idiots

Sunday Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/24/18: Potpourri!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Good Morning!

Once again, I am prepping for a law firm training session (at 9 am!), and am rushing to get as much covered as I can.

1 More on how sports commentators make us stupid. I happened to be listening to the Sirius-XM MLB channel, as old Red Sox third-baseman Rico Petrocelli was holding forth on the luck factor in baseball. “I mean,” opined Rico,” a single missed strike or ball call by an umpire can change games, championships, seasons and careers! A single missed pitch by an umpire!”

Then he and his partner on the show noted that there have even been calls for balls and strikes to be called electronically, which, as I have pointed out here, is now completely feasible. “Ridiculous!” spat Rico, as his sidekick vigorously agreed.

Let me get this straight: he just (correctly) talked about how a single mistaken call can have momentous consequences, but says it’s ridiculous to eliminate mistaken calls when the technology is available to do so.

That’s even less logical than the defenses of illegal immigration. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is A Prejudicial Tattoo..

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This is not a hoax.

His name in Michael Vines, and we have his South Carolina mug shot. He is charged with unlawfully carrying  a firearm. You can see the guilt on his face.

Here is what will happen. We know this, because there have been many cases with criminal defendants standing trial who have, entirely due to their own cretinous choices, incriminating or otherwise potentially prejudicial tattoos, like swastikas, words like “hate,” “kill,” or “murder,” and names like “Hitler”  visible somewhere on their head or neck.In each case, the judge has ruled that the tattoos must be covered with make-up—paid for by the State— to ensure a fair trial. A conviction of a man with, say, “hate” tattooed on his neck who is charged with a hate crime would provoke an automatic reversal and new trial. I have several posts about these cases, and normally I would supply the links, but I’m afraid that looking at more than one of these pictures in a 24 hour period will jeopardize my already precarious IQ stability. Search for “tattoos” on the blog: you’ll find them.

This guy’s tattoo is a new wrinkle: Have a graphic representation of your crime imprinted on your forehead.  This opens up a whole new vista in self-incriminating body art. Spousal abusers can sport tattoos of a man belting a woman. Embezzlers can have a tattoo showing a hand reaching into the till. Drug pushers can wear a drawing of a loaded syringe. FBI agents can display portraits of Hillary Clinton.

Of course, the simple way to convey the same message is to just have a talented tattoo artist write “I’m an idiot” on your face. (Make sure he’s not eating a Milky Way, or you may be stuck with “I’m an idoit.” Come to think of it, that might be even better.

I have been wondering if a defendant would be allowed to stand trial with nice tattoos on his face that suggest harmlessness and innocence. You know: tattoos of Care Bears, peace signs, hearts or portraits of Gandhi, Jesus, Mother Theresa, or Barack Obama. Would a judge allow such a defendant to appear before the jury with those messages uncovered?

My guess is yes.

___________

Pointer and Source: Res Ipsa Loquitur

Ethics Dilemma: What Can Be Done About People Like This? [Poll Included]

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Hold on to your skulls…

Social media can spread stupidity like a viral plague. Is there anything  ethical and constitutional  that can be done to protect the imperiled children addled  mothers like this may raise?

[Related Ethics Alarms posts here (feeding kittens a vegan diet) and here (dogs).]

Ethics Dunce (But We Knew That): Roseanne Barr [UPDATED…Again!]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Ugh. The new, surprise hit reboot of “Roseanne” self-destructed when it’s star, not for the first time, couldn’t restrain herself from being objectively repulsive and tweeted a racist insult to former President Obama’s black chief-of-staff, Valerie Jarrett. This morning the comic—at least some people think she is comical—tweeted that Jarrett was the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and “Planet of the Apes.” as in “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Barr apologized, but ABC was quick: it cancelled the series, saying, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”

Rosanne didn’t just step on a landmine, she stepped on several, then jumped up and down on them to make sure they blew her to bits, or so it seemed. Can’t attack anyone associated with Obama. Can’t use “Muslim” as an insult. Can’t make monkey jokes about black people. Any of these can be career-killers, and Roseanne did all of them at once, in only ten words and two initials. Wow. It takes a Master Ethics Dunce to do that. I am in awe.

