Julie Principle

Stop Making Me Defend Pete Rose!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hit leader who received a lifetime (and justified) ban from baseball for betting on games while a manager, was my very first Ethics Dunce, way back in January of 2004, on the old Ethics Scoreboard. Since then Pete has come up here often, with a thick and varied ethics dossier. The man is a slimeball; there is no disputing it. He knowingly violated baseball’s most inviolate rule; he lied about it in more than one way; he ended up in jail for defrauding the IRS; he has attempted multiple schemes to cash in on his own misconduct. Rose is the poster boy for the King’s Pass: he assumed that rules and laws didn’t apply to him because he was a Great and Beloved Player. Yes, he was a great, beloved, unique and entertaining player, but Pete Rose wouldn’t know an ethical value if it were nailed to his forehead.

And yet…the most recent attack on Rose’s character is contrived and unfair.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ex CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I saw a lot of brave men and women deciding to take somebody on who had a tremendous amount of power and who had come at them by name too and that’s a scary thing.”

—-Disgraced CNN star Chris Cuomo, celebrating himself and CNN for slanting new reports in order to oppose Donald Trump.

Cuomo could not have made a stronger case against the left-biased news media if that had been his objective. Many of his statements to Bill Maher in Cuomo’s appearance on HBO’s “Real Time” would serve as well as the above to prove just how arrogant and unethical Cuomo’s previous profession has become. For example, there is this: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: VP Harris And The Julie Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Father’s Day naturally got me thinking about Jack Marshall, Sr., and it was he who explained The Julie Principle to me. The context was one of his best friends from childhood, an obvious sociopath. It puzzled me that my father, who was literally dedicated to all of the virtues in the Boy Scout Creed and whom I witnessed placing his values over his self-interest repeatedly throughout his life, would remain friends 60 years with someone who so clearly was the opposite of my father, a deceptive, self-centered, even cruel individual who never showed any hint of remorse or contrition.

As I have related here more than once, Dad, tone-deaf as always, responded to my puzzlement by singing the opening lines from the famous “Show Boat” ballad, “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine,”sung by the tragic mulatto, Julie : “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.” He then explained, “I decided long ago that it was a waste of time and emotion to keep complaining or criticizing someone for conduct they will never change. You have too choices: either accept that a person will do what he does, like a bird or a fish, or decide that you can’t stand the way he or she is and cut them out of your life. But to keep getting angry or upset when someone simply acts as you know they will is pointless.”

I wrote the first post here designating my father’s philosophy as the Jule Principle in 2013. Looking back, I officially applied the JP to the late Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, and Donald Trump (both before and after his election), writing shortly after his surprise victory,

Donald Trump, more than any national figure in my lifetime,  requires a careful, measured application of The Julie Principle to serve everyone’s best interest. Screaming “TRUMP IS TRUMP! ARRGHHHHH!” for four years will do no good at all. Find a way to co-exist with him so his negative proclivities do as little damage as possible and his positive ones have a chance to thrive, and save the explosions of indignation for substantive matters where opposition is essential.

Note that nobody heeded my advice, but I was right. But I digress: Joe Biden got Julied here both before and after his election, also “The View,” Hillary Clinton, and most recently, poor, addled Larry Tribe. Looking back, there are many other individuals who have earned Julie’s pass, and I’ll take nominations. I also see that following the lesson of Julie is hard. I have frequently forgotten the fishiness of several Julie designees.

The subject of this Ethics Quiz, however, is Kamala Harris. I gave her a sort of half-Julie Principle nod regarding her general sliminess and lack of integrity, writing,

If, as many seem to assume, Harris is making stuff up to pander to the crowd, why fixate on this episode? We all know, or should, that the woman is shallow, has no core, and that saying whatever she thinks will endear herself to the most people at the moment is her defining characteristic. As Julie sang, “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly”: Kamala’s gotta make stuff up to pretend she’s something she’s not for the gullible, the naive, the hopeful and the blind.

That, however, evoked Julie in the context of Harris’s deplorable ethics, and before she took office as the woman a “heartbeat from the Presidency.” Over the 18 months since then, we have also learned that Harris is a babbling, incoherent fool, and I have frequently expressed horror at such gibberish coming from someone who was chosen by Biden to fill her critical role in the Administration.

