double standards

From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Resurrection Church Oakland (PCA) held this event last week.

In related news, spectacularly unethical Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis sent an angry letter to Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee today. She is furious that the committee is quite appropriately investigating the degree to which her part of the “Get Trump!” lawfare last year was orchestrated and coordinated with the Biden Administration.

“Rather than honor and uphold the oath you took, you have chosen to expend your time attempting to bully me, which is a complete waste of your time,” Willis wrote. “Might I suggest that instead of attempting to disrupt this office’s work protecting the people of Fulton County, that you celebrate Black History Month by visiting children in your district to teach them about the many contributions African Americans have made to this country—including those who have advanced democracy by successfully advocating that this nation live up to its ideals that everyone is equal before the law and everyone has the right to have their voice heard through exercising their right to vote. That would be a much more productive use of your time.”

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Pointer: Not The Bee.

Tales of the King’s Pass

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

During the baseball off-season the MLB channel on DirecTV has a lot of dead time to fill between the periodic announcements of trades, free agent signings and post-season awards and honors. Lately it has been re-running an old Bob Castas show called “Studio 42” (that’s Jackie Robinson’s number) where the perpetually boyish-looking baseball commentator, who now really is Old Bob, interviews retired players and managers about significant games and moments in their careers.

In an episode I happened across this morning after my dog woke me up and then stole the bed as soon as I got out of it, Costas’s guest was the late, great manager Whitey Herzog, like so many successful baseball managers, a mediocre-to-poor player in his Major League career. Whitey told a story that is as good an example of the King’s Pass, #11 on the Rationalization List, as there is.

He said that in one game between the old Washington Senators (the first Senators, the team that moved to Minnesota and became the Twins) and the Red Sox in Boston, Ted Williams had drawn a walk on a 3-2 pitch right down the middle of the plate that the umpire had called a ball. Williams was famous for his plate discipline and above-average eyesight, and umpires frequently let him, opposing players complained, call his own balls and strikes because unpires acknowledged that he was better at it than they were. Herzog came to bat late in the same contest having walked four times and with a chance to set a record by getting five bases-on-balls in a single game. He told Costas that the umpire called him out on strikes on a 3-2 pitch in the dirt.

“I turned around and said to the ump, ‘You give Williams five strikes and give me only two. It should be the other way around!'”

This struck me particularly squarely because I had been thinking about the Judicial Conference declining to take any action against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been the subject of a Senate Judiciary inquiry ever since ProPublica revealed that the Justice had neglected to report around half a million in luxury travel and gifts as legally required by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

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I Don’t Have A Clue What The Real Story Is Regarding The FEMA Response To The Hurricane, But I Do Know This…

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

…the fact that I don’t know and couldn’t possibly find out because there are no news sources I can trust shows just how incompetent, biased and pernicious American journalism has become.

It is unethical, I resent it, I’m disgusted with it, and I condemn it, none of which does any good.

Republicans in general and President Trump in particular have been harshly criticizing the FEMA response to Hurricane Helene, Trump in his usual meat-axe fashion. Naturally, CNN rushed to the Biden Administration’s rescue with this “factcheck” replete with a denial that Harris “stole” FEMA funds as if anyone seriously believed Trump meant “stole” literally, or that Harris was literally a thief. The Axis mainstream media would rather do this deflection than report the far more consequential issue that FEMA is claiming it has run out of money for American disaster relief while the Biden Administration is spending like the proverbial drunken sailor on Ukraine, “humanitarian assistance” to Gaza, and dealing with the consequences of it disastrous border policies.

DEI incompetent Dept. of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, while touring the carnage in North Carolina, told the press that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was going to run out of money because the budget is currently working under a “continuing resolution” until after the election, a situation he does not regard as “stable.” I get it: it’s the Republicans’ fault:

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An Ethics Estoppel, Double Standard Classic From The Axis After Walz’s Meltdown

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I actually laughed out loud reading Politico’s “Walz says he ‘speaks like everybody else.’ And it’s not working for the campaign.” representative excerpts:

  • “’Any time you are forced to go off message is never welcome,” said Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. ‘But in the end, voters are looking for somebody who is more concerned about what these candidates are going to do to improve their lives than, ‘Did he get every single fact correct?’”

That was the one that got me  laughing. It is exactly the argument Trump defenders have been making for years, to the sneers of the Left.  How dare any Democrat resort to it?

  • “Yeah, look, I have my dates wrong,” Walz told reporters in Harrisburg. “I was in Hong Kong in China in 1989. … I speak like everybody else speaks. I need to be clearer.”

Another Trump defender line: “He speaks like normal people.” Continue reading →

So…The Second Gentleman Running For First Gentleman Impregnated His Nanny During His First Marriage and Slapped a Date In the Face: Is That a Problem?

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

By the established standards of the news media and the rest of the Axis of Unethical Conduct, it should be, don’t you think? But apparently not.

Huh.

