signature significance

From the Res Ispa Loquitur Files…Maddow’s Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
https://twitter.com/i/status/1865163195146477938

Althouse found this for me. Anyone who is surprised or disillusioned by Maddow’s blazing hypocrisy hasn’t been paying attention or doesn’t care that the propagandists they follow have no integrity.

“Maze’s” comment about her being an actress is, sadly, astute. The talking heads on MSNBC, to a significant extent on Fox News, and also on the other networks, are allowed and probably encouraged to telegraph their feelings (or the feelings the network’s want their audiences to think they have) about what they are reporting. Once upon a time, even the most biased of news anchors would announce the news with poker faces and neutral tones. That was considered professional then, and in fact that was and is professional for broadcast journalists: it has just become passe along with journalism ethics generally. Few mug as furiously and shamelessly as Maddow, but her bosses and clearly her audience appreciate her hamming it up: she is reported to have a salary of around $25 million.

A total contradiction like the one portrayed in the matching videos above should be signature significance for anyone paying attention: it means: “I am a partisan hack rather than the trustworthy analyst I pretend to be, and I express what I think my audience wants me to feel about what I am reporting.” People are fine with that, apparently. Fascinating.

NO, Frank Bruni, Joe Biden Is NOT a “Good Man” and the Fact That You Would Say That Makes Me Wonder If You Know What Good Is

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“…And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us…”

—Long-time progressive NYT pundit Frank Bruni in one of the “Harris must win, Trump is terrible” stories and columns in the Times today.

I counted 11 of the latter. Twelve. Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Whatever would make you think that?

Bruni has been a member of the Times staff and editorial board for 25 years. Res ipsa loquitur. The Times has at least one (they have, in truth, many) columnist who had a regular platform to spread his biases and misconceptions, and he thinks (or says he thinks) Joe Biden is a good man. Right. There are few politicians of such longevity who have ever left such an unambiguous record of not being a good man, woman, or public servant. Since I’m not writing a book, I’ll just list the bits of Joe’s biography that stick out for me at the moment:

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Journalism!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Nice. Matt Yglesias is allegedly a journalist who has had many left-wing publications give him a platform. He also co-founded the relentlessly left-biased propaganda site Vox. Here’s a signature significance moment from Yglesias that I flagged in 2016, in which he said that lying to advance a policy or position is “the right thing to do.” Yes, he really did. Yglesias has had periodic attacks of integrity since, however. Occasionally.

In that tweet above, he asserts, from the position as a prominent journalist, a pure opinion as fact. Many readers inclined to be gulled by their own confirmation bias will immediately take it as fact. It is not fact.

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You Laugh, But This Tells Us a Lot About China

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

When I saw the story above last night, what I foolishly call my mind raced to two other related matters. One was the failed pseudo-sequel to “A Fish Called Wanda,” “Fierce Creatures,” in which the entire cast of the earlier, far superior comedy reunited to perform a John Cleese screenplay about a corrupt zoo-owner who, among other schemes, tries to pass off a mechanical panda as the real thing. The other was this story….

…from 2011.

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Ethics Hero/Dunce: Charlotte Dujardin

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I haven’t had many of these, as you might imagine. In fact, I’m not even sure that this is one.

British Olympic dressage medalist Charlotte Dujardin holds six Olympic medals, three of them gold, in equestrian events. She just dropped out of the Paris Olympics, however, after a video was uncovered that reportedly shows her repeatedly whipping a horse on its legs.

“A video has emerged from four years ago which shows me making an error of judgement during a coaching session,” she said in her statement withdrawing from the Games. “Understandably, the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) is investigating, and I have made the decision to withdraw from all competition — including the Paris Olympics — while this process takes place,” she said. The statement continues, “I am sincerely sorry for my actions and devastated that I have let everyone down, including Team GB, fans and sponsors.”

Some have described this as Ethics Hero-level contrition. She did wrong, she has admitted it without qualifications, and has administered her own sanctions. OK, I’m buying that, sort of. Maybe. With major misgivings.

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From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I know, I know...this might have been staged. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t staged, but just a single group of assholes after other trick-or-treaters used the communal candy basket as it was designed to be used. Maybe this video has no larger significance at all.

I hope it doesn’t.

But I suspect it does.

ADDED: I see that Ann Althouse also posted this video. Her focus is a bit different. She writes,

Why are we doing handouts anyway? To show what human beings are like? If you answer the door and dispense the handout personally, you can maintain a system of one portion per person, and you might even get a smile or a thank you. If you put out a big bowl of multiple portions because you don’t want to monitor the process and impose single portions, then people will serve their own interests and take all they want. You knew that. The kids who took it all also knew that if they didn’t take it all, the next group of kids would take it all. It’s a state of nature without supervision and enforcement. Don’t pretend you trusted people and you had some sort of admirable “hope” that now I’m supposed to feel bad got crushed. No, you lazy bastard. Answer the damned door next time. Or have the courage to turn off the porch light and huddle in a back room and celebrate the end of the holiday you no longer believe in.

