Imagine a culture that could permit something this biased, divisive, reductive and vile to get funded, green-lighted, produced and used.
Never mind: you don’t need to imagine it. That culture’s here.
Now what?
Workplace
Yes, This Goes In The EA “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files, But I’ll ‘Loquitur’ About It Anyway: Only 6% of New S&P Jobs Went to White Applicants After The George Floyd Freakout
Bloomberg revealed this a couple of days ago. You missed it, as I did, because the mainstream media chose not to report it. It’s a separate issue, but gee, why do you think that would be? Because it isn’t news? Because the public doesn’t care if major corporations deliberately discriminated against the largest racial group in the nation? Because this is smoking gun evidence of woke-driven, illegal racial bias in the workplace supported by a political party that the news media is dedicated to supporting? Because the strategy of race-based threats, riots, violence, lies and extortion works?
Nah, it couldn’t be for any of those reasons. Maybe it’s because Biden’s dog bit its 11th victim: THAT made it into news headlines, but not this. But I digress…
Let me plug the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news source so derided that it seldom makes news aggregator sites with its headlines, which did report the Bloomberg revelations. It wrote in part,
Language Ethics: Hollywood Writers Are Insulted That Their Work Is Being Called “Content.” Tough.
New York Times critic James Bailey takes offense on behalf of his pals in the Writer’s Guild, whose expensive strike is about to end, with a lament called “Emma Thompson Is Right: The Word ‘Content’ Is Rude.”He took off from a statement by Oscar-winning actress (and apparently now screenwriter—at least enough to put her in the union) Emma Thompson, who told the Royal Television Society conference in Britain last week,“To hear people talk about ‘content’ makes me feel like the stuffing inside a sofa cushion.” She continued, “It’s just a rude word for creative people.I know there are students in the audience: You don’t want to hear your stories described as ‘content’ or your acting or your producing described as ‘content.’ That’s just like coffee grounds in the sink or something.”
You see, the main impetus of the writer’s strike is the threat of artificial intelligence generating “content” and putting “creative people” out of work.
Writes Bailey (in part), applauding her indignation,
She’s right about the real-world impact of what is, make no mistake, a devaluing of the creative process. Those who defend its use will insist that we need some kind of catchall phrase for the things we watch, as previously crisp lines have blurred between movies and television, between home and theatrical exhibition and between legacy and social media.
But these paradigm shifts require more clarity in our language, not less. A phrase like “streaming movie” or “theatrical release” or “documentary podcast” communicates what, where and why with far more precision than gibberish like “content,” and if you want to put everything under one tent, “entertainment” is right there. But studio and streaming executives, who are perhaps the primary users and abusers of the term, love to talk about “content” because it’s so wildly diminutive. It’s a quick and easy way to minimize what writers, directors and actors do, to act as though entertainment (or, dare I say it, art) is simply churned out — and could be churned out by anyone, sentient or not. It’s just content, it’s just widgets, it’s all grist for the mill. Talking about “entertainment” is dangerous because it takes talent to entertain; no such demands are made of “content,” and the industry’s increasing interest in the possibilities of writing via artificial intelligence (one of the sticking points of the writers’ strike) makes that crystal clear.
Perhaps the finest example of this school of thought can be seen at Warner Bros. Discovery…The “content”-ization of that conglomerate’s holdings is the only reasonable explanation for the decision to rename HBO Max as simply Max — removing the prestigious legacy media brand that most clearheaded, marginally intelligent people would presume to be an asset. It lost 1.8 million subscribers in the process, but that’s merely the battle; it won the war, because when you visit Max now, the front-page carousel is a combination of scripted series, HBO documentaries, true crime and reality competition shows. It’s all on equal footing; it’s all content. But “Casablanca,” “Succession” and “Dr. Pimple Popper” are not the same thing — and the programmers of a service that pretends otherwise are abdicating their responsibility as curators...
The way we talk about things affects how we think and feel about them. So when journalists regurgitate purposefully reductive language, and when their viewers and readers consume and parrot it, they’re not adopting some zippy buzzword. They’re doing the bidding of people in power, and diminishing the work that they claim to love.
