Hopeful sign #1: On this date in 1962, in the middle of the Kennedy administration, now hailed as the dawning of a new liberalism, the iconic folk group known as the Weavers’ appearance on “The Jack Paar Show” was cancelled because the four members refused to sign a loyalty oath. The Weavers had been blacklisted during the Red Scare (they were, in fact, Communists), but it is impossible to imagine an artist being required to sign a loyalty oath today. That’s progress. Of course, an artist today is at risk of being “cancelled” for not mouthing sufficiently woke sentiments to satisfy the left’s social media mobs. That is definitely NOT progress.
(I don’t believe 2022 is “high noon for democracy,” but that is definitely the message both political parties and their ideological allies are pushing to begin the new year.)
1. More hope...the New York Times readers aren’t as brain-washed as I thought they were. The Times reader poll to name the top books published during the 125 years of the Times Book Review supplement chose as #1 Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.” This occurred despite the increasing drum-beats from Woke World to declare the classic racist, mainly because its iconic hero, lawyer Atticus Finch, teaches his daughter that it is important to try to understand people who think differently than you do, including racists, and that even those with racist beliefs can be good people.
I would have assumed that Times readers would have fully assimilated that narrow view of Lee’s masterpiece; clearly they did not. Also encouraging is the third place ranking of George Orwell’s “1984,” which I would argue is the single most important book for students to read in 2022….maybe for everyone to read.
2. But then there is this: Here was the Tournament of Roses Parade float yesterday called “Vaccinate the World”…
Sometimes I wonder if the idea is to make as many Americans as possible afraid of the vaccines. Here we see a scary robot nurse wielding a giant hypodermic needle, as another needle almost as big as she is lies on the floor. Who approved this thing? Continue reading →
Was 2021 a more ethical year than 2020? The question reminds me of the debate in “Stand By Me” over whether Superman could beat Might Mouse in a fight. I’d name 2020 as more unethical because of the George Floyd freak-out, the media support of rioting, the manipulation of the pandemic for political gain, the irresponsible closing of the schools, the unethical 2020 election, the defund the police movement, the corporate pandering (especially by the sports leagues) to Black Lives Matter, and the incompetent Trump legal team’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election as sufficient to give 2020 the nod, but not by much, and at this level of cultural rot, who cares? Both years were terrible, destructive, and likely to leave permanent scars.
Unless we are very, very lucky, I do not expect 2022 to break the trend.
1. About those “democratic norms” progressives are so concerned about…Chief Justice John Roberts delivered his year-end report on the state of the judiciary which almost nobody will read, but it was notable, other than for a long section singing the praises of his predecessor William Howard Taft, for this passage, buried deep in the nine-page document:
“Decisional independence is essential to due process, promoting impartial decision-making, free from political or other extraneous influence. The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co-equal branch of government.”
Perhaps he should have said more on the topic, but that easily could have crossed the line into partisan debate. For the main attacks on judicial independence have come against his own court, and onlt from one side of the political divide. Prof. Turley regarded Roberts words as a “denunciation,” which is an example of the professor seeing what he wants to see, but Turley does a good job of pointing out where the threat is coming from, writing in part,
We have been discussing the ramped up threats from Democratic leaders that the Court will either vote with the liberal justices on key issues or face “consequences,” including court packing….What Democratic members are demanding is raw court packing to add four members to the Court to give liberals an instant majority — a movement denounced by figures like the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer.
Last year, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, and others stood in front of the Supreme Court to announce a court packing bill to give liberals a one-justice majority. This follows threats from various Democratic members that conservative justices had better vote with liberal colleagues . . . or else.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., recently issued a warning to the Supreme Court: reaffirm Roe v. Wade or face a “revolution.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal previously warned the Supreme Court that, if it continued to issue conservative rulings or “chip away at Roe v Wade,” it would trigger “a seismic movement to reform the Supreme Court. It may not be expanding the Supreme Court, it may be making changes to its jurisdiction, or requiring a certain numbers of votes to strike down certain past precedents.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also declared in front of the Supreme Court “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.”
For her part, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. questioned the whole institution’s value if it is not going to vote consistently with her views and those of the Democratic Party: “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.” [Sen. Elizabeth] Warren seems to be channeling more AOC than FDR. Roosevelt at least tried to hide his reckless desire to pack the Court by pushing an age-based rule. It was uniquely stupid. The bill would have allowed Roosevelt to add up to six justices for every member who is over 70 years old. Warren, like AOC, wants the Democratic base to know that she is pushing a pure, outcome-changing court packing scheme without even the pretense of a neutral rule.
Despite the fact that the Court has more often voted on non-ideological lines (and regularly issued unanimous decisions), Warren denounced the Court as an “extremist” body that has “threatened, or outright dismantled, fundamental rights in this country.” Those “fundamental” values do not apparently include judicial independence.
