Rescued Comment Of The Day: “Ethics And The Joker’s Mustache”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In honor of King Tut’s tomb being opened on this date in 1922, here is a recovered lost treasure from the Ethics Alarms vault…

I know there are many, maybe hundreds, of Comment of the Day-worthy reactions to Ethics Alarms posts that never made it to this point, for a welter of reasons good and bad. If all of them could be tracked down and resuscitated, I could avoid writing about Donald Trump or the ethics rot of the increasingly disturbing American Left for months—wow, an old COTD archeology project sounds better the more I think of it! Stop it, Jack, get back to the point…

The point is that I found this excellent Comment of the Day by Marie Dowd by pure chance as I was researching the site on another matter, and was annoyed with myself for missing it the first time, way back in 2019.

I apologize, Marie! I can only plead that I was distracted: there were 24 comments on that ethics and TV trivia post, but only two that could be called substantive. Three alerted me to my careless mistakes (like calling the collective noun for critics a “snivel” instead of a “shrivel”), and most of the rest were jokes. Actually, there was a second excellent comment in the thread, that one by Pennagain, who has been missing from the ethics wars for quite a while. (I’m worried.)

Anyway, the topic, like the Joker’s hair, is ever-green, so Marie’s Comment of the Day on the burning issue of Cesar Romero leaving his mustache on despite being cast to play Batman’s clean-shaven arch-nemisis remains as fresh today as it was more than four years ago. So here it is, on “Ethics And The Joker’s Mustache”:

***

I’ve thought about this mustache far too many times for my own comfort.

As a kid, the intended audience even if I was too young to care during its run, I really did not notice. The reception was always fuzzy out in the country. >not a problem

In-universe, Joker’s insane. Merry prankster is the most forgiving way to tag him. Any version would grow a handlebar or do anything to mess with people’s heads, especially the Bat. Annoying Batman would be a laugh in character. >not a problem!

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10 Ethics Takeaways From Wapo’s “Students Hated ‘To Kill A Mockingbird.’ Their teachers Tried To Dump It”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Subhead: “Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful. The blowback was fierce.”

To begin with, read it all, and to the extent you can stand it, the comments. I included some trenchant quotes below, however.

Now the takeaways:

1. If there is a more vivid and depressing illustration of how far public education, teacher competence and race relations have declined since, oh, let’s say 2008, I don’t know what it could be.

2. The episode was triggered, a black student told the Post, when a white teen read “nigger” while reading “Mockingbird” to the class. The student disobeyed the teacher’s instructions to skip the slur, and “the kid looked at every Black person — there’s three Black people in that class — and smiled.” Well: a) Asking a student to read a passage of any book to the class when she feels part of the text must be skipped is incompetent. b) Of all the passages to have a student read from “Mockingbird,” choosing one that includes “nigger” smacks of deliberate sabotage. c) Presumed facial expression racism? At this rate, we should be back to “separate but equal” in no time.

3. “Freeman-Miller wondered: Did the school really have to teach Harper Lee’s classic but polarizing novel, as was mandatory for all freshmen?” There is no reason for any novel to be regarded as “polarizing,” except to those who regard literature as indoctrination tools. The educational process is to read the novel, discuss its literary merit, its context, its cultural significance, the ideas it communicates, and it why it works (or not) for a particular reader.

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Ethical Quote Of The Week: Richard Fernandez

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“One of the most poorly informed debates in the media coverage of war, is the concept of ‘proportionality’. The average person understands it as a kind of transaction. If X kills N citizens of Y, then Y can fairly retaliate by killing N*(1+i) citizens of X, i being a penalty….”

—Conservative commentator Richard Fernandez, tweeting as “wretchedthecat”

Bingo.

This central logical and historical fallacy is central to the pacifist’s unethical delusion. Fernandez explains,

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The Beatles’ “Last Song”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The category is botched exit ethics.

As I strongly assumed would be the case, yesterday’s much-hyped release of “the last Beatles recording” gave to the eagerly waiting world one more wan, down-beat sigh of a zombie song by the late John Lennon from his Blue Period, electronically turned into a sub-par Beatles number by adding contemporary contributions from Paul and Ringo, some instrumentation from the also deceased George Harrison, and sound engineering by “Fifth Beatle” George Martin’s son. Thus we have a trilogy of such things, with “Now and Then” being added to the similarly mediocre and lugubrious “Free as a Bird” and “True Love,” all of them home demos recorded by Lennon after the group dissolved and approved for Beatlizing by Yoko Ono.

One is compelled to ask, “Why?” Yoko doesn’t need the money; neither do the remaining ex-Beatles of George Harrison’s estate. The “last song” is going to be released on a commemorative 45 with “Love Me Do,” the group’s first hit. That’s nice. Two mediocre Beatles songs on one disc. This is akin to commemorating Shakespear by releasing “Titus Andronicus” and “Henry the VIII” as a set. This song, like the previous two, do nothing to enhance the reputations of Lennon or the group. If these were typical of the Beatles’ creative output, the band would be less fondly remembered than the Strawberry Alarm Clock (of “Incense and Peppermints” fame; in fact, I’d rather listen to that silly song than hear “Now and Then” again).

