Sunny Hostin

Open Forum! [And One More Complaint About “The View”…]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I woke up today with so much already happening on the ethics front that I immediately knew I had no chance of making a dent in it, especially since I am facing deadlines and crises on other fronts. Let me get one minor matter out of the way before I turn it over to you, dear EA contributers.

There were two items in yesterday’s potpourri post relating to the persistent insanity on “The View.” I wonder if I should just ignore that idiot program from now on, applying the Julie Principle. Occasionally the thing makes news, but it is a blight on the culture and social discourse. Barbara Walters, who started it, needs to be marked down in critical assessments of her career because her creation inflicted Joy Behar, Whoopie and Sunny Hostin and the rest on our social and political discourse.

Here is one last “View”-related ethics ugliness. Speaking on the “Behind the Table” podcast this week (who listens to these things?), Hostin, arguably the worst of the worst on the current panel, discussed the moment when Kamala Harris declared on the show that she wouldn’t change a thing her alleged boss, Joe Biden, had done during his Presidency. Harris’s fatuous response—did she ever say anything that wasn’t fatuous?—came after Hostin tossed the Democrats’ DEI nominee the softest of softball questions: what would she do differently from Biden? “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” said Kamala.

Many believe that Harris lost the 2024 election in that moment, which is scary to think given how many other reasons she gave the voters to vote Republican. Hostin, in the podcast, said, “I knew it instantly when she answered it. Which is why I asked the follow-up question, ‘is there one thing?’  Because I knew, I could see the soundbite and I knew what was going to happen, but I thought it was a really fair question and I thought it was a question that she would expect… I feel terrible.” 

Bob Hoge writes at Redstate, “Such are the depths to which our mainstream media has sunk, that a professional pundit doesn’t have regrets about trying to push an incompetent candidate on the country; no, her real regret is that Kamala was exposed.”

Sad but true.

Your turn!

Regarding Those “Adults in the Room”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Boy, THAT quote didn’t age well…

House Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (MA) joined Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA), and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (CA) for a press conference in May of 2023 that began with Clark declaring, “It is Democrats who’ve been the adults in the room. It is Democrats who’ve prioritized Americans over political gamesmanship.”

Last night I rewatched “All the President’s Men.” I was struck by how similar Nixon’s attempts to cripple potential Democratic Party challengers resembled the various unethical measures taken by President Obama’s minions and President Biden’s puppeteers to bury Donald Trump, but that’s a different topic. What I was immediately impressed with was how an archival film of Nixon’s State of the Union Address in 1972 showed the entire audience consisting of both parties of both houses of Congress rising and applauding the President as he entered the chamber. They did this because Nixon, as divisive and loathed as he was by the American Left, was the goddamn President of the United States, had been elected by the American people, and it was every member of Congress’s duty to show the office due respect.

And it still is. Today’s Democrats (and, tragically, their Trump Deranged supporters), however, choose to behave like spit-ball shooting grade-schoolers, debasing the nation and its institutions in the process. Jonathan Turley said yesterday that when he was a House leadership page, every member of the House of Representatives would have voted to censure a Congressman who behaved like Al Green, because, quite simply, his disgusting conduct deserved condemnation and it was crucial for Congress to insist of standards of decorum. Today’s Democratic House members saluted Green as a martyr, and behaved like the student protesters of the Sixties. You know, adults.

Here are a few other notable examples of Democrats and their anti-Trump cult followers behaving like adults in the past few days:

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This Lawyer’s Incredible Ignorance Prompts Me to Propose a New Standard For Disbarment

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That’s the outspoken, racist, Dunning-Kruger suffering lawyer on “The View,” Sunny Hostin, saying out loud and on national TV that climate change causes eclipses (yes, also earthquakes, but we’ve already heard public figures make fools of themselves on that topic, like here and here…). This was so bad that even Whoopie felt compelled to correct her: Whoopie’s problem is that she’s uneducated, but she’s still easily the smartest lady on “The View,” which admittedly is faint praise.

