The mainstream news media generally has humiliated itself with its “mostly peaceful protests” gaslighting forthe past three months, but CNN launched itself into self- parody with the classic chryon above. It quickly spawned social media mockery like this…
..and this…
and is sure to inspire more. I wish I was more adept at computer graphics; there are several scenes I’d love to use.
So I have to ask…
______________________
*Classic pop culture reference. What’s the film and the situation? (This should be easy.)
1. False narrative, bad analogy. The popular media narrative is that President Trump is in a similar position to George H.W. Bush in 1988, when polls at this point showed him trailing Democratic Presidential nominee Michael Dukakis by a large margin. Conservative media had cited the comparison earlier this summer to make the simple point that being behind in the polls in July is relatively meaningless. Lately the mainstream media has been flogging the analogy in order to continue its doomsday prediction for the Trump campaign.
“Bush ’88 rally could be map for Trump ’20” is somehow deemed worthy of a front page spot in the Sunday Times. To begin with, that’s fake news of the “future news” variety. (“…or, it might not be.”) More importantly, it’s straw man: the article exists to to show that President Trump may not be able to prevail, because, you see, having begun with the false assertion that his situation is similar to Bush’s, the Times explains that the situations aren’t that similar at all. The bad analogy is created to rebut it.
In fact, the differences between the Bush challenge in 1988 and Trump’s in 2020 mostly favor the President. Bush was never a popular figure; he was distrusted by conservatives, and only was nominated because an epicly popular President, Ronald Reagan, anointed him as his approved successor. (Barack Obama, in contrast, avoided “anointing” Biden.) A strong Democratic opponent would have beaten Bush; Dukakis was weak. He was ahead in the polls when nobody outside of Massachusetts knew what he was like. Trump has a large base of passionate supporters, something Bush never had. He is an incumbant (Bush was not), and if they run, incumbents almost always win. Bush was an awful debater; Trump has proven effective in debates. And while Dukakis was completely supported by the liberal wing of the party, Biden has critics on the hard left, among feminists (the non-hypocrite faction), and African Americans. The Democratic party of the 1980s had not spent four years trying to overturn an election. Moreover, polls are less reliable now than they were before news media bias began warping them, and Trump’s support, as the last election showed, is especially hard to measure. Continue reading →
Rasmussen used the occasion of the four day Democratic Party hate and hypocrisy-fest to poll Americans about political conventions. The results are here. The whole exercise was misleading, since what were once conventions that actually decided something stopped being so long ago, and whatever these 2020 pandemic-mutated things are—the GOP version will be next week—the fact that there really isn’t a live gathering of people makes calling them a convention the equivalent of Abe Lincoln’s quip about calling a dog’s tail a leg.
The only vaguely interesting result of the Rasmussen poll was in response to this question: “Have you ever changed the way you were going to vote after watching a national political convention?” According to Resmussen 19% said “yes.”
Absent more details, such as…
Did it make you want to vote for that party’s candidates, or against them?
Which convention or convention affected you that way?
What was the factor that changed your mind?
…the 19% tells us nothing, except maybe that almost 20% of those polled have cognitive problems. Continue reading →
1. From the Ethics Alarms cultural literacy files. I remember this re- tweet by acclaimed novelist Joyce Carol Oates from 2015; I can’t believe I didn’t post on it then. (Pointer to Ann Althouse for reminding me of it today):
Now, I would like to believe that Oates was joking (I’m not sure about Tilley), but she is not known for madcap humor. Apparently “Jurassic Park,” Steven Spielberg and popular culture are beneath her, and she was so focused on literature in school that dinosaurs completely missed her attention. I regard this as being estranged from one’s culture, and I regard that as irresponsible.
2. Question: If Twitter is taking down tweets involving hate speech, why is unequivocal hate like this permitted? Robert Trump, the President’s younger brother, died yesterday. The President wrote,
“It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight. He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.”
Yet the hateful, vicious “resistance” couldn’t rise to a moment of bipartisan decency. The hashtag #wrongtrump, is the second highest trending on Twitter, with more than 80,000 tweets last I checked. Among the the ghouls were journalist David Leavitt., ” who tweeted, “What did he promise the devil for the Grim Reaper to take the #wrongtrump ???” (5.7 thousand people “loved” the sentiment), and Bishop Talbert Swan, president of the Springfield, Massachusetts, branch of the NAACP (and a pastor, which will perhaps help illuminate my attitudes toward organized religion), who wrote “Dear Grim Reaper, You took the #wrongtrump.” That one got 10,000 hearts.
