censorship
Ethic Quiz: “Springtime For Hitler” Ethics
And speaking of Donald Trump…
In South Orangetown, New York, the school superintendent stepped in and cut the swastikas from Tappan Zee High School’s student production of “The Producers” less than a week before the production. Of course, the Mel Brooks musical satire based on his film “The Producers” employs swastikas on Nazi flags and armbands during its famous campy “Springtime For Hitler” number and at other points in the show. Before someone posted a picture of the swastikas on the stage on a Facebook page, this aspect of “The Producers” had somehow escaped the attention of school administrators.
Some parents were shocked, and complained. After checking out the stage, the superintendent cut the costume details and set dressing.“There is no context in a public high school where a swastika is appropriate,” South Orangetown Superintendent Bob Pritchard told CBS. Pritchard consulted with local rabbis before making his decision.
Rabbis, of course, would be a natural audience for “The Producers.” (Reports that the rabbis suggested a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” instead have not been confirmed.)
Your spring-is-in-the-air Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is this example of school censorship of the performing arts fair, responsible and ethical?
Ethics Quote Of The Week: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai
“The text of the First Amendment is enshrined in our Constitution, but there are certain cultural values that undergird the amendment that are critical for its protections to have actual meaning. If that culture starts to wither away, then so too will the freedom that it supports.”
—FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai to the Washington Examiner, in an interview where he expressed concern that respect for First Amendment principles were diminishing, particularly on college campuses.
Isn’t it fascinating that so many of those who are concerned about the freedom of speech being diminished by political correctness have responded by supporting a Presidential candidate who regularly abuses the right of free speech, and whose response to protesters at his own speeches is to abuse them?
But I digress.
Today’s example of what Pai is talking about comes from California State University Los Angeles (CSULA), where president William Covino, responding to expressions of dismay from the same kinds of students who needed counseling at Rutgers, cancelled a scheduled speech by conservative pundit and Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro, and in a particularly Orwellian touch, did so citing the need for the “free exchange of ideas.” Continue reading
A Google Chrome Extension So Progressives Can Distort Dissenting Opinions Without Even Trying…And The Left Thinks It’s Wonderful!
Don’t worry, only the TRUTH gets through….
With the addition of a simple Google add-on to your Chrome browser, each and every appearance of the term pro-life will be replaced with, “anti-choice,” rescuing sensitive abortion advocates from having to endure a a term that reminds them that there’s a material difference between abortion and choosing which flavor to get at Baskin Robbins. This means that the journalistic, scholarly and expositional communications of individuals with varying views from the Great and All -knowing Left will be edited without their approval, and can be copied, quoted and distributed in that weakened and distorted form.
We should have seen this coming. The anti-free speech instincts in the modern progressive movement betrays its totalitarian DNA. This is the next step down the slippery into the abyss from oppressive political correctness, from intimidating and punishing those who express opinions and positions that the left deems hateful (or too close to the truth), to making it impossible to communicate non-conforming ideas aty all by translating them into something less persuasive.
What other words and phrases will be subjected to this treatment? I’ll give odds that the next one will change “illegal immigration” to just “immigration,” not that the mainstream media isn’t regularly doing that already. Continue reading
When Corporations Don’t Respect Autonomy And Freedom Of Speech: Nike
Nike allows purchasers to customize their Air Jordans, but reserves the right to control what ideas, thoughts and preferences you proclaim on your shoes.
Nabeel Kaukab, self-described as “an All American kid with an unusual name,” was browsing the online NikeiD store where customers build and buy custom footwear, and discovered Nike’s lack of support for the concept of free speech when he explored the customization features, one of which includes the ability to place up to six letters on the athletic shoes. When he entered “Islam” and “Muslim,” he was unformed that these words do not fit within the Nike guidelines.
Really? Nike’s guidelines specifically exclude “profanity,” “inappropriate slang,” “insulting or discriminatory content,” “content construed to incite violence,” “material that Nike wishes not to place on products” and anything that “violates another party’s trademark or intellectual property rights.” Continue reading
Observations On A Nauseating Development
Ah, those were the good old days. Now we’re REALLY desperate.
Observation One: If you don’t see what’s nauseating about it, you are part of the problem. Here:
Top Obama administration officials, including Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, and White House Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith met in San Jose, California, with representatives of Twitter Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., and other Silicon Valley companies to seek ideas on how extremist content online can be identified and removed, as well as help creating alternative messages to counter terrorist recruitment methods using social media. You can be thoroughly nauseated by reading about the whole embarrassing fiasco here.
Other observations:
2. The incompetence this displays is staggering, and the apparent unawareness of the optics of incompetence is staggering:
“The gathering took place as Obama announced a new counterterrorism task force to thwart extremists and their use of social media after recent deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. The task force will organize federal efforts into several areas, including research and analysis, technical assistance, communications, and programs to help prevent radicalization, according to the Homeland Security Department.”
Translation: “We haven’t been taking this seriously at all and were caught with our pants down, big-time. Now we have to look like we’re doing something.” Continue reading
Comment of the Day: “Campus Protest Ethics Yin, Yang and Yecchh: Unethical Website Of The Month ‘The Demands,’Ethics Hero Dr. Everett Piper, And Ethics Dunces, The Occidental Faculty”
I’m running out to see “Spotlight,” so I will avoid my usual rambling introduction to this Comment of the Day, authored with skill and humor by reader Chase Davidson. A “Blazing Saddles” term I have used recently to describe the ideological jargon and convoluted double-talk we have been hearing of late from progressive protesters, ideologically committed bloggers and Presidential candidates, “authentic frontier gibberish,” seems to have taken root, and Chase has done a magnificent job translating large, stinky chunks of it revealed in my post today about the various college student demands.
