hypocrisy

Jay Leno, Age Discrimination, And Our Cultural Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments
Jay Leno, when he was talented.

Jay Leno, when he was talented.

One of the purposes of laws is to point the culture toward more ethical awareness and eventually, conduct. In the case of age discrimination, however, this isn’t working very well, and the recent foofaraw surrounding Jay Leno’s forced exit from the “Tonight Show” gives us some hints of why this is so.

NBC and the TV reporters covering the situation (in case you have a life: Leno has been forced to give up his 30 year reign at NBC’s flagship late night show in favor of his current follow-up on the NBC schedule, the lighter-than-air Jimmy Fallon) do not disguise the reason for Leno’s ouster: he is old, or at least considerably older than Fallon. Never mind that Jay still leads in the ratings over the despicable David Letterman, the Hell-spawn Jimmy Kimmel, and Jay’s former victim, poor, betrayed Conan O’Brien at TBS. Leno is 62, so he and his gray hair are being jettisoned by NBC in its fear that Kimmel, recently installed as competition by ABC, will siphon off more and more of the younger demographic that sponsors crave. I would think it would be much easier to tell Leno to start encouraging parents to torture their children too, but hey, what do I know?

What is telling is that nobody seems to see anything wrong with this. Old guys are a drag, we all know that, I guess. How many MSNBC hosts and Democratic Party flacks have loudly proclaimed that the Republican Party’s problem is that it is run by old guys? Old guys are trouble, sooner or later, so it certainly makes sense that anyone running a business or an organization figures out ways to dump them in favor of new blood, unless that pesky law stuff gets in the way. Then, of course, age discrimination is bad, bad, bad. Continue reading →

A Party Of Portmans, Of Cynics, Of Losers, Or No Party At All

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

GOP-ButtonThe just released GOP post mortem on the 2012 election is either wishy-washy, cynical, ambiguous or confused, depending on your level of charity. Personally, I would call it useless, as any internal assessment is likely to be when an organization knows that it will be dissected by unfriendly critics and used against them by outright enemies. It is also depressing.

In its essence, the report is about “messaging,” a.k.a marketing, a.k.a. “making people like what you’re peddling by not really letting them know the truth about it.” Undeniably, the Democrats have been better at this in recent years, as passing Obamacare without ever explaining what was in it either to the public or the legislators voting for it, running in 2008 as the tonic for all of George W. Bush’s supposed assaults on human and Constitutional rights and then pretty much adopting all of them and a couple more, like drone strikes, and perhaps most of all, making “transparency” a centerpiece of the 2008 campaign and then delivering a governing style that is anything but. “Messaging” to political parties means “lying” to the so-called “low information voter,” and no doubt about it, the Democrats were better at lying—not necessarily more prolific at it, now, but better—than Republicans in 2012

They must be so proud.

Thus the post mortem lurches between vague appeals to messaging and disturbing assertions that principle and integrity are just too darn risky in 2013 America. For example, the report notes that Republicans were tarred as the party of the rich–hardly a new label, based on those 1920’s political cartoons I have on file, but apparently more Americans don’t like rich people, and would rather be poor people who take the rich people’s money, or something…the report isn’t quite clear on why being rich in America is now somehow a bad thing. The report, therefore, seems to suggest a range of alternatives: Continue reading →

No Hero He: Sen. Portman Demonstrates How To Make Doing The Right Thing Look Terrible

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
PortmanQuayleTracy

Guess Who’s A Hypocrite?

Sen. Rob Portman’s sudden reversal of his long-held and vocally expressed revulsion toward everything gay—including marriage—is being hailed by some as a virtuous, generous, open-minded and courageous act. It is nothing of the sort.

Portman’s change was precipitated by the fact that his own son….that is, a real person he  cares about…revealed that he was gay, requiring Portman to choose between following through, in ways that would, for the first time, have unpleasant personal consequences, on his supposedly deeply held, faith-based opposition to gay rights in America, or to abandon those core moral beliefs in the time it takes to throw out an ill-fitting pair of pants. What Portman has gone through is a classic “foxhole conversion,” in the manner of the atheist who suddenly finds God when death is near and it seems wise to hedge his bets.

There is nothing courageous or admirable about this at all. To the contrary, it proves that Portman’s earlier position condemning people like his son was based on political expediency, ignorance, recklessness, cold disregard for anyone not like him, or dishonesty, and I really don’t care which.

We have seen such conduct from the Right before, memorably in Dan Quayle’s admission that despite his absolute conviction, or so he had said, that abortion was morally wrong and ought to be illegal even in cases of rape or incest, he would, hypothetically, support his teen-aged daughter’s decision to have an abortion because he loved her. We have seen it from the Left, too, as in the situation memorably dramatized in the film “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?” Individuals who advocate political, economic, moral and policy positions that they would oppose in the jerk of a knee if they had real, personal consequences are undercover hypocrites. They have not applied the Golden Rule;  how they would feel if the were in the position of those whose lives they so cavalierly would affect has never entered their consciousness. What this flip-flop tells us about Sen. Rob Portman is that nobody should respect or take notice of what he thinks or says he thinks, and that having such a man casting one of a hundred votes in the U.S. Senate means that the body is, at best, only 99% responsible, competent or trustworthy. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week, Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck Division: WSJ Blogger James Taranto

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“It’s like a proponent of laws against hate speech standing on a street corner shouting racial slurs in order to “demonstrate how easy it is” to say offensive things under the First Amendment. Of course it’s ‘easy’ to do something that is perfectly legal and protected by the Constitution. That doesn’t mean you ought to do it, especially if you claim to believe it is wrong.”

