Many tennis pros including stars like Serena Williams (recently retired) were coached from the stands by their personal svengalis during matches. This was against the rules, as well it should be. A tennis match is supposed to between the players on the court, not the players plus a brain trust making in-match decisions for them. Coaches gesticulating and communicating strategy was considered cheating.
Ah, but it was hard to catch, and “everybody did it.” Serena Williams’s coach was signaling to her during the 2018 U.S. Open, and got caught. After that match, Williams’s then-coach Patrick Mouratoglou told ESPN that he had tried to signal Williams but he didn’t think she saw him. (Theory: if you cheat but it doesn’t work, it’s not cheating. Rationalization: “No harm, no foul.”) He added that “every player” is coached during matches. (Rationalization: “Everybody does it.” )
It took a while, but in the tradition of cowards and ethics weenies throughout history in too many fields to list, the ATP has decided to allow its players to be directed by allies in the stands. It’s a “test,” allegedly, one which began the week of July 11. Of course it will be “successful”: it will eliminate cheating! Continue reading →
I couldn’t decide what to call this story out of Omaha, Nebraska, but it it did make my head explode.
Catholic Charities of Omaha Executive Director Denise Bartels thought, if you can call it thinking, that an unannounced active shooter drill was a peachy keen idea, and that five days after the Buffalo supermarket shooting in May was the perfect time to stage it.
Yes, she’s a moron. So were Catholic Charities’ compliance coordinator, Carrie Walter and Security Director Mike Welna who also approved this crack-brained scheme that was so obviously irresponsible and dangerous that a child could have figured out that it shouldn’t happen. Unfortunately, no children were employed in the organization’s management, only stupid adults.
It appears to be a triumph of “ick” over both law and ethics.
Kobe Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, was awarded $16 million as her part of a $31 million jury verdict Wednesday against Los Angeles County. Deputies and firefighters had shared gruesome photos of the NBA star; their 13-year-old daughter, Gianna; and other victims killed in a 2020 helicopter crash; the family of those other victims received the rest of $31 million. The nine jurors unanimously agreed with Vanessa Bryant and her attorneys’ argument that the photos invaded her privacy and caused emotional distress.
I’m sure they caused emotional distress. But how can an event that occurs in public be declared sufficiently private to have the protection of the right to privacy? If a journalist had taken the photos and published them, or shared them on a news website, presumably there would be no way Bryant’s widow would have a cause of action. I don’t see how a bystander with a cell phone could be blocked or sued either. These pictures were shared mostly among employees of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s and fire departments.They also were seen by some of their spouses and in one case by a bartender at a bar where a deputy was drinking. Well not to be unsympathetic, but so what? How does the right to privacy make reality a personal property protected by the law? If the bloody crash occurred where a crowd of a hundred people could see it, how would the law black them from taking photos and showing them to friends?
A much-esteemed member of the Ethics Alarms commentariate alerted me yesterday that he would be eschewing the blog indefinitely because it was making him anxious and depressed. I’m glad he won’t be reading this post. It made me anxious and depressed.
Fresh off of yesterday’s note about the woman who asked “The Ethicist” whether she was ethically obligated to “out” a friend at work who harbored horrible conservative opinions—you know, like not believing that there is a Constitutional right to kill human fetuses—and news of another study showing that Democrats increasingly don’t want to associate with anyone not buying into their progressive, crypt-totalitarian world view (I can’t locate the recent one right now; a similar study from last December found that “5% of Republicans said they wouldn’t be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats,” and “71% of Democrats wouldn’t go on a date with someone with opposing views, versus 31% of Republicans.”), comes more evidence that hate-mongering and Big Lies are working for the Left. They will destroy the democracy in order to save it, and promoting incurable divisiveness and distrust is just the way to do it.
1. There was a depressing question to the New York Times’ “The Ethicist Column.” What is depressing is that anyone would need to ask it. “The Ethicist,” Kwame Anthony Appiah, gave the right (and obvious) answer, but it shouldn’t take an ethicist to know this. The inquirer wrote,
Nearly nine years ago, I befriended a woman at work who, as I learned over the years of our now strong friendship, is staunchly pro-life. For her, the argument is both scientific and religious: Life starts at conception, and abortion is murder (no exceptions). She is morally consistent, though, in also being against the death penalty and in seeking out stronger social programs for families, like paid parental leave. We no longer work together, but we remain close friends and frequently discuss our views on abortion (I am pro-choice). Having a stronger understanding of one pro-life ideology has, I feel, expanded my thinking. I believe she is a good person who cares about the world immensely.
Especially after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, though, I struggle with having a friend who supports what I think is a restriction of my rights to make my own choices about my body. I struggle, too, with what I think of as duplicitousness: She actively restricts who she tells about her pro-life views, because she fears it will hurt her advancement prospects and could end friendships. She hopes people will see her as a good person and not judge her first on her anti-abortion views. I cannot decide if this is lying. And while I disagree with her views, it is the potential lying that is most questionable to me.
Maybe it’s like being queer and choosing to stay in the closet, but there’s the issue of what is a choice and what is inherent. Is it right for her to withhold the truth, or even lie, to protect herself, for the sake of her reputation and friendships? Is it OK if people do not want to be friends with or work with someone who has views like hers? I struggle with the idea that she is able to protect herself from the fallout of people knowing she is anti-abortion when implementing her views would take away rights that many people see as vital to living a life with dignity.
