Ethics Hero: Military Judge Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr, the military judge in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case, threw out confessions by the Saudi defendant Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in a 50-page decision yesterday. After all, the man accused of planning Al Qaeda’s suicide bombing on Oct. 12, 2000 in Yemen’s Aden Harbor that killed 17 U.S. sailors had been tortured by the CIA, or as th agency likes to describe it, “subjected to enhanced interrogation.” Yes, I seem to remember there was something in the Constitution that said you can’t do that. Quite a few things, actually.

Dirty Harry was also lectured on the same point, if I recall, 50 years ago.

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Ethics Dunces: “Snow White” Star Rachel Zegler, And Disney (Of Course)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I thought actress Sarah Porkalub, who trashed the (ridiculous) Broadway production of “1776” that had given her the chance to play South Carolina’s Continental Congress delegate Edward Rutledge as an Asian woman (Don’t get me started!), was the most irresponsible and arrogant performer I had heard about in decades, and, in fact, she might still hold the title. But it’s now a close competition, as Rachel Zegler, Disney’s star of the almost as ridiculous live-action re-imagining of its animated 1937 classic, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as “Snow Latina and the Seven Whatever-the-Hell-They Are” has been allowed to insult her film’s progenitor, which, among other things, is substantially responsible for her employer’s very existence.

“It’s really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful,” Zegler has blathered. “I mean, you know, the original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. Um… there’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her! Weird, weird, so we didn’t do that this time…People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it’s like, yeah, it is — because it needed that… our version is a refreshing story about a young woman who has a function beyond “Someday My Prince Will Come.'”

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Insufficient Mockery Alert #2: Blaming The Maui Wildfires On Climate Change

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

You knew this was coming, right? The amazing thing was that it took so long for the climate change hysterics—aka pretty much the whole Democratic Party—to go do that voodoo that they do so well. As the horrible facts came in, it was pretty apparent to all but hopeless “Facts Don’t Matter” addicts that many factors helped cause the disaster in Maui, including administrative incompetence, warnings that were ignored, a deadly combination of hurricane winds and dry conditions, fallen power lines, and more. But the climate change Borg never lets any tragedy, disaster or weather-related anomaly go by without linking it to climate change. Too hot? Climate change! Too cold? Climate change! No snow? Blizzards? High winds? Sharks in the water? Racism? Poverty? Whatever. If it’s bad, climate change is the culprit.

Yet for some mysterious reason, ABC, which is owned by Disney who these days never heard a piece of woke propaganda that it didn’t want to shout to the metaphorical rafters, headlined a story, “Why climate change can’t be blamed for the Maui wildfires.” What did ABC think would happen?

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The International Chess Federation Doesn’t Understand Its Own Game, Biology, And Who Knows What Else…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Funny, I thought chess players were supposed to be intelligent—observant, capable of long-term planning, adept at strategy, those kinds of things.

That’s one more stereotype to discard. The people who run international chess competitions have just outed themselves as morons. The International Chess Federation, or FIDE just banned transgender women from competing in men’s chess tournaments and stripped trans men of women’s chess titles they won. The body revealed its guidelines for transgender competitors this week, thus highlighting its long-running idiocy.

Okay, fine: defining the gender of chess players by their chromosomes would be a solution to a problem if there were a problem, but there isn’t. There is no reason to segregate female and male chess players except ancient prejudice and ignorance—well that, and if it is decided that the fewer little chess players conceived, the better.

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Friday Open Forum (Cont.)

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

I have to squeeze in some EA Catch-up today despite an unusual number of paid ethics work projects. I hope the forum takes up any slack.

Yesterday’s posts were truncated mid-day by my first excursion to a baseball game (Red Sox vs. Nats) since 2021, when I found having to eat a hot dog while wearing a stupid mask made the game unbearable. But there have been some alarming developments since then too…

Play Ball!

Ethics Observations On A Bizarre Conservative Tweet Exchange [Name Confusion Corrected!]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Lizzie Marbach, a former Ohio GOP official and currently director of communications at Ohio Right to Life, tweeted ,

This upset Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who is Jewish,  so he tweeted, twice,

Ugh.

