U.S. Society

Jesus’s Wife: A Depressing Example Of Why American Institutions Are Not Trusted And Don’t Deserve To Be

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Who do you trust 3

Most people younger than me don’t know (or care) that before he was the king of late night TV on “The Tonight Show,” Johnny Carson was the young, engaging host of a pseudo-quiz show called “Who Do You Trust?” I think of that show’s title when, as is increasingly the case, I encounter stories like this one, which is described in excruciating detail in a plaintive article in the Chronicle of Hight Education.. The main facts are these:

—A 2014 Harvard Theological Review article by Harvard Divinity School professor Karen L. King purported to have uncovered an ancient papyrus fragment in which Jesus refers to “my wife.” This, coming after the sensational best-selling novel “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown and its subsequent film version starring Tom Hanks, both of which were based on a fanciful conspiracy theory regarding Mary Magdalene’s alleged relationship with Jesus Christ, understandably caused quite a stir in academia, theological circles, and the popular press.

––King’s article was deemed unlikely to the point of absurdity by many scholars from the moment it was published. “Almost everything we know,” one expert wrote, “about the nature of historical evidence points to forgery.”

—King had failed to take basic steps to vet the manuscript, which she’d provocatively named “The Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” Worse, two of the journal’s three peer reviewers had decided the papyrus was a fake. Only one had not: an acclaimed papyrologist named Roger Bagnall. Bagnall, however, had helped King draft the very paper the journal asked him to review. This is called a conflict of interest, indeed a screaming conflict of interest. Not only had King identified him in the paper as her primary adviser, but Bagnall had been filmed declaring the papyrus’s authenticity for a forthcoming Smithsonian Channel documentary.

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A Follow-Up, An Apology, And A “Bite Me, Daily Wire!”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Charliebrown-1-

The previous post was one of the relatively few in which Ethics Alarms was suckered by bad information. As always when this happens, I am awash with regret and shame. Here is how it now begins, in bold:

“This is the revised part. The retraction is that despite the headline and what I wrote below, Twitter didn’t suspend New York Times columnist Bret Stephens account for violating Twitter’s rules with his recent op-ed calling anti-white measures showing up in the Biden Administration and elsewhere what they are: racism. The Daily Wire, a conservative website that was founded by right wing gadfly Ben Shapiro, wrote the post based on “a Twitter user” as its source,” and I foolishly assumed that the site would have checked out the claim before posting on it. It turns out the Stephens’ account says it’s “suspended” because he suspended it himself, in 2019.

Thus I am made an accomplice to this confirmation bias chain reaction, and I resent it. This is the kind of crap I experienced more than once from Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit, both of which are no longer cited as sources on Ethics Alarms, and whose stories I will not believe unless I find a credible source that independently confirms it. Now I’m adding the Daily Wire to that blacklist. There are plenty of left-leaning sites on that list as well, but since it is virtually impossible to ensure that a story that reflects poorly on the allies of progressive propaganda hasn’t been obscured or deliberately distorted by the mainstream media, conservative media has to be trustworthy and professional, and far too often, it just isn’t. Situations like this make it easier for the mainstream media to call every report they wish would disappear “conservative disinformation.”

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RETRACTED And Revised: “Scared Yet? Twitter Censors A Times Op-Ed Columnist For Calling Anti-White Racism What It Is”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

silence

This is the revised part. The retraction is that despite the headline and what I wrote below, Twitter didn’t suspend New York Times columnist Bret Stephens account for violating Twitter’s rules with his recent op-ed calling anti-white measures showing up in the Biden Administration and elsewhere what they are: racism. The Daily Wire, a conservative website that was founded by right wing gadfly Ben Shapiro, wrote the post based on “a Twitter user” as its source,” and I foolishly assumed that the site would have checked out the claim before posting on it. It turns out the Stephens’ account says it’s “suspended” because he suspended it himself, in 2019.

Thus I am made an accomplice to this confirmation bias chain reaction, and I resent it. This is the kind of crap I experienced more than once from Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit, both of which are no longer cited as sources on Ethics Alarms, and whose stories I will not believe unless I find a credible source that independently confirmed it. Now I’m adding the Daily Wire to that black list. There are plenty of left-leaning sites on that list as well, but since it is virtually impossible to ensure that a story that reflects poorly on the allies of progressive propaganda hasn’t been obscured or deliberately distorted by the mainstream media, conservative media has to be trustworthy and professional, and far too often, it just isn’t. Situations like this make it easier for the mainstream media to call every report they wish would disappear “conservative disinformation.”

