Now what?
This really is a res ipsa loquitur classic. Microsoft is literally saying, “We don’t have to obey the law, and besides, this is good discrimination.” Why isn’t the Justice Department bearing down on the company already? You know why.
Here is how the company introduces its great success at paying white men less than women and minorities…
Today marks the anniversary of Marines raising the flag Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima to declare the U.S. victory over Japan in that bloody battle. Let’s if any media outlets mark the day, or if doing so would be considered “racist”….
Meanwhile, here are some notable items you might want to peruse, or that I might choose to post about if and when I wake up…
Now it’s all up to you…
The whole story is here, courtesy of FIRE:
As I have to admit too often, I missed this debacle. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression got a court order against this ridiculous mayor (Guess what party!) in 2022 to force her not to interfere with her city’s citizens’ right to give their statements in a public forum. FIRE is now justly using the episode to raise funds for its excellent work, taking over for the ACLU, which has decided that it would rather be a tool of abusive government power (as long as their favorite party is in charge) than opposing it.
You’ll be pleased to learn that the mayor is no longer in office. The rest of the story: Owens, who had barely been elected mayor with just 32.5% of the vote in a five-way contest, was a human train wreck, with the lawsuit resulting from this meeting, a criminal conviction for making false statements on a grant application for her business, irregularities in her financial disclosure submissions, and other controversies.
My question above is a trick (sorry): Owens has claimed to be both a Democrat and a Republican depending on the situation and her mood: she’s a bi-partisan jerk. As with most of the horrifying individuals who end up in this Ethics Alarms category, the issue highlighted is irresponsible voters.
Here comes “The Saint’s Excuse”! The non-profit is furiously back-peddling after behaving cruelly, intolerantly, ungratefully and unforgivably toward the 90-year-old volunteer above. It will, of course, insist that it should be forgiven and trusted despite its smoking gun unethical conduct, and just watch: it will be, because of “all the good work it has done for a good cause.”
What prompted the kiss-off letter above was that 90-year-old Fran Itkoff, who had been an active volunteer for the the National Multiple Sclerosis Society for six decades (her husband perished of MS), had naively asked why names on documents she had received from the organization were accompanied by parenthetical pronouns. This, the Woke Nazis in command of the non-profit determined, marked her as hostile to its new “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidelines” and thus unfit to work for the care and cure of the dread disease (which runs in my family, incidentally).
The episode was flagged on social media by the indispensable Libs of TikTok, and an interview exposing the debacle hit YouTube. The National NS Society’s immediate instinct was to circle the metaphorical wagons, denying that it treated the volunteer the way it had, and implying that a 90-year-old woman made others feel “unsafe” because she dared to ask why stupid and presumptuous pronoun preferences were suddenly “a thing.” The organization also cautioned staff and volunteers to keep mum about the incident.
It didn’t work. The MS Society was bombarded with declarations from donors that they would cut off the charity. News organizations were closing in, with a Fox News senior meteorologist who suffers from MS, Janice Dean, threatening to give the story nationwide exposure. Yesterday, the MS Society issued an annoying apology:
The KIPP Academy girls high school basketball team includes a (“transitioning”…or not, reports are unclear) a male player who “identifies” as female, which is all that the increasing wokeness-crippled Bay State requires. Section 43.3.1 of the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association handbook states that “a student shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the student’s bona fide gender identity.”
And what, you may ask, is “bona fide gender identity”? The player in question is six-feet tall, appears to have facial hair more consistent with a teenage male, and is much stronger than the average drum majorette. The Daily Item reported that “KIPP officials refused to confirm the player’s gender identification,” but if she (he?) is playing on the girls team, presumably he (she?) identifies as female. Now, the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association also says a student like that one can’t be included on a roster “solely for the purpose of gaining an unfair advantage.” The key word there is “solely,” a weasel word all lawyers are familiar with. It literally means that having a boy who will seem like a superstar in a girl’s sport on a team supposedly for females will be acceptable no matter how unfair it is and no matter how much of an advantage it gives that team if there is any other reason for letting him (her?) change locker rooms. Maybe the newly minted female needs a boost in confidence!
