“Florida’s attorney general Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump while she considered joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates, AP reports Trump’s $25,000 donation to Bondi came from a Trump family foundation in a likely violation of rules surrounding legitimate activities by 501 C (3) charities, which are not allowed to engage in political grant-making. And Justice for All, a political group backing Bondi’s re-election, reported receiving the check on Sept. 17, 2013 — four days after Bondi’s office publicly announced she was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University’s activities.”
Rob Reiner has puzzled me for a long, long time. He can’t be stupid; his father Carl was a brilliant writer and comic, quick on his feet, witty, and able to hold his own with Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Neil Simon. Rob was once an excellent film director: “This Is Spinal Tap (1984), “The Sure Thing” (1985), “Stand by Me” (1986), “The Princess Bride” (1987), “When Harry Met Sally,” (1989), “Misery (1990), and “A Few Good Men” (1992). I’m also an excellent director, so maybe I’m inclined to assume that talent is linked to intelligence. But Reiner’s success in Hollywood has crashed as his partisan progressive fervor has slipped into fanaticism.
His Ethics Alarms dossier is frightening. In 2022, he actually tweeted this,
and didn’t expect to be laughed at. His Trump Derangement worsened, resulting in this tweet
and later, when he denied on Bill Maher’s HBO show that the press buried the Hunter Biden laptop story and then deflected to, “You know it’s not justified? Using armed violence to try to kill people in the Capital. That’s not justified!” I wrote at the time,” So many once intelligent people are like Reiner now. Isn’t that frightening? Don’t some Americans, the ones who aren’t too far gone, hear a celebrity talk like that and think, “Wait…I’m on the same side as that guy? Do I sound like that? What’s happened to me?”
Yesterday I was chatting with a woman whose two Golden Doodles are fond of romping with Spuds. She told me about her recent experience at a private school where her daughter attends, but soon will attend no more, as you will shortly understand.
This school is famously progressive, and among other things indulges “furry” delusions among its students. Don’t you know about “furries??
Oh, listen my children and you shall hear of this crazy fad the woke hold dear…
This story is “breaking,” but I have to comment. Gaetz can’t be called an Ethics Hero here: if he were one, he would have declined the nomination immediately, as this controversy was, or should have been, a forgone conclusion. He said all the right things today,
“There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, thus I’ll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1. I remain fully committed to see that Donald J. Trump is the most successful President in history. I will forever be honored that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will Save America.”
…but he could have said them a week ago.
Whatever: As a lawyer, I would have joined any petitions or organized professional protests against Gaetz being confirmed for the job of the nation’s top attorney. I don’t blame Trump for wishing the plague on the Justice Department and hating my profession, but Gaetz was too far over the line. Several of his other appointments are uncomfortably close to the line if not over it as well, but Gaetz’s selection was so indefensible that it risked undermining Trump’s credibility before his administration got underway.
Is one of Gaetz’s motivations for “doing the right thing” the fear that if he didn’t withdraw, matters would come to the public’s attention that would sink the rest of his political career? Oh, probably. I don’t care. What matters is that an unqualified nominee took himself out of the running before too much damage was done..
Is the New York Times really so desperate for anti-Trump, “let’s kill all the unborn babies” screeds that they have to dip into the high school newspaper pool? I saw this op-ed by a 16-year-old girl in The Salt Lake Tribune, which picked it up from the New York Times. There is no excuse for it. Titled, “I’m 16. On Nov. 6 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft,” the piece is irresponsible to publish for many reasons:
I don’t believe that it is likely to have been the 16-year-old’s work alone. I believe it was influenced by adults, and that they used her to promote their views, on the theory that “out of the mouths of babes” would have more persuasive power than “out of the mouths of pro-abortion extremists who believe nothing is more important than allowing mothers to kill unborn children.
The named author, whose name I will not mention here so as to in some tiny way mitigate the harm this publicity is likely to inflict on her, is too young to give valid consent to being exploited in this manner. The op-ed is forever. She isn’t out of high school. She shouldn’t have to begin adulthood already branded as self-branded bigot, sexist, demonizer of a President and abortion activist.
It would be a poor op-ed unworthy of publication if it were written by an adult.
Here are just a few excerpts to give you the spirit the thing: Continue reading →
This quiz comes from the latest inquiry to “The Ethicist.” I disagree with much of Prof. Appiah’s answer, as I often have lately, but I do concede that the question is worthy of a serious ponder.
On their way out a restaurant, a family group was interrupted by a stranger who had also dined there. He said to the inquirer’s comely daughter-in-law, “With all due respect, you are very attractive.” The inquirer rebuked him saying, “That is wholly inappropriate, sir.” The inquiry continued,
“My cousin snapped at me that it was only a compliment. My sister got mad at me for upsetting my cousin. My daughter-in-law appreciated my reaction but said that she has had “way creepier men say way creepier things to her.” I responded to them all that a stranger has no business commenting on the looks of a person, good or bad, and that this man would never have said a word if any man had been standing with us. Who is right?”
Before I give you The Ethicist’s answer and mine,
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….
“Are spontaneous compliments on a stranger’s appearance per se unethical?”
“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”
—Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, excusing Bucks County’s decision to count misdated or undated mail-in ballots after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court clearly stated that such ballots were invalid.
[Expanded commentary is below, after the original post.]
You can’t get much more unethical than that in so few words.
1. The edict about the invalid ballots wasn’t a court precedent, it was a ruling. If she doesn’t know the difference, she has no business being a commissioner. If she does know the difference, then she was lying.
