I have never watched “The Bachelor” other than to check in, stay for a few minutes, and decide, correctly, “This is more evidence of the decline of civilization and the uselessness of public education: Get thee to you sock drawer!” This has been the case with most reality shows since the invasive breed made network television unwatchable. I do follow accounts of shows like “Survivor” and, in its day, “The Apprentice,” to be aware when ethics issues surface.
To my horror, I realize this is the third mention of “The Bachelor” here in 2021, which does not bode well, but as is often the case, popular culture, even mind-numbingly stupid popular culture, is often where our cultural canaries go to die. This season of that idiotic show is supposedly a marker of racial progress because “The Bachelor” is black, or sort of black (he identifies as black, or Black). He (Matt James) is a hunk who, like every other “Bachelor” in the NINETEEN SEASONS of this blight on human evolution, has the IQ of a brick, and the exciting premise is that 25 beautiful women who might lose to him in Scrabble compete for his affections.
Dead Canary #1: As soon as a female or minority enters a system of environment in the time of The Great Stupid, large number of vile people who have nothing more promising in their lives but to concoct “gotchas!” that will make life difficult for others will find some evidence of politically incorrect bias, prejudice, or insufficient deference to justify crying “Racist!,” “Sexist!,” “Homophobe!,” “Ablest!,” “Anti-LGTBQ-ist!” or something. Increasingly, this is the price organizations pay for “diversity”: immediate conflict, presumed bigotry, and retribution. Nobody wants to be generous, reasonable, or presume good will or intentions. The whole idea is to grab power by putting others on the defensive. This, of course, makes racial harmony (as well as other varieties) less likely and less achievable, but never mind, the victim-hucksters don’t care. They have too much to gain, or think they do.
Thus, when conservative pundit Megan Fox, who regarded the show as a guilty pleasure, learned that this would be The Season Of the Black Bachelor, she opted out, explaining, “It’s the first time a black bachelor was cast on the show. So, if you thought there wouldn’t be any woke baloney to wade through, you’re nuts. It’s why I didn’t watch it this time. I figured that the woke police would be out in full force, and who needs that in their living room? Certainly, not I.“
Ah-HA! A privileged white woman stopped watching the show because it had a black “Bachelor” for the first time! Megan Fox is a racist!
It was a busy day, but I want to at least start this post about Rush Limbaugh, who died today of lung cancer, before it ended.
Three kind of people said negative things about Limbaugh: liberals/progressives who hated him for removing the Left’s monopoly of journalism, punditry and public debate; his targets, which were the political correctness mob, identity interest groups, and statists; and people who never listened to him and didn’t know what they were talking about. Rush Limbaugh was a transformation figure in broadcasting, politics and culture over many decades, and he should be recognized and honored as such. Yet do you know how I found out he had died? I saw this Boston Glove headline on an Associated Press breaking story:
“Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio host who employed vicious but influential rhetoric, dies“
Absolutely despicable. Limbaugh’s rhetoric was seldom “vicious,” though those who never listened to his show would usually talk about how nasty he was. To the contrary, he was usually the opposite; funny, light-hearted, witty, and almost always engaging and civil to callers when they took issue with him. He did not mince words, that is true, but his targets had long been protected by a general fear of calling them what they were. The AP story is typical of what the mainstream media will write about Rush, focusing on the various controversies he stirred up, some when his rhetoric was unduly harsh, as when he called Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who argued that the government should pay for birth control, a “slut.” But that was the worst of Rush, and considering how long he spoke extemporaneously about hot-button topics for three hours five days a week, it is amazing that he didn’t have more misadventures. He apologized for the worst of them, particularly a period in which he mocked AIDS victims, saying later, “It’s the single most regretful thing I’ve ever done, because it ended up making fun of people who were dying long, painful and excruciating deaths, when they were not the target. It was a totally irresponsible thing to do.”
I speak for a living, also extemporaneously and fearlessly, and it is dangerous. Anyone in the field knows that it is inevitable that words will leave your mouth that you wish you could take back, and I grant a lot of understanding and “there but the grace of God go I” sentiments to a speaker, DJ,Talking head or frequent interview guest who has a bad moment. For the most part, Rush Limbaugh didn’t require any slack. He was superbly prepared, clear, articulate, and entertaining, while having the kind of voice and delivery that few could match in the history of radio.