Ethics Observations: Continue reading →

Guest Post: Reflections from the Echo Chamber

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

by JutGory

A repetitive, if not constant, topic here is whether or not this blog is a right-wing echo chamber that is inhospitable to left-wing or progressive commenters.  With the recent hit and run by A Friend and a short visit from Ryan Pell, the topic again was front and center for a brief moment.  While one of my recent comments about that suggested that progressives had greater difficulty staying here because they were less inclined than conservatives to follow the rules.  Some of those comments can be found here:

Comment Of The Day: “First Open Forum Of August!”

I am not sure if that was completely right, but likely not entirely wrong.  It is certainly not fair to say conservatives are ethical and liberals-progressives are not.  There are ample counter-examples posted on this blog on both points.  Then, an alternate explanation occurred to me.  The reason why liberal/progressives do not seem to last long here may be because they are not here to discuss ethics; they are here to discuss politics. The topics, while overlapping, are different.  Politics presents arguments to win, and facts to spin.  We all have “our side,” and the goal of politics is for your side to prevail.

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Insufficient Mockery Alert #1: The “Jewface” Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Jonathan Turley likes to begin his posts on oft-visited topics (like speech suppression on progressive college campuses) by reviewing all of his past posts on the matter. If I started this post like that and listed all of the ridiculous, hypocritical, wokey, DEI-inspired casting ethics controversies EA has highlighted, there would be no room for the post itself. But I will supply a sampling…

Let’s see: a black actress can play Anne Boleyn, and James Earl Jones can play the Celtic King Lear, but a white actor is engaged in racism by playing Othello. Hmmm. Gay Hollywood actors (most of them are, after all) can play straight characters, but Tom Hanks apologized for playing a gay character (and winning an Oscar for it) in “Philadelphia.” Lou Diamond Phillips simultaneously asserted that as a Filipino actor he is entitled to play anyone—after all, he has made his living playing Hispanics, South Americans and Native Americans— then in the same interview said “I happen to agree that casting Caucasian people in what are supposed to be ethnic roles is not kosher.”

Yes, it’s Calvinball! The minority communities, supported by progressive DEI fanatics, make up the rules as they go along—whatever keeps whites, heterosexuals and non-disabled actors out of roles. Back in 2019, I designated this “the dumbest casting controversy yet”: that was when Bryan Cranston was criticized for playing a quadriplegic without being actually paralyzed from the neck down. Well, the DEI maniacs have gone way, way beyond that, and conveniently, the most recent ridiculous Calvinball installment is relevant to today’s nonsense.

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Ethics Verdict: “Rich Men North Of Richmond”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Cutting to the chase: It’s ridiculous that this standard issue country ballad is a culture war battlefield. Anyone who took the time to watch Ken Burns’ documentary on the genre will immediately recognize the themes, though Anthony’s blue collar anthem is a bit more whiny than most. Jeez, man, stop bitching and do something about it: that’s the American way! Though I guess he is, by exploiting the politicization of everything today to make a lot of money with a song that doesn’t offer anything new or original, just the familiar “Those rich politicians up North don’t care about us hard-working folks, so life is a struggle and it ain’t getting any better.”

Well, I’d rather listen to this than “Imagine.”

Here are the lyrics:

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A Canary Dies In An Ethics Culture Mine, And It’s No Surprise That The Mine IS In The State Of Washington

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In the city of Federal Way, Washington, Denise Yun is running for the City Council on a platform of protecting businesses from crime. Meanwhile, Nick Rose, a Federal Way Trinity Ace Hardware store owner, apparently caught her attempting to steal multiple hammers from his store by stuffing them into her purse.

Seeing her act suspiciously and spying the glint of something metallic in the woman’s jumbo purse, Rose asked if he could see what she had in there, to which Yun replied, “Absolutely not!” So he reached into her bag anyway, and pulled out one of his hammers. “It was one of my hammers that had a little ACE tag hanging on it. It was a ball peen hammer, so I just grabbed it. And as soon as that happened, she just stormed out of the store,” he said. Taking the rest of the hammers.

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