U.S. Society

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 4/26/19: Character is IN Again, What Real Obstruction Looks like, And The Biden Follies Open

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Wow, THAT week went by fast...

1 It’s the economy, stupid, except when the news media and Democrats want to overthrow the President…The Gross Domestic Product for the first quarter rolled in at 3.2%, considerably higher than the 2.5% predicted by “experts.” This is good news and big news, but because it’s favorable to Trump news, you can’t find it on the front page of today’s Times, or in the headlines at HLN. I’m an economics dummy—that’s one reason I majored in American Government, because I didn’t have to take major Economics course—but I worked at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce long enough to learn that all sorts of good things flow from a healthy GDP, which averaged well under 3 for the entire, benighted, protected and over-praised Obama administration.

There is no question that similar news—there was similar news in 2015—early in the Obama administration would have been heralded as cheer-worthy proof that Obama’s economic stimulus monster, derisively nicknamed “Porkulus” by critics, was working (it was an expensive failure), and that he was leading us out of the Wilderness, just as he had promised. Similarly, when Bill Clinton was running for re-election in 1996, his smug and slimy ways (“Where is the outrage?” asked poor Bob Dole) were already a matter of record even before Monica Madness, but the liberal news media and Democrats mocked the very idea that Presidential character should matter to voters.

That very year, my old theater company revived Gore Vidal’s “The Best Man,” a Sixties political satire on Presidential election politics. The play centered on an idealist candidate’s ethical dilemma of whether to release damning information on a competing candidate for the nomination, violating the good candidate’s ethics (the alleged scoop was that his competitor had dabbled in homosexual relationships in the army, not that there’s anything wrong with that: Gore Vidal certainly didn’t think so)  to win the nomination for himself and save the nation from the bad candidate, even though the Army rumors had nothing to do with why he was bad—the man was a Machiavellian right-wing monster (Gore believed all conservatives were monsters). The Washington Post reviewer panned the play, mocking the script as ridiculously outdated. “Who believes that character matters in choosing a President any more?” she asked. Continue reading →

The New York Times Tech Journalist Cheers Shutting Down Social Media. Of Course She Does…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Kara Swisher, Times tech journalist, begins her column:

…So when the Sri Lankan government temporarily shut down access to American social media services like Facebook and Google’s YouTube after the bombings there on Easter morning, my first thought was “good.”

Good, because it could save lives. Good, because the companies that run these platforms seem incapable of controlling the powerful global tools they have built. Good, because the toxic digital waste of misinformation that floods these platforms has overwhelmed what was once so very good about them.

Kara left out the real reason she and, I suspect, her fellow propagandists wish that social media didn’t exist: “Good, because then people will have no alternative but to believe what we tell them.”

Here’s some full disclosure: I have a history with Kara Swisher. Small Washington, D.C. theater companies like mine, the late lamented American Century Theater, had to fight to get any notice from the Washington Post, and in the early years, the internet didn’t help much. Swisher was then the Post’s writer for a weekly column about under-the -radar developments among the smaller theaters, but unlike her predecessor in that role, Kara played favorites. She kept giving ink to the same narrow group of companies that matched her tastes, and the large companies too, which was neither fair nor the column’s purpose. I complained to her, and to her editor, and I wasn’t the only artistic director who raised the issue. We all celebrated when Swisher, who was incredibly arrogant at a tender age, left town. She was and is a classic example of current journalism: convinced that her viewpoint should control what the public has a right to know.

Social media has many flaws, and they are exacerbated horribly by a U.S. education system that appears incapable of teaching critical thought. It is true that morons are especially vulnerable to inflammatory, false, and silly posts on Facebook, Twitter, Insatgram et al., (Imagine: companies pay Kendall Jenner to like things on Instagram, and it works..) but that’s not the fault of the platforms. The news media and journalists like Swisher just want all the morons to themselves so they can manipulate, confuse and control them, and through them, the nation’s culture and political tilt. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce, “Racially-Charged Epithets” Division: NBC Baseball Writer Craig Calcaterra, And Anyone Who Agrees With Him

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

See above. Ick.  This is your brain on political correctness and convoluted social justice double standards. It’s not pretty.

Last week, Wednesday White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson was thrown out of a game and suspended after a fight broke out on the baseball field between his team and the Kansas City Royals. The cause doesn’t matter here, but the Royals pitcher, Brad Keller, threw at Anderson for being flamboyantly demonstrative after hitting a home run.

Anderson was also suspended by MLB, and it turned out that the reason for his punishment was that during the fight he called Keller a “weak-ass fucking nigger.”

Here is Anderson…

This is Keller.

Continue reading →

“Ethics Dunce” Doesn’t Do Justice To Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot…Ethics Virus, Perhaps?

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

“Should All Thefts Be Prosecuted?” the headline asks rhetorically. Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear…never mind, you get the point. Of course all thefts should be prosecuted, just like all laws should be enforced. It is a stupid question, and should be immediately recognized as such, yet, that headline goes on tell us, “Dallas County’s District Attorney Says No.”