Well, in the past, I have known people who did this (put out baskets of candy to be used with the honor system) not because they were lazy or didn’t want to participate in Halloween, but because they were not going to be home, or had mobility issues for one reason or another. Ann just assumes that the natural tendency is to act badly and just take it all. I don’t.

But she lives in uber-progressive Madison, Wisconsin, so there’s that…

Snap Out Of It! Trump’s Latest Disqualifying Statement Is Signature Significance—Stop Pretending He Is A Rational Option To Elect President

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Asked by Glenn Beck in an interview “[I]f you’re president again, will you lock people up?”, Donald Trump, the supposed champion of democracy and heroic foe of the Democratic totalitarians, answered, “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.” 

Dingdingdingdingding! This is signature significance, just like his earlier musings about suspending the Constitution. As I wrote earlier this year, “As divided as Americans are, it doesn’t appear that enough of them care about preserving democracy to do anything to preserve it. They only differ on the means by which they are willing to let it collapse.” Electing Donald Trump as President, with his sick “tit for tat,” “Do unto others as they do to you,” “vengeance is mine” approach to ethics magnified by his “the ends justify the means” orientation can’t possible “save” democracy. The most it can do is maximize the chances that the totalitarians we end up with aren’t socialists, anti-white bigots and addicted to toxic woke fantasies. That shouldn’t be good enough. It isn’t good enough, not for this nation. That so many still think it is depresses and frightens me greatly.

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“Thanks, Tucker!” Carlson’s First Twitter Show Confirms The Ethics Alarms Verdict On His Firing By Fox

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The last time I was compelled to write about Tucker Carlson following his surprise firing by Fox News, I wrote,

The outpouring of conservative support for Tucker Carlson is quite nauseating, and shows an unfortunate infestation of bad judgment and ethics corruption when the necessary conduct is to recognize that an ideological ally is neither trustworthy nor honest. One report yesterday, pointing to the Fox News’ ratings crashing with Carlson’s exit, noted that younger Fox News viewers had led the stampede. Carlson is a demagogue with dubious motives, and the young are especially vulnerable to demagogues. I regard it as unethical for a news organization to put demagogues on the air for exactly that reason.”

Yesterday, Carlson premiered his new show on Twitter, and was kind enough to confirm that analysis, far from the first Ethics Alarms has made marking the one-time Golden Boy of America’s only conservative-biased network as a cynical, manipulative, self-promoting and untrustworthy narcissist.

You can watch Carlson’s Alex Jones imitation here. Only a deliberate conspiracy-monger would say this for public consumption:

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Signature Significance Cubed: This Weekend’s Despicable Political Cartoon By The Washington Post’s Ann Telnaes

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

It is signature significance for a political cartoonist to issue such a cheap, dishonest, juvenile, partisan and unfunny cartoon even once: no cartoonist with wit or taste would create such garbage

It is signature significance for the editors of a newspaper that it would allow such junk to appear in the paper’s pages. Doing so proves that the newspaper has no journalism standards.

It is signature significance that any Washington Post reader would approve of such a cartoon. Such a reader must be either ignorant, biased into crippling stupidity, or corrupt.

Just to point out the obvious lies, distorions and hypocrisies in the cartoon:

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Signature Significance And The Julie Principle Confront “The Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Ethicist” of the New York Times Magazine, doesn’t read Ethics Alarms so he isn’t conversant in two core EA concepts: signature significance, the fact that a single example of conduct can be enough to make a definitive judgment about an individual’s unethical nature, and The Julie Principle, which holds that once you recognize an individual’s flaws, you can accept them and continue the relationship, or use them to decide the individual is too flawed to tolerate, but it is pointless to keep complaining about them.A question from a disillusioned wife this week raised both, and “The Ethicist” acquitted himself well without directly acknowledging either.

“Theresa” revealed that her husband had tossed a banana peel out the passenger’s side window while she was driving on a highway. She protested, emphasizing her objection to littering and his setting a bad example for their 13-year-old in the back seat. He rationalized that the banana peel would “biodegrade”,“ and as if that wasn’t lame enough, defaulted to “I’m an adult, so I’ll do as I want.” After the incident, “Theresa” showed him an article about the dangers of throwing garbage on the street, plus a copy of the Massachusetts law declaring his conduct illegal. Her husband responded with, “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”

“He refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake or change his behavior,” “The Ethicist’s” inquirer wrote, adding that the deadlock on the issue is making her question her marriage.

At the outset, I have to agree that the episode might make me question the character of someone I had just met—not merely question it, in fact, but perhaps make a confident diagnosis: this guy is an asshole, and the sequence is signature significance. The only feature of the story that possibly rescues it from being signature significance is that it can be broken down into components:

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