Does she deserve to lose her show over this? Of course she does. It was, by any standard, a racist, hateful tweet. No company, especially an entertainment company, especially a Disney company, can afford to be associated with that kind of  reckless, high-visibility employee,  She was on thin ice anyway, being a self-declared Trump supporter. She should have known that she had to be even more careful than other uncivil comics and celebrities, like Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and Alec Baldwin, all of whom have  said or tweeted ugly and hateful things about the right kind of people—you know, whites, Republicans, the President, and his family.

One of Roseanne’s writers, stand-up comic Wanda Sykes, quit the show before it could be cancelled in protest over Roseanne’s “joke”, though Sykes herself was booed off the stage in 2016 after going on a hateful, expletive-filled rant against President-Elect Donald Trump, then flipping off the crowd as she exited to boos. Now that’s the kind of comic ABC is proud to employ! Continue reading →

From The Ethics Alarms “I Don’t Understand This Story At ALL” Files, Georgia’s Dancing Doctor Fick

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

YouTube is stuffed with videos like the one above, posted by Dr. Fick, aka Dr. Windell Boutte, a Georgia dermatologist who poses as a plastic surgeon and who has rafts of malpractice suits pending against her. Though she claims otherwise on her website, she is a board-certified dermatologist, but not certified as a plastic surgeon or general surgeon.

However, in the Peach Tree State, every licensed physician is allowed  to perform operations, even if they are not a board-certified. They are not supposed to be dancing while they do, however. Well, this is implicit. Apparently it isn’t made clear enough, at least for this doctor. Boutte posts videos of herself dancing during surgery, like the one above. There are many more.

Thus she is a fick, the first medical variety I have encountered. A fick is someone who is openly, shamelessly, even gleefully unethical. The fact that this hyper-narcissist films herself doing choreography and mugging for the camera while the only thing on her mind should be her patient’s care demonstrates that she is wildly unethical, reckless, irresponsible and unprofessional, and this would be the case if her record for safety was squeaky clean. It isn’t. At least seven malpractice lawsuits against Boutte include claims that she used unqualified staff during procedures that left former patients disfigured. Two additional lawsuit settlements are listed on the state licensing website. And then there is the dancing around unconscious, exposed, patients while performing renditions of popular songs, such as “Bad and Boujee,” “Building up Fat in the Booty” and “Gut Don’t Live Here Anymore, while her staff act like the back-up singers.

(I can’t believe I’m writing this.) Continue reading →

If You Want To Understand Why The Public Is So Easily Confused And Deceived, Follow Sports

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Our education system simply does not train our young in critical thinking, and hasn’t for a long, long time. Then, as adults, we listen and watch supposed professionals who make their living informing us, enlightening us and communicating to us, and the level of reasoning they model is uniformly incompetent.

Nowhere is this more evident than in sports reporting. If you don’t follow sports, you don’t know what stupidity is being pumped into unsuspecting brains on a regular basis.

Here is an example: I was just listening to the MLB  radio channel’s “Loud Outs,” where the host, broadcaster and former player Ryan Spilborghs, was discussing the new baseball fad of beginning a game with relief pitcher who only throws an inning or two, and then bringing in the starter. There are theories that against certain line-ups this can create an advantage, but never mind: it’s irrelevant to the issue. Spilborghs, who really did attend college, says, “You know what convinced me? These stats…” and he began to read the won-lost records of various teams when they score first. “Overall, the average for all of Major League Baseball is that the team that scores first wins 70% of the time! Why wouldn’t you use this strategy if it meant that it increased your team’s chances of scoring first?” His partner, former player CJ Nitkowski, said, “You’re right!”

No, CJ, he’s an idiot, and so are you.

