hypocrisy

Wait, I’m Confused: I Thought Trump Is The President Who Jeopardizes Democracy By Defying “Democratic Norms”….

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

I know I’m a bit obsessive on this topic, but none of the Democratic Party’s lies (and those of its dead-eyed allies, the news media and academia), annoy me quite as much as the “Trump breaches democratic norms!” refrain. It’s Resistance Big Lie #6 on the list; partisan scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have made a career out of peddling its hypocrisy and the fake history underlying it. Don’t make me go through the rebuttal again: a 2024 update is here.

At the moment, Barack Obama is engaged in breaching a very important democratic norm, the tradition holding that past U.S. Presidents rarely criticize the current occupant, and never actively campaign against a President who isn’t on the ballot. The reasons past Presidents don’t do this and must not are many, including that it is inherently divisive, that it encourages bitter partisanship, that it undermines the office, that past Presidents are supposed to recognize as few do the challenges of the job, and that it is cowardly, since past Presidents have nothing to lose by insulting the current POTUS except, perhaps, the respect of decent Americans. Obama is now on the campaign trail, doing less campaigning for Democrats running for Congress than insulting Donald Trump.

He is the only ex-President ever to do this when the ex- isn’t himself running for the office, as former President Trump was from 2021 to 2024. Theodore Roosevelt was a term-long critic of his successor (and onetime best friend) William Howard Taft, but Teddy was getting ready to run for a second full term. John Quincy Adams was vocal criticizing some of his successors, but that was from a seat in Congress. Obama’s shattering this “norm” because he’s special, or something.

Actually, Obama’s shattering this “norm” he’s an asshole. Obama has the gall to ridicule Trump’s construction projects, when, as Scott Bessent quipped, the design of his Presidential Library looks like Darth Vader’s tomb. He’s ethically estopped from making architectural critiques, just as he’s estopped from criticizing Trump or any President. Barack Obama was one of the weakest, most feckless, most destructive U.S. Presidents in our history: his major accomplishment was becoming President as a black man. Yay. But that’s it.

Obama may also be the most destructive and meddlesome former President in our history. John Tyler did join Jefferson Davis’s cabinet, so it’s close. But Barack has certainly proven that democratic norms only matter to Democrats when Republicans vary from them.

I guess we knew that, though.

New York City’s Ethics Horse Carriage Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The famous “Dancing in the Dark” number from “The Bandwagon” (one of Fred’s best) ends with Fred Astaire and the ethereal Cyd Charrise seamlessly collapsing in to a horse-drawn Central Park carriage. Can’t have that! New York’s communist mayor Zohran Mamdani (“There’s your party! There’s your party!”) has accomplished what New York City’s previous communist mayor Bill DeBlasio couldn’t. The New York City Council voted on last week to ban horse-drawn carriage rides from Central Park in two years.

Why? Because they could. Because a progressive constituency, albeit a wacko one, had been trying to put the Central Park carriage ride drivers out of business for decades: it’s cruelty to animals, see. It’s so much better to have those horses end up as dog food and their owners on Welfare. Anyway, it’s the principle of the thing.

Let’s look at the ethics elements in play:

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Stop Making Me Defend Shawn Gillis!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The wild—and increasingly weaponized—hypocrisy among alleged feminists is not to be borne, and I’m happy to flag it as the unethical—but woke!—cultural poison that it is.

Perpetually unfunny comic Shane Gillis was back for the third (or is it fourth?) time as a host of the now totally ideologically-captured Saturday Night Live last week. During his rambling monologue to begin the show, Gillis said, “I haven’t been to the gym in so long I didn’t know women just dress like whores now? Look, I’m sorry, there’s no other way to describe it.” Gillis then went on to describe the ubiquitous tight short-shorts that dominate young women’s attire at the gym as featuring “wrinkles [that] go around the cheeks and all combine at the butthole,” adding, “You’re not allowed to look… because they are filming. I’m in the background of about 10 TikToks right now.”

