U.S. Society

Ethics Observations on President Trump’s White House Cabinet Meeting/Press Conference

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

1. Well, Biden didn’t have Cabinet meetings at all for the most part, so I hate to complain. But a public Cabinet meeting is not a real Cabinet meeting. True, Trump proved in the epic confrontation with Zelenskyy that the presence of cameras won’t always inhibit him, but still: a true Cabinet meeting must be private and permit candid and open discussion from all involved.

2. This leads to the second problem: because it is a PR exercise and not a real Cabinet meeting, everyone except Trump comes off as scripted. Worse, they all come off as yes-people and sycophants. However, in front of cameras, Trump’s appointees can’t exactly start arguing with each other or the President. That should be obvious, but I’ve already had one Trump-Deranged colleague get on the phone to say, “See? It’s just like Stalin!” That’s the narrative, and all of the obsequious “Yes, under your leadership, Mr. President, the improvement in this area has been remarkable and America is truly great again!” boot-licking supports it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Trump should hire me to train his team to be more convincing and less obsequious.

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President Trump: The Kennedy Center, NPR, PBS…Now Fix The Smithsonian, Please

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I knew there was a reason I hadn’t been to the Smithsonian Institution for so long. Like so many other crucial institutions the apathy of sane and patriotic American allowed to become leftist propaganda weapons over the last 50 years or so, the Smithsonian, along with most of the major museums across the country, “stress on narratives over artifacts.” That’s a quote from Jonathan Turley in his annoying understated mode.

White House official Lindsey Halligan condemned the new National Museum of American History’s Entertainment Nation exhibit, writing, “American taxpayers should not be funding institutions that undermine our country or promote one-sided, divisive political narratives. The Smithsonian Institution should present history in a way that is accurate, balanced, and consistent with the values that make the United States of America exceptional.”

Gee, ya think?

That Star Wars exhibit above would have prompted me to walk out of the building. Turley comments, “I was one of those who went to the movie when it came out, and I cannot recall anyone thinking, let alone connecting, the film to Nixon or Vietnam.” Nor can I, because nobody thought that, even the most politics-obsessed. Even film reviewers, always mostly left-leaning and desperate to find hidden messages in the most apolitical films, didn’t think Jabba the Hut was meant to suggest Spiro Agnew, or something.

We’ve known this about the Smithsonian for a long time, of course, but just shrugged it off because so many other example of insidious political corruption are worse. The Institution tried to slap a war crimes narrative on the Enola Gay. It left Clarence Thomas out of the National Museum of African-American History because being conservative means that he doesn’t count.

Among the flagrant propagandizing noted by Turley:

  • The commentary tied to a 1923 circus poster, reads: “Under the big top, circuses expressed the colonial impulse to claim dominion over the world.” Ah. So those clowns were supposed to be scary…
  • The Smithsonian declares “One of the earliest defining traits of entertainment in the United States was extraordinary violence.” You know, because United States BAD. One of the earliest traits of HUMAN entertainment for thousands of years was “extraordinary violence”! That one would have also had me running for the exits. Gladiators? Bull-baiting? Public executions? Grimm’s Fairy Tales???
  • The Lone Ranger display states: “The White title character’s relationship with Tonto resembled how the U.S. government imagined itself the world’s Lone Ranger.”

Oh for God’s sake…

Fix this, Mr. President. Fire the administrators and curators, all of them. Start from scratch.

“Can The Princess Treatment Go Too Far?” Answer: No, If Your Ethics Alarms Function…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I heard the term “The Princess Treatment” for the first time last week, then right on cue the New York Times produced a feature called, “Can the ‘Princess Treatment’ Go Too Far? A popular video has prompted discussions about how to treat your significant other, what qualifies as “the bare minimum” and how this all relates to traditional gender roles.” It begins in part,

A husband opening the car door for his wife. A boyfriend surprising his girlfriend with flowers. Remembering her birthday. Tying her shoes. Paying for her nail appointment. Are these normal expectations or examples of the “princess treatment”? A recent slew of popular videos on social media have debated the concept, and what it means for women in relationships…Last week, Courtney Palmer, 37, reignited that discussion with a video that has garnered more than three million views. In it, she describes how princess treatment informs her relationship, including how she will sometimes defer to her husband. “If I am at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors and I do not order my own food,” she says in the opening of the nearly six-minute video, which has prompted a wide-ranging discussion about gender roles, restaurant etiquette and relationship expectations…

