How Is Bringing Back Old TV Shows Unethical? Let Me Count The Ways…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I had forgotten that “Frasier,” which graced the airwaves of network TV from from 1993 to 2004, was being brought back in a reboot on the Paramount+ streaming channel until I saw a promo for it yesterday. I was never a big fan of the original, though I appreciated its habit of frequently employing classic farce complete with slamming doors, so I was not and am not planning on tuning in to the zombie version. However, the disgusted review of the new “Frasier” by James Poniewozik in the New York Times reminded me of how icky these exercises always are are and how frequently the practice is resorted to now.

To be clear, I am not counting re-boots that involve completely recasting the show and simply slapping the old title on it to suck in suckers for a bait and switch. That practice is clearly unethical—it’s dishonest and disrespectful to the original and its key artists—but that isn’t what this post is about. Such rip-offs include the current “Hawaii 5-0” without Jack Lord and “Magnum P.I.” without Tom Selleck, the new, inferior “The Equalizer” (gender and color switched) as well as the infamous attempt to re-boot the original “Perry Mason” with, ugh, Monte Markham in place of Raymond Burr. No, I’m thinking about when a show that had been deemed to have run its course many years ago is revived with some of the same cast members, all older, less vigorous, and apparently desperate for work, and with lesser writers often peddling current biases. Poniewozik writes, in part,

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Ethics Dunce: The California State Government, But You Knew That.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed Senate Bill 673 into law. The measure will create a missing child alert system for black children only. This is the guy who wants to be President.

NBC News reports, “The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area.The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25.”

If a white child is missing, well, too bad, honky’s got their own alert. “California is taking bold and needed action to locate missing black children and black women in California,” Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford said in a press release. “Our black children and young women are disproportionately represented on the lists of missing persons. This is heartbreaking and painful for so many families and a public crisis for our entire state.”

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Ethics Quiz: The Consequences For Endorsing Terrorism

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

The revolting response of students and other members of campus communities to the Hamas attack and subsequent barbarism inflicted on Israeli citizens has launched a full-fledged ethics train wreck:

  • Zareena Grewal, a professor of American Studies at Yale, tweeted out “There is no question who the oppressors are who the oppressed are. And somehow people are confused about this. White supremacy never stops being shocking to me.” Then she wrote,  “Israel is a murderous, genocidal settler state and Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity.”

  • Derron Borders, a diversity administrator at the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management, wrote on Instagram in support of the Hamas terrorists who killed more than 900 people, “When you hear about Israel this morning and the resistance being launched by Palestinians, remember against all odds Palestinians are fighting for life, dignity, and freedom — alongside others doing the same — against settle colonization, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, which the United States is the model.”

Meanwhile, the students in the 31 Harvard campus organizations that famously announced that Israel was fully responsible for all the violence erupting in and out of Gaza, are facing organized efforts to ensure they are punished:

  • Bill Ackman, the billionaire founder of hedge fund giant Pershing Square Capital Management, has demanded that Harvard release the names of the students who belong to the 31 organizations, so that corporations know not to hire them. “I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members,” Ackman, a Harvard alum, wrote on “X.” “If, in fact, their members support the letter they have released, the names of the signatories should be made public so their views are publicly known. One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, who, we now learn, have beheaded babies, among other inconceivably despicable acts.”  So far, at least a dozen company heads  have endorsed his campaign.
  • Two trucks circled Harvard Square yesterday with LED screens that flashed the names and photos of about a half dozen students known to be involved with the pro-Hamas groups.  The billboard trucks were funded by the conservative news group Accuracy in Media, showed the Harvard students under the words, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites” and linked to a website, HarvardHatesJews.com, which directed users to send messages to Harvard’s board of trustees. “Tell them to take action against these despicable, hateful students,” the website states. “Each and every one of these students should be expelled and their student organizations should be kicked off campus.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

What constitutes a fair and responsible response to the campus supporters of the Hamas terror attacks?

Two thoughts: 1) The consequences facing professors, administrators and students should be different, 2) College is a time to make mistakes.

The First Amendment’s principles and academic freedom must apply. I believe the primary negative consequences should fall on the institutions who hire fools like Borders, allow political ideologues like Grewal to indoctrinate students, and who are negligent in teaching their charges in history, ethics, and critical thinking.

Two Letters From Harvard

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

At least a lot of Harvard professors were sufficiently disgusted by 31 Harvard student groups attacking Israel for “making” Hamas launch a sneak terrorist attack and further engaging in objectively evil conduct—

—to issue this open letter, signed by about 160 professors (including Alan Dershowitz–twice!):

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“The Ethicist” Whiffs! An Expatriate With Dual Citizenship Asks If It’s Ethical To Vote In U.S. Elections, And

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

….Kwame Anthony Appiah, the New York Times ethics advice columnist, gives a rambling, barely-responsive and contradictory answer that only reaches the obvious conclusion after downing the issue in verbiage. The question:

I’m a dual Swedish and American citizen and have lived in Sweden for the past five years, with no plans on moving back to the United States. I have a Swedish husband, pay Swedish taxes and vote in Swedish elections.

I still maintain my American citizenship and file taxes in the United States every year. But I’ve made a choice not to vote in U.S. elections. Because I no longer live (or plan to live) in the States, I don’t think I should have a say in selecting its government.

I have expat friends who strongly disagree. They all vote and think that I should. What’s your take?

Easy, easy call. It is unethical to vote. Not living in the nation for five years, the inquirer cannot possibly be sufficiently aware of U.S. conditions, culture or public needs. Not intending to return to the U.S., the inquirer has no serious stake in the outcome of the election either. For the writer to vote in the U.S. would be like me being allowed to vote in Massachusetts elections when I haven’t lived there for years. The “expat” friends are wrong, and frankly, warped. I’ve had experience with Americans who are in the foreign service and seldom even visit the U.S. I found them to be culturally estranged from the nation I know, arrogant, detached, and biased. In fact, it is a serious problem that many of the people who represent the U.S. abroad no longer understand the nation they represent.

