abuse of authority

“Psychology Today” (Again) Shows Why “Experts” Cannot Be Trusted

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Why is a standard issue anti-gun screed with moldy “common sense gun control” talking points being featured in “Psychology Today” under the guise of a “How to prevent suicides” article? Oh, lots of reasons, such as..

  • Anti-gun fanatics will use every opportunity imaginable to repeat their cant;
  • The fact that their objective, to somehow void the Second Amendment, is impossible doesn’t dissuade them from wasting our time;
  • Like most of the print media in the sciences, “Psychology Today” has been captured by the doctrinaire Left and allowed what should be a non-partisan topic be polluted by progressive activism;
  • Too many academics, scholars and experts today have no regard for integrity, and believe that they must accomplish their ideological goals by any means necessary, and
  • To someone whose only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

“Reducing Gun Violence, Particularly Gun Suicides: What we can learn from other countries when it comes to reducing gun deaths” announces its bias and how that bias has made its “expert” author stupid right in the headline. Other countries have nothing to offer us as far as gun policies are concerned. They do not have the same culture as the United States, nor do other nations enshrine individual liberty as securely as the United States. Other nations did not rely on guns and self-determination to the extent that the U.S. population has throughout its history, and other nations are far more submissive to government interference with their rights than Americans are.

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Ethics Verdict On President Trump and the Silly Cracker Barrel Episode

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Verdict: President Trump abused his position, power and influence by weighing in on a private company’s choice of logo and continuing to make declarations about it as if it is any of his business or a proper matter of concern for the President of the United States.

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An Ethics Alarms “Bite Me!” Goes To Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison!

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The “Bite Me!”is an Ethics Alarms designation reserved for either an individual whose “response to being bullied, pressured and threatened into submissiveness is to say, “Do your worst. I believe in what I am doing, and I don’t grovel to mobs,” or as used several times here, to impugn the author of unethical conduct that demands the response, “Bite me!”

Dr. Kirsten Viola Harrison is a licensed psychologist and a “spiritual integration coach,” whatever the hell THAT means. She’s seeking her 15 minutes of faux fame by lecturing us about how people can unwittingly give off an “unapproachable energy,” thus sending out a “bad vibe.”

“Giving off a bad vibe’ means unintentionally projecting energy, through words, tone and body language, that others perceive as negative, inauthentic, or that make one appear unapproachable,” she explains. “It often triggers discomfort and mistrust, even when no harm is intended. Since our brains are wired to detect dissonance between what someone says and how they say it, the non-verbal signals which inform our emotional responses are exceedingly influential and powerful in shaping our interactions.”

Dr. Harrison has identified nine phrases she says can create these bad vibes if one isn’t careful. Gee, I wonder if “Bite me, you insufferable, over-credentialed fool!” is on the list? In her case, the “Bite Me!” is earned by abuse of authority and making gullible people stupid with New Age psychobabble. Here is her list, and my reactions.

1.”I’m Just Being Honest!”

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Unethical Wise-Ass Quote of the Week: Baseball Writer Keith Law

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Of course, the size and length of the deal look absurd, and I doubt anyone expects Soto to still be a $50-million-a-year player in 2039, when he’ll be 40 if we haven’t burned up the planet by then.”

—Baseball writer Keith Law, writing in The Athletic regarding the impact of the Mets signing outfielder Juan Soto to a 15 year, $765 million dollar contract as discussed on Ethics Alarms here.

I’ll start with a full disclosure: I’ve had some unpleasant personal interaction with Keith Law, who is a talented baseball analyst of long-standing but out of his depth in the field of business and sports ethics, where his nasty exchanges with me occurred more than a decade ago. This quote would be flagged by me as unethical if had been made by my sister in a national publication.

Experts have an obligation to not abuse their authority, influence, presumed wisdom and ability to persuade the public. Keith Law is a very qualified commentator on all aspects of baseball, from the business of the game to talent evaluation and statistics. Unlike a lot of sportswriters, he has an impressive educational background including an undergraduate degree with honors in sociology and economics from the same disgraced but unfortunately still prestigious college that I graduated from, as well as a Masters in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. He is not, however, a climate scientist, and as it appears that his every waking hour has been and is devoted to the wide, wonderful world of baseball, it is safe to presume that he has not acquired any special expertise in the area of climate change other than what he reads in the New York Times (which owns the Athletic) and other progressive propaganda media.

