A Popeye: I Have To Fisk This Smoking Gun Opinion Piece, Because My Head Will Explode Beyond Repair If I Don’t…[Part I: Why]

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

“It’s all I can stands, ’cause I can’t stands no more!”—Popeye, sailor and American icon.

The column (below) by periodic New York Times opinion writer Wajahat Ali has been bothering me for over a week now. The moment I read it, I wanted to rush to my PC and tear it apart. Then I began questioning the exercise on a cost/benefit basis. Lunatic, hateful, biased pieces like this come out in the mainstream media every day; I can’t, and shouldn’t, use my limited time for Ethics Alarms debunking them all, for to objective, discerning readers, they debunk themselves.

Yet, as Thomas More futilely, fatally and correctly maintained at his trial, silence implies consent. This stuff is poisonous to our society and civil discourse. Moreover, Ali’s bile is especially illustrative of the Left’s current anti-America propaganda: it hits almost every one of the Big Lies, false narratives, hypocrisies distortions and fear-mongering appeals to emotion that threaten to tear the nation apart. It transcends unethical to border on evil. So after having this thing impinge on my sleep for a fifth night—I’m not exaggerating— I have to vivisect this monstrosity, for my own sanity if for no other reason.

Here is the whole essay, which was originally published at the now thoroughly deranged Daily Beast. (There’s hope in this: maybe it was too far off the rails even for the Times.) Read it, please. Its title, flagrant clickbait, is “Is It Time for Me to Leave America?” (Go ahead and read it on Yahoo, where that link takes you.) I’ll be back soon in Part II to take it apart.

You can also read it below….

Continue reading →

Should Fox News Broadcast The Prime Time Hearings Of The House’s Partisan Jan. 6 Committee? Of Course Not. And Neither Should Any Other Network…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The mainstream media and the usual suspect in the world of punditry are having a particularly silly meltdown over the decision by the Fox News management not to treat the hyped Jan. 6 Committee hearings as anything other than what they are and have obviously been from the beginning: an unethical, biased, last-ditch effort to salvage the November mid-terms by painting the GOP as a threat to democracy—because a bunch of morons and assholes stormed the U.S. Capitol in response to President Trump’s irresponsible claims that the election had been “rigged” and “stolen.”

Meanwhile, Democrats and their legions are trying to intimidate the Supreme Court, undermine the Bill of Rights, legalize racial discrimination,, and bomb anti-abortion organizations. Yeah, these are the people who will “save democracy,” all right.

Continue reading →

Good. Now Do Female Gymnasts, Swimmers, Child Models And Actors

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The international governing body for figure skating, the International Skating Union, announced yesterday that it will gradually raise the minimum age for Olympic-level competition from 15 to 17.  Thus no skaters younger than 17 will be allowed to compete in the 2026 Milano Cortino Games.

The body suddenly figured out that there  young athletes competing in sports at a high level faced unacceptable risks, not merely physical injuries due to their immature physiques, but also “psychological injuries” which can have devastating effects on their mental, cognitive, and emotional health in the short and long term. Of course, they knew this before, and didn’t care as long as child champions brought revenue and visibility. But the ugly scandal resulting from Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test at the last Winter Olympic Games in the Nation That Shall Not Be Named mandated a Barn Door Fallacy reaction. Valieva was given a child’s pass that allowed her to compete unfairly against adults, became the center of controversy, and crumbled under the criticism and scrutiny. Ethics Alarms discussed the matter here and elsewhere.
Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Dunce, And That’s Not The Half Of It: ESPN Host Sarah Spain”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I confess: I was immediately drawn to Steve-O-in NJ’s comment because it gave me another opportunity to post my favorite ethics film clip of all, Sir Thomas More’s speech from “A Man For All Seasons.”

But Steve’s comment, on the post, “Ethics Dunce, And That’s Not The Half Of It: ESPN Host Sarah Spain,” is a worthy Comment of the Day on its own.

Here it is…

***

I have to laugh, because the same persons who want to come for the conservatives today were saying “First they came for the Muslims – and then we said, “not this time motherf***ers!” at the beginning of 2017.

These days it’s more like:

First they came for the Second Amendment, and I said nothing, because they said they were protecting schoolchildren.

Then they came for the Fourth Amendment – and I said nothing, because they said if you had nothing to hide, then you had nothing to fear.

Then they came for the Fifth Amendment – and I said nothing, because they were just streamlining the process to get bad people out of society.

Then they came for the First Amendment – and I said nothing, because they were just stopping the spread of disinformation and misinformation.

Then they came for me – and I was disarmed, cowed and silenced,with no protection, so I had no choice but to go quietly with them.

