The lab where I go to get my bloodwork, Sunrise Labs in Arlington, Virginia on Carlin Springs Road, has a spare, gray waiting room. There is only a single decoration: a framed color photograph of gravestones.
I kid you not, as Jack Paar used to say.
“The Dishonest Waiter” Strikes Again…and Again…and Again…
I have referenced the parable of “The Dishonest Waiter” here several times after first encountering it in the film, “Denial.” The point is that when a waiter gives you the wrong change it can be presumed to be a simple innocent mistake, but when all of the waiter’s “mistakes” go in one direction, to his own financial benefit, one can no longer give such a waiter the benefit of the doubt: he’s dishonest, and those weren’t mistakes. Ethics Alarms finds the Axis news media as a perfect equivalent of the Dishonest Waiter now: all of their “mistakes” go to the disadvantage of Donald Trump and his party. Those who insist, “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias,” I fear, are as dishonest as the metaphorical waiter.
Our Dishonest Waiters has been a busy bee lately. A few examples among many more…
The Democratic Shutdown Was 100% Unethical: Let’s See If The Axis News Media Succeeds in Blaming It On Trump and Republicans…
Then, you see, in Axis of Unethical Conduct Land, the disastroud, doomed to fail shutdown was ethical because “it worked.” The Harry Reid Principle (“Romney lost, didn’t he?”).
“Why did you decide to vote with Republicans to open the government?” Joe Scarborough (on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”) asked “Independent” Senator Angus King (of Maine), who is a Democrat without the guts to admit it.
“Well, Joe, you have to go back to what the strategy was at the beginning of the shutdown,” King answered. “There were two goals, both of which I support. One was standing up to Donald Trump. The other was getting some resolution on the ACA premium tax credit issue. The problem was, the shutdown wasn’t accomplishing either goal. And there was practically, well, it was zero likelihood that it was going to.”
And there you have it! The Democrats were willing to harm the economy, government employees, the poor, federal workers and more to “stand up” to Trump, meaning that the shutdown had as much validity as the “No Kings” rallies and the Trump Deranged who gathered for a primal scream at the sky. The ACA premium tax credit issue had already been resolved, but the Democrats, who ironically enough, no longer support democracy, didn’t like the way it was resolved by an elected majority.
King caucuses with the Democrats; he knows what they talked about. Like any good totalitarians, which is what they have become, the entire party with a few outliers like Senator Fetterman, is counting on a captive, Pravda-style news media to mislead the public so they blame President Trump and Republicans for the damage they did unilaterally.
I wonder if they’ll get away with it…
Ethics Quiz of the Day: Mencken-Style Ad Hominem
At the Washiungton Free Beacon, columnist Andrew Stiles writes,
Jack Schlossberg, the sentient boat shoe and semi-employed TikTok user, is running for Congress in New York. It was bound to happen. The 32-year-old Democrat belongs to the Kennedy dynasty—that inexplicably beloved menagerie of goon-faced Habsburgian freaks, Nantucket douche bros, chronic alcoholics, and bloated sex pests. Schlossberg, a mentally deranged internet addict who cracks jokes about guzzling “Jew blood” and “male jizz,” has sought to inject the storied Kennedy brand with Gen Z flare.
That anti-Kennedy invective made me laugh out loud more than once. But is it fair commentary to mix in so much ad hominem invective in an opinion column if it is genuinely funny, at least to a substantial number of readers (or listeners)?
Famous (or infamous) journalist-pundit H.L. Mencken (1880-1956, above) excelled at this sort of thing; he may have even invented it. Here is part of his “obituary” for three-time (losing) Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan after he died shortly after he faced off against Clarence Darrow in Dayton, Tennessee in Tennessee v. Scopes aka, “Monkey Trial”:
The Duty To Remember: Jan Ernst Matzeliger, Inventor, (1852-1889)
This kind of thing drives me crazy, as regular and long-time readers here know. The culture and society lose so much when important events, figures and trailblazers are gradually lost—forgotten, ignored, erased by ignorance and apathy. That this remarkable and important inventor somehow fell into the memory hole of American history is particularly galling because he was black, and black activists have gone to extreme lengths, at times manufacturing significant black historical figures out of otherwise marginal accomplishments, to show the contributions of African Americans to U.S. society and culture. Jan Ernst Matzeliger was a big deal. We should know his name.
Ethics Alarms Thanks Gov. J.D. Pritzger For Highlighting Recent Ethics Alarms Points In His Latest Unethical Quotes of the Month Entry….
Imagine: this dishonest, repulsive* man really thinks he has a shot at the White House.
Meanwhile, Gov. Pritzker’s remarks neatly remind people to read Ethics Alarms:
1. Democrats want to make sure that parents have no choice but to submit their children’s vulnerable minds to radical, anti-American propaganda. As discussed here…
2. Here, on October 22, we discussed how prominent Democrats routinely demand that the “little people” eschew conduct that they happily engage in while appearing to see no irony or hypocrisy in their doing so. Of course, this is a hallmark of Communism and socialism, which the current leaders of the Democratic Party are currently promoting. As school choice advocate Corey de Anglelis correctly notes, Pritzker sent his children to private school.
3. “They want to punish teachers for telling the truth.” As debated here, “telling the truth” in our educational institutions means suffocating independent thought with Leftist cant, narratives and propaganda.
