double standards

Adventures In The Land Of Double Standards: Sexual Harassment At Riverdale High

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

archie reversed

Nancy Silberkleit, the co-CEO of Archie Comics, has been accused in a law suit filed by her male employees of workplace gender discrimination and harassment because she referred to them as “Penis” instead calling them by their names. The lawyers representing Archie president Mike Pellerito, editor-in-chief Victor Gorelick, and others allege that Silberkleit used the term many times in a degrading manner, as, for example, when she began yelling “Penis! Penis! Penis!” during a business meeting.

This woman needs to work with Bill Maher.

They deserve each other. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Alec Baldwin’s Employer, Whomever It May Be; Currently, This Means MSNBC President Phil Griffin

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
When MSNBC journalists attack!

When MSNBC journalists attack!

How is it that the old saw goes? “Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me; Fool me 3,256 times, I’m an idiot”? Something like that.

Actor Alec Baldwin has proven by his actions and words, over and over again and beyond a reasonable doubt, that he is a foul-mouthed, hair-pin tempered bully with poor impulse control and the flattest of learning curves. I could list the impressive number of incidents that he has been involved in making that statement beyond debate, from a leaked phone voice message of him verbally abusing his daughter, to his tirade against a airplane stewardess who dared to ask him to abide by the rules of the air and stop playing a game on his Iphone, to obnoxious tweets that have led him to suspend his account more than once. Lately, his specialty has been hurling anti-gay slurs at photographers. Baldwin has been in the public eye for decades, and knows how celebrity works, but either doesn’t care, or can’t help himself. He has also paired his atrocious behavior with the outspoken progressive tirades and half-baked opinions of a man who is nowhere as smart as he seems to think he is.

The latter, of course, has saved his career from one way ticket to Mel Gibsonville. As gay conservative-turned-liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote after Baldwin’s latest fiasco, Continue reading →

Regarding The News Media Covering For The President: Will Democrats Ever Have The Integrity To Admit How Dangerous And Wrong This Is?

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Nothing to see hereThis was going to be a completely different post. This week President Obama went on the Tonight Show, since, in this civically complacent, lazy and ignorant country, far more voters will watch him there than in his press conferences. In the process of his relaxed chat with Jay, the President made a number of surprising gaffes, verbal, factual, geographical and historical: 1) he confused the Summer with the Winter Olympics, 2) he incorrectly said that Russia’s Putin had been the head of the KGB (he was a long-time mid-level KGB official), 3) he seemed to say that Savannah, Georgia, Jacksonville, Florida and Charleston, South Carolina are on the Gulf of Mexico, when in fact they are on the Atlantic Coast, and 4) he mangled his words so that he appeared to be wishing that more people were killed in terrorist attacks, when he meant to say, pretty obviously, that too many people were killed in traffic accidents. Naturally, the conservative media went crazy with “we told you so’s” after this, recalling the President’s infamous “57 states” mistake and hammering its long-held contention that the President’s vaunted brilliance and mastery of knowledge are carefully maintained, teleprompter-aided myths.

My post was originally going to point out that this is nothing but “tit for tat,” two-wrongs-don’t-make-a-right unfairness melded with confirmation bias by conservatives and the right-leaning media. Yes, it’s true: these are exactly the kinds of mistakes that the liberal news media (but I repeat myself *) have roasted and mocked various Republicans over, from Eisenhower to Reagan through Dan Quayle, both Bushes, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, and those attacks were excessive and unfair, at least most of them.** True, Obama is more arrogant than any of these, and it is somewhat satisfying to catch him saying something that would be corrected by a seventh grad teacher, but that’s a petty motivation to claim significance for what is more likely the result of fatigue and poor briefing. I think its fair, indeed necessary, for the media to point out the blunders, if only so the public isn’t actively misinformed, and if the fact of his giving out flawed information lessens the tingle up the legs of some Obama supporters, so be it. Still, it’s not a big deal, and shouldn’t be represented as otherwise, regardless of the clear double standard at work.

This is a big deal, however: The Associate Press actively and intentionally set out to cover for the President, and hide his most significant gaffe rather than report on it.  In quoting the President’s erroneous statements about the Gulf ports that aren’t actually on the Gulf, the AP’s version was this:

‘”If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf – (and in) places like Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla. – if we don’t do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we’ll lose jobs,’ Obama said.”

That’s a blatant partisan clean-up job, not reporting. After several blogs blew the whistle on the AP, it issued a retraction and apology: Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month, Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck Division: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)….Plus A Major News Media Ethics Foul

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Now if she gave a statistic like this, it would be news.

Now if she gave a statistic like this, it would be news.