You can read it all: it’s a stupid debate. Not only with “significant others” but with all women (and, for that matter all men), how I treat them in private and social situations is based on 1) how I would like to be treated, Golden Rule 101, 2) how I have been told or discerned that they would like to be treated, and 3) what I have concluded is basic manners, and ethical societal norms that I believe should be cultivated. Why is this hard? Continue reading →

Revisiting “I Don’t Understand This ‘Niggardly Principle’ Story At All…Or Maybe I Do and Am Just Afraid To Accept the Truth”

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The Rest of the Story: I’m reposting this essay from almost exactly a year ago because the Free Press has a disturbing update on Holden Hughes (“He Was Falsely Accused of ‘Blackface.’ It Derailed His Life.”), one of the boys whose 2017 selfie was used by an unidentified woke ethics villain to have the children tarred as racists during the George Floyd Freakout in 2020. That ethics villain was an ideological compatriot of my friends who are raving about MAGA and Trump today. That is their “side.”

He’s an adult now, but Holden’s life plans were seriously derailed when the private school he was attending expelled him, not because he really was wearing “blackface” in that photo (he and his friends were smeared with green anti-acne facial masks) but because the woke head of the school believed that appearances mattered more than reality. Last year, a successful law suit by his family against the school ended in a one million dollar verdict for him and another one of the boys. That was just money, however, the damage remained

Everyone should reflect on this cautionary tale (which the mainstream media scrupulously avoided reporting on, and you know why) when the Trump Deranged claim that progressives defend democratic values and deplore ideological bullying. The piece ends,

Last year, shortly after the lawsuit was settled, he started dating a girl he liked. On their second date, he told her about his past and after that, he said, she stopped responding to his texts. He told me that it’s hard to accept that “something completely out of my control kind of inhibits that relationship from going farther.” But he can’t change the past.

“It’s my life, and there’s no avoiding that. It made me who I am today.”

Throughout the entire ordeal of the last five years, Holden told me he would remind himself: “I know who I am. I know my values. I know the real story.” He knows the other story—the one that isn’t true—will continue to haunt him. “I don’t think it’s ever gonna leave me,” he said. But he wanted to speak to me because he believed that putting his story in print, knowing it would be on the internet forever, would be cathartic. For him, it is a chance to finally set the record straight, after trying to hide the lies for so long.

“I am not ashamed of anything that happened,” Holden said. “I have made a lot of mistakes in my life. I make them every single day, but doing an acne face mask in eighth grade was not one of them.”

Here is the post, from May 11, 2024:

Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-old California teens, two of whom, Holden Hughes and Aaron Hartley, were about to begin attending St. Francis High School, a Catholic private school in Mountain view, were modeling anti-acne medicinal face masks that involved smearing dark green goo on their faces. (One of the boys had severe acne and his friends put the stuff on their own faces in an act of support). The teen who wasn’t headed to the private school snapped a selfie because the boys thought they looked funny. A similar photo taken a day earlier indicated that they had tried white medicinal face masks as well. 

A student at St. Francis found the image online and uploaded it to a group chat in June 2020. Not only was the George Floyd Freakout in full eruption, but the photo was circulated on the same day that recent SFHS graduates had posted on Instagram a satirical meme pertaining to Floyd’s demise, so the school was “triggered.” The gloriously woke student who decided to publicize the greenface photo claimed that the teens were using blackface; “another example” of rampant racism at the school, he posted, and urged everyone in the group chat to spread it throughout the school community—you know, to cause as much anger, division and disruption as possible.

I can’t find the name of that charming kid. He’ll probably be Governor of California some day.

Soon after this seed was planted, the Dean of Students at St. Francis Ray called the Hughes’s and Aaron Hartley’s’ parents to ask them if they were aware of the photograph. They explained that the teens had applied green facemasks three years earlier, long before the non-racial Minnesota incident that had no demonstrable racial significance and definitely no relevance to blackface. The parents added that the teens’ use of the acne medication had “neither ill intent nor racist motivation, nor even knowledge of what “blackface” meant.”

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“Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Bias!” CNN—AGAIN—Uses a Disaster to Broadcast Democrat Talking Points

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Just as it does with almost every mass shooting, CNN pounced on the opportunity created by the fatal flash-flooding in Texas to weaponize it for the Axis of Unethical Conduct, or which it is a card-carrying member. Partisan propaganda is not the function of ethical journalism, if anyone can even remember what that is now. Nor is lying outright, as CNN does in this passage:

“The NOAA research cuts would come just as human-caused climate change is resulting in more frequent and intense downpours like the ones that led to this tragedy in Texas.”