Meanwhile, The Daily Wire just notes (a few minutes after I’ve posted relying on its fabricated story) that the post had been “corrected.” It was originally titled, “Twitter Suspends NY Times’ Columnist’s Account After He Denounces Equity as ‘Racism.” NOW it is headlined “NY Times Columnist Denounces Equity as ‘Racism’” which is both inaccurate and not news, since Stephens’ column is three days old. He also never called “equity”racism. That’s like something they would say on MSNBC to distort what was written. I thought the phrasing was strange and sloppy in the first version, but since the topic was Twitter’s censorship, I didn’t bother with it. Now, the misrepresentation is the subject of the whole post. Then, in the body of the piece, it now says, “On June 30, a Twitter reader erroneously claimed that Twitter had suspended Bret Stephens’ Twitter account.” What it should have said is “On June 30, a Twitter reader erroneously claimed that Twitter had suspended Bret Stephens’ Twitter account, and we, because we were looking for another reason to bash Twitter, believed him without checking. We apologize to our readers and any other websites, commentators or blogs who were misled due to our mistake.”

But I DO apologize (and thank to JutGory for the prompt alert). Confirmation bias also played a part in my gullibility: I do not trust Twitter, and what was represented is just a bit beyond what Jack Dorsey’s arrogant cyber-creature has done already. The last line of the post is still valid, though the rest was built on garbage: “Boy, am I glad I quit Twitter. But I’m ashamed that I didn’t do it sooner”

Like Bret Stephens.

The rest of what follows, except for that last part, is retracted.

***

I didn’t see this one coming, because I am an idiot.

Two days ago, I wrote in the morning warm-up, (Item #2),

“Today [The New York Times] allowed Bret Stephens , one of the endangered species in their op-ed stable, a conservative, to write an anti-antiwhite racism piece under the Times’ main editorial gaslighting those who see Critical Race Theory for what it is. (On the opposite page, one of the Times’ usual far-left shills has another op-ed defending the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the schools, so the Times makes sure that Stephens is shouted down by his own paper, 2-1.) Stephens’ op-ed is called “The New Racism Won’t Solve the Old Racism,” which one would think is self-evident, but in the Year of the Great Stupid, it certainly is not. His “money quote” comes at the very end:

“Thoughtful liberals who think this is much ado about nothing should spend some time pondering how perfectly people like [ Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has announced that she won’t be interviewed by white journalists] are now playing into right-wing stereotypes. They should also spend time wondering whether the ideal for which they have long fought — a society that, if not colorblind, can at least see past color — is being jeopardized by progressives who apparently can see only color. Whichever way, it shouldn’t be hard to see that trying to solve the old racism with the new racism will produce only more racism. Justice is never achieved by turning tables.”

Obviously, he’s racist, or so the totalitarianism-enabling censors at Twitter decided. Yesterday, Twitter suspended Stephens’ Twitter account which now just says, “Account suspended.” His opinion, you see, violates Twitter rules, primarily the unwritten one that holds that any statements that in any way undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the Left’s efforts to undermine the Constitution and core American values will be censored so as few citizens get to ponder non-conforming arguments as possible.

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Noonish Ethics Battles, 7/1/2021: “Remember Gettysburg” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Gettysburg

July 1 marks the first day of the epic Battle of Gettysburg, which could fairly be celebrated as the beginning of the end for the Confederacy and slavery. Like so many pivotal moments in our history, this one came about by random chance, with Lee’s army and the newly installed Gen. Meade’s Army of the Potomac stumbling into each other in a Pennsylvania country town in 1863. For three days, a bloody and complicated battle engulfed the area, with so many ethics lessons in the process that I fear I won’t be able to cover all of them this week. [ Guest posts on the topic will be welcome!] I am hoping to visit the battlefield again this year—this week will be tough, unfortunately. I will definitely find time this week to watch Ted Turner’s excellent and even-handed film about the battle, highlighted for me by the performances of Jeff Daniels as Joshua Chamberlain, Tom Berrenger as Longstreet, and the late Richard Jordan as General Lewis Armistead, as well as the dramatization of Picket’s Charge, and the score by Randy Edelman.

