As crazy as this loon melting down in her airplane seat was, she had sufficient marbles loose and rolling around to try out the “I can’t breath!” line. This was, you will recall, famously used by two arrest-resisting African American males who really couldn’t breathe while inept and overly-violent police officers attempted to take them into custody.
Eric Garner deserves credit for the line; he really couldn’t breathe after being gang-tacked by three NYC police officers, though it didn’t help that Garner was morbidly obese. (“You take your victim as you find him”) George Floyd then memorably gave Garner’s catchy line an encore. He really couldn’t breathe either, possibly from claustrophobia, definitely from a fentanyl overdose, though it didn’t help that Officer Derek Chauvin was kneeling on his neck.
It was a nice try by the Spirit Airline wacko, but she neglected to consider the absolutely essential feature of playing the “I can’t breathe!” card.
Commenter Dr. Emilio Lizardo revealed this morning in the comments to “At Princeton, Students Feel “Unsafe” in the Company of a Conservative Professor” that the policy at issue had already been reversed by the time I wrote about it:
“By April 2, the policy was reversed after an intervention from the club’s Graduate Board. In the seven days in between, debate over the policy rose from the club’s private GroupMe to the headlines of national right-wing publications. Club leadership maintains that the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny.”
So Ethics Alarms can’t claim even a smidgen of credit for the reversal. Nonetheless, the lesson here, as we have already seen elsewhere, is that when organizations and institutions install discriminatory and self-evidently unethical procedures and policies in the name of wokeness, political correctness, aspiring fascism of the far left, DEI or other perversions of core American principles and are quickly exposed, assailed and embarrassed, they usually back down. (Usually.)
A further lesson is that the organizations and institutions know that what they are doing is indefensible except from the “by any means necessary” perspective driving the Left in its crusade to re-make America. They know it, but they try anyway, hoping that any single instance will fly under the metaphorical radar long enough to become institutionalized. When they get caught, their reaction is, “OK, too soon. We’ll hold off on this one for now.”
Their assumption, and it is, frighteningly, probably correct, that the current DEI, Black Lives Matter, open borders, climate change hysteria, anti-free speech…freedom of association…equal treatment under the law and due process wack-a-mole contest it has forced our society into playing will inevitably result in a slow, steady ratcheting-up of anti-democratic practices that become accepted as norms. This is how the public education system became an indoctrination process. It is how the initially admirable goals of affirmative action became the racist practice of “diversity, equity and inclusion.” It is how journalism in the US. became partisan propaganda.
The fact that only conservative publications and news sources treated the Princeton story as “fit to print” and necessary illumination to stop democracy from “dying in darkness” is also significant. This doesn’t mean that the story wasn’t important or objectively worth reporting on. The conduct of the mainstream media in ignoring it proves that its purpose is not to keep the public informed, but to assist the Far Left in laying waste to America’s traditional interpretation of democracy. The Princeton story is important, and the fact that only conservative sources publicized it (only Fox News among the news networks picked it up) doesn’t prove their bias. It proves the sinister, deliberate complicity of the mainstream media as it attempts to keep Americans from realizing what is going on right under their noses until it is too late.
The Princetonian wrote that a debate over the policy arose only after “headlines of national right-wing publications” exposed it. If the story sparked a debate, it means it was a story worth reporting. The MSM didn’t report on the story because the Far Left doesn’t want any debate. In an honest debate they lose, just as they lose on abortion, illegal immigration, and so many other issues. If they felt they could win on the merits, then they would want debate. Instead, their media tries to bury the facts. This isn’t a conservative “conspiracy theory.” It is reality.
Finally, the club’s claim that “the reversal was not due to national media scrutiny” is another damning piece of evidence. Gaslighting, denial, “Jumbo”-ism and “It isn’t what it is” (Yoo’s Rationalization,” #64) mania have become such reflex tools of the Left that comparisons with “1984” are unavoidable. The border is secure. Bidenomics is a success. Inflation isn’t a problem. The President didn’t extol the “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Easter. He’s as sharp as a tack. The Trump prosecutions aren’t political. January 6 was an insurrection. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
The Princeton student club episode is an important one for American to understand. They can only understand it if they know about it.