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Ethics Quiz: Is A Candidate Who Records Herself Urinating In The Snow And Posts The Video To Social Media Fit To Serve In The Virginia Legislature?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m kidding. This isn’t really an ethics quiz post. It’s a “When did the Democratic Party completely lose its collective mind?” post.

In Old Virginny, where I live, where multiple communities feel it necessary to criminalize over-age trick-or-treating, where the state Democratic Party felt that Clinton bag man Terry McAuliffe was a fine choice to be governor, and where the same party was until recently running a candidate who performed sex-acts for cash with her husband on a porn site, Jessica Anderson (shown proudly peeing in the snow above) is a nominated and widely endorsed candidate for Virginia’s House of Delegates.

Her professionally-designed website describes her as “not a politician; she is an everyday person who advocates for her community.” When did people who piss in the snow and publicize the process start qualifying as “everyday people”? I’ve known a lot of normal and abnormal people in my epic life, and I’m fairly certain that none of them have done this or would consider doing this. In truth, I was considering an ethics quiz involving another TikTok post by Jessica; this one:

The question would have been, “Is it fair to judge a grown woman who dresses as an eggplant and flaunts herself doing so online as not sufficiently trustworthy to be an elected official?”

Close reading of Jessica’s website reveals other red flags, one being that she favors unconstitutional “red flag laws” inflicting pre-crime breaches of due process and individual rights based on vague standards applied by the government. Her aspiring totalitarian explanation: “The idea that someone is seen as a substantial threat and could face little legal ramifications and endanger members of our community, should warrant stricter criminal consequences.” Being “seen” as a threat warrants criminal consequences! That the mark of a 2023 progressive Democrat, even one who doesn’t revel in peeing in the snow…

The peeing eggplant candidate also proves herself to be deliberately misleading, describing abortion (one must assume that’s what she’s talking about) on her site’s homepage as “reproductive rights,” the current cover-term now that “choice” has been outed as the disinformation it is. If one clicks through, abortion is finally extolled by the candidate, but the page presents another red flag regarding Jessica’s fitness: professionally designed as it is, her campaign site reveals her as careless, ungrammatical and inarticulate or, in the alternative, someone who delegates to incompetents. Here’s the text on the abortion issue, highlights mine:

Youngkin and VA-GOP have advocate for abortion bans, recently pushing for a 15 week ban specifically, Yet, they fail to discuss that a 15 week ban does NOT stop elective abortions and instead causes doctors to hesitate, putting patients at risk of sepsis, blood loss, organ failure, reproductive organ loss, coma and even death. These types of laws also eliminate families ability to make a personal decision when they are presented with the horrible reality that their wanted child is not viable and will not survive childbirth. We also know that 93% of all abortions nationwide, occur by or before 13 weeks, with only 6% occurring between 13 and 20 weeks. So we need to ask ourselves why politicians are trying to legislate a 15 week ban, that only impacts 2.5% of all abortions, which are medically necessary due to fetal abnormalities and/or maternal mortality. Legislators have no business in our doctor’s offices, making our personal and life-altering medical decisions, and putting our healthcare providers at legal risk simply for providing us care. I believe the long-standing law in Virginia, which allows for abortion access through the 2nd trimester and that in the rare instance of a 3rd trimester abortion, healthcare providers must respond quickly and ethically. It outlines that if a pregnancy is terminated in the 3rd trimester, it requires a physician along with 2 consulting physicians, to deem the procedure medically necessary. The further arbitrary laws being discussed and introduced are nothing more than political grandstanding and serve no purpose than to control this deeply personal decision.

This section and others on the site do explain why the candidate believes that education is important, I suppose. I also concede that this is how most “everyday” people think and write. Elected officials and representatives responsible for our laws and policies, however, should be better and smarter than the average American, a rather low bar to clear. The 2023 version of the Democratic Party and their progressive allies clearly don’t accept this rather obvious principle (See: Rep. Jamaal Bowman). Anderson’s endorsement page shows that she’s the darling of all the usual suspects, and enthusiastically supported by the leaders of her party in Virginia, who, by extension, apparently also applaud public peeing.

From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I know, I know...this might have been staged. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t staged, but just a single group of assholes after other trick-or-treaters used the communal candy basket as it was designed to be used. Maybe this video has no larger significance at all.

I hope it doesn’t.

But I suspect it does.

ADDED: I see that Ann Althouse also posted this video. Her focus is a bit different. She writes,

Why are we doing handouts anyway? To show what human beings are like? If you answer the door and dispense the handout personally, you can maintain a system of one portion per person, and you might even get a smile or a thank you. If you put out a big bowl of multiple portions because you don’t want to monitor the process and impose single portions, then people will serve their own interests and take all they want. You knew that. The kids who took it all also knew that if they didn’t take it all, the next group of kids would take it all. It’s a state of nature without supervision and enforcement. Don’t pretend you trusted people and you had some sort of admirable “hope” that now I’m supposed to feel bad got crushed. No, you lazy bastard. Answer the damned door next time. Or have the courage to turn off the porch light and huddle in a back room and celebrate the end of the holiday you no longer believe in.