The Hollywood Left’s explosion of fury, which sure sounds like mandatory feminist outrage from beta males to me, focuses on Gillis’s use of the word “whores”—I even saw it censored on Axis news sources as “wh*res.” Not to go back into the misty past, but as I will always remind readers here, Bill Maher called conservative women like Sarah Palin and others “cunts” and “twats” on his HBO show with nary a peep from feminists. Today, over a decade later, the same people who laughed at Bill’s hilarious misogyny want to cancel Gillis. Here’s Forbes virtue-signaling to the mob:

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: The Trump Administration Asks For Universities To Be Fair, Open and Responsible, and The Teachers Union Goes Nuts

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

What does this tell you?

Is there a second way to interpret this exchange?

I’m not going to comment much on this post, because the raw reality shouldn’t require it. First I was going to frame this as one of the game show posts, with the title, “Who’s Nuts?” But I did one of those just a few days ago. The unions are Ethics Villains to be sure, but even that doesn’t do them justice based on their letter. I was going to use the “Apocalypse Now” clip “The Horror!” to mock the way the two radical Axis unions reacted to the most reasonable DOE requests imaginable, but this is too frightening to mock. The unions’ letter is an Unethical Quote to be sure, but a 6 page unethical quote is a bit…unwieldy.

According to polls, a large proportion of Americans are willing to put these totalitarian far-left extremists in power because gasoline prices have spiked while the United States confronts a deadly international enemy that it should have crushed 40 years ago. The frightening part isn’t Congress temporarily flipping. The frightening part is that so many Americans are so short-sighted, easily manipulated, ignorant.

Here is the first letter, as Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon calls for colleges and universities to actually educate students, stop being far-left indoctrination factories, ensure intellectual and ideological diversity on campus and not violate the civil rights laws. Let me know if you see anything radical, extreme or alarming there unless one is a committed ideological warrior determined to prevail “by any means necessary”…

Now here is the response of the recently combined American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), both organizations victims of total ideological capture. (Just to follow the theme of recent days, both unions have called for boycotts against Israel.)

Professor Turley, whom I credit with first alerting me to this nauseating open correspondence, writes in part,

“…The alliance with AFT and Weingarten [Me: that’s her, ranting above] is crushingly predictable. Weingarten personifies what I have called the “education cartel,” where teacher unions receive massive contracts and pension agreements from Democratic allies and then turn around and send massive political contributions to those same allies. The losers in this symbiotic relationship are of course the students and their families. Weingarten is “credited” with turning the teachers’ union into an extension of the Democratic Party, often appearing at political rallies with her signature high-volume screeds…As public support and revenue for both public education and higher education plummet, these figures are doubling down. The last thing that they want to see is the restoration of neutrality or balance. That is why a policy calling for such reforms is so anathema to them. These organizations are now political organizations that use their dues to pursue radical agendas.”

All true, but the professor’s main concern is the radicalization of a union that purports to represent his profession. My main concern is the crystal clear dishonesty in the second letter and its extreme “it isn’t what it is” arguments. Calling out and preventing institutional discrimination against men, whites, Asians and conservatives isn’t “a partisan concept of national interest.” It’s called “enforcing the law.” The most laughable is the teachers’ union call to make higher education “affordable.” The schools can make tuition more affordable by cutting administrative staff, salaries and construction. Their solution is more taxpayer funding for useless and misleading degrees, but also more reliable woke activists.

Ethics Quiz: Sydney Sweeney (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Sweeney, the shapely and bold young actress who already angered the Left with her jeans/genes ad that supposedly dog whistled white supremacy, is now getting attacked by the Mad Left for the video above. She’s objectifying female athletes, you see. Or something. Because women athletes have never used sexual attractiveness to promote themselves and their sports…

Hey, how did pro-golfer Paige Spiranac get in there? Away with you, Devil Woman!

Now where were we? Oh yes, Sydney Sweeney….

