“I don’t think it’s fundamentally about incivility. It’s about insurrection.”

—-Ron Brownstein, Senior Editor of “The Atlantic” magazine and political analyst for CNN, commenting on the “Let’s go, Brandon!” episode during President Biden’s Christmas Eve session with NORAD tracking Santa’s sleigh

[In case you were MIA over Christmas weekend–like most people—Ethics Alarms covered what Brownstein was commenting on here,  and here (Item #3)]

Brownstein went on to say,

[T]he whole Let’s Go Brandon kind of motif is a reflection of the view of two-thirds of the Republican base, driven by Trump’s claims, false claims, and the Big Lie, that Biden is an illegitimate president.

And it reflects the findings in multiple polls by the American Enterprise Institute, Vanderbilt University, and others, that a majority of Republican voters now say the American way of life is disappearing, so fast that traditional American way of life that we may have to use force to save it.

I think you’re seeing — this is a manifestation, not just of incivility but of the fundamental view of the illegitimacy, and the ominous shores we’re sailing toward very quickly in 2022 and especially 2024.

A digression is in order...Commenters critical of Ethics Alarms, both here and on my off-site email, often say that I am irrationally “angry” about situations and incidents that I rate as unethical. That’s an unfair tactic employed to misrepresent what are serious, analytical assessments as emotional ones. I write hard–always have; it’s my style— but I’m not an angry person. I’m essentially an optimistic and happy person. I don’t fume over politics or the culture: I’m aware of developments, but getting angry does no good at all, and I’m not wired that way.

But Brownstein’s statement does make me angry (that’s me above). Who charted that course to that shore, Ron, you flaming, dishonest asshole? Your magazine, along with the rest of the “resistance” that it helped fuel for the length of the entire Trump administration, from the moment he was elected in 2016. Continue reading →

The print edition of today’s Sunday Times, the usually unreadable Sunday Review Section (which I mostly stopped reading mid-Trump administration when it became a monotonous and shrill “bash the President” orgy every week), is devoted to an alleged examination of “The Year in Opinion.” Online, the feature is called “The Year in 41 Debates.” At Ethics Alarms, I have several apropos descriptions of it:

• Predictable, as the Times’ commentary follows the paper’s usual lock-step progressive/Democratic Party bias
• Dishonest, and many of the “debates” are framed in ways that support the writer’s spin on the topic at hand, which is advocacy, not review, and
• Satisfying, because the vast majority of the issues and events were covered here, and, with the invaluable assistance of EA commenters, better (and without the $80 a month charge I pay to review the daily distortions of the U.S.’s “paper of record”), with the exception of a couple I missed that were not worth covering anyway. For example, apparently on January 2 a social media controversy erupted over whether a father was mean to his daughter by not helping her figure out how to open a can of beans. He was attacked world-wide, dubbed”Bean Dad,” and accused of abusive and toxic behavior. I’m glad I missed that one….and
• Facile

I am going to briefly encapsulate some of the Times’ takes on the significant, nonbean-related topics that relate to ethics, or the Times’ lack of them. I’ll be skipping the pure partisan punditry, like “Is the G.O.P. still the party of Trump?” Continue reading →

After four days of deliberations, a Minnesota jury found former police officer Kim Potter guilty of first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter in connection with the April 11th shooting death of Daunte Wright.

Bodycam footage of his arrest showed Wright, who was being detained after a traffic stop due to an outstanding warrant, struggling with police. He managed to evade them got back into the car. He appeared to be attempting flee in his vehicle. Potter could be heard saying, “I’ll tase you,” followed a few seconds later by, “Taser, taser, taser!” Potter then shot Wright with her gun. She immediately said, “Oh, shit, I just shot him.” Officers attempted CPR, but Wright was pronounced dead at the scene.

Neither the prosecution nor the defense seemed to question that Potter had made a terrible mistake in the heat of the confrontation. Based on the Minnesota first degree manslaughter law, I see no way Potter could have been convicted of that crime:

Continue reading →

An exhausting day yesterday that extended several hours into the evening thanks to having a legal ethics seminar to run, so I am late to the office as well as feeling less than smurfy. I’m sorry. One more example of how the lockdown as well as other questionable pandemic responses will have unanticipated and negative impacts going forward: my Zoom versions of what were designed as live, interactive, dynamic in-person seminars tend to devolve into lectures, as I can neither see, interact with or prod participants into Socratic dialogues. I have to talk and improvise the whole three hours, and the results are decidedly inferior to what I can achieve in person. Lawyers are going to have less-effective ethics alarms in the days to come…

1. Ethics Quote of the Day: Times critic Lindsay Zoladz, in her essay about the current rush to recast past events, art, culture and personalities according to current sensibilities:

The allure of presentism is causing people to romanticize contemporary perspectives at the expense of an excessively vilified past…The past was imperfect, yes, but so is the present. Inevitably, the future will be too. The lesson to be taken from all these reconsiderations is not necessarily how much wiser we are now, but how difficult it is to see the biases of the present moment. If anything, these looks back should be reminders to stay vigilant against presentism, conventional wisdom and the numbing orthodoxy of groupthink. 

Bingo.

2. Now who’s ready to do the same to anti-free speech, thought-controlling colleges and universities? Jeff T. Green, an advertising-technology billionaire, formally resigned his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and publicly rebuked the faith over social issues and LGBTQ rights.

“I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women’s rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights,” he wrote in a resignation letter to Mormon church President Russell Nelson. Eleven family members and a friend formally resigned along with him. Now Green’s  estimated $5 billion assets will be donated elsewhere, starting with a $600,000 donation to the LGBTQ-rights group Equality Utah.

Wealthy donors and philanthropists too often continue to fund other institutions that pursue values and objectives that the donors do not support, being satisfied as long as their names remain in marble somewhere on campus. This is not only a foolish use of charitable funds, it’s an unethical one. Continue reading →

Oops. I always thought “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” was another Gene Autry Christmas song, but it wasn’t, though Gene recorded it. It was written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, and banjoist Harry Reser and his band performed it on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in November of 1934. That version sold  500,000 copies of sheet music and more than 30,000 records within 24 hours. It wasn’t one of Autry’s big hits, but Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters reached the Billboard charts with it in 1947. In 1970, Rankin-Bass did its animated “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” TV special with a Fred Astaire puppetoon narrating. But it was Bruce Springsteen, of all people, who made the biggest success out of the song way back in 1975.

The creepy and unethical implication that Santa is spying on all children year long has been carried on by the disturbing “Elf on the Shelf,” which Ethics Alarms deplored here.

1. So…How long has this D.C. teacher been doing things like this? Has anyone asked for Terry McAuliffe’s reaction? At the Watkins Elementary School in the US capital, the Washington Post reported, a teacher has been suspended after making third-grade children reenact scenes from the Holocaust, including having them pretend to dig mass graves and shoot victims. She explained that this happened because “because the Jews ruined Christmas.” Some children were given specific roles. One Jewish child was told to portray  Adolf Hitler and then to pretend to commit suicide, according to the parent of the child. The instructor  told the children not to tell anyone about the activity, but someone squealed.

In an email, the school’s principal called this “a poor instructional decision.”

Ya think? Continue reading →