The Popular Culture Embraces Emerson College As Emerson College Embraces Anti-White Racism

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

As frequent readers here know, I frequently hear more ethics alarms in seemingly small things than in the major stories everyone else is talking about. This is one of those situations.

Boston’s Emerson College [full disclosure: my aunt got her speech degree there) is being promoted in the 4th season of Netflix’s cult fantasy/horror series “Stranger Things.” One of the shows heroines, Nancy Wheeler (played by Natalia Dyer), ostentatiously wears an Emerson T-shirt: she’s attending the liberal arts college in the 1980s, where the Stephen King-referencing show takes place. Now Emerson is cool. Copies of the shirt are being sold to support the victims’ families in Uvalde.

Emerson College is an enthusiastic agent of anti-white racist ideology that indoctrinates its students accordingly.

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A New Tale Of The Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck: The Home Test Cheating Algorithm

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Will there ever be any appropriate consequences for the Machiavellian politicians, incompetent health professionals, irresponsible teachers and fear-mongering journalists who collectively pushed the United States into a foolish, destructive and reckless lockdown in response to the Wuhan virus and its relatives? The harm inflicted on the nation, its culture and the public has been , and continues to be, catastrophic. In comparison to so many of the disastrous results of this deep self-inflicted wound, the travails of a young student unjustly accused of cheating doesn’t seem that consequential. What it demonstrates, however, is how many victims of the Wuhan Virus Ethics Train Wreck we don’t know about. I’m sure there are millions.

In truth, we know there are millions. For example, millions of people were forced to take bar exams, tests and quizzes alone at home on their laptops. Such conditions are not conducive to trustworthy or even meaningful tests, but never mind: the education community was willing to sacrifice learning for fear and bad science. Then there was the special bonus of getting rid of President Trump by knee-capping the economy.

At least remote proctoring companies boomed, offering web browser extensions that “detect keystrokes and cursor movements, collect audio from a computer’s microphone, and record the screen and the feed from a computer’s camera, bringing surveillance methods used by law enforcement, employers and domestic abusers into an academic setting.” Of course, as we learned in “War Games,” handing over critical tasks requiring judgments to machines has its drawbacks.

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Waiting For The Cool Cool Cool Of The Evening Ethics Breezes, 6/1/22: Hinckley, Depp, Wedding Snubs And Gun-Phobics

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I refused to do a post on the epicly stupid Johnny Depp/Amber Heard defamation trial (which I call the “Deppamation trial,”), but now that the verdict is in, I have some passing observations. If you haven’t heard, the jury vindicated Depp, awarding him Depp $15 million that due to a cap on Virginia’s punitive damages, will end up being only $10,350,000. Heard got an unsatisfying two million based on one of her allegations against Depp. Meanwhile:

  • In a healthy society, nobody would care. The media publicity the trial received, blotting out information on genuinely important events, is unforgivable. These are both sick narcissists, and Depp’s lawsuit was reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s insane defamation suit that ended up putting him in jail. Depp was revealed as a vicious creep, and Heard, whose fame depends on her association with Depp, was shown to be worse. Heard will lose money, but Depp, who actually is talented, now has the career prospects going forward of Kevin Spacey or Bill Cosby. But as he has hinted, he doesn’t care, as long as he stuck it to the former love of his life.
  • On Headline News this morning, they spent ten minutes analyzing this trial compared to 15 seconds on the Sussmann verdict.
  • If 10% of the fools that followed this idiocy spent the time reading Roe v. Wade, the Alito leaked draft, and District of Columbia v. Heller, instead, our society would have taken a major step toward responsible citizenship.

Yecchh.

1. I’m sure you will all be thrilled to hear that John Hinckley has been cleared to be a free man as of June 15. I know Jody Foster must be thrilled. I accept the conclusion that Hinckley was delusional when he shot Ronald Reagan, press secretary Jim Brady (inflicting permanent brain damage, a police officer and a Secret Service agent. Nevertheless, I believe that an assassin or would be assassin that inflicts such harm on the nation should never see the light of day again, no matter how mentally healthy treatment may render him. An assassin even crazier than Hinckley robbed the nation of President James Garfield, who might have been one of the great ones. We hanged him. I’m glad. Reagan was never the same after he was shot, and the least Hinckley should pay in compensation is his freedom.

