The Great Stupid

Ethics Dunce: University of California at Santa Cruz

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Yes, morons.

Just think: these are the people who run the high-priced institutions that are supposed to teach our rising generations critical thinking, logic and life skills.

Would you let this happen?

The University of California at Santa Cruz hired Amanda Reiterman to teach two 120-student lecture classes on classical texts and Greek history. Reiterman who holds a Ph.D. and has taught as a part-time lecturer at the university since 2020, was paid to design the course, do the lectures, and plan the discussion sessions. She recommended a former student of hers who had just earned her bachelor’s degree to be hired as her teaching assistant. Administrators began the hiring process and copied Reiterman…causing her to discover that thanks to a 2022 strike settlement after 48,000 graduate students, postdocs, and researchers in the University of California system walked off thee job to win pay increases and expanded benefits, many teaching assistants are earning more than lecturers, and in some cases, like this one, more than their supervisors and the instructors in their own classes. When Reiterman learned that her teaching assistant would earn $3,236 per month, $300 more than her own monthly pay, she quit. It was not about the money, she told the Chronicle of Higher Education, but the principle. “I felt like I could not teach a class under those circumstances.” Reiterman dropped out as instructor for one class and arranged to teach another class in a different department with fewer students and no teaching assistant.

Brava! No weenie she.

Why did no ethics alarms ring for these administrators? I suspect that when your entire sense of fairness and equity is being mangled and distorted by compensatory benefit theories and DEI cant, little matters like paying a subordinate more than a supervisor with far more experience and credentials just doesn’t resonate the way it once would have, before The Great Stupid spread its dark bat-wings across the horizon, blotting out the sun.

Decades ago, running a foundation where my supervisor negotiated salaries after I decided on who to hire, my first male staff member extracted a higher salary than his equivalent female member on my staff, who had been there longer. I immediately pointed this out to my boss, who agreed to raise the salaries of the women on the staff to the same level. I didn’t even have to argue with him: he knew immediately that it was the only just course.

It’s so disheartening. One has to fight, working in my field, not to conclude, “Not only is a majority of the public cripplingly stupid, ignorant and ethically obtuse, a frightening percentage of those who run our private and public organizations and institutions are also stupid, ignorant and ethically obtuse.” That way despair and madness lies.

But is it true?

___________________

Pointer: TaxProf Blog

Amazing Tales of “The Great Stupid”: the DEI Graduation Announcer

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Res ipsa loquitur. There is no excuse for this. Of course some of the names would give anyone trouble. But Thomas (at Thomas Jefferson University)? Elizabeth?

This was so bad the school issued an apology, though its explanation doesn’t pass the giggle test:

At a certain point, the DEI farce will reach an inevitable tipping point. Too many people are lazy, dumb, timid and gullible, but not enough are THAT lazy, dumb, timid and gullible to put up with clownish displays like the one Thomas Jefferson University inflicted on its nursing school graduates.

Ethics Hero: J.K. Rowling, or “Now THAT’S How to Practice Civil Disobedience!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Scotland’s has passed a bonkers hate crime law that went into effect this week. It makes it a crime potentially punishable by up to seven years in prison to “stir up hatred” regarding age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and “variations in sex characteristics.” The law would be such a flagrant violation of the First Amendment in the U.S. that even Democrats would be embarrassed to vote for it, but Scotland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, has been hit particularly hard by The Great Stupid. (This would be a propitious time to say a silent but heartfelt “Thanks, guys!” to Tom, Ben, George, John and the rest of the much maligned Founders.)

Being is an especially good position to do so, J.K. Rowling, the “Harry Potter” author, has decided to lead the principled opposition to the unethical law. Yesterday, as the crime of “stirring up hatred” went into force, Rowling publicly defied it by listing a convicted rapist, several ex abusers and trans activists in a post on Twitter/”X,” asserting that they were all, in her view, men.

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Yet Another Amazing Story From “The Great Stupid”: The Fat-Shamed Pig!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

We began this day with head-exploding stories from the Weird, Woke and Wonderful, so we might as well end with another. This one is genuinely funny; indeed it made me laugh out loud twice, something I haven’t been able to do for four weeks. Thank you, silly, humorless hyper-sensitive people!

