Promoting Your Institution By Emphasizing the Most Negative Perspective On Its History: Good Plan, U.Va!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m not certain what to call this, and solicit your suggestions. Incompetence? Woke virtue signaling? Self-hate? Betrayal? Insanity?

The Jefferson Council, an organization of conservative University of Virginia alumni, has criticized the recent tone of the school’s student-run campus tours that are supposed to convince prospective applicants and their families that U.Va is the place for the graduating high school students to continue their education. The tour organization, the University Guide Service, has been alienating prospective students, the Council says, by immersing the hopeful, bright-eyed young idealists with a “woke version of U.Va history.”

The cheerful tale of the storied university’s origins, the alumni complain, begins by describing how the university’s land was stolen from the Monacan Indian tribe, then goes on to describe how the Rotunda (above) designed by Thomas Jefferson as the center of campus, was constructed by slave labor. They believe that a tour for prospective students should emphasize Jefferson’s positive contributions to the nation, like, oh, authoring the mission statement for this great democratic experiment, his indispensable contribution to securing American independence, his achievements as the third President of the United States, his brilliance and an architect and inventor, those little details. There was nothing unusual about using slave labor when the University of Virginia was established in 1819. Why would an institution emphasize that in a promotional tour?

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What IS It About Democrats And “Stolen Valor”?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It’s not enough that Kamala Harris deliberately placed on the ballot to be elected one heartbeat from the Presidency a Democratic governor , Tim Walz, who has been lying about his military combat record for more than 20 years. (Well, that was just “bad grammar”…). Nor that Richard Blumenthal, the senior United States Senator from Connecticut, also a Democrat, was cheerfully elected by Connecticut voters in 2010 (and re-elected in 2016 and 2022) despite repeatedly lying about being a Vietnam war veteran. For “Wait, there’s more!”…Wes Moore to be precise, the Democratic governor of Maryland.

Moore, shown above as he gave a highlighted speech for the Harris-Walz ticket at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (he did not have a piece of the application for a prestigious White House fellowship in which he lied about receiving a Bronze Star hovering over his head, though) has been dispatched by the Harris campaign as a surrogate to defend Walz on cable television! What a good choice! After all, who better to try to rationalize lying about military service than someone who has done it himself!

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Speaking of Kamala’s “Values”…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Ugh. I meant to include this in the previous post.

In September of 2019, Kamala Harris, then a Senator, wrote to Twitter on official Senate stationery that it should censor then-President Trump. CNN’s Jake Tapper challenged her on the suggestion. (She also tweeted that position.) “You wrote to Twitter and the CEO Jack Dorsey and asked him to take away the president’s Twitter handle. How is that not a violation of free speech? The President has the same rights that you have, that I have, how would that not be a slippery slope where they have to ban half of the people on Twitter?”

Harris’s totalitarian reply: “A corporation has obligations. Their Terms of Use dictate who receives the privilege of speaking on that platform, and who does not. And Donald Trump has clearly violated the Terms of Use, and there should be a consequence for that. Revoke someone’s privilege, because they have not lived up to the advantages of the privilege.”

There’s a Harris “value” for you, and the Biden Administration’s “value” as well. When the government applies pressure on a corporation to ban a political figure’s speech, indeed a sitting President’s speech as he seeks re-election, the “privilege” of communicating with the public on social media becomes a right being infringed by the government. Does Harris believe freedom of speech is a right or a privilege? That’s a “values” question Dana Bash should have asked Harris.

Nah. Too hard. She might have flubbed it.

Unethical Quote of the Month: Kamala Harris (and Other Notes From the CNN Interview)

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“My values have not changed.”

—-Kamala Harris last night, repeating an obviously memorized response to anticipated questions by CNN’s Dana Bash about the many policy flip-flops she has executed since becoming the Democratic Party nominee.

This mantra was repeated three times in various forms, once prefaced by “let’s be clear.” To me the statement makes it clear that Harris’s “values” don’t include integrity or honesty. (I know: we already knew that.) Like her spectacular pretzelism of simultaneously running on “change” while maintaining that the Biden Administration she is part of has been all aces, this weasel-phrase is another transparently devious device to have it both ways.

