‘Nah, There’s No Mainstream Media Racial Bias!’

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The Associated Press reports on New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul setting up a commission to make “non-binding” recommendations regarding the state’s debt to the victims of slavery, presumably that they should be addressed by monetary reparations. This is going to take at least a year, after which Hochul assumes, I’m guessing, that she’ll be able to use reparations as a wedge issue. But I digress; the post is about this section of the story:

The idea of using public money to compensate the descendants of enslaved people is almost certain to draw a backlash from some, including some white people who don’t believe they should have to pay for the sins of long-ago ancestors, and other ethnic groups that weren’t involved in the slave trade.

The Associated Press certainly understands evil, racist “white people.” It just knows they will selfishly want to hold on to their ill-gotten wealth and protest a massive transfer of cash from those who had nothing to do with slavery to those who never experienced slavery a day in their lives or ever knew anyone who did. And surely no African-Americans will be objective enough see the logical, economic and political problems with such a plan.

The AP apparently employs no editors capable of reading that swill and had and gently saying to some proudly woke reporter, “Uh, no. This is blatant racial stereotyping. Try again. I have an idea: why not just report the facts without indulging in mind-reading or making baseless predictions of what will happen more than a year from now? Incidentally, reparations are hardly a new idea, so you don’t need to speculate about what “some white people” are ‘almost certain to think.’ You can factually report on what economists, social scientists and other experts on both sides of the issue and of a variety of races and ethnicities have already said about the concept.”

On “The Crown,” National Anthems, Tradition, And That Guy Making A Sex Video In The Capitol

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Perhaps I am the only one who immediately thought of Aidan Maese-Czeropki when I read this Brit’s complaints about “God Save the King,” but that’s the way my mind works.

Apparently the University of Bristol has dropped the UK national anthem from its graduation ceremony, and that decision has roiled the traditionalists in Britain. “University bosses have been accused of hating British culture and pandering to wokes,” one paper reported. The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, posted on X: “If Bristol University are too ashamed of their British heritage, presumably they no longer want to be subsidised by [the] British taxpayer?” Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said that “universities should stand up for our British values and stop giving in to woke ideology.” But Guardian lifestyle columnist Tim Dowling took the predictable progressive line: all that traditional stuff is behind the times, stuffy and boring. “God Save the King is not a good song. It plods. It goes nowhere,” he writes. “The first three lines end with the same word, as if no one could be bothered to come up with a rhyme for king. Obviously this made things easy the first time they had to change it to queen, but there’s no historical evidence that anyone was thinking that far ahead.”

Wouldn’t it be great if the British national anthem were something flashy and fun like “Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen? (That’s my suggestion, not Tim’s.) No, it wouldn’t be great; Dowling doesn’t get it, just as so many people don’t get it, just as Aiden the Sex Machine doesn’t get it, just as those who complain about our national anthem don’t get it.

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Great, Something Else To Worry About…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On CNN Business, we learn…

Intercity bus lines like Greyhound, Trailways and Megabus, an overlooked but essential part of America’s transportation system, carry twice the number of people who take Amtrak every year. But the whole network faces a growing crisis: Greyhound and other private companies’ bus terminals are rapidly closing around the country.

Houston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Tampa, Louisville, Charlottesville, Portland, Oregon, and other downtown bus depots have shuttered in recent years. Bus terminals in major hubs like Chicago and Dallas are also set to close. Greyhound and other companies have relocated their stops far away from city centers, which are often inaccessible by public transit, switched to curbside service or eliminated routes altogether.

These stations built decades ago are shuttering because of high operating costs, government underfunding and, surprisingly, the entrance of an investment firm buying up Greyhound’s real estate for lucrative resale.

Wait, what was that last part?

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The Ethics Sage Asks, “Can America Ever Regain Its Civility?” No! Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Last month Steven Mintz, aka.”The Ethics Sage,” wrote a plaintive lament about how far civility has declined in our society. Steven is a distinguished philosopher and writes passionately about ethics. He’s passionate about this topic too, but can offer little in the way of solutions to a problem he has visited before. His most recent essay mostly describes the problem. He writes in part,

“Who should we blame for the decline in civility? There is enough blame to go around, but I will focus on the primary culprits. The ABA survey reports that 34% of those polled said family and friends should hold the primary responsibility for improving civility in society, while 27% said that responsibility should fall to public officials. And 90% of respondents said parents and families are most responsible for instilling civility in children, followed by schools at 6%. This result is surprising. What should a school do if not to foster good behavior, concern for others, kindness and empathy? We have clearly lost our way in that regard. We are only in control of our own actions. However, our behavior can influence others in a positive way. We need to model civil behavior, so our kids learn how to behave in the classroom and at home.”