We could have an entertaining debate over whose statement is more idiotic, Rep. Jackson Lee’s claim that the moon is “mostly gas,” of this head-exploder from Hostin. But that’s not the point of this post.

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More “Good Racism” OK’ed By Network News

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I want to read or hear a reasonable, intelligent defense of this phenomenon, which is occurring fairly regularly, especially since the George Floyd Freakout, DEI Madness and the Great Stupid descended over the land like the Seven Plagues of Egypt.

Above you see approximately the moment when CNN’s dumb, sexist, racist, biased—but cute!—morning anchor Don Lemon said to Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, because he couldn’t think of a real argument,

“When you are in black skin, and you live in this country, then you can disagree with me.”

You can read the context of Lemon’s remark, but I don’t believe it matters. There is no context in which that statement is anything but racially biased (not to mention un-American and really, really stupid.) For the record, Lemon was claiming that black Americans don’t have the same rights in the U.S. that whites do, a particularly audacious contention from a guy who 1) hardly rose to his position at CNN from the ghetto or the cotton fields, 2) only has and keeps his multi-million dollar a year job because he is black (though being gay helps) and 3) was debating with another “BIPOC,” but apparently there is a hierarchy in that privileged group in which African American beats Indian American, like rock beats scissors.

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Suspend Sunny Hostin’s Law License

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A mere Ethics Dunce designation for The View’s Sunny Hostin isn’t sufficient, because she’s a regular co-host on ABC’s daily cultural offal pile where all of the women are ethics dunces at best. Hostin’s one of the worst, which is quite an achievement, but she’s also a lawyer, making her admission yesterday especially despicable.

I’ve seen the video several times but can’t find a way on Word Press to embed it. Sorry: you can view the evidence on Twitter here. Babbling on about voting with the ladies, Sunny expressed suspicions regarding how absentee ballots were being handled, because, she explained, she had an odd experience while dropping off her son’s absentee ballot which she had filled out for him.

Hostin is a different kind of idiot than the other idiots on the panel: she’s an arrogant, cocky idiot who thinks her law degree means that her idiotic opinions aren’t idiotic. Thus she admitted committing a federal crime on national TV and didn’t even realize it. I’d guess the average first year law student could figure out that this is a serious violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct in every U.S. jurisdiction. Not Sunny, though.

It isn’t a technical violation either; it’s serious. Usually unethical conduct by lawyers when they aren’t practicing law are ignored by bar disciplinary committees, but Rule 8.4, Misconduct, holds that “It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:

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We May Have A New Champion For Most Unethical (And Ridiculous) Member Of “The View”…

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Yes, it’s Sunny Hostin, “The View’s” token lawyer. Admittedly, the title of most unethical and ridiculous member of “The View” is a tough competition, with  Dunning-Kruger victim Joy Behar displaying her ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills non-stop and Ana Navarro not far behind in the head-exploding gibberish category. But bear with me…

Hostin accused former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley of not using her “real name because she was attempting to hide being someone “of color.” “There were some of us that can be chameleons and decide not to embrace our ethnicity so that we can pass,” Hostin said. “I think if she leaned into being someone of color it [would] be different,” she noted earlier. I guess if you follow progressive cant like a Good German, you get to use whatever name you like. Continue reading →

Ethics Warm-Up, 11/15/2019: Idiots, “Friends,” Rationalizations And Doing Things The Hard Way

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Korean War memorial on the Washington Mall….moving and ghostly.

Greetings!

1. The media, doing its best to make the public stupid. Yesterday the collected dolts  of “The View” managed to mangle the concept of hearsay, following a Democrat rep’s absurd contention that hearsay evidence cold be “better” than  direct testimony.  The panel show also misrepresented how the Clinton impeachment proceeded.