The arrival of Spuds, our new dog, was postponed a day. While chatting with his foster owner, she told us that had had decided to to report Spuds’ previous owner for animal cruelty. Good. The woman neglected the dog outrageously, as I wrote about here.
But for some reason, my mind flashed back to this post from 2013, involving a more complex animal cruelty case. It’s an ethics quiz, but I’ll be adding a poll at the end. The comments to the original post were very good.
***
Ethics Quiz: The Harley Tragedy
I’m sure PETA thinks this is fair; I’m not sure that I do.
Tammy Brown,47, a disabled Moon Lake, Florida woman trying to make ends meet on her $508-a-month government check, argued that she was not able to afford veterinary care for Harley, her 14-year-old dog who had a painful ear infection as well as skin problems, periodic tumors, heartworms and ear mites. Because she did not get treatment for Harley, however—the fact that she tried to treat the dog’s problems with over the counter ointments wasn’t enough to mollify the judge— Brown was convicted of felony animal cruelty. She spent more than a month in jail awaiting sentencing, and then received six months of house arrest, 300 hours of community service, three years of probation, and $1,000 in court costs. Circuit Judge William Webb also commanded, “I don’t want you to own any animals. Not even a goldfish!” (Hartley had been euthanized.)
Apparently Harley’s physical condition was shockingly poor, so much so that jurors found photos hard to look at. An Animal Services officer testified that Harley couldn’t stand up without support. The prosecutor wanted Brown imprisoned.
Has society become so animal-sensitive that it has lost its priorities?
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz…
Assuming that Harley’s lack of treatment was due to lack of resources and neglect rather than malice…
Was Tammy Brown’s sentence fair, or was it excessive and cruel?
I detest that sappy Ray Stevens song, and have since the first time I heard it. But I have to try something…
1. There’s no whining in baseball! Note to MLB players: heroes and role models don’t whine. Players have been making excuses for their flaccid play—of course, only the players who aren’t playing well are complaining—that the lack of a crowd makes it difficult to bear down during games. The Red Sox broadcasters, including two former players, keep talking about this over and over again. Two games ago, Red Sox newcomer Alex Verdugo, in his second season, made a great catch to take away a home run, and the only cheering to be heard (I’m not including the fake crowd noises) was coming from Verdugo himself. “In a normal game, he’d be getting a standing ovation! A curtain call out of the dugout!” said Dennis Eckersley.
Oh, cry me a river. These guys are supposed to be professionals, and they get millions of dollars to play a game for living, one they supposedly love. I don’t believe they need crowds screaming to “get up” for big moments, and if they do, something’s wrong with them. Every kid who played sandlot baseball manged to perform at his or her best because that’s what competitors in any game do.
Then there’s Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez, who is off to a miserable start. His excuse? Part of the MLB protocols during the pandemic prohibits players from in-game use of video equipment. Martinez is used to looking at videos of his at bats during games to pick up on any flaws in his swing, so he has complained that not being able to have access to the usual devices is contributing to his slump.
Not surprisingly, the former players in the booth have not been particularly sympathetic to his plight, having played in those dark ages when baseball players just played baseball during the games.
2. Telling us all we need to know about “Defund police,” the current Democratic Party, Minnesota, the former co-chair of the Democratic National Committee, and the mainstream media…MN Attorney General Keith Ellison recommended last month that women not call police to report when they’ve been raped. Ellison, who coincidentally has been accused of rape himself, said,
“If you’re a woman who’s been a victim of a sexual assault, and the assailant ran away, wouldn’t you rather talk to somebody who is trained in helping you deal with what you’re dealing with, as opposed to somebody whose main training is that they know how to use a firearm? Right?”
That’s the kind of statement I would expect from a teenage social justice warrior like David Hogg. Ellison is the top law enforcement official in the state, and his definition of a police officers is that that their main skill is using a gun? Continue reading →
Wait, what? Did Rep. Jim Clyburn really say that he wasn’t aware of any Federal building being attacked in Portland?