Boy I wish I knew how to get the readership here back on the rising curve it seemed to be on in 2016...
[As Curmie was kind enough to remind me in the comments below, I wrote about this same poll when it was first reported in January. Then, however, I couldn’t find the actual poll results themselves, and that post mostly focused on that problem. I like this post better anyway…]
Well, polls. Still, Scott Rasmussen yesterday used a podcast appearance to call attention to the results of a provocative poll he took earlier this year, and they are, in one aspect, heartening to your friendly neighborhood ethicist (though I don’t believe them). What he called “terrifying” was another set of results.
What caused me to click was this: To the question “Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair?” just 7% of American polled said they would prefer their candidate to win by cheating, if that’s what it took. Rasmussen says that he wished the number was lower , but that it “isn’t bad.” Not bad? I think the number is astounding, and that it’s obvious that people were lying. A vast majority of American students, adults, workers and management cheats in myriad ways to achieve goals far less important than electing national leaders. More people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump in 2016 despite undeniable evidence that the Democratic Party and Clinton had cheated to get her the nomination. Her then still popular hubby had even cheated on her, and she still went on the Today Show to cheat the public by blaming the Monica Lewinsky scandal on a conservative conspiracy when she knew the ugly story was true. 7%? Utter nonsense, whatever the reason.
The photo above, showing three illuminated cross along Lower Manhattan Skyline in New York city symbolizing the three crosses on Calvary, contrasts sharply with Item #3 of the previous post noting that the White House viewed Easter egg decorations with “religious symbols” inappropriate for the day’s festivities.
I ask, without irony or innuendo: “Is this progress?”
My family was schizophrenic about Easter, since the church we regularly attended in Arlington, Mass, the Arlington Congregational Church, had its Easter service on the regular day while the Greek Orthodox Church, in which my parents were married, celebrates on a different day entirely (well, most years—this year, Greek Easter falls on May 5). The Greeks dye all Easter eggs red, which is a bit boring, but play a game where everyone in the family picks an egg and takes turns smashing its end against another family member’s egg (hitting an egg in the side is cheating). The Marshalls had this competition on regular Easter with multi-colored eggs; my mother often secretly dyed an unboiled egg and gave this one to my father, so his egg would shatter into a gooey mess when they had their egg duel. Today my sister is making me a traditional Greek specialty, avagolemono soup. My grandmother made it: Mom didn’t have the patience. If you’ve never tried it, you should.
That Easter hymn above was always sung at our church (which was riddled with scandals: a deacon leaving his wife and two daughters to run off with a gay lover; a beloved, charismatic young minister being revealed as a serial adulterer with female members of the congregation; the young woman who ran the Sunday school program hanging herself in the church bell tower). It’s by my pal Sir Arthur Sullivan, who was one of those freaks like Richard Rodgers, Edvard Grieg, Irving Berlin, Carol King and Paul McCartney who could create catchy melodies without breaking a sweat (unlike, say, Stephen Sondheim).
My Easter celebration, as always, began this year with my umpteenth viewing of the guilty pleasure champion film of all time, Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments,” which I first saw as a child and which planted the seed that made me aspire to being a director. The production’s ethics lesson is “If you are going to do something, do it right.” The grand, incomparable epic also stands for the principle that important stories in our culture should be told to rising generations in a manner that will cement them in their brains forever.