“Rarit!!”
Here is Chase Davidson’s Comment of the Day on the post Campus Protest Ethics Yin, Yang and Yecchh: Unethical Website Of The Month “The Demands,”Ethics Hero Dr. Everett Piper, And Ethics Dunces, The Occidental Faculty:
“incorporate into each department at least one queer studies class.”
What? That doesn’t even make sense, and I say this as a bisexual Hispanic man (and a bastard at that, so they can’t tell me to “check my privilege”). What does ‘queer studies’, a very specialized offshoot of sociology, have to do with any departments other than Sociology and the Humanities? Calculus don’t give two figs what your gender identity or sexual orientation is. Java and FORTRAN don’t change because you kissed a girl and you liked it. What does ‘queer studies’ have to offer Architectural Engineering except snickering at how phallic many buildings are?
“[Every Dartmouth student] must be taught and made aware that the land they reside on is Abenaki homeland” Continue reading
Campus Protest Ethics Yin, Yang and Yecchh: Unethical Website Of The Month “The Demands,”Ethics Hero Dr. Everett Piper, And Ethics Dunces, The Occidental Faculty
It’s an interesting question: is a website that approvingly lists nothing but unethical and outrageous demands from student protesters in this current round of progressive campus thuggery itself unethical, or is calling it so a case of killing the messenger? The Demands is certainly a useful website, as it displays the full kaleidoscopic display of where indoctrination on campus and the elevation of victim-mongering as a successful political strategy (Go Redskins!) off campus has brought us. Since the site’s stated objective is to support these pro-apartheid, anti-speech, anti-education totalitarian tots, however, I think unethical is a fair description. Some may disagree.
The loony is powerful here. For example…
...Guilford College students demand that the college must prioritize recruitment and retention of undocumented students. Guilford also takes the prize for the most the most deranged “suggestion” among the lists, which is that “every week a faculty member come forward and publicly admit their participation in racism inside the classroom via a letter to the editor in the Guilfordian.”
…Every Dartmouth student “must be taught and made aware that the land they reside on is Abenaki homeland” especially at all major ceremonies, and the school must “incorporate into each department at least one queer studies class.”
…SMU students demand that all students considering initiation into a fraternity or sorority must be subjected to mandatory cultural intelligence and sensitivity training, a.k.a. brainwashing.
…University of North Carolina student activists go full Orwell, demanding “mandatory programming [on] ways in which racial capitalism, settler colonialism, & cisheteropatriarchy structure our world.” They also demand that“White professors must be discouraged from leading and teaching departments” studying colonized/enslaved people/societies,” and this gem: “We DEMAND that campus police participate in the University-wide political education….Policing as an institution must be abolished.”
…Vanderbilt students want the university to eliminate its policy against “obstruction or disruption of teaching, administration, & University procedures & activities.”
There is so much more, if you have the stomach for it. Please, please make sure some debate moderator makes a list of the most outrageous demands and asks Bernie and Hillary what they think about them, as well as the campus culture and political cant that gestated this virus. Continue reading
Ethics Quiz: Ann Rice O’Hanlon’s Fresco
In 1934, under the auspices of the New Deal’s Public Works of Art program, artist Ann Rice O’Hanlon painted a fresco (the largest ever painted by a woman up to that time) in the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Hall. It has become famous and is much admired by art historians, and thousands of Kentucky students have walked past it through the decades. The large, six section artwork depicts many events, industries, traditions and activities that were significant to the state, invented in Kentucky or by Kentuckians, as well as historical events. Among the scenes shown are black slaves picking tobacco and black musicians serenading whites.
Ann Rice O’Hanlon’s masterpiece became the target of choice at Kentucky as the University ‘s black students were seeking to emulate the power plays by their equivalents at the University of Missouri, Yale, Amherst, Harvard Law, Dartmouth and other institutions. The Kentucky students held a meeting with president Eli Capilouto and argued that the fresco was offensive, as it relegated black people to roles as slaves or servants, and did not portray the cruelty of slavery and the later Jim Crow culture that existed in the state. Capilouto capitulated, agreeing to move the work to “a more appropriate location.” In the meantime, Kentucky will cover up the 45-by-8-foot fresco while adding a sign explaining why the mural is obscured.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this:
Should a university remove works of art on campus because particular groups of students or individual members of such groups find the artwork upsetting, offensive, or a negative influence on their experience?
Ethics Dunce: Nutella
The latest ISIS plot?
Remember the little deaf child named Gunner whose school wouldn’t let him sign his own name because of —EEEEEK! GUNS!!!!!—? The people at Nutella think like that school’s administrators.
Nutella offers customized jars of the filbert ick , but refused to make a personalized jar for a 5-year-old Australian girl because her name is “Isis.”
The girl’s aunt tried to buy five customized jars for her niece and nephew. The local store accepted her nephew’s name, Odhinn—-Now THAT name is offensive: it’s bad enough naming a poor kid after the head Norse god, but spelling it like that? — yet the manager refused to order jars for little Isis. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 
This most recent ethics thread commentary from Rick Jones (a.k.a. “Curmie,” who chronicles education fiascos, among other matters, during the year on his own blog) involves the recent kerfuffle over a high school production of “The Producers” having its Nazi decorations stripped away. I confess that I specifically requested Rick’s take on this one, knowing him to be a theater colleague as well as a teacher, and he did not disappoint….except that he uses the British spelling of “theatre.”
Here is Rick’s Comment of the Day on the Ethics Quiz: “Springtime for Hitler” Ethics.