2. Next she invokes the hoariest unethical rationalization of them all, #1 on the list,, “Everybody Does It.”
3. The statement that people violate laws any time they want is false and a direct attack on the Rule of Law as well as the character of Americans. In fact, the vast majority of American obey the law. Continue reading →
Is it too much to ask Disney to at least have the courage of its oppressively woke convictions?
An episode of the new Disney animated show “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” that centered on a transgender character was pulled from the series and there are no plans to broadcast it.
The Disney Channel will not show the episode in 2025 apparently because of its LGBTQ storyline, which involves a transgender character named Brooklyn who is on the girl’s volleyball team and faces discrimination from the opposing team’s coach. The evil coach uses a magic key to lock Brooklyn and her teammates in the girl’s locker room so they can’t play. Brooklyn, who wears pride-themed kneepads and has a “Trans is beautiful” sticker on her water bottle, tells her team mates, “I’m trans, my very existence breaks Greer’s rules.”
Although Disney claims that the timing of the cancellation notice is a coincidence, it seems that all of the artists involved in creating the episode believe that the Presidential election results motivated the decision. Emmy Cicirega, a storyboard artist, wrote on X, “Disney should be ashamed of themselves for canning this episode. You don’t get to approve approve approve something and then destroy it at the last minute, shattering the crew’s hard work and hopes.” Another animator tweeted, “If an episode got this far, it was approved multiple times by multiple divisions, only to suddenly be struck down at the last second? Total breakdown of process and spitting on your team’s careful/thoughtful work…The action being preemptive makes it so much worse to me. The absolute cowardice and second guessing when actually this is when this content is needed most.”
Disney denies it all, but why should anyone trust Disney these days? It does seem spectacularly stupid to self-censor a work of art because of a Presidential election and a close one at that. It seems just as stupid to pull an episode that everyone will think became too controversial because of Trump’s win. If Disney believes as fervently in its all-in support of LGBTQ issues as its much maligned output in recent years suggests, then the company should show some integrity and guts, stick to its metaphorical guns, and tell Brooklyn’s story. One thing you could count on Walt for: if he had a vision, he didn’t care whose ire it aroused. Like all great artists, innovators and creators, if where he was going was into a headwind, he wouldn’t turn back. The decision to red pencil Brooklyn’s story reeks of a company without principles just trying to go where the winds seem to be blowing. Weenies.
Now watch everyone blame the lost episode of “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” on Trump.
____________
Pointer: Willem Reese [This is a correction: I initially credited JutGory for the tip, who quickly disavowed. EA apologizes to all concerned.]
“The Simpsons'” Nelson Muntz has been getting a workout on Ethics Alarms lately, because the Trump Deranged and the Axis totalitarians have been falling flat on their faces in their own filth with hilarious regularity.
On a recent episode of “The View,” the all-woke, all Trump-Deranged, all-too-dumb-to-breathe panel attacked President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks and Matt Gaetz’s nomination in particular, as former prosecutor Sunny Hostin, who thinks that earthquakes and eclipses are proof of cliamte change, expressed horror that Trump could nominate the former Congressman with such damning “allegations” having been made against him. Wow, she must have been some prosecutor with that attitude toward unproven allegations!
Three minutes after Hostin’s unethical diatribe, Whoopi Goldberg interjected, “Sonny, you have a legal note.” You see, Donald Trump is suing ABC for defamation. It’s a doomed suit I think, but ABC’s lawyers, being lawyerly, don’t want to take any chances. They heard Hostin’s rant and quickly rushed on the air a legal disclaimer that–Haha!—Hostin was ordered to read. Which she did, with the facial expression and tone of a North Korean-held American prisoner of war being forced to read a “confession”:
“I do have a legal note. Thank you, Whoopi,” Hostin replied. She continued,
“Matt Gaetz has long denied all allegations, calling the claims, quote, ‘invented,’ and saying in a statement to ABC News that ‘this false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism. The DOJ investigation was closed with no charges being brought.”
Whoopi then sent the show into a commercial. I’m surprised the network’s lawyers didn’t make Hostin recite, “ABC also wants to assure readers that I am an idiot, and what I say, as with all the other members of ‘The View,’ should never be taken seriously.”
To be clear, the position here is not that Gaetz should be rejected as Attorney General because of the allegations against him, but because he is not only unqualified to be a U.S. Attorney General, he’s unqualified to be a member of Congress. He’s untrustworthy, and based on his legal experience as well as his mass of outrageous statements, I wouldn’t hire him for any legal task I can think of. Trump obviously intends the nomination to demonstrate his contempt for the Justice Department under Merrick Garland, a sentiment that is understandable and justified. If that is the message he wants to send, however, he should have just nominated a baboon and avoided any ambiguity.
This is the most wonderfully strange country, isn’t it? I have mentioned here before how the United States “won” the World’s Fair called “Expo 67.” A huge, imposing Soviet Union pavilion displayed threshers, tractors and other farm equipment, tanks and satellites, perfectly capturing the harsh gray gravity of life in the USSR. Not far away was the United States pavilion, housed in a giant transparent geodesic dome (courtesy of Buckminister Fuller), filled with joyful explosions of American pop culture: Raggedy Ann dolls, artifacts from the baseball Hall of Fame, cool cars, rock ‘n roll and classic movie clips running on loops. There was Gary Cooper alone in the dusty street; Cary Grant being shot at by that crop duster; Julie Andrews spinning on the mountain top at the start of “The Sound of Music,” Gene Kelly singing in the rain. Tough choice for the international visitors: which country would you want to live in?
And now, after one of the bitterest Presidential campaigns in our history, following almost a decade of a constantly widening breach in our politics, values and discourse, the essential light-heartedness (and habitual triviality) that has always been a feature of our national character is pulling us together.
Ethics Alarms 