As currently inclined, Google’s artificial intelligence bot “Gemini” will not produce an image of a Caucasian no matter how many times you ask or what you ask for. The above pictures were among the results when Gemini was asked to show “Founding Fathers.” In another example, a user asked for images of the Pope and got these:
I love it!
When Gemini was asked directly to “create a portrait of a white male,” the DEI-addled bot replied, “While I am able to generate images, I am currently not able to fulfill requests that include discriminatory or biased content.” Of course! White people are inherently discriminatory and biased.
Google brass isn’t denying the glitch. “We’re working to improve these kinds of depictions immediately,” Google’s Senior Director of Product Management Jack Brawczyk told inquiring minds. “Gemini’s AI image generation does generate a wide range of people. And that’s generally a good thing because people around the world use it. But it’s missing the mark here.”
Gee, I wonder how this happened?
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Pointer and Source: Liberty Unyielding
Why do communities keep electing officials who are ignorant of the law, history, and the U.S. Constitution?
Three days ago, North Las Vegas Mayor Pamela Goynes-Brown, (Guess which party!) announced on social media that her city would host a Black-owned business fair this coming weekend at the conclusion of Black History Month. The fest would feature local black vendors, community resources, an art corner and an area for children. Food trucks and live entertainment would enliven the proceedings. It would be a fun day of promotion for all participating—black-owned only!—businesses.
Who could have a problem with that?
Performance artist pundits as a breed are an ethics stain on public discourse. These are the glib, often attractive loud mouths who make their living selling books and getting speaking fees for being outspoken and outrageous. Many of them, not all but too many, don’t really hold the some of the opinions attributed to them. They calibrate what position is most likely to attract rage, controversy and publicity, and issue statements with the Machiavellian calculation of a hedge fund investor. Prominent examples of this slimy, manipulative breed are Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Bill Maher, Candace Owens, James Carville, and today’s topic, Ann Coulter, who might be the most cynical of them all.
She is not dumb, however. Occasionally she is even perceptive, as much as I hate to admit it. This was one of those times.
A Harvard University faculty group. the“Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine,” had the anti-Semitic cartoons above appear on its Instagram page. It is a newly-formed organization of Harvard University faculty and staff “committed to supporting the cause of Palestinian liberation,” as the group explains on its webpage. It “wholeheartedly reject[s] accusations that critique of the Israeli state is antisemitic.” One hundred and twelve members signed a statement that attacks “Israel’s genocidal war and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.” The group does not mention Hamas or the terrorist attack that thrust the terrorist organization and Gaza into war with Israel.
Rabbi David Wolpe, the Harvard Divinity School scholar who resigned from the anti-Semitism advisory committee set up by disgraced ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay, wrote at the time that he had concluded that “the system at Harvard… is itself evil.” In reaction to the above cartoons, Wolper wrote on Twitter/X, “The cartoon is despicably, inarguably antisemitic. Is there no limit?”
Few pundits are as worthy of being ignored as Jon Stewart, Mary Trump and Tucker Carlson. Unfortunately, they imposed themselves on my consciousness, which really is needed elsewhere, by turning on each other for saying things one or more of them didn’t like. In doing so, they again drew my attention to the unethical habits of people who should not have the influence on public opinion that they do.
I briefly and reluctantly defended Tucker Carlson against hypocritical critiques from the Left that there was something unseemly about his interviewing Vladamir Putin, when liberal journalists have been interviewing various international villains for decades without similar criticism. It’s the typical double standards tactic that we now see constantly from our corrupt punditry. Jon Stewart piled on in his return to Comedy Central, where he again is posing as a comedian playing a pundit and a pundit doing comedy simultaneously. Stewart’s “clown nose on, clown nose off” act is tedious and obnoxious as well as corrosive: I hold him responsible for the all-progressive political propaganda organs that the late night talk shows have become, dividing the country by taking the unsustainable position that only conservatives are ridiculous.
Stewart also should be held responsible for further lowering the civic literacy of the younger generations, who regard him as a trustworthy source of news, and he is not. Stewart chooses which items to talk about according to what he thinks his leftward fans will laugh at, not what they need to know. As a comedian, he does not feel any obligation to be fair or to include facts that might weaken his jokes. He would have no obligation, except that he aspires to be taken seriously when he wants to be.
Ethics Alarms 