1. Baseball sexual misconduct notes…A restraining order was taken out against Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer, last year’s National League Cy Young winner. Bauer is a sportswriter favorite for his outspoken social media presence and progressive politics, so this will be a blow to the sportswriting woke. The woman making the allegations had what started as a consensual relationship with the pitcher, but in a 67-page document, alleges that Bauer assaulted her on two different occasions, punching her in the face, vagina, and buttocks, sticking his fingers down her throat, and strangling her to the point where she lost consciousness twice, an experience she said she did not consent to. After the second choking episode, the woman awoke to find Bauer punching her in the head and face, inflicting serious injuries. She contacted police, and there is now an active investigation of Bauer by the Pasadena, California police department. If any of her account is true, Bauer faces serious discipline from baseball, which has been (finally) cracking down on domestic abuse by players in recent years.

Also yesterday, MLB suspended the former New York Mets general manager Jared Porter at least the end of the 2022 season.   Porter was fired from the Mets in January after an ESPN investigation revealed that he had harassed a female reporter in 2016 when he worked for the Cubs.

Craig Calcaterra, the lawyer sports pundit, supplied the facts here, and I am grateful for that. I would love to subscribe to his substack newsletter, but every issue I read includes Craig’s apparently incurable progressive bias where it doesn’t belong, and I’m just not paying for that. This time, for example, he cites the Bauer, Porter, and Bill Cosby stories to justify the proposition that “we believe [women] when they say what happened to them,” a stunning thing for a lawyer to say. How Kirsten Gillibrand of him! Later, as if this belongs in a baseball news letter, Craig cheers the death of Donald Rumsfeld as an architect of an “Illegal and immoral” war.

All war is immoral to some extent, but the Iraq War, while in hindsight a mistake, was not illegal except in left-wing talking points. Craig should know better, and maybe he does, but in any event, foreign policy and international law are not his areas of expertise. The degree to which wokism has rotted his brain also shows up in his inclusion of an insulting trigger warning before his account of the Bauer allegations: “Warning: the following contains allegations of sexual assault and violence that may be difficult to read.” Oh for heaven’s sake: “Finnegan’s Wake” is difficult to read. News is life: stop treating adults like children.

You can subscribe to Craig’s excellent baseball observations and juvenile political commentary here.

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KABOOM! The New York Times Op-Ed Page Is Trying To Kill Me (And, Apparently, The USA)

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

jackheadexplosion

Once again, we have an opinion piece that an objective, serious newspaper that respects it readers and is committed to the idea of promoting good government and a responsible citizenry would read upon submission and say, politely holding back giggles, “Come on! We can’t print this: it’s ridiculous.” Not only that, but the author, Christina Greer, is actually employed by a university to pass along her brand of “reasoning” and “analysis” to innocent, unsuspecting students, who pay for the privilege. She’s an associate professor of political science at Fordham.

I hate beginning the day with dire thoughts of hurling myself into a woodchipper in despair. It’s been happening a lot lately.

This is the title: “Dear Kamala Harris: It’s a Trap!” And this is its thesis: Mean, possibly sexist and racist President Biden is setting up the Vice-President to fail by giving her really hard assignments that she isn’t qualified to pull off, and this is likely to adversely affect her chances of being elected President. No, I’m serious: I wouldn’t make that up. I couldn’t make that up. Prof. Greer really argues that in an essay that tries to turn so many basic premises of political and social reality on their metaphorical heads, it made MY head blow up. [Once again, much gratitude is due to reader Steve Witherspoon, who constructed that GIF.)

Here is the crux of her argument:

“Addressing the root causes of migration is one of several jobs President Biden has handed Ms. Harris, who had no deep expertise with Latin America issues or the decades-long quandary of federal immigration reform. He has also asked her to lead the administration’s voting-rights efforts, which are in a filibuster limbo. According to The Times, he has her working on combating vaccine hesitancy and fighting for policing reform, too, among other uphill battles….