There is no magic to when a baseball team scores its runs. A run in the first inning is no more or less a run than a run in the 7th. The reason a team that scores first wins most of the time is, or would be, obvious if our schools weren’t crap, that in any baseball game, if one team begins with a one run handicap, it will lose most of the time. The team that scores first is like a team that begins the game with a one run advantage. Now, one run is a big advantage, but many of the teams in that 70% scored more than one run first. They really have an advantage: those teams probably win 85% of the time.  Then there is this factor that pollutes that stat that Spilborghs found so amazing: the teams that score first the most frequently are also the better of the two teams. They figured to win before they had a one, two or three run advantage.

The team that scores the most runs wins 100% of the time. Prioritizing scoring first with the result that your pitching is more likely to give up runs later in the game does not convey any advantage at all. If the “opener” pitching strategy results in opposition teams scoring fewer runs, then it has value. Preventing the other team from scoring first, by itself, is meaningless. ( How often does the team that scores last win the game? How about the team that scores the most runs in the fifth inning? Can you guess? Sure you can. But don’t tell Ryan. You’ll break his heart. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/23/2018: The Honored And the Dishonorable

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Good morning!

1. A major ethics condemnation of Harvard will be posted soon; this is just the ours de vours...Harvard is disgracing itself and embarrassing its alumni one more time by awarding Hillary Clinton the once-prestigious Radcliffe Medal—it can’t be prestigious after this fiasco–for her “transformative impact on society” as part of the school’s graduation activities this week.  Harvard says Clinton was chosen for the award because she’s a “champion for human rights,” a “skilled legislator” and “an advocate of American leadership” on the world stage.

Let’s get this straight up front, shall we? Harvard, headed by feminist social justice warrior Drew Faust, is giving an award named after Harvard’s now defunct sister school that championed female power, dignity, and achievement independent of men, to the woman who meticulously enabled, aided and abetted a serial harasser, sexual abuser, and philanderer by intimidating and disparaging his female victims, so she could ride on his coat-tails to achieve wealth, influence and power that she never could have attained otherwise. Once within reach of that power, she managed to botch two Presidential runs against unlikely underdogs, while reducing the feminist message to “vote for vaginas.” Meanwhile, she joined with her husband in creating a massive influence peddling business that made them both rich. Having lost a Presidential election that she only had to stay out of major scandals to win, she has become the only losing Presidential candidate in U.S. history to continue whining about her loss at every opportunity for 18 months, thus strengthening a negative female stereotype.

Did I miss anything? Probably. This is once more consolation prize Progressive Feminist Inc. is giving to Hillary as virtue-signaling, which is ironic, because it signals hypocrisy, corruption, and dishonesty.  She is an ethics corrupter. She has made the culture, politics, society, and the nation worse. Harvard’s award is just one more example.

2. Not exactly Lincoln-Douglas…The recent Munk debate–part of a series series of  discussions that the news media keeps calling “highbrow,” which only shows how lowbrow the news media is—considered the statement, “Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress…”

What you call “progress,” I call thought control, censorship, and partisan bullying, and I say the hell with it.  Race-baiting professor Michael Eric Dyson and left-wing pundit Michelle Goldberg defended the indefensible “pro” position, and probably believe it, too, which is depressing all by itself. The “con” side at least had glib, currently-in University of Toronto Clinical Psychologist Jordan Peterson, who has a best-selling book and who became a celebrity after winning a duel of wits with an unarmed British journalist. He was paired with British actor /entertainer Stephen Fry: these debates are so highbrow, the organizers don’t think anyone will watch them if they don’t have jokes.  Even if the sides had been fairly constructed (any team with Michelle Goldberg on it has been sabotaged), it’s a terrible debate topic. The day the “pro” side wins is the day “1984” has arrived. Predictably, “con” won, and this was in Canada, which doesn’t have a First Amendment (the term “political correctness’ is inherently hostile to freedom of speech, and don’t think for a second progressives don’t know it.)

So, saddled with a losing argument, Dyson did what he does: he played the race card. “You’re a mean, mad, white man,” he said to Peterson at one point. End of debate, if I am moderating. When you have to stoop to ad hominem attacks, you’ve lost.  An equally acceptable rejoinder by Peterson would have been, “And you’re a black son of a bitch.”

