hypocrisy

The Hypocrisy And Dishonesty Of The Democratic National Convention Apparently Made Rose McGowan’s Head Explode

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

McGowan is a former Hollywood “scream queen” (one of my personal favorites, with her entertaining turn in “Scream” and her unforgettable “babe with a an automatic rifle for an artificial leg” performance in “Grindhouse” ) turned fearless #MeToo activist. She one of Harvey Weinstein’s victims, and has earned a reputation for calling out hypocrites within that movement in merciless terms, notably  her former “Charmed” cast mate and current fellow Twitter auteur, Alyssa Milano.

It was to be expected that the odious dishonesty of  the virtual Democratic National Convention just completed would provoke her, and, sure enough, it did.

In her now familiar take-no-prisoners style, McGowran tweeted:

Observations: Continue reading →

Friday Ethics Round-Up, 8/21/2020: Democratic National Convention Hangover Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

No, John Wayne doesn’t speak Spanish in “Red River,” but this was the only clip I could find of its iconic “Yahoo!” sequence. This may be the best Western ever; I don’t know, I go back and forth on it. Amazingly, Howard Hawks never won an Oscar…but then neither did Orson Wells, Alfred Hitchcock, or Cecil B. De Mille.

1. Now this is uncivil and unethical political speech (Pointer: Tim Levier):

No, it’s not justified by “tit for tat,” but the ugly, ad hominem abuse heaped on President Trump by the Democrats this week was hardly better.

2. Oh, it’s Friday; why not check in with Paige Spiranac? You remember Paige, right? I posted about her here. She’s not much of a professional golfer, but she is now a “social influencer.” She has power and influence because, let’s be frank, she looks like this, and makes sure everyone knows it:

Now she has a viral ethics tweet about slow golfers:

That’s slowLY, Paige. Mustn’t enable those “dumb blonde” jokes.

This has actually sparked a controversy in social media, though there shouldn’t be any question that excessively pokey golfers are being rude and inconsiderate. The rationalizations being offered by defenders of slow play are, sadly, illustrative of the ethics skills of too much of the public. For example:

“That’s a dumb comment. Golf is a leisure sport. You are meant to enjoy the sport with friends and family and take time while doing it. Especially if you’re not playing for millions.”

Continue reading →

It’s Snowing In Hell, And Stephen Colbert Is An Ethics Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Well, Bill Clinton was an Ethics Hero once too.

The talented host of the Late Show, who has betrayed his profession by taking the opportunity to do a nightly comedy talk show for all Americans using it almost exclusively  to take the cheap and all-too-traveled road  of  spreading disrespect and hate for the President of the United States, finally showed a flicker of integrity.

Should regular Clinton suck-up and “resistance” mouthpiece Stephen Colbert get an Ethics Hero accolade here for picking off the low-hanging fruit presented by Bill’s audacity in  speaking to the Democratic National Convention? Is finally doing his job, which is to unite the nation in humor while imparting perspective and criticism of the famous and powerful, really praise-worthy after Colbert has spent so many years doing the opposite? Continue reading →

Addendum: “Now THIS Is “Condign Justice”: The Democrats’ Hypocrisy And Bill Clinton’s Massage”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Clinton spin machine is already trying to minimize the significance of the photo of Bill Clinton being massaged by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex slaves, which surfaced just as Clinton was about to speak at the  virtual Democratic National Convention. That spin machine is damn good—after all, it was taught by the best. The narrative, however, is the equivalent of throwing dust in the eyes of observers while they are being blasted by a fog machine.

Here is the current “it depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is” deceit from Clinton’s lackeys, which was kindly provided by a commenter:

  • The woman who was giving him the massage in the photo was 22 years old at the time, not underage.
  • She really was a trained massage therapist.
  • The photo was taken in a public place — an airport — during a trip to Africa for a humanitarian mission, not to Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile island.
  • Clinton was in the company of several celebrities “who have never been accused of wrongdoing” who believed they were taking part in a genuine charitable event.
  • According to the masseuse, Clinton was charming and sweet and did nothing inappropriate during the trip.

I wrote the following in response, which Zanshin, another veteran commenter, proprly suggests should be buried in the comments, which, sadly, a lot of readers ignore. I’ve edited it slightly: Continue reading →

Now THIS Is “Condign Justice”: The Democrats’ Hypocrisy And Bill Clinton’s Massage

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Well, as the saying goes, it couldn’t happen to a nicer party.

Yesterday, as the Democrats shook their hypocrisy before America by having Bill Clinton play Star of the Convention, confident that they have so effectively corrupted and misinformed the public (with the help of the complicit news media, natch), that it won’t see anything amiss even at their first gathering since the emergence of #MeToo.  Then, shortly before Bill prepared to bloviate, a series of photographs were published by the Daily Mail showing the ex-President being massaged by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex slaves.

Perfect. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Hypocritical Conservative Media

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The  conservative media does itself and its cause no favors when it indulges in the same kind of warped and biased logic, as well as shameless appeals to emotion, that it–rightly–accuses the Left-leaning media of inflicting on the public.

This story is stunningly simple from an ethics perspective.  Walt Disney World has a rule that all visitors must wear masks at all times. A careless father who didn’t bother to do his research and preparation for a family trip to the theme park arrived to find that his 7-year-old daughter, who cannot wear a mask due to a disability, would not be allowed in. That was the correct call by Disney. It doesn’t matter whether the rule is excessive or extreme: this is a pandemic-related health  rule for the safety, peace of mind and security of Disney’s guests. If everyone doesn’t wear masks, then no one will regard the rule as fair or serious. There can’t be exceptions to such rules, especially, “Aw. just this once, after all, the kid has a disability and has really been looking forward to this” exceptions. Continue reading →

Discrimination Against Asian American Students Is Discrimination Against Asian American Students: Why Is This Even Debatable?