Every director, especially opera directors, can learn from the astounding Exodus scene, which thrills me every time I see it. CB spares no expense or imaginative detail: everything is going on: an old man praying is stampeded by geese; a small boy is nosed by a water buffalo (no mere oxen for CB!) ; the Nubians have a huge vulture flapping away on their cart. Brilliant colors, wild sounds, such organized chaos—and all those people are real, not CGI fakes. The fantastic boffo sequences are all so good you can forgive (if not forget) DeMille’s vulgarity and cornball instincts, as with the giggling daughters of the Sheik of Midion basically drooling over Charlton Heston, and various characters, but especially Nefertiri (played by Ann Baxter, who could be an effective actress, like she’s in a John Waters movie), saying, “Moses, Moses!” repeatedly. My favorites, other than Moses leading the thousands out of Egypt: the raising of the new obelisk…the burning hail—the plague of the first born moving down alleys and streets in a sickly green mist right out of a horror movie—God writing out the Ten Commandments with animated flaming lightning that does loop-de-loops and other stunts on the way to the tablets—-the parting of the Red Sea (of course), and CB’s insanely over-the-top orgy around the Golden Calf: Where did all those flower garlands come from in a desert?
I don’t understand why anyone continues to live or work in California, a state with a culture that lurches between stupid, irresponsible and deluded.
The headline above does not refer to the recent, bone-headed decision to give fast-food workers up to a 25% raise, with cooking Big Macs the minimum wage jumping to $20 an hour in that sector next week. “It’s a big win for cooks, cashiers and other fast-food workers ” says taxpayer-funded progressive propaganda organ NPR. Right. Fast food wages have been growing at a faster clip than almost any other sector since the pandemic, with the result that more outlets are moving to automation, which means, as has happened every time the minimum wage jumps, lower-paid workers—whose skills often aren’t worth the minimum wage— will lose their jobs. Meanwhile, fewer people with strained budgets will buy fast food because of the duel problems that it’s no longer fast, and is absurdly expensive, and California is already one of the most expensive states.
Oh, who knows: maybe all those vegans and health nuts in the Golden State want to wreck the fast food business. More likely, however, it’s just that legislators there—Suspense! Will they actually vote to make all Californians-of-the-right-color millionaires?—don’t understand economics, cause-and-effect and reality.
But I find the proposed law this post concerns more offensive from an ethics point of view if less destructive. California Assemblyman Matt Haney wants California to be the first in the country to give employees the legal right refuse to respond if their superior calls after hours. Then the law would permit workers to ignore emails, texts and other work-related communications until the next day after the work day has begun. “People now find themselves always on and never off,” the Nanny State fan said. “There’s an availability creep that has reached into many people’s lives, and I think it’s not a positive thing for people’s happiness, for their well-being, or even for work productivity.”
Oh, shut up. The law aims to give workers a legal right to be unprofessional. If you have a job and believe in ethical work values, you believe in diligence, responsibility and self-sacrifice. If you believe in personal autonomy and character, you believe that human beings need to be able to make intelligent choices about their life, including their careers, without being bolstered by the legal right to stand up to bullies, jerks and unreasonable supervisors.
Sarah B. submitted this Comment of the Day over the weekend, and it dovetails neatly with today’s post on the immediate politicizing of the Baltimore bridge disaster. Of course, that most recent incident is but a fractal of the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck, which saw both misinformation spread by the news media and our supposedly non-partisan, trustworthy health organizations, agencies and institutions, cripple the economy, damage our children, turn large swathes of the population into fearful, mask-clutching weenies, and damage the integrity of a national election. That’s where Sarah’s cautionary tale begins.
My mother, an RN (and massage therapist) became livid at all her TDS suffering friends and patients repeatedly calling Ivermectin a “horse drug”. She went and got documents discussing the usage of Ivermectin in certain patients with various types of issues, and how the drug was routinely used to treat certain infections.
But despite the high usage of the drug on humans in these papers from reputable medical journals dated over decades, she was told that she was too simple to understand that this was misinformation and that Ivermectin was only a conspiracy theorist’s solution. She was told that she needs to check with people with real medical degrees, not just crunchy folks in massage therapy school. Her bachelors in nursing with decades of experience was ignored in this discussion.
My mother’s insistence that people should look at the evidence lost her friends and clients, many of whom no longer contact her at all and haven’t since 2020, despite being friends for decades prior.