Did you know that Donald Trump and Republicans are a threat to democracy?Continue reading →
In case you missed it, an esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter caught a major error here, allowing me to fix it. Phlinn alerted me that the EA post about the Guardian cutting off a “poll” because it was favoring “cancelled” author J.K. Rowling for her opposition to tans-activist cant was “fake news,” as indeed it was. After his analysis proved correct, I retracted the post, and also put up a separate announcement of the retraction with the link.
Phlinn is an Ethics Hero, and also allowed Ethics Alarms to retrieve a small shred or respectability out of this mess: none of the other sites and news sources that reported the mistaken version of the Guardian “poll” has corrected the misinformation or retracted their stories. This is a sterling example of how the commentariat here is a full partner in making this ethics blog what it is.
1. Incident at the Tower of London. Some idiot tourist parents let their kid run into the path of marching guards at the Tower. The guards knocked the boy down but deftly avoided stomping him…
…but a controversy erupted on social media with the usual “Think of the children!” hysterics claiming that the guards should have broken formation to go around the boy. Maybe stop, pick him up, and deliver him safely to his parents. Buy him an ice cream while they were at it. Tell him a story.
Let’s have a kid run in the way of a firefighter trying to put out a fire and see what happens. The guards were doing their jobs, and if the precedent were established that they had to stop for irresponsible tourists and their kids, it would become a game, like people making faces at the guards at Buckingham Palace. The parents in this case should be prosecuted, and if there isn’t a law that allows that, there needs to be.
I’m not going to mention that the child wasn’t hurt, because that’s moral luck; he easily could have been. If he had been hurt, the guards would have been blameless.
Why does everything make me think of Kim Potter lately? [Pointer: Steve O-in-NJ]
(The relevant section of the SNL skit above begins at the 5:36 mark.)
Lia Thomas, a recently “transitioned” male collegiate swimmer at Penn, has been making a burlesque of female college swimming records as well as demonstrating what the future of women’s and girl’s sports will look like if post puberty males continue to be allowed to compete as women once they can legally switch genders. Her—just because she should be called a “she” doesn’t mean she should be competing against biological shes—team mates have anonymously expressed discomfort with what their matches have become, while Lia is just thrilled to be winning in her new, less competitive category, and Penn’s swimming coach doesn’t care about fairness, only winning.
In such obvious situations of injustice, the sole road to remedy is courage and confrontation. This is true not only for the ethics debacle of trans athletes crushing original women in sports, but other situations as well. Philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) made her legacy a series of quotes about what happens when those who are aware of wrongdoing—Hannah’s short-hand was “evil”—duck their societal obligation to take action. Here’s a few of them:
Those in charge of Council Rock Elementary School in Brighton, New York have decided that the school won’t include “Jingle Bells” in its music curriculum and holiday events any more because of the song’s possible connection racist minstrel shows and slavery. They are utter fools, but more importantly they carry an unethical social and intellectual malady that must be addressed and snuffed out if democracy, free thinking and reason are to survive in the United States of America.
Too strong? I don’t think so. I do not even know where Brighton, New York is (though I know Brighton, Massachusetts well) and I would feel no great loss if I never had to listen to “Jingle Bells” and its hack second verse (“Upsot?”) again for the rest of my life. But the “Jingle Bell” censors and and their like carry a fearful, dim-witted determination to cauterize the variety, history and joy out of life in teensy-weensy slices that nobody sane feels are worth the trouble to fight about. They will destroy our culture and the richness of life if they aren’t stopped. The “Jingle Bells” idiocy is as good a place to make a stand as any.
I’m always a bit depressed in the period between Christmas and New Years, and scenes like the one above, which have proliferated in Alexandria, don’t help. It looks like a massacre has occurred, not that I haven’t been tempted to rub out some of the more horrible inflatable lawn displays, like the 25 foot penguin, the Christmas Imperial Walkers (I do NOT understand), and especially the giant Mickey Mouse in a Santa suit that looms across the street and has embarrassed the entire neighborhood. There is clearly no generally accepted ethical standard requiring neighbors to make certain their Christmas displays are, if not artistic, aesthetically pleasing, dignified or restrained, at least not eyesores.
