Fads occur when the culture embraces a concept for emotional, selfish, foolish or otherwise irrational reasons. Usually they are harmless; sometimes they are not. This meme crystalized the reality of a current fad, an especially destructive one being advanced in pursuit of a social and political agenda, so deftly that Ethics Alarms is momentarily suspending its opposition to memes.
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Pointer: Powerline
That tweet of signature significance isn’t the topic of this post, but it is relevant. [Thanks to comment-master Humble Talent for passing it along.] This progressive group, much like the equally dim Move-On.org, represents shrill far-left ideological cant without nuance, facts, standards or restraint. All of my Facebook Friends who were addicted to posting disinformation and propaganda memes by Occupy Democrats have unfriended me by now I think; it’s too bad, because some of them once had functioning minds, but it’s just as well. Meanwhile, the always evident ethics and intellectual rot underlying OD is finally being recognized.
Occupy Democrats’ campaign finances over several cycles show that the group spent most of the money it acquired from charitable contributions— $577,000 of a total $797,000 raised this cycle—on “fundraising consultants,” with no—that’s zip, nada, zero— contributions going to candidates.
A quarter-million dollars of what the group raised over this past election cycle, did flow into the coffers of Blue Deal LLC, which is owned by Occupy Democrats’ founder Omar Rivero and his brother, Rafael.
Oh! So Occupy Democrats is like Black Lives Matter, then!
A scam.
—NYU law professor and legal ethics expert Stephen Gillers, reflecting on the chances of conviction arising from an indictment of Donald Trump for violations of the Espionage Act and other statutes making the mishandling classified information a crime.
Gillers’ position is similar to that of Alan Dershowitz, who also said last week that while there appears to be sufficient evidence to charge Trump (based on the heavily redacted affidavit Trump was mocking in his meme above), it would be unwise to do so. It would also be unethical prosecutorial conduct unless there is a significant likelihood that Trump could be convicted. It is unethical to make “the process the punishment,” and Attorney General Garland knows it.
This is why the raid on Mar-a-Largo was suspicious as well as a terrible precedent in the first place. In the absence of any demonstrated urgency, the raid looked like an effort to “mess Trump up a little” by treating him like a drug kingpin or a Mafia crime boss rather than with the deference every other former POTUS has received. This made it political theater rather than legitimate law enforcement, executed by a struggling administration apparently terrified of the previous President and his passionate supporters. Continue reading
And now for something completely appalling! The Tiverton, Rhode Island eatery posted this meme to Facebook:
Now what?
What occurred after the meme went up was that a local talk radio host called to investigate. She says the restaurant owner told her that he thought the meme was funny and then cut off the call. The employee who posted the gag alleged that he didn’t know who the girl in the photo was.
After the post had been taken down by the restaurant, a contrite apology went up in its place:
Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., shared a pro-life meme on Facebook that claims that readers’ grandmothers carried part of them inside their wombs. Facebook chose to impugn the post by claiming it “lacked context.” Well of course it did. It’s a meme. The topic is complex, and the meme only summarizes one interpretation of the facts. It seems clear that Facebook applied a different standard for this expression of a point of view that could be judged an anti-abortion opinion than it had for literally millions of left-of-center memes it users have posted. For example, Facebook had no problem with this idiotic meme posted by a friend of mine who should know better:
Talk about “missing context”! Nor did Facebook have any issued with this meme during the Kavanaugh hearings:
Context? How about outright lies? Nah, there’s no Facebook anti-conservative bias… Continue reading
First let’s do Twitter….
How much crap is it fair and ethical to give a public official who has this happen to her? My answer: an endless amount. Obviously Bowser didn’t do this; the incompetent she assigned to send out tweets in her name did. Too bad. If you delegate your identity, you are responsible for what goes out under your name. Should Bowser get more or less flack than, just to pick an example out of the air, Donald Trump, who sent out his own tweets and was widely mocked for every typo, poor chosen re-tweet, or dumb comment.?
Exactly the same amount.