Morning Ethics Warm-up, 6/8/2022: The Thread Of The Year, And More

/ Jack Marshall / 77 Comments

I apologize for not posting anything in the last two days on the anniversary of D-Day. This past Memorial Day, Grace and I, and my sister were completely immersed in World War II as we honored my father, and I had watched “The Longest Day” again during the weekend. Somehow June 6 came up too fast this year. Even acknowledging its many flaws, my Dad liked that WWII movie far more than most, because all of the anecdotes (right out of Cornelius Ryan’s book, which is better than his screenplay) reminded him of his own weird experiences in combat. (Dad’s least favorite war movies? A tie between “The Battle of the Bulge—with barely any snow in evidence and Sherman tanks playing Tiger tanks, and “Saving Private Ryan.”)

D-Day also had a strange place in the Marshall family’s consciousness. Dad was scheduled to be an observer during the invasion, but was sidelined when an idiot in his platoon used the pin of a live hand-grenade to dig mud out of his boot, blowing up himself, two other soldiers and my father’s right foot, and sending Dad to a hospital for months. The surgeon who later fixed Ted Kennedy’s broken back rebuilt my father’s foot sufficiently that it could be stuffed in a boot to allow him to get back into the war during the Battle of the Bulge. But he liked to remind my sister and me that we probably owed our existence to D-Day, specifically the fact that he wasn’t killed “observing” it.

1. The arrogance of anti-gun zealots. I just inserted myself into a thread launched by a Facebook friend expressing horror that parents entering a pediatric hospital would (legally) carry their guns inside. One of the Facebook friend’s Facebook friends wrote “I’m sick of your rights” and another wrote,”No one needs a gun.” Signature significance in both cases, and I told them both why.

2. Ethics Alarms Thread of the Year. I spent a long time trying to choose which of the uniformly excellent comments on the post Update: The Great Stupid Meets The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, and decided that there were just too many. I therefore declare the whole thread Comment of the Day-worthy, something I’ve never done before, but, looking back, probably should have. Some highlights to send you over there:

  • “Remember that the people pushing for gun control laws are the same people pushing for restorative justice.”
  • “Forty percent of Americans believe in ghosts, and fifty percent think UFOs are alien spacecraft. Let’s not start making policy based on what people believe, especially the dim bulbs who answer phone surveys.”
  • “Wait! Are Democrats okay with convicted felons and the mentally ill being discriminated against? What’s up with that? Didn’t Terry McAuliffe get felons the right to vote in Virginia (because felons evidently always vote Democrat)? And the mentally ill are a protected group. They are allowed to live on the street and do whatever they want wherever they want to. Who’s really in favor of them not having the rights of all other people? Will the felon lobby and the mentally ill lobby stand for this?”
  • “It seems to be legal for the mentally ill to stab or beat people to death in one on one situations on the street. That results in a stern warning not to do it again. It also seems to be legal for the mentally ill to break into homes and kill people, even via gun violence. It is only when the mentally ill break into schools and commit mass murder that anyone cares, and even then you aren’t allowed to point out that untreated mental illness was the root cause…”
  • “Regarding “priorities”… there’s millions and millions of brains in this country. I’d be surprised if we can’t figure out five problems at once….”

And many more: those are just examples, not necessarily the highlights. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce, And That’s Not The Half Of It: ESPN Host Sarah Spain

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Yesterday, Ethics Alarms noted the fact that the Tampa Bay Rays had decided to brand themselves during “Pride Month” as LGTBQ boosters with yet another rainbow themed patch meant to go on player uniforms, and that five players had chosen to duck the pandering. Around the same time I was writing the post, ESPN hostess (I bet she hates being called that rather than “host.” Tough.) Sarah Spain went on a rant in which she called the Rays players who decided not to go along to get along “bigots.”

Nice. Also Stupid. Also unethical.

“[This] is what tends to happen when frivolous class isn’t affected by things. That religious exemption BS is used in sports and otherwise also allows for people to be denied health care, jobs, apartments, children, prescriptions, all sorts of rights. We have to stop tiptoeing around it because we’re trying to protect people who are trying to be bigoted from asking for them to be exempt from it, when the very people that they are bigoted against are suffering the consequences you say trying to be bigoted.”

Wait, this woman’s a host and the best she can do off-script is that gibberish? I could talk better than that after a closed head injury.

Continue reading →

Update: The Great Stupid Meets The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

This really is like one of the old horror movies, but scarier, and real. I have no idea what to do about it. The sudden and, though no one wants to admit it, coincidental wave of shooting episodes last month (and bleeding into this one, literally) might as well have been part of a conspiracy to freak-out the American public and  cowardly lawmakers into surrendering the Constitutional right to bear arms in self-defense.