Too late to thank her, my wife’s death has made me realize what a terrible job she had dealing with all the companies, websites and cyber-traps one encounters trying to do business and deal with finances in today’s America. It also has brought into sharper focus what I had been aware of: that since the pandemic lockdown, customer service live and online has deteriorated to an extent that cannot be justified. When the Biden lackeys (like the execrable Paul Krugman) insist that the economy is wonderful and that the public doesn’t realize how great things are, this aspect of the economy should be thrown in their faces. Maybe elites like Krugman never have to go shopping in person or deal with a company’s website. If they did, they would realize that the quality of life has declined precipitously, and that it is fair to blame inflation (from profligate government spending) and excessive minimum wage levels as well as the remaining carnage from the Wuhan pandemic lockdown.
I hate to point a finger at Wells Fargo, as my bank has generally been more helpful over the past month than almost anyone else, but what follows is a prime example….
The way my mind works, those videos of the container ship sailing out-of-control yesterday morning into Baltimore’s now-destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge immediately reminded me of the scene in “Jurassic Park II: The Lost World” when the cargo ship destroys the pier in San Diego because a Tyrannosaurus had eaten the crew. It does appear that the vessel in Baltimore had a catastrophic mechanical failure and the crew lost control of the ship, but it did get off a distress message soon enough to minimize the fatalities when the wounded bridge collapsed into the river.
Never mind, though: the incident is still rolling, ethics train wreck style, because it is being unethically politicized by both parties, and that’s because everything has to be politicized now.
Exhibit A: During his press conference announcing that the federal government will fund the rebuilding of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, President Bidensaid he had taken commuter rail on the bridge “many many times commuting from the state of Delaware either by train or by car.” Everything is about Joe, you see. The problem with the statement is that there were no rail lines over that bridge.
This would normally be in the “confused old coot whose mind is hovering on the brink of crippling dementia” category and worthy of Julie Principle status. However, this is also quite likely to be another one of Biden’s many deliberate lies, and as long as the Trump Deranged and the Axis of Unethical Conduct continue to claim that Donald Trump is unfit to be President because he lies all the time, Joe doesn’t get a Julie Principle pass. He lies constantly and always has, during his entire career.
I’ll give him his pass when the Washington Post creates a Biden lie database using the same criteria they used for Trump’s database—every exaggeration, hyperbole, joke, misstatement and opinion the Post Democrats disagree with, broken promise, example of deceit and actual, intentional falsehood is a “lie,” and the paper reports on the “lies” from both individuals using exactly the same news judgement and standards.
Exhibit B: Utah Republican Phil Lyman, candidate for governor, tweeted out that the DEI mania was responsible for the Baltimore disaster:
There was no evidence whatsoever that the cargo ship’s problems were caused by the “Didn’t Earn It” fad. I’m having a hard time figuring out how the bridge collapse could possibly be blamed on DEI. In a subsequent post, Lyman added, “DEI=DIE.”
As Marty McFly might say,
Then, when called on this cheap shot idiocy, Lyman blamed the tweets under his name on the anonymous staffers who handle his social media accounts. “I prefer a dignified approach and sometimes the people who handle the social media are more provocative than what I’m comfortable with,” Lyman said. Oh. And why do you allow irresponsible agents to speak for you on social media?
If there are any Utahns out there, do NOT vote for this guy.
Lyman wasn’t the only conservative to make the absurd leap from DEI to the bridge collapse. Former Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatiniposted a video of the bridge collapsing adding, “DEI did this.”
Exhibits C,D and E:
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jonessuggested said the he suspects the accident was due to a cyber attack , perhaps the beginning of World War III. Who follows that idiot? How does anyone who pays attention to him get through a single day alive, with only a rudimentary brain, like a salamander?
American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp tweeted “drug-addled” workers and coronavirus lockdowns were to blame.
Fox Business Host Maria Bartoromo claimed that the bridge disaster was in part caused by the Biden administration’s illegal immigration policies. I would call this the equivalent of the Left blaming the accident on climate change.
Boy, The Great Stupid is strong on Twitter/”X” these days…and Google’s not working! Maybe World War III is starting…
Ethics Alarms 