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Authority Malpractice, Broadway Division [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Looking back over the nearly 17,000 posts here, I realize that the ethical issue of authority abuse has come up often, apparently because it drives me crazy. Experts and authorities, alleged, self-proclaimed or otherwise, are supposed to make everyone else better informed and smarter, not more ignorant and stupid. The “experts” that Ethics Alarms has fingered most frequently are pundits, politicians, historians (notably partisan Presidential historians like Jon Meacham, Michael Beschloss, and the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. ) elected officials and baseball writers (with a special place reserved in Baseball Writer Hell for Tom Boswell).

One of the requirements for this sub-category on Ethics Alarms is that I personally know enough about the topic the expert is mangling to detect the authority abuse. Musical theater happens to be one of those topics on which I am qualified to speak and write with some credibility, so I was annoyed yesterday to hear Sirius/XM’s Broadway channel host Seth Rudetsky emit an inexcusable whopper.

Rudetsky is what is called an “industry star,” meaning that the Broadway community knows and appreciates his work though he is largely unknown to anyone outside that community except certifiable American musical nuts. He does have a little empire on Sirius, though, hosting and commenting upon about 50% of the content on the Broadway channel while apparently going out of his way to sound as screamingly gay as possible. (I believe this indulgence damages the popularity, cultural status and prospects of musical theater, but that’s a topic for another day).

Rudetsky styles himself as an “expert on Broadway history and trivia” (as it is phrased on his Wikipedia page), so I was gobsmacked when I heard him say, in his introduction to the “Annie Get Your Gun” duet “Old Fashioned Wedding,” that “there was this thing that Irving Berlin did” in his musicals where two characters would sing different songs and then Irving put the songs together, and they “fit.” Rudetsky recalled the “You’re Just in Love” duet in Berlin’s “Call Me Madam” (above) as an example, and said that “Old Fashioned Wedding” from the revival of “Annie Get Your Gun”was another instance of Berlin’s “thing.”

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Critic Ethics: “The Top 10 Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas, Ranked And Rated”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Readers here know that web lists of “bests” and “greatests” regularly drive me crazy, as they are almost invariably clickbait assembled according to no real standards, usually by self-appointed mavens who don’t know what they are talking about. But what drives me even more crazy are such lists created by actual authorities, whose assessments are taken to be gospel by readers who don’t know what they are talking about.

On March 1, I will be heading a 90 minute program for D.C.’s venerable Cosmos Club, whose members over the past 144 years have included men and (only relatively recently) women distinguished in science, literature, politics, scholarship and the arts. The title is “The Enduring Magic of Gilbert and Sullivan, and 12 numbers from eleven of the operettas will be performed with my narration and commentary. This is, I believe, my 14th such production over the years, but I may be missing a few. The works of Gilbert and Sullivan have had a greater influence on the path of my life and careers than even my obsession with the Presidents of the United States and the Boston Red Sox. I’ve been enjoying them, watching them, studying them, performing in them, directing them, producing them, forming organizations dedicated to them and writing parodies of them since I was ten-years-old.

(That’s the cast of Georgetown Law Center’s Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s 1977 production of “H.M.S. Pinafore” above, which I directed. And that’s me, in the center, as Sir. Joseph Porter, KCB.)

In preparation for the presentation at the Cosmos Club, I decided to see how the old Victorian pair’s masterpieces were doing during The Great Stupid, as they have been subject to the predictable attacks that the shows are dated, sexist, racist, etc. (They aren’t any of these things.) In the process, I stumbled upon a post by Daniel Jaffé, a BBC music critic and classical music expert from a year ago titled, “The Top 10 Gilbert and Sullivan Operettas, Ranked And Rated.”

The piece turned out to be fascinating mess of many ethics problems such as, Continue reading →

Ethics Exclamation Points, 3/16/21: Duh! Whoa! Yay! Gag! Asshole!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

1 Duh! The competition for most incompetent host on CNN continues to be neck and neck, with Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter and Don Lemon threatening a photo finish. Lemon rounded the turn and made up some ground by visiting “The View” (Lemon coming to the idiot-infested ABC uninformed opinion fest is the very definition of “carrying coals to Newcastle”) and, when asked to respond to the Vatican’s announcement that Roman Catholic priests cannot extend a sacramental blessing to same-sex unions, set a new high for egomania and presumptuousness. Lemon answered in part,

“I think that the Catholic Church and many other churches really need to reexamine themselves and their teachings because that is not what God is about. God is not about hindering people or even judging people… do what the Bible and what Jesus actually said, if you believe in Jesus, and that is to love your fellow man and judge not lest ye be not judged.”

