Let me be clear: Tiffany Cross, recently fired as a show host by MSNBC, had and has no business being an on-air political pundit. She should never have been hired, and any legitimate journalism organization would have fired Cross years ago.
Let’s see: Cross has said that a “civil war” in the U.S. requires progressives to “pick up a weapon” in the fight for democracy. She called Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas “Justice Pubic Hair on My Coke Can,” referring to one of Anita Hill’s unsubstantiated accusations regarding Thomas creating a hostile work environment with sexually provocative jokes. She warned viewers about “White replacement” and called Republican members of Congress “White supremacists.” She openly rooted for Kyle Rittenhouse to be convicted, primarily because he is white, and said that those applauding his acquittal—since he wasn’t proven guilty—were disgusting. More recently, Cross sat by smiling as racist Ellie Mystal called Herschel Walker a “negro” because he’s a Republican.
Yesterday on her MSNBC show, Tiffany Cross featured Fernand Amandi, a Democrat pollster and adviser, and a regular on hers’s over-heated far-left hysteria orgy. Just think, the New York Times spent 6+ full pages today calling for the metaphorical life boats because Tucker Carlson’s monologues criticizing the Times and its pals for their anti-democratic efforts are getting longer, while Cross is part of an entire network that deals in toxic narratives and bias from dawn til dusk that the Times barely never criticizes at all.
The Democrats have a wonderful story to tell! And I think it could be distilled to something as simple as: the Democrats saved your life. They saved your job. They saved the economy. And now they’re trying to save democracy from a Republican party that no longer believes [in] it.
Isn’t that great? Who besides Rob Reiner could say something so ridiculous on television and not have to leave with his head in a sack? Yes, Democrats really are going to continue arguing that if you vote Republican you’re going to die, that a tanking economy is a great economy, that the pandemic deaths (or deaths attributed to the pandemic to achieve maximum fear) under Trump were “blood on his hands” and the even greater number of deaths under Biden’s watch were still “blood on Trump’s hands,” and that the party trying to crush free speech, cripple the rule of law, weaken the integrity of elections, pack the Supreme Court and criminalize Democratic opposition is going to “save” democracy.
The bet is that progressive-dominated educational institutions and news media has left the public so ignorant and incompetent that this might sound reasonable.
Then Amandi provided the totalitarian strategy: to beat the GOP in the coming elections, all Democrats have to do is arrest them!
[I]t’s one thing to try and disqualify a Republican party that no longer believes in democracy, but you need a little bit of help. If the Department of Justice, and the Attorney General Merrick Garland, do not start issuing indictments, not to the front line of Proud Boys and picknickers of January 6th that led an insurrection, but to the perpetrators of the crime, the Members of Congress who we now know through text messages wereplotters, the ringleaders at the top echelon of the Republican party, up into an including the Republican president, Donald Trump, voters are not going to believe that, they’re gonna just think that it’s political back-and-forth. The Justice Department needs to hold the perpetrators accountable….If these Republicans gain control, they will not give it back. We will lose democracy. And if you lose democracy, it’s not the sort of thing that you get back…You may not see it again in your lifetime in this country.
Why of course! Why didn’t we think of that before! The way to win elections is to arrest the leaders of the opposing party! That will save democracy!
And Tiffany Cross said, ” Yeah! I think that is the message that voters need to hear.” Continue reading →
Another death of a black man in an encounter with the police has re-emerged from 2019, this time from Louisiana. It has even more of the unethical elements of past tragedies/botches/fiascos than usual, and the cast of characters are all playing their now familiar parts to maximize the likelihood of protests, riots, political grandstanding and confusion, not to mention more deaths and further damage to race relation and law enforcement. Good job, everyone!
This is a true ethics train wreck, because nobody, literally nobody, who has been involved with the episode so far has behaved ethically. At this point, I see no hope that the mess can be cleaned up, but maybe we can learn something from how thoroughly another Police Meet Black Lawbreaker disaster has been mishandled by everyone to ensure the worst conceivable outcome. In no particular order, here is a list of those responsible for the Ronald Greene Ethics Train Wreck.
Bad, BAD week last week, and not just for me. It was a bad week in ethics, and because of my own shortcomings, I wasn’t able to properly provide a path through it. This week will be better, starting today. At least if I have anything to say about it…
1. From “the rest of the story” files: Remember when Jonathan Papelbon attacked Bryce Harper in the Washington Nationals dugout? It was 2015, and pretty much marked the end of relief ace Paplebon’s career. Harper went on to become a mega-million dollar free agent after the 2018 season, when he signed with the Phillies for a ridiculous 30 million dollars a year long-term contract. Papelbon finally resurfaced in Boston this season as an amusingly unrestrained analyst for NESN, which broadcasts the the Red Sox games. And I recently discovered how almost right he was to accost Harper, if admittedly a bit too enthusiastically. The prompt for Pap to go grab Harper by the neck was the latter loafing down the line as he barely ran out a ground ball. Harper’s periodic lack of hustle had been a source of annoyance for years (to be fair, he was “only” being paid 2.5 million bucks to play hard in 2015), but I just saw the stats for his last year in Washington. Having been a plus-defensive player in previous years, Harper stopped hustling entirely in 2018, both in the field and on the bases. Though he had once saved over 20 runs in a season in the field alone, in his free agent year Harper cost his team over 20 runs that year, making sure he stayed healthy for the big payday to come (to be fair, he was “only” being paid 21.6 million bucks to play hard in 2018). As soon as he had a guaranteed contract with Philadelphia, Harper started playing hard again, dashing around the bases and diving in the outfield.
Both Papelbon and Harper were jerks during their careers, but nobody could accuse “Pap” of not doing his best to win for the fans, his team, its city and his team mates every single time he stepped onto a baseball field.
2. Not Harvard this time: it’s back to Georgetown! Both of my schools’ diplomas are turned to the wall of my office in a symbolic protest against their continuing unethical policies and conduct—-I’m not sure what more I can do to signal my contempt and embarrassment. Now it’s Georgetown’s turn again—I worked for the University for five years after I graduated from the Law Center—to make me wish I had graduated from a school with some integrity. Though it has been notably un-covered by the mainstream news media, Georgetown Professor Michele Swers read the words of a Ku Klux Klan leader in her “U.S. Political Systems” class for the college, but because she “did not censor” the word “nigger,” a large contingent of her students sent a smoking gun letter letter to Swers and the college’s diversity office, demanding that she apologize profusely, review all future presentation and lecture material for potential bias; and demonstrate her “understanding of the history of the N-word and why it is inappropriate for a non-Black person to say it in any context, including an educational context.” [Pointer: Steve Witherspoon]
So far, I can find no record of a response from the university or the professor, but writing of the incident, Prof. Turley says in part,
Ethics Alarms 