Rep. Charlie Rangel, I should mention at the outset, should have been sent home by his constituents after demonstrating beyond question that he had reached the point of entitlement and arrogance where he believes principles of ethics no longer apply to him. But the Democratic Party chose to nominate the venerable Harlem icon, and his loyal, if irresponsible, New York district re-elected him, as it has been doing approximately since the dawn of time. Don’t think for a moment that this doesn’t have relevance to Rangel’s recklessness in the case I’m going to discuss. Why should we expect Rangel to be responsible, accurate or prudent in his public statements if nobody will hold him accountable? It’s not as if ethics is going to be a priority for him for its own sake.

Discussing the demise of Diane Feinstein’s assault weapon ban in the U.S. Senate, Rangel blamed the National Rifle Association in a videotaped, semi-incoherent rant that included this:

“I’m ashamed to admit it but its politics and its money. The NRA has taken this position, there is no reason, there is no foundation. There is no hunter that needs automatic military weapons to enjoy the culture of going hunting. But you know it’s really basically the absence of the voices of good people. I cannot believe that politicians are afraid of the NRA. We’re talking about millions of kids dying — being shot down by assault weapons, were talking about handguns easier in the inner cities, to get these guns in the inner cities, than to get computers. This is not just a political issue, it’s a moral issue and so when we condemn the NRA we should not ignore the fact that a lot of people that have taken moral positions have been solid on this big one.”

That’s right: Rep. Rangel said that millions of kids are being shot down by assault weapons. That’s what he said, on camera. Now, the facts in this case are not only easily checked, they are also at variance with reality in the approximate proportion that 2013’s America is not like Oz. Continue reading →

Abuse Is Abuse, And Gender Is Irrelevant

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
"Oh, man up! What are you afraid of? "

“Oh, man up! What are you afraid of? “

28-year-old Ivan Brannan Jr. has filed battery charges against his former girlfriend, perpetually troubled ex-tennis prodigy Jennifer Capriati, who is now 36. He claims she has been stalking him, and that she recently punched him several times in the chest.

What is notable, though not surprising, is how many commenters on sites covering the news item have reacted by pronouncing Capriati’s alleged victim a wimp and a weenie. “He should turn in his man card,” sniffed one.

Wrong.

Female on male spousal and companion abuse is neither rare nor harmless, but it is one of the most unreported crimes. That sexist, ignorant attitude is why. Society’s justified concern for violence against women leaves men with the presumed physical superiority and monopoly on aggression. As a result, shame, fear of ridicule and self-doubt cause many, and probably most abused men to tolerate without reporting levels of physical punishment that would be regarded as serious and criminal if the genders were reversed. The unsympathetic reaction of Brannan’s crtitics leaves him with the bad choice of accepting the violence and the worse one of escalating it and fighting back.

We don’t know Capriati’s side of the story yet, but if she did punch Brannan, she is capable of doing some real damage. Strength and muscularity were her trademarks on the tennis court. Whatever the physical abilities involved, however, female on male violence should be treated exactly like the reverse, and if his complaint is valid, Brannan deserves thanks and credit for bringing this unfair double standard into the spotlight.  He does not deserve to be insulted.

____________________________

Source: CNN

Graphic: Girls With Muscle

Ethics Hero: Ken At Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Don't look under that federal prosecutor's bag!

Don’t look under that federal prosecutor’s bag!

Not for the first time by a longshot, lawyer/First Amendment warrior/blogger Ken at the sui generis blog Popehat has earned an Ethics Hero award. This time, his achievement included:

  • Recognizing the widespread perpetration of a double standard that cannot be justified
  • Opposing it, though the legal and journalistic establishments are firmly on the other side, and
  • Remedying the immediate situation through his own efforts.

That’s a good year for most bloggers.

Ken was responding to a story that was widely publicized. Justice Sotomayor  had taken the unusual course of writing a separate opinion as she and her colleagues denied cert (that is, refused to take an appeal) in the case of Bogani Charles Calhoun v. United States, using it to condemn what she called the racist tactics of a federal prosecutor. Among her comments, she wrote, sharply, Continue reading →

Quick Ethics Quiz….

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I routinely edit blog comments for typos and minor grammatical mistakes, both to assist with clarity and reading and also as a Golden Rule exercise—I have typo issues myself, as regular readers well know.

This comment just turned up on Edward Carney’s Comment of the Day (from September of 2011) about flying the Confederate flag:

“I know what the confederate flag means. I am not racist. I wanted to show that I am not for whats going on in this country. Their is a lot of people like me.You cannot change history.You can make new history with it.”

I was tempted not to fix it (there are four errors) but I decided that would be unfair.

Should I have left it as it was?

Look! Now Obama Has a Suck-Up Speech To Explain…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The Daily Caller found a previously uncirculated Barack Obama speech from 2007, and the conservative media has been giving it the “47%” treatment. No wonder. The speech is uncommonly ugly, with the future President channeling Rev. Wright and Kanye West, encouraging black anger and racial hate. Needless to say, he does not sound like a leader of “all the people” here.

