Should It Matter If a Children’s TV Hostess Is a Virulent, Lying Anti-Semite?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It is remarkable the things you learn while searching for ethics topics that have nothing to do with President Trump.

For example, I had never heard of Ms. Rachel, perhaps because my ‘kid’ is 31. Ms. Rachel is the professional moniker of educator, YouTuber, and singer-songwriter Rachel Accurso. She created the YouTube series “Ms. Rachel” (originally known as “Songs for Littles”), a children’s music series that focuses on language development for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

That’s nice! Unfortunately, she can’t resist exposing the fact on social media that she hates Jews . Last week, she “liked” a post by one of her followers on Instagram that said “Free America from the Jews.” Oh-oh. Then she posted a video in which she wept pitifully and claimed that she had meant to delete the thing but inadvertently “loved” it.

Oh. Well, anyone can make a mistake, though I don’t see how someone could make that one. The problem is that this kiddie educator has been ranting on social media about Israel “genocide” in Gaza for quite a while now. Earlier, she posted on Instagram, ‘”Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Free Iran.” Last year she filmed a ‘Letter of the Day’ video with Palestinian journalist, Motaz Azaiza. Azaiza has praised Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, in which infants and children were massacred among other victims. He once posted online, “May God curse the Jews themselves.”

Call me judgmental, but hosting an anti-Semite like this guy seems like an ominous sign for a child educator. Yet Ms. Rachel appears to be uncancellable. Over at “Unspiked,” Brendan O’Neill speculates why. He writes in part,

“The Damocles sword of cancellation dangles precariously over all of us for such trifling speechcrimes as wondering if the Koran is bollocks (Islamophobia) or thinking immigration should be curtailed (racism). And yet you can openly rub shoulders with anti-Semitic people or anti-Semitic posts and the cancellers will look the other way.

“Be honest: what fate would befall a kids’ entertainer if they hosted on their show a man who had once said ‘Fuck all black people’? And if they then liked a post on Instagram that said ‘Get all blacks out of America’? We know exactly what would happen. They would be savagely cancelled. The only time we’d ever see them again would be in a Netflix documentary 20 years hence about the much-loved kids’ clown who lost it all by chumming about with racist scum.

“…The exact opposite has happened with Ms Rachel. She may have exposed the kids who follow her to a man who once said ‘Curse the Jews’, and she may have liked a post calling for the mass expulsion of Jews from the US, but she will survive. And thrive. Cancel culture will lay not one finger on her. And we all know why: because Jews enjoy none of the protections of ‘political correctness’. Jews have not been granted access to the kingdom of liberal concern. Offending Jews is seen as a lesser crime than offending any other group. Ms Rachel will suffer no consequences so long as her blunders only touch on the lives and feelings of Jews.

“The real problem is not Ms Rachel, who’s fundamentally just another celeb building a virtuous self-image from the rubble of Gaza. It’s the politics of identity. It’s that ideology’s ruthless demotion of Jews to the bottom of the league of identities. Scuff a page of the Koran and you’ll be had up for Islamophobia. Film a kids’ video with a man who said ‘Curse the Jews’ and you’re grand. There it is: the merciless neo-racialism of the woke era….”

This is another Cognitive Dissonance Scale issue at heart. Maybe a competent online children’s educator can still be regarded as effective and trustworthy as long as she keeps her vile political and social views out of her videos, songs and books. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, I’d rather have someone who isn’t a lying anti-Semite entertaining my children if I have a choice.

You?

Another Day in Minnesota, Another I.C.E. Shooting, Another Freak-Out and Battle of Narratives…

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Here is how the New York Times is framing the incident right now:

The authorities in Minnesota on Sunday were investigating the killing of a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident by federal agents, despite resistance from Trump administration officials who sought to cast blame on the victim and local Democratic lawmakers.

The victim, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, was an intensive-care nurse and a U.S. citizen with no criminal record who held a legal permit to carry a firearm, local officials said. Federal officials, without presenting evidence for the claims, sought to portray Mr. Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” who was armed and wanted to “massacre” law enforcement officers…Mr. Pretti was shot dead on Saturday during protests against the federal immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Videos analyzed by The New York Times show no sign that Mr. Pretti pulled his weapon during the encounter with federal agents in which he was killed, or that they knew he had one until he was already pinned on the ground…

Federal authorities said the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and Border Patrol, would lead the federal shooting investigation. But senior Homeland Security and Justice Department officials claimed it was already clear that Mr. Pretti and local officials were to blame for the shooting.

