Prof. Mayer has responded to my critique of his USA Today Editorial. I was hardly restrained or respectful, but his rebuttal is measured, spirited, and appreciated. How I wish more objects of criticism here would join in the discussion.
This was diabolical of the professor, because now I can’t help liking him.
He concludes by saying “Let the roasting begin!” Don’t let him down, now.
And remember, the topic is ethics.
Documentaries can be informative, entertaining and influential, but the more I watch them and the more accessible they become through the streaming platforms, the more it is apparent that they are too often pure propaganda instruments and inherently untrustworthy. Almost no documentaries are made from a neutral or objective points of view. In today’s indoctrination-oriented educational system, they are increasingly weaponized to advance political agendas. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” despite having many of its “truths” debunked and declared bad science, is still turning up in classrooms as if it weren’t the slick manipulative advocacy production it is. There is the despicable Michael Moore, of course, all of whose documentaries cheat with deceptive editing and politically slanted deceit. Even Ken Burns, whom I once admired, proved with his “The US and the Holocaust” that he could not be trusted. I’m a fool: he is affiliated with PBS. Of course he’s pushing a progressive agenda.
Documentaries should be watched with the presumption that they are dishonest, made from biased perspectives, and untrustworthy. Then it is the burden of the documentary to prove otherwise.
Morgan Spurlock died this week of cancer at the relatively young age of 53. He had one great idea for a gimmick documentary, pulled it off with humor and wit, and made himself famous and rich in the process. The idea became his Oscar-nominated 2004 film “Super Size Me,” documenting his physical deterioration as he ate nothing but McDonald’s fast food for 30 days. The movie followed Spurlock and his girlfriend throughout his Golden Arches orgy, with intermittent interviews with health experts and visits to his alarmed physician as he packed on 25 unhealthy pounds and found his liver function deteriorating. Naturally, many schools across the country couldn’t resist showing the film to gullible students. But the documentary, which earned more than $22 million at the box office, was entirely a scam. (Spurlock certainly left some clues: his production company was called “The Con.”) It was pretty obvious from the beginning, or should have been, that this was hardly a valid scientific experiment, but the same woke, anti-corporate dictators that cheered when Michael Bloomberg taxed jumbo sugary drinks in New York City were thrilled to pretend it was.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, where she was being honored….for what, I can’t imagine.
Awww! Poor Sonja! What’s she crying about? That she’s obviously over her head on the Supreme Court with actual legal scholars and experts who can make persuasive arguments about what the law is and what the Constitution means instead of just relying on warm, fuzzy feelings and mandatory progressive sentiment? That mean old conservatives aren’t buying her “But…but…it would be nicer if we decided this way” routine?
Did Sandra Day O’Connor, when she was in the minority on a liberal majority court, ever say she just went into her office and wept when a SCOTUS vote didn’t go her way? Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she was on the losing end of a 5-4 ruling? Did Scalia? No, but this Justice not only weeps over her defeats, she thinks its something to be proud of.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is truly a 1) blight on the nation; 2) completely incompetent and irresponsible, and 3) an idiot. Her latest outburst of inflammatory and unforgivable rhetoric to mislead the kind of people who would vote for someone like her—you know, morons—is to claim that the FBI was planning on assassinating former President Trump when it raided his Florida residence on August 8, 2022 and seized hundreds of classified documents that Trump had refused to return to the National Archives despite being instructed to do so.
Her basis for this latest freak-out was a newly-unsealed filing including the raid order. It stated, “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.” Being the reckless and toxic half-wit she is, MJG, without doing the minimal due diligence and research required, exclaimed on “X” this week: “The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Trump and gave the green light.”
Did I mention that she is an irresponsible idiot? She wasn’t the only one in this case, however. Steve Bannon and Mike Davis issued a video in which they discussed the search of Mar-a-Lago, and Bannon says on it, “They authorized deadly force, they had a medic, they had a plan to triage the wounded, they had a trauma center 18 miles away on a map. This was an attempted assassination on Donald John Trump or people associated with him. They wanted a gun fight.”
I received the notice above in my email inbox two days ago. Wow! That deal looks almost too good to be true!
It was. When I examined the terms, I discovered that the bank had made a teeny mistake. It didn’t take a deposit of just 25 dollars to earn the $525 bonus. It required a deposit of 25 THOUSAND dollars.
Details, details.
That’s a three decimal point error. It doesn’t exactly engender trust in the bank’s staff, its management, or it quality control procedures, does it?
Wells Fargo has a notable dossier on Ethics Alarms, notably here, but also here, here and most recently here. And the hits just keep on coming: this was an item from yesterday: Wells Fargo Accused of Draining Customers’ Accounts Without Notice or Authorization in ‘Blatant Disregard’ of Consumer Loan Protections: Class-Action Lawsuit.
Yeah yeah, anyone can make a typo (don’t I know it!) but a bank’s business is getting numbers right. I would think that especially after its terrible publicity over the past several years, Wells Fargo would check and triple check a mailing that goes out to all of its depositors to make absolutely certain no unnerving mistakes are in the copy.
