CNN this morning showed a reporter asking giggling college students and others to identify photos of Tim Kaine and Mile Pence. Many of them couldn’t and the ignoramuses and the reporters had a good laugh about it. Then a CNN panel and Carol Costello, beaming themselves, discussed the phenomenon, which isn’t remotely funny. Why are so many Americans ignorant about their own elections and government? Why do those Americans think their ignorance is amusing? Why does CNN encourage such ignorance by refusing to present it as the disgrace to democracy that it is?
Apparent, according to a survey, a full third of potential voters can’t identify either Vice Presidential candidate. That’s nice. One reason, of course, is that the news media has spent so little time focusing on either of them. Huh. Yet Sarah Palin’s candidacy was covered as a threat to the civilized world by these very same organizations. Well, that’s because her running mate was so much older than the 2016 can..actually, McCain wasn’t significantly older was he? How can the qualifications of VPs be so irrelevant now, but so newsworthy then?
I’ll stop being coy. The answer is that journalists have no integrity. Continue reading →
Not that anything Trump has done of late, or in the last year, for that matter, comes as any surprise to me. I have known for years that he was unstable, foolish, boorish, a true low-life, and completely untrustworthy. I’ve said so and written so, and nobody has ever provided a serious or substantive rebuttal. However, the Republican party’s cowardly and addled leaders actually allowed this narcissistic creep to represent their party, laughably known as the Grand Old Party and now behaving as the Pathetically Stupid Party, and Americans who supposedly did not require the assistance of the Americans With Disability Act–you know, for brain damage—actually voted for him in primaries, attend his rallies and tell pollsters that he’s the berries. This was inexplicable at the time, but eventually enough is enough, even for the gullible and the dim. It better be.
Ever since the debate, Trump has been madly engaged in trashing a woman of no significance whatsoever, continuing a beef he had with her years ago when she was a Miss Universe and gained too much weight for his liking. I had completely forgotten about the incident when Clinton mentioned it in the debate to goad Trump, and it would have had no impact whatsoever if The Donald had the sense God gave a sea sponge, the self-control of a well-raised 12-year-old, or the manners of your more refined Jerry Springer guest. (I’m not requiring of him the kind of character and conduct one would reasonably expect of a President: that would be asking too much.)
Instead, Trump has gone on his most bizarre and disqualifying Twitter rampage yet, which is saying something. Continue reading →
As you can see in the video above [Trigger warning: if seeing a former governor who presumed to place himself before the nation as a qualified leader making an epic fool of himself on live television upsets you, as it does me—heck, those sitcom episodes when characters try to do stand-up and bomb horribly, like Cliff did on “Cheers” make me leave the room—don’t watch it. I mean it.], Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, the designated “none of the above” for voters who believe Donald Trump has nothing to offer but chaos and Hillary Clinton is more untrustworthy than Richard Nixon (both correct assessments), went on “Hardball” with Chris Matthews and made Sara Palin look like Henry Kissinger, and Rick Perry seem like Carl Sagan.
During the interview on MSNBC yesterday, Chris Matthews asked Johnson, who sat beside his running mate, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld,”Who’s your favorite foreign leader?” “Name one foreign leader that you respect and look up to,” Matthews asked. “Anybody.” Johnson looked like he had been asked for the dewpoint of feldspar.
“Mine was Shimon Peres,” V.P. Weld offered unhelpfully, picking the former Israeli leader who just died from a stroke. “I’m talking about living,” Matthews shot back, focusing on Johnson.
“Anywhere. Any continent. Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa: Name a foreign leader that you respect,” Matthews said as Johnson continued to freeze. “I guess I’m having an Aleppo moment,” Johnson said, pathetically.
“But I’m giving you the whole world!” Matthews said. “Anybody in the world you like. Anybody. Pick any leader!”
“The former president of Mexico,” was the best Johnson could come up with. Whichever one he meant, by the way, he’s massive crook, like all Mexican presidents.
“Which one?” Matthews pressed.
“I’m having a brain freeze,” Johnson whined,
as Weld began going through the list of recent Mexican presidents.
“Fox! Thank you!” Johnson said when he finally heard the name of former Mexican president Vicente Fox, who Johnson probably vaguely recalled from the evident mush he calls a brain because Fox had just made the news by mocking Donald Trump’s debate performance.