Really? Then he is unqualified for office, an ethics corrupter, and a carrier of ethics rot. That DA—his name is John Creuzot–should resign, or be impeached. A prosecutor who doesn’t believe in enforcing laws is an unethical prosecutor, an untrustworthy prosecutor, biased and dangerous to society.

Creuzot has announced several measures of varying levels of justification and controversy to reform the justice system, which is certainly not without need to reform. However, one of them is unethical in multiple ways…

Study after study shows that when we arrest, jail, and convict people for non-violent crimes committed out of necessity, we only prevent that person from gaining the stability necessary to lead a law-abiding life. Criminalizing poverty is counter-productive for our community’s health and safety. For that reason, this office will not prosecute theft of personal items less than $750 unless the evidence shows that the alleged theft was for economic gain.

Continue reading →

Two Big Milestones For Ethics Alarms!

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

There were no comments on the vital commentary, then or yet.

  • Today Ethics Alarms passed 10,000,000 views.

I thought you might like to know.

Comment Of The Day: “Reparations Again”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Reparations for slavery are 1) impossible 2) unaffordable  3) offensive, and 4) guaranteed to worsen race relations rather than repair them, but as long as progressives feel the need to pander to a victim mentality among blacks and think they can prosper by professing to support what they must know is a cynical fantasy, we will continue to hear about them. Ethics Alarms, in turn, will have to keep noting the proposal is unethical.

We got a classic example of the kind of “logic” applied by reparations-mongers when one of the more obscure and unqualified contenders for the Democratic Presidential nomination—you can imagine how obscure and unqualified that must be—announced her support for taking the money from other races to enrich anyone who identifies as the offspring of slaves. Marianne Williams—quick, now, who is she?—told CNN over the weekend,

“It’s simply a debt we owe. This country will not heal until we take a serious moral inventory. A nation must undergo the same level of deep moral inventory [and] admission of our character defects. Racism is a character defect. Let’s end this. Let’s fix this. Let’s solve this. Reparations won’t end everything but it will be a profound gift. It implies a mea culpa. It implies a recognition of a debt owed and therefore, it carries not only economic power but spiritual force — whatever it costs, it’s time to do this.”

Sure.

Here is A.M. Golden’s Comment of the Day on the post, Reprations Again.

I’ll be back with a brief comment after A.M. has his say.

I oppose reparations. It’s no better than the lottery or a medical settlement.

In the Black Community, the concept of “Giving Back to the Community” is huge. It’s expected that, if you run a business in the neighborhood, you will use your largess to help your neighbors. This is, in part, why Asian-owned businesses that tend to be family run get flack because they don’t hire within the community. A wealthy resident or a business owner is made to feel obligated to fund a community center or food pantry (though this is really just making the lottery winner a forced charitable organization or even an extension of government). But, in many cases, “Giving Back to Community” means that you just hand over money to people as loans that are, in actuality, gifts.

I remember attending a sci-fi convention a few years ago with a notable black actor who spent many years working at his trade before becoming famous. At his Q&A session, he talked about a charitable organization he is involved with that sends minority children out into a type of summer camp in open places like Montana so they can be exposed to nature and a different environment. Halfway through the panel, an African-American fellow walked in, sat down, raised his hand and asked what the actor had done to “Give back to the community”. The actor then repeated his earlier description of his charitable work. After that, the newcomer left…probably to go into other Q&A sessions to determine if other black actors were pulling their weight. Continue reading →

From The “When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring” Files, Cultural Illiteracy Section: Nike’s Gaffe

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Pop quiz,  Ethics Alarmers: if you worked for Nike, and learned that it was about to launch a new campaign promoting the brand’s  Trail Running collection with this—“The Lost Cause…Because the lost cause will always be a cause worth supporting”—what would you do?  I assume that most of you would immediately recognize that the Lost Cause, in American historical context,  refers to the sentimental, romantic and  troubling interpretation of the Confederacy’s defeat, in which slavery is recalled as a benevolent institution and the Civil War as a noble effort by the South to protect a civilization now “gone with the wind”—the title of the film which, coincidentally, I am watching as I type this.

But as The Washington Post reported, it took historians blowing whistles at Nike to alert the company that the campaign was an epic gaffe, causing Nike to pull it within hours. Continue reading →

The Ozzie Albies Exension, Or “How DARE A Baseball Player Consider Anything Important Other Than Money?”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

The Atlanta Braves announced a contract extension with second baseman Ozzie Albies guaranteeing the 22-year-old third year players a total of $35 million  from 2019 tp 2025. He’ll earn $1million apiece in 2019 and 2020, $3 million in 2021, $5MM in 2022, and $7MM annually from 2023 through 2025. The contract includes two  club options reportedly valued at $7million each; the first one comes with a $4 million buyout. If both are exercised, Albies will earn  $45 million over the next nine seasons .

Executives, players, stat-heads and scouts are all  condemning the Albies extension, alternately calling it a terrible deal for Albies, unethical exploitation by the team, and selfish betrayal by the player.