Gee, thanks Don for answering the question that theologians have been debating for centuries: “What is God about?” And nice mangling of that quote, though even if you got it right, it still doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t make judgments about people. The New Testament passage carrying that message (Matthew 7:1) holds the we should be prepared to be judged by the same standards we use to judge others. In several other places the Bible specifically instructs us to “judge,” and God repeatedly reserves the right to judge human beings, so to say He “isn’t about judging” is an eccentric interpretation at best. Meanwhile, the Ten Commandments, like all laws, are about “hindering people.” Lemon isn’t competent to discuss politics; who cares what he thinks about theology?

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Trump Tweets: The Movies

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Stipulated: the ethics position here has been since long before the Trump years that Presidents should keep their opinions of persons, places, things and events having nothing to do with their duties or responsibilities to themselves.

Presidents are not kings, nor popes, nor universal authorities on everything. They have a role to fill, and they should fill it; it’s not like there should be plenty of time left over for weighing in on such matters as sports, popular culture, celebrities, and local controversies.

President Obama did far more of this than was responsible or good for the country, notably during race-related controversies. President Trump, obviously, has taken this misuse of his position into the stratosphere with his addiction to Twitter. His unrestrained tweets have done him at least as much harm as good; my own guess is that if he eschewed social media, his approval ratings would be 10% higher than they are.

It is also, I think, beyond argument that Trump’s use of Twitter guarantees that future Presidents will also use it to opine on matters that are none of their business. This is not a good thing.

The President’s latest self-made controversy, actually two controversies, came when he tweeted in part last week,

“How bad were the Academy Awards this year? Did you see? And the winner is: a movie from South Korea. What the hell was that all about? We’ve got enough problems with South Korea, with trade. On top of it, they give them the best movie of the year? Was it good? I don’t know? I’m looking for — where? — can we get ‘Gone with the Wind’ back please? ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ So many great movies. The winner is: from South Korea. I thought it was Best Foreign Film. Best Foreign Movie. No. Has this ever happened before? …”

And then he went off on Brad Pitt’s gratuitous crack about John Bolton. Continue reading →

Unethical Tweet Of The Month: Actress Rosanna Arquette

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Observations, besides the obvious and obligatory, “What an idiot!”…

1. This is signature significance for a stupid woman, desperately virtue- signaling to her peer group. No fair or intelligent person would say or think such a thing.

2. The tweet is declaring that an entire race should be ashamed of itself. This is bigotry; this is racism. Arquette lacks the intellectual skill to figure that out, though it is startlingly straightforward.

3. One of the responses to the tweet, which helps us define the kind of person who would follow the likes of Rosanna Arquette on Twitter, wrote, “Please don’t. I understand the inclination but this is actually more harmful than helpful. POC are not trying to shame decent white people for being white. This feeds into a right wing talking point that this is what we want. I don’t. I want allies who see my humanity. That’s it.”  Continue reading →

Monday Ethics Warm-Up, 7/29/19: Reverse Racism And Listening To Dead People

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“Life is just one damn thing after another.”—Will Rodgers.

1. “Dear White People.” Yes, that’s the name of what “Entertainment” calls an eagerly awaited Netflix series. The title is racist. Whites, however, are supposed to ignore constant efforts to stereotype them by skin shade, “otherize” them by designating people of non-color as “you people” (the term the NAACP erupted in outrage over when Ross Perot used it to describe their members), and generally employ the same demeaning rhetoric that if used in the other direction would be attacked as racist.

The  proposed rule appears to be that males and whites, and especially white males, should capitulate to this demeaning double standard, concur that they are twin blights on civilization, and if they do not, and find themselves driven into the arms of the national elected leader and the political party that does not accept the rigged “principles” that constitute consent to be bullied, persecuted and insulted, that means they are “white supremacists” and misogynists.

The gamble, I suppose, is that whites and men are really, really stupid and cowardly, and this divisive hypocrisy will prevail.

I could be wrong, but I think it’s a bad bet.

Post script: From the Babylon Bee: “Ilhan Omar Introduces Resolution Condemning Racism, White Men, And The Jews.”

Bingo. Continue reading →