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“Oh, That Wouldn’t Happen Here!” Wanna Bet?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

People always tell me they watch the BBC because it isn’t biased like American broadcast news. It must be the British accents: the BBC is relentlessly, overwhelmingly left-biased. This is a socialist nation that is smothered in political correctness. It’s at least as untrustworthy as any US news source.

Here’s a case in point: the BBC changed the testimony of a rape victim who referred to her alleged rapist as “him.” That was a reasonable choice on her part, because, well, because of the rapist’s “part.” Never mind: Facts Don’t Matter in jolly old England either: the victim’s words were changed to avoid “misgendering” the rapist in an article on the BBC website, which replaced every reference to “he” or “him” with “they” or “them.”

Wait—was it a gang rape? The BBC said in response to the episode was, “Our only intention when deciding on language is to make things as clear as possible for audiences.” Now that’s hilarious! In what universe is calling a single person “them” and “they” clearer than calling a rapist who did the deed with an attached male sex organ “he” and “him”?

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California Makes Its Values Depressingly Clear: Minority Privilege Over Children’s Lives

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Forget it, Jake, it’s California Town.

Two days after the Uvalde shooting, as all of California Democrats, progressives and anti-gun zealots were metaphorically screaming “Murderers!” at those who aren’t willing to gut the Second Amendment to pretend that various restrictions would stop evil lunatics like Ramos, the California State Senate voted to end a legal requirement that students who threaten violence against school officials be reported.

The old law mandated that whenever a school official was “attacked, assaulted, or physically threatened by any pupil,” staff must “promptly report the incident to specified law enforcement authorities.”

Gone. So, for example, the teacher in that screenshot above, taken from a video of an in-class assault, would not be obligated to report it. How odd that the state would eliminate such a restriction as the question rages over how so many people aware that the Uvalde shooter was an anti-social, gun-obsessed menace never alerted authorities. What could possibly be California’s thinking?

Oh, come on. It’s easy! I guessed—that proves it’s easy. The ACLU’s statement on why it supports the repeal tells all:

Decades of research show the long-term harm to young people of even minimal contact with the juvenile or criminal legal systems. Once students make contact with law enforcement, they are less likely to graduate high school and more likely to wind up in jail or prison. These harms fall disproportionately on students from marginalized groups: Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, as well as students with disabilities, are disproportionately referred to law enforcement, cited, and arrested.

Taking the photo above as an example, that student is merely the victim of centuries of systemic racism, and justifiably enraged by a racist white supremacist culture. Reporting him just compounds the injustice.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: The Sussmann Jury Forewoman

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“I don’t think it should have been prosecuted. There are bigger things that affect the nation than a possible lie to the FBI.”

—-The forewoman in the just completed Sussman trial, which acquitted Clinton Campaign lawyer Michael Sussman of lying to the FBI when he presented bogus evidence of Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia and said he was doing so as “a private citizen” when in fact he was carrying out the strategy of Hillary Clinton and her campaign.

The  breaking story yesterday, covered at Ethics Alarms here, had less than 24 hours hours of innocence in which the responsible response (and mine) was “we should give the jury the benefit of the doubt; they were in the courtroom for the whole trial, we were not.” Now we know, thanks to this woman, that the jury members were under the influence of progressive-programed  confusion and bias, and were either incapable of fulfilling the duties of a jury, or prompted by the leadership of this proudly unethical fool, chose not to. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Update On The Uvalde Massacre Extension Of The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, Part 5…”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Michael provides some much needed perspective (legally correct, too) on gun control issues in the wake of the Memorial Day weekend freak-out on the topic. You can read the Heller case here. It is amazing how many people (and pundits) shooting off their unregulated mouths on the topic of guns have never bothered to read the SCOTUS opinion that constitutes the latest boundaries on the Second Amendment.

Here is Michael’s Comment of the Day on this post:

***

Let’s get something correct in the debate about regulation of firearms.

