Read this whole jaw-dropping NYT article (Gift link!) and see if you can find evidence of anyone ethical in the entire story. It’s kind of like “Where’s Waldo?”
1.The headline is “Cornell Cancels Kehlani Performance Over Alleged Antisemitic Statements.” The caption under the photo (above) adds, “Kehlani, a popular R&B singer, is being replaced as the headline act at Cornell University’s annual concert.”
Observation: If she’s a popular performer for her singing ability and presentation, her “alleged Anti-Semitic statements should be irrelevant. This pure cancel culture stuff. Still. How can Cornell teach anybody if its administrators learn nothing?
2. “In a 2024 music video for the song “Next 2 U,” Kehlani danced in a jacket adorned with kaffiyehs as dancers waved Palestinian flags in the background. During the video’s introduction, the phrase “Long Live the Intifada” appeared against a dark background.”
Observation: So what? The event organizers can tell her not to perform that number.
“Now, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we have university students being swept up and shoved into unmarked vans, and fathers being tossed into Salvadorean gulags without a hint of due process.”
—-Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D, as you know) repeatedly lying his fool head off, fearmongering and generally appealing to the ignorance of uninformed citizens in his disgraceful and shameless “State of the State” speech this week.
So much about that quote makes me angry, and I usually don’t get angry at unethical quotes and don’t want to, because emotion interferes with rational analysis and critical thought. Corrupt and unscrupulous politicians, demagogues and Axis agents depend on that principle, which is why, in the absence of facts, common sense, law, principles and ethics, they are all relying on seeding fear and hate, just as Walz’s party did as it tried to inflict another four years of ruinous progressive rule on the nation last year.
That quote above is pure deceit, which makes it a lie start to finish. Saying “university students” are being “swept up” is a deliberate effort to confuse and misinform with technically accurate facts; it is like saying that “young people with ten toes are being swept up.” The students in question are not citizens, which is the critical fact underlying their removal, that and the fact that they have violated the conditions under which they are allowed to be here. Describing the Maryland illegal alien and alleged gang member and human trafficker as a”father” is almost a parody of deceit: Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s parental and marital status has absolutely nothing, zilch, nada to do with his deportation, and Walz, the asshole, knows it. No father in this country has any reason to fear that their being a father will lead to their deportation; Walz’s dishonest rhetoric is like a capital punishment foe describing the execution of serial killer Ted Bundy as the state “choosing to execute husbands.” I also must note that Garcia the father is a single individual, not a plural, unless his pronouns include “they.”
Fredo and I were not the only ones to predict this result…
It has now been a year and a few weeks since Assembly Bill 1228, the stupid (but typical, for California) law that raised the fast food minimum wage to $20 an hour in the Golden State, went into effect after being signed into law by Gavin Newsome. Shortly after that idiocy, I wrote in part here,
“Certain laws of economics are immutable: if someone’s skills and the value of their labor are not worth the amount they demand in compensation for it, then eventually no one will be willing to hire them….The U.S. Chamber of Commerce charged me with examining just this issue in my role as head of the National Chamber Foundation, the Chamber’s public policy research arm. I hired an independent economist….and he concluded that indeed, raising the minimum wage cost the most vulnerable American workers jobs every…single…time. ..Never mind, though: 21st Century progressives seem to care about virtue-signalling and fealty to socialist cant more than actual results or, to put it another way, reality. Naturally California, one of our extreme leftist kamikaze states, arguably the most reckless one, has adopted this attitude…Governor Newsom signed into law a $20 an hour minimum wage hike on the fast food sector for the “benefit” of fast food workers… Everything we have learned about minimum wage hikes indicated that this would be a disaster, but advocates of the move in the Democratic party pooh-poohed the objections as more proof that conservatives are cruel and greedy.”
Anti-Gun Twerp David Hogg is catalyzing a split in the Democratic Party because he is ethically inert. Well, good. The Party asked for it, and deserves to get it.
The current ugly rift has occurred because Hogg, who was elected a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee in an absurd party meeting in which everyone present agreed that the main reason Kamala Harris isn’t President today is because too many American are sexist and racist, has made it clear that he will use his leadership position in the party help defeat Democratic Party candidates and current elected officials who do not meet his standards of “by any means possible” progressive activism.
DNC Chair Ken Martin protests, saying, “Let me be unequivocal: No DNC officer should ever attempt to influence the outcome of a primary election, whether on behalf of an incumbent or a challenger.Voters should decide who our primary nominees are, not DNC leadership. Our role is to serve as stewards of a fair, open and trusted process, not to tilt the scales.”
Ugh. I woke up this morning, immediately got into a substantive discussion, and found myself unable to think of not one but two names I believe are important to remember. The most important of the two was Kurt Gödel, whose “Incompleteness Theorems” led me to the Ethics Incompleteness Theorem, which is an important concept I haven’t discussed lately but is in the Ethics Alarms concepts and special terms list above.
The other name that I had to dig into my neurons to locate was Jill Corey, whom I had vowed to remember because it is so unfair that she has been almost totally forgotten. I wrote about her in 2023, here, on the occasion of Corey’s death.
Try to remember what you have been thinking about in the world of ethics over the last week and share it with us, will you?
(Incidentally, almost nobody except musical theater geeks remember that before he starred in “Law and Order,” Jerry Orbach was the star of “The Fantasticks,” the longest running musical ever. That’s him singing in the video above, when he was in his twenties, in the original Off-Broadway production.