A throbbing example of wildly varying standards in the media depending on whether they are covering Donald Trump or Kamala Harris just raised its warty head. Did you see that Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband who was largely invisible until she pushed President Biden off the Democratic ticket, admitted he had an adulterous affair with his nanny and got her pregnant, leading to his divorce? That happened in August, after the slimy Daily Mail broke the scandal and Emhoff came clean to CNN. I missed it entirely, which means that, for example, the New York Times either ignored it or soft-peddled it because, well, you know. But the story burst on the social media scene this week after ex-Obama paid liar Jen Psaki, now a full-time Axis propagandist at MSNBC, interviewed Emhoff and gushed that he had “reshaped the perception of masculinity.” “Has that been an evolution for you and do you think that’s part of the role you might play as first gentleman?” Psaki continued. Yecchh. That was nauseating enough (no Vice-President’s spouse has the power, visibility or status to “reshape” anything), but Emhoff’s answer exploded heads from coast to coast.

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More Non-Traditional Casting Double Standards Hypocrisy: “Whitewashing ‘Little Shop of Horrors'”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Here is another installment of a frequent topic on Ethics Alarms: non-traditional casting, DEI casting, and and virtue-signaling stunt casting just to appear woke. The position here as a long-time stage director who has been responsible for some audacious non-traditional casting in my time (I once cast the role Cole Porter with a woman) remains unchanged: if it works and the audience enjoys the show as much or more than it would have with a traditional casting choice, then all is well. (Full disclosure: casting Cold Porter as female did NOT work. At all…)

The mission of any stage production is to be fair to the show’s creators and make the production as effective theatrically as possible, not to make political or social statements that get in the way. (Prime example of the latter: this.)

Curmie sent me a link to “Yes, You Can Whitewash ‘Little Shop of Horrors’, But Please Don’t” at Chris Peterson’s Onstage blog. I love the musical (my old high school doubles tennis partner, Frank Luz, co-starred as the sadistic dentist in the original off-Broadway production and the cast album) based on the wonderful 1960 Roger Corman camp movie classic. I thought its creators would revive the genre, but Disney snapped them up (“The Little Mermaid”; “Beauty and the Beast”) and then half the team, Howard Ashman, died.

Peterson cites the license-holders’ quite reasonable casting note:

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Comment of the Day: “As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn: The Sequel”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is an unusual Comment of the Day by Chris Marschner (on the post,“As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn”), but it makes an important point, indeed, the crucial point that exposes the intellectual dishonesty of the Times’ “Think of the Children!” campaign to demonize Israel as it tries to defend its right to exist.

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I reworked the original Times story to reflect a similar situation in the mid-20th century. All I did was change the name and the players. If the Times had written its report this way, then the Brits, the French, the Poles, the Czecks and others would be goose-stepping to their new bosses and Israel would not exist.

It is obvious to any rational thinker that when a nation faces existential peril from zealots who believe they are the rightful heirs of the entire region and that no one except the devout believers of Mohammed may live peacefully there, that when they are attacked they must eliminate the immediate as well as the long term threat in order to minimize civilian losses. We did this twice in the Pacific and Europe when despots saw opportunities for empire building.

My NYT rewrite:

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“As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With ‘Think of the Children!’ Porn”: The Sequel

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Today the Times published another in its continuing reporting efforts to demonize Israel, encourage anti-Semitism, support the unconscionable Biden -Harris pressure on Israel to agree to a ruinous cease-fire, and to validate Palestinian terrorism. The Ethics Alarms commentary on this piece is essentially identical to what appeared in its predecessor, As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With “Think of the Children!” Porn…which stated in that the Times report…

“…can evoke no possible response from typical semi-attentive and easily manipulated readers than “Think of the children! The Jews are monsters! Cease fire now! The Gazans have suffered enough! Justice for Palestine!”

And this is exactly the end result that Hamas sought when it launched its cease-fire shattering surprise terror attack on Israeli civilians, including infants, on October 7.”

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As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With “Think of the Children!” Porn…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Raja Abdulrahim, the New York Times reporter who prepared and wrote the splashy A-Section feature story in today’s print edition, says in her linked bio that “I abide by The Times’s ethical journalism standards. That includes refraining from promoting or protesting issues related to my work.” Can she possibly believe this while writing a piece of “Poor Palestinians!” propaganda like “There Is No Childhood in Gaza”? [Note: This is a gift link from me to get you past the paywall]

I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt, I suppose; it’s the ethical thing to do. Her story, and the way it is written, however, can evoke no possible response from typical semi-attentive and easily manipulated readers than “Think of the children! The Jews are monsters! Cease fire now! The Gazans have suffered enough! Justice for Palestine!”

And this is exactly the end result that Hamas sought when it launched its cease-fire shattering surprise terror attack on Israeli civilians, including infants, on October 7.

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Presenting a Continuing Ethics Alarms Series Until November: “This Is Kamala Harris”

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

I couldn’t get the video to embed, but here’s the link to the Democratic Party’s anointed candidate for President angrily chiding Americans for celebrating Christmas because children illegally transported across the border “won’t have a Merry Christmas.”

Evidence like this will be buried, ignored, or denied by the mainstream media, just like Hunter Biden’s laptop, until enough Americans have been deceived to put Harris in the White House. Meanwhile, of course, each word out of Donald Trump’s ever-open mouth will be spun and fact-checked to put him in the worst light possible. (Sometimes he will deserve it.)

Harris’s distorted values, cracked logic, obnoxious character and arrogance are all intolerable, and most normal people will see that, if they only are allowed to read, watch and hear. The mainstream media is the enemy of the people. Ethics Alarms pledges to do its best to help foil them.