He succeeded because he was talented and worked hard, and especially because he had guts. These factors, and good timing, allowed his show to change so much for the better that it is futile to try to cover his impact in a brief post. Limbaugh gave conservatives a voice and a sense that they could make a difference, while inspiring others to follow his lead. He weakened the Left by exposing its hypocrisy. He helped reveal how many conservatives there were in America, and almost certainly was a catalyst for Fox News to emerge as a desperately needed alternative to the mainstream journalism echo chamber. For this, he was hated; before Donald Trump, no national personality was the target of such venom. For his critics on the Left, those champions of insisting that mocking personal characteristics was a hallmark of bigotry, calling him fat was their favorite mode of attack.
..Even with acquittal all but ensured, there was no room for constitutional niceties like free speech or due process. There was only one issue — the same one that has driven our media and politics for four years: Trump. Through that time, some of us have objected that extreme legal interpretations and biased coverage destroy our legal and journalistic values.
—-George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, constitutional law expert, on the conduct of the Democrats before and during the just-completed second Trump impeachment trial.
This statement, as well as the rest of his article for The Hill yesterday, was not only astute (though Turley’s observations should have been obvious) but personally welcome, in part because it tracked exactly with what I have been writing here for four years, but in no small part because I was almost finished with a post making the same points. For Turley to make them is, of course, better, since a lot more people, though not nearly enough, pay attention to what he says. It was especially welcome because not one but two friends (among others) had made fatuous and indefensible assertions about the impeachment in the past two days, inspiring me to start that now redundant post.
My theme was going to be about how their now completely unhinged, Ahab-like mania to destroy the former President had led them to deny the importance of what once were accepted by liberals and conservatives alike—but especially liberals before their rebranding as “progressives”—as crucial, indispensable, core American values relating to personal liberty and government interference with it. The rationalizations employed in this scary process are stunning.
Prime among them as been 2020’s rationalization of the year: “It isn’t what it is,” #64. As I noted in the previous post, a Facebook friend (whom I strongly suspect was one of the self-exiled progressive Ethics Alarms commenters) wrote on the platform to the usual acclaim of “likes” and “loves” that the 57 Senators who voted for this corrupt impeachment were voting “for democracy.” They were in fact doing the opposite, and in many ways, as Turley’s article explains (though again, it should be obvious.) Then, in a discussion with a more rational friend, another lawyer, about how the House impeachment had deliberately bypassed due process, I was told that there is no right of due process in an impeachment proceeding, nor should the prohibition of ex post facto laws and bills of attainder apply. Here was a lawyer making technical arguments against ethics. “Legally, due process only applies to life, liberty, and property,” she lectured. “A job is none of those.”
I could rebut that, but the point is that both the Declaration and the Constitution mark out basic values of our society, not just laws, but ethical values. “Due process” means fairness, and this lawyer, an alleged progressive, was arguing that the government doesn’t have to be fair while depriving the public of an elected official and that elected official of his job, and that individual of his ability to seek that job or another one. This is what hate and arrogance have done to the Left.
I have been wrestling with myself all day, fighting off the little voice in my head over whether to post this nauseating essay on Facebook. I think it needs to be read, and I haven’t seen what I believe are equivalent explanations of the importance of the dastardly conduct it describes. But I’m sure the post would provoke impassioned and offensive defenses by The Deranged, and that I might well lose it and tell some of theme exactly what they have become. I scrupulously avoided stirring the snakes’ nest after the acquittal, even restraining myself from posting the single word “Good!” without comment. Yesterday I made the mistake of starting to read my Facebook feed for the first time in weeks, and a lawyer I know had written ruefully that there were only “57 votes for democracy” in the Senate. As Jack Point says in “Yeomen of the Guard,” I can’t let that pass, and noted that the statement was Orwellian, and I was being kind. Voting for the contrived conviction of a man no longer President, over which the Senate has no jurisdiction, based on an impeachment based on no evidence, no hearings, no investigation, no witnesses and no defense, after a trial in which a party, in order to prevent future voters from having the opportunity to elect an opposition leader who dares to oppose its assault on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, employed false and falsified claims while refusing to allow witnesses and continued to use a corrupted news media to misinform the public while doings so, when a conviction will complete the process of defeating the Founder’s design for an impeachment process based on the public interest rather than a power grab by any party having a majority in Congress, is a vote FOR democracy! This is how much the past year has corrupted the minds, ethics, civics, integrity, honesty and language of progressives and Democrats.
