cruelty

Out Of 199 Quotes, 40 That Reveal Donald Trump’s Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments
Slogging through 199 Donald Trump quotes is too much for anyone to endure. Here are the 40 that matter...

Slogging through 199 Donald Trump quotes is too much for anyone to endure. Here are 40 that matter…

I don’t like or trust the technique of cherry-picking quotes from famous people to make them sound stupid, venal, mean or distasteful. First of all, the technique has been  abused by the news media, which uses it against people like Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle, but seldom digs up quotes to embarrass the leaders and political figures they like and support. Many liberal icons—Barney Frank comes to mind—talk so incessantly that it would be easy to make them sound like monsters or fools using the technique, but if it is done to these people at all, it is done by ideological blogs with minimal exposure. Second, those who make such lists often cheat, taking quotes out of context, or worse, making them up. Many lists designed to show that Sarah Palin is an idiot, for example (she is many things, but idiot is not among them) use lines actually said by Tina Fay while lampooning Palin.

Michael Kruse’s feature for Politico called “The 199 Most Donald Trump Things Donald Trump Has Ever Said”, however, deserves a bit more deference. After all, he appears to have waded through a putrid swamp of Trump interviews, books, and videos, which probably left him drooling and giggling in a corner some place; I’ll be relieved when I see evidence that he’s OK. That task took courage, dedication and endurance: attention must be paid. Moreover, this isn’t the usual list of ten or twenty quotes: you could make Stephen Hawking  seem like a dolt in twenty quotes if you chose them maliciously. This is 199. Impressive.

Also horrifying. In selecting the 199 juiciest and most provocative quotes from any prominent American, wouldn’t you expect at least one that was articulate, thoughtful, wise or memorable? I’m not looking for Samuel Butler here, or even Barack Obama, but for someone who is at least for the nonce a “serious” candidate for the highest office in the land, it would be reassuring to find some evidence of wit, perspective, reflection, or a vocabulary beyond that of a typical 8th grader, and it just isn’t there. Has Trump  read any literature? Has he ever seen a play? Is he capable of a relevant famous quote or a cultural reference (saying that Bette Midler is “grotesque” doesn’t count, though “grotesque” may be the most sophisticated word that appears on the list)? If so, there is no hint of it. Maybe Kruse intentionally left out quotes that would reflect well on Trump, and omitted utterances like “I suppose there’s a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it’s the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom” (George Will) or “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators” (P.J. O’Roarke) or even“Our political differences, now matter how sharply they are debated, are really quite narrow in comparison to the remarkably durable national consensus on our founding convictions.” (John McCain). I doubt it.

There are three Trump bon mots in the 199 that barely justify quoting, like  #57: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: Sabrina Corgatelli, Fick

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

sabrina_corgatelli2

Just as the Cecil the Lion kerfluffle began to disperse (as Republicans try to recruit a dentist to shoot Donald Trump), frequent Ethics Alarms commenter Ing scored a Comment of the Day on my follow-up post about in-your-face giraffe-killer Sabrina Sabatelli, who intentionally mocked the Cecil mourners.

I designated her a fick, someone who publicly revels in their unethical conduct. Ing demurs, and employs the three Niggardly Principles to make his argument. I’ll be back briefly at the end; in the meantime, I’ll add the Niggardly Principle definitions to his commentary so you don’t have to follow the link back and forth.

Here is Ing’s Comment of the Day on the post, Sabrina Corgatelli, Fick: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The National Baseball Congress

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments
Kaiser Carlile

Kaiser Carlile

Shortly before my father died, and a little more than a year before she did, my mother made a series of jaw-dropping statements in a conversation with me and Dad. “You mean to tell me that I could wake up one morning, feeling fine, and then just drop dead later that same day?”

My father actually did a Danny Thomas spit-take with his coke.

“What??” said my father, who saw this occur to a lot of people during the war. “Of course! We’re over 80! It can happen any second! It always can happen any second! People die, every day, for no reason, suddenly, stupidly all the time!”

“Well, I just refuse to accept that!” said my mother, who really did think that she had a right to live forever.

For some reason Mom came to mind when I read that the National Baseball Congress had decided that it will not use bat boys or bat girls for the remainder of its World Series games in Wichita following the death of 9-year-old Kaiser Carlile.  The bat boy for the Liberal (Kansas) Bee Jays died Sunday, a day after a freak accident in which the boy was struck in the head by the swing of a player warming up near the on-deck circle. Though he was wearing a helmet and was immediately treated by home plate umpire Mark Goldfeder, a paramedic, the injuries inflicted by the bat proved fatal.
Continue reading →

Sabrina Corgatelli, Fick

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Sabrina_Corgatelli

Sabrina Corgatelli, a university accountant from McCammon, Idaho, is engaging in such blatantly fickish conduct that I am tempted to change the term “fick” to “corgatelli.” I won’t, because the conduct by the felicitously named Leroy Fick (in proudly declaring to the media in 2011 that he would continue to accept public assistance from Michigan despite winning the state lottery) had no defenders at all, while Corgatelli has thousands of fans who are evidently just as warped as she is. Thus Corgatelli is a fick—an individual who not only engages in unethical conduct but who publicly brags about it—and Leroy Fick avoids the fate of being labelled a corgatelli.