As a special bonus, it involves a baseball team, and today is MLB’s Opening Day!

The St. Paul Saints announced the name for the baby pig that will deliver baseballs and provide refreshments for umpires during the first half of the 2024 season. This is a tradition for the minor league team, which has had many baseball pigs as mascots over thirty years. The Saints recently began using two pigs per season,because they grow so fast. This time, the fan submission included f a masterpiece of topical swine-naming: “Ozempig.” Here’s the announcement:

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It’s Not Nice to Make My Head Explode First Thing in the Morning….

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Here’s the Great Stupid attack I woke up to:

  • That idiocy above, with our useless and silly Secretary of Education saying the underpasses built too low for vehicles like trucks and buses to get through were obviously designed to keep buses carrying black students to the beach from getting through.
  • The ADL declaring that the term “100%” is racist:
  • From the Washington Free Beacon: “The United States’ top intelligence agency wants to ban its spies from using “biased language,” including the terms “radical Islamists” and “jihadist,” saying these words “are hurtful to Muslim-Americans and detrimentally impact our efforts as they bolster extremist rhetoric,” according to a language guide published internally. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which is responsible for handling the country’s spy apparatus, seeks to ban a range of common terms because it says they offend Muslims and foment racism against employees. In addition to terms describing Islamic terrorists, ODNI instructs employees to avoid phrases such as “blacklisted,” “cakewalk,” “brown bag,” “grandfathered,” and “sanity check.”

“Didn’t Earn It”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I hadn’t seen or heard the derisive (but accurate!) nickname for DEI, as in “diversity, equity and inclusion” until I saw the Scott Adams “X” post above. I think he’s right. When a quick, pointed and accurate characterization makes people slap their foreheads and think, “Wait, why have I been willing to accept this nonsense?,” it can move metaphorical mountains.

The DEI fad has already been destructive to the economy, the workforce, society and its institutions beyond all imagining, making it one of the more damaging outgrowths of “The Great Stupid,” which really got rolling when its Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse equivalent (the fourth horse was a scratch, thank goodness) began galloping together in 2020. They were the George Floyd Freakout, the Black Lives Matter Scam, and the Wuhan Virus Panic, and together they brought virtue-signaling overdrive, progressive preening and an attack on core American and ethical values, not to mention civilization.

DEI , like the slogan “black lives matter,” was another ingenious manipulation of language to trap the slow of thought and the weak of character into going along with a movement that was intrinsically dishonest and unfair. Who could be against such benign concepts as diversity, equity and inclusion? But the objective was and is obliterating the cultural acceptance of merit as the aspirational basis of the American ideal. Along the way, the DEI industry itself emerged as an engine of waste and carnage with mostly underwhelming and undeserving drivers at the controls, as Harvard University demonstrated for us spectacularly.

Oh, we know how this will go: “Didn’t Earn It” will be roundly attacked a racist slur. Long screeds will be published to dispute “the lie”: the beneficiaries of DEI did earn it, the public will be told, just as anyone with ancestors on distant branches of the family tree who were victims of slavery at least a century and a half ago “earned” million of dollars in reparations today. (That response will anchor DEI to an absolutely indefensible policy goal: perfect.) Eventually, because this is what the dishonest and relentless far Left does, it will come up with another moniker, because DEI will finally have the aura of stench about it that it should—you know, just as “illegal aliens” became “undocumented workers” and are now “migrants” (or “visitors”), “performing major surgery on minors because they have been encouraged to believe they are the ‘wrong’ sex” became “gender-affirming care,” and the classic, “aborting the innocent unborn” was recast as “a woman’s choice.”

Never mind. “Didn’t Earn It” is an ethical tool to combat an unethical practice and ideology that is wasting financial and human resources.

I recommend using it.

__________________

Pointer: Instapundit

Is This Temple University Announcement Peak DEI Stupid? We Can Hope…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Students who identify as diverse in some way.”

!!!!

