Hump Day Ethics Jumps, Bumps And Lumps, 2/2/2022

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Nothing like dancing camels to end a perfect day. If only this had been a perfect day…

Meanwhile, I’m so proud! Having told my undergraduate institution that it had so embarrassed me that I would not be attending my BIG reunion this Fall, which I once was looking forward to greatly, it was thrilling to see my law school alma mater, which I also worked for over the next four years after graduation (It liked me! It really liked me!), receive a major honor. Yes, The FIRE named Georgetown University Law Center one of the 10 Worst on its yearly list of educational institutions that do not adequately respect and bolster freedom of speech.

Congratulations, GULC! You’ve worked hard for this the last few years, and the honor is richly deserved.

1. Quit, Whoopi, but let me write your resignation letter. It is being reported that Whoopi Goldberg is furious that she was suspended by ABC for her dumb, ill-considered, offensive but provocative comments about the Holocaust on the dumb, ill-considered, offensive but provocative show “The View.” Her worst statement? I vote for “Well, this is white people doing it to white people. So, this is y’all go fight amongst yourselves.” That was part of her explanation of why the “Final Solution,” in which Hitler’s crazies decided to see the purification of the white race by exterminating “lesser races” like the Semites—just guess what would have happened to the Whoop’s people when Germany took over the U.S. by getting the A-Bomb first!—wasn’t about race. She feels, we are told,“humiliated” at being disciplined  after she followed their advice to apologize. No, no, that’s not what Whoopi should quit over. Charles C.W. Cooke explains it well in “Whoopi Goldberg’s Suspension from The View Is Illiberal and Irrational” at the National Review. Meanwhile, many are asking the unanswerable question, how come Disney, who owns ABC, fired actress Gina Carano when she said on social media—not on TV, not under Disney’s banner, that the repressive political speech climate reminded her of Nazi Germany. The “Mandalorian” star was also dropped by talent agency UTA and Lucasfilms, leading some writers to compare her treatment to the Fifties blacklist. Whoopi got a relatively minor two-week suspension. Double standard there, obviously: Whoopi is a black progressive, Carano is a white conservative. Neither should be punished for an opinion unrelated to their competence at their job. If Whoopi quits, she could do some good by making it clear that it’s in defense of free speech and people being unafraid to speak freely. Continue reading →

Today’s Ethics News For The Nation’s Most Unethical Sports League, Part 2: The NFL, Race, And Brady

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The NFL had a downturn in TV ratings after its stars started kneeling during the National Anthem to protest, well, something. The protesters didn’t agree, their explanations were incoherent, and the stunt was generally annoying to spectators and fans. The League lacked the courage and integrity to stop it, but the kneeling started tapering off in 2020. For 2021, the NFL grovelled for approval from the relatively few social justice warriors who watch pro football by playing the so-called “Black National Anthem” at every game. This is offensive, as it constitutes a statement contradicting the ideal and the fact that Americans are Americans, and we don’t need no stinking color-coded anthems.

And that’s not even the worst of it. Players were allowed this season to choose from 6 progressive, racially divisive, anti-white bigotry messages to plaster on their headgear (which does not prevent brain damage, put the helmets are pretty, and now, woke): “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” “It Takes All of Us,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Inspire Change” and “Say Their Stories.”

Whose stories, you ask? Oh, just the stories of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, whose deaths had nothing to do with racism and have been hyped to encourage the hatred and distrust of police.

Thus this race-based development is fascinating:

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Today’s Ethics News For The Nation’s Most Unethical Sports League, Part I

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It’s Super Bowl month, and I will periodically be reminding readers of just how unethical it is to support the National Football League, which allows criminals to play, enables racial division while doing nothing substantive to address its own “diversity and inclusion” problems, is a Black Lives Matter propaganda distributor, and most of all, knowingly places the brains and health of its players at risk, confident that the price of paying periodic multi-millions to settle serial class actions will be pocket-change compared to the profit the NFL makes sending its employees into premature dementia. This is one of the major ethics corrupters in American culture.

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“Democracy Dies In Darkness” And Civic Literacy Dies By Trusting The Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

A few days ago, we were treated to a Post science reporter trying to resuscitate Aristotles’ theory of gravity. Also a few days ago, a Post political reporter “informed” the renowned paper’s erudite and elite readership of the development above.

It’s hard to be more wrong than that news item. First, the Constitution is not “supposed” to include any Amendment that wasn’t ratified within the legal deadline. Thus the archivist isn’t “refusing” to add an unratified Amendment. It can’t be added. It’s not an Amendment!

But wait! There’s more, and it took a conservative law professor to point out the error:

February 2, 2022

Letters Editor

The Washington Post

letters@washpost.com

Re:Amber Phillips, ‘The never-ending fight over whether to include the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution,’ The Washington Post (Jan. 31, 2022, 2:22 PM EST), <https://tinyurl.com/m6n3wfts>.