Here’s NBC Sports…

Front offices deciding, seemingly simultaneously, to stop spending on free agents in their 30’s stagnated the market. Then, because of the stagnated market they created, the owners get to collectively save billions of dollars in the coming years by nudging their young players into signing extensions well before their primes, before they have established leverage with which to negotiate. Free agency is then further stagnated because these players will be reaching it at 29 and 30, rather than 26. …In these young stars and potential stars signing away their arbitration-eligible seasons, they will fail to help set higher and higher bars at each step of the arbitration process.

Continue reading →

Saturday Ethics Warm-Up, 4/13/2019: I Throw Down The Gauntlet, Alexa Betrays Us, A Chinese Restaurant Isn’t Chinese Enough, And Thus Must Die [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Good morning!

1. Basically, to hell with them. Yesterday I was ostentatiously snubbed by two old friends at an event. It hurt, and more than that, it pissed me off.  Since I have not been directly involved with either of them for over a year, it was pretty clear what their justification was: I refuse to join “the resistance,” and also regularly call out Facebook garbage that is simply the unthinking regurgitation of Trump Derangement talking points. I don’t engage in political debates at social events unless someone makes an objectively false or offensive statement in my presence. The conduct I was subjected to was a political statement, however, and fascist in style. Shunning and marginalizing non-conforming views is increasingly the Left’s favored tool of gaining power, because it works. It works because most people will go along to get along. The next step is to try to shun and marginalize  people  who associate with the target, in this case, me.  Well, shame on them, and bring it on, baby. That kind of peer pressure has never worked on me, or anyone in my family,  my entire life.

What I have noticed on Facebook, and on Ethics Alarms, of course, is that the Angry Left and the “resistance” are mostly made up of cowards.  I actually got push back yesterday on a summary of the Boston Globe story, and the dissent consisted of “Yeah, but Orange Man Bad!” and “We’ll have to agree to disagree.” NO! The first response is a deflection, not a rebuttal, and the second is pure cowardice. (Simple “I disagree” comments don’t make it through moderation here.) What those responses mean is “I don’t like the facts and analysis you are presenting, because they interfere with my preferred narrative, so I’m rejecting them while impugning you, though I in fact have no arguments whatsoever to challenge your assertions. The day before, when I posted about the discriminatory  audition notice, I was accused of making the story up.

“The resistance”  has reached the point where it refuses to argue, because it can’t win arguments on the merits. One of the  Facebook commenters yesterday of the “Orange Man Bad” persuasion mouthed one of my favorite canards, the “he [President Trump] violates norms” argument. “What norms?” I asked. See, I know my Presidential norms, and my democratic norms, and this argument, pushed by the dishonest history professor wing of “the resistance,” is demonstrably crap, and I’m someone who can demonstrate it. I also can point to vital norms at the core of our democracy that Democrats and “the resistance” have breached, with serious, perhaps permanent consequences. What norm has the President breached that comes within a thousand miles, for example, of Democrats and progressives encouraging harassment and violence against the other party and its supporters?

Yesterday tears it for me. I’m taking off the velvet gloves. These are uncivil people who are relying on my civility, and cowardly advocates whose duty, if they had any integrity at all, would be to accept  that they can’t argue their case persuasively and reluctantly conclude that it’s time to admit that their case stinks. From now on, I’m telling them so. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 4/12/2019: “Seeing If I Can Function After Seeing That Fox News Video” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Well, it was a good morning…

…until Arthur in Maine sent me THAT.

1. Record ethics. Kansas City Royals second-baseman Whit Merrifield is a fine young rising star, but the nation will never turn its lonely eyes to him.Playing against the Mariners this week,  Merrifield beat out a squeeze bunt that not only tied the game, but also extended his hitting streak to 31 games. That set a new franchise record, beating Hall of Famer George Brett’s 30 game consecutive hitting streak set in 1980. That seems unfair, you say? Most of Merrifield’s streak was last season, you say?

I agree with you. Baseball takes the position on consecutive game streaks of all kinds that the six months between seasons don’t matter or count. I see the logic, a bit: why should a player’s chance at a record be arbitrarily ended because the season runs out? I also have the answer: tough noogies. There is a material difference between hitting in consecutive games over a single grueling season and doing so with a vacation in the middle. I guarantee that if Merrifield’s record got close to Joe DiMaggio’s iconic 56 games, set in the single, famous season of 1941 (when Ted Williams also hit .406), Major League Baseball would have rushed in and disqualified Merrifield for the consecutive game record because it wouldn’t be set in a single season. THAT, of course, would have been redolent of the controversial asterisk put after Roger Maris’s 61 home runs in 1961, which broke another iconic record, Babe Ruths’s 60. (Maris’s record was set in a 162 game season, Ruth’s in a 154 game season.)

Fortunately, Merrifield’s record chase was stopped at 31 the very next day.

This is as good a time as any to mention that the player who got me hooked on baseball, former Red Sox shortstop Eddie Bressoud, whose 87th birthday is coming up (May 2), had a knack for hitting streaks at the start of season. he hit in 15 straight in 1962, his first with the team, and set the team record for a consecutive streak at the start of the season in 1964, with 20.

2.  “Don’t be evil” a distant memory. R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. , the founder of mainstream conservative magazine “The American Spectator” announced that the publication had been blacklisted by Google, following an investigative report by The Daily Caller that revealed, Continue reading →