What a biased, self-satisfied, arrogant, undemocratic and unethical person “Name Withheld is.” And more like this are being churned out by the Woke Factory every minute. Continue reading →
“Well, I don’t think it’s forever irreparably damaged anyone.”
—Dr. Anthony Fauci, architect of the disastrous Wuhan virus response, to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto’s question, “In retrospect doctor, do you regret that it went too far? … Particularly for kids who couldn’t go to school except remotely, that it’s forever damaged them.”
How Clintonian of the good doctor, picking up on Cavuto’s awkward “forever” and adding “irreparably” to make it seem especially extreme. Maybe the lockdown forever damaged people, but it didn’t forever irreparably damage people. The lockdown caused more than 200,000 small busineses to shut down during 2020 alone. Gee, is that “forever enough”? It murdered the economy, the arts, and sports; it was significantly responsible for the George Floyd riots. The education and social development of young children were indeed retarded permanently by the isolating experience of remote schooling, as increasing numbers of assessments indicate. The corruption of US elections in 2020 arising out of the lockdown did long-term damage to the public trust in elections; whether it is “forever permanent” is yet to be seen.
It wrecked our small business, our savings, and our development permanently.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) is one of the most dishonest, hyper-partisan and untrustworthy of all members of Congress, so naturally he can do nothing right in the eyes of the conservative media. Thus his Twitter rebuke of Florida’s governor was widely mocked by the Right. Here’s RedState:Continue reading →
Let’s be fair and clear: golfer Hailey Davidson is not like Lia Thomas, who has crushed collegiate swimming competition by just “identifying” as female. Davidson went all the way, if you know what I mean. She is about to become the first transgender woman to earn a Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour card by excelling in the first two qualifying rounds in the first stage of the LPGA and Epson Tour Qualifying School in Palm Springs.
Still, though she now lacks the capacity to produce male hormones, Hailey competed as a male golfer as recently as 2015, and had the permanent advantage of going through puberty as a male. Though she claims that her drives off the tee have diminished since her transition, the question remains, is it fair for her to compete in a sport against women who have never been anything but. 18 states have outlawed transgender students from competing in girls’ sports. Golf, however, is not weightlifting, and some female pro golfers have competed in men’s tournaments.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day...
Is it fair to allow a transgender female to compete against biological females in golf?
Increasingly embarrassing New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation last week officially eliminating the word “salesman” in official parlance and replacing it with “salesperson.” “Jobs have no gender, but unfortunately, many of our state’s laws still use gendered language when discussing professions that are practiced by people of all genders,” state Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-Nassau) said of the bill she sponsored with Assemblyman Danny O’Donnell (D-Manhattan).
No, unfortunately the legislators’ political party is now addicted to Orwellian GoodSpeak measures, as it tries to control thought by restricting language.
The new law also replaces “his” or “her” with “their” in relevant statutes affecting the real estate industry. Other new Big Brother laws in New York ban the official use of “mentally retarded” and “inmate” in favor of “developmentally disabled” and “incarcerated person.”
Did you know that Donald Trump and Republicans pose an existential threat to democracy? Continue reading →
As Bill Maher would say: “New rule!” I am no longer tolerating rude, nasty, disrespectful clerks, waiters, or service providers of any kind. Gus McRae’s handling of an obnoxious bartender in the memorable scene above from “Lonesome Dove,” which I have come to regard as the best Western drama everput on a screen, high praise from me, may be a bit extreme, but only a bit. The frequency of insolence and general surliness from such employees has increased wildly in recent years—theories welcome— and the only way to stop the unethical trend is to resolve to make as much trouble for such jerks as possible. a) Tell them off. b) Complain to their supervisors. c) Tell the story to online consumer resources. d) Write to headquarters, and e) Don’t give up (I am still fighting it out with CVS over a complaint I registered almost six months ago.) I just walked out of a Staples after not one but two employees treated me like a bug, and resolved never to let such conduct pass again.
1. The “Pity the poor murderer!” defense is unethical, and should be banned. Melisa McNeill, the lawyer for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nicholas Cruz, is making the standard defense argument for monsters who have no other plausible defenses. Cruz never had a chance, he has bad parents, he had various maladies, he couldn’t help himself. This is an appeal to emotion over law or reason, a direct offspring of Clarence Darrow’s position that it is cruel to punish any criminals because they had no free will. The obvious rebuttal to the disingenuous and desperate defense is that millions have grown to adulthood with as many disadvantages or more and not decided to massacre innocent children.
“Wounded and damaged people wound and damage other people because they’re in pain,” McNeill told the jury in her opening statement at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale. “Nikolas was poisoned in the womb.”
Gee, there’s a “Make someone massacre high school students” poison? I did not know that!
This is no more nor less than prejudicing the jury. Once it is determined that a killer is legally sane, such defenses should be illegal.
2. I’m trying to think of the last time the District of Columbia didn’t have a ridiculous and incompetent mayor. It might be Marion Barry, who was sometimes ridiculous but never incompetent. Muriel Bowser might well be the most ridiculous and incompetent yet. Her requests for National Guard deployment to help the poor District, a “sanctuary city,” deal with the 7000 illegal immigrants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) started busing the Capital in April show astounding hypocrisy, not to mention stupidity. If the Pentagon granted her request, it could not avoid doing the same in the border states, which are often seeing more than 7000 illegals in a day.Continue reading →
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