First: I used to post on the Super Bowl ads, as there is usually some ethics-relevant fodder there, but this time I’m only interested in the Nike commercial above, which one of you sent me. Gee, the photography is nice!
The spot begs for the “What’s going on here?” question, to be sure. It is the perfect Rorschach test ad, with so many confirmation bias traps you have to admire the thing just for that. I almost posted it as an Ethics Quiz. Here are some reactions;
1. It is definitely brazen virtue-signaling by Nike, which has been getting hammered for not weighing in on the biological males in women’s sports debate.
2. The equivalent ad would have made more sense in the 1980s, or even earlier. Who needs to be told that women and girls can play sports and excel in 2025?
3. An all-male competition in which a female squad would be sent to the emergency room is a rather strange context for this message.
4. Is this a poke in the eye of excuse-making Democrats, who claim that Kamala Harris’s loss was because voters are biased against women? Or is the ad an exhortation to them to stop bitching and to “just win” by, you know, nominating more qualified female candidates?
Second: Not surprisingly, President Trump showed that he understands the Cognitive Dissonance scale…
From the state that gave us Joe Biden we have this proud incompetent, who had been the Democrats’ chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.Why does the U.S. have a dangerous National Debt? People who think like Senator Coons. That is, badly.
During an interview yesterday on CNN, Michael Smerconish asked Coons about the DOGE revelations regarding USAID’s bizarre waste of funds and Trump’s determination to shut the agency down. Here was the Senator’s defense of spending $20 million to have “Sesame Street” broadcast in Iraq:
“This isn‘t just funding a kids’ show for children, millions of children in countries like Iraq,” Coons said. “It’s a show that helps teach values, helps teach public health, helps prevent kids from dying from dysentery and disease and helps push values like collaboration, peacefulness, cooperation in a society where the alternative is ISIS, extremism and terrorism. And to your point, it‘s pennies on the dollar. The U.S. Department of Defense has an annual budget of about $850 billion. USAID was spending about $30 billion. It is a small proportion of our total federal spending. And as [political scientist Joseph Nye] would often say, it‘s not just soft power, it‘s smart power.”
Smart. Wow. I hear Inigo calling…
The former Children’s Television Workshop, now called Sesame Workshop (SW), is in desperate straits because its HBO gig is over and it is no longer carried by PBS. The ridiculous 20 million taxpayer bucks USAID sends to Iraq of all places—Why not Zimbabwe? Why not Tierra del Fuego? Why not Antarctica?—is classic government waste for objectives that make dim members of the public say, “Awwwww!” It is impossible to ever cut government spending and address the snowballing debt with fools like Coons having any say in our budget and expenditures. It doesn’t help that so many Americans think “It’s Ok to waste X dollars because we waste so much more elsewhere.”
“[T]hey contain the true principles of the revolution of 1800. For that was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of ’76 was in its form, not effected indeed by the sword as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform: the suffrage of the people. The nation declared its will by dismissing functionaries of one principle, and electing those of another, in the two branches, executive and legislative, submitted to their election.”
—Retired former President Thomas Jefferson, writing to a friend about his election to the office in 1800.
It would be nice, and perhaps even their salvation, if the Democrats would read our history and heed its lessons. Thomas Jefferson believed that democracies had to have periodic revolutions, and came to understand that such upheavals didn’t have to involve violence to be effective. In 1800, the Federalists had lost their way and breached their own principles: John Adams, of all people, had signed a law allowing the President to prosecute political dissidents. President Adams did: his main targets were anti-Federalist newspaper editors, accusing them of trying to provoke an insurrection.
Jefferson was horrified, and so was much of the public. “A legislature had [passed] the Sedition law; the federal courts had subjected certain individuals to its penalties of fine and imprisonment. On coming into office I released these individuals by the power of pardon committed to Executive discretion, which could never be more properly exercised than where citizens were suffering without the authority of law, or, which was equivalent, under a law unauthorised by the constitution, & therefore null,” he wrote in the same letter.
This is all sounding familiar….
The Federalists, certain that Adams had no chance, nominated an alternative candidate. The campaign of 1800 became one of the ugliest in American history. The desperate Federalists had ministers declaring that electing Jefferson, running under the banner of the Republican-Democrats, was the equivalent of rejecting God, that he was an agent of Satan, and that American society would descend into immoral rot if he were elected. Jefferson only prevailed in a deadlocked House of Representatives because a disaffected Federalist star, Alexander Hamilton, supported his longtime political foe after he concluded that the alternative would be disastrous.