I just wanted to get that bit of terminology housekeeping out of the way at the outset. I must say, however, that at least fick Fick’s motives for his fickism are traditional and comprehensible: selfishness and greed. Corgatelli pays large sums of money to travel large distances in order to kill endangered species. If forced with a crossbow to my head to play Sophie’s Choice with one fick or the other, I’ll keep Leroy.

Corgatelli has set out to taunt critics of Cecil the Lion Killer Walter Palmer by posting  serial images of herself on  social media, posing triumphantly with her big game victims, sporting captions like this one, attached to the photo above: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month AND Comment Of The Day: Ethics Dunce: “Cecil The Lion Killer Walter Palmer…Or Any Big Game Hunter, Really”

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

“Feel free to pay this murdering asshole a visit at his home at XXXXXXXXX.. Don’t forget to bring your hunting gear. Can’t make it then send some mail to him and his wife XXXXXX. She loves animal killers! His wife is one of the owners of XXXXXXXXX, a customs broker in North Dakota. His daughter is XXXXXX (Palmer) and she can be reached at her company XXXXXXXXX. He also has vacation home at XXXXXXXXX.”

—– “Is,” an attempted, but immediately banned, Ethics Alarms commenter to the post about Walter Palmer, the big game-hunting dentist who inadvertently ended up shooting a popular and well-known lion rather than a random, everyday, mount-his-head-on-the-wall lion, as if it makes any real difference at all. The X’s cover up personal information about the Palmers, as this vicious and anonymous creep attempted to use this blog to facilitate organized harassment and possibly violence.

Dr. Palmer's office front...

Dr. Palmer’s office front…

It has been pointed out, fairly and accurately, that while people like Mia Farrow are trying to get Palmer killed—she tweeted out the same information I deleted above– because he was unlucky enough to be tricked into killing a lion-icon, the media is barely covering serial videos showing the dead-eyed callousness of the Planned Parenthood officials who facilitate and encourage the abortion, for any reason, of unborn human beings.  The same sensitive, compassionate progressives who are trying to get Palmer murdered (PETA has stated that he should be hanged) are shrugging off human carnage that is exactly as legal as the activity that Walter Palmer thought he was engaging in. One old lion versus a million nascent human beings, trying to live. Thus does selective outrage approach madness. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Cecil The Lion Killer Walter Palmer…Or Any Big Game Hunter, Really

/ Jack Marshall / 87 Comments

Walter James Palmer, a  Minnesota dentist,shot and killed the famous Cecil the lion with a bow and arrow. The death of the 13-year-old animal has caused an international uproar among conservationists because Cecil was well-known to visitors at the Zimbabwe nature reserve and enjoyed human contact. The lion was lured out of the national park and shot.

In a statement, Palmer said that the authorities had yet to contact him and added that he did not know the lion he had killed was a “local favorite.” “To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted,” he said. “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt.”

Oh, so what? Why is it worse to kill a “local favorite” than to kill any wild animal just for—yechhh–the fun of it? Killing for sport is ethically indefensible, and killing these large, beautiful, and even endangered creatures is ugly, cruel and irresponsible.

After Cecil, the photos show Palmer with some of his other “trophies.” He must be so proud… Continue reading →

The Gawker Mess: Is Integrity A Virtue When It Means Continuing An Unethical Policy?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

gawker1The website Gawker is reeling in the aftermath of particularly Gawkerish  (that is, slimy) story exposing the efforts of a high-ranking male official at Gawker rival Conde Nast to secure the services of a male prostitute.  Following backlash even from those who usually tolerate  Gawker’s smug invasions into celebrity privacy, Nick Denton, the president of  Gawker Media, had the story taken down. He then wrote a post titled “Taking a Post Down,” defending his executive action.  Gawker Editor-in-Chief Max Read and Gawker Media Executive Editor Tommy Craggs resigned, and the editorial staff has protested the episode, noting that “business executives deleted an editorial post over the objections of the entire executive editorial staff.”

First, regarding Gawker’s plight: good. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving website. Second, and more controversial is this interesting ethics question that we don’t encounter very often outside the realm of “The Godfather” films: Is integrity applied to an inherently unethical culture a virtue?

When the Conde Nast outing story received furious blowback from media critics but also gay activists, who are flying high right now and thus not to be crossed, Craggs proposed that Denton issue a statement that Gawker was founded as a media gossip site and had always “unapologetically and often mercilessly” invaded the private lives  those who work in  the industry. “We stand by the story, which meets our simple, unwavering standard of being both true and interesting,” the statement was to say.

That simple, unwavering standard is and has always been unethical. Gawker hurts people for fun and titillation, and makes a profit out of doing so. Printing what is “true and interesting” without considering whether the often prurient interest factor outweighs the harm to the individuals and their families done by the site’s prying is inherently unfair and irresponsible. The pulled story was not atypical, but then Gawker has been typically immune to shame and decency. What had changed?

