Ethics Quiz: The Cheating Democrats’ Beyoncé Rumor

Having gagged on the last Ethics Quiz completely, I have to clear my palate with a second try.

Those canny Democrats tried to trick young voters into watching Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech last night by feeding their propaganda agents (that is, the U.S. news media) a fake rumor that pop super-star Beyoncé was going to show up in Chicago, perform at the convention’s finale, and thus endorse KAmala Harris.

“Beyoncé to perform at Democratic convention: Sources,” stated the headline at The Hill. “Did White House political director just drop major hint about Beyoncé DNC appearance?” coyly insinuated NBC Chicago. “BEYONCÉ PERFORMING AT DNC’S FINAL NIGHT!!!” claimed TMZ. “🚨🚨SHE’S THERE!!!!!!”announced the Twitter/X account @beyoncepress at 7:16 p.m. Central time, alongside a video of a black SUV driving through Chicago’s River North neighborhood escorted by a motorcade.

All false. Harris finished her speech, balloons came down from the ceiling, and no Beyoncé. Figures aren’t in, but I assume that the planted rumor “worked,” making it “good” as the late Harry Reid will confirm if you track him down in the Lake of Fire.

“It’s a bad move to trick people into staying tuned and then denying them what they thought they’d get,” opines Ann Althouse today as she disagrees with Harry, though I don’t know what she means exactly by “bad.” Unethical? Unfair? Likely to backfire (meaning it didn’t “work”)? Columnist Laura Bassett tweeted that “teasing a huge surprise guest and leaking that it’s both Beyonce and Taylor swift just to get people to tune in is actually kind of funny.” Not unethical. Funny. Bassett is a former HuffPo pundit who now hangs out at MSNBC and CNN, so you can guess what her ethics alarms are like.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this…

Is using a false rumor as a device to create interest in an event like the Democratic National Convention unethical, or is it sufficiently standard publicity and marketing practice now to give it an ethics pass?

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Democratic National Convention Ethics Adverse Reaction, 8/20/24

There has never been a U.S. political party with so little integrity or a convention so thoroughly confused about its values, direction, who it wants to appeal to, and what its culture is.

The fact that the Convention prominently features vans giving out free abortions and vasectomies (it’s Planned Parenthood, not the party proper, but it doesn’t matter) sends as militant an anti-family message as it would be possible to send. Then there are the all-gender bathrooms, making up 5% of the facilities at the convention hall, which about 1.6% of the population have a “which bathroom do I use?” problem. More...

1. Talk about rank incompetence: the official platform approved by the Democratic Party had never been edited to remove references to “Biden’s second term,” which appeared 19 times. How can anyone trust a party to run a government/agency/ lemonade stand that is this careless? Apparently Democrats are beyond embarrassment.

2. And speaking of the platform, here is a section that defies parody:

What does “acknowledgement” even mean in this context except as blatant virtue-signalling to another aggrieved minority group? “We care, but we’re not giving you your land back!”? “Time immemorial” is historical nonsense: the tribes weren’t here as the Earth cooled, they came here from other places, almost always displacing—killing—other groups of people who were here before them. Facts Don’t Matter to this party.

3. No sitting President in modern history has been treated with such disrespect by his own party as President Biden, whose address to the convention was shunted along to well past prime time. By any previous standard, the current, retiring President would be guaranteed the most prestigious slot, but Biden’s shambling condition reminds non-cultish voters that this party lied to them for a year or more, so the fewer who saw Joe speak, the better. Used to push Joe’s address past 11 pm. EST was the babble of Kamala Harris’s childhood friends, among others.

3. To be fair, Joe justified the decision to minimize his visibility, ad-libbing, “Those protesters out in the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.” “Those protesters” carried Hamas flags and were substantially in favor of killing Jews. The level of Democratic Party analysis of the war in Gaza is that “innocent people” are being killed, so war bad, soooo let Hamas survive until its next terror attack on Israel. BUT the Biden-Harris administration stands faithfully behind Israel, except when it doesn’t. Got it. It makes sense if you are stupid and not capable of paying attention.

4. Did you know Donald Trump lies all the time? Biden again repeated the false narrative that Trump called white supremacists in Charlottesville “very fine people.” It doesn’t matter how many times and how many sources have pronounced this false, the Democrats continue to repeat it. That is the essence of a Big Lie strategy….but they do it to save democracy, see, so channeling Goebbels is okay.

5. They started chanting “Lock him up!” during Hillary’s speech. How ironic—and again, telling. Locking Trump up has been the theme of the Democratic Party’s efforts to avoid the electoral defeat they have so thoroughly earned. Democracy! Again again, this is a party incapable of shame or embarrassment.