Bill Maher of HBO’s obnoxious “Real Time” is being reviled and repudiated by his mostly Trump-Hate obsessed fans because of the clip above, where he appeared to say sincerely, in effect, “Gee, President Trump doesn’t seem like such a bad guy after all when you meet him!” But Bill Maher doesn’t say anything sincerely. I have pointed this out more than once in 2025: like so many media-dependent weasels before him, Maher has made the ruthless calculation that simply bashing everything Trump does now will make him just another screaming voice among the Deranged, so he has to find a more nuanced identity if he’s going to get headlines. Despite the fact that he had cheered on the worst of the Angry Left’s stunts and outrages for years and derided anyone with an (R) next to their name as a (I’m quoting now) fascist, idiot, liar, “cunt” (for the women) or worse, now he is suddenly a voice of fairness and moderation.
The tale of the Scorpion and the Frog comes to mind. Maher was never a legitimate pundit, and his favor can be easily purchased with a ticket to notoriety. With Democrats thoroughly disgracing themselves daily, it didn’t take much analysis for a professional iconoclast to conclude that the smart move was to buck the Blue.
Yes, it’s Michelle Obama. Here’s the insufferable quote “explaining” her boycotting of the Trump inauguration, pointer to Ann Althouse, who pays attention to podcasts by celebrities like Mrs. Barack (me, I have sock drawers to keep):
“So I’m at this stage in life where I have to define my life on my terms for the first time. So what are those terms? And going to therapy just to work all that out. Like, what happened that 8 years that we were in the, the White House? What did that do to me — internally, my soul?… And going through therapy, you know, is… unlearning some of those messages that I’ve been tell… saying to myself and then trying to actively practice something different to rewire those neurons in my head…. [M]y decision to skip the inauguration… people couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason — they had to assume, that my marriage was falling apart. You know, it’s like while I’m here really trying to own my life and intentionally practice making the choice that was right for me, and it took everything in my power to not do the thing that was right or that was, was that that was perceived as right but do the thing that was right for me. That was a hard thing for me to do. I had to basically trick myself out of it. And it started with not having anything to wear. I mean, I had affirmatively — because I’m always prepared for any funeral, anything I have. I walk around with the right dress, I travel with clothes, just in case something pops off. So I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I gotta tell my team: I don’t even want to have a dress ready. Because it’s so easy to just say, let me do the right thing.”
Right…huh?
What an insufferable, narcissistic, arrested adolescent bore. She had the privilege of living in the White House and having the unearned status and honor of being treated as a national figure and icon, despite no personal achievements that warranted such celebrity other than marrying the right guy. As a former First Lady, Michelle has few obligations, but one of them is to provide a unifying example by appearing in a non-partisan role at certain traditional ceremonies and functions, a President’s inauguration being an obvious one. She has parlayed her White House stay into untold riches, and the very least she could do to earn her keep is to show up (which, as Woody Allen has pointed out, is 80% of success in life). Instead we get this New Agey empty “like” blather.
[Note:this post was supposed to go up yesterday. I aim at at least three and usually four substantial posts a day, but this week I have lost control of my schedule, my routines are shot, and I have been squeezed regarding my time, research and energy. A lot of what’s going on is important, some of it is lucrative, and all of it is exhausting, but that’s my problem, not yours. I am trying to get back on track.]
Dana Milbank is in a perpetual dead heat with Phillip Bump for the title of most unethical, dishonest and biased Washington Post columnist. He’s an embarrassment, frankly; the fact that Jeff Bezos allows him to continue to have a platform for his partisan attacks should be sufficient to assuage the anger of the Post’s almost entirely biased staff and readership. I decided to ignore Milbank years ago, because in addition to being intellectually dishonest, biased and none-too-bright, he’s a flaming asshole, as his most recent diatribe demonstrates.
Its title is “Trump is wrapping up 100 days of historic failure: America has seen ruinous periods, but never when the president was the one knowingly causing the ruin.” Punditry like this isn’t worthy of publication, and responsible journalistic publications, if there were such things anymore, would never permit such garbage to see the light of day except on an obscure blog—you know, like mine. If someone has made up his mind that everything a President says or does is wrong no matter what it is, that individual obviously is incapable of fair analysis: this essay might as well consist of 750 words-worth of “I hate him I hate him I hate him” repeated over and over.
Most Ethics Alarms posts involve analysis of what I regard as ethical or unethical activity with larger lessons attached regarding society, organizations, institutions and prominent or influential individuals. Now and then I choose an incident where there is no dispute about whether the conduct was unethical, but it was just so unethical that I feel attention must be paid, if only to remind us how depraved and devoid of ethical instincts and values the people around us can be. An esteemed commenter recently complained about such a post.
My motivation for these no-doubters is usually what it is in this case: I want to know how such a thing could happen. What was the miscreant thinking? How could they ever believe that their conduct was acceptable? Where has our society and culture failed to the extent that an incident like this could ever occur?
Teresa Isabel Bernal, 33, was arrested this week for bringing jello shots to her daughter’s fifth grade Christmas party. The party was held on Dec. 20, 2024, at Jones Elementary in Tyler, Texas. Bernal told the Tyler Independent School District police officer that she didn’t know that the cups of jello contained liquor when she bought them, but the evidence indicates otherwise.
Bill Owens, the long-time executive producer of “60 Minutes,” has announced his impending resignation from the iconic CBS Sunday news program.
Good.
His stated reason was that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience. So, having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” His memo was obtained by The New York Times, meaning that it was leaked.
If Owens had any integrity, he would have resigned in shame after the hard evidence emerged that the news magazine under his watch had deliberately sought to deceive some viewers (the lazy, inattentive ones) while pleasing others… the “by any means necessary” progressives seeking to foist a babbling fool off on the voting public as a competent potential President to succeed the resident babbling fool, Joe Biden.)
Ethics Alarms 