Mintz ultimately concludes “call me a cynic but I expect things to get worse before they get better.” What would make them get better? The Ethics Sage is whistling past the graveyard to suggest that parents and school have the power to turn things around. The culture itself now encourages and glamorizes incivility.

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NOW Will People Accept That Fox News Firing Tucker Carson Was Mandatory?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

It was interesting that the following incident occurred shortly after my post defending horror auteur Mike Flanagan from a conservative critic’s attack because he had one of his characters say that she “threw up in her mouth” thinking about Tucker Carlson. Guesting on “Prime Time with Alex Stein” (Stein is kind of a cheap knock-off of Tucker Carlson), the Fox News exile was asked by his conspiracy theory-loving host, “Do you think that the moon landing was real, and do you think that it was done by Nazis that were literally brought over during Operation Paperclip? Is that a conspiracy or is that true, in your opinion, Tucker?”

I’ve always wondered if the Nazi scientists were only figuratively brought over in Operation Paperclip, haven’t you? Stein’s question was brain-meltingly stupid, and the only responsible answer to it in a broadcast setting would be, “Of course the moon landing was real, of course I don’t believe it was faked, and if you do, I’m leaving so I can be interviewed by someone who is smarter than you, like, say, my dog.”

But Carlson didn’t say that. Instead, he replied, “You know, I don’t know! I do know that the the original moon landing tapes have been erased at NASA because they needed, you know, the tape space. So they just kind of taped over them.” Yeah, they did: almost all conspiracy theories depend on relevant records and evidence being destroyed or lost. It doesn’t matter: the moon landing conspiracy theory is one of the most ridiculous and insulting of them all. Giving it any credence is unforgivable: Buzz Aldrin once punched a guy in the face when he implied that the old astronaut was part of the supposed hoax, and I thought that was an appropriate response.

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Two Disparate Responses To Being Caught At “Good Discrimination”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Revealed Discriminator 1: Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.

Response: “Deal with it!”

Despite the legitimate uproar over Boston’s Asian-American mayor holding a party that explicitly excluded whites [covered here on Ethics Alarms], Wu and Boston Democrats decided to go with a moldy bunch of lame rationalizations (“it’s no big deal!”…”we’ve been doing it for years”..”we don’t care!”) and not only held the discriminatory event, but proudly issued a photo of it. Naturally, the news media’s reaction is “Republicans pounce!” but long-time conservative pundit Howie Carr, who is usually a bit extreme for my tastes, was spot on, writing in an op-ed for the Boston Herald:

“What if a white mayor had held a whites-only party at a city-owned building, after specifically disinviting all the non-white members of the City Council? It would have been the end of the world, a national story for days if not weeks on end. On the night of the party, there would have been rioting, or looting and violence….had the event been held by a Republican, every GOP politician across the nation would have been asked to denounce it…

Carr added that most of of the ‘state-run media’ in Massachusetts carefully avoided criticizing the party.

The reverse-racists are getting awfully cocky these days.

Revealed Discriminator 2: Harvard

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Now THAT’s Going To Leave A Mark…I Hope!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

[I am especially grateful for this story because it gives me a perfect oportunity to post my favorite John Wayne clip, from “McClintock!”]

One of the scholars that Harvard President Claudine Gay ripped off without proper attribution has issued a full-throated condemnation in the Wall Street Journal. Carol Swain, author, researcher and a retired Vanderbilt professor considered one of the pioneers in the field of race in politics and government doesn’t get into the high weeds of Gay’s pathetic performance before Congress on the matter of her campus’s harassment of Jewish students, focusing instead on the other reason the Harvard diversity hire is demonstrably unqualified for her prestigious position. Swain writes in part,

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Now Here’s A Scary Poll Result…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Geena is right.

