assholes

Just When It Looks Like The Contestants For “2022 Asshole Of The Year” Are Settled, A Surprise Contender Surfaces!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

And what a contender! That’s Samantha Foss, the 19-year-old daughter of billionaire Donald Foss, the founder and former CEO of auto loans company Credit Acceptance. Samantha, who was raised with all of the luxuries and benefits one would expect the youngest child of a tycoon to receive nonetheless took the podium at his funeral service and spent her oration insulting, denouncing, and trashing her father in front of mourners. Her money line: “You’ll never be what you could have been, but only what you are — and what you are is a racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, Trump-loving, cis, straight white man.”

Translation: “I am a spoiled, rude, ungrateful, narcissist offspring from Hell, and you must have been a terrible father, because look at the monster you raised.”

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“1776” Actress Sara Porkalob Is An Ethics Dunce And Should Be Fired

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The new, non-traditionally cast, “diversity”-pandering revival of “1776” is about to open on Broadway. Ethics Alarms already discussed it here: the production seems like a cynical, misguided, truly terrible idea that is likely to crash and burn, but as I wrote last month, “I hope the result is brilliant and illuminating.” I also wrote, “What I see, however, is a cynical abortion of a classic musical motivated by arrogance, ignorance, and greed.” In other words, the thing has a lot of self-inflicted problems standing in the way of critical and financial success, nicely symbolized by the photo above of an Asian-American woman playing slaveholding Continental Congress member Edward Rutledge singing “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” in the musical’s most dramatic scene. As a stage director and American history fanatic, I don’t see how having that song performed by someone who can’t evoke Rutledge in any way does anything but undermine the best song in the show. But hey, you never know.

One thing the radical production doesn’t need, however, is for that same performer to trash the production publicly. Here is “Rutledge,” Sara Porkalob, in an interview with Vulture’s Jason P. Frank:

“To me, the play is a relic. It is a dusty, old thing… On the inside, I’m cringing… I’m like, It’s okay. I wouldn’t have wanted it this way, but I am doing my job….[The direction] is horrible. I hate it… What I want to do with my time is make new works with collaborators…I feel like I’m going to work.”

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Boxing Day Ethics Parcels, 12/26/2021: Assholes, Hypocrites, Fake Martyrs And Monsters [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There was originally a video of the incident above, but YouTube took it down, and its videos are the only ones I can use. You can see the video here. The episode is instructive, as it…

1) …shows how far things can get out of hand when people with dead ethics alarms meet by chance…

2)…demonstrates how the still ongoing fear-mongering over the Wuhan virus and friends by the news media is exacerbating already-strained fault-lines in U.S. society

3)…how really, really stupid the mask rules are and how ignorant fanatics are who think masks are more than minimally helpful in keeping infection at bay.

When once normal people start using the conflict resolving skills of guests on the old Jerry Springer Show, we need to worry about it. The man’s solution to being confronted in this incident was to start name-calling. (Calling anyone “Karen” is signature significance for a dolt); the woman’s approach was to start acting like a first-grader. I particular like her declaration that she won’t wear her mask until he puts on his. One article I saw today claimed that this kind of mask dispute was about “What it meant to be an American.” No, it’s about the importance of not being an asshole just because someone else is being an asshole.

Conservative talk-radio host Monica Matthews tweeted: “The legacy of Fauci, CDC, WHO, NIH, Congress & every airline. This is what they’ve done to us. Merry Christmas.” Indeed those culprits don’t help, but nobody makes anyone act unethically.

1. Project Veritas Ethics Train Wreck update! When last we looked in on this mess, Justice Charles D. Wood of State Supreme Court in Westchester County had issued an order requiring the The New York Times to cease further efforts to solicit or acquire attorney-client privileged material, including information related to Ashley Biden’s diary, and also blocked the Times from publishing documents prepared by Project Veritas lawyers f that the paper had acquired through leaks from the FBI. The Times’s executive editor, Dean Baquet, described the ruling as “unconstitutional.” On December 24, the judge, ordered The Times to turn over any physical copies of the Project Veritas documents in question, and to destroy any electronic copies in the newspaper’s possession. Now the Times says it will seek a stay of the ruling and will appeal.

The publisher of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger, said in a statement,

“This ruling should raise alarms not just for advocates of press freedoms but for anyone concerned about the dangers of government overreach into what the public can and cannot know. In defiance of law settled in the Pentagon Papers case, this judge has barred The Times from publishing information about a prominent and influential organization that was obtained legally in the ordinary course of reporting.”

