In a just released video, conservative scholar and commentator Victor Davis Hanson adds his perspective to the Jake Tapper scandal, a sub-scandal to the Biden Dementia cover-up conspiracy of which he was a part, itself a sub-scandal of the Democratic Party’s descent into aspiring totalitarianism. From the transcript…
That’s what this unholy mess of a high school play ethics train wreck would be called if it were an old “Perry Mason” episode.
The run of a student production of “The Crucible” at Fannin County High School in Blue Ridge Georgia was cut from two performances to one for reasons unknown. Understandably, the students and their parents were upset. The administration explained that the reason was a licensing agreement violation, and the school was afraid of having to pay damages, or something. It said in a statement,
“After Friday night’s performance of “The Crucible,” we received several complaints as to an unauthorized change in the script of the play. Upon investigation, we learned that the performance did not reflect the original script. These alterations were not approved by the licensing company or administration. The performance contract for The Crucible does not allow modifications without prior written approval. Failing to follow the proper licensing approval process for additions led to a breach in our contract with the play’s publisher. The infraction resulted in an automatic termination of the licensing agreement. The second performance of The Crucible could not occur because we were no longer covered by a copyright agreement.”
Ah, but woke theater Fury Howard Sherman, the same guy who thinks that it’s okay for actors to boycott performances they are contractually obligated to perform because they don’t like the political views of particular audience members (like, say, the President of the United States), is muckraking again. He writes on his website that he’s sure that the show was really cancelled because “the play about witch hunts, about the persecution of people out of hysteria, despite being an acknowledge American classic widely taught in high school classrooms and performed frequently on high school stages, had provoked the same moral persecution it portrayed as unjust.” See, somebody’s mother told a student that the principle had said “that somebody in the audience didn’t like the context of the play and said that it was demonic and disgusting” so the final performance was cancelled.
Does Sherman produce any evidence that isn’t double hearsay that such a sequence occurred? Nope. Do we hear a quote or see a message from the alleged illiterate lunatic who registered such a complaint? No again. But never mind: Sherman is a progressive (to be fair, most theater types are progressives…welcome to my world) with an agenda.
Axis hack #1…
Ezra Klein!
Axis hack #2…
Ethics Villain, CNN’s Jake Tapper!
Almost exactly a year ago, I excoriated the New York Times and Public Enemy Ezra Klein, the infamous “advocacy journalist” responsible for founding uber-Axis propaganda organ Vox, for a wildly unethical Klein disinformation piece titled, “Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About It).” Guess what Klein didn’t see as a reason Biden was behind in the polls. Somehow, the fact that the alleged President was obviously suffering from dementia escaped his notice. (Suuuure it did…). The closest Klein got to that flaming, throbbing, flashing red alarm was “Voters think Biden is too old.” Just voters, mind you! I wrote, “[Biden’s] obviously declining mentally, and any fool can see he’s too old to hold any job, much less the most difficult one in the country.” But Ezra Klein, who was not declining mentally (and couldn’t possibly decline ethically, except into negative numbers), actually argued that Biden should do more debates with Trump, not just two, and that “all Biden needs to do is persuade enough voters that he is more capable than the erratic criminal defendant across the stage, who turns 78 next month.” What Klein meant was that all the complicit partisan media hacks—like Klein—had to do was to hide Biden’s incapacity from voters until election day. And that’s what they tried to do, except that Biden couldn’t even get through one debate without making it plain that his brain was mush.
Thanks to my still resonating Verizon services disaster last weekend, this is the second Open Forum in a week. I deem it important to at least try to get back to normal, however, and so here we are.
