culture

Baseball Gets the Gambling Scandal It Deserves.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Shohei Ohtani is, when healthy, the best baseball player alive as well as the most remarkable. No one since Babe Ruth (and no one before Babe either) managed to be a star slugger and an ace pitcher simultaneously, and Ruth never filled both roles in equal measure in the same seasons like Ohyani has. It may well be that the imported Japanese star isn’t as great a hitter as Babe or as overpowering a pitcher either, but never mind: he’s star quality on the mound and at the plate, and that is unprecedented.

The undisputed most valuable player in baseball signed a massive free agent contract with the best team in baseball (and, after the despicable Yankees, the best known), so Major League Baseball was confident that it had hit the metaphorical jackpot. And then…disaster struck.

During a Seoul, South Korea, series between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres, it was revealed that Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s interpreter since 2013 who followed the star to the United States in 2018, had been illegally gambling on sports; a law enforcement investigation of a bookie uncovered his activities. Ohtani’s name was bank transfers to the bookie to cover Mizuhara’s gambling losses, but Mizuhara insisted that his boss and friend knew nothing about the gambling. The Dodgers fired Mizuhara and the official story coming from Ohtani’s lawyers was that Mizuhara had been stealing money from Ohtani.

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The Latest Chaos in Haiti Brings Into Focus a Taboo Ethics Subject

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Once again, Haiti is in the throes of violence and upheaval. It has ever been thus. While the nation Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with, the Dominican Republic, has been relatively thriving (the key word is “relatively”) Haiti is in almost perpetual chaos. Florida is expecting another mass flotilla of refugees fleeing the hell-hole, and make no mistake, Haiti is a hell-hole. Under current law, and certainly under the warped Biden administration’s immigration policies, it is hard to imagine any scenario where thousands of Haitians do not enter the American populace.

Here is the ethics dilemma that it is politically incorrect to mention above a whisper: Haiti has a toxic, violent, ugly and undemocratic culture that has been ossifying for centuries. People who come from bad cultures, and this is a truly terrible culture, tend to have values and behavior traits that are antithetical to American society. Many in our “Imagine” subculture refuse to accept the fact that any culture is inferior to any other culture; hence they oppose “assimilation,” celebrating multi-culturalism instead. Multi-culturalism eventually metastasized into the DEI religion, and the success of the United States as a nation and a culture has been built on a once-solid foundation embodying the principle that immigrants come here to become Americans, with all the values and priorities that implies. Much of the division and cultural rot we are witnessing in the 21st century is a direct result of several decades of undermining that foundation.

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You Know The Headline On The Previous Post? Forget It. Denver Just Proved That The Great Stupid Has Civilization By The Throat [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Well that was certainly a short-lived ray of hope! Just as some states are realizing that one idiotic woke education policy is ruinous and needs to be reversed, Denver has come up with something infinitely worse.

Get ready for “language justice.”

The Denver school district is adopting a “language justice” policy as a “long term goal.” This astoundingly stupid movement encourages non-English speaking conceivably to the extent of allowing students to use their native language in school. Teaching English to non-English speakers, you see, is oppressive and rooted in racism.

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Eventually, We May Have To Call It “The Great Stupid Day”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It’s Columbus Day, and The New York Times’ way of celebrating it is to publish an op-ed  by a Hispanic anti-Columbus freelance audio journalist who complains about there being a gigantic statue to the explorer in Puerto Rico. After all, she reasons, the island is in “the part of the world that suffered Columbus’s brutality firsthand.”

Columbus’s “brutality,” of course, is not what’s being celebrated or honored by Columbus Day.   In 2019, before the Dawn of The Great Stupid, I re-posted both essays I have authored on Ethics Alarms about Columbus, the first, from 2011, explaining why it was an ethical holiday; the second, from two years later, taking the ethical position that Columbus is a problematical figure to honor. The comments the dual post inspired were diverse and excellent, and none of them endorsed contrarian post #2. 