No, I did not have Bobby Kennedy Jr. morphing into Alexander Hamilton on my Bingo card. Maybe Kamala Harris will challenge him to a duel. She owns a gum you know…
As President, Jefferson set about undoing almost everything the Federalists had done. He reduced the size of government, cut spending dramatically, and asserted that the states should have domain over much of what the Federalists had sought to control. The Federalists furiously opposed and attacked him, only succeeding in further estranging the party from the American public. The people honored and respected Jefferson because he kept his promise about using the power of the Presidency to advance individual liberty and state autonomy.
The Federalists never won another Presidential election.
As regular EA readers know, individuals, especially celebrities and elected officials, are found guilty here of resorting to the Pazuzu Excuse, named after that potty-mouthed demon who possessed poor Regan (Linda Blair) in “The Exorcist,” when they attempt to avoid accountability for their own words or behavior by saying, usually in a groveled apology, “That wasn’t the real me! I’ve never believed in saying/doing such horrible things!”
The incident of interest occurred on November 21, 2024. As he participated in a tour of the relic of St. Jude’s at the Queen of Apostles parish in Joliet, Illinois, Catholic priest Carlos Martins, the co-host of “The Exorcist Files” podcast, began behaving…. strangely. Father Martins “grabbed the hair” of a 13-year-old girl, placed it “in his mouth” and used it in a “flossing motion,” according to the criminal complaint. Then he sat behind the teenager girl and started “growling.” That’s Father Martins with his friends above.
His conduct prompted the immediate suspension of the tour, and police were summoned. The Diocese of Joliet staff confronted the priest and told him that “he must depart from our parish and out of our Diocese.” “In an abundance of caution, the veneration of the relic and evening mass were canceled,” the diocese said in a release.
That seems prudent.
Martins was processed by the Joliet Police Department, arraigned, and released awaiting his pretrial hearing. The Companions of the Cross, the religious order that Treasures of the Church is affiliates with, said Martins has agreed to withdraw from his pastoral duties in the wake of the allegations against him.
“He remains entitled to due process, as is any accused,” the church said. “The Companions of the Cross look upon allegations of misconduct as an urgent matter that requires serious attention. We pray for all those who are affected by this painful situation.” The Archdiocese of Detroit now lists Father Martins as “Ministry revoked.”
To be fair, Martins’ associates said that he has always been obsessive about flossing. All right, I made that part up. Sorry.
The attorney representing Martins, Marcella Burke, denied the accusations against her client, telling reporters, “Your mothers suck cocks in Hell!” and adding, “Why you do this to me, Dimmy?”
Okay, I was just kidding about those quotes too. What she really said was,”He did not put anyone’s hair in his mouth, let alone ‘floss’ with a student’s hair or ‘growl’ among other completely false and repulsive accusations. This remains a takedown of a good priest and an attempted shakedown of the Church.”
What’s going on here? I have absolutely no idea. I will opine that it must violate some code of ethics for an exorcist to growl at a teenage girl in church.
My law school alma mater—I also worked as an assistant dean there for several years—has been depressingly high on the list of ideologically-obsessed law schools along with Stanford, Yale and many others. Ethics Alarms has never held its fire on GULC based on any sense of misplaced loyalty. However, this time, as the school is being assailed for sponsoring a controversial speaker, I have to take its side for a change. Which is nice.
The Jewish Insider reports that a Georgetown University Law Center student group, a chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine, will host Ribhi Karajaha (above) as a speaker next week on February 11. Karajaha is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization. He is planning to speak about “arrest, detention, and torture in the Israeli military system,” an Instagram post says. Karajaha spent three years in an Israeli prison as part of a plea deal after he admitted to knowing about a terrorist bomb plot that killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl and injured her brother and father.
GULC is being criticized for allowing him to speak. On the contrary, it may be very instructive for law students to hear his point of view and to observe how he answers critical questions. This is known as “education.”
I heard Angela Davis speak when I was student. Davis was a radical Marxist, a domestic terrorist and a criminal. Listening to her was an invaluable experience. She was charismatic and obviously brilliant, but she didn’t brainwash me with laser eyes. I witnessed first hand and in person what fanaticism looks and sounds like. Education.
Georgetwon law student Julia Wax Vanderwiel told Jewish Insider that Karajah’s presence on campus “threatens the security of all Jewish students.” What, is he going to morph into Palestinian Hulk and run amuck? He’s going to talk. Words should not make anyone feel unsafe, and if they do, even then the words are still conveying useful information. The unsafe speaker myth has been embraced by the Mad Left as a way to censor speech and muzzle political opponents.