“Ms. Harris, at this point, can’t seem to win for trying. She is a historic yet inexperienced vice president who is taking on work that can easily backfire as so many people sit in judgment, with critics sniping (especially right-wing commentators) and allies spinning (like with official statements about “success”).

“And all the while, the clock is ticking. Most political observers think that if Mr. Biden decides not to run for re-election in 2024 (when he will be 81), Ms. Harris most definitely will. He had to know that in choosing her as his vice president, he was making her his heir apparent. But based on how things look now, her work as his No. 2 could end up being baggage more than a boon. Mr. Biden and his team aren’t giving her chances to get some wins and more experience on her ledger. Rather, it’s the hardest of the hard stuff.”

The translation for “historic but inexperienced” is “unqualified.” Being a historic VP is just box-checking. It doesn’t get the job done, and there is no excuse for making “historic” a candidate’s only asset, which is definitely the case with Kamala. (Electing a wombat, a coma victim, or a lawn chair would also be historic.) Harris has no executive experience. She was a prosecutor, and a pretty bad one, who rose in California politics by sleeping with a powerful pol. Joe Biden chose her as his running mate because his party had painted itself into a corner and decided that it was more important that he have a female, sort-of black running mate than someone actually qulaified to be President. She prevailed because the alternatives—Stacey Abrams was the least horrible of her competition— were even worse than she was. She was chosen entirely for her lack of a y chromosome and her skin shade, even though it was clear, or should have been, that Biden would be the most fragile President elected since an irresponsible FDR ran for a fourth term knowing he was a goner.

I shouldn’t have to explain this to a political science professor, but being President of the United States is hard. Being delegated difficult aspects of it is an opportunity for a competent VP to show that she is capable of handling the challenge, and any individual in the position of Vice-President should relish the chance. If the Vice-President isn’t up to any task under the President’s list of responsibilities, then she wasn’t qualified to be in the job in the first place. I cannot imagine Greer’s complaint being made on behalf of Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Adlai Stevenson, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, George H.W., Bush, Al Gore, Dick Cheney and many other previous VPs; it would be an insult. She appears to think that the objective is to sneak an unqualified, certified screw-up into the White House for the same reason she was allowed to run for Vice President, to be “historic.” Somehow, I think most Americans would like a little more reason to place the fate of their nation into a leader’s hands.

Having pre-exploded my head with her basic premise, I was spared later eruptions when Greer suggested that giving poor Kamala tough jobs to handle shows how racist and sexist we all are. Look at this sophistry:

“This country has yet to have an honest conversation and reflection on the ways in which race and gender play out in electoral politics. There are voters who look at Ms. Harris and immediately believe she is unqualified for the job because of her gender, her immigrant parents and the color of her skin. Republicans tend to say the quiet part loud, but if we are being honest, far too many Democrats would never be able to vote for a Black woman at the top of the ticket, no matter how qualified.”

Uh, Professor? Harris isn’t qualified, and your essay makes that clear, not that it already wasn’t obvious. So this is all obfuscation and misdirection. What your essay argues is that voters should favor a candidate who isn’t qualified just because of her gender and color—which is idiotic. Greer blathers on,

“Many white liberals like racial and gender equality in theory but get a little gun-shy when asked to make room at the table for others on a long list of issues — school integration, housing, homelessness, incarceration, policing and executive leadership among them. And for those of you scoffing, ask yourself why you can list almost every major and minor flaw of Hillary Clinton, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to name just a few. Many liberals struggle with issues of gender and race in practice; they may not admit to having a problem with Ms. Harris per se, but many still expect her to conform to certain standards and judge her harshly when she struggles on issues that are difficult to begin with.”

Boy, I’m sure lucky my brains were all over the ceiling before I read THAT paragraph. I can list the major flaws—we don’t need to get to the minor flaws— of Hillary Clinton, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who all have thick files on Ethics Alarms) because I pay attention. Hillary is the best of that terrible group, and she was a candidate for President only because of her husband, ran arguably the worst campaign in American history, and had been a notable failure as Secretary of State.