Well, “legally” is a weasel word here: the documents were illegally leaked to the Times, though they could legally accept them because the press thinks document laundering is wonderful, and it usually gets away with it. Nevertheless, the public has no “right to know” about the communications between an organization and its lawyers. Continue reading →

End Of Week Ethics Bombs, 8/6/21

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Hiroshima

August 6, 1945 is one of the most important ethics days of all, and among the most controversial. The United States bomber Enola Gay—now on exhibit in a hangar near Dulles Airport, dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people were killed in seconds, and another 35,000 were injured. More than 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. Was the launching of the nuclear age by the United States ethically justified to save American lives (an invasion of the Japanese mainland had been estimated to risk a million U.S. casualties) and end the war? Was President Harry Truman guilty of a war crime, as non-combatants, including children, constituted most of the deaths? Did the horrible results of the new weapon prevent World War III, or make it more likely? These are still intensely debated questions by scholars, historians, theologians, military strategists, philosophers and peace activists.

1. Well, I’ve been spoiling for a fight, shopping around Northern Virginia and fining myself one of the few unmasked. So far, nobody’s said a word, but anyone who does is in for it. I’ve been vaccinated twice and probably had a mild, symptom-free infection before that. I have always been unusually resistant to viruses. Mask fog up my glasses and make me miserable. If you have chosen not to get your shots, swell, that’s your choice, but your exercise of personal liberty is not going to restrict mine without a fight. And don’t tell me I have to wear a mask so phobics feel “safe.” That’s not my problem either. I am not inclined to “social distance,” either. The mask fetish is going to strangle community, society and the joy of life unless we draw some hard lines. I’m drawing.

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Breaking In Baseball Ethics: A New Asshole Of The Year Candidate!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

judge1

The new contender is a New York Yankees baseball player. A really big one.

I find this unbelievable, but apparently it is true. Tonight’s game between the Red Sox and Yankees was postponed after three Yankee players, Aaron Judge, Gio Urshela, and Kyle Higashioka tested positive for the Wuhan virus in the Yankee clubhouse. Judge was on the American League All-Star team that played (and won) two days ago, and wasn’t vaccinated. Now they are testing all of the All-Star team players who came into contact with him, and that means that every team in the league was potentially placed in peril. Indeed, the whole season could be in peril.

I don’t understand how MLB allowed a non-vaccinated player to play in the game, or be in the dugout. I don’t understand how anyone in Judge’s position could be so foolish and irresponsible as not to be vaccinated at this point. And Judge is supposed to be one of the nicest, most admirable professional athletes in captivity.

Except that he is apparently an asshole.

Well, as many a Fenway Park crowd has said over the decades, as uncivil as it may be, “Yankees suck.”

Satire Ethics: Carrying A Joke Too Far

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Unethical!

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s Australian wing applied to be formally recognized as anon-profit charitable entity, but was rejected on the grounds that the purported religion is nothing more than a “hoax.” Ya think? This is the deliberately ridiculous parody religion devised to mock all organized religions and those who believe in them. Pastafarians, as “believers” call themselves, have extended a gag web post ridiculing the logic of every other religion to the point of diminishing returns. Its “heaven” has a Stripper Factory and a Beer Volcano; its argument for the existence of the deity with noodely appendages involves the world distribution of pirates. Very funny. Now stop wasting everyone’s time. Ethics Alarms discussed two abuses of process by Pastafarians here and here, but as with the career of Jimmy Kimmel and the persistence of tofu, I assumed that this joke would have run its course by now. Sadly, no.

Adelaide, Australia’s Tanya Watkins is a self-described “captain” of the church (like on a pirate ship, see) , has made repeated attempts to have the “church” be granted incorporated association status. After her latest attempt was scoffed at by the Corporate Affairs Commission, Watkins sought a review by the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (SACAT), claiming the movement was formed for a “religious, educational, charitable or benevolent purpose”, thereby meeting the criteria of South Australia’s Associations Incorporation Act.

Hilarious! She should be fined.

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Most Ethical Quote Of The Month Apologized For After Being Called Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Singing Conductor

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys!”

—A British railway conductor to his train’s passengers. After a “non-binary” passenger complained, the London North Eastern Railway apologized profusely.

The complaint, via Twitter, stated, “As a non-binary person, this greeting doesn’t actually apply to me, so I won’t listen.” As is now the pattern, the railway’s management grovelled,

grovel2

The better response would have been, “Thank-you for alerting us. In the future, we will have all our conductors greet the passengers with “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, and assholes!” so you feel included.”

I’m kidding…but barely. The presumption by extreme minorities that they have justification to claim mistreatment if society does not distort its traditions, customs and procedures to include every variation of the norm, no matter how exotic, is pure narcissism and imaginary entitlement. The railway’s management’s response would have been appropriate for a conductor who spewed obscenities and blasphemy, not a cheerful welcome that conservatively applies to 99.9% of the population, and those who it does not apply to are in such outlier category based on a conscious choice: intersex individuals once did the practical thing and picked a gender. That was before they realized that power and victim status lay waiting for them by remaining ambiguous.