I was trying to decide whether the statement of House Majority Whip James Clyburn on Fox and Friends was signature significance for an incompetent, or whether he was just attempting Jimmy Durante’s stratagem, the Jumbo. (“Elephant? What elephant?”) I realized that the two alternatives were mutually exclusive. Clyburn also might be gaslighting us. In gaslighting, unlike the similar but distinct Jumbo, the ethics miscreant is trying to make everyone else think they are losing their minds, and somehow imagined something that, in truth, really happened. The Jumbo is a sign of desperation. Gaslighting is sinister.
If he knows that the “peaceful” rioters were laying siege to the Portland courthouse—and how could he not?—then Clyburn must be employing the Jumbo or attempting flagrant gaslighting. If he doesn’t know, he’s telling the truth, and that means he is a lazy, incompetent fool.
1. Let’s start with some good news! In April of last year, I wrote about Massachusetts judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, who was charged with obstruction of justice, along with another court officer, for helping an illegal immigrant (and criminal) elude arrest by the ICE. The story is here. It looks like the judge is going to trial.
U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin has now denied the judge’s lawyers’ motions to dismiss in a July ruling. “After careful consideration, the motions to dismiss are DENIED because the Indictment alleges the elements of the offenses and sufficient supporting factual detail,” he wrote . Joseph’s attorneys are claiming was that she is protected by judicial immunity, though that should only apply to actions a judge engages in under judicial authority and in the course of her duties. Instructing a court employee to help an illegal immigrant evade being taken into custody by ICE agents after his hearing on criminal charges, including drug possession, is not known as “being a judge.” It is known as “obstructing justice.” Even if the judge avoids punishment, her days as a judge are over.
Good.
2. What’s this? MORE good news? I have been looking for cracks in the monolithic mainstream media, with defections by individuals in the midst of the journalism’s abandonment of its duties to democracy in favor of news manipulation and partisanship. Less than a month ago, New York Timed editor Bari Weiss called out the oppressive culture of partisanship and conformity at the her paper, earning her Ethics Hero status.
Last month MSNBC producer Ariana Pekary quit the network, arguably the most unethical of all the broadcast news outlets, and yesterday she published a blog post explaining why. “I simply couldn’t stay there anymore.” She wrote:
“My colleagues are very smart people with good intentions. The problem is the job itself. It forces skilled journalists to make bad decisions on a daily basis….It’s possible that I’m more sensitive to the editorial process due to my background in public radio, where no decision I ever witnessed was predicated on how a topic or guest would ‘rate,’ The longer I was at MSNBC, the more I saw such choices — it’s practically baked in to the editorial process – and those decisions affect news content every day. Likewise, it’s taboo to discuss how the ratings scheme distorts content, or it’s simply taken for granted, because everyone in the commercial broadcast news industry is doing the exact same thing. But behind closed doors, industry leaders will admit the damage that’s being done…I understand that the journalistic process is largely subjective and any group of individuals may justify a different set of priorities on any given day. Therefore, it’s particularly notable to me, for one, that nearly every rundown at the network basically is the same, hour after hour. And two, they use this subjective nature of the news to justify economically beneficial decisions. I’ve even heard producers deny their role as journalists. A very capable senior producer once said: “Our viewers don’t really consider us the news. They come to us for comfort.”
She claims to want to be part of a solution to this dire situation. We shall see. I reached out to her in an email yesterday, offering my guidance and expertise, gratis of course.
3. On the theory that transparency is good news, it was nice to see Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, supposedly one of the top contenders to be Joe Biden’s running mate, demonstrate how dim-witted she is and unqualified to be President, though at this point even she could probably beat poor Joe Biden in a spelling bee. Over and over, on several Sunday news shows, she repeated her previous explanation for praising Fidel Castro , telling Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” for example, regarding calling the brutal dictator’s death a “great loss to the people of Cuba,” that she “wouldn’t do that again. Talked immediately to my colleagues from Florida and realized that that was something that just shouldn’t have been said.”
Astounding. She wouldn’t say that what she said was wrong, outrageous for a member of Congress and demonstrated inexcusable ignorance, but that she should have kept the opinion to herself. Todd, of course, being one of the worst hacks in captivity, didn’t bother to press her on the point for the benefit of members of his audience who can’t recognize signature significance when it’s right in front of them.