1. I’m beginning to wonder…if the guilty verdict rendered against Kim Potter might not be reversed after all, as it should be. If the current feeling is that Minnesota judges don’t have the guts to buck the mob by addressing the injustice in this case, the mob’s consensus seems to be weakening. The fact that the black officer who deliberately shot and killed an unarmed January 6 rioter has faced no punishment, never mind imprisonment, has been noted extensively, and I was shocked this morning to see two letters published in the New York Times declaring Potter’s conviction to be unjust. One made the point, which has come up in Ethics Alarms comment threads, about the contrast between how Potter’s fatal mistake was treated and how deadly errors by doctors and nurses are virtually never the object of criminal prosecution. Continue reading →
1. On second thought, who needs work? The United States has been a nation that embraced work as a value and a mark of character as no other. Naturally, this core value has been under assault from the Left as part of its cultural overhaul strategy. The pandemic created an opining that has been brilliantly exploited politically, leading to a large part of the work force now unwilling to work. The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the biggest bloc of liberal lawmakers in Congress, has endorsed a bill proposed by Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., which would seek to implement a four-day workweek. Americans work far more than people in most other affluent countries, and we also produce more without using, as some countries do that I might mention, slave labor. But the work ethic is weakening.
The anti-work ethic is the goal on one of Reddit’s fastest growing sites — r/antiwork. The subreddit is “for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, [and] want to get the most out of a work-free life.” It is up to 1.4 million members, ranking among the top subscribed-to subreddits.
Members discuss tactics workers can use to slack off, cheat, sabotage, and steal from their employers. You would learn there, for example, that April 15th is “Steal Something From Work Day.” [Pointer and source: Linking and Thinking on Education]
2. Observations on the Gallup Poll on public approval of Federal leaders (You can find the poll here).
Yes, I know, polls. But Gallup is straighter than most, and while the specific numbers should be ignored, the relative values are interesting.
The big finding, and what has been attracting all the headlines, is that Chief Justice John Roberts is way ahead of anyone else on the list, with a bipartisan 60-40 favorability split. This undercuts the pro-abortion strategy of warning that the Supreme Court can’t afford to make its decision on Roe v. Wade cases without considering the potential harm to the Court’s legitimacy. The Court seems to have the most trust of any of the branches, which means that it can (and should) be courageous if legal principles require.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is second. How many Americans know who he is or what he does? 20%? Less? What is it they approve of?
Dr. Fauci is third at 52% approval, which shows you can fool a lot of the people all of the time.
Mitch McConnell is dead last, even behind Nancy Pelosi. Good.
Part Iset some kind of Ethics Alarms record for reader disinterest, which I much admit, I don’t understand. These are all topics we have covered in some detail here over the last year, and the analysis of them by the alleged “newspaper of record’s” experts is, to say the least, perverse and revealing…yet the post’s first installment inspired just a single comment. Well, the Times’ take on the remaining issues are arguably worse. I find it fascinating, anyway. Here’s the rest of the highlights…
Can we save the planet?
It is embarrassing for a supposedly respectable news organization to frame an issue in such a hysterical and intentionally fear-mongering manner, which assumes one side of a debate is correct without reflection of nuance. The Times’ author on this topic, Farhad Manjoo, is a tech reporter, not an expert on climatology, so he has been given a platform to opine on something he doesn’t understand sufficiently to discuss reliably. On the topic of climate change, this is, sadly, typical. His article contains the kind of sentence midway through that would normally make me stop reading because of the bias, spin, hyperbole and mendacity: “During the Trump years — as the United States tore up international climate deals and flood and fire consumed swaths of the globe — unrestrained alarm about the climate became the most cleareyed of takes.”
There were no “climate deals,” just unenforceable virtue-signaling and posturing like the Paris Accords; the link between present day “flood and fire” and climate change is speculative at best, and unrestrained alarm is never “cleareyed,’ especially when those alarmed, like Manjoo, couldn’t read a climate model if Mr. Rogers was there explaining it. Then, after telling us that the Trump years were a prelude to doom, he says that since 2014, things are looking up. Much of what he calls “bending the needle” occurred under Trump.
Should the Philip Roth biography have been pulled?
This one is so easy and obvious that the fact that the Times thinks it deserves special attention is itself a tell. The answer is “Of course not!,” as an Ethics Alarms post explained. An absolutely competent biography was pulled by its publisher, W.W. Norton, never to be in print again, because its author, who had written other acclaimed biographies, was in the process of being “cancelled” for allegations of sexual misconduct toward women. I wrote,
“…[P]ublisher W.W. Norton sent a memo to its staff announcing that it will permanently take Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip Roth out of print, as a result of allegations that Bailey sexually assaulted multiple women and also behaved inappropriately toward his students when he was an eighth grade English teacher.
If that sentence makes sense to you, The Big Stupid has you by the brain stem.
It apparently makes sense to the Times, although its review of the matter doesn’t answer its own question. Why not? This is also obvious: as journalists, the idea that what a writer writes should be judged by what a writer’s personal life has involved is anathema, but the Times’ readers are so woke that the paper would dare not say so. Integrity! Continue reading →