2019 seems decades away now, with the annus horribilis of 2020 yawning between then and now like, well, the Atlantic Ocean. One bit of the Times op-ed perfectly crystalized why I cannot embrace the anti-Columbus Day movement—-even Massachusetts is considering making it “Indigenous Peoples Day,” meaning the Mayflower is next on the airbrushing list—and it was a CBS story linked to it about all the other Columbus statues that have been toppled lately (while the one on Puerto Rico, where Columbus is mentioned in the national anthem, still stands) “explains”:

After George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25, protests flooded the country and forced America to reckon with its past. Many protesters across the country flocked to local statues, demanding their removal and in some cases taking them down themselves. Almost 60 Confederate monuments have been removed, relocated and renamed since Floyd’s death, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Yeah, THAT makes a lot of sense. A non-racial incident in Minnesota involving an over-dosing habitual criminal trying to resist arrest and ending up dying in the midst of negligent restraint by a bad cop makes people want to cancel an iconic 15th Century explorer. Brilliant. Yet it is also fitting, somehow: the same episode was permitted to launch the Great Stupid and its prevailing ethos that only the negative consequences created by something matter, the somethings including free speech, rules, laws, law enforcement, men, romance, white people, the Founders, literature, “Gone With The Wind,” gestating babies, industry, civilization, and the United States of America, among others. The one really bad line of my anti-Columbus (but not anti-Columbus Day) piece was this: “And who is to say that the world would be better today had pre-Columbian civilizations persisted without European interference?”

Ugh. NOBODY can say the world would be better today if those primitive cultures had not been overwhelmed by a superior one. Well, the can say it, but it would be incredibly stupid. A satirical article linked to a comment in 2019 made the point nicely with its facetious list of ways to “not be a bigot on Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” The list (with explanations; read the piece):

  1. Perform human sacrifice
  2. Massacre neighboring indigenous peoples
  3. Collect scalps of your enemies
  4. Enslave other humans
  5. Eat people
  6. Steal everything
  7. Torture your enemies
  8. Complain about Europeans doing the same thing you did

The article concludes, “If you don’t do these—at least one of them—you’re a bigot.”

Well played.

Here are the two Columbus articles again. I no longer endorse the second, but it’s worth including for the counterpoint. It’s also worth including this Comment of That Day, though it wasn’t recognized at the time (mea culpa), by Steve-O-in NJ:

I hate to break the news to you, but this isn’t about Christopher Columbus and what he did or didn’t do. This isn’t about the Indians and how they should or shouldn’t have been treated. This is about two things leading to a third thing. First this is about dividing society, not just between the Italian-Americans and the Indians, but between those who choose to celebrate, or even who choose to leave it alone, and those who oppose to appear “woke” or “forward-thinking” or just not to appear racist. Second, it’s about an attack on the West, its history, and its traditions by those who hate it and all it stands for, and can’t wait to try to make this place into the illusory utopia people like Bernie Sanders promise. It’s from both those things that a few folks hope to score political points and generate political capital.

It’s rich to call those who choose to celebrate Italian-American culture and contributions racist. We were treated pretty badly upon arrival, and not really even considered white initially. The biggest lynching ever in the US was of 11 Italian-Americans in New Orleans. It was also a year before we were allowed to join the fight in WW2 because we “passed the test” according to FDR. We might not boast a heavily decorated UNIT from that conflict like the 442nd, but we do boast several highly decorated INDIVIDUALS, like John Basilone, Vito Bertoldo, and Ralph Cheli.

It’s also rich to call the third most influential person (after Christ and Mohammed tied for first and Guttenberg second) in history a villain for making everything that is America possible. Don’t give me that Leif Erickson was first nonsense, he established no lasting link. But while we’re on the topic, if Leif truly was first, doesn’t the guilt transfer to him? Don’t bother answering, the question was rhetorical. And please don’t throw out that pseudohistory about the Welsh Indians and Chinese villages on the West Coast before Columbus. Here’s one you can answer, though: Do you really think that, once it was known there was a whole untouched hemisphere, the rulers of Europe would have written some kind of treaty banning any European from sailing west out of sight of the Pillars of Hercules? Do you think such a treaty would have lasted more than a generation? Do you really think that the world would be a better place had the United States never come to be? Yes or no, please, no equivocating. If the answer is no, then why the fuss? If the answer is yes, why are you still here?

Viva Italia! Viva America! Viva Colombo!

The two posts….

I. Celebrate Columbus Day, Honor Columbus

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Comment Of The Day: Ethics Quiz: Celebrity Post Retirement Photos

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Mermaidmary99 has a strange relationship with Ethics Alarms: about half of her comments get sent straight to spam by WordPress for no apparent reason. This is perplexing for her and me, since she so often has an original and perceptive opinion to share. This Comment of the Day is an example, and yes, I found it in the spam collection.