Sunny Hostin, the alleged conservative on the panel,  said that  President Clinton’s impeachment  was the result of Linda Tripp’s  testimony, saying , “Clinton was impeached because of Linda Tripp’s testimony, which was complete hearsay!”

How wrong can a statement be? Clinton was impeached because he lied under oath in a hearing involving the civil law suit against him by Paula Jones (as well as for lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice.) Tripp had made an illegal tape recording of Lewinsky, which was not hearsay. Tripp’s tape was used to get Lewinsky to admit the affair, which was clearly not hearsay. Then there was that stained dress. Had not direct testimony and physical evidence backed up Tripp’s account, Clinton almost certainly   not have been impeached

2. This is why we can’t have nice things. It was inevitable, with all the recent resurgence in interest in the 90s sitcom “Friends,” that the long-running and still-popular show would finally be subjected to one of those depressing reunion specials. This was especially likely because the aging cast isn’t much in demand these days, and mots of them could use a boost.

But Beware, “Friends,” the woke posse is watching. The show about six white hetero singles living in New York was not diverse, and has been criticized in the 15 years since it ended for being implicitly racist, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ. Thus the Righteous have decreed, “Friends’ reunion is all we have wanted for years, but HBO Max version better have more racial diversity and LGBTQ representation.”

Thus we get this,

[T]he iconic NBC show is not without its problems, and yet it entertained us in real-time for ten years and for years after that, making us laugh on the days we are feeling low and making us believe that they will be there for us. It is only natural that we want to relive those feelings again, but even those of us who grew up on ‘Friends’ have outgrown those insensitive jabs about Chandler’s (Mathew Perry) drag queen father, unwarranted fat-shaming of Monica (Courtney Cox), repeated complicity of Joey’s (Matt LeBlanc) sexism and so on.

When the show does return in – hopefully – 2020 for an HBO Max audience, we should hope that it is rich in diversity without it being about tokenism. It is unfathomable that this group of friends who live in New York, the melting pot of America, hasn’t made friends with more diverse backgrounds. Even more so, it is difficult to believe that they haven’t even interacted with people of different sexualities, sexual identities, and races for them to know better than to make jokes about them. It may have flown in the 90s and 2000s, but it definitely isn’t going to in the current day and age.

No, we should hope that it is funny, but if awkward virtue signalling and making sure that all the EEOC boxes are checked while making up for ten years of insensitively showing a group of friends who hung out primarily with people like themselves (like most of us), are going to be the priorities, and you know they will be, it would be kinder and more responsible to leave Ross, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe, Rachel and Monica where they belong—in the past, on re-runs.

Incidentally, one of the two funniest jokes I ever heard on “Friends” involved “fat-shaming.” The groups was watching an old home movie taken when Monica was a grossly over-weight teen. The now svelte woman, embarrassed, said, “They say that the camera makes you look 15 pounds heavier,” to which Chandler replied, “Just how many cameras were on you?”

3. Upon reflection, I don’t think I need to add this new rationalization. The Rationalization List is stuck at 99, and I have been wondering what #100 would be. When I was writing about the now-fired Canadian hockey pundit Don Cherry bringing himself down with his big mouth, I was annoyed by how many of his defenders argued that Don was just being Don, and since he was always Don, and “didn’t mean anything” by being Don, and was popular because he was Don, being Don shouldn’t be held against him. I suspect this bothered me so much because it appears to be the only thing keeping Joe Biden from being ripped to pieces by #MeToo Furies, as he richly deserves to be. So briefly I considered the need for a “It’s just who he is” rationalization.

Upon reflection, I demurred. This is cutting the rationalizations too thin. We already have Rationalization 41 A. Popeye’s Excuse, or “I am what I am”:

Sure, let’s stipulate that the jerk is exactly who and what he presents himself as being. This doesn’t excuse his conduct in any way. He is what he is, and what he is is an irresponsible, narcissistic, rude, boorish, uncivil, nasty, destructive, ignorant, impulsive untrustworthy and despicable creep. Being a real  irresponsible, narcissistic, rude, boorish, uncivil, nasty, destructive, ignorant, impulsive untrustworthy and despicable creep is no more ethical than being a phony one. In this case, transparency is not a virtue.