Here’s The Athletic:

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OH NO! Trump Is Toppling A Work Of Art Outside The Kennedy Center! Democrats Would NEVER Take Down…Oh. Right.

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Well, I’ll say this for my Trump Deranged Facebook Friends: they are useful for keeping up on that group’s rapidly progressing mental illness, which exhibits symptoms manifesting constant fury over trivia, obsessive behavior, presumptions of certitude, and loss of all perspective. Oh, and hypocrisy! Mustn’t forget hypocrisy.

My friend the Trump Deranged professor posted this today with favor:

“Today, a permanent artistic gift—Joel Shapiro’s “Blue”—was taken from the nation because Donald Trump didn’t like it.

“September 18, join Hands Off the Arts to raise your voice and make sure Trump pays the political price for his vandalism of John F. Kennedy’s memorial and our nation’s cultural center.”

I’m marking my calendar right now!

The alleged vandalism was Trump’s ordered removal of the ugly thing above, which, since I started personally boycotting the monument to one of our most unethical Presidents and his corrupt family dynasty that included a U.S. Senator who left a young woman to die in a submerged car, I had never seen before. Huh. Is the outrage over Trump getting rid of that piece of blue crap more contrived than the fury over the 250th Commemorative coin, or less?

In a risible report, the New York Times informs us that “Blue” is a “towering artwork.” And it fit so well with the neo-Classical style of the Edward Durrell Stone white marble box-shaped Center, too!

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts removed a major outdoor sculpture from the center’s grounds on Wednesday. The work, installed in 2019, was targeted for elimination after President Trump’s takeover of the center, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times.

The Kennedy Center made no advance announcement of its plans to remove the towering, vivid blue metal sculpture of a stick-like human figure, called “Blue.”

On Wednesday morning, the limbs and torso of the figure were wrapped in protective material; an arm was the first to be removed.

The Kennedy Center confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that the sculpture was being deinstalled and that a foundation dedicated to the artist would determine its next location. It did not say the reason for the removal but noted that the deinstallation of artworks that had been donated or lent was common practice for conservation or preservation purposes.

A news release from around the debut of “Blue” describes it as a permanent sculpture for the grounds.

“We are deeply grateful to Joel Shapiro for the years ‘Blue’ has spent animating our campus and connecting visitors to his vision,” the statement said. “We are honored to have been stewards of his vibrant work and a part of his enduring legacy.”

Mr. Shapiro died in 2025. His daughter, Ivy Shapiro, who is president of his foundation, said in an interview that she thought her father would have been “alarmed” that the sculpture was being taken down from its intended location.

“In Joel’s mind, it was one of his greatest site-specific commissions, which celebrated joy, freedom and creativity,” she said.

Hear! Hear! I know I’ve always seen giant metal stick figures as celebrations of joy, freedom and creativity. Not as much as those inflated wiggly-men, of course, but still.

If there is one thing I do not care to hear knee-jerk progressives bleat about in their ravings, it is President Trump removing a single ugly artwork from the grounds of a public building because “he didn’t like it.” In this case the President showed exquisite taste (for a change) but even if the thing weren’t a big blue metal stick figure, the reason “It stinks!” is still a brilliantly-reasoned critique compared to the Axis and Friends removing over 160 statues from public grounds …

…because a black lifetime petty thug died after an accidental use of excessive force by a Minnesota police officer while he was resisting arrest and over-dosing on drugs.

The hypocrisy—and willful blindness to it—exhibited in this latest episode of “Everything Trump Does Is Terrible And Justifies Impeachment If Not Death!” is…I need a new adjective for “beyond belief.” Let’s see…it looks like I use all of them, and the Thesaurus list doesn’t even include “gobsmacking,” “head-exploding” or the phase that keeps jumping into my mind right now, “so fucking stupid it makes my pancreas whimper.” I guess I’ll go with the Cambridge Dictionary’s more dignified and restrained “impossible to comprehend.”

‘Nah, There Was No “Deep State” Undermining The First Trump Administration!’