How can someone pay tuition to be educated by an institution that would publish something that ridiculous? How could qualified administrators read that and not throw themselves into a wood-chipper? How could anyone even think such nonsense and not realize that something had gone seriously wrong with their internal wiring?

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Will the Disastrous Results of The Great Stupid Result in Learning, So Behavior Changes, or Will the Fools Responsible Keep Trying To Govern On Dreams Rather Than Reality?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I’m afraid of the answer.

If I were really in a nasty state of mind—and I am mighty close—I could make this post and dozens covering the same territory a chain of Nelsons, as in,

The problem with that approach is that nothing’s funny about the phenomenon. In a ridiculous number of ways, across the culture and nation, states, cities and communities are being forced to reverse policies installed at Peak Stupid that were, or should have been, evidently moronic and certain to lead to disaster when they were devised. Nobody, at least not enough bodies, wanted to pay attention; virtue-signaling was more important to them. They really believed this, and I maintain, with all what’s left of my heart, that this was signature significance: anyone who embraced (or, going forward into the frightening future, embraces) this kind of policy approach is unfit to hold any position of influence and power.

To touch on a current Great Stupid debacle for just a second that I’m too sick and too covered in alligators to deal with in any detail right now, the Democratic Party’s determination to renominate Joe Biden for President, someone yesterday described the decision as the equivalent of the Titanic’s captain that night in 1912 backing up and sailing into the same iceberg again. I really like that analogy, and intend to use it whenever appropriate.

This topic could support a book, let’s just look at two recent examples:

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I LOVE This Lawsuit! It Might Be the Best “Great Stupid” Lawsuit Yet!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Mohammad Yusuf, a 43-year-old Chicago police officer, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city because it refuses to allow him to change his race from “white” to “of color,” or something. The Chicago police department allows cops to change their gender identity according to whim, and he argues that this is a double standard.

Yusuf “currently identifies as Egyptian and African American.” When he first joined the force in 2004, the Great Stupid had not yet spread darkness over the land, and he only had a few race option to choose from, he says. Now he believes Caucasian is inaccurate, and besides, despite the woke Chicago police department claiming to have a race-neutral and merit-based promotion system, Yusuf claims he has been “repeatedly bypassed” for promotions in favor of less qualified black officers.

No, really? I don’t think Chicago would ever be a party to something like that, do you? Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, as the saying goes.

Did I mention how much I love this lawsuit?

Yusuf even provided his 23andMe genetic testing results to prove he is mixed race and it all depends on which he chooses to identify as when it comes to tribal designations and their DEI rewards. Still, the police department obstinately refuses to allow him to be black. It’s strange, his lawyers argue, that other officers can change their genders on official records, since no genetic test would back that up. That Y chromosome is there for life. Is this not a double standard?

“While other CPD officers are afforded the opportunity to have their gender identity corrected to match their lived experience, Officer Yusuf and others in similar positions are barred from obtaining accurate racial designations that align with their racial identity,” the suit says.

Isn’t this great?

OK, I Know “Mary Poppins” Well Enough That When I Heard That the BBC Had Ruled That It Contained “Offensive Language,” I Immediately Knew Why

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Why, that is, other than the fact that the UK has been lobotomized by The Great Stupid even more than the U.S. has.

Do you know what was “offensive” in one of my all-time favorite movies without cheating? Think, now…

Time’s up!

It’s this: Admiral Boom, a senile neighbor of the Banks family whose sole purpose in the plot is to set up a running gag showing how the Banks’ and their servants routinely deal with his shooting off a cannon (the house shakes, furniture slides around, things fall off shelves, hilarity reigns), twice refers to “Hottentots.”

The British Board of Film Classification announced that the film was resubmitted for a rating this month in preparation for a theatrical re-release. The Borad reclassified if from “G” to “PG” for discriminatory language, a spokesperson explained. “Mary Poppins (1964) includes two uses of the discriminatory term ‘Hottentots’…While “Mary Poppins” has a historical context, the use of discriminatory language is not condemned, and ultimately exceeds our guidelines for acceptable language. We therefore classified the film PG for discriminatory language.” The term was once used by the British to describe the Khoikhoi and San nomadic tribes in southern Africa—surely you remember them?

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