I am on record as believing that such partisan audience speeches should be taken for what they are, and thus with several grains of salt, but never mind: the standard, a different one, has already been decreed by the mainstream news media, which treated Mitt Romney’s unscripted remarks about the government-dependent “47%” as more significant than the collapse of Obama’s foreign policy, the negligent death of our Ambassador, and a protracted White House cover-up of a terrorist attack. If they want to aspire to any fairness and even-handedness at all, it should devote a similar amount of attention and outrage to Obama’s remarks to black clergy, which were, in my view, far worse, because they were designed to exploit racial fears and divisiveness. They are also, like Romney’s comments, misleading and unfair.

I could argue that it is more reasonable to focus on Obama’s speech, because it was made in public, and presumably was fair game for criticism at the time. Why didn’t the reporters who witnessed it raise any alarms then? Wouldn’t such a racially divisive speech during the campaign (for the nomination) be at least as newsworthy in 2008 as the “47%” line by Romney 2012? Of course not—because the media was trying to elect Obama then, and it is trying to defeat Romney now.

Don’t be silly. Continue reading →

As Wisconsin Bans a Theatrical Production, Some Questions

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“The forces of intolerance just won another victory in Wisconsin,” is how The Progressive headlines a story about a “rightwing evangelical” whose complaints prompted the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to cancel a planned production of  “The Bible: Complete Word of God, Abridged” in a state park. From the article:

“Vic Eliason raised a stink. Eliason is an evangelical clergyman in Milwaukee who runs the VCY (Voices of Christian Youth) America Radio Network. He has a show, “Cross Currents,” in Milwaukee, and on August 9, he dedicated his hour-long program to condemning the play as “blasphemous” and “diabolical.” He urged his listeners to contact the board members of SummerStage, and he gave out their numbers. He also urged listeners to call the businesses where some of the board members worked and ask them, “How can you have someone on the board who will literally spit in the face of the Bible?” Eliason also gave out the phone numbers of the DNR’s top two officials and told listeners to ask them why the state was allowing this play to go on, and why it was profiting from it. (The agreement with SummerStage and the Lapham Peak State Park is that 5 percent of ticket sales go to the park, Eliason said.)”

The article ridicules the state and Ellison on several grounds. The play, it notes, is “very light-hearted,” a spoof of the Bible. Ellison admits he never read the script, but that the theme of the comedy is enough. The statement of the Department in cancelling the play smacks of dishonesty: “SummerStage will not be performing ‘The Bible – the Complete Word of God, Abridged’ at Lapham Peak as the event did not meet the provision of the Department agreement requiring all productions to be family oriented,” said a spokesperson. Translation: “This was turning into a hassle with the possibility of a lawsuit, and it just isn’t worth it.”

I agree that Eliason is an officious trouble-maker, a bully who sees nothing wrong with stopping people from entertaining and being entertained if he doesn’t approve of their taste. But I have some questions: Continue reading →

Conservatives Take Note: Media Bias Doesn’t Explain Everything

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Rep. Akin and his fans.

Pervasive media bias against them has the added affect of making Republicans and conservatives both paranoid and less likely to perceive their own flaws. In this it is like racism: that black Americans know that elements of society refuse to treat them fairly makes it difficult for them to assess their own accountability when they fail. Given the opportunity to blame failure on ourselves or others, most of us are inclined to choose the latter: psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error. That tendency, however, undermines our ability to evaluate areas where we need to improve, and to improve them.

The news media’s leftward bias warps public opinion, tilts elections and distorts public policy. A few candid  journalists acknowledge this, like ABC’s Jake Tapper, who opined to Laura Ingraham yesterday that the media “helped tilt the scales” against Hillary and John McCain in 2008, saying that “Sometimes I saw with story selection, magazine covers, photos picked, [the] campaign narrative, that it wasn’t always the fairest coverage.” Weasel words for unethical media bias, true, but for a member in good standing of the liberal Beltway media like Tapper, an admirable confession. This is justly frustrating to conservatives, but they can’t let it drive them stupid, for this is the Catch 22 of all pervasive bias. If a group blames everything on bias, it begins to make the bias look justified.

Hypervocal, a snazzy blog that delves into such matters and much else, has an excellent analysis of a current example of this phenomenon, as conservatives complain that the news media is ignoring a juicy Minnesota scandal involving a gay Democrat while overplaying Rep. Todd Akin’s self-outing as an ignorant fool regarding rape, abortion, and female biology. This is such a regular refrain now any time an embarrassing event occurs involving a Republican that it is both predictable and laughable, and it is always unseemly. Continue reading →