I’ve been remiss in posting deserving “Comments of the Day,” and I apologize. It’s not that there haven’t been worthy submissions, its just been a fact that getting content up on EA at all has been especially challenging of late. The last Comment of the Day was almost a month ago. Yikes.
Below, after a brief observation on the specific incident inspiring the post, Charles Abbott segues from the CEO fired for trolling the Trump Deranged in social media with a photo saluting “Lake America” to the ideological grandstanding that has taken over Facebook, at least based on what I am reading there.
It seems the safest thing to do is simply to shut up. That will be a post for another day.
I want to redirect this comment to the topic of your experiences on Facebook. I’m not an expert on the the topic but I’ve had a Facebook account for approximately 20 years now. Like many of us.
You often post that you are surprised by the sorts of posts and comments and behaviors you see on Facebook from people you know personally and/or professionally.
Here’s the way it looks to me. If Facebook has ever been a place where people went to debate things in good faith, or to seek the truth, or to strive after correcting error, that time is long gone.
I burned this week’s open forum on Tuesday night as my remedy for enforced absence from EA (dead laptop, ethics road trip), so I’m waking up this morning with a different low energy feature. This was an awful week from a scheduling standpoint; on the other hand, at least my ethics wisdom was in demand. I had back-to-back seminars to teach for the first time since Ethics Villain Dr. Fauci and the totalitarian Left wrecked my training business (and the economy, children’s socialization, education, culture…) with their lockdown. Oh, and it killed my wife, too, I mustn’t let them off the hook for that. But I’m not bitter…
1. TCM has cancelled Porky Pig. It is hypocritical for a station that purports to preserve American film history and present the screen entertainment of the nation’s past for enlightenment and perspective to engage in any censorship at all reagrding the content its mission dictates, but I guess Porky doesn’t count. TCM often shows Warner Bros. cartoons between its main features, and as any culturally-literate person knows, these always ended with Porky Pig poking through the screen and stuttering, “That’s all folks!” the traditional Loony Tunes coda. It took me a long time to figure it out (“Huh! That’s funny…this one doesn’t have Porky…”) but Ted Turner’s legacy project has erased Porky from the endings of all its Warner Bos. animated features. What petty, silly, cowardly, pandering morons. Porky stutters, see, so he’s being mean to the disabled, or “differently-abled,” or funny speech-enabled, or whatever the hell we’ve been ordered to call it by our moral betters. If “Make America Great Again” meant nothing more than “End Crap Like Banning Porky Pig,” it would still be worth cheering for. I am officially ECLBPP.
2. Speaking of mind-rot in the U.S., one of my most esteemed and once-rational Trump Deranged Facebook Friends demonstrated how the cult corrupts. He posted with favor an essay by a progressive journalist that purported to give “both sides” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and recommended that everyone read it. The essay was weakly camouflaged anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda, and obviously so.
Once my friend would have seen that, but Trump Derangement has eaten a substantial part of what had been an impressive brain. The party he is now pimping for has become, incredibly, pro-Islam, pro-Iran, pro-Hamas and pro-terrorism, so the Cognitive Dissonance Scale is forcing him to excuse these indefensible positions by embracing spin, rationalizations, and lies. The author my friend was promoting referred to Israel as an “occupation” and cited the position of the World International Court as evidence of Israel’s wrongdoing. There is a reason why the U.S. doesn’t recognize the anti-American, anti-Isreal WIC.
Those are flaming tells, and that my friend, a retired lawyer, couldn’t or wouldn’t see that is itself a tell. Tragic. And yes, this time I did comment critically on his post. No response, because he’s still smart enough to know I was right.
3. Back to TCM: the station is saluting director Stanley Kubrick this month, which is appropriate since almost every one of his movies is brilliant and he excelled in every film genre he tried. I stumbled upon a disturbing note, however. Sue Lyon, who played Nabokov’s teenage sex nymph in “Lolita,” was evidently raped and sexually abused repeatedly by the film’s producer during the shoot, which the actress reasonably believed derailed her emotional stability, career and life. Where was Kubrick while this was going on? It was his film and his project, and I hold him responsible if his child star was being abused during the production. This month HarperCollins UK announced it would stop selling the children’s books authored by David Walliams following allegations that he harassed female and junior employees. The UK has lost all common sense in its woke-mania: if we start banning artists based on their personal conduct, we’ll have decimated our cultural resources. Kubrick’s film achievements aren’t degraded by his human failings, but it is interesting to me that Porky Pig was banned because he stuttered yet the TCM progressives don’t think Sue Lyon’s abuse under the director’s metaphorical nose is worth mentioning. TCM’s hosts habitually mention all sorts of production details in their introductions and final comments to the movies they show. (“Gone With The Wind” is racist, you know!) But they admire Kubrick too much to tell “the rest of the story.”
