Mid-Day Ethics Interruptions, 6/4/2021: After the First Item, You May Not Want To Read Any More…

Screamfest

1. When ethics alarms were never installed...The question here is not whether this was unethical. Of course it was. The question is how such an episode could happen anywhere in this country. Eight high school football coaches at McKinley Senior High School in Canton, Ohio have been placed on paid leave after apparently forcing a 17-year-old player, a Hebrew Israelite whose faith forbids the consumption of pork, to eat a pepperoni pizza in front of the team as punishment for skipping a practice. The family is suing the school district for violating the student’s First Amendment rights.

The head football coach, Marcus Wattley, allegedly told the boy that if he didn’t eat the pizza, his team mates would be punished. I don’t comprehend this. How can someone live in the U.S. and think forcing a child to violate his faith is anything but abuse? How does someone like Wattley get hired by a public school and entrusted with the welfare of children? Why would any high school have eight assistant football coaches?

If the facts are confirmed in an investigation, more than the coaches should be fired and, one hopes, prosecuted. The principal and other administrators should also be canned. [Pointer: JutGory]

2. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias…The dozens of ways the mainstream media warps the news and manipulates public opinion becomes oppressive once you are sensitized to it. The headline in the Times two days ago, for example, was “GOP Challenges Teaching of Racism’s Scope.” That headline presumes as fact that “Critical Race Theory” and the “1619 Project” fairly and accurately convey “racism’s scope.” “GOP Challenges What It Calls Anti-White, Anti-America Indoctrination In the Schools” would be a neutral headline. Later in the same article, the news story refers to President Trump’s “racist comments, ” which is just a continuation of a narrative build on a media-fueled Big Lie. President Trump made many insensitive, provocative and politically incorrect comments. None were “racist.”

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Comment Of The Day: “Decided: The Ten Reasons I’ll Be Voting To Re-Elect President Trump [6-10]

Scotsman Willy

With his Comment of the Day, Humble Talent neatly identifies as a rationalization a disingenuous argument that I have been fighting on social media for four years. This is the dodge, and it is a dodge, of moderate progressives and once reasonable Democrats who refuse to accept that the party and ideology they felt good about supporting has taken a hard-left turn to fanaticism.

“Oh, no,” I have been told. “The Green New Deal”/ confiscate guns/ reparations/ Medicare for all/free college tuition/ cancelling student loan debt/late term abortions/punishing “hate speech”/ open borders/ “defunding the police”…even impeaching the President and so on ad nauseam aren’t really Democratic party agenda items. Just a few over-enthusiastic and well-publicized activists are pushing those, and it’s unfair to say that the entire party wants such things. Yes, yes, it’s true that Democratic leaders don’t clearly oppose these ideas, but….”

Some of them might even believe it. However, the over-all effect has been to lie to the American public, which has a right to know just how estranged from practical government and democratic principles one side of the political spectrum has become. HT will have his rationalization added to the list as soon as he settles on a name.

Here is Humble Talent’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Decided: The Ten Reasons I’ll Be Voting To Re-Elect President Trump [6-10]:

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