Gullibility And Media Brainwashing Check: If You Believe This, You’ll Believe Anything

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The Washington Post claims that “The first crisis of the Biden administration could be looming: America may have a president, the first in generations, who is impervious to impressionists.”

Riiiiight.

This is a topic I know a little bit about, having written, produced, directed and performed in satirical political reviews both professionally and otherwise for decades. I’ve also followed Saturday Night Live until relatively recently. If I hadn’t already abandoned the show as tired, biased and hopeless, Alec Baldwin’s inept and unfunny Trump impression would have driven me away.

It’s easy to come up with a funny impression of Joe Biden. Hell, I could do it: even if it wasn’t very good, it would be better than Baldwin’s Trump. There is one reason and one reason only that comedians are reluctant to mock Joe Biden: he’s a Democrat, and political satire today goes one way only.

The same hypocrites were afraid to make fun of Barack Obama, who was a cornucopia of mockworthy traits and tics for anyone with the guts to exploit them. The Post would really have us believe that any comics drew blood with an Obama impression, or even tried? Ah, but they were terrified of being called racists. (Has there ever been anyone more easy to ridicule than Maxine Waters? How about Sheila Jackson Lee? Have you ever seen them skewered?) TV comics today are, much like the mainstream media—pure partisan agents. They don’t want to be funny as much as they want to signal their virtue.

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More On Why Minneapolis Is Headed For Rodney King Level Riots

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Rodney King Riots Timeline

I have to believe the prosecutors in the George Floyd murder trial know that they are just marking time to but off a repeat of the 1992 Rodney King rioting in Los Angeles, and probably worse.

We know, or should, that former officer Derek Chauvin is not a racist, other than the fact that he is white. This may be enough to make him a presumed racist according to Black Lives Matter and Democratic Party cant, but not under the law. The news media has been diligently searching for Mark Furmin-like racist comments in Chauvin’s past, and if they haven’t found any by now, I think it’s unlikely that there are any to be found.

We know, or should, that Chauvin did not intend to harm George Floyd. He definitely wanted to make Floyd uncomfortable, because he was angry at his perp for resisting arrest. Nobody has argued seriously or persuasively that the officer intended to kill him.

Finally, we know, or should, that it is possible, even likely, that Floyd’s death was caused by his own careless ingestion of prohibited substances, including an overdose of fentanyl.

With these facts, my knowledge of prosecutorial ethics tells me that without the influence of other factors that should not be factors at all, a competent and responsible prosecutor would not charge Derek Chauvin. It is very likely that a verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be achieved before a fair and competent jury, and prosecutors are forbidden from attempting to convict defendants while hoping that a dumb and emotional jury fails to weigh the evidence properly. If a prosecutor doesn’t think, based on the evidence, that an individual is guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, then no charges should be brought. That is exactly the situation regarding Chauvin and the death of George Floyd.

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So I Guess I Have To Comment On Meghan And Harry’s Oprah Interview

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

meghan_markle_diana

No, of course I didn’t watch the damn thing. There have been few instances when a Kaufmann was more obvious. But Americans remain inexplicably fascinated by Great Britain’s Royals; the New York Times, which spent weeks ignoring a rape accusation by a former Joe Biden staffer against its favorite Presidential candidate during the campaign, had multiple reporters doing minute by minute updates on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview. HLN yesterday morning brought on a body language expert to analyze what the self-absorbed pair really thought, which is the point at which I turned the channel to an old episode of “Diagnosis Murder.” But at least there were plenty of detailed accounts of what was said that could be absorbed in a lot less than two hours.

Piers Morgan, a loyal Brit with a low tolerance for celebrity grandstanding, penned a vicious (but fair) take on the interview, focusing most of his contempt on the claim made by Meghan that a member of the Royal Family had asked how dark her baby would be, and the couple’s allegation that the Windsors decided to prevent her son Archie from being an official Prince because of his partial black heritage. In neither case were any names mentioned, making the statements the most unethical and dastardly accusations imaginable. They can’t be checked or confirmed, and they cast suspicion on an entire family. Writes Morgan, “[H]aving having let off the racism bomb, the Sussexes won’t say any more. I find that cowardly.”

That’s because it is cowardly.

Regarding Archie’s status, Morgan says,

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Someone Please Explain What’s Going On Here Before This Question Kills Me

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

jackheadexplosion

Once again, I have read something in print that I don’t understand at all, and I’m concerned that, like comedian Lewis Black’s routine about over-hearing someone say, “if it wasn’t for that horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college” and obsessing over what it could possibly mean, the statement will fester in my brain until, like an aneurysm, it explodes and kills me.

This time the potentially deadly passage came from Phillip Gallane’s New York Times advice column, “Social Q’s.” I stopped caring what Gallanes thought after he revealed himself to be a standard-issue left-biased, Trump Deranged social justice warrior, but a Times Sunday Styles section was just sitting there next to the toilet, and now my life is endangered.

