Ethics Dunce: National Guardsman Jon Lynch

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

There is no excuse for this.

New Hampshire-based Air National Guardsman Jon Lynch made a promotional ad for the social media platform TikTok, announcing,

“My name is Jon Lynch, and I’m a member of the National Guard. I use my TikTok channel to spread helpful and useful information to benefit military members and their families. TikTok allows me to give other military members and other families these experiences to appreciate this life that they’re in.”

TikTok is a popular app that allows users to upload their short videos, sometimes leading to lucrative social media stardom. It is owned by the China-based ByteDance technology company. TikTok is believed to be a source of data on Americans and American institutions for the Chinese government, as well as a potent propaganda vehicle.

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Final Ethics Observations On The Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The last time EA visited the corporate cautionary tale was on April 23, here. Today’s post should be the end-point for this particular ethics matter, but you never know.

1. This isn’t going to blow over. Some commenters here and professional woke spinners in the news media tried to make the case that the backlash over Bud Light putting trans performance artist/influencer Dylan Mulvaney on a Bud Light can and featuring the camp figure in a promotion pandering to LGTBQ audiences was short-lived and a “nothingburger.” That has not been the case. Bud Light sales have fallen significantly for the third consecutive week. Beer Business Daily described the response to the campaign as a “shocking deterioration” of Bud Light’s market share. “We’ve never seen such a dramatic shift in national share in such a short period of time,” the newsletter said. Meanwhile, Bud Light’s biggest competitors like Coors Light and Miller Light are gaining consumers while Bud Light loses them.

So the immediate ethics breach here was competence. Corporations are supposed to use marketing to increase sales, profit and favorable views of their products—in fact, they are obligated to. Using marketing and messaging to endorse controversial political positions as self-conscious virtue-signaling is irresponsible, and, frankly, stunningly stupid. Pick your analogy: Bud Light featuring Jane Fonda on a can during the Vietnam war? How about Cindy Sheehan on a can during the Bush administration? It is amazing that Bud Light’s management was so estranged from the views of its own market.

2. It is not the job of corporations to try to change the views of its market.

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Hollywood Writers Fear That AI Might Replace Them. Tough!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The first Hollywood strike in 15 years began today, as talks with the studios broke down and the economic pressures of the streaming era sent unionized TV and film writers to picket for better pay. The strike has shut down most late-night talk shows, so it is already benefiting society. “No contracts, no content!” sign-carrying members of the Writers Guild of America chant outside various office buildings in Manhattan and L.A. The last writer’s strike shut down the industry for 100 days and helped send California into a recession.

As usual, the strike is about money. But far down the list of objectives for its contract negotiations under a section titled “Professional Standards and Protection in the Employment of Writers,” the union says it wants to “regulate use of material produced using artificial intelligence or similar technologies.”

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Res Ipsa Loquitur: Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month, Minnesota State Sen. Calvin Bahr (R)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Stay classy, Senator.

Minnesota lawmaker Calvin Bahr took part in a Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor Zoom meeting that was streamed on YouTube yesterday. For some incomprehensible reason, he couldn’t be bothered to put on a shirt. When the time comes for him to vote on something or other, Bahr appears bare-torsoed with a School House Rock “I’m Just a Bill” background behind him, then the camera quickly switches off to show just his name on a black screen.

He appeared to be lying on his side. Maybe he’s sick: it doesn’t matter. He had an obligation to make an effort to be professional. He represents the citizens of Minnesota.

A few weeks before he died of cancer, John Wayne got out of bed, pulled on a wet suit to wear under his tux so his weight loss wouldn’t be so obvious, and appeared as a presenter at the Oscars. He got dressed because he respected the institution, his industry, and the American public he knew would be watching. Senator Bahr could have mustered the energy to pull on a damn shirt. That he appeared this way in an official meeting with his colleagues demonstrates an absence of dignity, decorum, respect and common sense.

Today’s IIPTDXTTNMIAFB…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

That’s “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.”

I hate quoting the GOP hit machine, but sometimes attention mus be paid.

All I ask is for the same standards of decorum, taste and civility to be applied equally, fairly and objectively. Is that so unreasonable?

I’m assuming that the “boy” Biden was addressing was not black. However, if Trump had dared to use a similarly condescending term, it would have been cited as further evidence of his autocratic instincts.

Signature Significance: Tucker Carlson Generously Demonstrates Why He Had To Be Fired

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

It was really nice of Tucker Carlson, while his former bosses were being condemned and attacked throughout the conservative news media, to go on a podcast and demonstrate exactly why any responsible news organization would be ethically obligated to show him the gate. I’m sure that wasn’t his intent, but the fact that he doesn’t even recognize the implications of his own words is an additional reason why he had to go. He’s irresponsible. He’s untrustworthy. He is a demagogue, and, I suspect, a sociopath. People like Carlson—Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, General Edwin Walker, Alex Jones, Robert Welch and so many more—abuse the First Amendment and are, to be blunt, destructive to the nation.

On the podcast of another Fox News exile , Carlson said,

“If you say, like, ‘What actually happened with building 7? Like that is weird, right? It doesn’t—like, what is that?’… If you were to say something like that on television, they’d flip out. They would flip out. So you’d, like, lose your job over that. It’s an attack on my country. Can I ask? I don’t really understand. Do buildings actually collapse? No, they—maybe they do. I don’t know. But, like, why can’t I ask questions about that?”