4. Here is something artificial intelligence is good for: baseball statistics and history. Last night the Boston Red Sox lost to the Cleveland Ind..sorry, Guardians 1-0 on a home run around Fenway Park’s famous “Pesky Pole,” which marks the shortest outfield fence point of any baseball park still in use. I wondered if the Red Sox had ever lost a 1-0 game on one of those cheap homers, so I asked Google’s bot. The answer came in seconds: No, last night was the first time that has happened in all the games the Sox have played at home since 1912. Then I decided to check the information, as one must with AI until its annoying habit of making stuff up abates. It took me almost an hour, but the bot was right.
“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (lt will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists).”
This is TX-35 Democratic candidate Maureen Galindo. And her very existence unmasks the Democratic Party and the American left revealing the monsters they have become.
She’s not a fringe candidate either. Galindo was the top Democrat in the March primary election, with 29.2% support to her closest competition’s 27%. Since no one got a majority, Galindo advanced to a runoff election to take place next week against sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia. An awful lot of progressives and Democrats (I mean “awful lot” both ways) like anti-Semites and hate Jews.
As we are increasingly seeing…we are also seeing the Axis of Unethical Conduct trying to spin away the obvious implications of Democrats producing such a vile candidate with a “Republicans have anti-Semites too!” deflection. This was Bill Maher’s deceitful tactic, as I wrote earlier this week.
Watchdog group StopAntisemitism, which is one of those “independent” groups that always bashes Republicans, said, “The standard that Democrats rightly apply to right-wing anti-Semites must apply equally to left-wing Jew-haters. Democratic leaders must clearly, publicly denounce these bigots infecting their party without hedging. They must decline to appear on platforms with Hasan Piker. They must stop winking at extremist voices and truly stand for the principles they claim to stand for.”
Wait: what “right-wing Jews haters” are leading candidates in a Congressional race? Who is a Republican equivalent of Hasan Piker? Anti-Semites Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson have been emphatically rejected by President Trump, MAGA, and most conservatives. The Axis is now trying to claim that the PAC Lead Left that has spent $428,713 backing Galindo according to the latest data from Federal Election Commission filings is really run by Republicans. The problem with that dodge is that ethical, fair people won’t support anti-Semites no matter how much is spent on their political ads, unless the voters like anti-Semites and hate Jews. Both Piker and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who polls highly among potential 2028 Democratic Presidential candidates, endorsed Galinda. Is AOC a double-secret Republican agent?
In Part I, I published Bill Maher’s surprising slap at Democrats and progressives for their unethical drift into anti-Semitism. It’s pretty good—for Bill. The 18 paragraphs are numbered so I don’t have to repeat them here, especially since WordPress nearly sent me to the woodchipper when I was trying to compose the first post. I’m sorry that you’ll have to jump back and forth, but so do I, to write this.
And away we go…
1. Everyone has a right to be anti-Semitic, just as everyone has a right to lie, or commit adultery. Advocating anti-Semitism, promoting it, and acting on it is still unethical. These ethical nuances, rights vs. law vs. ethics, are beyond Maher’s comprehension.
2. See? Bill immediately defaults to a Rationalization #22 defense of Israel. It isn’t the worst country! Wow. Talk about a back-handed compliment!
3. Not quite as bad as China, Russia, Sudan, Iran, Myanmar, Haiti, the Congo, and North Korea, eh? Way to make anti-Semites feel ashamed, Bill….
4. Ezra Klein is nothing to be proud of. He has been a leader of Axis bias for a decade.
5. A “They’re just as bad” (Rationalization #2) cheat by Maher, and he’s cherry-picking. Carlson has been excoriated by conservatives for his anti-Israel stance. He is not representative of the Right at all, and I, for one, never thought he was.
6. Bill managed not to mention the Times’ “dog rape” libel.
9. Maher likes the #22 rationalization so much he comes back to it. This is because Bill doesn’t get ethics. He also evokes “Everybody does it!” here, the hoariest rationalization of all. Jeez Bill…read a book.
10. The “new rule” is about Democratic Party anti-Semitism, but the candidate he writes the most about is an obscure anti-Semitic Republican. Huh.
11. Israel overwhelmingly has the “right-wingers” on its side, and it has the President of the United States on its side in particular. Maher never mentions President Trump at all. He’s only willing to infuriate his audience so much, apparently.
12. Trying to continue his false equivalence argument regarding anti-Semitism on”both sides,” Maher pairs two typical leftist academics with…Candace Owens? She is persona non grata among conservatives, a true embarrassment, and she is the opposite of an academic, as she is illiterate.