The nonsense continues; read the rest if you dare. Two final points:

  • If you found yourself guessing the author’s race, you would be right. And articles like this do no favors for the cause of “diversity and inclusion.” The essay, to be blunt, is incompetent and biased, with a female, black scholar making a self-evidently foolish argument driven by her own loyalties. Academics have to be better than that, and if they aren’t, the raise a rebuttable presumption that they were hired for reasons that have nothing to do with their skills, erudition, or the “content of their character.”
  • Hilariously, Ezra Klein, whom we recently visited as he inflicted his own biased distortion of reality on Times readers, found Greer’s analysis spot on, tweeting, “This seems right. Kamala Harris will probably be the Democratic nominee in 24 or 28. Biden’s team should be giving her portfolios that make it likelier she’ll win. Instead they’re giving her impossible problems that will likely become liabilities.”

I’m in a “How could this happen?” mood today, I guess. How did progressives get this stupid and confused? I really can’t understand it. Nobody would have written an op-ed like Greer’s ten years ago. If someone did, it would have never been published, and if the thing were published, it would have been mocked mercilessly across the political spectrum.

Comment Of The Day: “Unethical Tweet Of The Month: The Portland Police Bureau”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

BLM sign 2

My designation as unethical of the Portland police’s desperate tweet to avert a riot—funny, I had come to the conclusion that Portland liked riots—informing the Antifa and others that the victim of a fatal police-involved shooting wasn’t black as was being reported so there really was nothing to get all worked up about (My interpretation of the tweet’s meaning; some disagree) sparked interesting reactions, but none more welcome than that of veteran commenter Extradimensional Cephalopod, who had been AWOL for far too long. Here is his (its?) Comment of the Day—#26, by my count—on the post, “Unethical Tweet Of The Month: The Portland Police Bureau”…

This story is ominously reminiscent (differences in power dynamics notwithstanding) of an old Jewish joke–a bit of gallows humor. I can’t find the source for it at the moment, but it was set in either the first half of the 20th Century or earlier, and a Jewish community in or near a city was panicking because a girl in the area had been found murdered. The community they knew the gentiles’ antisemitism would lead them to blame the Jewish community and lash out with violence and more bigotry. Then the rabbi arrives to calm the crowd, “It’s alright, everyone! I have good news! The murdered girl was Jewish!”

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Afternoon Over-Heated Ethics. 6/28/2021: On #MeToo, Barr, Teddy And Tuna

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

This date is another ethics milestone in American culture. On June 28, 1969, a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay club located on New York City’s Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, sparked a violent protest among the club’s patrons and supporters of gay rights. It was a set of facts resembling the George Floyd rioting in which an event unrelated to the matter being protested proved to be a cultural catalyst. The club was illegally serving liquor without a license among other its other violations, so the police were legitimately enforcing the law, but the gay community had been harassed by law enforcement for too long, and for whatever reason, the anger and resentment boiled over. The crowd became a mob and began throwing bottles at the police as the demonstration spilled over into the neighboring streets. New York’s riot police quelled the uprising before dawn. Next came several days of demonstrations in the city, followed by the formation of the Gay Liberation Front as and other gay, lesbian and bisexual civil rights organizations. In 1970, New York’s first official gay pride parade was organized, and the gay rights movement became inexorable.

Sometimes riots work.

1. More evidence that #MeToo has lost all coherence and integrity. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer finished fifth in the voting for New York mayor last week after at one point being regarded as one of the front-runners. His campaign was derailed by an ambush accusation by a woman, Jean Kim, who accused him of touching her without her consent in the back of taxis more than two decades ago. She admitted that she was moved to reveal her allegations now in order to discourage voters from favoring him in the primary. Her story did not include any contemporaneous corroboration, which Kim conceded didn’t exist, or a suggestion of a pattern. Nonetheless, the accusation alone was enough to undermine his candidacy. Stringer emphatically denied her claims. It didn’t matter.

In Washington, D.C., former major league baseball player F.P.Santangelo, who has provided color commentary on Washington Nationals broadcasts on MASN since 2011, was accused of sexual misconduct by a woman who will not identify herself publicly. Santangelo denied the allegation, but he has been suspended from the broadcasts for months. MASN, the local sports network ,investigated the matter initially before asking Major League Baseball for assistance. So far, nothing has emerged to suggest Santalgelo is guilty or that his accuser can back up her claims.