Strike Three. Strikes one and two were doubles off the Green Monster by comparison.
Good lord.
Observations:
“How does somebody think there going to run for President and be this ignorant? Completely ignorant?” asked Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe,” today. “He could not name a leader — living or dead — past or present! My children can answer those questions!”
Good points all. The answer is that Johnson is uninformed. Johnson is lazy. Johnson clutches under pressure. Johnson is not taking his own candidacy seriously. Johnson is a joke, but the proper response to it is weeping. At a time when the two parties have completely failed their responsibility to the American people by presenting unfit, untrustworthy candidates that the majority of the nation dislike, and the need for a viable third party option has never been greater, does Johnson study like a monk, prepare like a champion, and devote himself to being able to dazzle even the most skeptical voter with his expertise and mastery of issues? No! He apparently decides to boycott newspaper and TV news, and devote himself to Pokemon Go, or something. Surely he’s been doing something?
Diligence, responsibility, competence, respect for the nation and the public: Johnson has flunked all of these, spectacularly and beyond defending. Continue reading →
I promise, I’m not going to devote whole posts to every one of the nearly thirty ethics-focused TV shows starting new seasons this month. “Blue Bloods,” however, as the longest running such show and a drama whose very premise is an ethics problem (we call Tom Selleck’s baby “The Conflict of Interest Family” around the ProEthics office)–and it is a multiple winner of the Ethics Alarms Award for best ethics TV series— has earned a post of its own.
Last night was the premiere of “Blue Bloods,” and to its credit, the show that celebrates our men and women in blue did not duck the issue of police shootings and the national controversy over law enforcement. The episode, titled “The Greater Good,” had NYC Police Chief Frank Reagan’s oldest son, hot-headed police detective Danny (played by Donnie Wahlberg) facing a grand jury because he had shot and killed an unarmed man. Meanwhile, the wife of a fallen officer and Frank Reagan colleague and friend urged Selleck’s character to find a way to flunk her son out of the police academy, because she didn’t want her boy to end up hated and dead, like his father.
Unfortunately, the show’s writers managed to avoid all of the real issues involved in police shootings that have people getting hurt and killed in the Charlotte riots, pro football players grandstanding, and the races parting like the Red Sea as Barack Obama stands looking on, apparently content.
Danny, you see, shot an unarmed suspect who…
…was white
…an admitted serial killer
…tortured his female victims, over 20 of them
…was insane
…had kidnapped Danny’s college-student niece and announced that he would kill her
…was goading the detective into firing as part of his vendetta against him
…had his hands behind his back intentionally behaving as if he had a weapon, grinning all the while like the eeevil homicidal maniac he was
…refused to drop the imaginary weapon when ordered to do so, and
…suddenly whipped his hands out from behind his back, prompting Danny to fire.
Is it unethical to fail—even to fail miserably? Is it unethical to volunteer for the impossible, nation-saving mission and fall on your face, perhaps by inadvertently igniting a grenade you are carrying and blowing your head off? Can we fairly deride the baseball player who strides to the plate with a chance to win the big game, and then looks like a Little Leaguer as he helplessly strikes out on three pitches without getting within a foot of the ball?
Maybe not. Still, when the stakes are high and a hero is needed, taking on the assignment when one lacks the acumen, skill and character to carry it off is at very least incompetent and irresponsible.
This brings us to Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party. Again. Well, for the third time.
With Donald Trump attracting most of the media attention as the now completely politicized mainstream media devotes itself to defeating him by any means possible, and Hillary Clinton finding spectacular new and strange ways to make her own candidacy seem shaky even as the news media tries to bolster her, every interview, every second of air time, every opportunity to dazzle (because dazzling is the only chance a third party candidate has) is crucial for Gary Johnson. If he doesn’t know that, he’s an idiot. Since I assume he is not an idiot, and must know that he has to make every viewer who watches him who is not under the spell of Donald Trump or a true believer in Hillary Clinton say, “Hey! There’s a candidate on the ballot who is smart, informed, honest, dignified, healthy and rational with experience in executive governing!” Admittedly, this is difficult. There is no margin for error, and it is extremely difficult to appear brilliant and prepared unless one is brilliant and prepared.