If Georgetown law students are wise and ethical, they will allow the terrorist to speak without disruption. Unfortunately, they have been attending an institution whose Dean has endorsed partisan and political censorship, so I will be genuinely surprised if that is how this episode plays out.
This is perhaps the only downside of my decision years ago that watching the NFL was unethical and complicit with a greed-fueled sport that cripples its participants in exchange for short-term financial rewards. I was completely unaware that since the George Floyd Freakout in 2020, the cynical sports league had included the legend “End Racism” on its fields’ end zones, including in the Super Bowl.
Is there a more perfect example of virtue-signaling than this? That message on a football field does absolutely nothing, accomplishes nothing, changes no behavior or attitudes, and is just a silly “See? We’re cool!” declaration that really signals, “See? We have no shame! We think you’re an idiot!”
There has never been a smidgen of evidence that racism played any part in George Floyd’s death, except from the likes of Black Lives Matter which asserts that because the cop held responsible is white, he must be a racist. The DEI fad arose from the non-race-related death of an overdosing petty perp who happened to be black, and the NFL’s abandonment of its previous end zone slogan is being blamed on—all together now!— President Trump, as he has put that discriminatory and wasteful movement on his hit list. The end zones in today’s game will declare, “Choose Love,” which is just as fatuous but at least appropriate for Valentines Day.
Today I urge readers to join me in boycotting a game that is guaranteed to send some young men, probably many, to a future of being unable to recognize their children before they reach 65.
I sure wish I could call it a blitzkrieg, but, you know, that Hitler stuff..
Lots of people are writing and thinking the same thing, but I’ll state it anyway: the way Trump has begun his second term is politically and strategically masterful, as well as entertaining. It is also unprecedented, with the only remotely similar example in American history being Franklin Roosevelt’s first term as he rushed to get control of both the Great Depression and the cratering moral of the public. No President has moved this quickly and decisively, however, or caught his opposition so flatfooted and impotent.
This is an experienced CEO doing what effective CEOs do best. It took planning, foresight, guts and learning from past mistakes. Here, a substack essay explains how it occurred. The writer doesn’t cite any sources, but it had to be something like what he describes. The critics of Trump who insisted that he was mentally feeble-minded—you know, like all conservatives—and a certain a disaster waiting to happen are being proven so astoundingly wrong that they are reduced to babbling, screaming or saying huminahuminahumina like Ralph Kramden when he was exposed to his wife as a fool.
Here is how you can distinguish the Trump Deranged hacks from the Trump detractors with integrity. The latter will say, “You know, I have to say, I don’t agree with most of what he’s doing, but this is very impressive. I didn’t think he could do it.” Here are the other kind are like Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson in their Times piece called “Falsehoods Fuel the Right-Wing Crusade Against U.S.A.I.D.” [Gift link!] It’s all the logical fallacy known as “The Texas Sharphooter,” as the authors choose misreported and exaggerated examples of USAID waste without acknowledging the damning grants that would be sufficient to justify distrusting the agency even if it had never given a penny to Politico.
The hair-on-fire hysteria of Democratic Party leaders and the Axis media over Trump’s assault on big government and Great Stupid wokism is noted with disgust in this excellent post at “The Hill” by Jonathan Turley.
“Across the internet, politicians and pundits are in a monstrous mood. The same people who spent the last year declaring the imminent death of democracy if Donald Trump were elected are now insisting that the real threat is the monster he has unleashed upon the federal bureaucracy. For Washingtonians, Musk is the bogeyman they have long described to their children around campfires at night: An outsider who comes to town and lays waste to government waste, firing thousands and slashing budgets…
For decades, both Democratic and Republican presidents have run on reducing government and making it more efficient. But everyone knew that such campaign pledges would be quickly discarded after each election. What is so terrifying this time is that Musk means it. We know that because he has done it before….
Liberals correctly saw Musk’s defiance as an existential threat. For years, they had exercised virtual total control of social media, legacy media and academia. Opposing views were denounced as dangerous disinformation.
The key to their system was that you maintain orthodoxy by coercing people into silence. During the COVID pandemic, scientists who challenged the enforced view of masks, COVID-19 origins, and other issues were banned or fired. Others remained silent as they watched colleagues exiled for expressing their opinions.
Musk had to be destroyed, or others might start to believe that they could also defy the groupthink.”
