From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Bud Light’s Bias Makes It Too Stupid To Sell Beer

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Desperately trying to turn the metaphorical page after a trans-endorsing fiasco that has dropped the brand in popularity, infuriated share-holders, and made it a foamy joke, Bud Light just issued that video above as “marketing.” Now-exiled marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid, the genius who made male cross-dresser Dylan Mulvaney the symbol of the beer, did an infamous  interview with the podcast “Make Yourself At Home” on March 30 where she discussed her goal in transforming Bud Light’s outdated, unsophisticated, “fratty” image to appeal to a younger market. So now that the “Bud Light drinkers like chicks-with-dicks!” campaign has inexplicable failed, the geniuses running the show decided on a new, sure-to-succeed message: “Bud Light drinkers are fat, slovenly, clumsy yahoos who are simply hilarious!”

Unbelievable.

Where Reporting Ends And Propaganda Takes Over: The NYT On Affirmative Action

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Dominating today’s New York Times front page (above) is a report headlined “How It Feels to Have Your Life Changed By Affirmative Action” online and “Inside the Lives Changed by Affirmative Action” in the print version of the Times. The piece is naked and blatant advocacy for the Constitution- and U.S. law-violating policy that has been given temporary pass by a conflicted Supreme Court multiple times despite an unavoidable fact: it’s discrimination, and the Constitution doesn’t distinguish between good discrimination and bad discrimination. By the principles and values this nation was founded upon, all discrimination on the basis of qualities like religion, race, gender and ethnicity is wrong.

The Times approach to the subject is similar to its coverage of the illegal immigration controversy. In that matter, as periodically pointed out by Ethics Alarms, the Times has given readers frequent heart-warming tales of “the good illegal immigrant,” a hard-working immigration law violator who is the salt of the earth, a wonderful parent, and yet cruelly held accountable for his or her law-breaking anyway. The motive of such articles seems clear: use emotions to overcome and blot out law, ethics, fairness and common sense. As the Supreme Court seems poised to finally call college and university affirmative action programs what they are: illegal, the Times is trying to build support for its favorite party’s inevitable accusations of racism and illegitimacy against the five or six justices who will have simply done their jobs.

The headlines tell it all. Affirmative action changed the lives of its beneficiaries for the better, so obviously, affirmative action is good, and ending it would be unethical. What is striking about the article is that none of the affirmative action beneficiaries—all black—interviewed appear to have given a second’s thought to the individual whose opportunity they seized because of their “better” color. Some express regrets because they faced, or felt like they faced, skepticism about their degrees or career accomplishments because they were presumed to be “undeserving” affirmative action beneficiaries. None hint at any regret that someone who deserved to be accepted to an elite school or program was not so they could be.

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The Rogan-Kennedy-Hotez Controversy: Is It Ever Unethical To Debate?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A controversy among three people I usually have no interest in paying attention to raises fascinating ethics issues.

Joe Rogan is a giant in the podcaster universe despite having risen to fame as the host of the disgusting reality show “Fear Factor” and having little education beyond high school. Last week he had Robert Kennedy as a guest on his show to his Presidential run and his views as an anti-vaxxer. Dr. Peter Hotez, one of the more obnoxious and arrogant scientists with an addiction to the media spotlight tweeted to his 400,000+ Twitter followers that the podcast was “nonsense” and “misinformation.” This prompted Rogan—who is a giant in the podcaster universe because he knows how to “stir the pot”— to challenge Hotez to come on his show and debate Kennedy (or, failing that, Rogan), offering to give $100,000 to a charity of Hotez’s choice if he agreed. Hotez refused, saying that scientists don’t debate ignoramuses and charlatans (or words to the effect), Elon Musk tweeted in to support Rogan, and pundits left and right began taking sides.

The episode immediately called to mind the battle between Holocaust historian Deborah E. Lipstadt and Holocaust denier David Irving, a story recounted in the film “Denial.” Lipstadt took the unshakable position that a debate on this topic automatically gave dangerous credibility to a position that has none. If there is a debate, she reasoned, then uninformed people will think, ‘So—maybe the Holocaust happened, and maybe it didn’t!’ “Some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive, ” her character, played by Rachel Weisz, says in the film. (Maybe that’s an actual quote from Lipstadt, but I can’t find it.)

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The Weenie Mandate

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Elsewhere on Ethics Alarms are a few posts defending the decision by employers to fire employees who have physically intervened in attempted robberies, sometimes to the extent of capturing the thieves. Such individuals are usually hailed as heroes by the media and the public, and the stores that discipline them are assailed as heartless ingrates. The companies are on solid ground, ethically, legally and practically. Typically, there are policies in the employees handbook specifically laying out how robberies are to be handled. Physical intervention not only risks the would-be hero’s well-being, but the welfare of other employees as well. When a staffer’s amateur law-enforcement act goes well, it is still just moral luck.