This is, to quote a word that arose from past Hollywood “content,” gaslighting. Reality show writers marched shoulder to shoulder with the “artists” Bailey is extolling, and what they were striking over is money, not art, as the unionized writers try to fend off the threat of robots who are either capable or soon will be of producing the kind of swill I see in 80% of the TV and Hollywood content I watch ….and I watch a lot.
How Can It Be Responsible To Trust America’s Teachers When Their Leader Posts This…?
It is ironic that serial Ethics Villain and NEA president Randi Weingarten writes that her tweet “speaks for itself” when it is indeed a wonderful example of res ipsa loquitur, but not in the way Weingarten would have us believe.
The teacher was not fired for reading the “Diary of Anne Frank” to her class, but for using “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” without proper authorization from the school and using it to launch a class discussion of sexual molestation. The graphic version, in the style of a comic book…
…is true to Frank’s original diary but contains the sexual and other content that was taken out of the original version published by Frank’s father. The graphic novel-syle version has been critically praised, but the previously redacted material it includes are of a nature that require sensitive instruction and certainly prior approval by parents.
Weingarten misidentified the book involved due to carelessness, devotion to her political agenda, or deliberate deception, none of which are qualities any responsible parent wants in their child’s teachers. Yet Weingarten is the teacher the teachers’ union chose to represent and lead it.
Her tweet speaks for itself indeed.
Once Again, Our Leaders Inflict “The King’s Pass” On Our Culture…Well, A Variation: “The Slob’s Pass”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has directed the chamber’s sergeant at arms to end the centuries-old rule requiring male U.S. Senators to wear a suit and tie on the Senate floor, with members of the upper house to wear modest business attire. This move was clearly made by Schumer to relieve pressure on Frankensteinian Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa), who has been violating the Senate Dress code and appearing in shorts, T-shirts, and hooded sweatshirts since he returned from a hospitalization for depression. He had been criticized and mocked as a result—as he should be.
The King’s Pass, Rationalization #11 on the List, is a corrosively backwards reaction by organizations to unethical conduct that violates organization norms and values, the value in this case being “respect”—respect for the institution, respect for the public, respect for the United States of America. If the organization’s (company’s, institution’s, industry’s, government’s, sports team’s…etc.) member who is breaching norms, rules, laws and values is deemed sufficiently powerful, important or popular, the rules and norms are not enforced when the King’s Pass strikes. When the most prominent member of a hierarchy is allowed to violate standards of conduct, the conduct of those of lower status will deteriorate in response: this is what “the fish rots from the head down” means, with the head in this case being a brain-damaged one.
Ethics Dunce And A Tie With Rep. Broebert For Worst Apology Of The Week : Drew Barrymore
[Note: This post takes no position regarding the validity and justness of the Hollywood writers’ strike.]
Tough choice: is the now middle-aged former child star turned talk show host’s apology even more unethical than Broebert’s discussed here? It’s certainly more ridiculous, even though Drew’s was teary and seemingly sincere, unlike the Republican’s. In fact, this apology is unique in my experience: Barrymore was apologizing for something she had announced she was doing, then she went ahead and did it anyway. What is that?
The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has been on strike since May over more equitable wages and working conditions. Even though it is a talk show and theoretically shouldn’t require writers, “The Drew Barrymore Show” does employ some, and thus is officially being struck. Nonetheless, Barrymore announced that her show would metaphorically cross the picket lines to premier tomorrow as scheduled. Her announcement predictably attracted a “scab” response from the WGA and others on social media. Then Barrymore posted the mea culpa video excerpted above on Instagram.
An Invitation To Be An Unethical Lawyer…
Just as I was preparing yesterday for today’s 3-hour legal ethics CLE seminar (which, coincidentally, contained a section about the unsettled status of lawyers using artificial intelligence for legal research, writing and other tasks in the practice of law), I received this unsolicited promotion in my email:
Let’s see: how many ways does this offer a lawyer the opportunity to violate the ethics rules? Unless a lawyer thoroughly understands how such AI creatures work—and a lawyer relying on them must—it is incompetent to “try” them on any actual cases. Without considerable testing and research, no lawyer could possibly know whether this thing is trustworthy. The lawyer needs to get informed consent from any client whose matters are being touched by “CoCounsel,” and no client is equipped to give such consent. If it were used on an actual case, there are questions of whether the lawyer would be aiding the unauthorized practice of law. How would the bot’s work be billed? How would a lawyer know that client confidences wouldn’t be promptly added to CoCounsel’s data base?