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

The Trump administration has  fingered  Yale as discriminating against Asian-American and white applicants, just as an Asian-American student group had made the same claim in lawsuits against Harvard, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a recently filed case against the University of Texas at Austin. A federal judge ruled in Harvard’s favor last year, but i do not believe the decision will stand up on appeal, since it is dishonest and illogical. The Trump Administration is supporting the plaintiffs as it should…as everyone should.

I wrote about the Harvard decision here.  As you would expect, the analysis differs not at all from the ethics verdict regarding Yale’s discrimination, which is similarly indefensible. Also as you might expect, the “it isn’t what it is” rationalization (#64!) is rampant while the usual suspects try to defend it now, when the Black Lives Matter mob is demanding discrimination in favor of African Americans in all things—hiring, promotions, ring, college admissions, arrests, prosecutions, casting, honors, running for Vice-President—as if that is anything but racism, flat-out.

The New York Times–of course–is and will be embarking on a course of trying to obscure the obvious right and wrongs of the situation, as well as engaging in some ethics  jujitsu to make out the Trump Administration and anyone who thinks that no discrimination on the basis of race means no discrimination on the basis of race  as racist villains.  In this article, for example, the Times attempts or enables several dishonest arguments to discredit what should be self-evident, including… Continue reading →

It looks Like Biden Has The Hypocrite Vote Locked Up!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Shaun King is a social justice warrior star and a Black Lives Matter shill. As far as I can determine, King is black the way Elizabeth Warren is Cherokee. Never mind: he has built his career on identifying as a victimized person of color because, he says, his mother told him his father wasn’t the white man on his birth certificate, but a light-skinned black man. For many, many reasons, I wouldn’t trust anything Shaun King  says or writes, nor would I trust him to mail my water bill. One litmus test for me: he still claims Mike Brown was murdered by a racist cop. He is the very model of a modern major advocate of “Facts Don’t Matter.”

Here, next to King’s tweet about Biden and Harris from two years ago,  is his tweet yesterday celebrating Super-Hypocrite Kamala Harris’s selection as Joe Biden’s running mate.

To be fair, did say 1%. Continue reading →

OK, What’s Going On Here?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

In the Washington Post yesterday, the Washington Post’s Sunday “Outlook” section included an op-ed in which  Lawrence Downes,  a former member of the New York Times editorial board, enthusiastically wrote about his new pastime:

[I have] right-wing culture war books from the Fox-News-angry-White-person’s superhero universe. Besides Hannity, I’ve got Lou Dobbs, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik. The list is not comprehensive. It includes Karl Rove and Hugh Hewitt but not Newt Gingrich, Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump…The Fox folks seemed so bilious and out of place in that pleasant company, like toadstools among the daffodils. So I’d buy them up and take them home. Not for reading, which brought no pleasure, but for quarantine. The books are dispatches from a phony war, the one Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes helped gin up and got obscenely rich on. If you believe, as I do, that the plutocrat propagandists of Fox, talk radio and the GOP are lying liars who have vandalized our politics and country, then finding a Hannity or Ingraham book is like finding one of their bricks. The books piled up in my basement, out of circulation (which was the point) but always naggingly present, like asbestos. I wanted to be rid of them. And yet I paused, because even contemplating destroying books felt terrible…

I hit on the answer…. About once a week, I tear them into strips. I add them to the coffee grounds, potato and carrot peelings, onion and avocado skins, asparagus stubs, the papery bits of garlic, eggshells and dead flowers, and let the worms do the rest…

Turning propaganda into worm castings is not going to measurably reduce the amount of Fox News-iness in the environment. It is not strictly necessary. But if Hannity and company want to keep telling us that we are all at war, to keep stoking the flames and fanning the fear, then, for the good of this country, the people we love, the democracy we might lose and the world we want, so be it.

What’s going on here? Continue reading →

Did You Ever Want To Reach Right Through A Letters To The Editor Section And Slap A Letter Writer Silly?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

When I see a letter to a newspaper published that is indefensible logically and ethically, I often wonder, “Why did the paper print this?” Was the reason that the editors thought the letter made good sense, in which case, “Oh-oh!” Was the reason that it spoke for many readers with similar delusions, and thus would inform other readers that this, however dim-witted, is a common attitude or perception? Or, most ominous of all, was the reason it was published that the editors know the letter is badly reasoned, but think it will persuade other readers to accept a view that advances the paper’s ideological and political agendas?

I believe editors of letters sections are obligated to rebut dumb or misleading statements, either with their own responses or with other letters. The news media should not make people more ignorant, more biased, more stupid, and more misinformed. That our current news media does this now as a matter of course, and often deliberately, is one of the prime reasons I view the label “enemy of the people,” as inflammatory as it is, as fair.

I was thinking about this as I read the readers’ letters to the New York Times about Elizabeth Drew’s recent op-ed arguing that Presidential debates should be eliminated. As I’ve mentioned here earlier, her position was disingenuous and laughable: What a coinkydink that progressive pundits are suddenly opposing debates when the Democratic Party’s candidate is obviously trying to keep the extent of his mental decline from voters! Naturally the Times, being the Times,  permitted just one letter to get to press that expressed that analysis; only two of the seven letters published referenced Joe Biden at all. Continue reading →