13. Again with the rogue Republican joke in a statement about Leftist anti-Semitism, and again, Bill is cherry-picking. There is a reason that Margery Taylor Greene isn’t in Congress any more. Representing her idiocy as mainstream Republicanism is despicable. Rep. Fine’s sharp quip after one of Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim minions derided dogs was, in my opinion, undiplomatic but defensible. No dogs in the U.S. have engaged in any mass shootings or terrorism.
14-18. Bill finishes very strong, almost making up for his rationalizations and weasel words on the way to his conclusion
“The only question now is whether Kristof is a dupe for Hamas apologists who can’t be trusted to apply basic journalistic standards to his writing or a willing participant who doesn’t care about them. Either way, he doesn’t deserve to be a journalist”
“We want to believe that Nick Kristof and all the people who defended and shared his article are just like us—believers in honesty, men and women of integrity, a community of truth-seekers with a baseline sense of human decency. We want to believe this in part because of that very sense of human decency. But we are making a massive error. Kristof’s named sources not only provided no evidence for his lurid bestiality fantasies but themselves were also people with massive credibility deficits…And there’s another reason we want to believe that Israel’s critics are morally intact. Plenty of them are. Those are probably the ones we don’t hear from. Unfortunately, the ones we keep hearing from don’t believe this conflict has anything to do with where Palestinians live but rather that Israelis live at all.”
I don’t cite these two pieces as an appeal to authority. I reached the same conclusions in my post here before I read either of them. They do, however, reinforce my conclusion that Kristof, the Times staff that published his swill, and anyone you know who cites it, defends it or believes it are not to be trusted or respected. They are bent, or they are stupid and ignorant. There is no less damning conclusion.
Wow. I used to think Nick Kristof was the best and most trustworthy in Times’ generally unethical stable of pundits. Now I learn that he is nuts, or so biased against Israel that his brain sneaked out of his skull while he was sleeping.
This insane “report,” which his paper dutifully published because it no longer operates as a professional news source when politics are involved, is based entirely on second hand sources that have been anti-Israel and pro-Hamas from the beginning of the 2023 war Hamas began with a surprise terror attack on Israel’s civilians. Kristof cites only the claims of Palestinians, and sources that base their reports on the same. His main source is Sami al-Sai, a “free-lance journalist who has been painting Hamas and Gaza as victims of “genocide” since the war began. That is not an independent source. Neither is the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, also an anti-Israel group, or the United Nations, which has supported Palestinian propganda since the war began. At one point, Kristof even writes, “There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes.” There is also no evidence that the alleged rapes occurred.
There is definitive evidence that the Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women, however. Kristof’s fantasy appears to be a deliberate rationalization (#2. Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad“) to excuse Hamas/Gaza/ Palestinians for starting the bloody conflict. Coincidentally (?) an extensive, genuinely sourced report was released today documentingHamas’s attack, including the rapes, and sexual assaults against the kidnapped hostages. One commenter on “X’ wrote, “If you do not believe @nytimes knew EXACTLY what they were doing with the timing of the Kristof “opinion” piece [ie, trying to preempt justified outrage at Hamas’s sexual crimes by suggesting that Israel similarly engages in such crimes] I have a nice bridge to sell you.”
The Kristof piece seems like smoking gun evidence that the Times is filled with anti-Semites, or, in the alternative, people too stupid to put on their shoes after their socks. At very least, I would expect the Times to find a dog training expert to explain how the hell you would train a dog to rape a human being. Spuds (above) laughed when I told him about the article.
As Jack Nicholson says in “A Few Good Men,” this isn’t funny, it’s tragic. The American Left is embracing anti-Semitism to an extent that hasn’t been seen since the Thirties. David Bernstein wrote today, after an attack on a Jewish neighborhood in New York City, which elected a pro-Hamas mayor, “We are getting closer to an actual pogrom like Crown Heights 1991. Seriously time for Brooklyn Jews to arm themselves.”
It is a breach of civic duty to be this ignorant of history and reality and to spout off on social media while cheering on the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel news media. In other words, unethical and inexcusable.
The gift link to the NYT article at issue is here.
I’m not going to quote it or summarize it. I will characterize it: the opinion piece, Gaza’s Rubble Is the Grave of Our Future, by Ghada Abdulfattah, “a writer who lives in Gaza,” is anti-Israel, pro-Hamas propaganda that the Times has handed a large amount of space to promote. This is a “poor Gazans being victims of genocide by those inhuman, cruel Jews” essay. The writer never comes right out and says that, but her chronicling of the devastation in Gaza since the Israeli assault began three years ago is definitely aimed at conveying that misleading message.