Read her exchange with Bash about her sudden embrace of fracking. It makes no sense, especially in light of her later response that “her values have not changed” regarding the environment and that she still supports the Green New Deal, which mandates banning fracking.

A public official with consistent, sincerely held values does not and can not reverse herself on major issues unless significant new information and evidence has changed the problem. The significant new information that has caused Harris to flip-flop like the Flying Wallendas is polling that tell her that her previous positions on those issues will cost her votes. The values that have not changed are Harris’s ambition and her willingness to say and do anything to be elected. Those are not ethical values.

[I want to mention here that I took a break to have a cup of coffee and heard on the DirecTV NewsMix Channel that Trump and Vance are “pouncing” on Harris’s values line. This is why people accuse me of following Fox News talking points. Hey, if others come to the same conclusion I do, that just speaks well for them; it doesn’t mean I needed their help to figure it out.]

More on the interview:

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Comment of the Day: Curmie, On “On ‘the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris’: Ten Ethics Observations”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This submission by Ethics Alarms intermittent guest columnist Curmie created a categorization problem. Is it another installment of “Curmie’s Conjectures” (They are all here) ? Should I call it On “the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris”: Ten Ethics Observations, Part 2? Oh, I don’t know: I wrote and posted Part I before 5 am this morning when I woke up after a nightmare and such minutia is beyond me until I get at least two more cups of coffee in me.

Curmie’s analysis (he only stooped to “But Trump!” once) is enhanced in my eyes at least by Curmie’s mention of Christine Vole, the treacherous witness of the prosecution in the classic Billy Wilder film version of “Witness for the Prosecution.” Now, heeeeeeeeeeere’s Curmie!

***

Yesterday, in my first day of teaching (except as an invited guest) in over two years, I closed both my classes by urging skepticism, including of what I tell them. As an example of what I hope to get them to do, I used some of my current research: trying to determine who directed the production of a particular play. The play was staged before it was common practice to include the director’s name was on the program, in publicity materials, or in newspaper reviews.

Conventional wisdom, presented with only a single piece of evidence, suggests that the playwright directed his own play. Several prominent theatre historians all say so, most of them without citing any evidence at all. A couple of other scholars suggest, without explicitly arguing against the playwright as director, that the leading actress took over the function while the normal director for the company was ill and away from the city. They don’t provide much evidence, either.

Based on a number of factors, I think it’s about 98% certain that conventional wisdom is wrong, but 1). 98% is different from 100%, and 2). I’m not convinced of the counter-arguments, either. Maybe when I hear back from the company’s archivist my impressions will change. Maybe there isn’t enough primary source material to make a difference; maybe I’ll be able to prove (“beyond reasonable doubt”) that the playwright didn’t direct the play. Maybe I’ll be left with a speculative piece that claims “the preponderance of the evidence” is that he didn’t. Maybe I’ll end up agreeing with conventional wisdom. But I’m going to do everything I can to get all the evidence before finalizing my opinion, and I’m not going to say something is true if I only suspect that it might be.

CP, on the other hand, immediately loses all (and yes, I mean all) credibility by the claim that “you cannot deny the factual accuracy of what I am about to say.” Actually, yes, I can. Next.

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On “the Truthful, Brief, 21-Point Biography of Kamala Harris”: Ten Ethics Observations

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I don’t know who “Cynical Publius” is: does it matter? (Grok is the irritating Twitter/”X” AI bot, and I couldn’t stop it from photo-bombing my screen shot.)

Points:

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Ethics Observations On Nate Silver’s Latest Election Odds

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Nate Silver announced today that his famous election projection model shows Trump leading again, representing a nearly ten-point swing in Trump’s favor within two weeks. Remember, those aren’t poll percentages. They are the odds of each candidate winning the Presidency based on Nate’s mysterious weighting of polls and pollsters.

What is significant is that Silver detects movement in Trump’s direction now even after the mainstream media’s all-in efforts to promote Harris and assist her in the historically unethical “She isn’t what she is” campaign, the worst attempt at voter deception since 1840, when the Whigs sold Virginia squire William Henry Harrison as a back-woods rustic. Even after..

