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!
I have a two-hour session on professionalism and legal ethics to teach this morning, so I’m going to ask readers to submit and discuss their own ethics stories, issues and observations a day early. Surprise!
Pop Quiz: Without cheating, can you identify the handsome Confederate general above, and why he’s an appropriate symbol of today’s Open Forum?
Well this was certainly refreshing and unexpected!
Donald Trump-knockoff billionaire Mark Cuban stated in gratuitous tweet that he has “never hired anyone based exclusively on race, gender, religion,” but that “race and gender can be part of the equation” because he believes “diversity is a competitive advantage.”
What virtue-signaling claptrap! What does that last part even mean? Does Harvard consider that its acceptance of diversity as a substitute for genuine credentials and ability has given the university a “competitive advantage” as it competes for the best students, faculty and donors? Yesterday, in addition to having it revealed that its top DEI officer is a DEI hire herself who rose to predominance with the assistance of bogus scholarship, a wealthy donor who last year gave the university $300,000,000 dollars announced that he was through. “Will America’s elite university get back to their roots of educating American children – young adults – to be the future leaders of our country or are they going to maintain being lost in the wilderness of microaggressions [and]a DEI agenda that seems to have no real endgame…?” Ken Griffin asked in response to being asked if he could be lured back as a donor. Continue reading →
A poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek found that 18% of voters are “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a candidate endorsed by pop singer Taylor Swift.
Taylor Swift has been essentially dedicated to music since she was 14, though she did graduate from high school in three years. There is nothing she has to offer in trenchant political commentary besides celebrity, and to a large number of Americans, as we already know, that’s enough.
So naturally, as the buzz was in Washington, D.C. today, the Biden campaign is working hard to get Swift to endorse Joe, if possible at the Super Bowl.
It is estimated that 8 million new voters will enter the ranks of the US electorate this year, making a total of 41 million Gen Z voters. This is also a group that surveys show has a low opinion of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free enterprise and the United States generally, so maybe they don’t even need Swift’s OK to vote Democratic. My guess, and maybe I’m whistling past the metaphorical graveyard, is that most of that 18% may be more likely to vote if Taylor tells them who to vote for, but the majority of them won’t be engaged enough to vote anyway.
If the election is going to turn on somethings as trivial and meaningless as celebrity endorsements, its not even worth worrying about. Those idiots will deserve what they get, and so will their elders, for letting society and the culture get that stupid.
I didn’t want to start the day with an Unethical Quote of the Month right after last night’s post, but attention should be paid to what California governor Gavin Newsom told a stunned Jonathan Karl on ABC News’ “This Week” yesterday. The full quote was: “We have the best three-year record of any modern American Presidency, period, full stop. And you look at the issue, issue by issue, they poll overwhelmingly, the American people support what Biden has done.”
What’s going on here? The most recent polling shows Biden with the worst three-year approval rating going back to Gerald Ford half a century ago (my, how time flies). How could the American people “overwhelmingly” support (“approve of” is a synonym for “support”) what Biden has done while roughly two-thirds tell pollsters that they think he’s a lousy President?
I write this in a state of advanced disgust over the predictable but still nauseating reaction by the legal ethics community (as represented on the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, of which I am a member) to the still roiling Fani Willis scandal. This is a, I estimate, a 80%-20% woke profession, and I may be being generous. Not only did group’s hyperactive listserv conspicuously ignore the story despite it being by far the most high-profile legal ethics controversy in many months, but when the topic was finally broached yesterday, it was to brush aside the obvious conflict of interest as irrelevant to the case’s defendants, including Donald Trump. (This is a passionately Trump-Deranged group to the point that vocal dissenters are risk professional blackballing.) This CNN opinion piece by a member has been virtually unanimously praised, despite employing blatant “whataboutism”: “Willis may have engaged in nepotism (as when President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Robert Kennedy to be US attorney general or when Trump appointed his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner to positions in his presidential administration).” For some strange reason, the legal ethicist association seems to be willing to accept the dubious proposition that even though Willis’s alleged legal lover is profiting greatly from his involvement in the case (and that she may be receiving benefits from that profit in the form of travel and other baubles of affection), this could not reasonably be seen as a factor undermining her required independent judgment in managing the case as his supervisor.
Well, the group is still a valuable resource the 95% of the time that progressive politics aren’t involved…
1. Oh…about that headline! It’s my“Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” note of the day. It’s a real headline from a real story, but dates from March 2023. Legal Insurrection wrote about its author here. But I missed it, and as the saying goes, if it’s new to you, it’s still news….
Ethics Alarms 