Unfortunately, this sensible policy has had illicit relations with the “shoplifting should be a crime” mutants, and the result is one frightening deformed offspring. Thanks to woke brain rot seeping through San Francisco and other urban areas, viral videos show staff just standing by politely as people forage through store shelves, sometimes returning several times.

The woman above, Mary Ann Moreno, had worked at Circle K for 18 years. Moreno was behind the counter when Tyler Wimmer walked into the convenience store with a knife, and asked Mary if she would give him a pack of cigarettes for free. Moreno declined. When he grabbed a pack anyway, she instinctively reached out and touched him, then pulled away. Based on the surveillance tapes, the company fired her for violating the company’s “Don’t Chase or Confront Policy” regarding shoplifters and robbers. Moreno is now suing Circle K Stores Inc. Her attorney, Iris Halpern, said the footage clearly shows that Moreno acted in self-defense and made no real effort to stop or chase Wimmer. “Companies have not sufficiently thought through the nuance in these situations,” she says.

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Gavin Newsom’s Unethical, Ridiculous “28th Amendment”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, issued this on Twitter:

And thus once again we are faced with the question of just how stupid, civically ignorant and gullible an American politician thinks the public is. I can understand why Newsom might believe that the answer is “incredibly stupid, civically ignorant and gullible,” because someone like him was elected governor by Californians. However, there is hope that he is mistaken.

To begin with the most important point, his proposal is pure grandstanding. The chances of any Constitutional amendment being passed are vanishingly small, but the chances of that mess being passed are zero. It is unethical to make proposals that are impossible: call it the “Imagine” fraud. The cynical and manipulative individual putting forth the plan is seeking approval and support for a sentiment that is entirely useless and cruelly misleading, at least for the fools silly enough to take it seriously.

This “amendment” is a sop to the “Do something!” crowd. See? Gavin is doing something! He’s proposing a solution that is absolutely impossible, and that wouldn’t be a solution even if it somehow came to pass!

In addition to the cynical nature of proposing an impossible solution, what Newsom is proposing is an abuse of the amendment process, essentially using the Constitution to pass legislation so the legislation can probably never be repealed. It also isn’t what he says it is: a collection of “four gun safety freedoms.” How are any of those provisions “freedoms”? Newsom is casting a fake amendment in terms evoking the First and Second Amendments though it doesn’t involve “freedoms” at all. That’s OK: most of the amendments are about rights, not freedoms, but his using the term in this context should set off everyone’s snake-oil salesman alarms.

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“God Save The Queen, Man!”: An IIPTDXTTNMIAFB And An Integrity Test

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Remember Plan E? That was the designation on the Ethics Alarms list of resistance, Democrat and news media impeachment or removal plots for the 25th Amendment theory, which was that President Trump was mentally disabled and thus should be declared incompetent. The catalysts for this intellectually dishonest effort were Trump-hating hack author Michael Wolf and now-fired Yale psychology instructor Bandy Lee, but many in the “Get Trump!” mob quickly embraced their nonsense, as Ethics Alarms discussed here. I wrote, “Ethics Dunce is too mild a name here. We have the mainstream news media proclaiming to the world that the President of the United States is mentally deficient based on tweets, gossip, leaks, unethical diagnoses by discredited professionals, an author who has admitted making things up and lying to the White House to get access, and Steve Bannon.” Prominent among the 25th Amendment-pushing journalists, if you can call him that, was CNN’s fake media ethics watchdog, Brian Stelter. Of course, my Trump-Deranged Facebook friends were also convinced that Trump had dementia.

Last week, as he ended his remarks at a “gun safety summit” in Connecticut, President Biden said, for no apparent reason, “God save the Queen, man!” The video was instantly all over social media.

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A Clinical Example Of Hopeless Trump Derangement [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Trump Derangement fascinates me, I must admit. It is pathological, an example of raw emotions and the desire to be in line with peers, friends and colleagues literally–and I mean literally literally—disconnecting ethics alarms and basic critical thinking skills simultaneously. The phenomenon is important to study because it has done immeasurable damage to the nation and our republic, and promises to do far more before it has run its course.

Ethics Alarms reader and frequent commenter Steve Witherspoon was kind enough to send me this blog entry by Dave Cieslewicz, previously a Democratic mayor of Madison, Wisconsin. His title: “The Damage Trump Has Done to Liberals.” It’s an astounding essay; if you aren’t subject to depression, it is mordantly amusing. Here’s the main thrust:

Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to America. He has undermined our most cherished institutions, destroyed norms of decent behavior, made racism and misogyny acceptable, disregarded facts, lied with impunity and stoked nutty conspiracy theories. And I could go on….The problem is that when the other side is so clearly wrong — ignores or makes up facts or simply lies — it blows apart the desire on the part of moderate liberals like me to be fair to the other guys, to give their arguments a fair consideration and to ask ourselves if they might be right, even just a little.

