Ethics Notes on the Reagan National Airport Collision Aftermath

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I live less than 15 minutes from Reagan National Airport, so last night’s deadly collision between an American Airlines commuter jet and an Army helicopter from Fort Belvoir was just about the only news available on satellite or network after 9 pm. yesterday. Why, after all this time, is this still the practice in news reporting? All four local networks, plus the PBS outlet, and CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, reported exactly the same lack of developments for the rest of the evening. This used to puzzle me when there was a major news story when I was a kid. The practice makes no sense, wastes money, and leads to not-so-bright people, which is to say most talking heads and reporters on the scene, to resort to saying silly things to fill dead air. What is this, virtue-signaling? To show they care? Why don’t all of broadcast news sources have an advance, rotating agreement for one of them to cover these things after the others put up a screen that states, “We at [station or network] care about X, and you will find complete coverage at [the designated pool broadcast location]. We will let you know about any substantive developments”?

Literally nothing happened last night after the crash itself and the rescue teams arrived. Reagan quickly announced that it was suspending flights at least until morning. Meanwhile, we were hearing dumb statements. A couple of far away videos of the accident showed a tiny light, the aircraft, being met by another tiny light, the copter, followed by brief flash and a hint of something falling into the Potomac. These videos would have had to be explained if one saw them out of context, yet one of the newscasters introducing one felt required to issue a trigger warning: “We must warn you, these images are extremely disturbing.” No, they weren’t. Anyone who is extremely disturbed by little flashes of light needs to be in a home for the bewildered.

At around 11 pm, someone on CNN felt the need to ask some guest in the airline industry who had nothing substantive to say, “What would you tell anyone watching who fears for her life and those of her loved ones in future flights as a result of this tragedy?” The guest blathered something innocuous, but should have said, “I would recommend that anyone who reacts like that brush up on their understanding of statistics and critical thinking. This event has literally no significance as far as calculating the safety of air travel.” The exchange reminded me of the argument I had just had with my occasionally woke-addled sister, who said that she was fearful of going to a movie theater because of the risks posed by legal semi-automatic rifles being legal. (She isn’t really, but was desperate for an anti-Second Amendment argument.) Even asking a question like that makes the vulnerable, the hysterical and the stupid (Hey, wasn’t that the title of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti Western?) dumber still. It’s irresponsible and incompetent.

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Let’s Thank Ex-Senator Menendez for Giving Us Such A Valuable Review Of Rationalizations At His Sentencing

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I find miscreants and wrong-doers who whine, grovel and weep as they face the just consequences of their crimes particularly despicable. Give me the defiant, unapologetic variety, like Ruth in “Ozark,” who when looking down the barrel of a pistol wielded by the mother of a cartel leader she had assassinated, says, “I’m not sorry. Your son was a murdering bitch, and now I know where he got it from.” As the woman aims the gun at her heart and pauses, Ruth shouts “Well, are you going to fucking do this shit or not?”

Bang.

Yesterday a sobbing Robert Menendez begged the court for mercy after being found incredibly guilty of accepting bribes from foreign governments and businessmen in exchange for cash, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz convertible among other riches. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison for selling out his Senate office to enrich himself. The New Jersey Democrat and former head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wept as he argued, “Your honor, I am far from a perfect man. I have made more than my share of mistakes and bad decisions. I’ve done far more good than bad. I ask you, your honor, to judge me in that context.” Let’s see, that’s…

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Is “The Three Amigos” Really Racist, or Have I Just Been Brainwashed?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I am proud to say that I thought “The Three Amigos” was a largely unfunny and lousy movie when I saw it the first time…this, despite the fact that I generally admire John Landis as a director of comedies (he will always have a place dear in my heart for directing “Animal House”), and although I generally appreciate the talents of the movie’s stars, Steve Martin and Martin Short (Chevy Chase not so much). For some reason it has been showing repeatedly on MGM+ of late, and upon re-watching the thing after my sock drawer was in order, I found another reason to hate it other than its annoying tone and its predictable gags. This time around, the film seemed egregiously racist.