The Ethics Quiz asked readers, “Is it ethical to take unflattering photos of former performers and celebrities and publicize them expressly to invite cruel comments and ridicule?” It was sparked by two things: the emergence of the first photograph of former movie star Bridget Fonda, daughter of Peter, niece of Jane, grand-daughter of Henry, in twelve years. Last time the public saw her, Fonda looked more of less like she did in Quentin Tarentino’s “Jackie Brown,” above; the other was my wife’s complaint, after her recent stay in the hospital (a bad scare, but all is fine), that the nurses kept telling her she was beautiful (which she is) and she refuses to believe it, insisting that the years have not been kind. I thought the new photo of the considerably younger Mrs. Elfman would help her put things into perspective. (My wife’s answer: “I bet those nurses would tell her she’s beautiful too!”)

Here is mermaidmary99’s rescued Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: Celebrity Post Retirement Photos.”

***

Who judges if it’s unflattering?

My dad would look at [the recent photo] and see a miraculous, beautiful human being with trillions of cells working in perfect intelligence allowing us to see her standing. He’s also would be keenly aware that he too is a miracle, a person with 10 to the 30th power of different viruses inside him, trillions of bacteria and fungi, and cells with 200-8000 mitochondria in each one, working non-stop. Continue reading →

Baseball Hall Of Fame Ethics: This 2016 Post Just Became Ripe And Moot At The Same Time

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The sportswriters who decide who is admitted to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame voted in David Ortiz yesterday. The Red Sox and Boston icon (Carl Yastrzemski once said that while Ted Williams was the greatest Boston baseball player, Ortiz was the most important, and he was right) sailed into the Hall in his first year of eligibility, an honor few players have ever been accorded.

It was no surprise. In addition to having unquestionable statistical qualifications, “Big Papi” is also personally popular. That matters, a lot; the writers this year rejected Boston pitching ace Curt Schilling who also has impeccable Hall qualifications, because they don’t like him. Schilling is opinionated, combative, religious, and worst of all, politically conservative. Can’t have that. On the plus side, the writers also rejected steroid cheats Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, as well as almost certain steroid cheats Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield.

In 2016, anticipating and dreading yesterday’s news, I wrote a post titled, “The Wrenching Problem Of David Ortiz, The Human Slippery Slope.”

Here it is again.

Ethics conflicts force us to choose when multiple ethical principles and values point to diametrically opposed resolutions.  Often, a solution can be found where the unethical aspects of the resolution can be mitigated, but not this one. It is a tale of an ethics conflict without a satisfactory resolution.

I didn’t want to write this post. I considered waiting five years to write it, when the issue will be unavoidable and a decision mandatory. Today, however, is the day on which all of Boston, New England, and most of baseball will be honoring Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz, who will be playing his finale regular season game after a 20 years career.  His 2016 season is quite possibly the best year any professional baseball player has had as his final one; it is definitely the best season any batter has had at the age of 40 or more. Ortiz is an icon and a hero in Boston, for good reason. Ortiz was instrumental in breaking his team’s infamous 86-year long “curse” that saw it come close to winning the World Series again and again, only to fail in various dramatic or humiliating ways. He was a leader and an offensive centerpiece of three World Champion teams in 2004, 2007, and 2013. Most notably, his record as a clutch hitter, both in the regular season and the post season is unmatched. You can bring yourself up to speed on Ortiz’s career and his importance to the Red Sox, which means his importance to the city and its culture, for nowhere in America takes baseball as seriously as Beantown, here.

That’s only half the story for Ortiz. Much of his impact on the team, the town and the game has come from his remarkable personality, a unique mixture of intensity, charm, intelligence, generosity, pride and charisma. After the 2013 terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon, which shook the city as much as any event since the Boston Massacre, Ortiz made himself the symbol of Boston’s anger and defiance with an emotional speech at Fenway Park. Then he put an exclamation point on his defiance by leading the Red Sox, a last place team the year before, to another World Series title. Continue reading →

“What Is Wrong Is That We Do Not Ask What Is Right.”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Guest post by E2

[Introduction: G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) is one of the greatest of all English language writers and thinker, as well as one of the most entertaining. He wrote about literary and visual art, history, religion, politics, economics, science, and ethics, and if this is his first appearance on Ethics Alarms as I suspect, I am awash with shame. E2, in this guest post, does us all a great service by presenting this example of his thinking regarding the ethical problem of deciding how to construct better cultures and societies. The title is taken from the conclusion of the Chesterton quote offered—JM]

I have known about G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) for a long time, as a brilliant British philosopher and social critic (and the author of the witty and wry and silly “Father Brown” stories – though obviously not of the TV version), but I never bothered to actually read him. I admit that it was only recent chance and a cheap Kindle book that finally allowed me to do so.