She did it again today: speaking to a group of about two dozen elementary school-aged children at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, Harris said,

“I think that we all know today is a day to celebrate the principle of freedom. And think about it in terms of the context of history, knowing that black people in America were not free for 400 years of slavery. Let this be a day that is a day to celebrate the principle of freedom, but to speak about it honestly and accurately, both in the context of history and current application. With the Emancipation Proclamation and Civil War, it required America to really ask itself, who is free? How do we define freedom? Freedom in terms of the autonomy one should have? Is freedom given to us or are we born with freedom? Right? I would argue it is our God-given right to have freedom. It is your birthright to have freedom. And then during slavery, freedom was taken. And so we’re not going to celebrate being given back what God gave us anyway, right? We should think about it also in terms of current application, asking is everyone we know free? Do we know anyone who is not free? Around the world do all people have freedom? Are there those who are without freedom? When we talk about freedom, are we talking about freedom from — or are we talking about the freedom to?”

What the hell?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Does Harris deserve a Julie Principle pass for her evident inability to think and speak in addition to one for her appalling lack of integrity?

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Tuesday That Feels Like Monday Ethics Clarifications, 7/6/2021

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

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1. What a surprise! Cheating works! Since Major League Baseball decided to enforce its 100 year old rule against doctoring the baseball as pitchers had recently begun using glue to let them throw faster and snap off devastating curve balls, the results have been obvious and significant. In a month since umpires were directed to check, the MLB batting average has gone up by seven points (it was at a record low before the enforcement). Scoring has increased, and several pitchers rumored to be dependent of “the sticky stuff,” notably Yankee All-Star Gerrit Cole, have been hit hard in recent starts. This is because, of the 35 pitchers with the highest four-seam spin rate on June 3, 33 of them saw a decline in spin rate since then by an average drop of 96 RPMs. Consequently, batters aren’t striking out as often.

2. Please clarify: Should I apply the Julie Principle to Maxine Waters? We know she’s an idiot, ignorant, partisan to the point of poisoning democracy and a race-baiting, hateful blight on Congress, her party, the nation and homo sapiens generally. Is there anything accomplished by complaining about Waters acting like Waters, since she’s obviously not going to change? [You can refresh your understanding of the Julie Principle here.] Water was in fine, typical form over the Independence day weekend, blathering as only a fool like her could,

“July 4th … & so, the Declaration of Independence says all men are created equal,” Waters began. “Equal to what? What men? Only white men? Isn’t it something that they wrote this in 1776 when African Americans were enslaved? They weren’t thinking about us then, but we’re thinking about us now!”

Of course, we know that “they” were thinking about black slaves a great deal, as anyone who reads about the debate over the Declaration in the Continental Congress knows. But why should a senior Congresswoman know anything about the founding of the nation? Maxine continued,

“Further, the Dec. of Ind. says we hold these truths to be “self-evident”… yet:

– 17 states have enacted voter suppression laws

– Supreme Court gutted Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act

– George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice

Need I say more? #July4”

No, actually, Maxine, you didn’t even need to say that: we already knew you were a blathering, hateful dummy. But just to clarify:

  • Laws that are intended to ensure the integrity of elections are not “voter suppression laws”
  • The Supreme Court confirmed that the Federal Government should not meddle in state matters except for demonstrable evidence of racial bias, and since the standards in Sec. 5 of the Voting Rights Act were based on the conduct of Southern states through 1964 only (that’s 57 years ago) and thus did not reflect any reforms, changes or improvement, making the law out of date, SCOTUS quite correctly demanded new data and Congressional update. Get to work.
  • There is literally zero evidence that George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, or Tamir Rice met their unfortunate fates because of racial bias.

Or is it silly even to pay attention to Waters’ incurable bile?

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Usually It Is Unethical To Take Satisfaction From The Misfortune of Another, But In The Case Of The Villains In Baseball’s All-Star Game Debacle, An Exception Is Warranted.

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Aw, isn’t that too bad? Major League Baseball’s offensive, incompetent and unjustified decision to pull its mid-summer All-Star Game out of Atlanta in order to signal it’s virtue to the Left, capitulate to its various sponsors under their own pressure from activists, and, as usual, to grovel to its race-baiting players union, has made the Commissioner, the game, and the unscrupulous politicians whose lead they followed look terrible…and there is no way out.

