political correctness

Indians, Pirates, Greeks, Intellectual Property, and Political Correctness

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The always understated Robert Newton as Long John Silver. You owe his estate a quarter every time you say “Arg!”

Here I am banging my forehead with the palm of my hand for not realizing that all of the rhetoric flying around about how horrible it is that people in the U.S. can get away with denigrating religions would spark yet another round of political correctness applied to team names and mascots. Perhaps this was inevitable when a vestige of an earlier controversy along these lines invaded the Elizabeth Warren-Sen. Scott Brown race: some of Brown’s staff were seen doing the old Atlanta Braves “tomahawk chop” to mock Professor Warren’s beneficial delusion that she is a bona fide Native American. The political correctness police were all over this one, though the logic, as in a lot of political correctness, was strained: doing a famous fake Indian gesture to mock a fake Indian political candidate is an insult to…real American Indians? Even after the real Cherokees have announced that Warren’s pretensions of affirmative-action worthy Native American status is offensive to them? I’m afraid  those who are empowered by being offended are just too creative for me—I don’t get it.

Nor do I get an earnest essay by  Paul Lukas on the ESPN website, titled “Time to Re-think Native American Imagery.” I am on record as believing that the assault on Native American symbols and imagery for school and team names is just more cynical power-mongering by convenient victims, with the exception of the Washington Redskins, the one team with an undeniably racist name that ought to offend everybody. Still, it is obvious that the political correctness thugs will keep chipping away, counting on their persistence and the eventual bureaucratic shrug (“Oh, what the hell—it’s only a name. Let’s just give them what they want!”) to give them a victory–whereupon they will find something else to be offended about.  Continue reading →

Emmett Burns Emulates Rahn Emanuel, or, What Does It Tell Us That Yvette Clarke Is NOT This Month’s Most Incompetent Elected Official?

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Brooklyn, NY, circa. 1898. If you look closely, you can see the slaves working in the windmills…

In case you missed it, Rep. Clarke, the Congresswoman from Brooklyn, NY, had thousands of American banging their heads against the wall (and, tragically, many more, like those who voted this dolt into office nodding their empty heads and saying, “She speaks the truth!”) when she told Comedy Central’s wag Stephen Colbert that Brooklyn still had slavery in 1898, a full 33 years after the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment. When Colbert, in mock surprise, said, “It sounds like a horrible part of the United States kept slavery going until 1898! Who would be enslaving you in 1898 in New York?”, Rep. Clarke, eager to fill the gaps in Colbert’s knowledge of New York history,  informed him that it was “the Dutch”…who lost control of New York when “New Netherland” was conquered by the British in 1664, 200 years before the end of the Civil War. Continue reading →

Are “Freak Shows” Unethical? Because They Are Back.

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Abigail and Brittany Hensel: Who’s exploiting who?

Circus and carnival sideshows were banned by law and ordinance over half a century ago. Silly me: I remember hearing about that as a child and assuming that it represented human progress, that civilized Americans had decided that it was degrading to both the “human oddities” displaying themselves to gawking onlookers and the gawking onlookers themselves, and that we were better than that. The ethical attitude toward people with deformities, strange maladies and unusual physical characteristics was compassion, acceptance, kindness, and treatment as equals, not voyeuristic ogling. It made sense at the time.

Of course, as a child I had yet to experience the full oppression of political correctness. The sideshows were banned because the people who had no interest in them felt that they could dictate conduct to the people who did, and that it was also somehow virtuous to forbid the human exhibits from making a living—for their own good, of course. It is certainly time to repeal those bans, which were of dubious constitutionality anyway, since the freak shows that were deemed unhealthy and degrading on the carnival circuit are now openly thriving on television, making more money and being seen by more Americans than P.T. Barnum could have imagined in his wildest dreams. The original question remains, however: Are they ethical? Continue reading →

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Scores An Ethics Alarms Hat Trick: “Ethics Dunce,” “Incompetent Elected Official of the Month,” and “Unethical Quote of the Week”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Take THAT, Bill of Rights!”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel gets, and richly deserves, the first Ethics Alarms Hat Trick for his astounding attack this week on a private citizen, Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy, for his personal, faith-based social views (specifically those opposing same sex marriage)  and the fact that he gives financial support to advocacy groups that back them.

Here is Emmanuel’s unethical, Hat Trick-winning (and un-American) quote:

“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. They’re not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members, and if you’re going to be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect the Chicago values.”

Thirty despicable words these are, born of the worst kind of liberal arrogance and thuggery, embodying dishonesty, disrespect, abuse of power, irresponsibility, and ignorance of the Bill of Rights…and they are jaw-droppingly stupid to boot.  Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Ken at Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“But the government doesn’t get to pick and choose what social causes are permissible, and any government actor who aspires to that power is a lowlife thug. What’s particularly alarming about Menino’s thuggery is how openly his referencing to licensing “difficulties” reveals how things really work in government: whatever rights you think that you have, practically speaking some bureaucrat can punish you for exercising them on a whim, and there’s very little you can do about it. Menino represents the ethos of government actors who think quite frankly that this is right and just and how it should be — that they, our masters, should be able to dictate what we think and do and say if we want to do business in their fiefdom”

—-Ken, Ethics Alarms 2011 Blogger of the Year, on Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s public attack on Chick-fil-A, the food outlet whose president openly opposes same sex marriage and contributes to anti-gay marriage organizations.