Yet President Joe Biden simply sidestepped a far more credible accusation from a named former employee, and the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, remains in office despite multiple accusations of sexual harassment, also by alleged victims whose stories are far better supported than those of Santangelo’s or Stringer’s accusers. Meanwhile—not to be the proverbial “broken record,” whatever that was, none of the Democratic Senators who styled themselves as feminist avengers while denigrating SCOTUS nominee Bret Kavanaugh as a juvenile rapist on the basis of another uncorroborated accusation have demanded any accountability for Biden or Cuomo.

2. Suddenly, Bill Barr is a man of principle to the Left and a traitor to the Right. The mainstream media is crowing over Barr’s pronouncement in a feature in The Atlantic that Trump’s claims of election fraud were and are “bullshit.” The forner U.S. Attorney General revealed that when Trump confronted him for publicly saying the voter fraud claims could not be substantiated, he told Trump,

“You know, you only have five weeks, Mr. President, after an election to make legal challenges.This would have taken a crackerjack team with a really coherent and disciplined strategy. Instead, you have a clown show. No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it. It’s just a joke. That’s why you are where you are.”

So when Barr concluded that the highly conflicted and partisan Mueller Report had found no evidence of impeachable conduct by the President, he was a Trump-licking hack, but when he refused to engage in partisan use of the Justice Department, like his successor, he was a principled public servant. At least, that’s the current progressive narrative. Conservatives viewed him as a heroic figure opposing an obvious coup attempt from Democrats during “Russiagate,” but now are calling him a traitor.

The truth is that Bill Barr has always been the same: he calls it as he sees it, as a good lawyer should, and deserves our respect for that, whether he’s right or wrong.

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Unethical Tweet Of The Month: The Portland Police Bureau

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Portland tweet

There are many Ethics Alarms categories the tweet above would fit neatly into, like Ethics Dunce, Unethical Quote of the Week, evidence of The rampages of the Great Stupid, res ipsa loquitur, signature significance and others. I wonder if it is something else as well, like coherent civilization’s death rattle.

The Portland police felt constrained to issue that announcement after a police officer in Portland opened fire at a deranged man who charged him with a screwdriver. The man was shot dead in what all reports indicate was self-defense. This was apparently a “suicide by cop.” Quickly, at least 50 protesters converged at the Motel 6 where the episode occurred, and what looked like it could quickly turn into a violent riot was looming. The mob “began yelling, throwing items at officers, and attempting to interfere with the investigation,” Portland Police Bureau said. Videos showed many black-clad protesters chanting the anti-police phrase “Fuck 12.” A officer’s baton was grabbed as she was pulled toward the crowd; another protester sprayed an officer with pepper spray. One police car had its tires punctured and a window broken. Meanwhile, the Antifa distributed flyers calling the incident another example of racist police brutality against the black community.

So, acting quickly, the Portland police issued the tweet, assuring everyone that it was a white man who was killed. No worries! The nation was made just a little bit better and less racist. one more whitey down!

Naturally, the mob dispersed, and there was no more threatened violence.

The officer involved in the shooting was black. “Our officer encountered a very difficult and dynamic situation that no officer wants to face,” Police Chief Chuck Lovell said at the scene.“I want to assure the community that we’re committed to a full, thorough and complete investigation.”

Hey, never mind, Chuck! The guy was white! Nobody cares.

When an officer shot a black teen preparing to stab another young woman with a knife, there was a riot. When police shot an accused black rapist who was armed with a knife and preparing to drive off with his alleged victim’s children, there were riots. When a black man resisting arrest was shot after trying to fire a taser at an officer, there were riots. When a black man who had tried to take an officer’s weapon away while resisting arrest was fatally shot as he rushed the much smaller officer, there were riots. When a black woman was accidentally shot in the cross-fire between police and her boyfriend began the exchange of bullets, there were riots.

But once the crack Portland Police made it clear that it was only some sick white dude who was killed, all was well.