1. Maybe someone was un-woke enough to read the Constitution? In Oregon, which has now lapped California in the “which state has become more insane?” competition, the 27-member COVID-19 Vaccine Advisory Committee that is charged with devising “a vaccine sequencing plan focused on health equity to ensure the needs of systemically affected populations, including communities of color, tribal communities and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, are met,” seemed poised to announce a vaccine access priority based on race. That would be unconstitutional, and any well-educated 15 year old should be able to explain why; nonetheless, Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who is NOT 15, went ahead and did explain why prioritizing race in vaccination decisions would breach the Equal Protection Clause, writing that such a plan “runs into the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says citizens of all races are entitled to the equal protection of the laws.The Supreme Court has long interpreted this to mean that the government may ordinarily not dole out valuable benefits, or impose harms, based on a citizen’s race.”
The commission’s decision was due more than a week ago, and crickets. No news is good news; such an anti-American bit of bias would naturally entail accusing anyone opposing it as being a white supremacist.
2. “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos” The planned Democratic PRO act is an assault on employment liberty that would devastate, among others, actors and theater artists. The voice in my head that is cheering for its passage to stick it good and hard to all my professional theater friends who happily and ignorantly put Joe Biden in office is undoubtedly evil, but the little guy sure is seductive. But I’m sure Sean Penn approves of it after careful analysis.
The PRO Act was just re-introduced with sponsors including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer. Among many other things, the bill would severely restrict the legal definition of independent contractors, substantially ending the gig economy as we know it. The Foundation for Economic Education explains, PRO would use the reclassification of independent contractors to force gig economy companies to hire workers as full employees and thus provide them the accompanying salaries and benefits. All but a tiny percentage of professional theaters can afford to operate like that. FEE writes,
The PRO Act would outlaw millions of existing jobs with the stroke of the president’s pen. After all, it would make illegal any independent contractor arrangement where the worker provides services within “the usual course of the business of the employer,” meaning jobs like Uber drivers, Doordash drivers, Instacart grocery deliverers, and more could not exist as we know them. There are roughly 10.6 million independent contractors in the US, accounting for 6.9 percent of all employment. Some of these workers might not be affected by the law and some others may get hired on as full-time as a result. But there’s little doubt that millions more would find themselves unemployed…Uber is just one company and one example. But freelance workers such as journalists, photographers, florists, musicians and more all lost work in California under legislation similar to the PRO Act.
This reminds me of Erika Mann’s discussion of mathematics education (Völkisches Rechnen or people’s arithmetic) under Nazi rule in the 1930’s, in her book School for Barbarians. Here’s an example (page 67):
“An airplane flies at the rate of 240 kilometers per hour to a place at a distance if 210 kilometers in order to drop bombs. When may it be expected to return if the dropping of bombs takes 7.5 minutes?“ -From National Political Practice in Arithmetic Lessons.
A question like this may not initially point to a scholastic propaganda problem until the other questions come into play, questions like:
“What was Germany’s population loss due to the Versailles Treaty?” What is the load capacity of four gas bombs?”
” How many people can fit into a bomb shelter?”
“What percentage of the German population is home to “alien” Jews?”
It suddenly becomes more clear that these questions are preparing these kids for war…and compliance with the state.