The first chapter of his 1910 book “What’s Wrong With The World” was a ‘bright-light’ experience for me. Though hopelessly outdated in some 21st century factual respects, it is interesting because Chesterton takes the time to examine the thought process and how it affects the outcomes of different kinds of thinking, reminiscent of the “observer effect.” (Though he was, in 1910, much more trusting of science and medicine than we are now, e.g., and did not address 21st century thought process issues like the scientists’ dilemma about doing something simply because they can, without considering if they should.)

Herewith a short sample of G.K. Chesterton’s “What’s Wrong With The World,” now in the public domain in the US and considered to be one of his more interesting works. (So why did I pay anything at all for the book when I could have downloaded it for free? Because I wouldn’t have thought that day to google him or it and so have had this happy accident.) If you check the internet today you will find articles as recent as Christmas Eve 2021 about GKC and Santa Claus… Final note: succeeding chapters are just as fun.

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Ethics Alarms Encore: “Christmas Music Blues”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

[The previous post reminded me of this one, from 2015. Here it is again, slightly updated and edited. It’s as accurate now as it was then, unfortunately.]

At the rate things are going, I am certain that before long no pop vocal interpretations of traditional Christmas music will be easily accessible on the radio. This is a cultural loss—it’s a large body of beautiful and evocative music—and someone should have, one would think, the obligation of preventing it. But I have no idea who.

I realized this when I felt myself getting nostalgic and sad as I listened to a series of “Christmas classics.” For one thing, they all reminded me of my parents, whose absence beginning in 2011 permanently kicked my enjoyment of the season in the groin. For another, all the artists were dead. Bing: dead. Frank: dead. Elvis: probably dead. Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, Burl Ives, Gene Autry, The Andrews Sisters, Perry Como, Elvis, Karen Carpenter, John Denver–dead. Long dead, in most cases. Christmas has become a serenade of dead artists. Except for the narrow range of country music stars for those who enjoy “O Holy Night” with a twang, living pop artists don’t sing these songs. OK, Mariah Carey, Josh Groban and Michael Bublé. Not many others. A few years ago, Sirius-XM was so desperate to find living artists that it was playing the Seth McFarland Christmas album. Seth can sing, but I’m sorry, but it’s hard to enjoy “Silent Night” while picturing “The Family Guy.”

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Ethics Quiz: The “Expose Your Kids To LGBTQ Kinkiness” Op-Ed

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

kink

The Washington Post, where “democracy dies in darkness” most days, published a fascinating op-ed a week ago called “Yes, kink belongs at Pride. And I want my kids to see it.” The author, Lauren Rowello, is a former prostitute and self-identifies as “gendervague.” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) She brought her pre-teen children, including a toddler, to a Philadelphia Pride parade and had them march in it along with her and her trans wife. [Ethics Foul! Her children were too young to meaningfully consent to being used as props this way, which is what Rowello was doing.] She tells us,

“When our children grew tired of marching, we plopped onto a nearby curb. Just as we got settled, our elementary-schooler pointed in the direction of oncoming floats, raising an eyebrow at a bare-chested man in dark sunglasses whose black suspenders clipped into a leather thong. The man paused to be spanked playfully by a partner with a flog. “What are they doing?” my curious kid asked as our toddler cheered them on. The pair was the first of a few dozen kinksters who danced down the street, laughing together as they twirled their whips and batons, some leading companions by leashes. At the time, my children were too young to understand the nuance of the situation, but I told them the truth: That these folks were members of our community celebrating who they are and what they like to do.”

“Kink embodies the freedom that Pride stands for,” Rowello proselytizes, “reminding attendees to unapologetically take up space as an act of resistance and celebration — refusing to bend to social pressure that asks us to be presentable.”

But society, and community ethics, ask us all to be “presentable.” Public displays of kinkiness show disrespect for everyone watching and basic manners. What ‘resistance” is there in a gay pride parade today, unless it’s the demonstration of the unethical principle, “Since you don’t respect us, we won’t respect you”? Rowello is teaching her children that complete social chaos and deliberate defiance of social norms is not just tolerable but desirable. Hippies in the lamentable Sixties called this ” letting it all hang” out, which sometimes they did literally. I thought most cognizant Americans figured out the flaw in that approach. Guess not.