The killing of Mr. Pretti in Minneapolis’s Whittier neighborhood prompted a new round of protests in the city, where tensions have reached a breaking point after weeks of aggressive federal immigration action. Increasingly, U.S. citizens have taken to the streets to protest what many have described as a military-style occupation of an American city. At least 1,000 people gathered for a vigil for Mr. Pretti in Whittier Park on Saturday night despite subzero temperatures.

Mr. Trump and administration officials cast blame on local lawmakers, who are Democrats, for the unrest. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota and other lawmakers of allowing “lawlessness” to spread and made a series of demands, including for state officials to turn over voting records to the Justice Department. In response, Mr. Walz’s office said that federal agents had “brought chaos and destruction to our state.”

Observations:

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Ethics Quiz: the Narcissist Nurse

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The woman above, a nurse at a Georgia hospital, was told to go home and not to come back to work until she got rid of her flamboyant (I’m being nice) hair style. The woman—I don’t care what her name is—claims that the ‘do is culturally significant, whatever that’s supposed to mean. She also claims that it doesn’t interfere with her job, which I would dispute, and that the hospital is discriminating against her race by telling her that is isn’t professional to dress up like an exotic bird …

…to care for sick people.

I think the lawsuit is a loser: I’m sure the administrators will say convincingly that no one, male or female, black, white or puce, would be allowed to work with that on their head. The woman is an exhibitionist. Personally, I would be wary of trusting any hospital that allowed someone with such dubious judgment and misaligned values to be charged with patient care.

Also, as someone whose week long stay in a hospital last summer featured being awakened out of a deep sleep to have some nurse’s head four inches from my face, the sight of that hat hair could spark a cardiac episode.

But hey! I can be convinced otherwise. So that’s why…

Today’s Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is…

Is a nurse who wears her hair like that meeting minimal professional standards?

Stupid Lawyer Tricks…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This really happened, based on the reliability of the lawyer who reported it to me.

In one of those petty organizational battles over control of a book club or something of similar weight, one faction tried to kick a member of the other faction off the organization’s board without any authority to do so. The other faction quickly insisted that the member be put back on the board, and is trying to oust the offending faction from the group entirely. The fight has erupted on social media, mostly on the club’s Facebook page, in angry and ugly posts.

The ejected faction has hired a lawyer who sent a Cease and Desist and Demand letter to the rest of the membership, threatening a defamation suit. The Demand Letter ended with the following:

THIS LETTER IS A CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL COMMUNICATION AND IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION. ANY PUBLICATION, DISSEMINATION OR BROADCAST OF THIS LETTER OR ANY PORTION OF IT THEREOF, WILL CONSTITUTE, INTER ALIA, A VIOLATION OF THE COPYRIGHT ACT. YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO PUBLISH THE LETTER IN WHOLE OR IN PART.

Well..

1. The letter is obviously not confidential client communication as it has been communicated to non-clients.

2. Sure it’s technically copyrighted like anything you write is, but fair use of such a letter makes the implied threat deceitful. The recipients don’t need authorization to re-publish the letter, and neither do I.

3. Where do lawyers like this get their law degrees from, Bazooka gum comics? “Draw Skippy” ads?

4. My immediate suspicion upon receiving a demand letter like this would be that someone is engaging in the unauthorized practice law or using a dumb AI bot.

Port script: I’m trying to find a standard graphic for this topic. I’m considering using Michael Cohen, Trump’s perjurous, disbarred former fixer. You know, this guy…

What do you think?

A Trump Derangement Test: Show This Story To Your Friends and Relatives and Note Which Ones Believe The President’s Secret “Daughter”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Necla Ozmen, 55, who lives in Ankara, Turkey, has filed a paternity lawsuit claiming the President is her biological father and is demanding a DNA test to prove it. Her filing was immediately dismissed by the Turkish court, and she’s appealing.

Necla says she was born in 1970 and is officially registered as the daughter of Sati and Dursun Ozmen, the couple who raised her.  However, she claims she later learned she had been adopted. Her mother told her that she gave birth to a stillborn baby and that another woman giving birth at the same time, a US citizen Necla identifies only as Sophia, handed over her newborn to be raised and registered by the Ozmen family.

This resembles the plot of “The Omen.” Was Sophia a jackal, by any chance? If so, that means Necla is the Anti-Christ and Trump is The Beast! I knew it!

