Hardly anyone is reading or commenting today, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to clear the inventory…
1. Today’s incompetent elected official: Pennsylvania State Rep. Kevin Boyle (D-Philadelphia) is shown in a video that turned up on social media ranting and threatening people at a bar. It is unknown right now when the video was taken; from an ethical point of view, it doesn’t matter. Elected officials who disgrace themselves and their constituents like this…indeed, even less than this, should resign immediately. One time is too many. A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania House Democrats blathered, “We are aware of a video circulating on social media. It is very troubling.” “Rep. Boyle has been open about his personal challenges,” the spokesperson wrote. “We are encouraged that our colleague and dear friend is seeking help. Our commitment to delivering mental health services does not stop at the Capitol Steps. One of the main reasons we advocate so strongly for mental health access is the reality that challenges can and do happen to anyone, and seeking treatment should be encouraged, not stigmatized.”
No. When an elected official behaves like that in public, his conduct should be stigmatized. He can seek treatment as a private citizen. He has no right to serve in a public position of trust when he has behaved that way.
The same, incidentally, applies to President Biden.
From the report issued today by the DOJ Special Counsel tasked with investigating Joe Bden’s storing boxes of classified documents in his garage:
Holy guacamole.
Well, I assume this document will authoritatively put an end to the dissembling Democratic narrative that President Biden is as sharp as a tack. The status of Biden’s mental facilities was relevant in making the determination of whether charges should be filed, if prosecutors were doubtful about whether and jury would convict someone who is described as a doddering old man, as in this passage:
“…We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Since we began the day with a dead canary in the mine of democracy, here’s another. That video shows a thief rampaging through an Apple Store in Emeryville, north of Oakland (where Woke Kindergarten romps). Nobody tries to stop him. Nobody even appears alarmed by him. He escapes by running right by a police car.
Last night the New York Times reported that Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel will resign after the South Carolina primary. Anyone paying attention knows that in a competent party, McDaniel would have resigned in 2022 after her party failed miserably in the mid-terms despite the ongoing train wreck of the Biden administration. If McDaniel herself had any integrity, pride, sense of accountability and decency, she would have resigned after that debacle on her own initiative, if not committed ritual seppuku and eviscerated herself on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
For some reason, electing incompetent heads of the Republican National Committee is a tradition in this perpetually addled party. Remember Michael Steele? The guy who said his favorite book was “War and Peace” and then purported to quote Tolstoy by reciting reverently, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”?
What finally did Ronna in was Red State’s Jennifer Van Laar’s investigative reporting on McDaniel’s ineptitude and warped priorities based on the evidence of official Federal Election Commission figures. (Ah, if only we had some mainstream, trustworthy, independent, professional institution that did things like that!) Here’s a sample, but the first part alone would warrant firing the individual responsible in a serious and competent organization. The period covered is October 20, 2022 through November 30, 2023:
You knew that, I assume. Just to pick one example, we heard a Presidential candidate in a debate call an opponent “scum”—and it was a female candidate. Remember when one of the arguments for putting women in office just because they were women was that they would civilize politics. Ah, those halcyon days of innocence!
The new year began with another one of those TV commercials that defines cleverness as “using language that is code for a vulgar phase or word.” Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about one of those, a tax refund service ad that used“What the buck?” and “Buck yeah!” This was even less clever than the still rampant “Let’s go Brandon!” coded insult to the President. (The coded use of “fuck” in that case is stillmore clever and slightly more civil than how Rep. Tlaib, one of the supposedly civilized female Congresswomen, referred to the previous President when she said for public consumption, “We’re gonna impeach the motherfucker!”)
In the past, Ethics Alarms has noted low-life advertisers using code words for “ass” (Verizon), alluding to sexual intercourse (Reese’s), evoking the word “shit” (K-Mart and DraftKings), as well as Jackson Hewitt’s inspiration for “buck,” Booking.com. For some reason, the un-named pizza company (I don’t want to give them any publicity for being, in Nikki’s terms, “scum”) commercial, promoting a really good pizza- and-other-stuff deal, showing a young woman exclaiming, “Shut the back door!” upon learning the shockingly low price bothered me even more than the past examples. “Shut the back door'” and also “Shut thefront door” are street-talk euphemisms for “Shut the fuck up!” This is pandering to Generation Z, of course, but it’s also obscenely gratuitous.
Once again, Ethics Alarms visits the thorny issue of what kind of conduct permanently disqualifies someone from being a trusted lawyer—and in the law, if you can’t be trusted, you can’t be a lawyer. Last October, I wrote about “the rest of the story” concerning Shon Hopwood, who served more than a decade in federal prison for bank robbery, became a “jailhouse lawyer,” went to law school after his release, passed the D.C. bar exam, was admitted to practice, and became a professor at my old alma mater, Georgetown Law Center. In 2017, I had written that he should not have been trusted sufficiently to receive a law license, as such a serious felony committed as an adult is ominous signature significance for someone whom society may choose to trust as a citizen after serving his prison sentence, but not for one trusted to administer and advise regarding the law. The second post was prompted after Hopwood was arrested for multiple counts of domestic battery, and relieved of his teaching duties.
True, Hopwood didn’t steal a client’s money or commit a breach of the legal ethics rules (other than breaking the law, which is a breach of the ethics rules that doesn’t involve the unethical practice of law). I was sorely tempted to say “I told you so!” to the vast majority of my colleagues who disagree with my bias against bank-robbing lawyers, but I resisted the temptation.
