Well, I finally did it. As I was returning with Spuds for a walk, I saw a tall young man standing alone in the middle of the athletic field behind our cul-de-sac, and couldn’t retrain myself.

“Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question?” I began.

“No,” he said.

I introduced myself, and then asked, “Why are you in the middle of a field, on a lovely evening, with nobody withing sight except me and my dog, wearing a mask? You’re vaccinated, right.”

He responded that he was. After a “So?” from me, he said, “It’s just that my friends and I think it’s important to wear a mask to show that we support science; you know, in climate change and all that.”

I had obviously chosen—not poorly at all.

“Interesting”, I said. “So in a state where health officials have said masks are unnecessary—and I assume you know that masks like the one you’re wearing provide no protection at all—you are wearing it anyway to show you believe in science, though “scientists” have been wrong and misleading repeatedly regarding the pandemic, and every scientist agrees that masking in your current situation is pointless. Is that fair?”

“I guess so,” he said.

“I think you’re really wearing a mask to signal conformity, and you’re doing it a way that is anti-science in any way. Will you think about that? Maybe talk to your friends?”

“Sure,” the young man said. “I will. Thanks.”

“Thanks for chatting,” I said. And I left.

I noticed that he kept his mask on.

The damage that the politicized reaction to the Wuhan virus and its relatives has done to our culture, society, nation and social structure is immense, and I suspect its full effect won’t be revealed for a long time. Best to start the long, hard road of undoing it as quickly as possible.

1. I thought this was inevitable. A Los Angeles judge ruled that California’s recent law mandating that corporate boards meet racial, gender, ethnic and LGBT quotas violates the state Constitution. The ruling last week granted summary judgment to Judicial Watch, the conservative legal group seeking a permanent injunction against the measure. The lawsuit argued it was illegal to use taxpayer funds to enforce a law that violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. I think the American Bar Association’s recent declaration that all Continuing Legal Education programs must have “diverse” panels or not receive certification violates the same principle, and the ruling will bolster the opposition to it. The California ruling might reach the Supreme Court.

I wonder how new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will rule on it… Continue reading →

Way back when Ethics Alarms was just beginning, I got flamed by a bunch of nasty lawyers for suggesting that it was unethical for a criminal defense lawyer to use his website to perpetrate a hoax on April 1. You see, it wasn’t technically unethical because 1) it was April Fools and 2) the Rules of Professional Conduct prohibition against lawyers lying only applies to lies that would justify an ethics complaint. Obviously punishing a lawyer for an April’s Fools gag, even a bad one, wouldn’t be grounds for professional discipline, so I apologized and pulled the post. As a legal ethicist, I should have been clearer.

But I still believe it is unethical for lawyers to lie in public, whether it is sanctionable or not. And I still hold that April Fools posts and articles on platforms and sites that the public has been led to trust that are not obvious to all but complete mutton-heads are unethical, as in “wrong.”

In another realm, I just learned that my Wuhan-phobic sister has been exposed to the virus while on a cross-country trip. Now she doesn’t know what to do, since her destination is a home just as pandemic-phobic as she is, and if she is tested, as she will be required to be, and tests positive, they won’t let her inside the house. Nobody has taken more extreme precautions than my sister. Now she says that she hopes al the masks and shots and social distnacing that had made her live like a leper the past two years will protect her from infection, though she says there is no guarantee. Be proud of me: I didn’t say, as I desperately wanted to, “If you don’t have confience that all of that will protect you, why the HELL did the U.S. cripple its society, economy, education, social structure, politics, families, culture and trust based on politically-fueled and mainstream media-promoted hysteria?

1. Pssst…ethics dunces! It doesn’t matter. Now some sources are disputing the Oscars’ statement that Will Smith was asked to leave the ceremony after his slap-fest and refused. So what? Smith’s conduct isn’t mitigated either way. He should have left the auditorium without being asked immediately after battering Chris Rock and embarrassing the Academy. But he wanted to get his Oscar, because he’s a sociopath, or plays one at award ceremonies.

One more Will Smith note: Fellow Hollywood asshole Jim Carrey floated this excuse for his pal:

“I also think that people not unlike Will, or myself, we live in a lot of pressure. We set up a lot of pressure for ourselves, [and] we’re encouraged by this country to never stop and never be satisfied and never look at our lives and going, ‘You know what? I’m enough. I have enough. I’ve done enough…It’s beyond our bandwidth. And we’re starting to see the symptoms of what it’s like to be living beyond your bandwidth and cracking under the pressure. That’s what that was.”

Was it? It’s called being a grown-up and dealing with life, Jim. Normal people who don’t have millions in the bank and are adulated for making movies don’t get any sympathy from the law or society when they “snap.” The “little people” have a lot more pressure on them than Will Smith, and those who have grown up learn that they have to deal with it  without beating on whoever is nearby.

2. I confess! Schadenfreude! The Los Angeles Times, reports that Rep. Maxine Waters (Is she the worst Democrat in Congress? The amazing thing is that she isn’t, not even close )requested that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority show up in her district  to provide assistance to her homeless constituents. However, “an unofficial social media post erroneously promised that those who showed up would get rare vouchers for permanent, subsidized housing” resulting in homeless people showing up in packs while “heated arguments broke out among the hundreds of people who turned out for assistance.” Overwhelmed and surprised, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority workers “were unable to meet more than a small fraction of the need and left while throngs of people were still waiting for help.”

 Waters, quick-thinking as ever, tried to take control of the situation by telling the group that they needed to “go home.” Ha! The crowd of mostly homeless people responded to that angrily. As one participant shouted at Waters, “We don’t got no home, that’s why we’re here. What home we gonna go to?”

I’m sorry, but I have to laugh. Imagine what Waters would have said (or Don Lemon, or Nancy Pelosi, or “The Squad,” or Charles Blow, or Joy Reid, or Hillary Clinton, or Stephen Colbert…) if a President Trump had told a homeless group to “go home.” Waters’ response was pure Waters: she indignantly told the crowd, “There’s nobody in Washington who works for their people any fucking harder than I do!”

This is the ethical equivalent of “Do you know who I am?”

Finally, when The L.A. Times tried to interview Waters about the fiasco, she  threatened the reporter by saying “you’ll hurt yourself” if he proceeded to publish a story. “I don’t want you to start trying to write it, you won’t understand it,” she said.

Oh, I think we understand Maxine perfectly by now. Continue reading →