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An “It Isn’t What It Is” Spectacular From CNN

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is disgraceful; what would be a better word? CNN’s assertion is deceitful and designed to mislead and misinform—but as I’m sure Brian Stelter would say if he still worked there, it’s responsible journalism because this is good deception. Or not deception at all. Who knows what Stelter would say; he’s an idiot: why am I even dragging him into this discussion?

Black fathers are often portrayed as absent because they are absent too often, and to a destructive degree that is a major factor in undermining success in the black community. The statistics on the problem vary widely because of different measuring methods; one states that 64% of black children are living without their fathers in the same household (the figure for white kids is 24%). Here’s another assessment from the Justice Department:

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Introducing “Curmie’s Conjectures,” A Recurring Ethics Alarms Column

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

[ Curmie should be familiar to comment readers here as one of EA’s erudite and witty participants in our daily debates. He has a real name, of course, which he is at liberty to reveal when the mood strikes him. Curmie is an experienced blogger; his own site, Curmudgeon Central, has been referenced and linked-to frequently here over the years. The consistent quality and ethical analysis that he always brings to his commentary, as well as the fact that Curmie has a more liberal orientation than many feel your host displays, made his addition to the Ethics Alarms team (see, two is a team!) both logical and wise.  The fact the we share a deep involvement with theater and the performing arts had nothing to do with it. Well, maybe a little.

Curmie has no set schedule for his contributions, and has complete editorial discretion unless he begins babbling incoherently and shows signs of a stroke. And now I’ll get out of the way and leave you in Curmie’s capable hands.-JM ]

Strange Bedfellows: Socialism and Free Expression

by Curmie

Reading Jack’s piece on the Gallup poll that suggested an increase the percentage of Americans who self-identify as conservative, my first thought was, “so where do I fit in this model?” 

There are so many variables: I’m quite liberal on some issues, staunchly conservative on others.  I took a couple of those online quizzes: according to Pew, I’m “Ambivalent Right” (whatever that means); according to politicalpesonality.org, I’m a “Justice Warrior” (erm… no); ISideWith has me as a Green (not really, although I’ve been accused of worse).

Moreover, such things are always relative: there’s no doubt that I’m well to the left of most people in my Congressional district and of most readers of Jack’s blog, but I’m a fair distance to the right of many of my colleagues in academic theatre.  Moreover, times change.  My once-radical position on gay rights, for example, is now rather mainstream: my belief system had remained virtually unchanged, but it’s now no longer “very liberal,” and may even be “moderate.”

Most importantly, distinguishing between left and right isn’t always the appropriate axis.  Sometimes it’s the continuum from authoritarian to libertarian that really matters.  Political Compass places me solidly to the left of center, but even further into libertarianism.  And it is on these issues—of non-interference by powerful forces, be they governmental, corporate, or otherwise—where Jack’s readership is most likely to agree with me (vice versa). 

In other words, my longtime assertion that, to quote the title of a piece I wrote a few months ago, ““The Left and Right Both Hate Free Expression—They Just Do It Differently” ought not to surprise us overmuch.  What might is a casual observation I made while doing a little research for my second of my two posts on the Roger Waters controversy.

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Ethics Quiz: Ethics Hero Or Insecure Spoilsport?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Former MLB player David Freese was voted by St. Louis Cardinals fans into the team’s Hall of Fame. To everyone’s surprise, he declined the honor.

“This is something that I have given an extreme amount of thought to, humbly, even before the voting process began,” Freese said in a statement. “I am aware of the impact I had helping the team bring great memories to the city I grew up in, including the 11th championship. I feel strongly about my decision and understand how people might feel about this. I get it. I’ll wear it. Thank you for always being there for me, and I am excited to be around the Cardinals as we move forward.”

He also said that he did not feel “deserving” of the honor. “I look at who I was during my tenure, and that weighs heavily on me,” said Freese, who recived the most votes of any former Cardinals player for induction in online balloting. “The Cardinals and the entire city have always had my back in every way. I’m forever grateful to be part of such an amazing organization and fan base then, now and in the future,” he said. “I’m especially sorry to the fans that took the time to cast their votes. Cardinal Nation is basically the reason why I’ve unfortunately waited so long for this decision and made it more of a headache for so many people.”

Perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that Freese has battled clinical depression his entire life, and is a recovering alcoholic.

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