One would think the suspension of a heretofore obscure Biden staffer with the risible name of “T.J. Ducklo” couldn’t possibly be important or significant, but it is. The episode demonstrates that less than a month into his administration, Joe Biden has squandered his credibility and the public trust, and done so foolishly. The news media cannot save him from this, though of course it will try. Biden has already shown, with his appointments and his executive orders, that his pledges and promises are just PR bluster. For example,
…has already been shown to be empty words by his nomination of an anti-white, pro-black biased NAACP lawyer to run the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Rights in America are supposed to apply to all Americans equally, and discrimination on the basis of race is wrong regardless of the race. but Joe’s pick doesn’t believe that. His administration also quit the discrimination lawsuit against Yale for not admitting qualified Asian and white students in favor of less qualified blacks.
So much for that promise.
Then there was this one:
That one is particular amusing in a sad sort of way. The President hasn’t lifted his finger to pull the plug on an unconstitutional impeachment trial, fueled entirely by his party’s hate, that is guaranteed to inflame the partisan division in the nation further.
In these pronouncements, Biden has revealed himself to subscribe to the Obama style of dishonestly. Obama made soaring, general statements of purpose and promises of future actions, and regularly ignored them or violated them, hoping for minimal news media criticism (and usually getting it). The most infamous of these was his “if you like your health plan” lie, but there were others, like his campaign promise to ban lobbyists from high posts, his pledge to have “the most transparent administration” ever, and most damaging of all, his “red line” threat against Syria. Lies and broken promises like those are crippling to effective leadership; only the worshipful loyalty of Obama’s irrationally admiring base spared him the consequences that usually follow such recklessness.
Donald Trump’s brand of dishonesty was different. The subject matter was usually trivial; most of what the news media categorized as lies were exaggerations, puffery and hyperbole. President Trump was actually better at following through on what he promised to do than most Presidents, though that is a low bar. Nonetheless, he squandered his trust and credibility too, and even earlier than Biden has. If one of the anti-Trump media members is asked to support the “Trump is a compulsive liar” narrative, he or she will probably start with the President’s boasts about the size of his inauguration crowd. even for him, it was a spectacularly stupid lie, a Jumbo level lie that could be disproved with ease. Nevertheless, his press secretary Sean Spicer tried to support it, and Kellyanne Conway compounded the mistake by defending the Trump version as “alternative facts,” a phrase that would haunt the administration to the end. How much better off everyone, including the President, would have been if Spicer or Conway had just said, “Yeah, the President get exuberant sometimes and sees what he wants to see. No, it wasn’t the biggest inauguration crowd ever, and he knows that he will have to be more careful with his superlatives going forward.” After all, who the hell cares how big the crowd was? This controversy wasn’t worth losing one iota of public trust, yet Trump and his staff threw away a chunk of it for nothing.
Commenters are being far too pessimistic here of late, and so are the rational people I know. Complaining is fine; so is worrying. But action is mandatory. Defeatism, despair, submission—these are not only self-destructive, but un-American. The nation got in its current mess (as it has gotten into others) by inattention and complacency; it is time, once again, to consider first principles, and act. As is usually the case, the bad guys are not nearly as bright as they think they are, as well as being cocky, careless, and corrupt. The public is naive, ignorant, driven by emotion and reckless, but it has come through for the nation throughout our history, and can, and will, again. There were a lot of positive developments in the past five days. Getting the word out is difficult, because our journalists are journalists no longer but tools of aspiring censors and dictators, but there are ways. The United States has always been lucky, sometimes amazingly so, and often when the odds against it have been daunting.
Don’t bet against it.
Meanwhile, make sure we get rid of the marked deck, the crooked dealers and the loaded dice.
1. This day in 1945: U.S. terrorism. On February 13, 1945, the Allies firebombed the German city of Dresden, killing roughly 25,000 people and destroying one of the cultural gems of Europe despite its having no military or strategic value at all. Germany were certain to surrender, it was only a matter of time. Yet more than 3,400 tons of explosives were dropped on the city by 800 American and British aircraft, with the resulting firestorm setting the city on fire for days, creating a horrific landscape of charred corpses, many of them children. Many believe that Dresden was bombed in retaliation for Hitler’s bombing of Coventry, the lovely British city that also had little military value. It doesn’t matter: the unquestionable truth is that Dresden’s destruction was pure terrorism, an act of pure cruelty designed to destroy German morale and create widespread fear. Although the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima is usually the focus on anti-war critics and those who accuse the U.S. of war crimes, the alternative to that bombing was and still is widely believed to have been an Allied invasion of Japan that would have involved huge military losses.There was no justification for the Dresden bombing. It was, as an infamous Civil War battle was once described, “Not war, but murder.”
