U.S. Society

Three Word Summary of “Working at Anheuser-Busch, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement”: “It was D.E.I.”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“The principles that built great American companies are simple: Hire the best people, serve your customers well and let merit and financial results determine success. While expanding opportunity and making employees feel welcome are worthy goals, how D.E.I. policies were carried out often strayed from these foundational principles and might have even created other forms of discrimination.”

It might have even created other forms of discrimination! Gee, ya think?

In a jaw-dropping example of the “Tell me something I don’t know” variety of journalism, the New York Times gives us “Working at Anheuser-Busch, I Saw What Went Wrong With the D.E.I. Movement” (Gift link!). Anson Frericks tells us that water is wet with the solemnity of a doctor announcing a cancer diagnosis. He was shocked–shocked!—when his company, having announced its commitment to “DEI,” turned down a beneficial distribution arrangement with another company because “being associated with Black Rifle was too politically provocative, especially in progressive circles.” This, in 2022, two years after the beginning of the George Floyd Freakout, made Anson realize that his employers were more interested in virtue-signalling to the Looney Left than selling beer.

What did he think “diversity, equity and inclusion” was going to mean?

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They Make Such a Nice Couple! Ethics Dunce: Texas A&M University; Ethics Hero: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Texas A&M students started holding “Draggieland” (“drag” mixed with “Aggieland,” get it?) at the campus theater complex in 2020. Five years later, however, the tradition was slapped down as the school’s Board of Regents voted to ban all drag events on the 11 Texas A&M campuses.The board’s resolution reads in part,

“The board finds that it is inconsistent with the system’s mission and core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others, to allow special event venues of the universities to be used for drag shows [which are] offensive  [and] likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.”

I’d guess a pre-law student with a closed head injury could correctly explain what’s wrong with that silliness, but luckily the student body at Texas A&M will have a better champion than that, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, aka FIRE. FIRE moved in to fill the breach when the ACLU decided to be woke rather than defend free speech and expression regardless of which side of the partisan divide was attacking them, and this low-hanging fruitcake edict prompted the organization to file a federal lawsuit. It backs the Queer Empowerment Council, a coalition of student organizations at Texas A&M University-College Station and the organizers of the fifth annual “Draggieland” event that was scheduled to be held on campus on March 27, and aims at blocking the policy as a clear violation of the First Amendment. Which it is. FIRE asked a court in the Southern District of Texas to halt Texas A&M officials from enforcing the ban.

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Inadequate Notes on the State of the Union Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

This is exhausting. It is why I dreaded another Trump term, even though re-electing the Democrats after they had so disgraced themselves with the Joe Biden administration was, n my view, indefensible. I don’t want to keep writing about all this crap: Trump’s habitual excesses and rhetorical hyperbole, the partisan factchecking, the Axis news media propaganda, the absurd spectacle of Fox News gleefully spinning everything Trump of the Republicans do as marvelous while CNN and MSNBC give the public stony expressions and unrestrained hatred of the elected President of the United States; the increasingly unhinged conduct of Democrats, and the pathetic declarations of Trump Derangement by my Facebook friends (How did that February 28 boycott work out for you, morons?) The State of the Union debacle and its aftermath showed that while some of this has moderated from Trump’s first term in office, its not nearly enough. Will it really be this way for all four years? I see no reason to hope that it won’t be.

I accumulated over a dozen episodes and articles that would support individual post here related to the aftermath of Trump’s speech, and I don’t feel like writing any of them. I’ll touch on some in what follows, a random set of largely disgusted notes and observations….

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Comment of the Day: A Spammed Commenter…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

…who shall remain nameless.

This:

“Experience the future of companionship with an AI girlfriend chatbot. Designed to listen engage and respond with intelligence and warmth this virtual partner offers meaningful conversations, emotional support, and personalized interactions. Whether you seek a friend a confidante or just casual chats this ai girlfriend chatbot companion is always there for you anytime anywhere. Enjoy a unique ever-evolving connection powered by artificial intelligence.”

I think a blow-up doll is more ethical. The product is as perilous as crack or heroin, and destined to cripple and manipulate vulnerable, lonely people, like, say, me. It is the logical and inevitable next step from 800 sex chat phone lines. They can’t be made illegal; someone will undoubtedly argue that AI girlfriend chatbots can be therapeutic and even, on balance, capable of accomplishing more good than bad.

Sure. As for me, I’m reminded of this post from 2017: The Unibomber Had A Point.

Res ipsa loquitur.

Unethical Quote of the Week: President Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

President Trump just used his State of the Union message to call Joe Biden “the worst President in the history of the United States.”

I wasn’t going to watch any of the speech, both because I dreaded what excesses Trump would inflict on his audience and the behavior of the Democrats. But I just couldn’t resist tuning in: the Netflix series I was watching stunk, so I switched over to DirecTV and landed on NBC for literally 20 seconds, maybe fewer. And what did I hear but the President talking about the success of his border crackdown and then insulting his predecessor. I instantly turned off the TV and went to my office to post this.

There was no need to say what Trump said, and no excuse for it. It was just gratuitously nasty, graceless, divisive and hateful. It was historic though, so maybe progressives will be impressed.

No President has used that traditional speech to denigrate a predecessor, and few have used any Presidential speech to insult a previous White House occupant. Presidents, more than anybody, understand the rigors of the job and are expected to convey at least a modicum of respect for the other members of the select group who have taken on the daunting challenge of leading this chaotic, ambitious, essential nation.

I say this with full understanding that Trump’s assessment of Joe Biden was accurate: Ethics Alarms came to the same conclusion over more than a year of analysis. That doesn’t make Trump’s outburst any more forgivable. Trump’s insult sprung from nothing but the worst of his character: cruelty, vengefulness, lack of self-control, immodesty, crudeness. It also, again, showed the President’s astoundingly flat learning curve: his similarly gratuitous attacks in the past made lifetime enemies out of the late John McCain, the entire Bush family, and the Cheneys, with no compensating benefits. He likes upsetting people.