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Enjoying Seeing Open Borders Hypocrites Squirm, Part II

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It is rather glorious, though I can wipe the smile off my face by remembering how many doltish knee-jerks fall for the posturing of such unscrupulous politicians as Eric Adams, the mayor of NYC, and Lorie Lightfoot, the deservedly soon-to-be-unemployed mayor of Chicago. New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. are sanctuary cities (among others), which means that they literally invited illegal immigrants to defy U.S. laws and cross our borders. Welcoming them sent the message that major American metropolises would not assist in the enforcement of our laws, and the cynical non-performance of the Department of Homeland Security reinforced that message.

Now those cities are freaking out as the prospect of more illegals being transported to their metaphorical doorsteps and left there like abandoned babies of yore yawns before them. (Good.) The Title 42 policy, which is about to expire with the already unethically extended pandemic public health emergency, will no longer be around to discourage border-crossers, and it is estimated that 10,000 of them will arrive daily once the public health restrictions end. As usual, it will be the border towns that bear the brunt of the chaos, though those municipalities are emphatically not sanctuaries. Texas governor Greg Abbott, and probably some other governors as well, will resume his policy of busing as many of the invaders to sanctuary cities as possible, causing sanctuary city mayors to cry out indignantly about having to deal with the problem they helped create.

Part I of this theme, if you have forgotten, was posted here last September. That’s when the smug little enclave of Martha’s Vineyard, which sported “Illegals welcome!” signs like this…

was suddenly faced with actual people arriving. The islanders did not take it well. The towns treated the “migrants” little better than Alex Kintner-eating sharks, and quickly shipped the newly arrived border-defiers to a military base, triggering MSNBC’s progressive hacks and Hillary Clinton to claim that governors who transport illegals to welcoming shores areengaged in “human trafficking.” This was both legal and logical nonsense. Then Gavin Newsom, whose whole state is a “sanctuary,’ accused Abbott of “using kids as political pawns.” This raised raised the bar in the hypocrisy competition, for, as the EA post noted, “The Open Borders progressives have applauded the illegal use of children by border-breaching aliens, and revved up the “Think of the children!” chorus to a scream when President Trump had to separate alien children from illegally migrating parents in the same emergency enclosures Obama used…”

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A Bar Owner Learns That If You Are Going To Grandstand On A Principle You Better Be Ready To Accept The Consequences

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

At least I hope that he’s learned that. Right now, he looks like a phony, a hypocrite, and an idiot.

First, McKinley Minniefield, the owner of Fairfax Bar and Grill in Bloomington, Indiana, a college town where the woke wun fwee, issued a ringing statement on Facebook informing patrons that those who objected to transgender performance artist Dylan Mulvaney’s embrace by Bud Light would no longer be welcome in his establishment. “We are tired of all of the hate. We are very open to debate and discussion and it’s truly a shame that we can’t have open conversations about this important political and cultural topic,” Minniefield wrote. “Unfortunately due to all of the bigotry and hatred that has surfaced around the Bud Light controversy any patron wanting to voice their concerns about the issue will be immediately asked to pay their bill and leave our establishment.”

How collegiate of him! He’s open to debate and discussion, but not if the views discussed are the “wrong” ones.

“If you are intolerant of other humans of any kind, we ask that you keep your opinions to yourself. Should you feel the need to discuss this matter in public you will be asked to leave. We will not tolerate intolerance here,” the post continued. You would think the obvious contradiction in that last bit would have tipped the bar owner off that he was on metaphorical thin ice ethically, but apparently not.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: San Francisco Homeless Resident Joseph Peterson

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“I just stole to eat.”

 —Joseph Peterson, a homeless man in San Francisco, lamenting the demise of the Whole Foods in his neighborhood and attempting to draw a material distinction between the rampant theft from the store by those seeking to sell what they stole, and his own shoplifting.

And there it is! In such carefully crafted rationalizations lie the seeds of societal rot. Peterson thinks his personal shoplifting—he cops to stealing macaroni and cheese and chicken from the hot food bar at the now closed grocery store a number of times, but believes that his theft is justifiable, unlike those who wanted to sell their heist for cash. Also believing his thefts were justifiable are many of San Francisco’s elected officials. They also believe that the “bad” shoplifters in Peterson’s view are equally justified, and in fact they are. What’s the ethical difference between stealing food to eat it, and stealing food to sell and use the money for other needs? There is none. In both cases, the expense of the food stolen is borne by other city residents, who will have to pay higher prices for their food, unless the prices become so high that they resort to theft as well.

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From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files: This Is The Level Of Critical Thought Being Cultivated At The University of North Carolina

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Yes, these students believe that bumper stickers and lawn signs are profound revelations of discovered truth.

In related news, some UNC students “drove home” because they “were scared for their safety in anticipation” of Mike Pence speaking on campus. That’s Mike Pence—you know, the almost invisible VP in the Trump administration who allowed the cast of “Hamilton” to harass him at a performance, and who will soon take his place in history among so many irrelevant and forgettable Vice-Presidents like Walter Mondale and Dan Quayle.

Scary!