There is good news on the cultural front: Salon, the far, far left web publication that has been stocked with extremists and crazies since its beginnings, announced yesterday that it is ceasing publication. Good. You can read its EA dossier here: eventually I just stopped paying attention about five years ago, and my sock drawer was the direct beneficiary. This made me wonder what had become of the other bonkers far, far left site, The Daily Kos. I hadn’t heard much from that biased mess in years (last EA mention: 2017). So I checked: unfortunately, it is still making people dumber. Here’s a typical headline from the home page: “Republicans lost because voters were sick of their sh-t.”
About that Babylon Bee joke above: I couldn’t resist, because it is harsh but fair, and also astute.
Now regarding your duties regarding today’s open forum, as Hedley says,
Celebrity dust-ups are usually too trivial even for me to get concerned about, but the behavior of pseudo-celebrity Crystal Hefner, Hugh’s gold-digger widow, is truly gobsmacking, and attention must be paid.
Crystal married the wealthy Playboy founder in his dotage after she was a centerfold in the magazine, for love, I’m sure. Now, having become rich herself (estimated worth: $20-30 million)on the profits from Hugh Hefner’s female objectifying enterprises, she is a feminist. Recently she decided to impugn has-been Saturday Night Live alum Jon Lovitz, saying that he had been the “Playboy Mansion’s No. 1 customer.” Lovitz responded that “Any time someone says I’m No. 1, it’s a compliment.” For some reason, the former Mrs. Hefner thought it made sense to get in a war of words with someone a lot quicker on the uptake than she is.
“I think Jon Lovitz is part of the problem,” she told Page Six. “I think many men who came up to that mansion [and] were very sexist and misogynistic are all part of that problem. If I could dismantle that toxic masculinity and patriarchy just a little bit, I will feel happy. It’s very sad.”
The woman married the man who invited everyone to the Playboy mansion! She was at those parties flaunting her sexual assets; she is ethically estopped from wielding the woke patriarchy blather when she owes her status in life to embracing and promoting it.
She targeting Lovitz after a July exchange, when the comic reacted to her Instagram statement that she “regretted” marrying Hugh. “Do you regret the house he bought for you to live in, after his death?” Lovitz responded. “And keeping the money, after you sold it?… And do you regret all he did for you?”
Good questions. Hefner, proving she was fighting above her metaphorical weight class, said, “Jon Lovitz had mentioned to me that Hef had bought something for me or paid for something and that I have no reason to speak because of that. I think his thinking is very outdated. That’s really sad that, just because someone buys you something, it guarantees silence.”
Once a bimbo, always a bimbo.
Well, as Jimmy Durante would say, “I’m glad I got that out: on my x-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”
This is the last Open Forum before the Most Important Election In The History of Mankind. Make it count!
I would think there is a lot to talk about ethics-wise, but I have been wrong estimating the volume of novel topics EA’s five commenters can generate before. Let’s see what happens…
I was moved to visit a site purporting to feature a recent “major study” showing that Americans were getting dumber. As I started to read the report, I noticed that this piece was also on the home page: “Luck Is Everywhere For 3 Zodiac Signs All Week, From Now Until October 25.”
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Speaking of “Is We Getting Dummer?,”AOC recently vomited out this: “Public colleges should be tuition free! They are attacking women’s ability to get an education! They don’t want women to go to college!” “They” are Republicans. Women outnumber men in colleges and law schools by a significant number, and men are being targeted for even existing in colleges. And this idiot is considered a power in the Democratic Party…
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And speaking of those colleges, The Washington Examiner points out that by banning alll frat parties and events for the rest of the year, “Cornell is punishing all the other fraternities and students for the actions of a fraternity that does not exist and hasn’t existed for the entire time Cornell’s freshman and sophomore classes have been at the university”…”based on no evidence that a rape ever occurred, other than the female student’s claim, weeks after the encounter” [and] “is imposing collective punishment on its student population that does nothing to punish the alleged offenders, based on an alleged crime that still doesn’t appear to be a crime at all.” The Examiner adds, “Cornell is making reactive decisions based on social media posts and liberal media pressure, with no interest in any sort of institutional integrity.”
I have been given the ridiculous assignment of trying to produce a useful legal ethics presentation to lawyers association in 75 minutes this morning. On top of that, I can hardly ignore the metaphorical elephant in the room, the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and yet the connection between that event and legal ethics is attenuated. The chief one is that lawyers who defended some of the alleged terrorists were and still are vilified in the conservative news media and by other ignorant critics.