As always, our democracy’s Achilles heel is public ignorance, and the anti-gun news media and the usual demagogues have done a bang-up job this time around of both exploiting the ignorance and adding to it. It is especially ironic that the same side of the ideological spectrum taking aim at the First Amendment with its cynical attacks on “disinformation,””misinformation” and “hate speech” are engaging in all three daily, indeed almost hourly, in order to finally crush the Second Amendment rights of law abiding and responsible citizens—so the people who pay no attention to laws anyway will somehow be dissuaded from gun violence.

Good plan!

The escalated assualt is simultaneously dumb, intellectually dishonest and unethical…but effective. And it is coming from all directions all at once, like the fast zombies in “World War Z,” as long as we’re using horror film analogies. In my annoyed and fevered state, I can’t even organize all of it coherently, so I’m going to resort to bullet points for now:

  • As I predicted when the Uvalde shooting first was reported, the Barn Door Fallacy is in full swing. The shooter was 18, so banning gun sales to anyone under 21 is one of the most popular “Do something!” measures, because the law will go back in time and stop Ramos from murdering all those kids. That’s because he bought his guns; never mind that Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, was also under 21, and just took his mother’s guns to go on his rampage. Since the privileges and responsibilities of adulthood mostly attach when one turns 18, the sudden conclusion that 18-year-olds are dangerously irresponsible lacks integrity and consistency. Is there a line there, or not? Why there? Why are people allowed to vote for who makes laws when we think they can’t be trusted to obey them? What’s magic about 21? If two or three shooters are over 21 and under 25, will “Do something!” mean that the right to own a gun will be limited again?

The Stupid! It BURNSSSS!

  • The lies (disinformation/misinformation/lazy, careless or deliberate confusion of terms and deceit) make fair and informed debate impossible. Semi-automatic rifles are called automatic weapons, “AR-15-style” is used without clarification; “weapons of war” is scary and useful as a cognitive dissonance trigger but meaningless; “assault weapon” has no agreed-upon meaning, other than “bad.” Those who wield this fog of language literally don’t care about meanings and definitions…
  • …bringing us to “comprehensive background checks,” another “Do something” trope. What does “comprehensive” mean? Under U.S. law, federally licensed gun dealers, importers and manufacturers must run background checks for all sales to unlicensed buyers. The law bans firearm transfers to anyone convicted of a felony or committed to a mental institution. But a private seller without a federal license doesn’t need to meet the same requirement. “Comprehensive” apparently means making private sales involve background checks as well; it also could involve adding more—much more—details about a purchaser to “check.” Regarding the latter, you don’t have to be paranoid to wonder what those details could entail.
  • Regarding the former: how would (or could) a private gun transfer background check law be enforced? Such laws would place a serious burden on the seller. What if I had a cash emergency and wanted to sell my WWII German Luger to a collector friend who had always admired it? Getting the background check would take too much time for my urgent cash needs. I know and trust the collector. If he doesn’t pay, take my gun and shoot up a school, how would the government ever find out about the transaction? Unenforceable laws are deceptive, pretending to be something they are not—effective. That’s unethical.
  • In order to pursue the (batty) argument that its the guns and not the sociopathic, law-defying, violent and often crazy people who use them that are the problem, the anti-gun mob is denying that the mental health of shooters is a primary issue. (This goes along, strangely enough, with the “blood on their hands” attacks on Republicans, arguing that they have not supported significant spending on mental health treatment—which continues to be hit-and-miss no matter how much money we throw at it.) Here’s the LA Times:

Blaming mental illness for mass shootings inflicts a damaging stigma on the millions of people who suffer from clinical afflictions, the vast majority of whom are not violent. Extensive research shows the link between mental illness and violent behavior is small and not useful for predicting violent acts; people with diagnosable conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are in fact far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence.

This is Yoo’s Rationalization, “It isn’t what it is,” to the max. People who are not mentally ill do not shoot up schools. They do not go on shooting sprees that are certain to get them killed themselves. They do not shoot people “to get famous.” Mass shooters, like serial killers are, by definition, nuts. Laws are not likely to stop them.

