Bar associations are trying to woke-up their ethics rules regarding sexual harassment and sexual discrimination, and it’s not going well. The states pretty much rejected the language of the ABA’s broad and vague proposed 8.4g, declaring it unethical for a lawyer to engage in harassment or discrimination “related to the practice of law,” whatever that means. Moreover, the rule implies that more than illegal “discrimination” is covered, and doesn’t bother to define sexual “harassment,” which has been a moving target since it was conceived. Tennessee adopted the ABA’s language, and the rule was quickly declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court. Now the ABA is back to the drawing board after causing this chaos, trying to tighten the language.

Maybe it was reading about the latest developments in this mess that sent my mind reeling back to 2018, when an attendee at a monthly ethics seminar I had given for more than a decade suddenly had a tantrum over my interpretation of another bar association’s ‘discrimination” rule, which prohibited a lawyer from engaging in discrimination in “employment.” Or maybe it was the shadow of doom, since I had recently set a personal record for the most unwelcome bodily sources of voluminous expurgations of blood in a 24 hour period.

Boy, if my life is going to pass before my eyes, I would urge the editor to skip this episode.

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This is a record, I think, for the latest EA post ever. I had started two posts this morning, and then my run of bad luck in all respects over the past two weeks struck again. Yesterday, in the late afternoon, a wind storm knocked out just enough of our electricity—only ours, in this area of Northern Virginia—to render our appliances, my PC, our internet, TV, our air conditioning and our phones inoperable. A lucky encounter with a power company crew working on a street light (Grace, Spuds and I were aimlessly driving around the neighborhood so we could at least listen to the Red Sox game) resulted in three trucks arriving at our home in about ten minutes, and they brought us out of the Stone Age in about two hours. Then today, Comcast had “an outage in our area.” They fixed that problem a little after 7 pm.

Getting any posts up in this stretch has been a chore, mostly because I’ve been feeling terrible along with having some income-producing obligations that had to take priority. I want to thank all of the readers and regular commenters who have sent me kind emails, and others of you who I owe personal replies, acknowledgments and thanks and am tardy on those along with such essentials as calculating invoices, shopping, walking Spuds (I owe him about ten) and clearing fallen branches off off the lawn.

Naturally, traffic here, already unstable since the election, has really crashed, and the hell with it. I’ve decided that of all the things to worry about, that’s a waste of time. My mistake has been thinking that I have any control over traffic, other than to keep myself healthy enough to try to cover the ethics landscape and provide something for the traffic to come to. The commentariat here has, as usual, come through with flags flying while I was languishing.

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In truth, I hate bucket lists and the whole concept behind them, which I regard as emblematic of a general misunderstanding of the nature of life. However, I must say that the experience I had last night—waking up at 4 am with my mouth full of blood—is certainly a unique and memorable experience that everyone should have. In my case, it was literally a bucket list item, because I could have used a bucket to deal with the problem.

As it turns out, the issue was neither as bad as it sounds or looked, at least according to my oral surgeon. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, the last ten days (and nights) have been something of an ordeal, reaching its peak yesterday, when I only had the time and energy to put up a single post, and one about Ellen DeGeneris at that. I also could only walk Spuds briefly, I missed two client deadlines, I’m late paying my bar dues (two of them) and so many people are annoyed with me that I might as well join the Republican Party.

I also find myself getting worried, really for the first time, about health impeding my many projects and aspirations. The great pop philosopher Satchel Paige trenchantly observed, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?” In my case, the answer would always be about 14, and I’m proud of it. My friends and relatives are depressing me: they are younger than me and they are retired or soon will be. They look old , and sound old. An old geezer at the dog park where Spuds romps always latches on to me like a barnacle (he’s also a Bostonian refugee), and I thought the guy was about 80. Last week I learned that he’s six years younger than me!

Like both my parents, I have always been blessed with good health and energy, but boy it’s hard to feel 14 when you get hit with a cascade of health issues like what I’ve had to deal with lately. But the obligation is to, as Winston Churchill, liked to say, “keep buggering on.”

1. Giving it away. This is the story of my life, or one of them: this week a longtime client wanted to do a video promo for a seminar I’ll be doing next month. And asked if I would write the copy, and do the video, because they “talked about it and agreed that I was better at these things than anyone on staff.” And I said yes. My wife and business partner things I’m a sap in such matters, and indeed, through the years I have given others the benefit of my time and talents without compensation to a ridiculous extent. This one of many reasons I will not be spending my golden years playing golf. It’s my fault, and only my fault. Once you get a reputation for giving your work away, people and organizations will take advantage of it.