—–Wall Street Journal blogger, pundit and wit James Taranto, describing the “stupid stunt”perpetrated  by Mark Kelly, the husband of  former Rep. Gaby Giffords, in which he purchased the kind of weapon he and his wife have been lobbying Congress to ban, a so-called “assault weapon,” in order to “demonstrate how easy it is to obtain” one.

At least Kelly didn’t break the law, like David Gregory, to show how easy it was to get an illegal magazine in Washington, D.C.

 

If this is the best argument you have...be quiet.

If this is the best argument you have…be quiet.

Is this hypocrisy? No, it’s not hypocrisy. Kelly’s act is reminiscent, though not as certifiably cretinous, of stunt pulled by the foolish Ronald Miller, who walked into his child’s school and announced that he was going to start shooting people, just to show that he could. Kelly proved nothing. To someone who believes that a law-abiding citizen who believes he needs an assault weapon to protect his family against home invaders, Rodney King-style riots or the breakdown of civilization (never mind what Joe Biden or Andrew Cuomo think he needs), Kelly’s purchase proved only that the system works: a law-abiding citizen can buy a legal gun. The Horror. To anti-gun crusaders, Kelly proved that a gun they think should be made illegal is legal—but presumably they already knew that. Kelly was trying to demonstrate that legal conduct should be made illegal because people can currently do it?

Okaaaaay… Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Hugo Chavez Fan Club (Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY), Oliver Stone and Joe Kennedy III

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"We love you Hugo, we really do-oo! There isn't anyone, we love like you-oo! When you're not with us, we're blue! Oh, Hugo, we love you!"---From the new musical, "Bye-Bye Chavez," written by Oliver Stone, starring Sean Penn!

“We love you Hugo, we really do-oo! There isn’t anyone, we love like you-oo! When you’re not with us, we’re blue! Oh, Hugo, we love you!”—From the new musical, “Bye-Bye Chavez,” written by Oliver Stone, starring Sean Penn!

What do we learn from those who mourn the passing of Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez and praise his leadership? Chavez leaves his nation with a corrupted judiciary, an intimidated and manipulated press, a soaring violent crime rate, massive debt, crumbling infrastructure, galloping inflation, government-sanctioned anti-Semitism, and the prospect of political instability for the foreseeable future. When we hear an American praise Chavez, we learn that he or she neither trusts or values the institutions of democracy, like a free press and independent judiciary. We learn that such an individual believes that indeed the ends justify the means; that lies, repression, manipulation of news and public opinion, cultism, divisiveness and class warfare are all forgivable and even laudable in pursuit of “social justice,” roughly defined in the manner of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro, murderers all. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: The Washington Post Editors

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“To govern is to choose. By missing Friday’s deadline for averting $85 billion worth of across-the-board spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, Congress and President Obama have chosen not to govern. Instead, each side has concluded that its interest lies in letting the “sequester” proceed as scheduled — and then trying to win the political blame game….”

—-The Washington Post, in its lead editorial today, as the sequester deadline passed.

gordian-knot1While so many other Obama supporting media organizations continue to absolve the President for any responsibility in this disgraceful episode, his hometown newspaper, blue as blue can be, has been uniquely  fair and objective on this issue. The Post’s blueness manifests itself in overly-gentle terms to describe conduct that deserves far harsher terms, much as Bob Woodward’s using the term “mistake” to describe President Obama’s claim that he didn’t propose the sequester in the first place, when the accurate term is certainly “lie.”  For example, the Post editors, later in their piece, say this: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week, Sequester Ethics Train Wreck Division: Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Watching Woodward the last 2 days is like watching my idol Mike Schmidt face live pitching again. Perfection gained once is rarely repeated.”

–—  Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe, in a tweet contributing to the White House effort to undermine the credibility of journalist Bob Woodward for the crime of calling attention to some of its more unsavory maneuvers regarding the sequestration crisis.

plouffe

“I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

He owes Mike an apology too.

He owes Mike an apology too.

Maybe this is what Gene Sperling meant.  Now the White House gang is suggesting that Woodward has lost it, can’t get around on the fast ball, that his time has passed, that he is, in short, an old geezer who should be put out to pasture, like 1970’s baseball great Mike Schmidt.