Well, in the past, I have known people who did this (put out baskets of candy to be used with the honor system) not because they were lazy or didn’t want to participate in Halloween, but because they were not going to be home, or had mobility issues for one reason or another. Ann just assumes that the natural tendency is to act badly and just take it all. I don’t.

But she lives in uber-progressive Madison, Wisconsin, so there’s that…

A “Great Stupid”-George Floyd Freakout Mash-up Classic! The Fentanyl Overdose Death Of A Black Perp In Minnesota Will Result In A Name Change For Scott’s Oriole

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I’m not kidding.

This story has convinced me that the obsessions of the woke-infected have no limits. Hold on to your skulls…

The American Ornithological Society announced yesterday that it will remove human names from the common names for birds to create “a more inclusive environment for people of diverse backgrounds interested in bird-watching.” It is expected that around 80 birds in the U.S. and Canada will be renamed, the announcement says.

Wait, what?

It seems that this political correctness movement among bird brains began in 2018, when a college student named Robert Driver proposed renaming the McKown’s longspur, a small bird in the Central United States was named for John P. McKown, who collected the first specimen of the species in 1851. Ah, but Driver’s research revealed that McKown was insufficiently psychic about what causes would be deemed acceptable in a hundred years or so, and thus he fought Native American in the Seminole Indian in 1856, then participated in an expedition against Mormons in Utah in 1858, and worst of all, became general in the Confederate Army. Driver’s crusade was rejected at the time, because…well, it was stupid, to be blunt. The bird was named for McKown because McKown first spotted and identified it. His politics, positions on Indian relations and military exploits have exactly nothing to do with that distinction. 99.99% of people who hear the name “McKown’s longspur” don’t know or care who McKown was, or what he did in the Seminole War, nor should they. Driver—I’ll have to check to see what wokeness indoctrination factory he got his degree from—was just a bit ahead of his time. His ilk hadn’t started toppling Thomas Jefferson statues yet.

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Got It: Hating White People Is OK

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

This explains a lot.

Last night, watching a World Series I wasn’t really all that interested in out of obligation to The Game, I was, because I’m an incurable optimist and sap akin to Pollyanna and and Shirley Temple, startled by the ad above that popped up between innings. Titled “Hate Rises,” its primary message was to “stand up to Jewish hate,” which is certainly currently relevant, since college campuses and Democratic cities are roiling with anti-Semitism and violence threatening Jews because the nation of Israel isn’t willing to let bygones be bygones after the Palestinian terrorist government slaughtered 40 infants, among other acts of savagery.

But I noticed that when the final message quickly scrawled through “all” hate, one kind of bigotry and hateful vilification was omitted. Stand Up To JEWISH/MUSLIM/BLACK/ASIAN/HISPANIC/LGBTQ Hate the ad concluded. Well, that about covers it! Wait a minute…

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Ethics Dunce: Aspiring T-Shirt Entrepreneur Steve Elster

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It’s come to this, has it?

Tracking the infinite variations of Trump Derangement is alternately entertaining and horrifying, often at the same time. This one is mostly just puzzling.

Elster, who is also a lawyer [inject multiple derogatory speculations here] is so impressed with his own wit and convinced that there are plenty of people whose taste is simiarly poor, whose brains are so pureed by wokism and Trump-hate, and whose willingness to proclaim their lack of political sophistication and IQ points is so unwavering, that it is worth going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to secure a trademark for what you see above.

The front of the T-shirt wittily <cough> refers to the low point among many low points in the GOP candidate debates that brought Trump the 2016 Presidential nomination, when Marco Rubio, trying to get the mud with Donald Trump (“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it” ) and stoop to crude ad hominem insults. I wrote about the incident at the time:

…when he appeared to be surging in the polls, though only because his competition was so repellent, Rubio made the decision to go “tit for tat” with Trump’s ad hominem attacks and vulgar rhetoric, making fun of the tycoon’s hair, fake tan, “little hands” and, ugh, presumed penis size. If that wasn’t bad enough, his delivery of the insults was atrocious, as he grinned and snickered while uttering these gutter attacks, looking like nothing so much as a smug 7th grader. With this, Rubio showed that he had as little dignity and respect for the office he was seeking as the disgusting boor people were turning to Rubio in order to reject. He showed that he lacked core values and integrity, and that his judgment, again, was terrible. At that point, Rubio’s support evaporated.

But Mr. Elkins, apparently, saw this sad display and thought, “Ha! Good one! I’ll have to remember THAT!” And so, as the wheel comes around for Trump again, Elkins designed that thing above and tried to trademark “Trump too small” with the drawing indicating a tiny pee-pee. Be proud, legal profession!

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