First Friday Open Forum of September!

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Last week, because of my training schedule, the Friday Forum was on a Thursday, so theoretically there ought to be more pent up ethics issues that Ethics Alarms has missed than usual. I bet there are more than usual for other reasons: as I predicted would happen as the Election to Save Democracy gets closer, EA has been set upon by single-purpose commenters whose objective is to discredit me and the site, usually by sealioning a single rebuttal to an essay critical of Harris, telling the truth about the rotting ethics of the Democratic Party, or defending Donald Trump against Axis smear attempts.

Typical was the exchange with a commenter on this post, who was determined to prove that Trump or his campaign using some video that was taken at an Arlington National Cemetery ceremony that he was invited to attend violated an “Army Rule.” When I told him that he needed to move on to another topic, as genuine and good faith commenters here do, he vanished, after wasting not just my time, but that of many commenters here as well.

No, I don’t believe that these are paid operatives; Ethics Alarms doesn’t have enough distribution or influence to be worth paying someone to do what the Trump-Deranged and knee-jerk progressives will do anyway for free.

I almost feel like I should apologize for the blog taking an obvious turn to substantially more political commentary this year, even more than in 2016 and 2020. Almost. I regard this as an unusually important ethics tipping point for the culture and the election. Trump is almost irrelevant (my opinion of the man, his character and his trustworthiness have only slightly improved since 2015): if the Axis strategy since Trump’s election in 2016 doesn’t finally result in the crushing rejection it deserves, all of those dire predictions about the fate of the U.S.A. will not be so hyperbolic after all.

But see if you can discuss something else….

FIRE’s 2025 College Free Speech Rankings Are Out: Can You Guess Who’s Dead Last Again?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Of course it’s Harvard. My other alma mater, for which I worked as an administrator for several years, Georgetown, was ranked at #240 out of 251 schools. Harvard lapped the field however, with a perfect 0.00 score. Do read the report, rankings and details here, as depressing as they are regarding the ethics rot in higher education generally. At least I wasn’t disappointed or disillusioned about my two universities’ rankings and performance, since Ethics Alarms has covered the deterioration of both, not as extensively as FIRE, but enough to make it obvious to readers here (and me) that Harvard and Georgetown have busted ethics alarms.

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Outrageous Hypocrite of the Month: Liz Cheney

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It continues to amaze to me that there are (once) intelligent and objective people who regard Liz Cheney as anything but a raging, emotion-driven, warped political hack at this point. The Axis and the Trump-Deranged like her for the obvious reasons, but isn’t there some point where even a mouth-foaming Trump-Hater is too silly to take seriously? Cheney crashed through that DETOUR sign when she signed onto Nancy Pelosi’s “Get Trump!” star chamber “investigating” the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.

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I Hate to Say “I Told You So” Again Regarding What An Untrustworthy Demagogue Tucker Carlson Is, But I’m Saying It Again…

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

…because now Carlson is promoting a “historian” who says that Hitler was just trying to be kind when he tried to wipe out the Slavs and the Jews.

No, I am not exaggerating.

Back in May, I wrote about how despicable it was for Tucker Carlson, whom Ethics Alarms flagged as a self-promoting, unprincipled creep years ago, to interview Alex Jones (who claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax) as if the conspiracy peddler was a legitimate journalist. Ethics Alarms described Carlson as “a smug, narcissistic, ethics-challenged, unprincipled, Machiavellian demagogue who helps pollute our civic discourse rather than enhance it.” More:

“…since Fox News fired him (one more example of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons), several publications have noted that Carlson’s focus has descended into cheap tabloid territory as he desperately seeks publicity, clicks and eyeballs. Of course he has. Carlson doesn’t need the money (he’s a trust fund kid and has a net worth estimated at $30 million); he could easily maintain whatever integrity he had and present serious, useful analysis from the conservative side on whatever platform he used as he waits for his Fox contract to run out. Nah, he wants fame and power.

Now, I can’t explain exactly how Carlson’s latest example of irresponsible journalism will help him in the power department, but his latest interview subject makes Alex Jones seem like Lowell Thomas. This week Carlson chose to interview Darryl Cooper, and introduced him as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.” Best! Most honest! Cooper explained to Carlson’s audience that Winston Churchill was arguably “the chief villain of the Second World War” and “primarily responsible for that war becoming what it did.” After all, Churchill could have made a separate peace with Adolf, who didn’t want to fight Great Britain, and maybe then the war would have peacefully concluded with Hitler taking over the rest of Europe and the U.S. never having to get involved at all!

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Now THIS Is An Unethical Surgeon…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Don’t you just hate it when you’re under anesthesia for a serious operation, and while you’re unconscious your surgeon lets her 13-year-old daughter take over?

Graz University Hospital in Austria ( Graz is the regional capital of Styria, Austria’s second-largest state) released this apology: “The hospital’s management would like to express its utmost regret and extend its sincere apologies for this incident, and is working to fully clarify the matter.” The “matter” is this: After a 33-year-old man was flown to the hospital with serious head injuries following an accident, the female neurosurgeon, whose name has not been revealed so far, apparently allowed her 13-year-old daughter to scrub in. Maybe it was “take your daughter to work” day or something, but the aspiring distaff Doogie Howser was accused by a whistle-blowing member of the surgical team of actively taking part in the emergency surgery, including drilling a hole in the patient’s skull to relieve pressure from cranial bleeding.

