Maybe I should just end the post with that single word, because it’s essentially all we need to know from an ethics perspective.
O.J. Simpson, who just died of prostate cancer at 76, was a bad man, a sociopath, one of the most vivid examples of the narcissist celebrity who believes the basic rules that the “little people” are bound to follow don’t apply to him. I keep reading that O.J. was “controversial.” There’s nothing controversial about a man who slaughters his ex-wife and her male friend at the doorstep of the home he and his victim once shared, with his children sleeping upstairs. Such a man is a villain, and deserves to be executed.
I just watched an interview on Fox News with a journalist friend of Simpson’s who got all choked up talking about “the O.J he knew” and said that Simpson’s legacy was “complicated,” as if he was talking about Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. “Well, yes, he did some bad things like locking up Japanese-American citizens and selling out Eastern Europe to a brutal dictator, but on the other hand, he did save the nation from economic and spiritual collapse and the world from Hitler…” What ethical relativistic garbage. Simpson was a great college and professional football player, that’s all. There have been a lot of them, and none of the others murdered two innocent human beings and got away with it. Having a fortunate physical ability and success in sports has very little to do with one’s value to society andthe human race, or the content of one’s character. If anything, Simpson was overly rewarded for being able to run fast and dodge tacklers. Moreover, stardom made him into a monster, if he wasn’t one already. Bill Cosby’s legacy can legitimately be called “complicated,” as he was a public figure who contributed significantly and positively to the culture even as he was drugging and raping hundreds of women who trusted him. Virtually everything O.J. did to our culture was, in the end, destructive.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama’s flagrant DEI choice for the Court, is a poor jurist and one of the weakest SCOTUS intellects ever, as her Ethics Alarms dossier makes depressingly clear and as she makes clear herself every time she authors a dissent or a concurring opinion. Nonetheless, I’m 100% in her corner as the desperate Left tries to push her into resigning so Biden and the narrow Democrat majority in the Senate can put a 28-year-old transgender Muslim midget of color in her place.
Sotomayor is a target ostensibly because shes 70 (a spring chicken in Supreme Court demographics), diabetic and had one parent who died at a young age, so there is a non-negligible chance that she may shuffle off this mortal coil after Biden vacates the White House, allowing the evil Donald Trump to appoint Darth Vader to the Court or someone similar. This may be part of the reasoning, but I strongly suspect that progressives know that The Great and Powerful O screwed up and selected a liberal justice who lacked the gravitas and acumen to do battle with the SCOTUS conservative majority beyond metaphorically crooning “Feelings,” which is what the “wise Latina” is all about.
Well, tough. The Left made their bed by confirming Sonia, and they are stuck with her. It serves them right for placing ethnicity over scholarship and competence in such an important government institution.
Late night host Jimmy Kimmel, in my view, isn’t usually worth writing about on an ethics blog. He’s a despicable human being, and the fact that Kimmel is paid large amounts of money to be a media celebrity nicely illustrates the state of rot in our popular culture. Nevertheless, even the despicable have their uses. A recent outburst by Kimmel on his ABC show stands as throbbing evidence of just how estranged from logic and reality the Trump Deranged are. He also demonstrates just how meager the ethics decision-making skills are of many celebrities. (Very meager.)
Kimmel’s monologue three nights ago began with Jimmy expressing amazement that a poll showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in several crucial swing states ahead of the 2024 presidential election. “How could this be?” Kimmel asked, channeling Hillary Clinton’s absurd lament in 2016 that she should be leading in the polls by “50 points.” Kimmel’s grand proof that Trump’s lead in polls was inexplicable consisted of his observation that many ex-associates of the former president have spoken out against him, so Trump. “doesn’t even lead in a poll of people who worked for him.”
Good thinking there, Jimmy. In fact, close associates and even family members of many, perhaps most popular elected officials and other public figures, like entertainers, have vastly different views of them than the public. The list of prominent figures including successful leaders who have sterling reputations, but who had smelly feet of metaphorical clay or worse is too long to list. The public doesn’t know the candidates they support; they usually only know their carefully constructed images. Moreover, working for someone is completely different from having a stake in their decisions. Kimmel’s reasoning here is incompetent, as usual.
Yet it is still not as damning as believing that there is no reason why anyone would rather see Trump—or anyone—in the White House rather than Joe Biden. To begin with, Trump’s term, until the pandemic derailed everything with the heavy assistance of the Democratic Deep State, was undeniably more successful that Biden’s term so far. It’s not even close. When one asks a loyal, closed-minded Democrat what is so impressive about Biden’s policies and results, all they have is admiration for Joe’s fealty to the progressive agenda, and the gaslighting argument that the public doesn’t appreciate how good they have it.
Biden may have the most incompetent Cabinet in Presidential history. Foreign affairs are an expensive, feckless mess. His Justice Department has politicize law enforcement beyond anything Richard Nixon would have dreamed of. Due process, equal protection, the right to fair trials, the First and Second Amendment and the Constitution itself have been eroded under Biden’s watch. The nation is enduring a totalitarian-style alliance between the central government and the news media, which is dangerous. Major cities are becoming unlivable, border enforcement is out of control, anti-Semitism is epidemic, and the single thing that Biden promised to do, heal the division in the nation, not only hasn’t happened, but Biden set out to make it…
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.
Ethics Alarms 