U.S. Society

Ick, Unethical, or Illegal? The Fake Scarlet Johanssen Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This is one of those relatively rare emerging ethics issues that I’m not foolhardy enough to reach conclusions about right away, because ethics itself is in a state of flux, as is the related law. All I’m going to do now is begin pointing out the problems that are going to have to be solved eventually…or not.

Of course, the problem is technology. As devotees of the uneven Netflix series “Black Mirror” know well, technology opens up as many ethically disturbing unanticipated (or intentional) consequences as it does societal enhancements and benefits. Now we are all facing a really creepy one: the artificial intelligence-driven virtual friend. Or companion. Or lover. Or enemy.

This has been brought into special focus because of an emerging legal controversy. OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, debuted a seductive version of the voice assistant last week that sounds suspiciously like actress Scarlett Johansson. What a coinkydink! The voice, dubbed “Sky” evoked the A.I. assistant with whom the lonely divorcé Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with in the 2013 Spike Jonze movie, “Her,” and that voice was performed by…Scarlett Johansson.

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An “Authority” Looks Foolish Now For Declaring “Monty Python” Unfunny 50 Years Ago…Prof. Jeremy Mayer of George Mason Says “Hold My Beer!”

/ Jack Marshall / 95 Comments

It was Prof. Mayer’s head-exploding op-ed for USA Today that made me start thinking about how often alleged “authorities” stick their whole legs down their own throats. Unlike the late Cleveland Amory’s misfire regarding the Pythons, Mayer’s “expert” analysis of the current 2024 Presidential election scenario qualifies as malpractice, an abuse of authority triggered by an epic case of the Bias Makes You Stupid Disease. It is also another of what promises to be an accelerating stampede of panicked outbursts from the Trump Deranged in the news media and academia.

The headline signals this guy’s lack of perspective and objectivity immediately: “How Biden Can Save America From Trump’s Return To The White House: Drop Out of the Race.” The claim that Trump is an existential danger to democracy is a dishonest, despicable Democratic party talking point concocted on the theory that fear-mongering is the party’s best chance. It did the same thing in 2016, you may recall: I’ll never forget speaking with a formerly rational lawyer friend in Massachusetts who was near tears after the election, terrified for her year-old baby’s future, certain that the Orange Devil would start World War III. Funny: in four years, Trump didn’t get the U.S involved in any wars at all. Biden, however…

The screed continues with equally batty analysis, denial and gaslighting:

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Ultra-NYT Partisan Propagandist Provides A Terrific Example of the Ravages of Bias, Denial, and Bubble Dwelling

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I find this article incredible, even from Ezra Klein, one of the most openly and proudly biased partisan hacks in captivity. How could he write this swill? Is he really that delusional? How could the Times publish it? Do the editors not see how foolish it makes the paper look?

Read this thing. I have a pay wall free link here, though I almost feel like it’s an insulting gift for you. The headline is “Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About It).” Theories for why Biden is losing? Who needs to search for theories unless their heads are so burrowed into their nether regions that they can lick their intestines. Theories? Here are facts:

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So It’s Come To This: A Brief But Depressing Addendum To “In the Hallowed Halls of Congress, Ethics Dunces, Dolts, and Disgraces All Around”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In the comments to the previous post regarding the juvenile incivility and playground level exchanges of insults in the House of Representatives last week, Chris Marschner notes in part,

“Today, our representatives are products of our public education system where the original classics have been banned for being offensive to one group or discarded as irrelevant to current society. Linguistic presentations today reflect the gutter because that is how the teachers they had speak.’

Last night, before Chris issued his comment, I had already resolved to write about the following revolting development:

In a new episode of “Blue Bloods,” the long-running CBS police and family drama that Ethics Alarms awarded “Ethical TV Show of the Year” several times back when I was doing such things, the show concluded with Erin ( Bridget Moynihan), the NYC prosecutor and police commissioner Tom Selleck’s daughter, making an erection joke. At Sunday dinner. And not even an original or particular funny one.

The discussion around the dinner table of this devout Catholic extended family—where grandpa constantly reminds the brood to “keep it civil”—involved the fifth wedding anniversary of youngest son Jamie (Well Estes) and his policewoman wife. The group noted that traditionally this was the “Wooden” anniversary. Erin then asked, “So, Jamie, are you up to giving her wood?”and punctuated her witticism with a suggestive upward arm thrust.

Hearty laughter all around.

I look forward to next season, when Sunday dinner is disrupted by Grandpa (Len Cariou) loudly farting during dessert.

How can anyone still argue, as I have many times, that Donald Trump is too crude to be President?

Cornell’s Fleeing President Shows Why Trump’s Much Condemned Statement That “Any Jewish Person That Votes For Biden Does Not Love Israel And Frankly Should Be Spoken To” Was Substantially Correct

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Substantially correct, but rhetorically sloppy and needless inflammatory….in other words, typical of Trump.

