There Is Hope! Chicago Voters Threw Out Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Who Then Demonstrated (Again) Why They Were Fools To Elect Her In The First Place

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

There are some really, really, unethical, incompetent big city mayors running amuck right now, but it would be hard to argue that any of them are worse than Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot. She easily won the Ethics Alarms 2022 award as “Most Unethical Mayor of the Year.” From that post…

Lightfoot moved slightly ahead on the pack after it was revealed that she asked teachers to try yo dragoon Chicago students into volunteering for her campaign, then lied about it, but this was standard stuff for her. In May, she tried to incite violence against the Supreme Court. She’s classy, too: Lightfoot took the stage at a “Pride” event–she is gay, after all—and declared, “Fuck Clarence Thomas!” But her forte is clearly hypocrisy, denial, and dishonesty, while counting on Chicago blacks, the primary victims of her inept crime policies, to support her anyway. No wonder: this year she suggested that blacks caught on camera speeding or running lights should  get a break on extra fines and fees, or  pay based on an amount proportionate to their income.

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Ethics Quiz: The USS Chancellorsville

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

In a final flurry of Black History Month pandering by the Biden administration, the missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville was renamed USS Robert Smalls. A US government Naming Commission reviewed military bases and vessels that appeared to honor the Confederacy and made recommendations regarding which should to be renamed. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin approved the commission’s recommendations in October 2022, and this was one of the results. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced that the Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser would lose its previous name and henceforth would bear the name of Smalls, a former slave who took over a Confederate ship and delivered it to the Union navy.

Esteemed reader Steve-O-in NJ brought this story to ethics Alarms’ attention, and makes this argument:

It used to be we would name carriers after battles, but, for whatever reason, when these cruisers, once the most expensive and most sophisticated non-carrier vessels afloat in the US Navy, were built, they decided to name them after battles instead (with one exception, the USS Thomas S. Gates, which left active service long ago because it was not built with the vertical launch system).  I questioned this choice of names from the get-go, since as far as I know all US ships named after battles were named for US victories or at least battles where our forces gave a good account of themselves (one of the other ships in the class is the USS Chosin, another the USS Anzio).  Why did they decide to name this one after a disastrous US defeat?  Well, presumably the same reason the names USS Semmes, USS Buchanan, USS Waddell, and USS Barney found their way into the Charles F. Adams and Spruance classes of destroyers, but are unlikely to be used again.
 
I can think of a long list of names that would not break the class tradition, nor stick out like a sore thumb, and speak to the entire US.  Notably the names USS Saratoga and USS Lexington are not presently in use, nor the names USS Coral Sea or USS Midway.  Give me a few minutes and I’ll come up with a dozen more.  But of course this couldn’t be just a switch of names to something more universally admired, it HAD to be the name of a former slave, as a rebuke to those evil racists who dared name a ship after a legendary victory led by Robert E. Lee, and now everyone who sees it or hears the name will know of the rebuke.  
 

A two-part Ethics Quiz of the Day arises from this discussion:

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From “The Great Stupid” Files, Ethics Dunce: Katy Perry

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The simplest commentary on this episode would be, “Oh, grow up.”

A 21-year-old mattress salesman named Trey Louis performed Whiskey Myers’ 2016 song “Stone” as his “American Idol” audition for pop singer Kay Perry and fellow judges Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan. (He wasn’t bad at all.) After receiving a positive response from the three, Louis was asked by Bryan why he’s auditioning out for “American Idol.”

“I’m from Santa Fe, Texas. In May 2018, a gunman walked into my school,” Louis replied, becoming emotional. “I was in Art Room 1. He shot up Art Room 2 before he made his way to Art Room 1. I lost a lot of friends. Eight students were killed. Two teachers were killed. It’s just really been negative, man. Santa Fe’s had a bad rap here since 2018.”

(That doesn’t exactly answer the question, but never mind…)

Perry quickly throttled the other judges in over-the-top emotional grandstanding, first putting her head in her hands and weeping, and then screaming, Continue reading →

As If One George Santos Wasn’t Too Many GOP Fakes In Congress, Now There Are Two…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

…that we know of.

Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.) acknowledged yesterday that he “misstated” the degree he had received from Middle Tennessee State University when he told voters that he received a degree in international relations. Ogles said his degree was actually for “liberal studies,” a general education degree typically for those who cannot settle on a major. He claims that the mistake was inadvertent, and he just forgot his major.

Sure, Andy.

That baloney might be palatable if he hadn’t been shown to have falsified so many other aspects of his résumé. For example…

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Morning Ethics Collection: Farewell Black History Month Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

For some reason, Black History Month and the corporate pandering to it have really bothered me this year. The streaming services all have special race-segregated categories this month, for example. I just heard a promo on the Sirius MLB channel with an announcer from a vintage game clip (the one where Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record) screaming that a “black man is now baseball’s all-time home run champion!” What matters is that Henry Aaron broke the record, regardless of his skin shade. Funny, I don’t recall anyone noting, when Barry Bonds broke Aaron’s record aided by illegal drugs, that “a black man is now baseball’s first all-time home run champion to achieve the distinction by cheating!”

Meanwhile, professional organizations felt it necessary to present programs like this one, by the New York City Bar:

The national obsession with race is a sickness, and only perpetuates division and distrust. It has to stop.

1. Ugh! More unethical web list misinformation...I checked out another of those annoying on-line “slideshows,” this one purporting to list the 35 “Best Movies That Are Actually True To History.” Some of the selections were valid (notably “Gettysburg”), but there are too many better choices than most included on the list to count, and one in particular was unforgivable: “Saving Private Ryan.”