2. Postcards from Cancel Culture Hell: Poet and writer Joseph Massey penned a exposition of his cancellation at the height of #MeToo—you know, before progressives decided that sexual harassment didn’t matter when it’s done by politicians they find useful. It’s a long essay, as is the linked essay about what he did that got him cancelled (not good), but his last section is worth remembering should the mob ever come for you. He writes,

The Roman poet Ovid, after he was exiled in 8 AD for pissing off Emperor Augustus, wrote: “they’ve stripped me of all they could take, / yet my talent remains my joy, my constant companion.” Companionship in joy that is invulnerable to any individual or mob, or worldly condition, is one sure way to save yourself from falling for the traps small minds have set before you. Set your mind on preserving the parts of you they can’t take away.

3. Let’s play “Idiot or Liar”... I have now heard Joe Biden say repeatedly that “you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater.” First of all, that’s not true; second, it’s a hackneyed reference to a generally derided opinion. (Ken White, who feels the way about this quote that I do about the “77 cents of every dollar” fake state, did an epic job dismantling it here.) Joe has a law degree, and either he doesn’t understand the point of the quote from Justice Holmes, or he’s deliberately misrepresenting it. Which is it? I have absolutely no idea.

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Beyond the admirable speech by Tyler Perry, I’m not devoting any whole posts to the Oscars, which are no longer culturally significant enough to compensate for their traditional lack of integrity. I will note in this preface to today’s ethics notes that the results yesterday proved the advantage of anonymous voting. Basically under a command to honor minority artists irrespective of merit, since the awards, and all awards, and all honors, benefits and advancement, must be based on “diversity and inclusion” above all else, the voters nonetheless voted for old white British guy Anthony Hopkins for Best Actor over Chadwick Boseman, who was considered the frontrunner for the award since he had the unbeatable qualities of being excellent in the role (of a rebel musician in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,”) being black, and being dead. I think it may have been a tiny backlash against the Racialization of Everything. It’s too bad this was where that point was made, since Boseman was obviously a huge talent and would have been a worthy winner.

But I won’t be doing my annual tribute to the performers that the Oscars left off its “In Memoriam” segment this year, or ever again. Turner Movie Classics does one every year that’s less rushed, more interesting, and better. Who needs the Academy Awards version, especially since it has rebranded itself as an affirmative action organization? Nine of the 20 acting nominations went to minorities this year. Did their ethnic origins and skin shade help them get the nod? Like all the other kinds of bias that pollute the Oscars, the fact that there is even a question makes the the exercise unworthy of serious respect.

1. The irrational bias against police reaches the level of farce. I assumed even the most deranged, anti-cop, wokist heralds of presumed racism would back off from their accusations once they had the facts in the shooting of teenager Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus right before she was able to stab another young woman. Former Reason writer now with the Washington Post, Radley Balko, was the exception, talking down his tweet critical of the cops and apologizing for his premature criticism. In contrast, shameless demagogues like Valerie Jarrett—this woman was Barack Obama’s prime advisor—think about that—wrote, “A Black teenage girl named Ma’Khia Bryant was killed because a police officer immediately decided to shoot her multiple times in order to break up a knife fight. Demand accountability.” No, he shot her to save the other black girl’s life. In order to make the wacked-out assessment made byof Jarrett and others, progressives are pushing the astounding narrative that knife fights are just part of growing up back. Even sillier are the amateur recommendations of how police could stop an imminent knife attack without resorting to gunfire. These include “long sticks,” “shouting ‘drop the weapon,” “tripping the assailant,” “rubber bullets,” “dogs,” trying to talk to the attacker,” and the ever-popular “winging her.”

Personally, I’m fond of the old Marty McFly trick of pointing and shouting, “What the hell is THAT??” as a distraction. It worked with Biff!

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Just finished a two-hour legal ethics seminar that theoretically was attended by 100 lawyers. Since only two of them asked any questions, the rest might have been asleep for all I know. BOY i hate teaching on Zoom…

1. Good! Bradley Gayton,the Coca-Cola general Counsel responsible for the unethical–but woke!—extortion demand that all of Coke’s law firm’s lawyers had to meet diversity quotas among its lawyers or else has resigned, which means he was fired. Here’s Bradley:

From this I discern that Coke heard from its law firms that this arm-twisting was bad business, bad law and bad ethics, which it was. I have sympathy for the guy: he has been brainwashed into believing that race hucksterism and the diversity racket was ascendant, and wildly over-estimated just how crazy things were. Yet. In this way minority hires are being set-up to fail., but by their alleged allies.

2. I oppose organized boycotts as unethical, but if I didn’t, boy would I be organizing them against Mountain Dew, AT&T, Beats, Nike, Walmart, Rimowa, GMC and Blaze Pizza. All of these pay NBA super-star LeBron James to be their spokesman. James, not to put too fine a point on it, is an irresponsible, hate-mongering racist asshole. With nearly 50 million followers on Twitter, most of them either African-American or morons (because following the inane blatherings of any celebrity is proof of an empty life and a cranial vacuum) James essentially put a hit out on the officer who probably saved the life of one young woman by shooting the other one who was preparing to stab her. If the officer, whose photo James tweeted out with the sinister words, “You’re next!,” is not attacked or killed it will be by way of moral luck, and nothing else.

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