It is the mark of an asshole.

Ethics Irony: Democrats “Resisting” the President During the State of the Union Address Will Be More Destructive Than the J-6 Riot

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

But they’ll do it anyway.

Some Democrats have told colleagues they will storm out of the chamber if and when Trump says specific lines they find objectionable. Some are going to boycott the speech entirely. They are considering using props, like noisemakers, signs (like the “war criminal” sign “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) held up during Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech last year, eggs or empty egg cartons to taunt Trump for not bringing down inflation in less than two months, and so on.

Morons. Of course, Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi set the precedent for such juvenile and divisive tactics when she ostentatiously ripped up the text of Trump’s last State of the Union Speech in 2020. Remember when GOP Representative Joe Wilson was excoriated in the media and by both Republicans and Democrats by shouting “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during a joint session of Congress in 2009? Wilson was formally rebuked by the House , which held that by shouting that during the president’s speech the Congressman had committed a “breach of decorum and degraded the proceedings of the joint session, to the discredit of the House.” The State of the Union is the most notable and in most years the most important joint session of the House and Senate, as well as a traditional demonstration of unity and respect for the U.S.’s government, the Presidency, and it institution. Elected officials deliberately breaching this “democratic norm” and showing such disrespect for a newly elected POTUS in the first address of his first year in office is destabilizing, dangerously divisive, and an unequivocal demonstration that the party will not give the people’s choice a fair chance—just like the last time.

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“March Comes In” Monday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 3/3/25

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

March 1 was the 395 day anniversary of my wife’s sudden and unexpected death on Leap Year, 2024. I want to thank everyone who has been so kind , tolerant and supportive here. To be honest, it seems like yesterday that I found her lifeless body. I still have nightmares, anxiety, attacks of regret and sudden sadness when something triggers a memory, and almost anything can, from my dog to movies to songs, like this one, which for no reason at all suddenly started going through what I laughingly call “my mind”….

Anyway…thanks.

Meanwhile…

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Can Shattered Trust Be Restored? Should it?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Last September I wrote about minor league catcher Derek Bender. He was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Minnesota Twins’ Low-A affiliate, and was accused after a game of tipping off several hitters for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, a Detroit farm team, regarding the next pitches the Mighty Mussels pitcher was going to throw. Lakeland scored four runs in the second inning to win the game 6-0 and win the Florida State League West division, eliminating the Mighty Mussels from playoff contention.

Lakeland’s coaches alerted Fort Myers coaches regarding Bender’s alleged pitch tipping, and the fact that Bender had told several teammates that he was exhausted and wanted the season to be over was sufficient to convince the organization that Bender had deliberately lost the game for his own team.

The Twins released him. Despite his previous status as a high-rated prospect, the catcher is now a pariah in the game. MLB’s investigation has not been completed, though news stories last fall stated his pitch-tipping as fact. Bender’s agency representing him advised him to make no public statements until there was official report. That seems to have been bad advice: the belief that the player cheated to cause his own team to lose has taken hold as the accepted narrative.

Now he has given an extensive interview to The Athletic, the New York Times sports publication. He says he is innocent of the accusations. Bender met with investigators in November, going over the fateful inning pitch-by-pitch to prove that he was innocent. If the report concludes he did tip off opposing batters to his pitcher’s pitchers, Bender’s baseball career is almost certainly doomed.

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Ethics Musings at a Memorial Service

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I have been to more memorial events in the past year than in the previous ten. Today, on the day before the 365 day anniversary of my wife’s sudden death, I began with another, a “celebration of life” in a Baptist church for a woman I never met. But she was the mother of a friend, not a close friend, I guess— can someone you have only talked to twice in 30 years be called a close friend?—but a wonderful, kind, caring man whom I am proud to have as a friend at all.

I knew only three people at the service besides my friend, which surprised me. I spoke with two of them, and waved to another. Sitting alone in a long pew, my mind wandered all over the place on many topics—this is my curse. Is it unethical to be thinking about a different deceased person at a memorial for another one? No, thinking isn’t ethical unethical, but anyway, I couldn’t help replaying the events of the past year beginning with February 29, 2024 in my mind.

The service, though mercifully short, reminded me of Grace’s disillusionment with organized religion after growing up as Methodist minister’s daughter. The sermon was delivered by a friend of the family; itwas so generic as to be impersonal and meaningless, even though it was presented as particularly applicable to the deceased. The pastor basically repeated that “love is the way” over and over again for fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile, he soloist at the service seemed to think of herself as channeling Aretha Franklin, but had neither the voice nor, crucially, the pitch to approach that standard. She also was belting high, screachy notes into a harsh and overly-loud sound system that really and truly hurt my ears, but I felt it would have been bad form to cover them with my hands.

Furthermore:

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

There should be a lot to write about today that I have missed so far.

Meanwhile, the Hackman demise mystery is more confused now than when I posted on it yesterday. The theories are getting really wild now: last night I heard an “expert” speculate that Hackman and his wife had simultaneous heart attacks.

I think we can officially conclude that the Hackmans did not kill their dog as part of a grand, planned exit, because two of the couple’s dogs are alive and well. Well, good. The post was primarily about the unethical practice of euthanizing healthy dogs “out of love.” (No one has yet suggested that the dogs conspired to rub out their masters, but the way the speculation is going, that theory may surface yet.

I always feel terrible when any well-loved and respected public figure has a final act that is embarrassing, lurid, pathetic or ugly. Often this means that the mess is remembered for than what went before, which was what mattered.

Do write something memorable for me today.