My father regarded that film as offensively unrealistic, and wrote the military advisor on the movie to complain in a 20+ page memo. Details aside, however, the entire plot conceit of the “film”Private Ryan” was absurd, and an insult to General George Marshall. There is no way Marshall would have made the welfare of a single GI a higher priority than ensuring a successful post-Normandy invasion campaign, but that is what Spielberg’s film imagines. Furthermore, the letter allegedly written by President Lincoln that inspires Marshall’s crack-brained scheme in the film has been pretty conclusively proven to have been authored by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Not only that, but the object of the letter, the tragic mother who had supposedly lost five sons in Civil War battles, definitely didn’t.

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Ethics Heroes: The Mid Vermont Christian School Girls Basketball Team [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Mid Vermont Christian School girls basketball team, the Eagles, were set to play against the Long Trail Mountain Lions in the fourth game of state championship tournament playoffs last week. But the Eagles forfeited the game and lost their place in the tournament, taking the position it was unfair and unsafe for a high school girls team to have to play against a team with a biological male on its squad.

Which, of course, it was and is.

[That’s another trans member of a women’s basketball team above, but illustrative of the problem…don’t you think?]

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Why Punish Dilbert For His Creator’s Rant?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ethics Alarms discussed the weirdly illogical, emotional and intentionally inflammatory reaction of cartoonist/pundit Scott Adams based on, of all things to freak-out over, a poll by Rasmussen that was even more unreliable than most polls, which is saying something. The fact that I assumed something like the resulting backlash would occur and that Adams should have expected it doesn’t make the reaction any less unethical.

Hundreds of newspapers have now stopped printing the popular workplace satire comic strip. The statements of the San Antonio Express-News, which is part of Hearst Newspapers, and the USA Today Network were typical. The Express-News said that it will drop the Dilbert comic strip “because of hateful and discriminatory public comments by its creator.” USA Today tweeted that it will stop publishing Dilbert “due to recent discriminatory comments by its creator.”

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From The Ethics Alarms Incompetence Files, Baseball Section, Unanticipated Consequences Tab

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Oh yeah, this is going to turn out well…

In the Boston Red Sox’s first Spring Training game, played with the new pitch-clock rules that will be followed this season, home plate umpire John Libka ruled that Atlanta Braves prospect Cal Conley was not in the batters box and “alert” to Sox pitcher Robert Kwiatkowski at the required eight-second mark. This mandated that an automatic strike be called. The automatic strike came at a 3-2 count with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied 6-6.

That ended the inning, and, since there are no extra innings in spring exhibition games, the game. The final score was 6-6.Neither Conley, nor the fans watching, nor the Red Sox, nor either team’s broadcasters had a clue what had happened.

How exciting!

The new pitch timer rule requires pitchers to take no more than 15 seconds to begin their delivery with the bases empty and 20 seconds with runners on base. The batter must also be in the batter’s box and “alert” to the pitcher—meaning ready to swing— at the eight-second mark. Thus the pitcher clock is also a hitter clock.

Morgan Sword, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations, recently called the pitch clock “probably the biggest change that’s been made in baseball in most of our lifetimes.” If it decides many games by cutting off rallies with the bases loaded, I suspect fans might be calling it something else.

Making material changes to the rules of a successful enterprise after many decades is something that should not be undertaken precipitously or with a “well, let’s see how it works out!” attitude. Such changes, if made, must also be communicated clearly and widely to the public, which MLB has not done in this case.

I see strong analogies to, for example, the 2020 mail-in ballot rules, among other public policy innovations.

Baseball, after all, is Life.

If It Is Unethical For CNN To Continue Putting Don Lemon On The Air, What Do You Call ABC Allowing “The View” To Rot Brains Daily?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Yes, that was fake Republican Ana Navarro spreading the word that blacks and Hispanics get sent to jail for years for stealing a pack of cigarettes. “The View” is the most-viewed news and talk program in daytime television, and is run by the ABC News division. The ABC News division is permitting outright, flagrant false information to be communicated to its dim and ignorant audience by this coven of fools. They make Don Lemon look like Edward R. Murrow.

ABC, do recall, is owned by Disney. Continue reading →

“The Great Stupid” Across The Pond: We Helped Save Roald Dahl’s Children’s Books From The Censors; Now They’re Coming For OO7

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

…who might soon be called “008” to soothe readers offended by the number seven. Seven deadly sins, seven dwarves, that creepy Morgan Freeman movie with Gwinneth Paltrow’s head in a box…it’s a touchy number, you have to admit.

I’d like to think in some tiny way Ethics Alarms helped spread the news of the despicable bowdlerizing of Dahl’s classics that resulted in his publisher backing down and adopting the New Coke solution to a fiasco: the anti-authors’ rights business announced over the weekend that it will henceforth offer “Dahl Classic” along with the vandalized “New Dahl.” Yeah, let’s see which sells more copies. There was hardly time to pop the champagne, however: we then learned that Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are being re-written for “modern readers“to omit alleged “racist language” and “racial references.” The censored novels will be published in April to mark the 70 years since “Casino Royale,” the first in the series, was published.

There’s nothing quite like honoring an author by defacing his most famous works. At least they’re leaving “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” alone. I think.

The indefensible conduct comes after Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, which owns the rights to Fleming’s work, commissioned a review by “sensitivity readers.” The British really don’t get that freedom of speech and expression thingy, do they? Neither does the rest of the world beyond our shores and porous borders. Now watch: U.S. progressives will argue that once again, the United States is out of step with its betters by not censoring literature and movies with the same wild abandon that it pulls down statues.

The disclaimer accompanying Fleming’s reissued novels, echoing Dahl’s publisher Puffin, will read: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”

If Ian Fleming “might be considered offensive” to the political correctness police, imagine what’s going to happen to Mark Twain.

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