Boy, I didn’t see that ending coming. I thought we would learn that the one hired was the interviewee who left first….which would have been me, after about 30 minutes.
Anyone who would agree to work for a manifest asshole like the employer in the story is such a pathetic weenie that he or she deserves the abuse that such a job would inevitably entail.
I sure hope it’s not a true story. And I hope only a tiny percentage of those seeing the meme are not so foolish and submissive as to think this was a test of “patience.”
These tweets have not made me regret my decision to get off of Twitter.
Now on to Facebook, which is evidently trying to make me quit that platform too…
1. While I’m thinking about Republican Senators (as in the previous post)... A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll indicates that a majority of Iowans,though only a third of Iowa Republicans, say they hope U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) decides not to seek reelection in 2022. For Democrats, this may be another example of having the right opinion for the wrong reasons: they might just think with Grassley out of the way, they have a better chance of replacing him with a Democrat. But the man is 87 years old. It was unethical for him to run for re-election the last time, in 2016. Is Grassley really going to tell voters that he expects to be fully alert, competent, healthy and alive until he’s 93?
Grassley needs to watch videos of Sen. Strom Thurmond in his waning years. This is an ethics test for him, and it shouldn’t be a difficult one.
2. Update: Yesterday I told a friend, ethicist and Georgetown Law Center grad about the Sandra Sellers mess, and his immediately reaction was, “So they fired her for telling the truth?” Yet many law school alums signed the petition to have her canned for “racism.”
If they don’t know that being admitted with lower credentials means that any group—including the children of big donors— will tend to settle at the bottom of the class, then a lot of Georgetown Law Center grads are either not as smart as they need to be to practice law competently, or not honest enough to practice law ethically.
This thing is everywhere, particularly on conservative websites. It was even quoted on Ethics Alarms.
Observations:
1. It’s not true. Try not to embarrass yourself by quoting it, for “Wet Ass Pussy” was not, in fact, the “Song of the Year.” At last year’s Grammys, which gives out the annual “Song of the Year” awards, “Wet Ass Pussy” by female rapper Cardi B was not even nominated in the category. The nominees were…
The winner was “Bad Guy.”
This year’s Grammys have not yet been awarded, so “Wet Ass Pussy” can be called the “Song of the Year” by any measure.
2. Therefore the irony, the dripping contempt for contemporary culture, and the implication of corrupted societal values are only effective if one is ignorant of the topic. Nice.
That meme turned up on Facebook. Of course, progressives and the Woke think Jefferson is racist whose memory should be consigned to the ash heap of history, so no wonder they disagree.
1. Daniel Horowitz suggests that Democratic and media fearmongering about the dangers of exposure to the Wuhan virus might have had the perverse effect of scaring Democratic voters away from the polls. “While we don’t know the ballot choices of those who voted early, we do know the party registration breakdown in most states. And in nearly every critical state, Republicans are doing much better than they did in 2016 in terms of in-person early voting,” he observes. “Given that Trump won in 2016 and the electorate will only get more favorable for Republicans on Election Day itself (because the majority of Democrats vote early), this portends an outcome way out of sync with the majority of polls.”
Boy, would that be what NeverTrumper George Will likes to call “condign justice”!
1. Yes, these are the people who want to have power over our lives. Imagine: this woman isn’t mourning the death of a human being, she’s angry because that human being can no longer serve her interests. The human being in question continued to work for the public long after she could have retired with dignity and comfort, and this woman is furious that she wasn’t physically able to do so “until 2021.” Not only that, she posted this repulsive video with no apparent comprehension that it exposes her as a horrible human being. She just assumes that most who share her political persuasion are just as incapable of empathy and compassion as she is. Maybe she’s right.
Again I must ask, “How do people get like this?”
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Okay, I just stumbled on some timely satire. I generally hate memes, but this is genuinely funny. Forgive me.
2. Speaking of memes and The Great Stupid, what can you say about an adult who would post this on Facebook in all seriousness, as if it was profound or true?
Ethics Alarms 