Democrats are quick on the trigger to accuse adversaries of coded racism, sexism, and homophobia, but appear to have no compunction at all when it comes to denigrating opponents as old, or fat. This is bigotry, you know, from a White House that has benefited mightily from planting the myth that any criticism of its primary occupant is subject to legitimate suspicion of being motivated by prejudice. Let’s see—Woodward is 68, almost 69. Harry Reid is 74. Nancy Pelosi is 72.  Justice Ginsberg and Justice Breyer, two liberal stalwarts protecting the Presidents legal flanks, are 79 and 74 respectively. Hillary Clinton, who is being pumped up for a Presidential run in 2016, will be 66 this year, and 70 by the time she runs, if she runs.  Joe Biden is older than Woodward; so is newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry. Plouffe tweet is a slur and a cheap shot, rank hypocrisy, and really stupid.

His message is that if a journalist dares to challenge this administration’s Machiavellian tactics, it must be because of creeping senility. Perfection is, naturally, holding Republican administrations to standards of integrity and honesty. Doing so with Democrats, however, is proof that a journalist has stayed to long at his desk.

He is a bigot, an ass, and I fear, an in-house assassin.

You know, I wouldn’t bet against Mike Schmidt still being able to hit one out.

_____________________________

Source: Instapundit

Influence Peddling At The White House

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

For Sale2

The New York Times—

You know, that Obama-hating, right-wing news rag—

has the story.

I’ll wait here while you read it.

( The key paragraph: “Giving or raising $500,000 or more puts donors on a national advisory board for Mr. Obama’s group and the privilege of attending quarterly meetings with the president, along with other meetings at the White House. Moreover, the new cash demands on Mr. Obama’s top donors and bundlers come as many of them are angling for appointments to administration jobs or ambassadorships.” )

Done?

We can make this short and sweet.

This is unethical.

It reeks of impropriety, influence peddling, and cronyism.

This is similar to the scandal the Clinton White House was embroiled in before Monica distracted everyone.

The bottom line is that the President is allowing his operatives to sell access to him and his office for a half-million dollars a shot. Using the White House, the Lincoln bedroom, positions of influence and substantive access to the President to raise money for anything is unethical, regardless of whether or not there are legal loopholes that allow it to avoid direct illegality. It sets a terrible example for other office holders. It is the epitome of the rotting fish head.

What a cynical and hypocritical disappointment this President has become. Or, perhaps, how shockingly ineffectual he has been in controlling the worst impulses of his staff.

In the end, the results are the same which ever it is.

_____________________________

Facts: New York Times

Now THIS Is Hypocrisy: Jack Lew Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

cayman-islandsI know it pains many of you to hear it, but integrity has not been one of President Obama’s evident virtues, and the nomination of  his Chief of Staff Jack Lew to replace Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury is a particularly vivid example. The nomination demonstrates either hypocrisy or dishonesty (or both) no matter how one chooses to look at it.

This has nothing to do with Lew’s qualifications for the job: I’m certain he is sufficiently qualified, and is as likely as anyone else to help lead the nation through the fiscal wilderness, which is to say “not very.” The problem with Lew’s nomination, in the context of the President’s integrity, is two-fold. Although Obama and his campaign’s successful strategy was to demonize Mitt Romney as a grasping and venal corporate raider who accumulated big corporate bucks while doing little of value, Jack Lew’s resume includes receiving a $945,000 bonus in January 2009 after a short time working at Citigroup, which was in the process of collapsing financially and seeking (and receiving)a massive taxpayer bailout.  Obama also made hay during the campaign by implying there was something shady about Romney’s investments in Cayman islands-based institutions. Jack Lew. meanwhile, oversaw Cayman island investment funds while at Citigroup. In his 2008 campaign, Obama took special aim at one of them known as Ugland House, and a Senate hearing on the subject designated it as a facilitator of tax evasion. Jack Lew had investments in the Cayman islands, and, like Mitt Romney, had them with Ugland House. Continue reading →

Drone Ethics: The Policy and the Memo

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments
Hey, Fox News! INCOMING!!!

Hey, Fox News! INCOMING!!!

With the leak of the Obama Administration’s Justice Department memo laying out  alleged legal and Constitutional justification for targeted drone killings abroad, the ethical debate over this practice finally began in earnest. Back in October of 2011, I visited this topic in a post titled, “The Ethically Messy, Legally Muddled, Drone Killing of Anwar al-Awlaki,” who was an American citizen and also an al-Qaida leader and terrorist, and wrote…

“I am far less confident of a conclusion that the killing was legal than I am that the killing was ethical in a situation where traditional rules and considerations don’t fit the situation well, meaning that decision-makers must go outside the rules to find the right, meaning ethical, course of action.  And I’m even not 100% confident of that.”

This still accurately encompasses my view, although my confidence in the position has declined materially, in part because of the memo. However, my position in 2011 was based on the assumption, using the Bush Administration’s position, that the United States was engaged in a de facto war with al-Qaida, and as a tool of war, killer drones  are within ethical bounds by my analysis. The leaked memo, however, begins with the assumption that the drone strikes are not part of ongoing declared warfare, but rather a new variety of cross-border lethal intervention that has no legitimate statutory basis. I think that under those assumptions, targeting drone killings are illegal, unethical, and to the extent that they give the President of the United States the power to kill someone in any nation based on his assessment that person needs killing, ominous.

I’ll leave the legal analysis of the memo to others. For now, other than pointing readers to my earlier analysis of drone killings in the context of warfare, I just have some observations: Continue reading →