I have vowed to make this point again and again, every time I see the argument raised in print or in speech, as often as I encounter it and for the rest of my life—as should you.
The Washington Free Beacon, often an admirable and indeed indispensable source of news and information that the left-biased mainstream media hides, distorts, or just ignore hoping it will the public will never have the opportunity to consider it, added this yesterday:
This goes into the Maslow’s Hammer file, as in “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
I have been watching all the original “Columbo” episodes, first because they’re still worth watching, second because Grace and I used to watch them when picking something else was too much trouble and we couldn’t agree, third because Spuds likes Columbo’s dog (a Basset Hound), and fourth, because they usually distract me from stuff I don’t want to think about and leave me relaxed for a while, unlike, say, watching the Red Sox. As I finished the seven seasons, I wondered if I had ever heard Peter Falk’s character called anything but “Columbo” or “Lieutenant” on the show. My research revealed that I had not: the character’s creators Richard Levinson and William Link deliberately kept the eccentric sleuth’s first name a secret as one of the show’s quirks, and were adamant: nobody should ever speak his first name.
This raises the question of whether a character who only exists in television episodes where his first name is never mentioned has a first name, but that’s not an ethical question. However, the saga of Columbo’s first name did tick a few ethics boxes.
“On the 18th of April in ’75…Hardly a man is now alive who remembers that famous day and year.” I was going to post all of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” (the first substantial poem I ever memorized) yesterday, but, as usual, stuff happened. That means today is the 19th of April, a date banged into the heads of children living in Arlington, Massachusetts like me, the anniversary of the ugly little battle that took place just up Massachusetts Avenue a bit on Lexington Green, that officially started the Revolutionary War.
700 British troops were marching on a mission to capture traitors/patriots John Hancock and Samuel Adams and seize a rebel arsenal when they were blocked by 77 Minutemen under Captain John Parker. British Major John Pitcairn ordered ragtag army to disperse, but the proverbial shot rang out, everybody started firing their muskets, and a few minutes later eight Colonists were dead or dying and ten more were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but at around 7 am the same fateful day, the Redcoats got what was coming to them a little further up the road, at Concord Bridge.
One subsidiary benefit of memorizing “Paul Revere’s Ride” is that I’ll never forget that famous day and year, or the day after it. I wonder how many of today’s public school-educated children, even those in neighboring Arlington, know the significance of April 19. Heck, I wonder if it will be mentioned in the mainstream media’s blathering today at all. It would be a good day for the President of the United States to use his “bully pulpit” for something positive and remind everyone, but no, these days that platform is reserved to call half the nation fascists.
I digress, however. Celebrate the beginnings of America by taking about ethics, for this is the only nation in the world that was created to embody ethical principles and to model ethical values.
That battle rages on.
For some unfathomable reason, veteran Hollywood producer Carol Baum (that’s her on the right) felt compelled to gratuitously insult the current Hollywood “It” girl, Sydney Sweeney (on the left) in an on stage interview with New York Times film critic Janet Maslin. Baum said, “There’s an actress who everybody loves now: Sydney Sweeney. I don’t get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie [‘Anyone but You’] because I wanted to watch it. I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her. I watched this unwatchable movie — sorry to people who love this … romantic comedy where they hate each other.”
The adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, added: “I said to my class, ‘Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?’ Nobody had an answer.”
Huh. What could it be? And nobody had an answer! It’s a mystery. What is it about Sydney Sweeney that anyone would possibly find “hot”? Wow. That’s right up there with the “Mary Celeste” and the Lost Colony. Incomprehensible!
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has asked for $70 million to care for illegal aliens after already spending upwards of $150 million to make sure defiant border-crossers know they are welcome. Or, as the late johnny Olden used to say on “The Price is Right,” “Come on Down!”
The budget committee voted 20-8 this week to advance the proposal to the full City Council. The money will come from a discretionary fund, because, apparently, there is no good use for it involving the citizens of Chicago. The idea is so irresponsible that even some Democrats are willing to say so. “Here we are begging for more money when we don’t have money for the people here!” said 9th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale. “When we don’t have money for after school programs. We don’t have money to help our kids get off the street. But yet, we would just blow money left and right.”
Ethics Villain? “Bias makes you stupid”? “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!”? Unethical Quote of the Month? Oh, let’s start with that one:
—-The New York Times editorial board, in yesterday’s biased, manipulative, Trump-Deranged misinformation-fest titled, “Donald Trump and American Justice”
This is no more and no less that a “WE HATE YOU TRUMP! HATE HATE HATE!” statement. As President, Trump never did anything to “deny fairness and due process” to “others.” The claim to the contrary not journalism and it’s not punditry. It is just hurling accusations without support. Yet the Times editorial board never protested when President Obama used his “bully pulpit” to suggest that American citizens were guilty of crimes before they had been tried or even charged, as in the case of George Zimmerman. The editorial provides no examples or evidence to support the statement, because there aren’t any.