Denton’s various explanatory statements are ethically inert—not surprising, since he founded this monstrosity. Continue reading →

The Girl Scouts Face Corruption By A Rich, Cruel, Horrible Person

/ Jack Marshall / 80 Comments

batman_arkham_origins

Fortunately, they knew what to do.

Last May the Girl Scouts made news when they announced a new policy of acceptance for transgender girls.  The policy was reasonable and case-by-case based, but the policy is secondary to the story. What matters is that the organization adopted it as consistent with its mission.

Last month, a $100,000 donor sent the Queen Anne offices of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington a note demanding that the chapter “guarantee that our gift will not be used to support transgender girls. If you can’t, please return the money.” The $100,000 was about 25% of the group’s yearly fundraising goal, and would have been used to send about a 500 indigent girls to camp.

Council CEO Megan Ferland returned the donation, telling the donor “Girl Scouts is for every girl. And every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.” Of course she did. A non-profit organization cannot put a price tag on its mission and its integrity. This would be like St. Jude’s Hospital accepting a huge donation in exchange for allowing a black child to die of cancer. It would be like a a women’s college’s board of directors cutting a profitable deal with an outsider to close the school down, just to pick a wild hypothetical out of the air. It is the equivalent of treason, selling out one’s nation, or taking money to betray a family or a friend who trusts you. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Actor and Ex-“George” Jason Alexander

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

susan-ross

The gag on “Seinfeld” was that all four of the main characters (and most everyone else, too) were selfish, neurotic, essentially horrible people. Michael Richards signaled that he might have been channeling his inner creep into “Kramer” when he had a spontaneous racist meltdown during a stand-up gig, effectively destroying his career. Now we have learned what a mean-spirited, gratuitously cruel jerk Jason Alexander is. And I always thought it was just the fact that he was playing mean-spirited, gratuitously cruel jerk Larry David as “George Costanza.”

The “Seinfeld” episode in which George’s rich, odd fiancee Susan Ross died by licking too many cheap wedding invitation envelopes has always been controversial, as many critics and fans felt that it caused the show’s characters to cross over the line from endearingly strange and self-involved to outright despicable—especially George, who received the news of her death with thinly veiled relief.

In an interview with a genuinely despicable individual, Howard Stern, Jason Alexander, previously “George Costanza,” was asked by Stern how Susan’s sudden death became an episode.

“This poor girl,” Alexander said, chuckling.  “The actress is this wonderful girl, Ms. [Heidi] Swedberg… I love her. She’s a terrific girl. I love her. I couldn’t figure out how to play off of her.”

Stern: “You’re being kind.”

“No,” said Alexander, meaning “Yes.”  “Her instincts for doing a scene — where the comedy was — and mine were always misfiring.”

Alexander went on to say that his castmates told him he was being unfair until they had to play scenes with Swedberg. “Finally, they do an episode where Elaine and Jerry have a lot of material with her,” Alexander said. According to Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Seinfeld concurred afterward that it was ” fucking impossible” to play off of her.

Alexander then fingered the actor who sealed “Susan’s” doom.  “Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Elaine”) actually said, ‘I know — don’t you just wanna kill her?’” “Seinfeld” co-creator and writer Larry David then agreed to execution by envelope.

“Every time I tell this story I cringe,” Alexander said, “because Heidi is the sweetest.”

In a career turn that sounds like a  punchline, Swedberg now lives by teaching the ukulele and leading her own ukulele band.

Alexander, not to be excessively harsh, is scum. Continue reading →

P.S. 120’s Pay-To-Play Carnival: How Can We Entrust Our Children’s Education To People Like This?

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments

150521_ Carnival at PS 120, 58-01 136th St, Queens, NY, for Sunday, J.C.Rice

I don’t know why my head didn’t blow up with this one. Maybe I’m building up resistance. (Is that good or bad?)

PS 120 in Flushing, Queens, held a carnival for its students last week during school hours, with nearly 900 kids, pre-K to fifth-grade, taking turns in 45 minutes shifts.  There were inflatable slides, a space-bounce, rides,popcorn, ices, music and more. It also cost parents $10, and if they didn’t pay, their kids were forced to sit in the auditorium and listen to their richer classmates having fun.

Now the carnival operator is offering to hold a repeat for the excluded children. “If I had known that there were kids not allowed to attend the carnival, I would have paid for them,” he now says.   That’s nice (and smart PR), but the damage is done.

All the teachers, administrators, the PTA and the principal involved in planning this event, and not one had the functioning ethics alarm to say, “WHAT? We can’t exclude kids who can’t pay. That’s unfair and cruel.”  Wow.

Find another way to fund the event. Find a sponsor. Tell the parents who can pay that they will also be paying for poorer families that cannot. Cancel the event, but whatever you do, you can’t punish kids because their parents can’t or won’t pay ten dollars.

Oh—the school made a nice profit on the carnival!

People this incompetent and lacking in compassion and common sense shouldn’t be allowed alone with children, much trusted to teach them.

___________________________

Pointer: Fred

Facts: NY Post 1, 2