There was a time when I thought I would have enjoyed the job of being the New York Times advice columnist, “The Ethicist.” In the last year or so, however, the questions the current column-holder has answered have tended to indicate basic ethics problem-solving skills among the public have fallen to an abysmal level. And these are supposed to be the best questions received by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at NYU. Heavens to Betsy, what are the other questions like?

This week’s top question was this:

Continue reading →

I hate to append that corny clickbait “Exclusive” to this post’s headline, but I want to be clear: nobody else has noticed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s latest, and in my view, most unethical and blatant effort to influence the election in order to elect Kamala Harris.

I just searched online: I appear to be the only one who has noticed so far, or at least who has written about it. Not Fox News, the devoted mob of conservative pundits at PJ Media, the Washington Free Beacon, Joe Concha—of course not the Times, WaPo, CNN et al., which are are pretending PBS is beyond reproach and as unbiased as…they are.

On October 1, the Public Broadcasting System premiered an episode of “The American Experience” titled, “The American Vice President: Rethinking a political afterthought.” Like the other installments in the long-running educational series, it was a mini-documentary about an aspect of American history, using historical footage and interviews to tell an enlightening story. I began watching it from my point of view as a student of American history, government history and the Presidency in particular. Halfway through—-it shouldn’t have taken that long, but it was 5 am. this morning—I realized what the real message was: “Kamala Harris is qualified to be President of the United States.”

Continue reading →

The Bellevue School District in Washington, like so many others as well as our college campuses, has experienced a plague of anti-Semitism since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack by Hamas against Israel. The phenomenon has been particularly ugly there, with students taunting Jewish classmates in one episode by chanting “Gas the Jews!” Phantom Lake Elementary in the district discovered a swastika drawn on one of its walls on campus. , someone tagged the west wall on campus with a swastika. Principal Heather Snookal sent a reassuring email to parents about the incident, but then felt compelled to send a woke DEI disclaimer so no swastika-lover from another culture would be offended. She really did this. No, I’m not making it up.

“While the symbol is often associated with hate and intolerance due to its use during World War II, it is important to acknowledge that the swastika has deep historical and cultural significance in other parts of the world,” Snookal wrote. “I apologize that I didn’t acknowledge this in my previous communication.”

Continue reading →

Does there need to be much more evidence than that absurd tweet from yesterday? Greene preceded this with a conspiracy theory-esque map showing that it was mostly GOP-tilting regions that got hit hardest by Hurricane Helene.

Presumably no rebuttal is necessary, but I have some reactions…

• What is she talking about?
• What the hell is she talking about?
• What the bloody hell is she talking about?
• Who is “they”?
• Who voted this idiot into Congress?
• How can Republicans with IQ’s in double digits avoid being associated with a House member who constantly embarrasses her party, the Congress, and the human species with outbursts like this?
• I’m racking my brains to think of a dumber and more irresponsible assertion from a House member of either party in the history of the institution. Compared to Greene, fellow Georgia rep Hank Johnson (D-Ga), who memorably expressed concern that Guam might tip over because the U.S. had so many troops there, is Galileo.

What a great time, with House control hanging in the balance, for Greene to make her party look too brain-damanged to put its shoes on the right feet.

I’m having an incredibly busy, stressful day, as I have had every day at least since mid-August. Grace memorial event, which I am completely unprepared for emotionally, is 9 days away. I just learned that my Aunt Beatrice, the last of my mother’s family in that generation, died last night. I have client work that, as usual, will take me well into the night.

But I have to walk the dog, and did so, luckily with my (I nearly wrote “our”) neighbor who was walking her dog, one of Spuds’ pals, as a companion. Our neighborhood firehouse puts out boxes of biscuits and dog treats for the many canines around here, and both dogs pulled us toward that locale as soon as we got close.

I had Spuds’ leash in one hand, so to gather some treats for both dogs I had to put down what filled my other hand: a plastic bag heavy with my dog’s morning offal. I rested the bag on a shelf next to the dog yummies. It wasn’t until I got home that I remembered that I had forgotten to pick the bag up, so I could deposit it in my trash.

So, big deal. It was obvious what the bag was, and what it contained. It was tied up. Would it be so terrible if one of the fire fighters had to toss the thing? But I can’t allow rationalizations like that to outweigh the obvious. Once, I might have.

So I got into my car, drove to the fire house, and retrieved the bag.

It was the right thing to do, damn it.

…because it isn’t worth more. As I assumed, nothing occurred in the debate that might be expected to change enough votes that matter, unless you believe that a Presidential nominee’s choice of Veep tells us something about the nominee’s judgment, management skills, responsibility, and priorities. It should, but historically, it doesn’t. I’m trying to think of whether anyone has been picked as a running mate on the grounds that the individual was the most qualified person to take over as POTUS. Harris wasn’t. Biden wasn’t. Pence wasn’t…I’m back to Grover Cleveland now. Nope!

Still…

Continue reading →

I appended the title so that the many readers here who skip my baseball posts don’t skip this one entirely. It’s not mostly about baseball. But the introduction is.

You see, now it really gets hard for me. Grace, my wife of 43 years, dropped dead on Leap Year. March 1 is when baseball’s Spring Training becomes serious, and baseball is one of my most consuming passions. I taught Grace to love the game; during the seasons we watched the Red Sox almost every day (until they frustrated her too much, which happened frequently). Today, the 2024 season ends. It didn’t save me from being depressed, overwhelmed, guilty, angry and frustrated, but it sure helped a lot. The games also were virtually my only respite from work, as I try to resuscitate our, now my, struggling business after it was savaged by what I bitterly call “the Stupid Lockdown.” I’d watch a game with Spuds sprawled across my lap, then, when it ended, usually around 9:30 pm or so, I would head up to the office to go back to work, either in the throes of the joy of victory or the agony of defeat.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll have neither Grace nor the the Red Sox. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, yesterday was an ethics milestone in Red Sox, baseball and sports history.

On September 28, 1941, the last day of Major League Baseball’s regular season, the Ted Williams became the first player since 1930 to hit .400 as well as quite probably the last player to do so as well. “I guess I’ll be satisfied with that thrill out there today,” he told the Boston Globe of his quest for .400. “I never wanted anything harder in my life.” He never wanted anything harder, but he refused to get it on a technicality. Going into the final day, a double-header, “The Splendid Splinter” as he was called by some writers sported a .399 average that had enough numerals after it to be rounded up to .400. The Red Sox manager, Joe Cronin, told Ted to sit out the last two games. They were meaningless (the Yankees had already clinched the pennant, just like they’ve already clinched the American League East title this year, and the games were meaningless to the Red Sox. Cronin told Williams that nobody would blame him for protecting his historic batting average.

But Ted Williams didn’t care about other people (this was something of a problem for him); it was meeting his own standards that mattered. He felt that “backing in” to a .400 average would be cowardly and would tarnish the achievement in his own eyes. So he risked his .400 average by playing both games…and got six hits in eight at-bats to raise his average to .406.

The ethics password for this weekend is “integrity.“

Meanwhile, in non-baseball ethics news…

Continue reading →