Brian Kilmeade

Ethics Warm-Up, 10/24/2018: Catchers, Judges, Photographers, And Journalists Behaving Badly. Then There Are The Bombers….

/ Jack Marshall / 112 Comments

Good afternoon!

You might as well know: I’ve been what they euphemistically  call “under the weather” recently. Ethics is getting in the way of my naps…

1. About those bombs…Not much that needs to be said about the explosive devices sent to Soros, the Clintons, Obama and—it fits–CNN, except this: it was inevitable. With conservatives being harassed and attacked in public places, Fox News offices and Republican offices being vandalized, and Democratic leadership and the media openly feeding the hate while rationalizing extreme incivility ( Philippe Reines, former adviser to Hillary Clinton, on MSNBC regarding mobs harassing Mitch McConnell and others: “People are doing these things because it’s all that’s left.” Gee, I guess there were some other tactics left after all, eh, Phil?), that some unstable wacko would decide to bring a gun to knife fight was a near certainty. Naturally, the news media and Democrats want to blame Republicans for the crimes. That’s not going to defuse the situation, and it’s also wrong.  The blame falls on all of those who have encouraged the rhetoric of hate and uncivil conduct rather than conducting political debate in a manner that doesn’t shame democracy.

You can make that list as easily as I can. When the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, the extreme anti-government rhetoric—by the standards of those times, at least–of the Right was fairly accorded the bulk of the blame for raising anger to a dangerous level. This time, the hate machine is being operated around the clock by the Left, and for two years without a break or a significant easing on the accelerator—indeed, it is pretty much the Democratic theme of the 2018 elections.

2. It’s a huge bat! It’s a black-robed blur! It’ SUPER JUDGE! In Chehalis, Washington, Judge R.W. Buzzard left the bench and chased  after two handcuffed inmates when they made a run for it from his Washington state courtroom. 22-year-old Tanner Jacobson and 28-year-old Kodey Howard bolted for the door and down  four flights of stairs, but the judge grabbed Howard just as he was about to exit the courthouse, and Jacobson was caught by police apprehended Jacobson a few blocks away.

As with the cases of bank tellers and grocery clerks who spontaneously play vigilante, the judge was exceeding his authority and interfering with law enforcement. This wasn’t his job, and is not the kind of image the judiciary wants to project. He should be disciplined, but probably won’t be.

Sheriff Rob Snaza said of the incident, “These things don’t happen very often.” No kidding. And they shouldn’t happen at all.
Continue reading →

Unfair, Unbalanced And Stupid Is No Way To Go Through Life, Fox News

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments
He's the most impressive- looking Presidential candidate, and Fox News has apparently never heard of him.

He’s the most impressive- looking Presidential candidate ever, and Fox News has apparently never heard of him.

I usually watch CNN in the morning, but today I decided to try to stomach “Fox and Friends” as long as I could. Fox News, as we know (or should), is often deliberately unfair to Democrats, skimps on criticism of Republicans, and enjoyed Hillary Clinton’s loss so much that the faces of many of their alleged broadcast journalists are still frozen into Joker-like smiles. Fox News is  unbalanced to the right, which means that it is intentionally trying to counter-balance the relentless leftward tilt of the rest of the mainstream media, hence the tongue in cheek “fair and balanced” slogan. Get it??? (It is constantly amazing to me how many people don’t.)

Yeah, I get it. Thus I am on notice of Fox’s biases, and indeed grateful that one network is transparent about them (MSNBC makes two.) All I ask from Fox News is that it doesn’t make me ashamed to be tuning in by being unconscionably incompetent and stupid.

This morning  I was half-asleep, so the “Fox and Friends” giggling from the couch didn’t get to me as fast as it usually does. There was an interview with John McCain, who turned on the interviewer’s (I think it was Brian Kilmeade, but frankly, I don’t want to know these hacks’ names—I have baseball statistics to store) leading question about Sec. of State nominee Rex Tillerson’s friendly relationship with Russia—the question begged McCain to agree it was nothing to worry about–to slam Russia, saying, “these people are murderous thugs.”  That was fun. But then the gang had an endless visit from a mindreader—yes, “Network” is no longer satire—as whatever dyed blonde woman  Fox had on the couch this time squealed, “That was AWESOME!,” and—I’m not making this up—interviewed a 13-year-old “historian,” as if a 13-year old could be a historian. (I wanted to ask him to explain what was wrong with Chuck Todd’s “history.”)