Martha Pollack announced earlier this month that she will step down as the president of Cornell, running neck-and neck-and -neck-and neck with the other Ivy League indoctrination camps in seeding anti-white hate and anti-Semitism. She championed the Democratic Party led race-focused DEI initiative at Cornell in the wake of a non-racial incident in which a bad cop hastened the demise of a life-time petty perp and addict overdosing and resisting arrest in Minnesota. This, in turn, led to targeting of Jewish and pro-Israel students, to such an extent that Jewish students felt unsafe and threatened on their own campus; one student was charged with seriously threatening a Jewish massacre. Pollack has been weak and enabling toward the pro-terrorists even for an Ivy League president, resulting in terrible publicity for the school and many millions in lost donations.If she was “doing what she thought was right,” she didn’t even have the guts to follow-through on her misguided agenda: perhaps seeing the proverbial writing on the wall, she’s quitting before she can be fired.

But in the grand tradition of weenies and cowards everywhere, now that she is immune from consequences, Pollack took one last, disgusting swipe at her victims, praising the Hamas-supporting demonstrators in an email released on May 14. As Cornell professor William Jacobsen correctly noted, the message  amounted to gaslighting. “The entire statement was demeaning and insulting, except to the anti-Israel protesters,” he wrote. It praised the students who threatened the Jews on campus and expressed “gratitude” that the demonstrations weren’t worse. The missive to the campus read in part:

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Never Mind the “Unethical Quote” Part, This Is Conclusive Evidence That NYC Mayor Eric Adams Is An Idiot

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

At his weekly news conference two days ago, talking about New York City’s shortage of lifeguards for its public pools as the simmer months approach, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said,

“How do we have a large body of people that are in our city and country that are excellent swimmers and at the same time we need lifeguards? The only obstacle is that we won’t give them the right to work to become a lifeguard.”

He really said this. He did! I wouldn’t lie to you about something like that. That’s what the mayor of New York City said, and he wasn’t joking.

After the predictable response (well, Adams apparently is incapable of predicting it, but almost everyone with their cerebrum installed properly would be), the mayor’s attempt at “walking back” his idiocy only raised more doubts about his intellectual fitness (or rather, eliminated them). Adams suggested that illegal immigrants (he called them “migrants,” which doesn’t change what they are) could fill other key jobs in the city, in nursing and food service , for example. “Why people want to just hang onto swimming when I listed that we need to allow people to work,” he said. “Let people work.”

  • Yup, let’s allow people to break our laws and defy our immigration procedures, and be rewarded for it. Good plan! Why should any American respect our laws when elected leaders like Adams take that position? Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) asked: “Do other Democrats like Joe Biden think breaking the law is qualification for employment in our country?” Why yes, Marsha, they do.
  • Somebody explain to the mayor that attaching any skill or characteristic to an entire group is at the core of stereotyping and bigotry. May I assume that Adams, as a black man, has great rhythm and can play a mean banjo?
  • Q: Since apparently wading or swimming across the Rio Grande is regarded as a career credential, why don’t our DEI obsessed Ivy League colleges extend swimming scholarships to these talented and buoyant “visitors”?
  • A: Because “not drowning” doesn’t make someone an “excellent swimmer.”

The signature significance test: Would any public figure who isn’t an idiot say this in a public forum, even once, without intending to be funny?

I don’t think so.

Companies Deliberately Alienating “Undesirable” Consumers: What’s Going On Here?”

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I don’t think we’ve ever seen this before the 21st Century emergence of The Great supid, with those entrusted with the management of for-profit companies deliberately choosing virtue -signaling over profitability. What does it all mean?

Today’s example is Sports Illustrated, which, I must confess, I thought was defunct. The once indispensable sports photography and commentary magazine almost went under last year and was apparently bought by a last-minute rescuer.  So how does the magazine launch its comeback? Why, by prominently including the above model in its annual swimsuit issue due out this month, displaying other comely and not so comely models in gowns rather than bikinis (Who, other than Oprah, wants to see Gail King in the S.I. swimsuit issue?) and highlighting Angry Lesbian Megan Rapinoe to promote the issue. That should really draw the guys!

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Observations on a Scenario in Which Everyone and Everything Involved Looks Bad Including the Schools and American Society in General

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Zoey (above), a high school senior at Ayala High School in Chino Hills, California —we don’t yet know her whole name—was expelled for cyberbullying, intimidation, harassment and attempting to cause physical injury to another person after she used her cell phone to live-stream a classroom brawl between fellow students. There seems to be some suspicion that she was in on the plot to attack one of the combatants, though Zooey denies it. The incident and the report covering it raise all sorts of ethics questions and conclusions.

Such as…

1. Why are students allowed to have cell phones in class at all, specifically cameras? The school has a rule against filming and posting occurrences in the school involving students, potentially embarrassing them, humiliating them and harassing them—why not just confiscate all of the phones before class so this kind of thing is impossible?

2. Zoey’s explanation: “In our generation, you go live to do makeup, to do everything, so it was just going live just to go live. It wasn’t my intent to purposely or try to cause harm to anyone.” I see Zoey has virtually reached adulthood without anyone teaching her that rationalizations aren’t valid reasons for unethical conduct, and “Everybody does it” is particularly wrong.

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

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Now get this: In 2017, three 14-year-odlCalifornia 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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