Did non-English speakers on the train complain bitterly that the conductor’s greeting wasn’t repeated in their language? Were deaf passengers offended that the conductor didn’t sign? I wonder if an expectant mother felt that her unborn child was being snubbed because the conductor didn’t welcome fetuses…

“Laurence” set out to get an innocent conductor disciplined or fired so in the future conductors would be less welcoming to everyone.

Maybe I wasn’t kidding.

Some Enchanted Evening Ethics, 3/11/2021

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The New York Times this week referred to the “killing” of George Floyd, which presupposes what the trial of Derek Chauvin is taking place to determine. This is disgraceful journalism. The more I consider the trial, the clearer it seems that this is an unethical show trial, devised to keep the mob at bay, punish a white cop by putting him through an ordeal, and putting off the inevitable mindless riots as long as possible. Potential jurors are already saying that they are frightened. A mob shouting for “justice” was outside the courthouse yesterday during jury selection. Chauvin can’t get a fair trial; not in Minneapolis, not anywhere. The news media and the riots made certain of that.

1. Self-portrait of a self-promoting weenie. Stacy Dash, whose major acting achievement was “Clueless’ 25 years ago, became a darling of the Right and Fox News as a black, female conservative and Trump supporter bucking the Hollywood lockstep. Celebrities, especially B-listers, are always suspect when they take a position that garners publicity. Stacy thought she had a profitable niche. Now that it’s clear that niche has dried up, Stacy has decided it’s time to launch Stacy 2.0. Read this, if you can, without rolling your eyes so hard they come out your ears…

“I’ve lived my life being angry, which is what I was on Fox News. I was the angry, conservative black woman. And at that time in my life it was who I was. I realized in 2016 that anger is unsustainable and it will destroy you. I made a lot of mistakes because of that anger There are things that I am sorry for.Things that I did say, that I should not have said them the way I said them. They were very arrogant and prideful and angry. And that’s who Stacey was, but that’s not who Stacey is now. Stacey’s someone who has compassion, empathy…God has forgiven me, how dare I not forgive someone else. I don’t want to be judged, so how dare I judge anyone else. So if anyone has ever felt that way about me, like I’ve judged, that I apologize for because that’s not who I am…I’m not a victim of anyone. Working for Fox at the time, that was my job. I did my job from the place I was at. Stacey now would never work at Fox, would never work for a news network or be a news contributor.”

As for her vocal support of President Trump, Dash said, as a cock could be heard crowing three times, “He is not the president. We have a new president. Being a supporter of Trump has put me in some kind of box that I don’t belong in. But he’s not the president. I’m going to give the president that we have right now a chance.”

Good luck with the reboot, Stacy. But you’re pathetic and desperate, and have the integrity and loyalty of Tessio in “The Godfather.”

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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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Ethics Dunce (And Asshole): USA Today Sportswriter Nancy Armour

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

RSI NFL-DEFLATE/BRADY A EDU SPO FBN USA MA

I apologize for the vulgarity, but the only way for the obnoxious and unethical attitude highlighted in the op-ed by America’s most insubstantial paper’s smugly woke female sportswriter is to make it clear to all just how indefensible such positions are, and how irresponsible it is to keep publishing them. Let her go write a fringe blog that nobody will read.

You know, like this one.

In the excruciating op-ed for the paper, Armour begins,

Tom Brady was happy to talk politics until he wasn’t.The Make America Great Again hat in his locker, the flippant endorsement of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Only when those ties became inconvenient did Brady decide he wanted to “stick to sports,” and that he preferred to be a beacon of positivity rather than delve into society’s thorny ills. How mighty white of him. Brady’s ability to enter and exit the debate at his choosing, to shield himself from accountability, is the height of white privilege.

Asshole. I’m sorry, but no other word will do. Asshole, asshole, asshole:

1. Nobody has an obligation to talk about politics or their preferences ever. Ever. The less celebrities like Brady do it, the better.

2. Despite the AUC’s thirst for revenge and the sick need to “punish” those who had the audacity to support the elected President of the United States rather than to savage him daily and try to drive him from office, Tom Brady has no “accountability” for choosing to publicly support Trump while he was running for office or when he was under siege while in office. Unethical journalists like Armour, however, have a great deal of accountability for dividing the country and weakening our democratic institutions, including the press, out of sheer hatred and arrogance.

3. The “ties’ are only “inconvenient” because totalitarian-leaning creeps like Armour are determined to purge non-conforming Americans from society if they don’t fall into line with their progressive betters.

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