Entrusting an artificial intelligence-imbued assistant introduced this way with the matters of actual clients is like handing over case files to someone who just walked off the street claiming, “I’m a legal whiz!” without evidence of a legal education, a degree, or work experience.
On the plus side, the invitation was a great way to introduce my section today about the legal ethics perils of artificial intelligence technology.
Observations On An Incident At McDonald’s
For various reasons the most convenient route to a late lunch was the nearest McDonald’s, so after my wife’s physical therapy session, I reluctantly hit the drive-thu. All went surprisingly well at first: for a welcome change, someone who could speak clear-English was at the mic, and the order was correct on the screen (though the prices for fast food now are absurd). Two sandwiches, one small fries, no drinks, easy-peezy.
The order was simple, Grace didn’t bother to check the bag when I handed it to her at the window, but it felt light, so she checked after we had pulled away. Sure enough, there was only one of the two sandwiches we had ordered.
The Other Shoe Drops In The Alex Murdaugh Murder Trial Train Wreck
In March, disbarred South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences after a jury found him guilty yesterday of the 2021 slayings of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, his wife and son. Murdoch, who already faced life in prison for his financial crimes and who is a compulsive liar, was convicted despite an extremely weak case in which the prosecution barely proved necessary elements of the crime. The only motive for his murdering his family the state could come up with was that he did it to was to take attention away from his other offenses. Okaaaaay…
Here is what I wrote about the case after the trial…
“Reviewing the astoundingly thin evidence, I do not understand why the trial judge didn’t throw out the jury’s verdict and declare Murdaugh acquitted because there was not enough to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt as a matter of law. There wasn’t. This was an example of a jury convicting a defendant of murder because they decided he was a bad guy and there were no other suspects. Alex Murdaugh lied repeatedly regarding the deaths of his wife and son and he was undeniably a thief and a sociopath—but prosecutors couldn’t and didn’t present much more than theories about whether he was the killer. Judges are understandably, reluctant to over-ride juries, but in this case it was necessary. If the Trump Deranged reasoning that the conclusion that someone is just an untrustworthy bounder is sufficient to assume guilt of criminal activity is becoming a cultural norm, our justice system is approaching a crisis, if it isn’t in one already.
The news yesterday suggests that the jury verdict may have another explanation.
Ethics Corrupters: “Work Friend” Advice Columnist Roxane Gay And The Irresponsible Newspaper That Employs Her
The latter would be the New York Times. Gay (above) has a long and disturbing dossier at Ethics Alarms (under two tags, here and here, because of her annoying misspelling of her own first name).The last time I visited her work as an ethics corrupter, I wrote,
It tells you pretty much all you need to know about the biases of the New York Times that its workplace ethics column, “Work Friend,” is authored by race-obsessed, radical, and combative gay feminist Roxane Gay. No biases there! …I have concluded that Gay is too often intellectually and rhetorically dishonest because of her ideological mission, and people like that shouldn’t have regular platforms (or advice columns) in the New York Times.
Now I have discovered that I was too kind in that evaluation. It isn’t just that Gay is so woke she can’t see or think straight; her ethics are rotten to the core, if one can call them ethics at all.
In today’s edition of her weekly workplace advice column for the Times, an inquirer writes that she and her colleagues have discovered that the sales office’s star employee has been faking her results, and is being rewarded for it. “She’s logging calls that never happened, and falsifying her activity to get to the top. This colleague now gets special praise each month, got promoted and is in a mentorship role, and makes everyone else’s numbers look bad,” the questioner writes. What should be done?
What should be done??? Could a work-related question be easier? Go to the management with your colleagues and your evidence, and demand that the lying, fabricating co-worker be properly dealt with. Be prepared to go up the ladder as far as it is necessary to go. The situation has to be exposed, and nothing short of a fair resolution should be accepted. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 