Rule 1.2 (b):
(b) A lawyer’s representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social, or moral views or activities.
Anyway, I’m off to downtown D.C. in the rain. More posts when I get back, I promise…
The second I saw Teddy in the “Near Great” category and White House Ethics Villain Woodrow Wilson in the “Great” category (along with Andy), I immediately knew the source. It was a late 1940s assessment by Democratic hack historian (and Kennedy shill) Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. It even used the same pictures. Oh, someone cut and pasted Clinton’s face in there, but no Truman? No JFK? No Ike? No Reagan? No Obama? Literally no historian today dares to rank Wilson, an open, virulent racist, as “great,” but that was typical through the 1960s. Similarly, Jackson, though a Democrat and presumed great in the overwhelmingly left-leaning history departments has been cancelled since they started focusing on Old Hickory’s treatment of Native Americans. (Jackson was still a great President.) I know the point was the joke of putting Trump on top, but this was lazy and irresponsible execution by whatever staffer prepared it.
The one thing that puzzles me is how John Adams ended up in the “Near Great” tier. Even back when people took Schlesinger seriously, nobody, literally nobody, claimed Adams’s single term was anything but a disaster.
As for the silly thing in general, I know Trump does this stuff to annoy the people who hate him, but acting like a 12-year-old really does nobody any good, not Trump, not his party, not the country. In addition to making the Trump Deranged more crazy than they already are, such stunts make rational people question his judgment, not to mention his prudence and political skills.
But enough of that.
Let’s have a lively open forum this week. Last week’s was a dud.
In Billy Crystal’s hit comedy “City Slickers,” famous for getting old pug-ugly actor Jack Palance something nobody ever was thought possible for a performer like him, an Oscar, Jack’s character, a grizzled old cowboy called Curly, liked to say that life comes down to “just one thing.” This early morning post comes down to just two things, but I am counting on you to add to the total.
Thing One: Fitch Ratings affirmed the United States’ “Long-Term Foreign- and Local Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) at ‘AA+’ with a Stable Outlook” yesterday, stating,
“The United States’ ‘AA+’ rating is supported by its large economy, high per-capita income, dynamic business environment and exceptional financing flexibility due to the U.S. dollar’s role as the preeminent global reserve currency. However, high fiscal deficits, a substantial interest burden, and high and rising government debt levels constrain the rating. Debt is more than double the ‘AA’ rating median. The government has not taken meaningful actions to address the large general government (GG) fiscal deficits (averaging 7% of GDP since 2022), and spending pressures will mount over the next decade due to an aging population…“
This sparked the Axis newx media to start its doomsday act, suddenly showing interest in the National Debt, while the anti-Trump conservative outlets did the same. The Triple Whammy of two Democratic Presidencies and two Trump terms has exploded the National Debt beyond all reason or fixing, both parties are complicit, and the only reason the issue is being raised now is because Trump is President and Democrats think the Iran War makes government spending useful as a campaign issue before midterms. Anyone who takes political warfare over the dept seriously is so dumb they’d probably vote for Kamala again. It’s obvious that no party is ever going to do anything about the National Debt, even though it is a ticking time bomb. Fixing the problem takes sacrifice, and any party in power that doesn’t ensure short term gratification for voters with 95 IQs and the attention span of mayflies is going to lose power. But accepting short term pain, giving up some overly expensive benefits and not just balancing the budget but achieving a surplus and then using the surplus to reduce the debt guarantees political disaster, so it is never going to happen. Never. Everybody figures that the disaster will happen after they are dead, so why worry? Brilliant. Ethics Alarms used to discuss how irresponsible and incompetent this is. The topic is now officially in my “Futile Ethics Grandstanding” category along with demanding that guns be banned, an end to all wars, the “two state solution” for Palestinians, and slavery reparations.
Thing Two: During the first Trump Administration a refrain on conservative blog Instapundit referring to the Democrats was, “All they had to do was not be crazy, and they couldn’t do it. “Yesterday President Donald Trump’s handpicked board at the Kennedy Center voted to add an inscription below the Kennedy Center’s sign, saying the arts complex was “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” This is designed to get around the court order rejecting the attempted at re-naming of the performance complex to include Trump’s name. There is no defending this obsession. It is crazy, petty, the kind of thing that triggers the “No Kings” fools, and accomplishes nothing but stroking Trump’s massive and frequently bonkers ego.
