical comedy, where the Roman slave Pseudolus is asked a question by an intimidating general. He answers “No!” and the general reacts by bellowing menacingly, “NO???!!!” to which Pseudolus quickly replies, “I mean yes! I said “no,” but I meant yes!”
Lu’s LinkedIn page says he has attended college in Indiana and Chicago, but he apparently never studied American history. Or law. Or logic.
Lu’s “My burning cross didn’t mean what burning crosses always mean and I didn’t think it would seem racially motivated” now joins the three previous worst excuses in Ethics Alarms annals, making the total four. In chronological order, the three earlier winners are…
I was once accused of engaging in deliberate candidate confusion. Arlington, Massachusetts is the largest municipality in the U.S. that still employs the ancient town meeting government structure. When I graduated from law school, I registered to run for the town Board of Selectmen, which sort of serves as the town equivalent to the U.S. Senate with the town meeting members playing the House of Representatives. People freaked out. My father was well-known and respected in Arlington, and since our names were the same, both of us were accused of deliberately trying to mislead voters.
But Democrats really did try to cheat this way in Alaska. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) is trying to hold off a challenge by former Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat trying to flip a critical GOP seat as her party is determined to take over the U.S. Senate in November despite being repeatedly revealed as the most cynical, ruthless and untrustworthy major U.S. party in history. To aid the cause, Democratic Party operatives recruited a retired teacher also named Dan Sullivan and got him on the ballot to split the Republican vote so Pelyola could prevail.
Piper Rockelle is human civilization rot. The child star turned slut-for-bucks epitomizes how the social media age has curdled childhood, taste and ethics. It’s an ugly story, and one that I was blissfully unaware of until recently.
Piper, 18, has been performing for money since she started winning kiddie beauty pageants—a dubious “ick or ethics” activity itself—from about the age of three. Her mother began uploading clips of her prancing around to YouTube when Piper was 8. The mother, a stage mother from Hell (and hopefully destined to end up there) moved her budding meal-ticket to LA when the girl was 10, “homeschooling” her (it is anyone’s guess how much of the schooling involved actual education) while selling her daughter’s images online. Next, Mom began recruiting “the Squad”, a group of other preteen children to exploit with Piper as the leader. First they were filmed doing darling little girl things until they were transitioned to tween “crush content”: scripted reality show-style drama with episodes about infatuation, coming of age, teenage angst, first kisses and dating.
Piper Rockelle became the most famous online “kidfluencer.” Her tween and teen content was popular and lucrative on YouTube, and Piper built a fan base of millions of bored low-lifes and budding pedophiles on TikTok and Instagram. Then, in 2022, eleven members of the Squad sued Rockelle’s mother Tiffany Smith, and her boyfriend and business partner, Hunter Hill, alleging abuse and exploitation. TheirYouTube channel was demonetised, costing Piper and her mom hundreds of thousands in lost dollars every month.
I’m sorry, Kim, to have to call you out as the unethical hack you are—I’m an ethics expert, you know— but then I didn’t ask you to invade my email inbox with your incompetent and deceptive substack essay, “Stop Talking About Biden. Start Talking About Trump. And no, I’m not linking to that dumb screed, because I’m not going to help you promote alleged expert commentary that in fact makes the public more ignorant than they already are.
Wehle is a member of the law professor Trump Deranged ward, which is quite extensive, as my recent unpleasant experiences with my own ilk, legal ethics professors, has amply demonstrated. Her background doesn’t suggest that that she is a progressive, but who knows. It is hard to believe that any lawyer who cites as authority the likes of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), both with extensive Ethics Alarms dossier s(because they are both spectacularly dishonest, biased and unethical) has any other excuse for doing so.
The argument that President Trump should be removed because he is mentally ill or demented has been a go-to “let’s get rid of Trump without having to beat him in an election” almost from the moment he was elected in 2016. It was high on the list—Plan E-— of my “Presidential Impeachment/Removal Plans, 2016 to 2020,” which you can easily review at the link above. As I wrote then, here Democrats and their allies expose their totalitarian drift: declaring anyone who opposed Soviet Communism had to be mentally deficient was a staple of the USSR. At this point, I consider anyone making that argument today proof of one or more conditions: crippling Trump hate, total lack of integrity, or wilful blindness. Since I don’t like writing the same post twice, I adequately explained what was so blatantly biased about the Second Term’s 25th Amendment bleating when I wrote in disgust in “Presidential Removal Plan E” In the Dumbest Way Possible, Raising the Need For a Similar “Incompetent Journalist Removal Plan”,
Maggie Haberman, the unethical and biased Times reporter who, often with her colleague Jonathan Swan, diligently devises news angles that will cause gullible Americans to fear and hate their President, has a new “scoop.” “Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right”the story is headlined. Let’s begin with the fact that as is so often the case with the Times, the headline is misleading and deceitful. When I read it, I assumed that the President had considered suspending a Constitutional right guaranteed to all Americans. Wouldn’t that be how you would read it? But the subhead makes it clear that the headline is scare-mongering: “Secret memos show that the White House debated last year, to a greater degree than previously known, whether to limit habeas corpus rights for undocumented immigrants.” Wait, the Times is playing language games again—undocumented immigrants? What the Times means is illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are people who have no right to be in the country at all. The U.S. generously (and unwisely, in my opinion) extends the constitutional rights all citizens possess to non-citizens, but that doesn’t mean that a strong argument can’t be mounted (as it has been and should be) that under certain conditions, people who are here illegally can have those rights suspended.