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

There are about 20 friends and relatives I am dying to send this clip to, but I won’t. Probably.

‘There was no progressive Deep State secretly working to undermine Trump and conservative policies!’ they have all told me for years, in varying degrees of certitude and exasperation. ‘That’s just a Fox News conspiracy theory!’ One close relative in particular, a career government lawyer, is insulted by the very suggestion. After all, he worked diligently and loyally for administrations under GOP and Democratic control. I believe him. I also followed the astounding numbers of leaks in the first Trump administration, the outright defiance by many holdover administrators, the FBI’s efforts to “Get Trump” during the Russian Collusion investigation, the betrayal of confidences by White House aides, staff and Trump appointees, and more. Remember former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor, who authored the anonymous Times op-ed on September 5, 2018 titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration”? He stated that he and others in “the Resistance” were working from within to thwart the President’s impulses. Remember how this creep was cheered on by the Times readers?

The Axis complained and still complains bitterly about how Trump 2.0 has made absolute loyalty and trustworthiness by his extended team a priority. To that, I say, “Good. He gave Democrat career government workers a chance to prove they were professionals and could be trusted to respect and advance the policy agenda of the elected President of the United States. Instead many—one was too many— used their positions to “resist.”

There have been consequences of that necessary reaction in the second Trump Administration. The talent pool available to the Trump Administration is vastly diminished because of it, leading to too many incompetents, true believers, sycophants and “yes men” (okay, okay, “yes persons”). That is affirmatively bad for the nation. But it is the Left that has rejected the key principle of our democracy that once a President is elected, all commit themselves as Americans to allow the voters’ choice to govern. Democrats, with Hillary playing a lead role, broke that “democratic norm” in 2017 (and had the gall to accuse Trump of “breaching democratic norms”). It is broken still. It is probably beyond repair.

Clinton fears “Deep State” sabotage from Trump’s federal work force because she knows that is how her “resistance” behaved. She is pledging to do exactly what President Trump knew he had to so when he was elected a second time…because of Hillary, “the resistance,” and unethical Democrats.

Rep. Gill’s Question To Rep. Pressley: More Than a “Gotcha!”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

An exchange yesterday between Democratic Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) and Republican Representative Brandon Gill during a House hearing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is rapidly going “viral” this morning, no thanks to any left-leaning news aggregators and the Axis media, which are trying to ignore it.

During the hearing, Representative Pressley criticized Republican anti-DEI policies as harmful to women (translation: not discriminating against men is harmful to women) and in her usual obnoxious “I wish I didn’t have to deal with these racist idiots” air asked Representative Gill to support her legislation to support the justly dead-in-the-water Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Gill immediately responded, “Does it define what a woman is?” and was met with crickets by Pressley, who pretended he hadn’t said that and muttered weakly, “I look forward to your signing on.” Gill, triumphant, replied, “I just was hoping for some analytical clarity, but thank you.”

Gil’s question was deft and significant. It instantly drew attention to the intellectual dishonesty, internal contradictions and the procrustean nature of so many progressive obsessions, including affirmative action (violating laws against discrimination in order to remedy discrimination), trans-female sports competition (harming biological women by warping Title IX) and, of course, DEI.

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My Legal Ethics Association Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
Great. Unethical legal ethicists....

I have gradually discovered, over the past few months, that the association of legal ethics lawyers in which I am a card-carrying member is, in fact, biased, partisan, and not particularly ethical at all.

Membership in the group is considered a credential and an important one, especially since few legal ethics experts have degrees in the field. (My mentor in the area, Michael Daigneault, is one of the few who do.) I don’t belong to the association because of the credential—membership in the ABA ethics section is regarded as a credential too, and that association is crippled by bias, so to hell with it—but because it once seemed like a useful network and because the listserv keeps me relatively informed of major developments in the field.

I knew the group was overwhelmingly left-biased because the whole legal profession is left-biased. Conservative members generally foxhole during discussions that turn political, and they often do. When I have decided to be Popeye (“It’s all I can stand, ‘cuz I can’t stand no more!”) and point out a particularly annoying outbreak, I receive sheepish emails off site from members who tell me that they agree with me. They just don’t have the guts to say so on the site.