As a bit of inspiration, I present the tale of a most unethical public servant, former L.A. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Brian K. Williams, shown above. Democrats have become this crazy: on Oct. 3, 2024, while he was in an online meeting involving his official duties, Williams picked up an incoming call on his city-issued phone, excused himself, and called the L.A. Police Department’s Chief of Staff. Williams reported he had just received a call from an unknown man who was threatening to bomb L.A. City Hall. Ten minutes later, Williams texted Mayor Karen Bass and other city officials, writing,
“Bomb threat: I received phone call on my city cell at 10:48 am this morning. The male caller stated that ‘he was tired of the city support of Israel, and he has decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the rotunda.’ I immediately contacted the chief of staff of LAPD, they are going to send a number of officers over to do a search of the building and to determine if anyone else received a threat.”
But there was no threat. The call Williams had received, an investigation revealed, was from Williams himself, who had used the Google Voice application on his personal phone to place a call to his work phone. The threatened bomb threat was his own.
The Department of Justice announced that Williams, 61, has been charged with the felony of reporting a false bomb threat, and has pleaded guilty. The crime carries a statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
Nice.
Your turn!
Morons.
The Chicago Sun-Times published a list of 15 recommended books to read this summer as Memorial Day looms. Ten of the 15, two-thirds, were made up titles. Then the Philadelphia Inquirer published the same phony list, headlined “Summer reading list for 2025.” There was the well-reviewed tome “Tidewater Dreams” authored by Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende. Her “first climate fiction novel”! (She’s real, the book wasn’t.) Then there was “The Rainmakers,” set in a “near-future American West where artificially induced rain has become a luxury commodity.” That artificially induced novel was supposedly written by 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett. (Nope!) The list also included “Deep Thoughts” by Joe Biden, a book of blank pages.
OK, I’m kidding about that one…
Of course, of course, the phony list was generated by an AI bot, because that’s what the bots do: make up stuff. Who doesn’t know that by now? Well, apparently journalists don’t, because they are lazy practitioners of a profession that no longer observes basic ethical standards of competence and responsibility. A while back I wrote the post “By Now, No Lawyer Should Be Excused For Making This Blunder” about the lazy lawyers who used Chat GPT to write legal memoranda and briefs that inevitably included fake case cites. Arguably, journalists and editors have even fewer excuses for falling into that trap.
How can we continue to believe American higher education is anything but an unethical, greed-propelled fraud if the institutions themselves don’t take their official mission seriously? (That would be education and the conferring of wisdom and inspiration, in contrast to the real mission, ideological indoctrination. Here is a revealing article about Harvard’s corruption, for example.)
The University of Maryland will have Kermit the Frog as its commencement speaker today to send the graduating class of 2025 off into the real world.
Well waddya know! The U.S. is on the verge of setting records for all-time low temperatures in May. That’s funny. I thought humanity was doomed because the world is burning up.
Of course, I don’t think one unseasonally cold month has any more significance than one unseasonably cold day, but that’s not how the climate change cabal has been playing their game. No, every time the temperature seems especially high anywhere in the USA, the activists, most of whom know as much about climate science as I know about fixing a carburetor, start screaming, pointing, and crying out, “See? SEE?” They do the same thing with seasonal wildfires, hurricanes, floods and, at least on The View, earthquakes and eclipses. They get away with it too, because the unscrupulous politicians they elect and the dim-bulb progressive pundits and reporters who work for those politicians always endorse and rationalize the climate change hysterics’ propaganda, even after every prediction, every projection, every deadline to save humanity proves to be hooey.
Does anyone still need convincing that Gov. Walz is among the most irresponsible, civically ignorant, repellent and dishonest elected officials in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? Apparently so: the University of Minnesota Law School invited him to give the main address as its commencement ceremony. Even if Walz were not a clueless demagogue, constitutional dunce and enemy of free speech (he thinks “hate speech” should be punished), he’s an absurd choice to give a speech to law school grads. Not only isn’t he lawyer, he lacks the rudiments of critical thinking essential to the law. He doesn’t know what lawyer do, or what their standards of conduct are.
