censorship

Unethical Quote Of The Month: 65 Professors And 558 Other Faculty Members And Students Of Washington & Lee University

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“We ask that the University prevent Matt Walsh from speaking on our campus and that the University live out its Statement of Commitment to Diversity by taking action to protect its minority students from future harmful events.”

—623 Washington & Lee signatories, including 65 professors and law professors, of an online petition to block a conservative speaker from appearing on campus

Displaying either ignorance or contempt for the core American ethical principle of freedom of speech, 623 members of the Washington & Lee University community, mostly students and faculty members but with a few others mixed in, maybe cafeteria workers or something, have signed an online petition insisting that conservative political commentator and author Matt Walsh be prevented from speaking at the Virginia campus on March 30, on the currently controversial topic of “What is a woman.” Walsh has been a deliberately inflammatory critic of the current extremist, indeed brain-melting phenomenon of transsexual madness, which has reached such heights (or depths) that the last confirmed Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court professed an inability to define “woman.” Walsh stars in online documentary film “What Is a Woman?” created by the conservative website, The Daily Wire.

What is so disturbing about the petition, which is reproduced in its entirety below, is the anti-democratic logic and ideology it displays, though all of this is now familiar to anyone following the descent of the American Left into aspiring totalitarianism. The position one whole side of the American political spectrum has now almost completely accepted as legitimate is that dissent from its obviously virtuous and correct cant (they are on the “right side of history,” after all) is the equivalent of violence and causes permanent “harm” to member of its constituency or society in general. The petition justifies its existence by providing frightening proof of many horrible truths, among them that the U.S.’s institutions of higher learning now indoctrinate their students into anti-democratic philosophies. Here is just a sample of the petitioners’ reasoning:

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Central Connecticut State University May Not Be Stanford, But Its Anti-Speech Mobs Are Exactly The Same

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Candace Owens’ documentary exposé on Black Lives Matter was released last Fall. “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold” also challenges the mainstream media narratives surrounding the death of George Floyd, so you will not be shocked–shocked!—to learn that it has received minimal attention from the news media. Discussing, never mind showing, the utter corruption of the cynical, racist movement that corporations, whole industries and major cities bowed down before in abject submission is a perfect excuse in for Woke World—-and that includes most journalists and editors—to metaphorically kill the messenger. I’m abashed to admit that I had never heard of the film before this week.

And so it came to pass that when The Daily Wire-produced documentary was screened at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) earlier this month, the film was shut down by a Stanford Law-style student mob. Conservative Hollywood blogger Christian Toto quotes the account of a CCSU professor who related what happened when the film began to play on the screen:

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Insidious Stealth Mind-Control Is Spreading And I Have No Idea What Can Be Done About It

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

It is well-established that when a mind lacks the linguistic tools to conceive of certain thoughts, those thoughts become impossible to conceive. This is why tight control of the language was so central to Big Brother’s control of the populace in “1984,” and, it seems clear, why current aspiring power-mongers on the Left are increasingly employing censorship and linguistic manipulation to herd a lazy, badly-educated and apathetic public into virtual pens where they can be controlled and relied upon to support their betters.

In the last couple of weeks we learned that woke-infested publishers have been stealth editing the works of Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming; this week, “Goosebumps” author R.L. Stine announced that his popular series has been similarly edited “for sensitive readers” without his consent. Who knows what other classic books are having their original authors’ words, ideas and messages altered by anonymous political correctness hacks in the pursuit of “social justice”?

Now comes the news (via The Spectator) that a prime online news source and political analysis site is also in the business of restricting language. Here is a list of  “non-inclusive words” that Politico’s reporters have been instructed to avoid using: Continue reading →

Idaho Student Massacre Ethics…And A “Hate Speech” Issue

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Issue I: The Banned Subreddit. Above you see a posted photo of some sick fan-girls’s shrine to University of Idaho student massacre suspect Bryan Kohberger. On the massive social media site Reddit, a “subreddit” titled “Brynation” emerged after Kohberger’s arrest late last year for the murders of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. The Reddit group, which included women professing to be infatuated with the accused killer as well as amateur sleuths who maintained that he was innocent, had grown to more than 500 members before it was banned from the platform for allegedly violating Reddit’s Moderator Code of Conduct. As is typical with such social media bans, Reddit didn’t specify the exact offense.