But I digress. Launching into long-winded equivocal academic mode, “The Ethicist” waxes on about whether one should have to pay taxes to have a vote, the wisdom of allowing people who aren’t citizens or have been convicted of a crime to vote, and “Does having made a contribution to your country over a period mean that you should be allowed to vote even after you’ve retired to another country?”, he finally proclaims, “A reasonable conclusion is that people granted the legal right to vote are morally free to exercise it.” Oh, shut up, man! The question wasn’t whether the inquirer had a right to vote or should have a right to vote. The question is whether it is ethical to vote under the conditions listed in the question!

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Comment Of The Day: “AI Ethics: Should Alexa Have A Right To Its Opinion?”:

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Below is Mason’s Comment of the Day, illuminating us regarding how intelligent “artificial intelligence” really is, sparked by the post, “AI Ethics: Should Alexa Have A Right To Its Opinion?”:

***

This is part of a wider problem in the field of AI development known as ‘alignment’. Essentially, it comes down to making the AI do the thing it was programmed for but also do it for the right reasons. As you can see with Amazon, this isn’t going too well.

AI developers want their products to be accurate, but also to hold back or conceal certain information. For example, OpenAI makes the Chat GPT AI. They want this AI to avoid saying insensitive things, like racial slurs. Thus you can prompt the chatbot with a scenario where a nuclear bomb will destroy a city unless it gives you a slur, and the AI will refuse. They also want the AI to be factual, and not to, for instance, completely fabricate a list of references and case law in a legal document.

But what if these two prerogatives clash? Ask the chatbot which race is most likely to be convicted of a crime. It can factually answer black people, but this is totally racist (at least if you work for Google). It can also make up or refuse an answer, but this is a problem if the AI refuses or fabricates responses to different types of questions.

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How Can Parents Be Expected To Trust Schools And Teachers When This Could Happen?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’m not referring to the sexual predator teachers who deflower boys, or the LGBTQ indoctrinaters who see it as their mission to initiate kids into the joys of alternate sexuality, or the social justice warriors who teach kids to hate whites, the Founders, and the United States of America, or even the teachers whose intellectual skills, judgment and knowledge base better qualify them for work at a bait shop than in a Kindergarten-12 school.

No, the topic today is the Miami Springs math teacher employed by The Academy of Innovative Education, a charter school, who showed his fourth grade class of 9-year olds “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” the trailer for which you can see above, if you dare.

You know. Math.

The so far unnamed teacher showed the class about 30 minutes of the horror movie. His defense was that the class chose it, probably misled by its title. I suppose he also would have shown the kids “Piranha 3DD” or “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” if they asked for those films.

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Res Ipsa Loquitur: This Is What BLM And Its Local Chapters Are Posting On Social Media

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Brilliant.

Saying you “stand” with someone represented by a figure who isn’t standing. Referring to “Palestine,” when there is no such country to stand “with.”

And, of course, proclaiming solidarity with a terrorist group that just slaughtered innocent people.

Some of us realized that Black Lives Matter is an irresponsible, racist, violent and crooked movement run by despicable people from the very beginning. The latest example is no surprise.

One minor source of satisfaction from BLM’s fatuous “statement of solidarity” with Hamas: my silly neighbor who has inflicted on our neighborhood a large Black Lives Matter display on her front lawn for almost three years quietly took the eyesore down.

When are all the groveling politicians, corporations and organizations who proclaimed their support for these “social justice” scamsters going to take similar action?

I Know “Fact Don’t Matter” To The Woke Anti-Semites, But At Least They Should Know What Facts They’re Ignoring…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In the short (5.5 minutes) video above, an articulate, objective, unpretentious podcaster explains the origins of the possibly endless Israel-Palestinian conflict in terms even “The Squad” should be able to understand (but won’t). He doesn’t even have to go into more recent events, like the Palestinian reliance on terrorism for the last 50 years, or point out that Israel took over Gaza after it successfully defended itself against a coordinated, unprovoked attack, the second, by surrounding Arab nations, or dwell on the fact (there’s that word again) that the group still refuses to accept the legitimacy of the nation of Israel and is pledged to wipe it from the map.

It is a quick, accurate (if simplified) history lesson that should be mandatory viewing for all of the young, unethical (incompetent, unfair, irresponsible…) bigots and fools cheering on Hamas at colleges and universities. As for the alleged American “intellectuals” who are posting pictures of the Hamas paragliders with machine guns as an image of liberation, I’m not sure what can help them re-enter reality…or decency.

More Thoughts On Baseball Play-Off Ethics.

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I raised this issue in the last pot-potpourri post, noting that, horrors, I agree with Keith Olbermann: the current system, now combined with the “balanced schedule,” is unethical (Keith didn’t exactly say that, since “ethics” isn’t in his vocabulary), because it is unfair to teams that have achieved the best record over the course of the season. As I explained in a comment thread,

“I detest any system where a team that was decisively clobbered by the team that won the division is ever in the position to eliminate the clearly superior team. That devalues the season. “….As long as the divisions had significantly different schedules, there was an argument that a superior record in one division(or league) didn’t necessarily mean the team finishing second in another division wasn’t as good (or better). The seeding means that the teams that have to play in the first round may actually have an advantage over the better teams that get to sit out the first round [because the extra days off may in fact be a handicap]….With 30 teams, there is no good solution, but it still stinks.”

Forget about your baseball biases: this a basic fairness question.

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