Oh no! Have 40 years of relentless bludgeoning by political correctness, hyper-sensitivity and wokism taken over my brain? When I first viewed the film (which Wikipedia tells me was ranked 79th on Bravo’s list of the “100 Funniest Movies,” a factoid that only reaffirms my long-standing belief that Bravo is useless), that thought never occurred to me for a second.

One of many films that borrows heavily from the Western classic (and ethics movie) “The Magnificent Seven,”—others include “A Bug’s Life” and “Battle Beyond the Stars” along with a pretty bad remake, with Denzel Washington standing in for Yul Brenner—“The Three Amigos” (the film’s score is by the same composer who scored “The Magnificent Seven”) tells the tale of three incredibly white silent movie stars who end up rescuing a town of substantially helpless and poor Mexicans. The town’s tormenter is “El Guapo,” the evil leader of the most ugly, stupid, dirty and brutal band of Mexican bandits in silver screen history. All right, maybe the Mexicans in “The Wild Bunch” are worse, but the white guys in that bloody film are hardly what you’d like to see your daughter bring home to meet the family either. Naturally the three white guys prevail, despite their collective IQ of about 210, for an average of 70 each (it actually breaks down to 85 for Martin’s character, with Short at 70 and Chase at 65).

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Sanctuary! Well, Not So Much…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

It is mordantly amusing to listen to progressives on MSNBC bemoan the incursion of ICE into the “sanctuary” of churches attempting to extend their invisible force field around illegal immigrants. These are the same people who have shown no respect or reverence for Americans who assert their religious beliefs regarding, to take one infamous example, compelled speech.

In the case of church sanctuary, they are oh, a couple centuries behind the times. Allowing a church to harbor criminals and others sought by the state is a tradition that goes back to Roman times, and here and there it has been bolstered by the law. Not here and now however. The tradition makes no sense in modern times, and if churches have no legal grounds to protect lawbreakers, the claims of so-called sanctuary cities and states are weaker still.

The political and ideological Left has dashed itself on the rocks of illegal immigration, and based on some of the talking head nonsense I saw on MSNBC and CNN today, they are still dashing. When they are not crying “Think of the children!” (Note: law-breaking parents who put their children in untenable positions by their parents’ conduct are 100% accountable for those children’s plight) the apologists for illegal border-crossers are asserting that they are “human beings” and deserve to “have their humanity respected and recognized.” That’s fine: nobody denies that they are human beings. They are also human beings who do not belong in the United States.

This, for some strange reason, seems difficult for some progressives and Axis hacks to grasp. One of the two women I saw rending their garments over the Trump deportation policy, stuttered, babbled, shrugged, sighed and finally said, “I just can’t believe that this is happening! It’s so cruel!” Her partner in absurd “Good Illegal Immigrant” rhetoric nodded and agreed that deporting illegal immigrants who weren’t violent criminals is a violation of human rights.

There is apparently, according to these revolutionaries, a human right to live anywhere you want to. This is pure “Imagine-ism,” probably caused by hearing John Lennon’s fatuous paean to brainless utopianism one time too many. Both women also bemoaned the “collateral damage” of deportations. All law enforcement has “collateral damage” to families and others who depend on the law-breakers. That is a reason not to break laws, not to stop enforcing them.

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Bonus cultural literacy quiz: Who is that lovely young actress playing Esmeralda in that clip from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”? No cheating, now: this is an ethics blog…

Well, I Guess There Won’t Have To Be A Revolution THIS Time…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The Trump Deranged really do think this President is capable of being Hitler.

In a post on his usually rational and excellent blog “Simple Justice,” criminal defense lawyer Scott Greenfield embroils himself in an apocalyptic scenario where President Trump decides to break the law, defy the courts, and impose his will on the nation. Greenfield writes in part,

What mechanism exists to prevent a president from simply doing whatever he pleases? I gave the short list of how this works on the twitters.

There are three primary checks on presidential power:

1. Virtue
2. The military’s refusal to support unlawful action
3. Revolution

Some replied that this was wrong, ignoring the constitutional separation of powers, court rulings, Congress’ laws, even elections and impeachment. They missed the point. Honoring all the guardrails built into the system falls within the first check, virtue. It only matters if the president respects the law and the Constitution. Andrew Jackson realized this when he mumbled, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” What if the president just says “no”?