2. “First they came for Hercules, and I said nothing…” Kevin Sorbo, the actor who played Hercules in the TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” for many years, announced yesterday that Facebook had deleted his account along with its half-million followers. He says he has received no explanation from Facebook (just as Ethics Alarms has never received an explanation from Facebook for blocking links to my blog for two years just as it was beginning to see significant growth in traffic and followers). Sorbo, you will be surprised to learn I’m sure, is an outspoken conservative and Christian.
If I posted this on Facebook—I don’t bother any more—I know the response: the rationalizers would condescendingly explain that Facebook, as a private company, has the right to block anyone they choose from using its platform. Yes, asshole, I know that. I also know, and unless you are a complete idiot as well as a fan of progressive domination, that because social media has become a primary means of communication and political advocacy in this country, censoring one side of any issue is an attack on both democracy and freedom of speech, and thus unethical and dangerous. I don’t care if it’s legal (and if you and people like you hadn’t voted for the censors, it might not have been for much longer). It’s unethical. You can’t process that because you believe that the ends justify the means.
3. Despicable and totalitarian screed of the week: Washington Post hack Dana Milbank. The headline says it all: “If Republican senators acquit Trump, they will own the violence that follows” needless to say, Milbank isn’t a lawyer, and apparently hasn’t even watched many TV lawyer shows. An argument like that would mean an instant mistrial in any court in the nation. If is an inflammatory, irresponsible, idiotic argument that appeals to bigger idiots. It represents an endorsement of the unconstitutional concept of pre-crime. the fact that the Washington Post employs a writer capable of making such an argument without “hiding his head under a bag,” as Justice Scalia liked to say tells you all you need to know about how untrustworthy the Post has become, and why it is now the tool of those who oppose individual liberty.
If there is violence, it will be because Milbank and journalists like him have enabled the foes of democracy. Donald Trump will have nothing to do with it.
4. Relating to the previous EA post...Professor Turley argues here that the Democrats were “tanking” the impeachment trial—losing intentionally. If someone can explain why the usually astute professor thinks “tanking” in politics makes sense (in professional sports it can result in better draft picks), please do. he makes a strong case that the case for impeachment is incredibly weak (“In the last impeachment, I criticized the House leadership for impeaching Trump on the thinnest record in the shortest time in history. It then outdid itself by impeaching him a second time with no record and no hearing.”)but fails to explain how the Democrats can possibly benefit from fiasco. He concludes,
“That is why, with the start of the trial, there is growing suspicion of a tanked trial. The House will present a case long on emotions and short on evidence. Trump will then be acquitted and Democrats will look to picking up new talent in the 2022 draft.”
Huh? Turley is often described as a “progressive” professor by the conservative news media when he criticizes Democrats. I’d call him a fair and objective professor who is capable of rising above his own preferences and bias. This is one of the few pieces by Turley that suggests a Democrat Party bias. He’s desperately trying to rationalize utter incompetence and stupidity fueled by irrational hate. “They just can’t be this stupid,” he’s arguing. “They must be losing on purpose.”
With due respect for Professor Turley, that’s almost as ridiculous as Rep. Greene’s “The wildfires were caused by Jewish lasers from outer space” conspiracy theory. Occam’s Razor applies. The Democrats are running an incompetent impeachment because they are incompetent.
Since this is Jimmy Durante birthday week, and I’m fighting against ethics despair myself, I thought it would be a good time to play Jimmy’s most depressing song ever. I’ve always liked it, and nobody else ever sang it, as far as I can determine.
“What became of life?” Well, if it’s anything permanent and bad, it is only because people of good will and strong values gave up out of discouragement, frustration and defeatism.
Please stick to ethics: it shouldn’t be difficult. There is a lot going on, and lot at stake.