Still, to presume to run for President of the United States is an assertion of remarkable ability, and to make that assertion without such ability is wrong, indeed horribly wrong. “Does anyone know CPR?” The intrepid volunteer steps to the fore and says, “I do!” and then proceeds to kill the stricken stranger because he doesn’t know CPR as well as he thought he did. “The pilot and co-pilot are unconscious! Can anyone fly the plane?”“I was a pilot!” says a confident passenger, who then takes the controls and power-dives the aircraft into the ground, because he’s more than a little rusty.
The Libertarian Party and its nominee have–I guess had is the proper word now—a once in a century opportunity, with both major parties betraying the public and nominating candidates who are unfit for the Presidency, and millions search for a way out. If they couldn’t do better than this, they should have left the job to someone who might have.
I have no idea what’s going on in the video above. NBC News’s Kasie Hunt was interviewing Johnson today how different things might be if he were allowed to participate in the upcoming debate between Clinton and Trump. Mid-answer, Johnson’s tongue emerges between his lips and he proceeds to try to talk, sounding for all the world like someone winning a bet by giving the Gettysburg Address while the tip of his tongue is between his fingers. It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen any interview subject do, and also one of the funniest. Peter Sellers losing control of his Nazi arm in “Dr. Strangelove” was hilarious— Continue reading →
Yahoo Sports posted an infographic on polling results regardingthe ongoing national anthem protests following the example of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Part of it shows that 44 percent of NFL fans would likely stop watching NFL games if more players protest the movement.
This suggests that 44% of NFL fans have more ethical objections to a sport that panders to hypocritical, Black Lives Matter-supporting dim bulbs like Kaepernick than to the fact that the same sport pays young men to cripple themselves while raking in billions and denying that there is a “causal link” between the concussions it routinely inflicts on players and the debilitating brain disease that is being found in autopsies of more former NFL players than not.
This month a class-action lawsuit was filed against Pop Warner, the nation’s largest youth football league. It alleges that the organization knowingly put its young players in danger by ignoring the risks of head trauma. The complaint also accuses USA Football, the youth football arm of the N.F.L. that creates football helmet safety standards, of failing to protect football-playing kids from the long-term consequences of repeated head hits, while ignoring medical research (as described in the documentary “League of Denial” and the film “Concussion”) that has raised serious concern about whether football is a safe sport, especially for children.
The suit was filed in federal court in California by Kimberly Archie and Jo Cornell, whose sons played football as youngsters and were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, a neurological condition linked to repeated blows to the heads. In March, Pop Warner settled a lawsuit with a family whose son played Pop Warner football and later committed suicide. He was found to have CTE. Continue reading →
Thank you, George Zimmerman. Thank you, Mike Brown, and Freddie Gray. Thank you, Marilyn Mosby, Barack Obama, Ta Nihisi Coates. Thanks, Charles Blow, and Al Sharpton, MSNBC, Sabrina Fulton, Lezlie McSpadden, and the Democratic National Committee. Thanks, Baltimore Police, Ferguson Police, and Bill DeBlasio. Thanks, Eric Holder. Thanks, Black Lives Matter. And thanks to you too, Michael Slager, Timothy Loehmann, and the other trigger-happy cops who made their fellow officers around the country vulnerable to accusations of racism and murder by your incompetence. Thanks to all of you and others, it is now impossible for police to do their jobs without fear of being demonized and destroyed if they are wrong, or sparking riots and violence if they are right.
Now what are we supposed to do?
A Charlotte, North Carolina police officer named Brentley Vinson, an African American, shot and killed Keith L. Scott, 43, after he posed an “imminent deadly threat” to police officers by refusing to drop the weapon he was carrying when ordered to do so. The shooting sparked night of rioting and violent confrontations between police and “protesters.”
According to police, officers were searching for a suspect with an outstanding warrant. Around 4:00 pm yesterday, police observed Keith Lamont Scott inside his car. (Scott was not the person being sought.) Scott exited the vehicle carrying a firearm, got back into his vehicle, and when officers began to approach his car, got back out of it, again carrying his handgun. Officers ordered him to drop it, and he did not. The officers fired their weapons at Scott, who was hit and fell. They immediately requested medial assistance and began performing CPR.
Following the pattern of the Ferguson and Freddie Gray incidents, unverified reports spread through social and broadcast media that the victim was a disabled man, holding only a book and no weapon. A woman claiming to be the victim’s daughter used Facebook Live to give her angry, emotional and quite possibly fanciful account of what was transpiring. About a hundred protesters arrived at the site of the shooting. #KeithLamontScott began to trend on Twitter.