Biden, or whoever his ventriloquist is, is officially trapped in ethics zugzwang. The only reason Bass is even being considered is that Biden has to select a black (George Floyd!) woman (#MeToo!) as his VP, and all of his remaining options are horrible by any objective standard. This will be a flaming lesson in the foolishness of placing physical characteristics over ability, experience and character, a perfect example of why affirmative action doesn’t work and will never work. Bass is a light-weight, but Biden’s two other options are Kamala Harris ( whose ugly Ethics Alarms dossier is here), and <ack! choke! yecch! barf! gag!> the even more horrible Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s ethics-free acolyte. Her dossier is here. She would be the most sinister Vice-President candidate since Aaron Burr.
I have to poll this: Who is Joe’s best choice among this unethical trio?
I’m not going to allow “None of the above,” because I don’t think he has that option, or at least doesn’t have the integrity to insist on choosing a qualified candidate who has the wrong tint or chromosomes.
4. Finally, to end on a downer, the Unethical Non-Trump Tweet of the week. Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac was the only NBA player not to kneel during the National Anthem, and also refused to wear a “Black Lives Matter” warm-up like the rest of his teammates. In Sunday’s game, he tore his ACL, a season-ending and career threatening injury. ESPN radio host Dan Le Batard then ran a poll on Twitter asking, “Is it funny the guy who refused to kneel immediately blew out his knee?”
When the poll was pulled, about 45% of respondents said that it was funny, which tells you all you need to know about NBA fans and Black Lives Matter supporters—the genuine kind, not the grovelers. Le Batard issued a phony apology, Level 10 on the Apology Scale.
“We apologize for this poll question,” he wrote. “I said on the front and back end of the on-air conversation that I didn’t think it was funny. Regardless of the context, we missed the mark. We took the tweet down when we realized our mistake in how we posed the question to the audience.”
Lies and more lies. They took the tweet down when it was clear they were getting slammed for it. If he didn’t think a young athlete getting injured was funny because he dared to oppose the BLM mob, why would he think anyone else would? When is someone getting hurt who has done nothing wrong and who did not do something foolish to cause the injury ever funny?
1. I don’t understand this behavior at all. Who are being more irrational and anti-social, the fanatic mask police, or the renegade maskless? Clearly the latter. Take this story, for example :near El Paso, Texas, customers retaliated after they were asked to put their face masks on inside Dapper Doughnuts at the Fountains at Farah. Surveillance footage shows an unmasked couple arguing with Dapper Doughnut staff, then throwing a box of doughnuts at the woman for asking them to comply with the City of El Paso’s mandate that anyone over the age of two must wear face masks inside public buildings or public outdoors spaces if social distancing is not an option. Sure, I think it’s quite possible that we’ll eventually learn that the whole mask fiasco was hooey, but, 1) if it makes others feel safer, fine, and 2) a business has every right to require them. There is no ethical argument for not wearing masks around others in public, and absolutely no excuse for throwing tantrums over it.
Yet I am reading about this kind of incident virtually every day.
In the silliness above, the people who snapped like twigs in the wind demanded a refund—for the doughnuts they threw away?—and when that demand was refused, they stole the change mug.
2. Unfortunately, I don’t have a clip of someone saying, “Hopeless! Hopeless!” Polls on the Presidential race have now reached maximum absurdity. In the same day, last week, I saw one poll showing Trump behind Biden by 12 points, and another one with him within two. When the “science” is that unreliable, it’s time to stop feauring polls as “news.” You might as well interview psychic. The news sources, naturally, treat whichever poll they want to be true, as true.
However, until Joe Biden comes out of hiding, gets questioned routinely by interviews not tossing softballs, and picks a Vice-President, no poll relating to him has even passing credibility. He is essentially that always popular candidate called “anyone other than Trump” at the moment, even though whoever he chooses as VP will be a) presumed to be the real Presidential candidate by much of the electorate, since about half think he’s one or two ticks from wearing his shoes on his face, and the other half will come around once they see him trying to speak without a teleprompter. Did you read about Joe saying that most people don’t distinguish between Asian nationalities? If Dr. Seuss were alive, he’d write a kids book called, “Oh, the Gaffes You Will See!” and b) will immediately alienate a significant group of voters. Continue reading →
Ethics Alarms 