Here is what I read as the first question in his column: “Wife” wrote,

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Monday Ethics Final, 3/8/2021: A Bad Day In The Revolution

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

GnadenhuttenMassacre

March 8 should be a day that “lives in infamy,” but it isn’t, in part because of this nation’s, and all nations’, tendency to forget episodes in their history that they would rather pretend didn’t happen. On this date in 1782, 160 Pennsylvania militiamen slaughtered 96 Christian Indians including 39 children, 29 women and 28 men. The Patriots killed their captives by hammering their skulls with mallets from behind, as the victims knelt praying and singing. The Patriots then piled the bodies in mission buildings, and burned the entire Moravian Mission at Gnadenhutten to the ground in the Ohio territory. . The Pennsylvanians claimed that the attack was revenge for raids on their frontier settlements, but the Native Americans they killed were not involved in any attacks. In fact, they were pacifists who had been assisting the Americans against the British by serving as scouts and performing other services.

There were consequences of the massacre, though not to the criminals responsible. Despite talk of bringing the murderers to justice, no charges were filed. But Native American tribes became less willing to trust the Patriots as the Revolutionary War continued. When General George Washington heard about the massacre, he told his soldiers to avoid being captured alive by Indian forces, as he feared the Americans would be tortured. Many were, and Native Americans had longer memories of the atrocity at Gnadenhutten than the citizens of the new nation. In 1810, Shawnee chief Tecumseh pointedly reminded future General and later President William Henry Harrison, “You recall the time when the Jesus Indians of the Delawares lived near the Americans, and had confidence in their promises of friendship, and thought they were secure, yet the Americans murdered all the men, women, and children, even as they prayed to Jesus?”

Theodore Roosevelt, a historian in addition to his other pursuits, called the atrocity “a stain on frontier character that the lapse of time cannot wash away.”

But it has, hasn’t it?

1. And they said Trump supporters were stupid! A group called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden feel betrayed:

Pro Biden

These people really believed that the Democratic Party was going to “engage” on the topic of abortion, and that electing Joe Biden President would lead to compromises and moderation on the issue. Let me write that again: These people really believed that the Democratic Party was going to “engage” on the topic of abortion, and that electing Joe Biden President would lead to compromises and moderation on the issue.As you know, I have constant difficulty accepting the principle that being stupid isn’t unethical. Outrageous stupidity makes me angry, and maybe that’s unfair. Episodes like this are difficult for me to put in perspective.

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I Hearby Forgive Prof. Jonathan Turley For My Having To Toss My Completed “What An Idiot!” Post On Rep. Swalwell…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Village idiot

…because Turley did such a superb job showing how ridiculous Swalwell’s lawsuit is. I couldn’t possibly compete.

I saw the note about Swalwell filing a a 64-page complaint against Donald Trump ( and Donald Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and Rep. Mo Brooks) alleging nine counts in tort ranging from negligent emotional distress (suffered by Swalwell) to negligence, in an “incitement to riot.” That news sparked three thoughts: 1) “What an idiot!” 2) “Who was the hack lawyer who agreed to file such a suit?,” and finally, 3) “This will be a fun post to write!” And it was, except that while I was formatting, editing and arranging tags, commenter Steve Witherspoon dropped me an email that said in part, “Did you read Turley’s blog post about Eric Swalwell posted a couple of hours ago? WOW!!!”

I hadn’t, I did, and “Wow!” indeed. It’s a tour de force.

The take-no-prisoners defenestration of Swalwell is unusually merciless for Turley, who begins,

“French philosopher Voltaire said he had only one prayer in life — “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous” — and that it was uniformly granted by God. The answer to Donald Trump’s prayers may be Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)”

Do read the post. And as you do, remember that the idiot Turley is writing about was hand-picked by Nancy Pelosi to be one of the House Managers in the second Trump impeachment trial. The University of Maryland School of Law must be measuring the heads of its board, administrators, alumni and faculty for paper bags to wear, because that school gave Swalwell a law degree.

Ethics Quote Of The Month: New York Times Columnist Ross Douthat

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

seusscancelled-header

“It was mildly creepy to hear that the custodians of Theodor Geisel’s estate, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, consulted with a ‘panel of experts’ and decided to cease publishing six Seuss titles because they ‘portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.’ But it was much creepier that so few people notionally in the free-expression business, so few liberal journalists and critics, seemed troubled by the move.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, one of the paper’s three token conservatives (or perhaps “non-knee-jerk Democrats” is more accurate), in his column, “Do Liberals Care if Books Disappear?”

The question is a rhetorical one. Douthat knows the answer, and so do regular Ethics Alarms readers: “Only if the books that disappear are those they agree with.” Though the column focuses on the Dr. Seuss metaphorical book-burning, Douthat properly interprets what it signifies. Of course, he is appropriately late to the party, for it was obvious well before “If I Ran the Zoo” was under attack that the totalitarian-tending Democrats and their progressive supporters and allies were in favor of “good” censorship. Never mind—Americans rushed to their mailboxes to vote an anti-free speech regime into power anyway.