Technical knockout. And Dyson unmasked himself as the fraud that he is. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up Overstock, 5/15/ 2018: It’s Use Them Or Lose them…

/ Jack Marshall / 70 Comments

This is perplexing. I have a backlog of ethics stories and issues that I feel are better mentioned in the Warm-Up format, then that post run long, and the items in my basket of deplorable often get superseded by new issues, and are never seen here at all. The collective approach saves amazing amounts of time, so if I have to post each of the leftovers individually, that will preclude doing the work necessary on potentially more significant issues.

Well, today, at least, I’m posting on some of the morning issues that didn’t make the cut.

And this is why Royals used to avoid marrying commoners.

What an Ethics Dunce, and worse,  soon-to-be Royal father-in-law Thomas Markle is! Your daughter is unexpectedly in the middle of a world event (not that it should be that), and she is approaching the most exciting day of her life. One of your two duties is to be on hand to walk her down the aisle, and your other duty is not to screw things up for her and embarrass her. Markle couldn’t do either, because, it is evident, he is a low-life, the real equivalent of  Eliza Doolittle’s father in “My Fair Lady,” who after years of neglect has to try to cash in on his daughter’s good fortune.

The father of the soon-to-be royal bride couldn’t resist cashing in, doing several photoshoots with a paparazzi agency ahead of the wedding. The news reports of this provoked a negative reaction, predictably, except Tommy Boy was too greedy or dumb to predict it, and now he says that he will not attend because he does not want to embarrass Meghan or the royal family.

Too late!

Are there really people who think this is legitimate criticism?

I suppose there are, but wow.  A politically active genealogist named Jennifer Mendelsohn—she’s an idiot, by the way—spends her time digging into the ancestry of critics of illegal immigration and illegal immigrants to prove they are hypocrites, or something. Her latest target is Fox News’s Tomi Lahren (I am not a fan) and Mendelsahn really seems to think she has uncovered a “gotcha!,” tweeting…

Except the 1930 census says Tomi’s 3x great-grandmother had been here for 41 years and still spoke German. Her 2nd great-grandmother had been here for 10 yrs. Spoke no English. Her great-grandfather’s 1895 baptism from MN? Recorded in Norwegian…But as long as people like Lahren continue to push a specious agenda that suggests today’s immigrants are somehow wholly different from previous ones, I’ll keep showing just how alike they really are.

I really do think the wretched quality of thought here is more characteristic of most illegal immigration activists than people are willing to admit. I’m sure you can do this analysis yourself, but…

  • Illegal immigrants are not the same as legal immigrants. That what was once legal is no longer doesn’t make what the legal immigrants did in 1900 wrong, or what illegal immigrants doing now right.
  • There is nothing hypocritical about a citizen with immigrants in their lineage condemning illegal immigration. Indeed, there would be nothing wrong with someone with illegal immigrants in their family doing the same. If my great, great grandfather was a pirate, I can still oppose piracy. If I exist because my great-grandmother was raped, there is nothing wrong with my opposing rapists.
  • Did I mention that Mendelsohn is an idiot?

Just wanted to make sure.

Best rejoinder to her tweet: “Now do Elizabeth Warren!” Continue reading →

Google And The Bail Bonds: When Virtue-Signaling Goes Horribly Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

..or, in the alternative, go ahead and BE evil, but make sure you’re pretending to be progressive while you’re doing it.

“With great power comes great responsibility not to be reckless and stupid.”

Google recently announced this policy change. See if you can spot what is wrong with it: I shouted, “What???” pretty much through the second paragraph.