As far as I can determine, Hopwood has not been tried or convicted, and maybe that explains why he is still listed among GULC’s faculty. His Wikipedia entry does not mention his latest arrest, but it does mention that he hired Tiffany Trump as a research assistant.
Giving a Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama for doing nothing but existing looks increasingly reasonable. A member of the Norwegian Parliament just made a sufficiently outrageous nomination for the honor to topple the previous champion while making Obama look like the Dalai Lama.
The previous prize for a ridiculous nomination came in 2021, when a different member of the Norwegian Parliament, Petter Eide, formally nominated Black Lives Matter for the honor. “I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality,” Eide said. “Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.” Riiight.
If you think Harvard’s best and wokest mourning the fact that its inept, dishonest DEI president went down in flames is a symptom of an ideological pathogen loose in the USA, you “ain’t seen nothing yet!”
Shorecrest High School in Shoreline, Washington held an assembly on Martin Luther King Day that took time to honor—wait for it!—Fidel Castro as a social justice hero. “Now we are continuing a tradition today to have a candlelight vigil to pay solemn tribute to a selection of the people who were martyred while working on behalf of advancing civil rights, social justice and decolonization,” a student presenter said. “This year we are selecting Black American civil rights leaders as well as leaders of developing nations who valiantly sought to liberate themselves from the shackles of Western imperialism, capitalism and a specter of war crimes.”
The assembled were informed that Castro was “a figure whose impact on Cuba and the world is undeniable.” “As the leader of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Castro aimed to uplift his people by overthrowing the Batista regime and ushering in a new era of social justice. His policies in healthcare and education significantly improved the standard of living for many Cubans, and his politics promoted antiracism,” the assembly script said.
He also nearly started World War III, but there was no mention of that. Nor did anyone address the mystery of why so many Cubans were willing to risk their lives to escape such a workers’ paradise.
I have always thought not, but the tale of Pookie and Jett, the silly couple pictured above, is causing me to re-think that conclusion.
Because of my oft-mentioned sock drawer issues, I never heard of TikTok stars Campbell Puckett and her hubby Jett, and was happy in my ignorance.
The Georgia couple, like so many entertainingly trivial people, became prominent and wealthy on TikTok because—and I do NOT understand this— Campbell, aka “Pookie,” posts videos of the pair modeling their outfits as Jett blathers on about his wife. “Pookie looks absolutely amazing,”says in a recent video. It has been viewed over 6 million times.
The Times article focuses on the almost inevitable result of social media fame and fortune: eventually, someone sets out to dig and find dirt on the “stars” to bring them down. On Reddit, someone posted photos of Pookie, including one in which she was posing in front of a Confederate flag. This, of course, means she’s a racist and is a defender of slavery, or something. Another showed her wearing a “Gone with the Wind”-style gown as a costume for an “Old South” plantation-themed ball. Mrs. Campbell has told publications that she regrets the photos, but that she was 20 and “didn’t fully understand the impact of my actions the way I do now.” She has grovelled an apology “for the harm this may have caused for some and take full responsibility.” Of course she has. She’s an aspiring “influencer” with nothing to justify her power and influence but her popularity.
The episode has been cited by the Times as a teachable moment, demonstrating how “everyone should understand the speed and ease with which everyone’s entire online experience is available for public consumption.” That’s worth thinking about, but I’m wrestling with whether my reaction to Pookie’s Predicament should be sympathy or a Nelson…
My general ethics position here is that no one should be held to account for old social media posts unless the posts have direct relevance to a current public figure’s statements, positions and stated values, and even then, evidence that a previous impolitic, undiplomatic or otherwise disreputable statement no longer is a fair representation of that individual’s character should be considered definitive. Attacking a star baseball player for dumb tweets he made to a handful of friends in high school is wildly unfair, for example. Old social media posts that indicate that rabid leftist propagandist such as, just to pull a name out of the hat, MSNBC’s prime racist Joy Reid, was an unabashed homophobe and gay-basher before her cable TV gig are a bit more justifiable, especially when they provoke a reaction like Reid’s, which was to lie her head off.
Part of me wants to say that social media dirt-farming is a valid and ethical enterprise when it exposes hypocrites, villains and poseurs, with “influencers” like the Pucketts falling into the latter category. That same part is inclined to argue that people who influence millions with no real expertise or special powers of perception are irresponsible and dangerous, and taking them down a hundred pegs or so is a virtuous objective That part also believes that public figures invite public scrutiny, and if their past actions and statements can’t stand up to that scrutiny, well, that’s good to know.
Another part, however, feels that setting out to harm someone’s reputation and livelihood when an individual isn’t doing anyone any harm is mean-spirited and wrong.
“The impeachment process is not intended to be used as a political weapon. The move to impeach Mayorkas is a pointless sideshow and deserves to fail.”
Incredible. The CNN column by lawyer Raul Reyesnicked so many Ethics Alarms categories that I couldn’t figure out which way to turn. The whole article is disingenuous, and the work of an ethics dunce. The quote above is unethical in its deliberate failure to acknowledge relevant history. That CNN, of all places, would publish an article calling for the impeachment device to be used sparingly and legitimately by Congress is offensive. And it made my head explode, qualifying it as an automatic KABOOM!
Ethics Alarms 