Reddit can ban whatever and whoever it chooses; the question is when it is ethical to do so. There are too many arguably sick subreddits to list, including many involving fetishes, which the common phenomenon of women being smitten by murderers certainly is. At this point, Bryan Kohberger is presumed innocent in the eyes of the law. I just heard an “expert” opine that social media outlets have an “obligation” to control and minimize “hate speech” on their platforms, which he defined as speech that could provoke violence or “harm” individuals, and cited Reddit’s action as an example of responsible social media management. The Fox News interviewer just nodded like one of those plastic dogs people used to put in the rear windows of their cars.

How is chatting online about an accused murderer “hate speech”? The expert’s fatuous (but popular!) position demonstrates exactly what’s unethical about the anti-“hate speech” movement on the Left: the term literally can mean any speech the censors don’t like, disagree with, or find “icky.” The participants in the banned subreddit were not doing anything likely to result in violence: has anyone ever become a serial killer to be more attractive to women? Thinking isn’t dangerous; talking on line about one’s thoughts isn’t dangerous either, or unethical.

In a purported democracy, the culture should lean hard in the direction of free expression, with all expression given a strong presumption of legitimacy. People like Fox’s “expert” do the opposite, and are working to shift our culture toward concepts of GoodThink and BadThink, with the distinctions being dictated by powerful corporations, Big Tech, social media, the news media, educational institutions and, of course, the government.

Weird people have rights too.

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“The Great Stupid” Across The Pond: We Helped Save Roald Dahl’s Children’s Books From The Censors; Now They’re Coming For OO7

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

…who might soon be called “008” to soothe readers offended by the number seven. Seven deadly sins, seven dwarves, that creepy Morgan Freeman movie with Gwinneth Paltrow’s head in a box…it’s a touchy number, you have to admit.

I’d like to think in some tiny way Ethics Alarms helped spread the news of the despicable bowdlerizing of Dahl’s classics that resulted in his publisher backing down and adopting the New Coke solution to a fiasco: the anti-authors’ rights business announced over the weekend that it will henceforth offer “Dahl Classic” along with the vandalized “New Dahl.” Yeah, let’s see which sells more copies. There was hardly time to pop the champagne, however: we then learned that Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are being re-written for “modern readers“to omit alleged “racist language” and “racial references.” The censored novels will be published in April to mark the 70 years since “Casino Royale,” the first in the series, was published.

There’s nothing quite like honoring an author by defacing his most famous works. At least they’re leaving “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” alone. I think.

The indefensible conduct comes after Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, which owns the rights to Fleming’s work, commissioned a review by “sensitivity readers.” The British really don’t get that freedom of speech and expression thingy, do they? Neither does the rest of the world beyond our shores and porous borders. Now watch: U.S. progressives will argue that once again, the United States is out of step with its betters by not censoring literature and movies with the same wild abandon that it pulls down statues.

The disclaimer accompanying Fleming’s reissued novels, echoing Dahl’s publisher Puffin, will read: “This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set.”

If Ian Fleming “might be considered offensive” to the political correctness police, imagine what’s going to happen to Mark Twain.

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“Good Censorship”(Cont.): “I Enjoy Being A Girl”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

No, I’m not ready for the epic job of defenestrating Seth Abramson for his ethics-anti-matter “justification” of re-witing Roald Dahl’s works. It’s not that its going to be difficult— most readers here could do it as well as I can—it’s just going to be tedious and infuriating, and I’m on edge already.

Right now I want to pose a related issue: the song you can hear above from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Fifties Broadway hit “Flower Drum Song.” I hadn’t heard it myself for a very long time, and when it was played on the Sirius-XM Broadway channel, I almost drove off the road. It’s a famous song; Rodgers, as usual, provided a memorable melody to Oscar’s lyrics…but wow. Are there any demeaning female stereotypes that aren’t endorsed in this song? Here are the lyrics:

I’m a girl and by me that’s only great!
I am proud that my silhouette is curvy,
That I walk with a sweet and girlish gait,
With my hips kind of swively and swervy.