Nice! CNN states as fact what many scientists and researcher deny. Climate change hysterics keep claiming that weather events like hurricanes are increasing, but so far, their predictions have proven repeatedly and inconveniently wrong. Nor is there evidence of “more frequent downpours” like what just hit Texas: what made that downpour newsworthy and disastrous was that it was so unusual. One freak weather event doesn’t prove anything, but nevermind: CNN’s goal is a political agenda, not informing the public.

Most of the news story tries to blame the disaster on the Trump budget cuts, even though at one point CNN says that the flood warnings were timely. That doesn’t stop it from littering the piece with subheads like “Forecast offices stretched thin,” though their own reporting makes it clear that this is irrelevant to the Texas flooding.

Well, hey, if the spin can know a point or two off Trump’s approval rating in a poll, it’s worth it, right?

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Pointer: Arthur in Maine

Trump Derangement Saturday Note…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Yes, that’s the Fourth of July tweet from poor, deluded Kamala Harris. Since I’ve posted on several examples of Trump Derangement today (the ridiculous Indian bridge is the one exception, but I try to avoid politics, I really do), I feel like Harris’ statement deserves a little attention. Like Ken White, she just assumes everyone sees through the same jaundiced eyes and knows why “things” are really, really terrible, but she doesn’t give any specifics. That strategy is so much safer than saying, “It’s really terrible that we crunched Iran’s nuclear weapon capabilities, it’s so horrible that criminal illegal aliens are being deported, it’s just outrageous the news outlets that try to rig our elections and that the universities that discriminate against men, whites, and Jews* are being held to account.’

Unemployment is down, the stock market is up, inflation has slowed, DEI is fading away, sanctuary cities are finally being confronted, and Congress passed a budget. The male swimmer who cheated female swimmers out of records and titles has even been rebuked. What’s “hard,” Kamala? Hard for whom?

And what ideals is she talking about? To repurpose her own infamous indignant quote her, “How dare she?” She represented an administration and led a party that ran roughshod over “American ideals” like no other. A fake President. Criminalizing politics. An appointed Presidential candidate who never faced a primary challenger. Refusal to enforce the nation’s laws. An administration built on demographic bias instead of merit.

The amazing thing is that anyone would care what Kamala Harris says, thinks, or wants at this point. She really seems to think she has a career in politics. She’s like the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” still issuing challenges and bravado despite having lost his arms and legs.

Just not as funny.

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*Note: Harvard’s alumni magazine this month congratulates the Class of 2025 on its back page, featuring a photo of a white, maybe mixed-race female grad, a Hispanic female grad, and an Asian male, all smiling away.

Unethical Quote of the Week: Lawyer/Pundit Ken “Popehat” White

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“The people I despise, and who despise me, believe America’s values and goals are blood, soil, swagger, and an insipid and arrogant conformity. They are the values of bullies and their sycophants. They may prevail. There’s no promise they will not.”

—Libertarian pundit Ken White, in the introduction to his annual retelling of personal July 4th reminiscence.

What happened to Ken White over the last several years or so? Once a frequently-praised, reliable advocate of free speech and responsible analysis, he has slowly morphed into a standard issue “resistance” hack, although better writer than most. As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds might say (and maybe he has), “Ken White morphed into Charles M. Blow so slowly I almost didn’t notice it.”

Ken was the main blogger at the now defunct libertarian blog Popehat. Now he periodically issues his Popehat Report newsletter, which you can subscribe to for free. That’s a good thing, because the most recent edition was the first one in 2025. He also has a podcast, like virtually everyone breathing but me.

Apparently every Fourth of July Ken posts some version of his “Fourth of July story,” a personal reminiscence about an incident he says was “epiphanal and . It describes “a formative experience in my life and in my identity as an American.” It’s a nice story about a naturalization ceremony the judge he was clerking for at the time performed for some aging Filipino veterans. However, White feels compelled to introduce it this year with the same kind of lazy, reflex, Trump-Deranged snark that infests so many of the less erudite post of my Facebook friends these days. A favorite approach of their posts is the “Everything is Terrible” Big Lie (#5), which has been, as I wrote in “The Big Lies of the Resistance,” “has been a veritable mantra of the ‘resistance,’ Democrats, progressives and the mainstream news media from the second Donald Trump had been declared the winner of the 2016 election.” You read this in social media and hear it from all over, the side comments about “the way things are now,” “these difficult times,” and “with what’s going on.” This is how the Trump Deranged signal that they’re not a deplorable: it’s like a secret handshake. If I wanted to have whole days wasted by arguments with people who don’t care about reality, I would ask these TDS sufferers, “What exactly is that supposed to refer to?” Then their answers would make me lose respect for them, because they would be regurgitated talking points, massive hypocrisy, or proof positive of crippling ignorance and gullibility.