Better late than never for Ross, I guess. Here are some highlights (but read his whole piece):

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Unethical Quote Of The Week: Deyate Hagood’s Zoom High School Economics Class

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“What that nigga want God? Word up, look out for the cops…Word up, two for fives over here baby. Word up, two for fives them niggas got garbage down the way, word up.”

—-Lyrics in “Cash Rules Everything Around Me,” performed by Wu-Tang Clan ,in one of two rap videos that formed the basis of an economics class taught by Deyate Hagood, a social studies teacher at A-TECH High School.

For the uneducated, “Two for fives” is a 90s’ term for crack cocaine sales, meaning “two vials for five dollars.”

When a Queens mom working at home heard this and another equally vulgar rap video taking up the bulk of her son’s Zoom economics class on “money, power and respect,” she snapped. The woman, whose name is being withheld because she fears retribution against her or her son, grabbed her son’s laptop and shouted at Deyate Hagood, the social studies teacher at A-TECH High School in Williamsburg, saying…

“You honestly ought to be motherfucking embarrassed. Disgusting! You have rap videos using N-words, talking about whores and bitches and selling drugs. I’m working from home, and this is what I’m hearing my kid in his senior year learning in class?”

Indeed it was. “I’ve had to watch my high-school senior spend an entire year at home in isolation while receiving a very limited education,” said the Queens mother, an executive assistant with a younger son in middle school. She told the New York Post that her 12th-grader did not have a book or syllabus for the economics class. Her son reported that Hagood usually showed videos. In the second rap video played that day in Hagood’s class, a prostitute in black lingerie “sings,”  “First you get the money. Then you get the muthafuckin’, power. After you get the fuckin’ power muthafuckas will respect you.”

Nice!

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Sunday Evening Ethics Reflections, 3/7/21: Two More For Cuomo, Too Late For Kasich, Too Stupid To Be Believed, And Too Cowardly To Be Of Any Use…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

evening-reflections

1. Well, what do you know! Two more women have come forward to accuse New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment, making a total of five now. The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have the stories.

A former press aide, Karen Hinton, told the Post that Cuomo embraced her in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2000. Ana Liss, another ex-aide, said the governor hugged and kissed her and grabbed her waist in 2014. As we have discussed here often, true sexual harassers are habitual and incorrigible. It’s not a mistake or a lot of misunderstandings. These are powerful individuals who feels entitled to abuse that power with subordinates who are likely to be reluctant to resist or report the misconduct.

2. Where was she when John Kasich needed to be told? Ann Althouse has a post titled, Is there someone in your life who is annoying you with the conversational tic “Do you know what?” In 2016, desperately seeking some alternative to Donald Trump among the large and fatally flawed GOP field seeking the party’s Presidential nomination, I was so annoyed by Kasich employing that tic (or its equivalent, “Guess what?”) that I tuned him out every time he spoke. Why didn’t anyone tell him? I’m a stage director: I’ve corrected dozens of actor tics. Any politician who is so inattentive that he or she can’t acknowledge and address a bad communication habit (Kamala Harris’s laugh!) is intrinsically untrustworthy, inattentive and lazy. It’s a tell.

3. Look! A public “How stupid, frightened and gullible are you?” test! This ridiculous thing is a real product designed to wear all day and night to protect you from the deadly viruses, microbes and pollutants that threaten to kill us all.

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Another 7-11 Encounter: There Is Hope.

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

yankees-vs-red-sox

For over a decade, a cynical, destructive, dangerous and—let’s see, is there another good adjective? Yes!— unethical strategy has been pursued to strip away all trust between the races, to use racial guilt for profit and power, to make black Americans fear and hate white Americans and to cause white Americans to resent their blacks neighbors. This is, disgracefully, a deliberate choice by elements in our society and politics in order to achieve power. It is an existential threat to the United States, our society and our culture, and has never been more so than now.

I was running an errand for Grace to the local 7-11. As I got out of my car, wearing a black #*&!@#!! mask, my path intersected with that of another man on the way to the convenience store. All I could see were his eyes and his skin-color (he was African-American), and the rest was attire: a New York Yankees cap and a Yankees team jacket. I was one up on him: I was wearing my Red Sox cap, a Boston team jacked AND my Red Sox canvas deck shoes.

The stranger, who appeared to be around my age, froze dramatically as we came face to face about ten feet apart, extended his arms, and exclaimed, “What is this, a beer ad?” and laughed. I replied, “I think it has to be!,” and he followed me into the store. We stopped a few feet inside the door, and talked for 20 minutes about baseball, our teams, various players, baseball ethics (steroids and cheating), and life. He was such a friendly, smart and funny guy; I loved talking with him. Then he gave me a fist bump, and we parted. I never even got his name.

There was nothing in our interaction that day that involved race or anything else contentious. We were just two human beings and citizens of the United States who have a lot more in common and a lot more to talk about together than group identities and conflict. The encounter reminded me that the bonds that unite us as a nation are still stronger and more resilient than the enemies of democracy think they are.

And as I got back into my car, the most famous quote from Anne Frank’s diary suddenly popped into my head: “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Not all people, certainly, but just maybe enough of them.

There is hope.