“Sophia,” Necla says, said that she was the result of an elicit relationship with Trump. The President’s alleged “daughter” wants the judges to establish her paternity and order genetic testing.  Necla has no idea how Trump and Sophia met. “I don’t want to cause him any trouble. I just want to know the truth,” she tells interviewers. “I just want to know whether he is my father. I would like him to speak with me. I can prove through a DNA test that he is my father, if he agrees. I believe he is a good father. I believe he will not turn me away either.” She has also sent petitions to the U.S. Embassy and to courts in the US.

Several of the news reports I have read say that the woman has an “uncanny” resemblance to Trump. Wow. They’re almost twins.

Hey…you know one of you reading out there might be Trump’s kid too. Can’t hurt to check it out! And if he’s not the father, why would Trump oppose a blood test?

I’m guessing that at least 30% of your Trump Deranged acquaintances will instantly accept this Turkish woman’s account as plausible, with a similar number calling it hypocrisy if you don’t after criticizing Hunter Biden’s denial of paternity of one of Joe Biden’s grandchildren.

What are the odds, now, of some Trump-hating judge in the U.S. granting Necla’s request? I’d say strong, and that’s why her lawyers are not unethical to press her claims.

As the wicket Witch of the West memorably said, “What a world, what a world…”

From Maryland, A “When Ethics Fails, The Law Steps In” Verdict

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I recently re-watched “Runaway Jury,” the ethically and legally repugnant film adaptation of a John Grisham legal thriller. It’s one of the most unethical movies extant, and before the last couple of years I would have said such egregious lawyer conduct as depicted in the film was unlikely to the point of impossible (as in most of Grisham’s books). The novel and movie involved a high-profile civil suit: the widow of a man murdered when a fired employee “goes postal” seeks to hold the manufacturer of the gun used by the killer liable for millions in damages. A pair of anti-gun zealots conspire to both rig the jury verdict and ruin the evil jury consultant (Gene Hackman) who helped defeat their home town in a similar case years before. In the end the “good guys” win (that is, Hollywood’s idea of “good”); I have mentioned the film before in the context irresponsible films and TV shows that actively misinform the public about a lawyer’s ethical responsibilities. Now comes a jury verdict from Maryland where a jury delivered a multi-million dollar verdict against Walmart for allowing an employee to buy a shotgun before he used it to blow his head off.

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Ethics (and Blogging) Hero: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

My late wife might say of this post, “If you like Ann Althouse so much, why don’t you marry her?” (Ann-like tangent: my favorite use of that line was when Homer Simpson was in a TV debate with Rev. Lovejoy over gay marriage, and after the Springfield cleric cited the Bible, Homer retorted, “If you like the Bible so much, why don’t you marry it? Here, I’ll do it for you…”)

Ann is the all-time Ethics Alarms leader in “Ethics Quotes” of the month and week; she’s also been an Ethics Dunce here several times. I even suspended her from any mention in my posts after a particularly miserable performance. Her fascinating EA dosser is here.

I know I just posted about Ann’s recent four slam-bang post run, but her defenestration of Anti-Trump New Yorker hack Susan B. Glasser was masterful, and I bow down in awe and wonder. When the ex-University of Wisconsin law professor is on her game, nobody is better, and attention must be paid.

Glasser issued “It’s Time to Talk About Donald Trump’s Logorrhea/How many polite ways are there to ask whether the President of the United States is losing it?” , jumping on the “Let’s try the 25th Amendment!” Trump removal plan a Golden Oldie among the many that the Axis was pushing in his first term. That any journalist who sat idly by refusing to point out that Joe Biden’s brain was falling out of his ears in chunks has the gall now to make such a claim about Trump (literally all of my Trump-Deranged Facebook Friends keep returning to it) is disqualifying, but Ann doesn’t even need that low-hanging fruit to show us how Glasser cheated to please the Atlantic’s biased readers.

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Pre-Blizzard Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This weekend will be a good time to work on those guest posts you’ve been meaning to write for Ethics Alarms while you’re snowed in. Or, if you don’t live in the storm zone, or are not snow-phobic like everyone in the D.C. area but me, it will still a good time to work on those guest posts you’ve been meaning to write for Ethics Alarms.

I have to go to a funeral of a good friend at Arlington this morning, and don’t know when I’ll return. It’s a bad day for that, as I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, but as Yogi Berra sagely said, “You gotta go to your friends’ funerals. If you don’t go to theirs, they won’t come to yours.”