USC has banned this year’s graduating class valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, from Chino Hill, California, from making her speech during the university’s commencement ceremony. The justification: anti-Israel (or pro-Palestine…same thing, really) posts on Instagram, including thise calling for the “complete abolition” of Israel.
Asna is a Muslim, not that there’s anything wrong with that. USC officials chose her from nearly 100 student applicants who had GPAs of 3.98 or higher. It seemed like a good idea at the time: certainly in this age of enlightened DEI, the woke school wasn’t going to choose any icky white male. Tabassum majored in biomedical engineering with a minor in resistance to genocide—wait, what??? USC has a “resistance to genocide” major?
The USC Provost explained the decision thusly:
Stuff is piling up on the blog like it’s piling up at my home. At least here I have a solution…
1. The Democratic Senators were right to kill the House GOP Mayorkas impeachment, and they did it for the right reasons. Being incompetent isn’t a high crime, and the House can’t end around the Constitution to fire an executive appointment: it is a breach of the separation of powers.
What a waste of time…
2. Canary dying in the public education mine tale: This is a depressing story. Short version: Last March, a Hispanic school principal physically stopped a female student whom he concluded was about to attack another student. The student he physically restrained accused him of assault—she is black, and with the help of her parents blew the incident into a racial one.
Now the principal Columbia High School in New Jersey, Frank Sanchez, has been arrested and charged with assault and endangering a minor. The family’s lawyer is telling the news media that the encounter exemplifies how black students are discriminated against and mistreated. But some parents are saying that the student was a known bully and a disciplinary problem, and the incident has been exploited by a black parents advocacy group to get rid of Sanchez.
Grace and I finally decided to home school grant when he reported that in all of his freshman high school classes (at Alexandria City High, long known as T.C. Williams until the name was changed because a bad cop either negligently, recklessly or intentionally killed a lifetime petty crook who was overdosing on fentanyl in Minnesota. That butterfly causing a typhoon by flapping its wings has nothing on George Floyd.) classes were almost uniformly 15-20 minutes late because the teachers had to settle down the black students goofing around, talking and refusing to take their seats. He said the teacher were afraid to do anything but keep repeating, “OK, now, that’s enough.” Columbia High had to pay the Black Parents Workshop, which formed in 2014, damaged after it sued the district charging that black students were suspended more frequently than white students for the same acts. Occam’s Razor would suggest that this was not because of discrimination, but because black kids engaged in those acts more frequently. Now, if that was the real reason, they are still behaving like that, but get away with it. Problem solved!
That is kind of a fanciful title, I guess. The only people who didn’t realize that NPR has been strongly biased leftward over the last, oh, two decades or more would be those who agree with that bias, so naturally think the taxpayer funded radio network is just “telling it as it is.” Selective editing to make, say, Ted Cruz sound like a far-right nut case, or having a Supreme Court correspondent who is pals with the most liberal justice on the Court are just, you know, “mistakes.”
But having an insider who is obviously a progressive Democrat himself blow the whistle and announce that “the nonprofit radio network had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage” (Ya think???) meant that attention must be paid, and the furious reaction of NPR’s leadership to that statement of the obvious–-“How DARE he! We’re NPR!”—gave instant credibility to his indictment, again, not that it should have needed any more, if people were paying attention.
Now comes the news of the obvious other shoe dropping: Uri Berliner, the senior business editor who blew said whistle, has been suspended by the network but for just for five days. In an interview with NPR earlier this week, Berliner revealed that NPR said he would be fired if he violated the policy against unapproved work for another media outlets again. Apparently NPR figured out that the Streisand Effect applies, and the more they go after Berliner and deny, deny, deny, the more visible the network’s progressive propaganda proclivities will be.
They figured it out too late, unfortunately. The mask, which was hanging anyway, is off now. NPR can blame any future criticism on Republicans and conservatives “pouncing,” but as long as it is led by a woman whose social media comments mark her as an extreme anti-American social justice activist, the strategy is unlikely to work. Fine, let NPR preach to the metaphorical choir—but I shouldn’t have to pay for it.
Meanwhile…
by Curmie
I’ve promised two essays that are indeed partially written; I could finish one of them in 20 minutes or so if I could just concentrate, but something else always seems to come up. So let me try yet a different topic.
One of my friends and former students (we’ll call him L for the purposes of this post) teaches theatre in a public school. He recently posted on Facebook about a confrontation he’d had with the father of one of his students. The boy had failed to do three significant assignments, and, curiously enough, his grade reflected that fact.
Ah, but you see, the lad is an athlete, and a failing grade made him academically ineligible. So Dad screams for “about 15 minutes.” My friend responded like this: “I want him to be able to play […], too. I understand how important it is for him to have that outlet. But if I want lights on in my house, I gotta pay bills. If I wanna drive a car, I gotta pay to put gas in the car. So, if _______ wants to play […] then he’s gonna need to stop being lazy and do what is required in this class. Not to mention the other three classes he is failing.”
Ethics Alarms 