Maggie’s hit job story goes on to describe how a White House lawyer circulated a“confidential” memo explaining why this would be a bad idea, and as a result, the option of attempting to lock up illegal immigrants without due process of law was abandoned. In other words, nothing happened. The “news” is that the President and his advisors and lawyers discussed a possible solution to the deep and dangerous problems caused when the previous administration did not enforce U.S. laws, and decided against it. Oh, but see, it was “debated” to a “greater degree” than “previously known.” Hmmmm. At what point is debating an out-of-the-box policy too much debate when the end result is…nothing? Is a policy consideration not news when someone says, “We could do this!” and everyone says, “Nah. Are you nuts?” but suddenly is news when they say, “OK, let’s think about that” but soon someone delivers a memo that says “The idea is nuts” and then the idea is abandoned?
Taking their cue from Democrats, who seem hell-bent on proving that American voters are too stupid, inattentive and trivial to be entrusted with a Republic, here is an AI TV campaign attack video in the Alabama Lt. Governor race. Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen approved the head-exploding ad against John Wahl, the former Chair of the Alabama Republican Party to gain an advantage in the party’s runoff for the position. Trump endorsed Wahl, who finished in first place in the primary earlier this month but short of the 50% of votes necessary to win outright. Apparently he has a pet raccoon that sleeps on or in his bed with him. Now me, I would automatically vote against any candidate who would insult my intelligence with such an ad.
Meanwhile…
1. And now, the rest of the story.…Last August, EA told the story of Shannon Joslin, a Yosemite park ranger fired for mounting a Pride banner on El Capitan. Poor Shannon! “I’m devastated, said Joslin, “We don’t take our positions in the park service to make money or to have any kind of huge career gains. We take it because we love the places that we work. I have a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, and I could be making a lot more money in Silicon Valley, which is only a few hours away, but I made career choices to position myself in Yosemite National Park, because this is the place that I love the most.’” I asked, “Then why did you use your position to make an unauthorized political statement while marring the natural beauty that tourists expect to see in National Parks?”
Well, Shannon sued the Park Service (the lawyer who came up with the theory should be sanctioned), claiming that his/her First Amendment rights were breached—you know, because any other employee gets to put up political signs in the middle of their workplace without approval or permission, right? No? The dismissal was “vindictive” and “retaliatory” and meant to “communicate disapproval of a particular point of view”? Really? Uh, no. The stupid suit was dismissed last week.
In a side Great Stupid issue of continuing annoyance, the New York Times begins its report announcing that Shannon is non-binery and uses “they and them” pronouns, so it feels required to confuse readers by using plural pronouns to describe a single idiot throughout the story. Typical section: “To me this ruling isn’t a ‘win’ for the federal government,” they added in a text message. “This just slows down the process of allowing justice to be served for the American people and slows down allowing National Park Service employees to be effective stewards of public lands.” And the way to be stewards of public lands is to allow rangers to mar them with Pride flags. Brilliant! “Right now, it is unclear whether Dr. Joslin will ever have their day in court,” “their” lawyer said. Awww. What a shame that would be!
Sorry, back to the pronouns; the sheer stupidity of this whole episode got me off track. The duty of a news source is to make the facts clear to readers, not to accommodate all the political correctness hoops the subject of the story insists everyone jump through. Don’t know whether you’re male or female? Too bad. Pick one. Or be prepared for the singular pronoun “it.”
A recent participant in the comment wars asked if EA was going to have any further comments on the Los Angeles mayoral election, which is an ethics lemon in about every way imaginable. Thinking about it, I suppose I have…
1. In the end, it may be that the predictable result of Democrats rigging the primary and election process to ensure that two unqualified extreme leftist women-of-color oppose each other will not be what is remembered, but the emergence of Spencer Pratt as a rising force in American politics. He was in the cast of the brain-dead reality show The Hills, and his main qualification to be mayor was that he was wiped out by the L.A. wildfires that current mayor Karen Bass allowed to rage in her incompetence and then lied about it. That’s like claiming that being mugged qualifies one to be chief of police. Pratt and his reality show actress wife own Pratt Daddy, “an exclusive crystal company,” whatever that means. In L.A., though, not being a woke idiot may be a qualification all by itself.
Like Ronald Reagan half a century ago, Pratt can speak persuasively in complete sentences, and has sufficient acting chops to project intelligence and gravitas. He mopped the stage with both of his Democratic adversaries, Bass and councilwoman Nithya Raman in their debate. He also had deft, humorous, and effective online ads that may be the beacon of what campaign ads will become.