What is Congress or the Supreme Court going to do if the President tells them to kiss his executive butt? Congress may have the spending authority, but it’s the Treasury that holds the cash and writes the checks. The Supreme Court may have the authority to hold an action unconstitutional, but the military serves under the Commander in Chief.

If the president abides by the limitations of law or constitutional authority, as has generally been the case up to now despite the occasional overstep, then the mechanics of our society work. But what if he doesn’t?

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Caroline Kennedy’s Unethical Hit Job On RFK, Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Robert Kennedy, Jr. is one of President Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet that I would not be disappointed to see rejected. His nomination is transparently the fulfillment of a political quid pro quo between him and Trump. There is nothing shocking about that: it is a standard tactic in a strange arena that often embraces Bizarro World ethics. Kennedy’s crusade against vaccines in general has exploded the number of anti-vaxxers in the U.S. and undoubtedly caused unnecessary deaths. Democrats won’t mention his extreme climate change positions, including RFKJ’s advocacy of criminal penalties for “climate change deniers,” but that is also, in my view, a disqualifying feature of his career in the public eye. I would not be surprised if Trump himself is hoping Kennedy’s nomination is rejected. I would not be surprised if he has taken steps behind the scenes to ensure that it is. I hope he has.

Nonetheless, Caroline Kennedy’s public letter to four ranking Democratic Senators condemning her cousin and attacking his character as well as his positions is a particularly odious betrayal and Machiavellian political shiv in the kidney. The letter is also spectacularly hypocritical, and an excellent, if nauseating, example of abuse of celebrity and influence as well as a stunning lack of self-awareness.

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Jim Acosta, Ethics Villain (Axis Journalism Division) Quits CNN In a Snit

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This rates a Nelson. Mr. Muntz has been getting a work-out on Ethics Alarms lately. The Nelson, as frequent readers here know, is used when condign justice arrives for some ethics miscreant of note, or when such an individual beclowns himself or herself. Nelson Muntz, for the culturally ignorant, has been a regular character on “The Simpsons” for more than two decades. His function is to issue a mocking laugh when he encounters the misfortunes or witnesses the embarrassments of other Springfield residents.

Jim Acosta is a long-time CNN reporter with delusions of grandeur. He is an “advocacy journalist” (which means, ironically, that he’s not a journalist at all) who fashioned himself as Dan Rather to Donald Trump’s Richard Nixon, or Sam Donaldson to Trump’s Ronald Reagan, the dogged liberal reporter knight pledged to slaying the conservative President dragon. Unfortunately for Jim and the rest of us, Acosta isn’t as smart as Rather or as careful as Sam, and is more unethical than either.

Though Acosta led the broadcast media siege of fake and spun news along with Big Lies and double standards to cripple Trump’s first occupation of the White House, CNN figured out that his act was not going to play this time around. Trump 2.0 took over after a decisive electoral win and a higher approval rating from the public than he had at any time in his first term. CNN, seeing its ratings sinking and trying to tack to the center after thoroughly discrediting itself in 2024 (along with the rest of the mainstream media that insisted Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign, Tim Walz wasn’t a boob and Donald Trump was an insurrectionist) decided that Acosta was a liability (“Welcome to the party, pal!“) so they moved his show to the midnight slot, which is the CNN equivalent of Hitler sending an officer to the Russian front.

So Acosta, laboring under the delusion that he deserves better, quit. Here was his astoundingly pompous farewell:

I just wanted to end today’s show by thanking all of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at this network.

You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing in alternative timeslots CNN offered me, I’ve decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly 18 years I’ve spent here doing the news.

People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump.

Actually, no. That moment came here when I covered former President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island’s political prisoners.

As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.

I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I’ve always tried to do that here at CNN, and I plan on doing all of that in the future.

One final message. Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope.

Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give in to the lies. “I will not give in to the fear!”

Post it on your social media so people can hear from you, too.

I’ll have more to say about my plans in the coming days. But until then, I want to thank all of you for tuning in. It has been an honor to be welcomed into your home for all these years.

That’s the news. Reporting from Washington. I’m Jim Acosta.

