The Great Stupid

Today’s Dispatch From The Great Stupid: The Nazi A’s Coach

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Because, in the course of trying to communicate to his players while following MLB’s pandemic protocols, he made a gesture that might be taken as a Nazi salute if it weren’t on a baseball field in 2020 and if the supposed member of “Hitler’s Coaches” was insane, Oakland A’s bench coach Ryan Christenson was accused of deliberately giving a Nazi salute.

I didn’t need to see the video or learn anything more. I knew he wasn’t giving a Nazi salute, just as I wouldn’t need to check if someone told me a baseball player laid an ostrich egg on third base. The man was gesturing for some reason to explain something. Maybe he was saying, “Hit the ball out there!” and used the flat of his hand rather than pointing. I don’t know; I don’t care. There are no laws about gestures, and I always presume good will, not bad will and insanity.

But the usual bunch of cancel-hunters saw that they might be able to destroy someone, so they tried. This is like the equally ridiculous “OK” sign outrages. If these terrible, terrible human beings can’t get someone fired, at least they get a notch on their metaphorical belts if they can make someone grovel. Here they hit the jackpot: first the poor coach apologized, explaining that the A’s do something they call “the karate chop” instead of a high five (which is banned as part of the MLB protocols, and he was being schooled on the safe way to do it. He had reached out to do the  chop with someone who said “No, no, no straight arm!” and Christenson took a second to realize what he meant. By all means, the coach should be fired. Heck fire both of them. Ban the team. Continue reading →

From The “When Ethics Alarm Don’t Ring” File, Presidents Of Evangelical Christian Universities Division.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Yes, that really is Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. smiling, with his pants unzipped, as he poses with an arm around a scantily dressed young woman who is not his wife. And get this: Falwell posted the photo to social media himself. He really did. No, seriously.

I’m getting frightened, because this episode suggest that The Great Stupid is extending beyond the boundaries of the George Floyd Freakout and the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, and infecting people that have nothing to do with either. This means, if true, that The Great Stupid can strike any of us without warning. One minute you are arguing about the perils of the National Debt heading into the Red Zone, and suddenly Rep. Ocasio-Cortez starts making sense to you, and you’re sticking shrimp up your nose.

What in the world was Falwell thinking? This would be crazy for the President of Berkeley, and his university is one of the most conservative institutions in the nation,  prohibits students from having sexual relations outside of marriage,  listening to music with lewd lyrics, or watching films with sexual content, and nudity. Students are also required to dress modestly. Great role model, there, Jerry! Continue reading →

Tales Of The Great Stupid, Niggardly Principles Chapter

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

I am most grateful—I think—to  Ethics Bob Stone for bringing this story to my attention. It gives me hope, it really does, that we are quickly arriving at the point where the George Floyd Ethics Train Wreck will be revealed to all as being driven and enabled by people so silly and stupid, that there will be an ear-splitting slapping sound across the land, as Americans of sense and perspective bring their palms to their foreheads in the humbling realization that they have been taking seriously the blathering of fools and ignoramuses.

And with a ripple of embarrassed laughter, the suddenly enlightened  will immediately begin going about life as they once did, devoid of self-flagellating guilt for believing in  a land and a system where people are, or should be, judged by their talents, enterprise, accomplishments and the content of their character, and not, whether black, Black, white or other hues and shades, the color of their skin, their ancestors, or what their ancestors did or didn’t do. Thereafter this period of unrestrained hate and statue-toppling, the cancel culture,  fear, groveling, virtue-signaling and grandstanding will come to be known as “The Great Stupid,” and we will collectively wonder, as with the Dutch Tulip Mania of the 17th Century and Disco, how the Hell something so mad could have happened, and for so long. Continue reading →