  • And then we have “red flag” laws, which the public tends to like in polls because, as with so many of the “do something” measures, respondents have not thought about what they are or mean.  These are laws that the government could easily expand to remove rights from citizens who have done nothing illegal, or who have engaged in conduct in the past that has been dealt with and is over with. “Red flag laws” are pre-crime punishment, and should be ruled unconstitutional, though there is no guarantee they would be.
  • Polls that do nothing but sum up mass ignorance and manipulated uninformed opinion are being used as authorities. Mother Jones (I know, I know) got all excited about s new poll published by CBS News that “found” that “three quarters of Americans believe we can prevent mass shootings if we prioritize the goal of doing so.” In other words, “Do something!” How do we stop illegal gun violence? “Prioritize it!” Oh! More than climate change? “Well, maybe not more than climate change.” More than inflation? “Well, no, inflation is killing us.” More than fighting “systemic racism”? Oh, no, nothing’s more important than fighting that! More than abortion? “Are you kidding! That’s the most important of all!” So “doing something” about gun violence is, at best, fifth on our list of priorities, even from the perspective of the Left…which means it’s not going to be “prioritized.”
  • Meanwhile, the public is being fed lies by the President of the United States. “We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons,” Biden said in his hysterical “do something” speech last week. “They’re the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity. Imagine. Imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued, where we’d be today. The gun industry’s special protections are outrageous. It must end.”

Ugh. Cigarettes are a consumer product that caused death and illness to uninformed users who had been deceived by manufacturers. If a driver uses a car to murder someone, can General Motors be sued? No. If someone beats in their wife’s brains with a baseball bat, can Hillerich and Bradsby be sued? No! Manufacturers are liable when their products are faulty and negligently produced. They are not liable, and should not be liable, when a purchaser uses the product illegally or negligently. All products have “that kind of immunity,” but when anti-gun zealots devised the idea of suing gun manufacturers anyway, a 2005 law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which shields gun companies from lawsuits based on the unlawful acts people commit using their products.

At the risk of repeating myself, “Ugh.” The Great Stupid and the Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck alliance is going to be much harder to fight off than Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man.

Was There Any Way For The Tampa Bay Rays To Support “Pride Month” On The Field Ethically? Nope!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The Rays, of baseball’s American League, are one of three teams, the others being the National League San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers, to incorporate Pride Month support in their uniforms. Five Rays decided to decline to wear the patch above: Brooks Raley, Jalen Beeks, Jason Adam, Jeffrey Springs and Ryan Thompson. There have been no such defections from their team’s mandated corporate position on the Giants or Dodgers—you know, California. I am willing to bet my head that there are many more than five players on the three squads who resent having to be a walking political statement, but who have calculated, “Well, it’s just a patch.”

The explanation of the spokesman for the five Rays players was weak , but about what I’d expect from a pro athlete. Jason Adam said,

Continue reading →

A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Reports A Fake Video As News In The Johnny Depp-Amber Heard Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
How embarrassing, but more than that, how infuriating.
Richard Winton, a 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Los Angeles Times, reported on the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation trial that consumed social media,
“At one point, actor Jason Momoa, star of ‘Aquaman,’ testified via live video in support [of] his co-star Heard. Without prompting, he said, ‘Hi, Camille,’ to Depp’s high-profile litigator, Camille Vasquez, a rising star in Orange County legal circles who quickly became the star of the trial as much as Depp and Heard.”

It didn’t happen. What Winton reported as fact was actually a faked video sent out on Twitter as a joke. To be clear, the reporter was pretending to report on what he had witnessed, but really took second-hand information as true, and it wasn’t. I once got a theater critic fired for writing a review of the second act of a show I directed when she had left during intermission. This is worse. The Times issued a terse correction stating, “An earlier version of this article included a paragraph about Jason Momoa testifying by video at the trial. The “Aquaman” actor did not testify.”

And? What is the paper going to do about a reporter who reports imaginary news as fact, when he’s too lazy to attend the event he’s supposedly reporting on? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Kim Phuc Phan Thi

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“I thought to myself, “I am a little girl. I am naked. Why did he take that picture? Why didn’t my parents protect me? Why did he print that photo? Why was I the only kid naked while my brothers and cousins in the photo had their clothes on?” I felt ugly and ashamed.”

—-Kim Phuc Phan Thi, the now 59 year-old woman (above). She was the screaming  9-year-old North Vietnamese girl shown in “The Terror of War”, the famous photograph by AP photographer Nick Uts showing her running naked and burned down a road after napalm was dropped on the village of Trảng Bàng in 1972.

I always  uncomfortable with that photograph from the moment I saw it, and thought it was cruel and unethical. Would the AP have published a similar photograph of a white American girl? I don’t know, but I don’t trust the Associated Press (or any press, at this point). It won Ut a Pulitzer Prize and helped energize the anti-Vietnam war effort in the U.S., but the photo (shown in the underlined link above) fails two basic ethics systems: Reciprocity, as in the Golden Rule, and Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which forbids using another human being as a means to an end. Can it be justified under Utilitarian principles, as a balancing of outcomes? Was the benefit of publishing the photo sufficient to make it ethical conduct, despite the harm it would do to an innocent child?

 Not on my scorecard.

Continue reading →