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Just To Be Clear: RayGun’s Apology Isn’t an Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It isn’t even a non-apology apology.

Littlemore than two weeks ago, both Curmie and I wrote about the ridiculous “RayGun,” aka. Rachel Gunn, who made a travesty of the Olympics breakdancing event (which was arguably a travesty from its inception anyway) and who may have rigged the Oceana competition to represent Australia in order to get a free trip to Paris in exchange for making an ass of herself.

Now, apparently sensing that her metaphorical 15 minutes of infamy was expiring, she’s in the news again for issuing what the ethically-inert news media is terming an “apology.” In an interview with the Australian current affairs show “The Project” the 37-year-old university lecturer said this week that she is “very sorry for the backlash that the [break-dancing] community has experienced” following her performance.

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Ethics Quiz (or “What the HELL Is Going On at Yale Divinity School?”): The Spell

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Who is Adrienne Brown (and why did she stick a Lifesaver in her nose?) is a far, far FAR left writer and facilitator, a supporter of almost every toxic Leftist delusion you can imagine, from Black Lives Matter to transformative justice, from defunding the police to abolishing prison. Her very existence is testimony to the power of the Great Stupid in 21st Century America, which naturally includes the embrace of DEI by previously respectable institutions.

College Fix has an account by a student at Yale’s Divinity School, included one of Brown’s writings in its Before the Fall Orientation. The three-day orientation included a series of discussions and activities preparing incoming students for the year ahead, followed by small group discussions. At one point, students were rquired to read aloud, line by line and one by one, from Adrienne Brown’s “Radical Gratitude Spell,” which is this:

you are a miracle walking
i greet you with wonder
in a world which seeks to own
your joy and your imagination
you have chosen to be free,
every day, as a practice.
i can never know
the struggles you went through to get here,
but i know you have swum upstream
and at times it has been lonely

i want you to know
i honor the choices you made in solitude
and i honor the work you have done to belong
i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself
and your journey
to love the particular container of life
that is you

you are enough
your work is enough
you are needed
your work is sacred
you are here
and i am grateful

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files, Scary But Funny Section: Nah, There’s No Big Tech Pro-Democrat Bias!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Brief reactions:

  • Why did it take so long for someone to try this?
  • Of course, only a moron would seriously ask Alexa who to vote for, but then morons are the pivotal voting bloc in any Presidential election.
  • One would think Amazon would be a bit more careful not to show its hand like this. One would be wrong.
  • This is how you fix an election and then deny later that the election was “stolen”: Millions of little slants, nudges, lies, smears and bits of propaganda, none them by themselves significant enough to point to as corrupting, but collectively very powerful.
  • Watch Amazon say that this was just an inadvertent “mistake.” Sure it was. What are you, a conspiracy theorist? Big Tech would never be so openly biased and manipulative before an election! This was a glitch, that’s all.  AI still has glitches! Be patient!
  • Hilariously, the best Alexa can come up with as a Harris “accomplishment” despite stating that there are so, so many is her DEI status. Perfect.

Ethics Villain: CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The announcement that the shamelessly biased and wildly incompetent “media expert” Brian Stelter is returning to CNN and that the network is resurrecting “Reliable Sources,” the once legitimate media watchdog show that Howard Kurtz ably and fairly hosted until it was corrupted by Stelter, proves one thing. CNN, after a brief (and only partial) attack of conscience, is fully committed to being a metaphorical whore for the Left again. After all, it has to help save democracy! Here’s Stelter’s announcement:

This revolting development means that Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, CNN’s most flaming propagandists and untrustworthy talking heads who were fired for disgracing even what is now laughingly called broadcast journalism, have found gainful employment, not at Hardee’s where they belong, but again in the field that they sullied by their presence. Continue reading →

A Manager’s Baseball Decision Has Lessons For The Non-Baseball World.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In a game over the weekend between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers, Red Sox starting pitcher Cooper Criswell was pitching the game of his life. In a 0-0 tie through four innings, the Tigers had no base-runners at all. Criswell, a rare breaking-ball and control specialist who serves as Boston’s fifth starter now that those above him on the depth chart have been injured, appeared to have perfect command of his pitches, as evidenced by the large number of strikeouts he was getting, and he is not a strike-out pitcher. Criswell also threw just 52 pitches in his four innings, and that is well-below any likely fatigue level.

Nonetheless, despite being literally perfect that far, Cooper Criswell did not come out to the mound for the fifth inning. Red Sox manager Alex Cora replaced him with lefty Rich Hill, because the Tigers had three tough lefties coming up to bat (left-handed batters typically hit right-handed pitchers like Criswell better than they hit lefties like Hill).

Hill walked one of the left-handed batters, and the first right-handed batter he faced as a result hit a two-run homer. The Red Sox never caught up.

After the game, Cora had no regrets, telling the press that pulling Criswell was part of a predetermined plan. “We drew it up, they had a bunch of lefties,” Cora said.. “He gave us enough. We went to Rich in that situation. We had a big pocket of lefties. Just the righty burned us.”

There are two ethics issues here.

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