Dear Letters Editor, 

Ms Phillips wrote that: “Two-thirds of the states have ratified the ERA, which meets the constitutional requirements for adding to the Constitution.” This is not correct. Article V of the United States Constitution, which governs the constitutional amendment process, requires ratification by the legislatures of ¾ of the states. In certain circumstances ratification is possible by the conventions of ¾ of the states, but those circumstances are not applicable to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.

In any event, as long as the United States has 50 states, ratification requires action by ¾ or 38 states, and not 2/3 or 34 states.

Sincerely

/s/

Seth Barrett Tillman 

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The Duty To Warn: As Will Surprise No One Who Is Familiar With This Blog, I See A Serious Ethics Issue Related To My Recent Visit To The Emergency Room

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I’m going to have to cover this topic with one metaphorical hand tied behind my metaphorical back, because some of the important details land in the realm of confidentiality.

Last week, one of my loved ones had a frightening experience, slowly becoming disoriented and confused regarding time, place and language, hallucinating, falling down an unlit staircase and only missing serious injury by pure luck, speaking nonsense, then gibberish, and finally being unable to speak at all. By the time the EMTs were summoned, I was worried that I was witnessing a stroke in progress, which is what the paramedics thought when they arrived.

But it wasn’t a stroke. In fact, the ER doctors couldn’t figure out what was going on. By then the patient was trembling, thrashing around (so much that an MRI was impossible), frightened, angry, aggressive, and talking incessantly but incomprehensibly. They thought it might be a tumor, or an infection, or bleeding, or an interaction of many factors. It was like a “House” episode.

The real reason for the symptoms was that the patient hadn’t filled a long-standing prescription for Levothyroxine, a very common drug ( also known as synthroid) used to treat an underactive thyroid. The weather had been bad and ice was everywhere, so the trip to the CVS was put off one day, then another, then another. An unremarkable few days off the drug, which had been taken regularly for decades with occasional short interruptions, stretched into a week. That, the doctors concluded, had caused it all. Once the drug was injected, complete recovery occurred overnight.

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Comment Of The Day: “Catching Up: Professional Ethics And The Challenger Disaster”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I was very pleased to receive this Comment of the Day by Ryan Harkins on the post “Catching Up: Professional Ethics And The Challenger Disaster,”  because it focuses on the ethics of risk, a great topic that EA hasn’t covered as well as it should. 

I’ll have one brief note at the end.

***

I was 4 and in preschool when the Challenger exploded. We watched the launch on TV before I went to school that day, and apparently it really disturbed me, because I bit another student and then hid under a table for the rest of the day.

Working at the refinery now, we get to revisit the Challenger explosion frequently (along with the Bhopal Union Carbide gas leak, the Texas City tanker explosion, the Texas City ISOM explosion, and a host of others) when discussing process safety. Michael West is absolutely right in that it isn’t simply a calculation of what the worst consequence is, but also the likelihood of that occurring.

Part of the reason the engineers’ concerns were dismissed was because the problem with the O-rings had been known and discussed for quite some time, and there had been numerous launches prior to this one that had been perfectly successful. In other words, NASA had gotten away with using the faulty O-rings before, so they saw no reason to be overly concerned this time around. Furthermore, the launch had already been delayed multiple times, and they were under intense pressure to launch. Why should they listen to the doom-saying of engineers when empirical evidence said the worst-case scenario was not going happen?

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Welcome February Ethics Warm-Up, 2/1/22: Yes, Whoopi Is Officially An Idiot

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

A Janet Jackson movie is playing on cable, so of course we’re going to hear, again, how poor Janet was unfairly and cruelly blamed for “Nipplegate,” when the supposedly family-friendly Super Bowl half-time show featured an uncleared rapey bit of choreography in which Justin Timberlake “tore” Jackson’s costume, revealing her breast. It all happened on this date in 2004. CBS got fined and the NFL got in trouble. Timberlake lied, wink-wink, calling it a “wardrobe malfunction,” which everybody thought was cute. Historical revisionism has Janet as a victim of a sexist culture because she was the focus of most of the criticism and not the man in the plot. But it was her breast, after all. She also lied, and has been lying for almost 20 years.

Here is what I wrote about it in part on the Ethics Scoreboard the year it happened. I had forgotten: Janey Jackson got the very first Jumbo!

Janet Jackson has now appeared on the David Letterman Show to deny that her infamous Super Bowl breast-baring was anything but an accident. Before we discuss what a ridiculously transparent lie this is, let us also ask, “Why bother?” The damage, whatever it is, is done. Nobody is going to believe her. This was a fine opportunity for Jackson to stand up, admit an error in judgment, and use her celebrity to endorse some ethical values, like honesty, taking responsibility for one’s actions, and contrition.

But nooooooo.