Ah, if only they read Ethics Alarms. This was an easy ethics call, just as the obnoxious efforts of the NFL and the NBA to drag politics into their games were an easy call: wrong, an abuse of trust, and stupid, stupid, stupid.

Let’s look at the current position of the architects of this mess, beginning with…

I. President Biden

A week ago, Biden told ESPN he “strongly supported” the MLB’s boycott of Georgia.

“I think today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that. People look to them. They’re leaders.Look what’s happened with the NBA, as well. Look what’s happened across the board. The very people who are victimized the most are the people who are the leaders in these various sports, and it’s just not right.”

Wow, what an idiotic statement, even for Biden. No “leaders” in the various sports are “victims” of anything: they are elite, fortunate athlete celebrities, and millionaires all. People who look to athletes for guidance in matters not relating to sports are gullible fools. Most of them couldn’t tell you how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights, or quote the dates of the Civil War. They are role models because they are paid heroes, but heroes are not “leaders.”

Biden, of course, lied repeatedly about the law he was calling on athletes to protest, and his calling the Georgia voting law “Jim Crow on steroids” was naked race-baiting. The President was getting hammered even by allies in the news media, because it was publicized that MLB moving the All-Star Game would cost the Atlanta area—heavily Democratic and black—$100 million in lost business revenue. Good job, Joe! That’s “acting responsibly,” you leader you!

So Joe, Biden-like, didn’t have the integrity to stick to his alleged principles. Yesterday, he refused to say that Masters Tournament should also boycott Georgia, saying, “I think that’s up to the Masters.“

Well of course it’s “up to the Masters,” but why is baseball boycotting Georgia something Joe supports, and whether the PGA doing the same is a coin flip?

“It’s reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws are just antithetical to who we are,” he huminahumina-ed, but…“There’s another side to it too When they in fact move out of Georgia, the people who need the help the most — people who are making hourly wages —sometimes get hurt the most. I think it’s a very tough decision for a corporation to make, or group to make.”

Wait—why did Biden say he supported baseball hurting “the people who need help the most?”

He then said he “supports whatever judgment they make.” Then White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, already nearing peak dishonesty in a job that swims in it, claimed that Biden never encouraged Major League Baseball to abandon Georgia. Facts don’t matter, words don’t matter.

Nobody’s fooled. Biden looks feckless, dishonest, silly, reckless and weak after all of this.

Good.

Then we have…

2. Stacy Abrams

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Ethics Observations On Major League Baseball Boycotting Georgia

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

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Here I am, trying to be loyal, understanding, broad-minded and forgiving, and baseball kicks me in the metaphorical snarglies on Day #1 of the Red Sox season. The Sox managed to lose yesterday to the pathetic Orioles in perhaps the most boring Opening Day I have ever watched, getting just two hits off of an assortment of bargain basement pitchers, scoring no runs, allowing only 4,000 fans into Fenway, and giving up the deciding run because its new free agent hot-shot fielder botched a sure double-play ball at second base—but I’m not even talking about that.

On April 1, I wrote,

Let’s see just how stupid Major League Baseball is. Democrats want MLB to remove the All-Star Game from Atlanta because Georgia passed a voting regulations bill that the party is lying about. If the sport allows itself to be used this way—I’m sure many players will boycott the game without having a clue about the law—many of them look for ways to opt out of it anyway—there will be no end to such manipulation., and baseball, of all sports, cannot effort to be seen as partisan. I’ll write a full post on this mess later.

This is that post. Indeed MLB did capitulate to Democrats and pull the game, though I am not certain that “stupid” was the correct word. The right words are “cowardly,” “cynical,” and “being a weenie.” Also greedy. And completely predictable.

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On Kamala, King, Lies, The Media And The Julie Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

King and Harris

Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris has a favorite story she likes to tell about her childhood, most recently in Elle Magazine. The article begins with the anecdote: Harris was attending a civil rights march in Oakland, California as a toddler. She fell out of her stroller, and,

“‘My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing,and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom.’”