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Depressing Fourth of July Ethics Footnotes: The United States Is Still Great & The Founders Should Be Proud of Us (and Themselves), But…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Axis of Unethical Conduct, the Trump Deranged, and the Galactically Stupid either don’t know this or don’t want anyone else to know it. That is unpatriotic and unethical. But first, a song! The singing comes at the end, words by, of course, John Phillip Sousa…

Now on to the inventory. I will try to post more up-beat stories tomorrow…

1. This, of course, is autocracy: The Environmental Protection Agency today placed 144 employees who signed a letter accusing the Trump administration of politicizing the agency on administrative leave and opened an investigation into their their conduct. Good. There is no workplace where an employee publicly criticizing and attacking his or her employer isn’t likely to be fired and shouldn’t be fired. “Current and former E.P.A. employees, lawyers and advocates expressed alarm at the development, saying the agency appeared to be ignoring the employees’ First Amendment rights.” Of course they do, because undermining their own Executive Branch is their objective, and they think they should be allowed to do it. “The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” the E.P.A. press secretary, Brigit Hirsch wrote in an email. OK, that’s unnecessarily bombastic, but basically correct. The suspended employees signed the letter using their official titles. They don’t have a metaphorical ethics or legal leg to stand on.

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KABOOM! “Innocent Illegals????” “Just Want a Better Life????”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I want to get a July 4th weekend Ethics Alarms multi-issue post out, and this probably belongs there, but for the love of God, I can’t wait.

I just heard one of the MSNBC talking heads agree with a typical guest on the network (“you know: morons”)by pointing out that Joe Klein, the “legendary TIME columnist” (who wrote “Primary Colors,” the best-selling roman a clef about the Bill Clinton cabal and lied about his authorship), had written on his substack that ICE deporting “innocent illegal immigrants” who have been living here for many years and “only came here to have a better life” “makes the country weaker.”

Will we never be able to sound the death knell for that hoary, dishonest rationalization? How can anyone still be saying that, and worse, how can anyone be so cretinous as to quote it as if it is some kind of revelation?

ONE: There are no “innocent illegal immigrants” who are adults. It is impossible to “innocently” enter the United States illegally. This is so obvious that it shouldn’t have to be repeated or explained.

TWO: The fact that one of these illegals has been living here for “many years” means that a non-innocent individual has been violating our laws that entire time, even if they haven’t engaged in drug-dealing, rape or other felonies. They are just as culpable as they would have been in they were nabbed in the act of breaking out immigration laws.

THREE: ALL thieves, embezzlers, traitors, adulterers, bigamists, identity thieves, extortionists, blackmailers, frauds, drug dealers, counterfeiters, tax cheats and even murderers commit their crimes to “have a better life.” If that’s an excuse for illegal immigrants, it’s a mitigation for illegal immigrants too, and it’s not.

The next person who says any of that garbage in my presence had better be ready to duck, because I’m going to train myself to projectile vomit at will as my automatic response to “innocent illegal” or “They just want a better life.”

Does Jazz Really Need DEI?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I would say that DEI has more rapidly than most reached the final evolutionary stage noted by philosopher Eric Hoffer, who famously observed that every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. The problem with that is that DEI was never a great cause to begin with. However, it has definitely entered its racket stage, and maybe its certifiably insane stage. Behold…

Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice—no, I’m not making that up— at Boston’s Berklee College of Music has issued the results of a study that claims to show that because “male-identified jazz educators” outnumber “female-identified counterparts” six to one, it is proof that jazz “remains predominantly male due to a biased system.” The Institute’s website asks,“What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy?” One wag’s answer: “Probably like nothing at all.”

Indeed most jazz musicians and composer are male. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and if any variation from demographic equality proves bias, oppression and discrimination in your DEI worldview, then this phenomenon is sinister. Researcher Lara Pellegrinelli PhD is an “ethnomusicologist” who contributed to the study. She blathers, “To identify each jazz faculty member by gender, we examined the pronouns we encountered in these sources—and found only “he” and “she” in reference to the educators in our study. This is why we use the terminology “female-identified” and “male-identified” for our data, as opposed to sex assigned at birth or the descriptors “female-identifying” and “male-identifying,” which suggests a more active process of participant self-identification.”

Oh.

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