Banned in Boston

Some things never change, do they? Once my old home town used to ban books and plays that contained ideas and content the powers-that-were disapproved of, and now its mayor actually thinks its his job to decide what political and social views a business owner or any citizen can safely support without facing active government enmity and sanctions. Boston, which was the nation’s first cauldron of free thought and passionate dedication to governments allowing free thought to thrive, quickly came to exemplify the liberal hypocrisy of being so dedicated to freedom that it will punish and censor anyone who doesn’t adopt its virtuous and obviously wise and correct views of the world. Menino’s threatened abuse of power to compel Chick-fil-A’s ownership “think right” is a classic in this category. The mayor told the Boston Herald: Continue reading →

Rest in Peace, Andy: Mayberry Wasn’t Racist

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In the wake of Andy Griffith’s death today, a friend of mine wrote this on Facebook: “If you’re waxing nostalgic about Mayberry as an idyllic 1960s Southern town, remember that it had no Negroes living there. Is it any wonder that show was so popular in the midst of the turmoil of the civil rights movement?”

The sentiment was undoubtedly motivated by good intentions, but boy, it is unfair. America was a largely segregated society in 1960, when “The Andy Griffith Show” began its trek to television Valhalla, and it was not up to the producers or writers of a folksy sitcom set in small North Carolina town to remedy that, protest it, or comment on it. This wasn’t “Andy Kills a Mockingbird.” It was a comedy, and a comedy unique and precious for celebrating basic ethical values like kindness, loyalty, friendship, tolerance, community, cooperation, patience, respect and virtue. There were no racist sentiments or attitudes expressed in Mayberry, and no reason to doubt that if a black family moved into the town, they would have been embraced, appreciated, and treated like everyone else. The fact that this may not have been true of a real North Carolina town of that period is as irrelevant as pointing out that real Scottish villages don’t disappear and reappear centuries later like Brigadoon. Continue reading →

The Fojol Bros., Innocent of Racism, Political Correctness Victims

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In its advanced stages, 21st century political correctness becomes a kind of delusional illness, causing sufferers to interpret  benign, harmless and even socially healthy conduct as offensive and sinister. An outbreak of this variety of political correctness is in full flower in Washington, D.C., where more than the usual number of officious defenders of that which needs no defending are trying to gin up public outrage against a creative, fun, and successful small business enterprise, Fojol Bros.

The company sends food trucks around downtown D.C. and serves strangely named hybrid ethnic dishes inspired by Indian, Ethiopian and Thai cuisines. The Fojol employees who hand out the delicious fare wear turbans, robes and fake mustaches,  claim to hail from  “Merlindia” and “Benethiopia,” and go by names like “Kipoto.” This was once called “theater” and “fantasy,” no more offensive than Disney employees in Frontierland dressing in cowboy and saloon girl garb and calling themselves “Tex” and “Lilly.” Now some are calling it “offensive,” because too many people have forgotten what offensive is. Continue reading →

Ethics Round-Up in Race, Religion and Sex: GOP Bigotry, Georgetown’s Integrity, and Warren’s Absurdity

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Help! I’m buried in great ethics stories!

This is one of those periods in which there are so many juicy ethics stories that I am falling far behind. Here are three that are worthy of longer treatment that I can’t allow to get lost in the crowd: Continue reading →

Combating “Linsanity”—The Ethics Variety.

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Look out ! It’s a trap!

In today’s Washington Post letters section, Fred Shwaeary writes:

“In the April 28 Sports article “Harper called up to majors,” Adam Kilgore wrote, “General Manager Mike Rizzo made his bones in player development, and he crafted a careful scheme for [outfielder Bryce] Harper’s ascension.” “Made his bones”? Not the old mob reference again! This is a phrase that should never be used when writing about those of Italian descent — or anyone else, for that matter.”

Thanks, Fred! Now Mike knows he ought to be grievously offended,  Kilgore knows that he was derisively suggesting that Italian Americans are all Mafia types the rest of us know Kilgore is a bigot, and the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League can demand that 1) the Post ban the term, which I have been using now and then for years and never associated it with Italians at all, from its writers’ lexicon; 2) Kilgore issue an abject apology to save his job and 3) Kilgore be symbolically suspended for a slur he neither intended nor that anybody else other than Shwaeary, and perhaps Fredo Corleone, took as an insult. Continue reading →

Were The Marlins Right To Suspend Ozzie Guillen for Loving Fidel Castro?

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

And imagine...Media Matters had NOTHING to do with it!

‘”I love Fidel Castro,’ blurts Ozzie Guillen, the new manager of the Miami Marlins, in his Jupiter, Fla., spring-training office before an early-March team workout.”

And with that spontaneous utterance, quoted in a Time magazine feature, Guillen, who was hired during baseball’s off-season to lead the long-languishing Miami baseball franchise to elusive community popularity and on-the-field success, suddenly found himself at the epicenter of a career-threatening controversy. Cuban groups in the Miami area were horrified, and demanded that Guillen be fired. Guillen immediately went on an apology tour, arguing that he had “mistranslated in his head from Spanish to English,” and that he emphatically did not “love” the Cuban dictator, but in fact hated him. Even though he said he loved him. That’s some bad translating.

“I feel like I betrayed my Latin community,” Guillen said to one Miami group, according to ESPN’s translation of his comments in Spanish. “I am here to say I am sorry with my heart in my hands and I want to say I’m sorry to all those people who are hurt indirectly or directly. I’m sorry for what I said and for putting people in a position they don’t need to be in. And for all the Cuban families, I’m sorry. I hope that when I get out of here, they will understand who Ozzie Guillen is. How I feel for them. And how I feel about the Fidel Castro dictatorship. I’m here to face you, person to person. It’s going to be a very difficult time for me.”

He got that right. Today the Marlins suspended their manager for five games, saying in a statement, Continue reading →