One more note on the previous post: while drinking my first cup of coffee, I saw the Two Guys on the Couch with a Blonde in the Middle on Fox News talking about one reporter at the Australian Open who was asking the American tennis players, “How does it feel representing the United States right now?’ If the athlete answered with an obviously pre-set, “I am always proud to represent my country,” the guy pressed on with, “I mean, you know, considering everything that’s happening,” fishing for an anti-Trump statement.

The Blonde in the Middle made the right point: it’s too bad one of the tennis pros wasn’t prepared to answer, “Oh, you mean Trump’s first year? Yeah, wasn’t that awesome? He finally got rid of public funding for NPR and PBS, the Education Department is toast, so maybe our kids will be educated instead of indoctrinated, inflation is down, the White House really needed a ballroom, we’re getting illegals off the streets, and even the tariffs are working!”

OK, gotta go. I’m going to visit Mom and Dad while I’m at the cemetery. It’s been a while.

It Happened Again…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I have mentioned before that I find it remarkable that if you can string three sentences together and appear relatively affluent and educated, people assume that you hate the President and believe that “everything is terrible.”

Today I was waiting in an inexcusably long line because Harris Teeter’s had only one check-out station open even though it had to know that the snow-phobic Northern Virginians would be stocking up for the weekend snow storm. I found myself behind a chatty and pleasant woman close to my age. She struck up a conversation, and, as usual, I was not at a loss for words. We talked about movies and history, National Parks, the Tunnel Tree, and Theodore Roosevelt.

She said she wished it were a longer line because she enjoyed the conversation so much, and out of the blue said that if we weren’t going to be so snow-bound, she would join a protest somewhere, because there is so much to protest. She said it as if she didn’t think there was a chance in a million that I wasn’t in complete agreement. After all, I was friendly, polite and articulate: surely I must be terrified by the threat to democracy that all decent people—all her friends and social media pals and those smart pundits on MSNBC—see.

I saw no point in challenging her. In my experience, when I ask, “What exactly do you think is so terrible?” the answers that come back are vague, evasive, non-substantive or factually wrong. She seemed happy and was enjoying my company. Why break the mood? I’ll probably never see the old bat again. I did not want to prompt an imitation of that woman in “The Birds.”

I was dying to point out, I must confess, that her disdain for Donald trump was at odds with her stated admiration of Teddy Roosevelt, since Trump’s view of his office is more Rooseveltian than any POTUS since TR, with the exception of his cousin Franklin. I’m pretty sure Trump had Teddy in mind when he reacted with defiance after being shot: Roosevelt pulled the same stunt in 1912.

It is remarkable that everyone around here just assumes you are a member of their progressive club, or cult, or delusion. Never have I had anyone make the opposite assumption, that I am one of them, the evil people who think this President is doing many things that desperately need to be done, and that he deserves more support and respect for having the guts to do them.

Why is that?

Don Lemon Was Never A Real Journalist, and He Can’t Claim to Have Been One When He Invaded That Church

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Not to say I told you so, but I told you so: Ethics Alarms flagged Don Lemon as an unethical, biased, arrogant, preening disgrace as a journalist long before he was finally canned by CNN, and he has done nothing but live up to my assessment, indeed, show how restrained it was, since. See? I’m smart!

Over the weekend an anti-ICE mob stormed a church in St. Paul on the theory that one of the pastors was an ICE agent. I know, that makes no sense to me, either. They interrupted the service, chanting Renee Good’s name, “Hands up, don’t shoot” and other nonsense that had nothing to do with the service was shut down. Lemon was part of the mob.

The administration has been investigating the disruption at the church as a violation of the Face Act, a law that makes it a crime to physically obstruct or use threats of force to intimidate or interfere with a person seeking to participate in a service at a house of worship. It seems pretty clear that this is what the mob did, and that Lemon is as guilty and any of the thugs who did this.

Lemon filmed the event and claimed he was just there as a journalist. No, he’s an ex-journalist, as am I: I was on the staff of my high school newspaper. Lemon made his claim of being at the illegal intrusion as a reporter rather than a participant is weak, and made weaker by his comments on the podcast “I’ve Had It” with Jennifer Welch. “And there’s a certain degree of entitlement. I think people who are, you know, in the religious groups like that,” Lemon said. “It’s not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they’re entitled and that that entitlement comes from a supremacy, white supremacy, and they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian country, when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom. It’s religious freedom, but only if you’re a Christian and only if you’re a white male, pretty much.”

Doesn’t sound like he was in that church as an objective observer to me. Lemon is such an idiot. Listen to him in the clip above, implying that there is a Constitutional right to burst into a church, stop a service, and protest something that has nothing to do with the service or the parishioners at all.

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