Rueful observations:

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Sunday Ethics Affirmation, 6/27/2021: “Life Is Unfair, Suck It Up” Edition [Cont.]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

[back to where we were before I was so rudely interrupted…by life, ironically enough…]

3. Baseball Ethics: Sticky stuff update! Baseball’s sudden emergency crack-down on pitchers using various versions of glue on the ball to make it go faster and be curvier caught its first cheater today: Seattle Mariners left-hander Héctor Santiago was ejected from today’s game against the White Sox by home plate umpire Phil Cuzzi after a between-innings foreign substance inspection. Santiago’s glove was confiscated. If the glove indeed shows the presence of a forbidden substance, the pitcher will be subject to a ten-day suspension under the terms of Major League Baseball’s new enforcement of the prohibition against ball doctoring. There is some skepitcism that the test will prove Santiago guilty, since it is believed that nobody could be so stupid as to try to keep using “sticky stuff” this week, knowing that they will be checked. On the other hand, Gerrit Cole, the 2019 Cy Young winner who has been widely suspected of being a “sticky stuff” addict, apparently went cold turkey. Today, against the Red Sox, his pitches were spinning much slower than usual, and he got clobbered, giving up 6 runs, 8 hits and 3 homer in just five innings. A coincidence, I’m sure…

4. Tales of The Great Stupid: Apparently the mainstream news media decided that this was just too embarrassing and might hurt the cause of mad wokism…because so far, it has managed to ignore it. A National Archives’ task force on racism determined that the structure, which houses the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights demonstrates “structural racism,” portraying the Founding Fathers and other “white men” too positively, since it “lauds wealthy White men in the nation’s founding while marginalizing BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and other People of Color], women, and other communities.” The report also calls for “trigger warnings” to be put in place with historical content to “forewarn audiences of content that may cause intense physiological and psychological symptoms.” Cassie Smedile, executive director of conservative group America Rising, called the report “the radical Left’s latest attempt to sow division and rewrite our history.” No, it’s the latest example of the progressive mainstream as it has metastasized to reject the idea of the United States of America. Blame Obama, who appointed National Archivist David Ferriero in 2009, and the Senate, which confirmed him, and President Trump, who didn’t have the foresight to fire him. He assembled and commissioned the task force, meaning he knew exactly what he would get. Ferriero claimed the task force was necessary in light of George Floyd’s death last year, the report notes. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense: an example of local police misconduct in Minneapolis without any demonstrable racial motive or animus mandates another trashing of Jefferson, Madison, Washington and the rest. [Pointer: A.S.]

Brilliant.

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Sunday Ethics Affirmation, 6/27/2021: “Life Is Unfair, Suck It Up”Edition [Part I]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

That Ol’ Blue Eyes classic comes to you courtesy of item #1. I am not a fan of Frank in general: despite his artistry and the pleasure he gave to so many (including, on occasion, me), he was such a loathsome individual that I can’t listen to him without the cognitive dissonance chimes sounding. But that song, by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon, perfectly expressed my father’s indomitable philosophy, which he grandly passed on to his son and namesake.”That’s life!” can easily be a rationalization to justify passive inaction; indeed I have considered adding it to the Rationalization List many times. My father didn’t use it that way, however. He expressed it as a quick summary of the Serenity Prayer: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Dad knew the difference, and a large part of my ethics journey is gaining as firm a grip on that difference as he had.

1. Wait, which part is unfair? The Times reviewed two documentaries about female athletes and headlined the piece, “Women, and Girls, Compete in an Unfair World.” (the online version is titled, “Review: ‘Sisters on Track,’ ‘LFG’ and the Price of Star Power.” This is a pattern with the Times: the print edition almost always has a more aggressively political, propaganda-style headline. Any theories? Of course, we all compete in an unfair world, especially if one adopts the Left’s expansive definition of “fairness.” The first documentary examined (and remember, documentaries are usually advocacy pieces, not neutral or “fair.”) is “Sisters on Track.” It follows the saga of two talented young African-American runners. The unfairness, according to the Times: “[C]ontinued track success pushes closed doors open, granting the sisters access to shelter, scholarships and private school admissions that might have otherwise been beyond their means. But as they plan ahead for college — its opportunities and its expenses — they know they have to maintain their national records if they want to translate early success into lifelong stability.” Now why is that unfair? I would argue that it’s unfair for an unproductive talent like winning track meets to bring such financial riches, while society grossly undervalues other more substantive achievements. The message of the documentary is that the athletically talented Shepard sister have to keep excelling in order to keep profiting. Yes, that’s life, and that’s capitalism, meritocracy, and the United States of America. Would the documentary-maker and the Times reviewer call this “unfair” if the speedy Shepard sister weren’t black?

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