The story also appears in Harris’s 2010 book “Smart on Crime” as well as her book published in 2019 titled “The Truths We Hold.” Yet it sounded strangely familiar to some people this time around, and sure enough, it seems that the tale is oddly similar to a story Rev. Martin Luther King related in his famous interview published in Playboy a half-century ago. During the interview, King recalled an incident:

“I never will forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother. “‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom.’ She couldn’t even pronounce it, but she knew. It was beautiful! Many times when I have been in sorely trying situations, the memory of that little one has come into my mind, and has buoyed me.”

Now Harris is being mocked on social media and by conservative pundits for her apparently fake and stolen story.

Observations:

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Ethics Observations On Beyonce’s Super Bowl 50 Halftime Performance

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

beyonce-superbowl-x-cbs

On the eve of her Super Bowl 50 half time show performance, Beyoncé released  “Formation,” a video full of references to Black Lives Matter tropes and propaganda, including “Hand Up! Don’t Shoot!”  (You can view it here. The earlier version of this post had an unofficial version: I apologize for the error.) Then in her portion of the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, the pop star gave the sold-out stadium and world-wide audience a live version of the video, including  backup dancers wearing Black Panther berets who formed  an X, apparently alluding to black Muslim activist Malcolm X, and raised their fists in the “black power” salute. African-Americans activists wrote that they saw the performance as a tribute to the 50th Anniversary, not of the Super Bowl, but to the Black Panthers.

The halftime show was part of a marketing plan messaging across multiple platforms, from social media to mainstream media. Once the show was seen in the context of the more explicit video, a controversy emerged, just as Beyoncé ‘s marketing geniuses hoped it would. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was among the vocal critics, calling the show “outrageous” said telling Fox News,”This is football, it’s not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive.”  Protests are planned at NFL headquarters.

What’s going on here?

1. Stipulated: Beyoncé’s sole intentions are to sell, make money, and get buzz. If she has a genuine political motive, and I doubt it, it is secondary to the good ol’ profit-making motive that has made her a mega-millionaire. She and her husband Jay-Z have been linking their brand to Black Lives Matter because they see profit in it, that’s all. Is it crass and ethically inert? Sure it is…just like the music business and the rest of show business. Is it particular disgusting, at a time of dangerous racial division in this country heightened by liars, crooks, complicit activists and cynical politicians, to try to make money by glamorizing it? Yes indeed, but the Julie Principle needs to be applied here. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, and if you are paying any attention to people like Beyoncé, you can’t be shocked or overly angry at them when they show that their motives are purely non-ethical at all times. Yes, Beyoncé’s conduct was culturally irresponsible and unethical. “This is my shocked face:”

shocked face

2. That said, hijacking the Super Bowl halftime show to make a race-baiting, divisive, anti-police demonstration out of what is supposed to be a unifying, fun, family-friendly cultural event, by extolling the racist Black Lives Matter, the criminal and racist Black Panthers, and destructive lies like “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” is indeed outrageous. The stunt deserves every bit of criticism it has recieved and more. Continue reading →

Fun With Rationalizations: Considering Salon’s Attack On The New York Post

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

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Let me dispense with the outrage over The New York Post’s brilliant (from their perspective, which is selling newspapers) and tasteless front page covering the death of Menachem Stark, a Hasidic real estate developer ( a.k.a. “slumlord”) who was found murdered and burned in a dumpster last Friday in Long Island.

The operative principle is not, as the reader who flagged the issue suggested, the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule does not often apply to the press, which is supposed to be truthful, not kind and diplomatic. There are provisions of most journalistic codes about avoiding unnecessary harm to third parties, which is pretty much a universal ethics rule in every field, from law to the military. When, however, you operate a tabloid, and not just any tabloid but a tabloid whose brand is defined by intentionally shocking, outrageous, assaultive and controversial headlines and photos, “Unnecessary harm to third parties” is almost an impossible principle to apply.

The headline is a perfect example of the Julie Principle, which I explained back in May. The Julie Principle comes into play when an undesirable or annoying  characteristic or behavior pattern in a person or organization appears to be hard-wired and part of their essence.  In judging such a person or entity, it is useful to keep the lyrics of Julie’s song from “Show Boat” (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein Jr., music by Jerome Kern) firmly in mind, when she sings…

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…

I’ve gotta love that man til I die

Can’t help lovin’ that man of mine!  Continue reading →