Janet wants us to believe the incident was an accident, completely unchoreographed or planned. Never mind that:

  • Justin Timberlake’s move uncovering Ms. Jackson’s breast occurred on a musical beat, corresponding to song lyrics referring to his “having her naked by the end of this song.”
  • Her costume conveniently had a detachable flap that would expose the breast without doing any damage to the rest of her outfit.
  • Her breast had a large, uncomfortable-looking decoration of some kind stuck to it, raising the obvious question of what it was doing there if it wasn’t intended to be seen.
  • Timberlake’s comments immediately after the show confirmed that the moment was choreographed…

Oh, just never mind. If this were a crime, any jury would find Jackson guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Even the most dishonest people, when confronted with undeniable proof of their misdeeds, will usually confess. Not Janet Jackson.

Here’s your elephant, kid. This Jumbo’s for you!

1. Who can you trust? Justice Breyer was reportedly angry that his plans to retire at the end of the current SCOTUS term was leaked. Only close staff, family, his Supreme Court colleagues and the President had been made aware of his decision. He did not want to be a lame duck justice, and had asked his confidantes for confidentiality. Now the mystery of who betrayed Breyer’s trust is solved. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told reporters yesterday that President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, spilled the metaphorical beans.

If I were Breyer, my reaction would be to do what Donald Trump has done several times with leaks: make the leaker and the news media look foolish by changing course. I would not retire, after a betrayal like that, and make Democrats wait another term. Justice Breyer, however, doesn’t think this way Too bad. Continue reading →

Ethical Quote Of The Week: Faculty Letter To GULC Dean Treanor In Support Of Illya Shapiro [CORRECTED]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

So far, 106 professors from all points on the ideological spectrum have signed a letter to Georgetown Law Center’s Dean Treanor, telling him what should not have to be explained to a Top 20 law school dean: that “academic freedom protects [Illya] Shapiro’s views, regardless of whether we agree with them or not. And debate about the President’s nomination, and about whether race and sex play a proper role in such nominations more generally, would be impoverished—at Georgetown and elsewhere—if this view could not be safely expressed in universities.”

Shapiro, as discussed here, has been suspended (“put on leave pending an investigation”) by Treanor, and if past behavior by Georgetown Law Center is any indication, he is likely to be fired, forced to resign, or to have to humiliate himself by submitting to “sensitivity training” after a public confession of WrongThink.

Here is the letter, which appears to have been coordinated by the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education. Those seeking to add their names to the signatories can email facultyoutreach@thefire.org.

Disgracefully, no member of the GULC faculty has signed the letter to support their colleague—and the principles of freedom of expression and academic freedom at their own institution—as of this writing. Continue reading →

It Reveals The Dire State Of U.S. Higher Education Culture That Dean William M. Treanor Of Georgetown University Law Center Isn’t The Most Unethical Law School Administrator Of The Past Year (It’s Close, Though…)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

That distinction still has to go to Yale Law School Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Yaseen Eldik and Associate Dean of Student Affairs Ellen Cosgrove, who persecuted, and and threatened a student in this infamous episode last Fall. Their victim is a student, which gives them an edge over Dean Treanor whose target is Ilya Shapiro, GULC’s newly hired director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and vice-president of the Cato Institute.

Just two days ago, I described Shapiro’s foray into the debate over President Biden’s looming Supreme Court nomination, which will have to be a black woman because race and gender are more important to the Far Left than qualifications, ability and experience in the branch of the government that protects the Constitution, but mostly because Joe promised he would while in Full Pander Mode as he fought for his party’s nomination to oppose President Trump in 2020. Shapiro issued a series of tweets that were crystal clear to anyone reading them rationally and honestly, making his case that Biden should be nominating Justice Breyer’s replacement on the basis of qualifications, ability and experience. A careless choice of words, however—this was Twitter, after all—gave race-baiters and progressive censors an opportunity to pounce, and they did.

Shapiro was accused of being a racist (of course); the law schools black student association demanded he be fired (also of course); and GULC’s ostentatiously woke Dean capitulated to the anti-free speech and anti-academic freedom mob, announcing yesterday to me and other “alumni/ae”, as the marvelous Dean I worked for, the late David McCarthy always called them…

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“Election-Deniers!”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Apparently the latest deceptive slur on those who question the integrity of the 2020 election—which had less than any Presidential election in this century plus at least 40 years back in the previous one—is “election denier.” Nice. I found it ironic that just as an esteemed commenter here has been trying mightily in good faith to argue that the New York Times is not a constant purveyor of partisan propaganda, the paper headlines a front-page story, “Election Deniers Seek State Posts To Certify Votes,” a slimy and misleading header by any standard. Following in the muddy footsteps of the climate change fanatics, using “denier” to characterize those who oppose the Left’s cant, the Times headline plays a despicable cognitive dissonance game. “Denier,” until the climate change mob started using it, had previously only applied to the deniers of the Holocaust–fascists, anti-Semites, and morons. Thus, by extension, “deniers” in any context is similarly damning—and that’s the idea.

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