Here’s Rowello’s justification for exposing her children to adult sexual fetishes:

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Baseball Has A Cheating Problem That Is Old, Was Supposedly Addressed Decades Ago, And Is Strangling The Game. It Is Relevant To More Than Baseball (Part 1: Introduction)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Baseball sticky

Since about four other readers pay any attention to my baseball ethics posts, let me say right up front why this a mistake. Baseball’s current pitchers using foreign substances on the ball problem is, ethically, exactly the same as our nation’s election cheating scandal, or the illegal immigration crisis. It arises from the same dead-headed rationalizations, intellectual laziness, and self-serving deception. We can and should learn from it. But we won’t.

If you want to ignore the latest baseball ethics scandal as a niche problem unrelated to greater ethics principles, be my guest. You will be missing an important and still developing lesson.

Baseball’s hitting is way down this year, and pitching is more dominant than it has been since the mid-1960s. There is a reason: almost every pitcher is using some kind of sticky substance on the ball. This increases “spin rate,” which before computers and other technology was impossible to see, much less measure. The faster a pitcher can make a ball spin, the more it moves, curves and dives at higher speeds. Sticky substances allow a pitcher to do that. Using them is against the rules; it’s cheating. But for years now, the same kind of ethics-addled fools who allowed Barry Bonds and other cheats to use illegal steroids and wreck the game’s home run records as long as they lied about it have let pitchers illegally doctor the ball.

This week, the whole, completely avoidable ethics train wreck became an engine of destruction for the National Pastime.

Unfortunately, one has to understand the context to comprehend what is going on now, and that means looking backwards, in this case, to 2014. Here, with some edits, are two Ethics Alarms essays that provide the context. The first was titled “The Abysmal Quality of Ethical Reasoning in Baseball: A Depressing Case Study.” The second, Pineda-Pine Tar, Part II: Baseball Clarifies Its Bizarro Ethics Culture, appeared 13 days later. Yes, what is happening now was foretold by conditions that were evident seven years ago. The remaining parts of this series will bring you, and the train wreck, up to date.

***

What happened was this: During last night’s Red Sox-Yankee game in Yankee Stadium, the Boston broadcasting team of Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy noticed a glossy brown substance on New York starting pitcher Michael Pineda’s pitching hand. It was very obvious, especially once the NESN cameras started zooming in on it.   “There’s that substance, that absolutely looks like pine tar,” play-by-play man Don Orsillo said. “Yeah, that’s not legal,” color commentator and former player Jerry Remy replied.

Indeed it isn’t.  According to rule 8.02(a)(2), (4) and (5), the pitcher shall not expectorate on the ball, either hand or his glove; apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball; [or]  deface the ball in any manner.

The Red Sox, who probably knew about the gunk on Pineda’s hand, didn’t complain to the umpires, and just went about their merry way, losing the game. Asked about the stuff on his hand, Pineda demonstrated the full range of body language indicating that he was lying his head off. “It was dirt,’ he said. Later, when the ick appeared to be gone,  Pineda explained, he had just sweated his hand clean. Right. Whatever was on his hand—beef gravy, crankcase oil, chocolate syrup…the majority of pundits think pine tar—it wasn’t “dirt.” Pineda’s manager, Joe Girardi, was brazenly evasive.

The Yankee pitcher was cheating. This isn’t a major scandal, but cheating is cheating: sports shouldn’t allow cheating of any kind, because if a sport allows some cheating, however minor, it will encourage cynical, unscrupulous and unethical individuals on the field, in the stands, and behind keyboard to excuse all other forms of cheating, from corked bats to performance enhancing drugs. Cheating is wrong. Cheating unfairly warps the results of games, and rewards dishonesty rather than skill. Cheating undermines the enjoyment of any game among serious fans who devote energy and passion to it. Any cheating is a form of rigging, a variety of lying.

And yet, this clear instance of cheating, caught on video, primarily sparked the sports commentariat, including most fans, to cite one rationalization and logical fallacy after another to justify doing nothing, and not just doing nothing, but accepting the form of cheating as “part of the game.” I’ve been reading columns and listening to the MLB channel on Sirius-XM and watch the MLB channel on Direct TV since this episode occurred. Here are the reactions:

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