I adore being dressed in something frilly
When my date comes to get me at my place.
Out I go with my Joe or John or Billy,
Like a filly who is ready for the race!

When I have a brand-new hairdo,
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do—
I enjoy being a girl!

When men say I’m cute and funny,
And my teeth aren’t teeth, but pearl,
I just lap it up like honey—
I enjoy being a girl!

I flip when a fellow sends me flowers,
I drool over dresses made of lace,
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound and a half of cream upon my face!

I’m strictly a female female,
And my future, I hope, will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy
Having a girl like me!

I enjoy being a girl!
I enjoy being a girl!

I flip when a fellow sends me flowers,
I drool over dresses made of lace,
I talk on the telephone for hours
With a pound and a half of cream upon my face!

When I have a brand-new hairdo,
With my eyelashes all in curl,
I float as the clouds on air do—
I enjoy being a girl!

When someone with eyes that smoulder,
Says he loves every silken curl
That falls on my ivory shoulder—
I enjoy being a girl!

When I hear a complimentary whistle
That greets my bikini by the sea,
I turn and I glower and I bristle—
But I’m happy to know the whistle’s meant for me!

Oh, baby, that whistle’s meant for me!

I’m strictly a female female,
And my future, I hope, will be
In the home of a brave and free male
Who’ll enjoy being a guy
Having a girl like…ME!

Clearly, by the criteria adopted by Puffin Books, that song would have to be re-written and censored, because they “regularly review the language to ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today.” I know women whose teeth would be set on edge right from the title, in which a fully grown woman refers to herself as a girl. As the song proceeds, she checks all sorts of sexist other boxes too, including expressing secret approval of sexual harassment.

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“Good Censorship”: Regarding Ethics Villain Puffin Books And Its Defender, Seth Abramson

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Yes, that’s a dead and rotting puffin above. It should be the new logo for Puffin Books, a division of Penguin. According to Wikipedia, “it has been among the largest publishers of children’s books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world” since the 1960s. According to the Penguin website, Puffin Books is “prestigious.”

According to Ethics Alarms, the children’s book publisher has no regard for authors’ rights, integrity, fairness, literature or language, all rather crucial to its trade, wouldn’t you say? What’s happened at Puffin? Well, what’s happened to Disney, elementary schools and toy makers? ( Clue: Mattel has a gender-fluid line of Barbies).

Puffin has decided that the demands of wokism, political correctness and child indoctrination justify rewriting the works of iconic British author Roald Dahl. Since Dahl’s death, Puffin has made hundreds of changes to his childen’s classics, removing words and passages that The Wonderfully Woke might consider offensive or harmful, even to the extent of adding passages that Dahl never wrote.

What?? I’m assuming that Puffin owns the rights to the books somehow and can do this legally. You want to know why authors like Samuel Beckett made sure his estate had iron-clad control over his works? THIS is why. Please note: it doesn’t matter one whit that Puffin can allow some anonymous censor to rewrite “Charlie and the Choaolate Factory,” it is throbbingly unethical for it to do so.

In the original edition of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” Grandma Josephine speaks of a “crazy Indian prince.” The 2022 edition describes the character as a “ridiculously rich Indian prince.” Augustus Gloop, one of the horrible children in the novel, is no longer described as “enormously fat” as Dahl wrote; he is now   described as “enormous”(whatever that means). Puffin apparently has a fetish about “fat.” Aunt Sponge, in the 2022 edition of “James and the Giant Peach,” is now “quite large” instead of “enormously fat,” leaving the possibility that she could be the size of  The Rock or even a T-Rex. Other passages where Aunt Sponge is described as “fat” have been excised.

Meanwhile, “two ghastly hags” has been changed to “two ghastly aunts.” “Queer” is apparently no longer acceptable to describe a house—just in case its a gay house, I suppose—and was replaced with  “strange.” In “The Witches,”  edits by Puffin made character descriptors gender-neutral, so “chambermaid” became “cleaner.” Though Dahl wrote that a character said, “You must be mad, woman!,” the line is now, “You must be out of your mind!” The line describing a, “Great flock of ladies” was changed to a “Great group of ladies.”