Abraham Lincoln, born on this date in 1809, has had a bad year. The Republic he struggled…and died…to save has seen its core values under attack, and for the first time since he was alive, there is reason to fear its existence as a beacon of individual liberty for the world. Statues that honored his brilliant tenure as leader of the nation when it was challenged by a multiple crises have been torn down or removed by mobs and fools. Last week, The New Yorker ran an interview with San Francisco school board President Gabriela López, the former teacher behind the recent decision by the body to remove the names of Founders and Presidents, including our two greatest, George and Abe, from schools because they had not completely absorbed 2ist century understanding of racial equality in the 18th and 19th Centuries respectively. Lincoln is “not someone I see as a hero,” this head-explodingly stupid and ignorant woman said. Meanwhile, the NeverTrump political organization that bears Lincoln’s name is in the midst of a scandal that raises questions about the group’s own values and trustworthiness. When I was a child, Lincoln’s birthday was a holiday, but government bureaucrats decided that two holidays honoring the birthdays of the Presidents most responsible for the nation’s character and existence was too much, so Abe’s day was folded in to George’s, while both of their names were stripped away. Thus, rather than honoring Lincoln today, we honor Millard Fillmore on February 22. The “This Day in History” page I see most mornings has Abe’s birth listed 12th, after the death of…Sal Mineo. #1 is the founding of the NAACP, which deliberately chose Lincoln’s birthday for the landmark. The average student in the United States, including college students, can’t tell you much of anything about Lincoln’s life or character. The ignorance, ingratitude and lack of perspective is staggering.
1. “Nothing to see here! Move along!” The Georgia State Election Board voted unanimously this week to investigate U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock for his role, as board chairman of a voter registration organization founded by Stacey Abrams, in permitting the group to submit some 1,268 voter applications that did not comply with the law. Warnock’s election last month tilted control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats.
2. Nauseating grovel of the week: Rachael Kirkconnell is a contestant on “The Bachelor,” competing for the heart of Matt James, the first black “Bachelor” in the fatuous reality show’s history, which would make them the first mixed race couple on that show. Which is weird, since according to TV, about 80% of American couples are mixed race. Anyway, the social media mob went looking for something, anything, they could find to cancel Racheal, and the best they could come up with is that she attended an Old South-themed fraternity party three years ago—you know, big Scarlet O’Hara dresses, beaus in tails. The Horror. Racheal’s “Manchurian Candidate”-style apology:
At one point, I didn’t recognize how offensive and racist my actions were, but that doesn’t excuse them. My age or when it happened doesn’t excuse anything,” she said in a statement Thursday afternoon. “There are not acceptable or okay in any sense. I was ignorant, but my ignorance was racist. I am sorry to the communities and individuals that my actions harmed and offended…
Then the 24-year-old said she was ashamed”of her lack of education. Like saying “I am sorry to,” perhaps? She also encouraged others to use this as a “teachable moment” to prevent someone else from making the same mistake. You know, teachable: like intimidating and punishing anyone who doesn’t bow down to critical race theory and white guilt. “Racial progress and unity are impossible without (white) accountability, and I deserve to be held accountable for my actions,” she said
In Louisiana, African-American Tessica Brown ran out of her usual hair spray styling product last month, so she thought and thought about what to use instead (I’m just speculating here). Tapioca? Laundry detergent pods? Kerosene? Battery acid? The ashes of her beloved cat? No, no, none of that seemed right. “Eureka!” Tessica suddenly exclaimed. Of course! It’s obvious! Gorilla Glue adhesive spray!”
And so she did.
Guess what happened. Yes, yes, I know it’s hard, but just for fun. Guess.
As she revealed in a now viral video she posted on social media, the glue stuck to her hair and scalp! Who could have predicted that! A local hospital tried to remove the clue using acetatee, but that just burned her scalp.
On Wednesday, Tessica went to Los Angeles to meet with Dr. Michael Obeng, a plastic surgeon, who has offered his services for free because it will great marketing for all of the other women disfigured from putting Gorilla Glue on their hair. I’m sure there must be..well, there might be another one. Maybe.
Since the video is being viewed by so many, the makers of Gorilla Glue felt it was prudent to put out this statement:
Ethics Alarms 