A survey conducted this week by Harvard-Harris polling found that 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believe the answer to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is for “Israel to be ended and given to Hamas and the Palestinians.” The stark contrast between our rising generation and the rest of the American population is truly disturbing. As you can see..

…outside of the demographic that has been indoctrinated into an anti-American, victim-obsessed, extreme progressive ideology by exposure to our education system and social media, the U.S. public is overwhelmingly supportive of Israel and understands that Hamas represents terrorism and genocide. “These individuals siding with evil over democracy should be a wake-up call,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) said, reacting to the poll. “Ideological rot among young Americans, driven by woke values and victim culture, has gotten so bad they’ve convinced themselves to sympathize with actual terrorists who hate America.”

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Stupid Unethical Quote Of The Month: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“Joe Biden is a threat to democracy. He’s a threat. And you know—We’ll bring in adversaries and I’ll bring it in right now—Even Vladimir Putin—Has anyone ever heard if Vladimir Putin?—of Russia says that Biden’s — and this is a quote – ‘politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.’”

—–Donald Trump, in the same stream of consciousness rant that produced his previous Unethical Quote of the Month in New Hampshire (the clip is here)

I don’t have to explain what’s wrong with this, right? I don’t have to explain it because if you read Ethics Alarms, you must have at least a sufficient number of functioning brain cells to know why this is a stunningly idiotic thing for Trump to say. Now, I might decide that it is interesting that Russia’s Machiavellian dictator is using the various prosecutions of Trump by Democratic officials and Biden’s Justice Department to point out the hypocrisy in U.S. democracy under Biden, and refer to that Putin quote (if it really is a quote) for that purpose. However, I would never use a Putin in an appeal to authority, which is what Trump did in New Hampshire.

‘You don’t believe me that Biden is a threat to Democracy? Well, even such a distinguished expert as the Russian dictator agrees with me, so there!’ is what Trump said, in essence. Putin cannot be used as an authority because Putin is a proven liar, and is especially useless for that purpose regarding the United States, which is, after all, supporting a nation Russia is currently fighting. What Trump said is literally as absurd as it would have been for Richard Nixon, running for President against Hubert Humphrey in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam war, to quote Ho Chi Minh or Chairman Mao saying that the Johnson administration was filled with warmongers and fools. Nixon didn’t do that, of course, because whatever else he was, Richard Nixon was a good lawyer, and knew that if you use an unreliable and discredited authority in a brief or oral argument, the court is going to think, “Wow, this guy is desperate. And an idiot…”

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Politics Doesn’t Have To Ruin Everything: Netflix’s “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Ideologues and perpetual political warriors do get tiresome, and both ends of the ideological divide are guilty. On Newsbusters, the conservative media watchdog, Stephanie Hamill goes after the latest Netflix horror series by Mike Flanagan (not to be confused with the Baltimore Orioles ace of the late Sixties and Seventies). Her indictment: a liberal agenda “is both overtly and subtly promoted throughout the show’s eight episodes, starting with the incredible amount of LGBTQ characters.” My defense: Oh, lighten up. All Stephanie has is a hammer, so a clever and complex Edgar Alan Poe mash-up that only brushes up against political issues—and, I would say, in a tongue-in-cheek manner—seems like a progressive screed to her. That’s too bad: she can’t enjoy a quality show because she’s so intent on finding signs of Hollywood wokism.

Flanagan is a genuine horror auteur, and he has found his metier in the streamed, multi-episode series. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is his fourth (and last, apparently, for Netflix: he is moving over to Amazon). Nothing is likely to top the writer/director’s re-imagining of Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House,” which might be the best horror movie ever made, but “Usher” is still a blast. Using almost all of Flanagan’s large rep company (which includes Henry Thomas of “E.T.” fame), the series is an Edgar Allen Poe fan’s dream, challenging us to recognize the myriad references familiar and obscure. which range from names to plots to poems. Since the conceit of the show is to make the Usher family the thinly disguised avatars for the infamous Sackler clan that brought us the opioid crisis, Flanagan is naturally hard on the corporate mentality….and the Sacklers deserve the abuse if anyone does. In addition, his greed-busting results in some of Flanagan’s best writing: I already highlighted the instant classic monologue by Bruce Greenwood as the dying, damned family progenitor.

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