Last month, as I have mentioned here, I raised for discussion the difficult problem of how to square the legal profession’s protection of its many (MANY) alcoholic and substance-addicted lawyers with the duties of candor and communication to clients, supposedly a core legal ethics requirement. The group’s reaction was to “circle the wagons,” deny the problem, and attack me. When I responded in words I believed were appropriate to the attacks, I was singled out and threatened by the group’s president, who said that he had received complaints about my “incivility.”

Translation: Non-conforming positions that made some members uncomfortable are not welcome. Shut up, Jack.

I haven’t participated since. I had already been disillusioned twice in the previous weeks, once when the consensus was that ethics lawyer somehow get an exception from the legal ethics duty to report lawyers they know are unfit to practice ( it would take too much time, you see) and that the fact that bar associations, contrary to the public’s belief, not only do a terrible job policing the profession but intentionally make it difficult for the public to flag unethical lawyers. “How dare you!” would be my summary of the group’s reaction to my pointing out that fact.

Today I saw a post on the listserv by an esteemed member whose signature contained this as a feature:

“A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.” —-Declaration of Independence

So now I have to put up with partisan, No Kings, Trump Deranged virtue signaling. I am sorely tempted to drop a note with the coda, “These people are crazy.” —President Donald J. Trump, 2026 State of the Union Message.

I’m sure I would again be the target of censorship, and maybe, finally, banned. On one hand, I still find the listserv a valuable resource. On the other hand, as Captain Hook would say, they are hypocrites and unethical., and somebody ought to tell them.

Now what?

Oh, NOW Platner Isn’t An Acceptable Candidate? [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Exactly a month ago, I wrote “I Would Say Graham Platner Poses An Integrity Test For Democrats, Except They Have Already Flunked.” From that post…

“The fact that the Democratic Party is rallying around an unequivocal scumbag like Graham Platner is damning. So desperate is our aspiring totalitarian party to pack the Supreme Court, add automatic Democratic states like Puerto Rico and D.C. to the stars on the flag, open the borders and lock up their political opponents that they are willing to betray their duty to the political system not to present untrustworthy candidates to voters. It doesn’t matter that Platner, about to be nominated as a Senate candidate in Maine, is a liar, a Nazi admirer, a serial sexual offender and has no qualifications for office.”

But for some reason Platner being accused of “rape rape” (in Whoopi Goldberg’s immortal parlance) is too much. What a ridiculous, repellent, disgusting party the Democrats have become! Now, after the latest revelations, previous supporters of this unequivocal scumbag are running for their lives like the rats on board the Titanic.

“I’ve been very clear that sexual assault or violence against women is a red line. These allegations are very serious and credible. Graham Platner should drop out from the race. I am withdrawing my endorsement,” tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna, who is quite a scumbag in his own right. Democrat Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego wrote, “The allegations against Graham Platner are troubling and deeply serious. I am rescinding my endorsement.”

Wait, the earlier established facts about Platner weren’t troubling and serious? Democratic anti-gun hysteric David Hogg also withdrew his Platner endorsement today. So did Hollywood Democratic Party lackey Jon Favreau. Finally, The Maine Democrat Party has called for Platner to withdraw from the race.

George Will would call this “condign justice.” Nelson Muntz would say “Ha Ha!” And I channel Connie Corleone when I say, “That’s your party! That’s your party!” No one should let these hypocrites escape accountability for their open contempt for ethics, decency, voters, Maine, Congress or the Republic. Platner’s unfitness for office was already undeniable before Jenny Racicot accused him of rape, but Democrats were willing to hold their noses, cover their eyes and inflict him on the nation anyway. Never mind Platner, this tells us all we need to know about their character, their trustworthiness and their fitness to govern.

__________________

Added: Senator Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer have withdrawn their endorsement of Platner.