All right, I will offer a quote:
“It isn’t just the sadness of what was demolished. Seeing endless piles of concrete brings a second layer of violence — the violence of being forced to live with destruction. Rubble doesn’t just destroy the past; it erases the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today.”
Gee, I guess launching a sneak terror attack on civilians in your neighboring state, killing over 1200 people, including infants, raping woman and taking 250 hostages isn’t such a good idea, eh? Huh. Who knew?
It is remarkable the things you learn while searching for ethics topics that have nothing to do with President Trump.
For example, I had never heard of Ms. Rachel, perhaps because my ‘kid’ is 31. Ms. Rachel is the professional moniker of educator, YouTuber, and singer-songwriter Rachel Accurso. She created the YouTube series “Ms. Rachel” (originally known as “Songs for Littles”), a children’s music series that focuses on language development for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
That’s nice! Unfortunately, she can’t resist exposing the fact on social media that she hates Jews . Last week, she “liked” a post by one of her followers on Instagram that said “Free America from the Jews.” Oh-oh. Then she posted a video in which she wept pitifully and claimed that she had meant to delete the thing but inadvertently “loved” it.
Oh. Well, anyone can make a mistake, though I don’t see how someone could make that one. The problem is that this kiddie educator has been ranting on social media about Israel “genocide” in Gaza for quite a while now. Earlier, she posted on Instagram, ‘”Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Free Iran.” Last year she filmed a ‘Letter of the Day’ video with Palestinian journalist, Motaz Azaiza. Azaiza has praised Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, in which infants and children were massacred among other victims. He once posted online, “May God curse the Jews themselves.”
Call me judgmental, but hosting an anti-Semite like this guy seems like an ominous sign for a child educator. Yet Ms. Rachel appears to be uncancellable. Over at “Unspiked,” Brendan O’Neillspeculates why. He writes in part,
“The Damocles sword of cancellation dangles precariously over all of us for such trifling speechcrimes as wondering if the Koran is bollocks (Islamophobia) or thinking immigration should be curtailed (racism). And yet you can openly rub shoulders with anti-Semitic people or anti-Semitic posts and the cancellers will look the other way.
“Be honest: what fate would befall a kids’ entertainer if they hosted on their show a man who had once said ‘Fuck all black people’? And if they then liked a post on Instagram that said ‘Get all blacks out of America’? We know exactly what would happen. They would be savagely cancelled. The only time we’d ever see them again would be in a Netflix documentary 20 years hence about the much-loved kids’ clown who lost it all by chumming about with racist scum.
“…The exact opposite has happened with Ms Rachel. She may have exposed the kids who follow her to a man who once said ‘Curse the Jews’, and she may have liked a post calling for the mass expulsion of Jews from the US, but she will survive. And thrive. Cancel culture will lay not one finger on her. And we all know why: because Jews enjoy none of the protections of ‘political correctness’. Jews have not been granted access to the kingdom of liberal concern. Offending Jews is seen as a lesser crime than offending any other group. Ms Rachel will suffer no consequences so long as her blunders only touch on the lives and feelings of Jews.
“The real problem is not Ms Rachel, who’s fundamentally just another celeb building a virtuous self-image from the rubble of Gaza. It’s the politics of identity. It’s that ideology’s ruthless demotion of Jews to the bottom of the league of identities. Scuff a page of the Koran and you’ll be had up for Islamophobia. Film a kids’ video with a man who said ‘Curse the Jews’ and you’re grand. There it is: the merciless neo-racialism of the woke era….”
This is another Cognitive Dissonance Scale issue at heart. Maybe a competent online children’s educator can still be regarded as effective and trustworthy as long as she keeps her vile political and social views out of her videos, songs and books. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, I’d rather have someone who isn’t a lying anti-Semite entertaining my children if I have a choice.
Steven Spielberg finally got the love he was seeking from the Hollywood establishment when “Schindler’s List” nabbed him Best Director and Best Film honors at the Oscars (despite being only the second-best film he made that year, after “Jurassic Park”). The Holocaust drama also established the director as a Serious Artist. He founded the Righteous Persons Foundation with his profits from “Schindler’s List,” saying that he wanted to educate Americans about the Holocaust.
“I could not accept any money from ‘Schindler’s List,’” Spielberg said, ” if it even made any money. It was blood money, and needed to be put back into the Jewish community. My parents didn’t keep kosher and we mainly observed all the holidays when my grandparents stayed with us,” the filmmaker explained at the time. “I knew I was missing a great deal of my natural heritage, and as I became conscious of it, I began racing to catch up.”
Ah, but Stevie lives in the Hollywood woke bubble, and intersectionality and progressive cant dictates that in the Hamas-Israel war, the Jews are the oppressors—they are white, see. Whites are always are oppressors.