  • …a Democratic National Convention that was virtually all Trump-bashing throughout while painting Harris as the candidate of “joy.” Even after…
  • …Pundits and talking heads unconscionably morphed into Harris campaign surrogates, defending Tim Walz combat lies and twisting themselves into metaphorical pretzels to deny that Harris was handed the responsibility of dealing with the border crisis. Even after…
  • …Harris successfully avoided having to answer questions about her policy positions even once since Joe Biden was ousted from the presumed ticket.

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 14: Female Baseball Broadcasters

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There is really no good excuse for this one, just reasons, but I’m trying, I really am.

Major League Baseball is making a concerted effort to get more women into the baseball broadcast booths for both radio and TV. I don’t know if this is a DEI-inspired initiative or just a rational response to a long-lasting gender prejudice. Either way, there is no reason why a woman who knows the game, has a pleasing voice and is an experienced broadcaster shouldn’t be doing play-by-play or color commentary.

I am not used to it, however; nobody is. Baseball games to loyal fans are the voices of Vin Scully, Earnie Harwell, Mel Allen, Curt Gowdy, Harry Carey, and the rest. It didn’t help that the first prominent national baseball female broadcaster was whoever the young softball star was who was put in a three-person ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth next to Alex (yecchh!) Rodriguez several years ago. Cheatin’ A-Rod was terrible as always, but she was embarrassing: NOW should have petitioned to have her fired. She was cute, which I suspect was the major reason she got the job, but most of the time she was giggling or laughing. She set the cause of female baseball broadcasting back at least a decade.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Why does a public school herd its students into campaign events — replete with student musicians repurposing the school’s fight song to support a political candidate? It’s compulsory schooling and compulsory participation in politics. The purpose is openly political.”

Bloggress Ann Althouse, criticizing a Harris campaign stop at a high school in Georgia.

I am inclined to agree with Althouse and see this as totalitarian-ish indoctrination, but only because the public schools have been tending increasingly that way in recent years. It’s possible, I think, that the motivations of the teachers and the school were not partisan but educational. In a healthier era when parties didn’t try to demonize each other, a chance to experience a Presidential campaign up close would have been regarded as unique teaching opportunity. I know that in 1960, when I first began my obsession with U.S. Presidents, I would have loved to be in the middle of a candidate’s visit, and which candidate would have mattered to me not one whit.

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Labor Day Weekend Open Forum: Defenestration Edition!

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

This month, August, 2024, has already broken the all-time Ethics Alarms record for banned commenters with seven, the last kicked out late last night. There are still two days to go, so the chances look good for eight or more.

Appropriately, this morning I will be holding this month’s version of my two hour, Continuing Legal Education legal ethics Zoom seminar for TRT, “Professionalism, the Key to Ethical Lawyering and Trustworthy Justice.” It was my noting in this post that I taught this seminar from my home office 90 minutes after finding my wife of 43 years dead in our living room that partially triggered the barrage, it appears.

Frequent commenter and critic here Extradimensional Cephalopod usefully pointed out that commenters who thought (or claimed to think) I was an unfeeling Mike Dukakis clone (or something) couldn’t grasp the concept of professionalism because, well, they apparently weren’t professionals. However, these now banished Ethics Alarms visitors could have enlightened themselves had they availed themselves of the EA search engine, which would have revealed that as a professional ethics specialist, I have discussed and explained the concept repeatedly.

Other banned commenters, including the previous record-setting group just two months ago, in June, may have descended on Ethics Alarms because I decided to become active on my newish Twitter/”X” account by linking to the Ethics Alarms posts that concentrated on the 2024 Election Ethics Train Wreck and related matters, and a political party whose name I will not mention (and shouldn’t need to) will try to destroy anyone who dares to offer opposition to its quest for power.

Ask Robert Kennedy, Jr.

But I digress. This is your weekly space to discuss whatever ethics issues you want to discuss, even me, as long as you haven’t been banned.

I’ll be fulfilling my professional obligations….