Pratt has refused to concede despite being ejected from the final race by the Democratic machine in a, shall we say, dubious but not surprising manner. As you can see in his most recent ad, he intends to expose the corruption and incompetence in L.A. politics, although I might ask what more needs to be exposed.
Today Elon Musk, already the world’s richest person, became its first trillionaire as the result of a record-setting initial public offering from SpaceX, his rocket and artificial intelligence company. As the company ended the day valued at more than $2 trillion, Musk’s wealth jumped to $1.2 trillion.
Good for him. Bravo!
The abuse being hurled his way for earning money commensurate with his contributions to civilization and the United States particularly is unusually foolish and unethical even for the political and ideological Left, from whence it is coming. Musk is a trillionaire now because he is an innovator, he is gutsy, he spends his money wisely, he takes big risks less wealthy people will not, and he has provided jobs aplenty in new industries. He is almost certain to accomplish much more going forward; it’s exciting to speculate. What’s not to like?
Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City wrote on X (because he’s a Communist and has never built a business in his life), “Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich.” Would somebody please tell the Mayor that we do tax the rich? It is estimated that Musk has paid about 11 billion dollars in state and federals taxes over the years, and even more internationally. Senator Elizabeth Warren posted on social media that the average U.S. household would have to work more than 11 million years to attain Musk’s level of wealth. That is the epitome of “missing the point.” I read even dumber complaints about Musk on my Facebook feed.
Maybe something is wrong with me: never in my life did what someone else made, possessed or have in the bank make me envious of him or her, resentful, or feel anything at all, frankly. Maybe it is because I figured out early in life that someone making more money than me doesn’t cause me to make less unless we are both line items in a limited budget.
Musk deserves more than a trillion dollars: he deserves a heroic statue next to Miss Liberty, because his purchase of Twitter, something only he could do because he had money to burn, rescued free speech in the U.S. and open political discourse from censorship by the totalitarian Left.
Those who attack Musk because he has made a great fortune doing great things don’t comprehend liberty, capitalism, genius, risk-taking, innovation, problem-solving, oh, lots of wonderful things. And they vote for barely employed oyster-seekers who have Nazi symbols on their chests and abuse women.
Cees Van Barneveldt challenges me from the start of her Comment of the Day to lay odds on how likely it is that Democrats will try to turn Karmelo Anthony into the latest “systemic racism” martyr. One can never go broke relying on the stupidity of either political party, but I just can’t believe the Axis is foolish enough to let this happen.
Rightly or wrongly, the U.S political Left has convinced itself that the mid-terms ar in the bag because all voters care about is the price of eggs, beef and gas. (In other words, voters are even dumber than the two parties.) There has been substantial backlash against Black Lives Matter, and Karmelo is not a particularly sympathetic “victim.” It is hard to justify stabbing an unarmed teen to death.
“Democrats can’t be dumb enough to try to make a martyr out of Karmelo Anthony. They just can’t. Right?“
I am just curious what our host is willing to bet on this; the last word of the post indicates some doubt. I am afraid that Red State may have a point here, and I hope they are wrong.
I do not like the scenes outside the courthouse. A group of black people who believe the entire case is about race, and are cheering on Karmelo Anthony. One of the protesters is on video shouting “The only good cracker is a dead cracker”. Not that I am surprised by this, given that the GiveSendGo campaign for Karmelo’s defense was motivated by the desire to fight white supremacy. For Karmelo and his family, and for the donors to this fund the issue has always about race since the arrest, and not about justice (murder or self-defense).
I also do not like the counter protesters, with their “White Lives Matters” banners, American flag T-shirts, and some of them waving confederate flags. This is like waving a red cape in front of a bull, needlessly provocative. Why would anybody not just simply follow the court proceedings on television from home, and hope and trust that the jury reaches a just verdict?
About not having an African American on the jury, this is not evidence of jury rigging in disfavor of Karmelo by the prosecution. The county in which the trial took place has a 12% black population. The likelihood of a jury without any African American by random selection is 20%; this means that there was no significant bias against African Americans during jury selection. Statistics often uses a likelihood of below five percent as significant. One of the black juror prospects demonstrated bias during jury selection by stating that he “would have a hard time convicting a brother”, and had to be stricken for reason. The jury was not all white as there were four minority members on the jury, just not black. I do not blame the prosecution for trying to prevent racially biased jurors reaching an OJ Simpson style verdict based on racial considerations.
The trial proceedings did not show racial bias. Many of the witnesses against Karmelo Anthony were black. Austin Metcalf’s coach is black.
If the defense attorney is worth his salt and salary (which he has not proven during this trial) the best thing he can do is appeal the verdict based on the jury selection process. We will see how much merit it has. The speed and clarity of the verdict will be a big hurdle for the defense to get an appeal.
Sadly enough this society has enough low IQ people who will milk their grievance till the bitter end and will be willing to burn this society like in 2020. To them I would say “bring it on and make my day” and see how this works out in the mid-terms. They will find that accusations of racism have lost the power to shame and manipulate people, and now only contribute to the phenomenon of “black fatigue”.
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