I would think that, and apparently I would be wrong.
Being a helpful, responsible customer, I sent a screen shot of the botched email to my banker at the local branch. I got no reply; I also never received any error acknowledgment from the bank.
They probably are still sending that promotion out.
I was watching an old “48 Hours” episode last night about Todd Kohlhepp, a serial killer convicted of murdering seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016. He also kidnapped and raped at least two women and claims to have killed many more. The interesting part of the show was the interview with his 70-year-old mother.
Even though she had been told about her son confessing to committing seven murders, including a mass shooting in a bicycle shop where he wiped out the entire staff, she insisted that her son was misunderstood. “He’s not a monster,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “He’s a good person.”
Oooh, I’ll be using this one in a legal ethics seminar for sure.
A sicko American Airlines flight attendant (Estes Carter Thompson III, above) allegedly hid a camera under the First Class toilet seat and filmed the nether regions of several little girls between the ages of 7 and 14 during a seven-month span last year. One of the victims, aged 14, spotted a phone’s camera flash underneath the toilet seat, which was covered by tape. She took a cell phone photo of it and showed it to her mother. As you might expect, the girls’ parents were perplexed.
A lawsuit ensued by the parents of another victim, age 9. The American Airlines lawyers came up with a true “Hail Mary” defense theory, stating in court filings, “Any injuries or illnesses alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff, Mary Doe, were proximately caused by plaintiff’s own fault and negligence, were proximately caused by Plaintiff’s use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”
I was looking for a new series to stream, as the time it takes on the streaming services for me to choose a movie almost requires as much time as watching the movie. At least with a series, your choice is pre-determined for many sessions. “Bridgerton” has a new season (#3), and I had never tested it; Grace had it on her list for future viewing, because she was an English literature major and knew the Regency period in England well.
I had quite a bit of trepidation approaching “Bridgerton” because it’s another Shandaland production. I eventually baled on every Shonda Rhimes show I’ve ever sampled, including her flagship, “Grey’s Anatomy”: they are all over-heated soap operas with less nuance than “Dallas.”
But what the hell. I started Episode 1 last night and made it maybe a third of the way through. The production values were high, and the acting was Masterpiece Theater-level at least. It had only two gratuitous and vigorous coitus scenes, which is less than the average for a Shondaland production. I could not, however, stomach the African-Americans and British aristocrats-of-color wandering around early 19th Century English social scene.
This one’s for Dad.
I had already decided to shut down my commentary for the day (judging from the traffic, I see that a lot of people are starting their Memorial Day Weekend early) when I saw a fascinating note on The Volokh Conspiracy, and I just can’t let it pass, since it puts the two posts (here and here) about the “Get Alito!” flag fixation in proper perspective.
Josh Blackman, a regular contributor to VC, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, and the president of the Harlan Institute, reminded readers about something that occured the day after election day in 2016, November 9. The Supreme Court was in session, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wore the jabot she only sported when dissenting from a majority opinion. Ginsberg herself had explained her sly fashion messaging in in 2014:
but in this case there was nothing to dissent from other than the obvious: Donald Trump, whom Ginsburg had called “a faker” before the election, had defeated Hillary Clinton. The Associated Press got the message and reported on it.
Unlike the Alito flags, there is no question about who was making the political statement regarding President Trump: it was Justice Ginsburg. Nobody fooled her into wearing that collar. A relative didn’t wear it, she did. Nor was the symbolism of the collar in question: Ginsberg herself had said exactly what it meant. This was a far less ambiguous and far more serious display of bias by a SCOTUS justice than the contrived flag outrage, yet no Republicans in Congress exploited the incident to call for Ginsburg to recuse herself from future cases, or to move for a Congressional censure.
Ah, but Ginsburg was a news media favorite, female, progressive, Democrat and cute in her casual and repeated crossing of the lines of judicial propriety. I have to check, but I don’t recall the members of my legal ethics expert association registering any problem with Ginsberg’s open protest of Trump’s election, while the listserv has been roiling over Alito’s flags all week, with Ginsberg-adoring female members being particularly indignant.
At the last second I deleted a comment I was ready to make yesterday after following the hypocritical thread. It read, “I’m sorry, but the partisan bias and hypocrisy being displayed here by alleged legal ethics scholars isn’t just depressing, it’s disgusting.”
Blackman concluded, “I have a very, very difficult time taking the outrage over the Alitos’ flags seriously. The Justices routinely convey messages through their words and deeds. Who gets to decide what is an appearance of impropriety? People who are inclined to despise the conservative Justices will draw the worst possible inferences from all of their acts….These people are loathe to co-exist with anything they disagree with, so will take umbrage at the slightest sleights.”
In contrast, I take it very seriously. The Double standard harshly demonstrates how little integrity and honesty exists even among our most trusted professionals.
Ethics Alarms 