The hysterical attacks on Musk are both silly and self-indicting. That TIME cover…
is a good example: for four years the U.S. really did have someone or someones serving as shadow President while Joe Biden leaked IQ points, yet Henry Luce’s fading baby never let their readers in on the secret. President Trump found the perfect individual to delegate one of his most difficult tasks, “draining the swamp,” uncovering the graft and scams, trimming the budget. That’s what successful leaders do: they find the best people to do the hard jobs. I realized how sad and impotent Democrats have become when one of their “leaders” in the anti-Musk rally actually tried to start a “Heigh Heigh Ho Ho, Eon Musk has got to go!” chant. Wow. I almost feel sorry for them.
Almost.
What Americans are witnessing is a transitional, tipping point moment that has rarely been seen in our history. Jackson, perhaps. The two Roosevelts. But it has only been a little more than two weeks! Disney should reprogram its Hall of the Presidents to have all of Trump’s predecessors turn and salute #47. If they weren’t audio-animitons, I bet most of them, may be all, would be thinking, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Like my old law school roomie who left “Gone With the Wind” at the intermission thinking it was over, I almost posted on this ethics mess too early. There were three acts, and there might be a fourth. I thought the ethics show was over after Act II.
Act I. The news media’s tantrum: Upon finding that Elon Musk and DOGE were serious about uncovering government waste, that he was employing some of his young computer nerds from SpaceX to do it, and that they had brought down USAID, a foreign aid, woke slush fund icon by exposing just how profligate and irresponsible it was, Katherine Long, a progressive reporter on the Wall Street Journal, targeted the young geniuses who may all be on the autistic spectrum (like Musk). One of them, a 19-year-old, she embarrassed by revealing that his social media handle when he was in high school was “Big Balls.” She also doxxed Marko Elez, writing that he was a “25-year-old who is part of a cadre of Elon Musk lieutenants deployed by the Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize federal spending” and had published troubling social media posts like, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.” “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,” he wrote on “Twitter/X” in September. Long revealed that his account declared, “Normalize Indian hate,” in the same month, expressing his disapproval of the large numbers of tech workers from India in Silicon Valley.
Ethics takeaway: Doxxing is unethical; so is using old social media posts to make a newly prominent figure a victim of the “cancel culture.”
[From your host:I’m thrilled that my request for guest ethics commentary on the current upheaval in Washington attracted an entry so quickly, and especially pleased that it arrived from Steve Witherspoon, who has contributed so much here over the years but who has been unjustly neglected in my Comments of the Day choices.]
I consider myself to be a consummate observer. I listen and observe the world around me and openly question why some people make certain choices that seem to me to be completely devoid of critical thinking and logic, delve into how choices can affect their lives and society around them, and how those choices can either damage or support our culture as a whole.
I devoted the theme of my blog (Society’s Building Blocks: Social Commentary Blog – Critically Thinking About Things That Change Our Society) to just such a perspective even though it appears that there’s almost no interest, but I’ll trudge on.
I chose “Debates We MUST Have As A Modern Culture” as the title because in a culture that has freedom of speech as a core foundation, without continuing open, reasonably civil debate regarding things that have changed and are changing in our culture, we tend to flail around with absurd anti-American culture ideals that are dominated by the completely closed minds of freedom suppressing totalitarians. We are then afflicted with cancel culture, speech suppression, and Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI), as well as willful rationalizations for open politically motivated Lawfare.
Let’s face it: when reasonably civil debates are tossed aside as a quaint ideal and people withdraw into their tunnel-visioned cultish cliques, bigotry ensues. Unchallenged, absurd groupthink takes hold and people become so gullible that they’ll believe just about anything they’re told that supports their bias without any critical thinking. They become ideologically-consumed parrots. This isolationist cultish groupthink has the power to completely destroy our culture, and that may be the goal of some of these cultish anti-Americans.
The United States of America is rapidly approaching 250 years old and there have been some turning points in our history that have redefined us and shifted our culture in very good and thoughtful ways. I personally believe that we are at another turning point and we are going to go through another cultural shift; I just don’t know how much of a shift we are going to see. What I do know is that this cultural shift needs to be based on thoughtful and well debated choices that are guided by our Constitution, general law and order, and how we want to present our country to the rest of the world. We need to honor our core foundations as we look to the future.
Let’s bring a little more focus and briefly list some of the current hot political topics that we must openly debate instead of simply tossing them aside as being unconstitutional, racist, genocide, apocalyptic, etc. Immigration law, law enforcement, self protection, firearms, birthright citizenship, when does individual human life begin thus giving that individual constitutional rights, protecting the environment, government overspending, and illegal drugs are just some of these.
We cannot continue to do things in the same way we’ve been doing them if we want any kind of real change.
Ethics Alarms 