..and Joe Biden even has his own rationalization springing from Cherry-like excuses, Rationalization 38B, Joe Biden’s Inoculation or “I don’t deny that I do this!”

A sub-rationalization to #38. The Miscreant’s Mulligan or “Give him/her/them/me a break!,” Joe Biden’s Inoculation argues that habitual bad conduct is mitigated by one’s open admission and acknowledgment that one’s engaging in it is an ongoing problem.

I think this base is well covered. The search for #100 goes on…

4. Why didn’t she just take the bar exam one more time?  I don’t understand this story at all.

Roberta Guedes graduated from Stetson University College of Law in 2014, but she  failed to pass the Florida Bar exam twice. The traditional remedy for this is boning up and taking the exam again, and again if necessary, but noooooo. 

Instead, federal prosecutors say, she used the name of a classmate  to register two new law firms with the state Division of Corporations. Agnieszka Piasecka attended law school with Roberta, and the friends  talked about starting a law firm together, When Guedes flunked the bar exam, Piasecka who did not flunk,   opened her own firm in Clearwater,  specializing in wills and trusts, immigration, and divorce cases.

The plot began when Guedes offered Piasecka the free use of her  office in downtown Tampa to meet with clients a few times.

In September 2014, Guedes incorporated a firm she called Ferguson and McKenzie LLC, listing Piasecka as its registered agent. In November, she started a second legal services business called Immigration and Litigation Law Office, Inc., listing another woman, Arlete Chouinard, as a vice president and manager.  Neither Piasecka nor Chouinard knew about this. She created websites for both companies, including claims of  national and international offices that didn’t exist, and faked partners and associates using stock photos. She also represented clients, accepting fees while never telling them that she had no license.

Now Guedes, 40, faces prison time after pleading guilty to federal charges of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft. It is fair to say that it is now too late to pass the bar exam.

Slow Friday Ethics Pick-Me-Up, 7/19/2019: The Chant, The View, The Times, The Recidivist, The Fire, The Comic

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Let’s see…what’s percolating today?

1. Do they even teach the First Amendment any more? I wonder how many of the Trump supporters who chanted “Send her back!” regarding Rep. Omar were doing so tongue in cheek, and realized that the U.S. can’t “send back” naturalized citizens? I admit that I’m rather afraid of the answer.

Yes, there’s a big difference between the President’s “why don’t they go back” line in his stupid tweets and “send her back,” but there’s no way he can escape some accountability for the ugly chant. He now says he disagrees with it, and except for those who will always assume the worst motives in this President, there is no reason to doubt that; after all, if he believed she should be “sent back,” he would have tweeted as much himself.

Of course, when network-anointed “experts” on social policy and politics like the ladies of “The View” broadcast ignorance of the First Amendment to their loyal and gullible audience, it doesn’t help. Co-host Joy Behar—is she the dumbest one on the panel? I think so— asked yesterday why President Trump had yet to face any legal consequences for “hate speech” directed at Democratic Rep. Omar, blathering, “Why can’t he be brought up on charges of hate speech?Why can’t he be sued by the ACLU for hate speech? I don’t get it. How does he get away with this?”

“Hate speech is tricky,”  was the best that cowardly former federal prosecutor Sunny Hostin could muster to clarify matters, making things worse. There is no such thing as “hate speech” in the law, which means it is more than “tricky,” it is a delusion, unless one means “hateful speech,” which can be a subjective definition, but is nonetheless protected by the Constitution.

If ABC were a responsible network, a comment like Behar’s should trigger an instant on-air intervention in which a team of law professors, judges and maybe a literate 6th grader or two burst onto the set and explain to this fool what freedom of speech means. Continue reading →