Walz didn’t disappoint: he continued on the path of unhinged demogoguery that has characterized his pronouncements since he dragged Kamala Harris and the Democrats down to defeat. (Yes, I know there were dozens of factors that resulted in the Totalitarian Party’s well-earned loss in November, but when I absolutely knew the Harris ticket was doomed was when Walz bumbled his way through the debate with J.D. Vance.)
Here are the lowlights of the unethical speech he inflicted on the recent graduates. There are more gaffes and lies than acceptable sections, which is, I guess, impressive it its own, warped, knickleheaded way. My comments are in bold, his blather is in italics:
Who is Hugo? He’s a 31-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Brazil who was arrested outside Cambridge District Court in Medford, Massachusetts last week. Four plainclothes officers approached him as he was leaving the courthouse, escorted him to a Jeep Cherokee and placed him in handcuffs. ” I was calm because I knew I didn’t do anything wrong,” Monteiro said later. “They were just, like, telling me I was under arrest, that I was in trouble. I was confused.”
So were they, as it turned out. When the officers tried to confirm that they had arrested the the right person, they discovered their mistake. “I showed them my ID, my passport and my picture, and they confirmed that it was not me,” Hugo said. So the officers returned Monteiro to the courthouse. The whole episode took less than 20 minutes.
Hugo didn’t scream police brutality or run to the press to condemn “people being scooped off the street and disappeared.” He said that he knew the officers were “doing their job” and supported their efforts.
“Unfortunately, they called the wrong person, but I still support whatever they’re doing,” Monteiro said. “I voted for Trump. There are a lot of bad people in this country, to be honest with you, [who] don’t deserve to be here. No hard feelings,” he added.
Spoken like a good citizen.
For reasons yet to be explained, my second attempt to maintain an account on “X” was foiled yesterday when I was suddenly blocked from my own home page, “EthicsAlarmist.” I have spent over an hour trying to wade through the laborious process of getting back on, all because the phone number I initially used to set up the account is no longer in use. There is apparently no way to fix this. They keep wanting to send me a code using that number, and when I give them my current cell phone number and try to use the code they send me, the site responds that the phone number I am using is not associated with the account. Like so, so many others, X has a terrible service website.
I just received this in the email they also say is not associated with the account:
Hello,
The phone number you provided does not match the phone number on the account.
If you have a different phone number that might be associated with the account, you can request a password reset via SMS text message using this link: https://x.com/account/begin_password_reset.
If you’re still not able to update your password, we may be able to assist you. Please respond to this email with the following:
- Are you still logged in to https://mobile.x.com?
- What is the @username you are trying to access?
- Is the account linked to an app like X for Android or iOS, postDeck, Vine, Instagram, etc?
Thanks,
X Support
I’ve gone through all of that, twice. It’s an endless loop. Then I received this:
Hello,
We’re writing to let you know that we’re unable to verify you as the account owner. We know this is disappointing to hear, but we can’t assist you further with accessing your account. If you know which email address or phone number is associated with the account, and you no longer have access to that email or connected phone number, please contact your service provider for assistance.
For privacy reasons, we can’t provide any information about this account’s registered email address or phone number. We understand it’s frustrating to get locked out of an account, but we have these policies to protect accounts and private data. We appreciate your understanding.
You’re more than welcome to create a new account to get back onto X.
Please do not respond to this email as replies to this account are not monitored.
Thanks, X Support
My response: “You are welcome to bite me.” I do not understand, and I particularly don’t understand how a Big Tech company can be this incompetent.
Eventually I suppose I will have to open a third account (I abandoned #1 while Twitter was kicking out conservatives and Trump) just to have access to tweets and videos from other sources, but I won’t be investing any time in seeking followers or exposure for Ethics Alarms content.
A platform that behaves like this can’t be trusted—and I even paid for a “blue check.” And after my Verizon experience, Musk’s baby picked the wrong time to mess with me. I’m sure there is some secret to getting my account back, but X has wasted too much of my time already, and I will not forgive or forget.
To Hell with it.
Ethics Alarms 