Bye! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, you self-righteous, arrogant hack.

I know that the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome describes people who are so stupid that they don’t know they are stupid, but what do you call the syndrome when you think you are brilliant at your job when you really stink at it? That’s Acosta. Reading his nauseating statement from last night, I took a tour of the Ethics Alarms dossier on Jim. It is necessarily much thinner than it could be: Acosta quickly identified himself as belonging in the same group with Joy Reid, Don Lemon, Charles M. Blow, Courtland Malloy, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and others, openly biased pundits and broadcast journalists who viewed bringing down Donald Trump by any means necessary as their Holy Grail. I ignored his predictable dishonesty and lack of professionalism except when it was too egregious to let stand (or when I was short on topics).

Let’s see:

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Brevard County School Superintendent: “We Hold Our Leaders to the Highest Standards…” Yeah, RIGHT.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Roosevelt Elementary School (in Cocoa Beach, Florida) principal Elizabeth Hill-Brodigan (above, right) held a party with more than 100 teens in attendance. Alcohol was flowing, joints were being puffed. When police arrived at Hill-Brodigan’s home after a tip on January 19, they discovered the wild underage party, one teenager having an alcohol-related medical episode on the front lawn, and Roosevelt Elementary teacher Karly Anderson (left), who was drunk as a skunk. They also found alcoholic beverages in coolers. Now police have learned that these parties have been occurring for a while, once or twice a month.

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New York Magazine Is Caught Manufacturing Fake Evidence Of “White Supremacy”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Once upon a time, the news media would get away with this kind of blatant dishonesty.

The story itself that New York Magazine used this deceptively cropped photo to introduce (The Cruel Kids Table: Out late with the young right as they cultivate cultural domination”) states that “Almost everyone is white” after beginning the story by quoting a party attendee as observing, “Have you noticed the entire room is white?” Promoting the piece, the NY Mag X account wrote that the story was about “the young, gleeful, confident, and casually cruel Trumpers who, after conquering Washington, have their sights set on the rest of America.” This was a hit piece about a supposedly all-white conservative influencers Trump inauguration party, yet the party’s host was black Gen Z Republican strategist CJ Pearson. Others pointed out, like black conservative pundit and “influencer” Rob Smith, also a guest at the party, that there were many Hispanics, blacks and Asians there. He posted this photo…

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Abuse of Celebrity: Selena Dumb Gomez’s Virtue-Signaling

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The video of former Disney star Selena Gomez weeping over the deportations of illegal immigrants who should be deported is a brilliant reminder that Hollywood makes you stupid. Gomez posted it on her Instagram which has 424 million followers and I want to kill myself.

Gomez is difficult to understand amid all the sobbing and histrionics, but here’s the text: “I just want to say I am so sorry… all my people are getting attacked [by Trump’s deportations]. The children. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something, but I can’t, I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything, I promise.”

To state the obvious, being subject to law enforcement isn’t being “attacked.” It is breathtakingly obnoxious for Gomez to call illegal immigrants “her people”—she’s an American citizen, and we are her people. Of course she plays the always popular “Think of the children!” card. And the hubris necessary for a B-list celebrity—she was okay in “The Dead Don’t Die”— to apologize for something she has no power over whatsoever, and to promise to “try everything” to stop it when there is nothing she can do is especially staggering.

“Entertainment Tonight” isn’t much better, saying in that clip that the deportation policy mostly “targets Latinos.” No, you hacks, it entirely targets illegal immigrants.

You can say this weepy virtue-signaling is harmless, but the fact that an ignorant woman like Gomez has over 400 million followers means that a political, cultural and ethics dunce can influence a dangerous number of people, making them stupid, fearful, and bad citizens. It has always been thus that our most talented artists (not that Selena is one of those) usually lack intellectual and critical thinking abilities on par with their performing abilities. They also tend to be emotionally frozen somewhere between the 6th and 11th grade. There are exceptions, of course, but social media has given these Dunning-Kruger victims a way to spread their juvenile politics and poor civics literacy far and wide, usually infecting the young most of all, and most damaging of all.

Maybe I’ll make a video of myself weeping over this…