4. Here EA recently pondered what the Democratic Party calls “supporting” trans individuals. Of course, there are many posts, over many years, holding that our primary schools schools should not be promoting any sexual orientations or conduct whatsoever.
5. Finding himself devoid of valid arguments, Pritzker follows the current fad of his flailing, tantrum-addicted party, and continues the coarsening of public discourse by resorting to “fuck.”
Boy, Democrats have some terrible, unethical governors! Which do you think is the worst of the batch? J.D. Pritzker (Ill.)? Kathy Hochul (NY)? Tim Walz (Minn.)? Gavin Newsom (Cal.)? Gretchen Witmer (Mich.)?
Tough choice.
__________
* I am not using “repulsive” as an ad hominem insult, but simply making a factual observation. Since the arrival of TV, no credible Presidential candidate has ended up on a ballot who was morbidly obese (like Taft) or whose face could stop a clock (like Lincoln). Running in his party, Pritzker is also handicapped by being white, heterosexual, and male. The guy is deluded.
Here’s How You Get Mamdani, DEI, Open Borders, and Totalitarianism
The Federalist reports that Michigan State University’s elementary education program, ranked, who knows how or by what criteria, as the top elementary teacher’s program in the nation, mandates its aspiring teachers to attend a “Social Foundations of Justice and Equity in Education” class. The class teaches that free market principles, meritocracy, and American values are toxic, and that understanding this must be conveyed to elementary school students. The indoctrination class is described on MSU’s website as “understanding self, schools, and society; emphasizing racial justice, equity, and social identity markers.”
Course materials show that one of the class units is an interview with radical, terrorist and Communist Party member, former Berkeley professor Angela Davis, who was an active collaborator with the violent Black Panther Party. “Racism is integrally linked to capitalism,” Davis says in the video, “and I think it’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place….This is a period during which we need to begin that process of popular education which will allow people to understand the interconnections of racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism,” the video concludes. Another required video claims that “America can never be a meritocracy” until it provides “an equal starting point and equal resources.”
Which, if you think about it for a second or two, is bonkers.
No, Dr. Gelman, Just Because You Think Your Toaster Is A Lawyer Doesn’t Mean What You Say To It Is Privileged
Its continues to amaze me whom the New York Times will give a platform to. Take Dr. Nils Gilman (please!), a historian who “works at the intersection of technology and public policy,” whatever that means.
He has written a supposedly learned column for the Times [gift link] claiming that human beings should have something akin to attorney-client privilege when they shoot off their mouths to their chatbots. His cautionary tale:
On New Year’s Day, Jonathan Rinderknecht purportedly asked ChatGPT: “Are you at fault if a fire is [lit]because of your cigarettes?”… “Yes,” ChatGPT replied…. Rinderknecht…had previously told the chatbot how “amazing” it had felt to burn a Bible months prior….and had also asked it to create a “dystopian” painting of a crowd of poor people fleeing a forest fire while a crowd of rich people mocked them behind a gate.
Somehow the bot squealed to federal authorities. Those conversations were considered sufficient evidence of Rinderknecht’s mind, motives and intent to start a fire that, along with GPS data that put him at the scene of the initial blaze, the feds arrested and chargeed him with several criminal counts, including destruction of property by means of fire, alleging that he was responsible for a small blaze that reignited a week later to start the horrific Palisades fire.
To the author, “this disturbing development is a warning for our legal system.” You see, lonely, stupid people are using A.I. chatbots as confidants, therapists and advisers now, and the damn things cannot be trusted. “We urgently need a new form of legal protection that would safeguard most private communications between people and A.I. chatbots. I call it A.I. interaction privilege,” he pleads.
Note To ABC News: “Live By The Bias, Die By The Bias!”
ABC News got its just desserts on Sunday, when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” to discuss with George the government shutdown and correctly characterize it as the Democrats holding the innocent Americans hostage while they try to refuse to acknowledge that they no longer run the country.
Bessent made it clear—because, you know, it’s the truth— that the Democrats’ aim was to sabotage Trump’s record going into the midterm, as he described the “human costs” of the Left’s tantrum including holiday air travel, cargo transport and supply chain disruptions. When Stephanopoulos acted as he always does, as an advocate for his political party, Bessent pointed out his hypocrisy.
No Surprise: Prince Harry Is An Ethics Dunce, and Also an Idiot
On the superb Showtime series “Ray Donovan,” actor Dash Mihok played Ray’s sad, stupid, easily manipulated brother, “Bunchie.” I always thought self-exiled Prince Harry was disturbingly Bunchie-like in appearance and intellect, and he proved the latter resemblance spectacularly in recent weeks.
As I discussed in an earlier post, Prince Harry attended one of the World Series games in L.A. with he and his insufferable wife wearing blue-and-white Dodgers caps. Harry’s father, King Charles, is the official ruler of Canada, a part of the British Commonwealth, and given that the Dodgers’ opposition in baseball’s ultimate series was the Toronto Blue Jays, many Brits and Canadians were upset that a member of the royal family would publicly favor the American competitor over the Canadian one. Of course they were. Imagine the scandal if one of Trump’s sons ostentatiously cheered on a Russian athlete in the Olympics.
Ethics Alarms 