Incredibly, all this didn’t make me want to flee into the street, screaming. This did: Continue reading →

Of Course Gretchen Carlson Was Sexually Harassed At Fox News….So Why Didn’t She Sue Before She Was Fired?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Ex Fox Blonde Gretchen Carlson and Fox stud-muffin Roger Aisles

Ex-Fox Blonde Gretchen Carlson and Fox stud-muffin Roger Ailes

Gretchen Carlson is suing Fox News Chair Roger Ailes for retaliating against her for refusing his sexual advances. I don’t know whether her allegations, which are disturbing to say the least, are true. The most sensational of them is her claim that Ailes, when she came to him to complain about sexual harassment from her co-hosts on “Fox and Friends,” said, “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better.”

Cowabunga.

Ailes denies her account, but then, he would whether it was true or not, for that statement is pure, unadulterated sexual harassment by all by itself.

Indeed, a sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox by Carlson once would be such a slam dunk that it is interesting that she never brought one. I stopped watching “Fox & Friends” in part because Carlson was harassed almost every day by co-hosts Seven Doocy and Brian Kilmead, and it made me angry, and to some extent angry at Carlson for putting up with it.

In 2009, Carlson  complained to a supervisor that Doocy “had created a hostile work environment by regularly treating her in a sexist and condescending way, including by putting his hand on her and pulling down her arm to shush her during a live telecast.”  Indeed he had. You can see examples of this repeated and juvenile conduct here and here. In her suit, Carlson says that her co-hosts had been “mocking [Gretchen] during commercial breaks, shunning her off air, refusing to engage with her on air, belittling her contributions to the show, and generally attempting to put her in her place by refusing to accept and treat her as an intelligent and insightful journalist rather than a blonde female prop.” To this, Ailes reportedly told Carlson that she was a “man hater” and “killer'”and said  that she needed to learn to “get along with the boys.”  Continue reading →

(PSSST! Conservatives! Here’s Why Democrats Win Elections By Claiming a Republican “War On Women”: You Tolerate Too Many Pigs, Sexists And Misogynists)

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
OK, quick: What did Jennifer Lawrence do that the Daily Caller felt was newsworthy?

OK, quick: What did Jennifer Lawrence do that the Daily Caller felt was newsworthy?

[WARNING:  For some bizarre reason,the second half of this post will not let me space out the paragraphs properly; WordPress is having some issues. I apologize, and I’ll fix it as soon as I can.]

I regularly peruse about 50 websites as part of my search for provocative ethics issues, including Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller. It’s a conservative blog, of course, similar in content to Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, and a fair reverse-negative politically to the leftish Daily Beast. Scrolling through its various stories, I hit this headline:

Double Feature: Jennifer Lawrence Shows Sideboob AND Underboob Simultaneously [PHOTOS]

Now THAT’S “news you can use”!

Why is this kind of leering, sexist, fratboy junk—exactly what used to cause us to ridicule the British tabloids back when American newspapers had integrity— appearing on what is supposed to be a serious political commentary website? Simple, really:

  • Its linkbait.
  • Most of the Daily Caller’s readers are conservative males, a disturbing number of whom will drool over revealing [PHOTOS] of comely actresses young enough to be their granddaughters.
  • Too many conservatives, like Carlson, have deficient ethics alarms when it comes to reducing women to their body parts.

This wasn’t a departure for the Daily Caller, not at all: it posts this kind of crap regularly. (Here’s another.) The entire story regarding actress Lawrence’s exposure read as follows:

“Jennifer Lawrence clearly did not mind (or was not aware) that the Internet was abuzz with her flash of sideboob last week.Over the weekend, the actress simultaneously showed some sideboob AND underboob during “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” premiere in Paris. It was glorious.”

Wow. Stop the presses. Continue reading →