I have solicited opinions from some police authorities , and have yet to receive an answer. Maybe that’s cheating, though.
On May 6 of this year, Weirton, West Virginia police officer Stephen Mader confronted a distraught and armed man after responding to a domestic violence call. “I saw then he had a gun, but it was not pointed at me,” Mader told reporters. A silver pistol was in 23-year-old Ronald Williams’ right hand, hanging at his side and pointed at the ground.
Officer Mader calmly told Williams to put down the gun. “Just shoot me, ” Williams responded, and jerked his wrists, suggesting that he was preparing to raise his weapon. “I’m not going to shoot you brother, ” replied Mader.
“I thought I was going to be able to talk to him and de-escalate it. I knew it was a suicide-by-cop,” he said.
Then two other Weirton officers arrived on the scene. Williams walked toward them waving his gun, and one of Mader’s colleagues shot Williams in the head, killing him instantly.
A West Virginia State Police investigation later concluded that the shooting was justified. Mader, in the meantime, faced an investigation of his own. In a meeting with his chief and the city manager, Mader was told that he was being placed on administrative leave, and that an investigation would determine if he would still be employed. “You put two other officers in danger,” the police chief told him.
Following the investigation, Mader received a notice of termination stating that by not shooting Williams, Mader“failed to eliminate a threat.”
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Was it fair and responsible for the department to fire Officer Mader as a result of this incident?
Having just returned from an eight-day (and partially laptop-less) speaking tour that has me about ten posts behind, it was nice to have Steve-O-in-NJ deliver a textbook Comment of the Day, expanding on the original post with relevant and useful observations about photography -obsessed parents and photography ethics.
I do object from an ethical standpoint to his tit-for-tat endorsing last line.
What are the ethics of taking 500 pictures of your child? I wish that I could say that the ethics of taking large numbers of pictures are always the same but they are not. I am in the middle of a two-week vacation and I have been taking a large number of pictures. I see absolutely nothing wrong with shooting a large number of pictures during an air show, particularly where the opportunity to get a particular shot is very limited. I see absolutely nothing wrong with taking a large number of pictures at a place like Colonial Williamsburg, where the actors are deliberately dressed up in costumes designed to attract attention. The same ethics generally applies to any event where there are costumed individuals who are seeking attention. The same ethics probably apply to sporting events. Of course the shooting of inanimate objects like in a museum is perfectly all right, subject to whatever policies the institution puts in place and makes known. Continue reading →
An 18-year-old Austrian woman is suing her parents for continually posting embarrassing childhood photos of her on Facebook without her consent. Since 2009, she alleges, they have willfully humiliated her by constantly posting intimate images from her childhood—about 500 to date. Among them are potty training photos and pictures of her having her diapers changed.
The abused daughter told reporters, “They knew no shame and no limit – and didn’t care whether it was a picture of me sitting on the toilet or lying naked in my cot – every stage was photographed and then made public.” Her parents have 700 Facebook friends.
The technical term for them is “cruel and merciless assholes.”
They have refused to delete the photos, with her father arguing that since he took the photos he has the right to publish them to the world.
Oh, what does the law have to do with this? If the parents had any decency, and sense of fairness, respect and caring, the law wouldn’t have to be involved in any way. Their daughter feels humiliated, as most of us would be, by having such photos published. There is no ethical principle under which publishing photographs (or videos) of anyone that were taken without consent when the subject objects or one knows or should know that he or should would object can be justified. This controversy, if ethical parents were involved, would be settled with a simple exchange:
Her:“Please don’t put anymore of those photos on Facebook, and take down the ones that are up now. They are embarrassing.”
Them: “OK!”
How hard is that? I know it’s hard for parents to resist posting photos of their adorable infants and toddlers while they are too young to protest, but the protest should be presumed. The Golden Rule rules, and I go further: this is an absolute. Children should not have their lifetime privacy scarred by parents selfishly indulging themselves by treating their children like pets. Children should be able to trust their parents to respect their sensibilities and vulnerabilities, and not to sacrifice them for cheap Facebook “likes.” Obviously, many of them can’t.
Ethics Alarms 