At Google, we take seriously our responsibility to help create and sustain an advertising ecosystem that works for everyone. Our ads are meant to connect users with relevant businesses, products and services, and we have strict policies to keep misleading or harmful ads off of our platforms—in fact, we removed 3.2 billion bad ads last year alone. Today, we’re announcing a new policy to prohibit ads that promote bail bond services from our platforms. Studies show that for-profit bail bond providers make most of their revenue from communities of color and low income neighborhoods when they are at their most vulnerable, including through opaque financing offers that can keep people in debt for months or years. We made this decision based on our commitment to protect our users from deceptive or harmful products, but the issue of bail bond reform has drawn support from a wide range of groups and organizations who have shared their work and perspectives with us, including the Essie Justice Group, Koch Industries, Color of Change and many civil and human rights organizations who have worked on the reform of our criminal justice system for many years. According to Gina Clayton, executive director of the Essie Justice Group, “This is the largest step any corporation has taken on behalf of the millions of women who have loved ones in jails across this country. Google’s new policy is a call to action for all those in the private sector who profit off of mass incarceration. It is time to say ‘no more.’” Enforcement of this policy will begin in July 2018. This policy change is part of our ongoing efforts to protect users on our platforms.

Maybe this isn’t as stupid as it appears. Maybe Google is trying to protect its users by ensuring that potential predators accused of crime rot in jail while they are awaiting for trial because they don’t have access to bail.  Now that would be sinister and cruel, but not idiotic. Maybe? Perhaps?

No, this is just idiotic.

Prof. Alex Tabarrok, the Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center and a professor of economics at George Mason University, explains:

Bail bonds are a legal service. Indeed, they are a necessary service for the legal system to function. It’s not surprising that bail bonds are used in communities of color and low income neighborhoods because it is in those neighborhoods that people most need to raise bail. We need not debate whether that is due to greater rates of crime or greater discrimination or both. Whatever the cause, preventing advertising doesn’t reduce the need to pay bail it simply makes it harder to find a lender. Restrictions on advertising in the bail industry, as elsewhere, are also likely to reduce competition and raise prices. Both of these effects mean that more people will find themselves in jail for longer.

And may I add, with respect, “Duh.” You don’t begin reforming the bail system by making it harder for people who need bail to get it….that is, you don’t do that unless you have a cranial vacuum.  Moreover, Prof. Tabbarrak has the same message based on his experience with bail bond companies as I did when I had criminal defendants as clients—and when I have had to help family members and friend deal with the bail system: Continue reading →

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: “The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View”

/ Jack Marshall / 78 Comments

A history teacher at the Great Hearts Monte Vista Charter School (in San Antonio, Texas) distributed an assignment consisting of a worksheet titled “The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View”  to eighth graders. The idea was for student to list the positive and negative aspects of slavery.  After parent Roberto Livar posted to social media the worksheet his son Manu brought home to complete, the teacher was placed on leave and the school said it would audit the textbook associated with the lesson.  Aaron Kindel, the superintendent of Great Hearts Texas, which operates 28 public charter schools in that state and Arizona, said in a statement posted on the Great Hearts Facebook page, “To be clear, there is no debate about slavery. It is immoral and a crime against humanity.”   He said the school’s headmaster plans will explain the mistake to the history class.

I can’t wait to hear what that explanation is. How does any American living in the 21st Century not flinch at a title like “The Life of Slaves: A Balanced View”? It sounds like a joke, in fact: there is a whole genre of galley slave cartoons that rely on the idea that there is anything positive about being a slave is inherently ridiculous. (“It’s not a paid position but I’m gaining invaluable experience in the rowing sector!”). Yes, this teacher is incompetent, and leave is too good for him (or her). If you can’t trust a teacher not to hand out something that stupid, what else might be handed out? Hand grenades? “What Happened”?

Sadly, Mr. Livar couldn’t maintain the high ground, and had to say this:

“We are fully aware that there is a concerted effort by the far-right nationally to reframe slavery as being ‘not that bad’ and trying to revise the Civil War as being about ‘states rights’ and not about slavery. We were concerned that this assignment fell in line with that ideology and were naturally concerned, as well as other parents. These issues are not isolated to one school or one book. These issues are systemic and continue up the chain all the way to the Texas School Board of Education.”

He also said this likely happened because the school is short on diversity.

No, it happened because someone mistakenly hired an idiot as a teacher. Continue reading →