And so on. Continue reading →

The State Dept.’s Online News Blacklist: Unconstitutional And Sinister, But The MSM Doesn’t Care, And The Public Is Too Ignorant To Object

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

That’s quite an ironic masthead, as you will soon see.

Reason Magazine reports:

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a British organization that evaluates news outlets’ susceptibility to disinformation. The ultimate aim is to persuade online advertisers to blacklist dangerous publications and websites.

One such publication, according to GDI’s extremely dubious criteria, is Reason.

GDI’s recent report on disinformation notes that the organization exists to help “advertisers and the ad tech industry in assessing the reputational and brand risk when advertising with online media outlets and to help them avoid financially supporting disinformation online.”

The U.S. government evidently values this work; in fact, the State Department subsidizes it. The National Endowment for Democracy—a nonprofit that has received $330 million in taxpayer dollars from the State Department—contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI’s budget, according to an investigation by The Washington Examiner‘s Gabe Kaminsky.

The other publications on the US government supported blacklist, which lists the 10 “riskiest online news outlets,”are the New York Post, Real Clear Politics, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, One America News Network, The Federalist, Newsmax, The American Spectator, and The American Conservative.

No viewpoint discrimination there!

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Comment Of The Day: Unethical Quote Of The Week: Former Head Of Twitter’s Office of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In this Comment of the Day, made yesterday by veteran EA commenter Glenn Logan, he alerts us to an arguably even scarier statement at the Twitter censorship hearings yesterday, pointing to Jonathan Turley’s horrified (the professor is always horrified in a restrained fashion, unlike me) reaction to both the statement and the Democratic approval of it. The entire day of testimony justifies the appearance of Geena above, and she was only warning about a single man gradually turning into a giant fly. We are watching our nation mutating into a repressive, totalitarian society that restrains and punishes independent thought.

How many of your friends would vote for the likes of  Rep. Melanie Ann Stansbury (D., NM), whose response to the creepy statement Glenn writes about was “Exactly”? Or with former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s statement that he pledged to regulate the platform’s content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation” and would  “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard”?

For all his weirdness, hypocrisy and Trumpish trolling, Elon Musk performed one of the most important acts in defense of democracy and America’s future in recent memory.

Here is Glenn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Unethical Quote Of The Week: Former Head Of Twitter’s Office of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth.”

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Jack wrote: Roth literally said that Twitter believed you have to destroy free speech in order to save it—and he didn’t even realize how Orwellian that is.

Indeed, but what really freaks me out (and only slightly hyperbolically) was the testimony of his fellow Twit, former Twitter executive Anika Coliler Navaroli at a House Oversight Committee hearing yesterday, which is analyzed by Jonathan Turley on his blog:

Navaroli said in response to a question from a Democratic member:

“Instead of asking just free speech versus safety to say free speech for whom and public safety for whom. So whose free expression are we protecting at the expense of whose safety and whose safety are we willing to allow to go the winds so that people can speak freely.”

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Unethical Quote Of The Week: Former Head Of Twitter’s Office of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

CENSORSHIP IS SPEECH

“Unrestricted free speech, paradoxically, results in less speech, not more.”

—-Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter’s Office of Trust and Safety, testifying before the the House Oversight Committee.

Imagine: Twitter had someone who thinks like that running its content review operation.

Free speech may result in less speech in a setting where participants are required to defend their positions and opinions, and cannot claim the comforting protection of an ideological echo chamber. Roth was unable to distinguish between manner of speech, which requires moderation, and censoring speech for content, which is what Twitter did to please and placate its progressive users.

First, Roth said that “Twitter found that users were unhappy with the company’s approach to content moderation and that this … dissatisfaction drove people away from the service. This has consequences for what we mean by free speech on social media.” Then he said, “Again and again, we saw the speech of a small number of abusive users drive away countless others.”

Which was it, abusive speech, or content? As we have learned from watching student-driven censorship on college campuses, speech that counters leftist cant and challenges progressive positions is “unsafe” and thus abusive. A free society must have free speech, and that means that members of that society need to learn to communicate and accept that the marketplace of ideas is challenging, intense, and even frightening.

Roth literally said that Twitter believed you have to destroy free speech in order to save it—and he didn’t even realize how Orwellian that is.