Heller, often cited, does NOT preclude regulation. In fact, Justice Scalia’s (certainly not a left-wing progressive, rather a proponent of originalism) opinion suggests the contrary. Toward the end of the Heller opinion, he states “the problem of handgun violence in this country” is real and the government has “a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns.” The Constitutional requirement of Heller is that the government may not disarm citizens in their homes. Justice Scalia recognized regulations of several types of government regulation as presumptively lawful: “conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” bans on carrying weapons in “sensitive places,” and he noted the “historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of ‘dangerous and unusual weapons.’” See (for example) the FDR era laws that restricted guns presumed to be the type used in mob violence. Continue reading →

Observations On The Acquittal Of Clinton Lawyer Michael Sussmann

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

A federal jury today delivered what is widely being called a major setback to special counsel John Durham’s effort to get to the bottom, or at least part of the bottom, of the partisan Democratic plot to bring down the Trump administration. It acquitted lawyer Michael Sussmann on the charge that he lied to the FBI in 2016 while acting on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign, thus causing it to pursue a false investigation.

I must say: I thought this might happen. The Washington Post has long posited a defense that I regarded as cynical and depressing, but it felt like something a jury, especially a C.C. jury, might swallow. Sussman’s lies to the FBI didn’t matter, and neither did Hillary Clinton’s efforts to use what she knew was false information to sic the FBI on Trump. The FBI already knew that the case against Trump was weak and based on garbage, but it didn’t matter. Like so many others, it was determined to keep digging until they got him. And like the Sheldon-maddening argument on “Big Bang Theory” that nothing Indiana Jones does in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” matters (the Ark ends up buried anyway), if Sussman’s lie didn’t have any impact, it’s all “no harm, no foul.” The “Deep State” FBI was already so committed to bringing down Trump that it didn’t need fake clues to justify its investigation investigation. The FBI, like most of the D.C. establishment, was so certain that Donald Trump was…well, cue “The Birds” lady… Continue reading →

Post Memorial Day Weekend Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/31/2022

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

May 31st is one of the really bad dates in U.S. history.

On this date in1921, thousands of white citizens in Tulsa, Oklahoma attacked the city’s predominantly black Greenwood District, burning homes and businesses to the ground and killing hundreds of people. It was one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the nation’s history. Ethics Alarms noted the event last year, and the New York Times did an excellent retrospective here.

 Teaching such important race-related events in public schools isn’t “Critical Race Theory,” and the fact that the Tulsa race massacre—which is an accurate description whereas “Tulsa race riot,” the traditional name, is not—has been largely ignored (or covered up?) in school history curricula  is indefensible. The significant distinction is whether the event is placed in proper context with U.S. progress in race relations and equal opportunity.

Relegating it to the shadows of history, however, is not an option.

1. This time, Republicans really did “pounce.” EA has noted the observed phenomenon of the mainstream media deflecting from actual Democratic Party scandals by focusing on Republican/conservative reaction to the scandals. Indeed it is a marker of the mainstream media’s bias. However, this Newsweek headline is fair and appropriate: “MAGA Republicans POUNCE on Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s DUI.”

Why is a DUI offense by the Speaker of the House’s spouse worthy of so much commentary by the conservative media? It isn’t, that’s all. It is just a cheap way to try to embarrass Pelosi. Her husband wasn’t elected. He has no substantive importance to the nation at all. I don’t care about his DUI, his recent root canal, or the fact that he told a dirty joke to the plumber. None of that is news, or even interesting.

Every relative of a politician isn’t like Hunter Biden. Continue reading →

So You’re A Bigot, Then, And Discard Fairness And Reciprocity As Guiding Values! Thanks, Malcolm Gladwell! Good To Know…

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

I was once a big Malcolm Gladwell (“The Tipping Point”) fan before I figured out the pop psychology and “airplane book” author’s shtick. This latest revelation completes my disenchantment. On his website, Gladwell, discussing interview questions, wrote that he never hired any job applicants who answered in the negative when asked whether they could drive a manual transmission automobile. Those who have mastered a shift and clutch, Gladwell says,realize that the most fun cars in the world to drive are sports cars with manual transmission, and they like the idea of being able to turn a rote activity (driving) into an enjoyable activity. That, and his belief that people who drive a shift like “knowing how to do things that most people do not,” causes him to conclude that these are the only people he wants to work with

Got it. He’s a bigot and an asshole. If I were asked that question and I wasn’t interviewing for a chauffeur, I would ask, “What does that have to do with anything?” The question is really no different from asking one’s religion or party affiliation, ethnic background or position on abortion. It’s a justification for bigotry. The question would be enough for me to terminate the interview, and walk out. I don’t want to work with unfair people.

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