2023: More SCOTUS Ethics Alarms

July 3, 2023July 12, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

July 3 is a major date in U.S. history, slammed as it is between the epic significance of July 2 and 4 in the birth of our nation, and representing the crucial final day in the battle of Gettysburg, which in retrospect we can see as the critical moment when that nation was preserved as one.

Pickett’s Charge and the too little noted role of Gen. George Armstrong Custer have many ethics lessons to teach: the annually re-posted Ethics Alarms essay on those topics are here.

1. Get woke, go broke, and make someone else pay the price…Disney has been taking multiple hits as a result of its current mouse-eared masters determination to take sides in the culture wars, a one way ratchet that as Bud Light and Target (among others) have discovered, there is no way to backtrack or repent. Now it appears that its latest summer blockbuster attempt, “Indiana Jones and the Graying Temples of Doom” or whatever the misbegotten project is being called, is having approximately the same level of audience interest as, say, a sequel to “Body Heat” featuring the now 200 pound Kathleen Turner. When the most positive movie reviews say, “It really isn’t as bad as everyone expected,” you know there’s a problem. So how is Disney fixing the problem? By gutting the other businesses it owns! ESPN and National Geographic are the latest victims. Meanwhile, there are no signs that Walt’s wounded cultural icon is retreating to the neutral position it should have maintained all along.

2. Gaslighting from the Times (again). The more I think about the Times headline, “With Supreme Court Decision, College Admissions Could Become More Subjective,” the worse it seems. Is the Times telling us that using the color of an applicant’s skin as a determinant was being “objective”? Is it implying that anyone is arguing that deciding among many more qualified applicants than Harvard can hold (that’s why God made Yale!) is possible without considerable subjectivity? This is one more example of how the SCOTUS decision is being distorted in order to mislead the 99% of American who either won’t read the decision or won’t understand it if they do. It’s really a pretty simple ruling. Colleges can make their choices on the basis of many subjective judgments, but U.S. law and the Constitution forbid discriminating on the basis of race.

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Pro Sports’ Stunning Hypocrisy On Gambling

July 3, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

From ESPN:

“Isaiah Rodgers and Rashod Berry of the Indianapolis Colts and free agent Demetrius Taylor were suspended indefinitely — through at least the 2023 season — for betting on NFL games last season. In addition, Tennessee Titans offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere was suspended six games for betting on other sports at the workplace. The four suspensions were announced Thursday by the NFL. The Colts subsequently announced that both Rodgers and Berry have been waived as a consequence of their suspensions. “The integrity of the game is of the utmost importance,” general manager Chris Ballard said in a statement. “As an organization we will continue to educate our players, coaches, and staff on the policies in place and the significant consequences that may occur with violations.”

Meanwhile, while watching the Boston Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays yesterday, I noticed that about 75% of the commercials were promoting on-line betting on baseball games, including that baseball game. At one point the Red Sox play-by-play announcer read the over-under odds on the game’s total runs and other odds. Several of the gambling ads featured David Ortiz, the Red Sox icon who is about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

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Soledad O’Brien’s Unethical, Useful Affirmative Action Tweet, And Related Matters…[Updated]

July 2, 2023July 3, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Gee, it’s nice to have the smug, biased, poisonous Soledad O’Brien to kick around again. The unethical broadcast journalist of color who left her news show-hosting role with CNN in 2013 to cash in with podcasting and other syndicated ventures that spared the general American public by keeping her toxic influence limited, sent that outrageous tweet above in response to an Asian American women’s expressed satisfaction that college applicants who looked like her could no longer be legally handicapped when they apply to educational institutions.

It’s reassuring to know O’Brien hasn’t changed; after all, so little seems reliable or permanent any more. Her offensive and obnoxious tweet also neatly illustrates one important side benefit of the Supreme Court’s opinion last week striking down racially biased admissions policies, aka “affirmative action,” at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. The reactions to the ruling during the Woke World freakout are revealing so much about so many of its ethics dunces and villains. We should all be grateful.

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“They’re Here!!!” How Do People Get This Way, And Why Do They Now Think It’s To Their Benefit To Display Their Malady?

July 2, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

I usually keep a watchful eye on advice columns, especially “The Ethicist,” Carolyn Hax and a few others, but have been a bit lax of late. Thus I missed this astounding letter sent to “Ask Amy,” which was bought to my attention by loyal reader and frequent commenter Jeff.

Hold on to your heads or erect signs nearby warning others that they are in a potential head-explosion zone…

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The Merchant Checkout Scam

July 2, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I feel like an idiot.

PetsMart asks me to contribute a few bucks to dog rescue organizations when I check out. Oh sure, why not? 7-11 has a jar where you can drop change to help Jerry’s Kids, or what ever that organization goes by these days. Hell, I’ll throw in some coins, at least when the jar hasn’t been stolen. These “oh, by the way, as long as you’re here” fundraising asks are so common—“Would you like to ’round up’ today, sir?”—and routine that I usually accede to them, and most of the time, don’t really know what I have contributed to.

That ends now.

Haggen, with 2,200 stores in 34 states and one of the grocery store chains owned by Albertsons Companies, including Safeway, Shaw’s, Vons, and Randalls, asks customers during checkout to donate to a pool of organizations promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.” How many customers know what they are supporting? How many think DEI is just the acronym for the latest dread disease, like “COPD”? How many think about what they are giving money to when they are solicited in the middle of a basic transaction that one is seeking to complete as quickly as possible?

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On The Trail Of The Great Stupid…

July 1, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

These signs were allegedly posted yesterday in response to the Supreme Court’s hay trick yesterday. If genuine—and who knows?—‘s staff the owner of the establishment is a medical miracle, apparently living without a brain. As simultaneous virtue-signaling and IQ 80 signaling, this is special. Let’s see: the Supreme Court did not rule that businesses can discriminate. How will the store’s staff identify “Trump supporters”? How often does a church walk in a store to buy anything? Do churches even fly flags? I’ve never seen one.

Bias makes you stupid, but it can’t make someone this stupid unless he or she is well on the way already.

Celebrities Abusing Free Speech, Case # 708,666,213,45 (Since 2017): WNBA Player Natasha Cloud

July 1, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

(Of course, the number in the title above is just an estimate. It might be more.)

The first ethics problem with celebrities mouthing off in public about matters they know nothing about is that they have an undeservedly out-sized metaphorical megaphone. The second problem is that foolish adults and immature kids think that someone being rich and famous means that that they possess special skills and powers of perception beyond whatever expertise it was that made them that way. It’s the “they must be smarter than I am, because they’re richer/more famous/more successful than I am” fallacy. The third problem is that so many celebrities in this category believe their own hype, and really do think their opinion is more valid than the average guy on a bar stool.

The fourth ethics problem is that the news media reports what these Dunning-Kruger Syndrome victims say, which is the journalistic equivalent of spraying deadly viruses via aerosol cans in a crowded stadium.

Today’s example of this ugly, persistent, and probably unpreventable phenomenon is the WNBA Washington Mystics Natasha Cloud, who is generously called a “star” in most reports. (She’s averaged 7.5 points a game.) I question whether any WNBA player qualifies as a star, but that’s just me.) She’s been shooting off her mouth since May, when she told the Philadelphia Inquirer :

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Ethics Observations On The Left’s Unethical Three Freakout Day

July 1, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Yesterday’s clean and persuasive Supreme Court decision finally striking down racial discrimination in university admissions after decades of pretending it wasn’t the Consitutional offense it was was followed by two more sound Constitution-based decisions that were as important as they were necessary. All three were quickly attacked as “partisan” and “extreme” when they were neither, except to those who find the boundaries imposed by our nation’s traditional democratic principles overly obstructive to their schemes.

Finally ruling on a lawsuit brought by six state governments, the Supreme Court rejected President Biden’s insane $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan as illegal because it was never authorized by Congress. In a cynical, Harry Reid-ish strategem to buy the 2022 mid-term elections, Biden had announced a $430 billion gift to mostly middle-class and wealthy citizens who were unable or unwilling to do what millions of Americans in their exact situation had done: paying back money they owed for a benefit they had received. In many ways it was progressive irresponsible government at its worst. The Constitution gives Congress, not the the White House,the power to determine how federal funds are spent. As Illya Somin wrote yesterday, “If the administration had won, Biden and future presidents would have been empowered to use vague statutes to usurp Congress’ constitutional control over the federal budget. Moreover, because of the context for this case, it also would have allowed the president to abuse emergency powers for partisan ends.”

The “partisan” accusation was especially dishonest (Vox: “The Supreme Court’s lawless, completely partisan student loans decision, explained”) since that famous right-wing partisan Nancy Pelosi had endorsed the position of the SCOTUS majority just two years ago, saying, “People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.” Chief Justice Roberts included her statement in his opinion for the majority, but facts don’t matter. The increasingly unhinged progressive mob, aided and abetted by the mainstream media, pronounced the decision the product of an “extreme” conservative majority running amuck.

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Ethics Quiz: “Erica Marsh” [Corrected]

June 30, 2023June 30, 2023 / Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The tweet above has “gone viral” with its seemingly approving statement of the underlying arguments being raised in protest of yesterday’s SCOTUS decision ending affirmative action in universities. Conservative pundits and wags are using it to mock the hypocrisy and racism of progressives, some apparently believing the tweet is sincere, others believing it is satire but treating is as genuine anyway. The low-IQ quadrant of Woke World like the tweet because its denizens can’t detect its glaring idiocy; the smarter segment is outraged at the tweet’s blood-drawing power, and reacting like this: