A really, really smart friend whom I respect a great deal just posted on Facebook that the President, on one of his sophomoric name-calling jags, had mocked Sen. Ossoff (whom I just posted about today, coincidentally) as “Pinky Herman.” My friend wrote that Trump was obviously mixing up Peewee Herman with Pinky Lee, a vaudeville kids TV star in the Fifties. “More proof of dementia,” my friend wrote.
I never thought of it before, but it seems to me that Pinky Lee might well have inspired Paul Rubens’ decades later kids’ show character. Pinky and Peewee are pretty similar names. Confusing the two is hardly evidence of dementia, unless the one making the mistake is Donald Trump.
But as usual, everyone on Facebook laughs, likes, and acts as if this stupid smear is a profound diagnosis. Fifteen years ago, I confused Aaron Burr and Raymond Burr while teaching a seminar and didn’t even realize it. Another time I said “Helen Keller” when I meant to say “Anne Frank.” I have mixed up my Jacksons on occasion: Jesse, Reggie, Andy, Michael and Stonewall. I assuredly do not have dementia. I think claiming that Trump does based on mixing up two fey comic kids show stars with similar names is more evidence of mental decline than anything either Trump or I have done.
I really detest this stuff. It is so petty, disrespectful, ungenerous and obnoxious. And, you know, Trump might have deliberately merged Pinky and Pee-wee, which would have been clever. Nah, it couldn’t have been that…
I remember Pinky well. I even remember the words to his song:
Yoo hoo, it’s me! My name is Pinky Lee. I skip and run bring lots of fun To every he and she! It’s plain to see That you can tell it’s me! With my checkered hat And my checkered coat, The funny giggle in my throat And my silly dance Like a billy goat!
There is so much crazy and stupid ethics stuff out there I just woke up from a crummy night’s sleep and am exhausted already.
Last night, trying to have an intelligent discussion with a lawyer friend who used to be intelligent, I raised the incident I wrote about yesterday and which I continue to think is an unusually important one for the legal profession today: the ABA’s president refusing to be honest-–in front of cameras and under oath—when asked in a Congressional hearing about its extreme woke positions. My friend started screaming at me, literally screaming, with a “whataboutism” attack: what about Trump, what about Todd Blanche, what about the Supreme Court, what about the ballroom, what about the Kennedy Center. It was scary. I was tempted to have her sedated.
Weird things keep appearing on my screen too. Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has no qualifications whatsoever to be a U.S. Senator (and maiden names don’t count) announced that getting appointed to a position she has no business being in isn’t enough, she now is going to run for a full term. A female sportswriter suggested that WNBA star Caitin Clarke complaining about being mugged on the basketball court by the black lesbians who have virtually put a hit out on her has put them at risk of ending up like Emmit Till. Megan Rapinoe, the over-the-hill women’s soccer star who thinks she has something to contribute to society besides hitting a soccer ball with her head, actually said that President Trump was responsible for the U.S. losing in the World Cup and that opposition to biological men playing women’s sports is “an attack on women in society.”Prof. Turley has a post up about how Democrats are now referring to belief in the Constitution as “nostalgia.” The Secret Service has opened more than 10,000 threat investigations this year, which is 40% increase from the same period last year. Yesterday Whoopie Goldberg, on ABC’s “news ” show “The View,” ended the program by ranting, “We need to get out and make changes, because we need to block [Trump’s Presidency] every way we can! That’s all. Vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote, vote.Don’t wait until November. Start looking now.” That is a pure violation of FCC rules, and if the FCC dared to act on it, we would be hearing about Trump trying to censor the press.
But by all means, write about what you want to.
This cheered me up yesterday for about 30 seconds…
President Donald Trump had a statue of Thomas Jefferson placed in the Rose Garden last week, bringing to five the number of sculptures he has added this year. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, and a sculpture honoring Revolutionary War soldiers preceded the one honoring our third President and the author of the Declaration of Independence.
Naturally the Washington Post is sneering at the project, even going to the trouble of finding an expert, Maxwell Anderson, the former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, to sniff that the statues statues are of “negligible artistic value.” You know, not like the Obama Presidential Library…
…or the obscene thing supposedly representing the Kings embracing
…or the King Memorial, which makes me think of Han Solo hanging on Jabba the Hutt’s wall.
The Jefferson statue is of “negligible artistic value” because President Trump selected it, just as the Reflecting Pool upgrade has to be mocked and sabotaged because it is this President’s project. Trump Derangement is pure Cognitive Dissonance Scale craziness: the President’s endorsement of dogs—fortunately he is the only POTUS in memory who hasn’t put a dog in the White House as a political prop—would have much of the Left siding with Mamdani’s anti-canine Muslims.
The statues are also irritants to the Axis and pals because the Rose Garden sculptures that arrived before Tom’s are on loan from Harland Crow, the conservative billionaire who has lavished gifts on Clarence Thomas. That’s also cognitive dissonance at work where it doesn’t belong. The owner of artwork has no relevance to the quality of the art, just as the character of the artist is irrelevant to any assessment of the artist’s work. There should be nothing controversial about the White House honoring patriots and Founders on its grounds, and there isn’t. No Chief Executive in our history has been so absurdly attacked over non-substantive matters. President Trump’s real offense is that he dared to persevere into the headwinds of presumed leftist dominance and prevailed. How dare he?
Ironically, while I was feting an old friend over the Independence Day weekend, another old friend, this time a college classmate who roomed with one of my very close friends so I spent quite a bit of time with him, used Linked-In to promote a “Medium” essay he seemed to think was worth reading. Foolishly, I read it earlier this week.
Let’s call this old friend “Bobo.” Bobo has had some tough breaks, but he’s smart and resilient and landed on his feet. He did end up on my blacklist for what I consider to be a major breach of ethics and friendship. About 30 years ago Bobo reached out to me when he was visiting D.C. and said he wanted to get together to catch up. When we did meet, he pitched me on a ski resort he worked for as the head of marketing, complete with a promotional package. The meeting had nothing to do with “catching up”: Bobo was using our past relationship to get a contract from the organization I was working for at the time.
The next time he was in town and called me, I ignored him.
The Medium essay was as good an example of Trump Derangement and progressive indoctrination as one is likely to find. Bobo is based in Colorado, and is apparently a Boulder ventriloquist dummy with the Axis of Unethical Conduct drinking glasses of water while he mouths their message. This thing carried the obnoxious headline, “Is 850,000 Fireworks enough?“, so I knew what I was probably in for. Still, the essay was even worse than I expected. As I said, Bobo is smart, or used to be. But here is what he wrote, absent gratuitous quotes from John Adams, FDR, Dr. Mortimer Adler (?), and Thomas Paine, a pompous introduction, and shoehorned in at the end, another promotion of a project he’s involved in, and probably paid to push
“Nearly every day, our social fabric is being torn apart by executive orders, endless lawsuits, and odious Supreme Court rulings cheered on by the current administration. Let’s also put a bookmark in place to visit the fragmented, siloed media landscape that has amplified unimaginable lies, perpetrated false claims, and exaggerated ludicrous conspiracy theories while doing the bidding of dark money moguls and narrow corporate interests. These bad actors are ripe for prosecution. Criminal disinformation is rampant as they continue to mislead far too many Americans. Do I need to remind my readers that FOX News was guilty of knowingly lying to their listeners and paying nearly a $Billion$ fine? The more we learn about the fragmentation of our sources of information and loss of integrity in journalism, the uglier it gets. There is so much more to say about news deserts, food deserts, lack of trust, wealth disparity, homelessness etc. The meta crises are vast and complex… All this chaos is by design and funded by what many call the Big Ugly Bill — supporting the 800-plus pages of Project 2025. The primary architect and author of that project, Russell Vought, is currently the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
“In 2017, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Steve Bannon declared that Donald Trump’s cabinet appointees were selected for the purpose of the “deconstruction of the administrative state”. And, that was his first administration. My last article in Medium addressed the issue of accountability — it fell on the deaf ears of Republican Senators….In Trump 2.0, think of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk. This all boils down to fewer public servants looking out for what people care about, like clean water, clean air, food safety, and better schools for our children. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“…Wondering whether there was anything to be said that hadn’t already been said, concerned that more words would simply be adding trauma to an already deeply traumatized citizenry, I hesitated…. In 1993, we were celebrating our nation’s 217th anniversary of the courageous Declaration of Independence. I had recently returned from the United Nations’ Earth Summit in Rio, where I had been embarrassed by the proclamation of then President George H.W. Bush, whose first words to the assembly and the world were: “The American Lifestyle is non-negotiable”…
“…Celebrating our independence from tyranny and oppression is baked into our cultural heritage. Yet, in the midst of an historic heat wave, ironically fueled by more than a century of polluting our atmosphere, we have a President determined to “set a world record, like you’ve never seen before” by adding 850,000 bombs bursting in air this evening. Let’s find another way to celebrate that doesn’t add one more molecule of pollution to our precious atmosphere… before this administration literally burns down everything they detest.
“Most observers agree we have precious little time left to change; others are certain collapse is unavoidable. The optimists see this as a golden opportunity to redesign everything that is dysfunctional and destructive. A friend recently reminded me that HOPE is a VERB with its sleeves rolled up! With empathy and compassion, courage and heartbreaking bravery we can move beyond this moment of cruel havoc and selfishness…”
As you know, I have been regularly wrestling my fingers to the floor to avoid responding to such junk on Facebook and elsewhere, but this was too much, especially coming from a fellow Harvard grad. I wrote as a reply to his Linked In post that included the Medium link:
Since you asked for feedback, [Bobo], it’s bad form to complain about false media reporting and then to post “that FOX News was guilty of knowingly lying to their listeners and paying nearly a $Billion$ fine.” That’s not true in several ways. 1. Fox wasn’t found guilty of anything: there was no trial. 2. The issue was alleged defamation, not “lying to their listeners.” The First Amendment protects networks from being punished for lying; otherwise, MSNBC and CNN would be indicted every day. 3. There was no “fine.” A settlement is not a fine or even damages.
Spinning like that removes an essay from the realm of enlightening commentary to just partisan talking points. A collection of characterizations isn’t an argument. Which SCOTUS opinions to you consider “odious”? I read them all, and they were all legally sound, including the one that rejected the President’s EO ending birthright citizenship.
Meanwhile, how about that Graham Platner?
Linked In made me delete a several hundred words. What I originally had before the Platner sign-off was this:
Wow. Stephen King is so Trump Deranged and politically obtuse that he’s really publicly defending a Nazi-loving, lying, unqualified, serial sexually-abusing accused rapist communist as the Democratic candidate to be a U.S. Senator of his home state, Maine.
And they say President Trump is losing it.
I admire and enjoy Stephen King as a writer. Few writers’ books and stories have spawned as many excellent movies as King. He manages to keep politics out of his horror tales, for the most part. His political opinions are routinely infantile, but let’s face it, artists are usually like that. Stevey doesn’t style himself as an intellectual: G.K. Chesterton he’s not. I would be surprised if anyone is influenced by King’s political outbursts, to which the only response should be “Shut up and scare us.”
However, those tweets cross an ethics line, embracing multiple rationalizations while indicating the ethics standards of a mollusk.
Observations:
1. Why in the world would King, or anybody, hope that Platner doesn’t drop out? At this point Platner can’t win. His party has announced that it will not support him. At best he was a long-shot to defeat Susan Collins even before the latest rape allegation. Does King like Nazis? Tattoos? Communism? He can’t like Communism, can he? King is worth an estimated $500 million. If he’s into income redistribution, why hasn’t he redistributed his?
2. Whatever Donald Trump has or hasn’t done, his conduct is irrelevant to Platner’s qualifications to be a Senator. This is whataboutism at its dumbest. The corresponding rationalizations on the list are #2, Whataboutism, or “They’re Just as Bad,” #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse: “There are worse things,” and #31, The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”
3. The term “Abuser in Chief” is a trope of the Epstein conspiracy theorists, and they are the dumbest, most vicious and most immune to justice, fairness and logic of the Trump Deranged.
4. King’s second tweet is even worse, which is remarkable. He libels every member of Congress with no facts whatsoever. “If we knew what we don’t know, I know that every member of Congress has done horrible things.” What an astoundingly irresponsible statement, as well as pompous, arrogant and mean! King also tops his previous rationalizations with the biggest rationalization of them all, and the most childish: #1 on the list, “Everybody does it.” But everybody doesn’t rape women. Or get a giant Nazi tattoo on his chest. Or post vile things on social media.
5. Finally, King defaults to the hoary “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8: 7,10,11), #5 on the Rationalizations list. It doesn’t mean what King and other lazy wielders of the line cite it to mean. Jesus said that to a group of men preparing to stone a prostitute that all of them had slept with. He was condemning hypocrisy of a very extreme sort, not saying that only the perfect and blameless could make moral judgments. In the context of Platner’s conduct, the quote means, “Let him who isn’t a serial sexual abuser, rapist and substance abuser who has no experience in governing whatsoever and who presumes to run for U.S. Senate cast the first stone.
I’m trying to think back on whether any President was so hectored, attacked and criticized over matters as tangential to Presidential performance in office as Donald Trump regarding these two “scandals.” I rank both of these on the level of Harry Truman criticizing the Washington Post music critic who criticized his daughter Margaret’s singing: fodder for future Presidential trivia and oddities, but ultimately non-substantive.
So why did former CNN full-time partisan anti-Trump agent Jim Acostago into raptures over the removal of Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center’s front, “This is very much like watching the Berlin Wall coming down. It is a sign that mankind, humankind can stand up against tyranny“? Because, dear friends, these sad, confused, hysterical people have lost all sense of proportion and reason. As I have had to point out on EA too many times already for such a silly episode, the President’s take-over of the Kennedy Center was petty, vindictive, intentionally obnoxious (aka “trolling”) and gave his worst enemies a metaphorical stick to beat him with. But it was also an act that literally had no impact on matters concerning the American public, since it involved an elitist art venue unaffordable or inaccessible to all but about .0001% of Americans, and is an aging, excessive monument to the second most over-rated U.S. President in U.S. history (the first being Barack Obama).
One wag on X responded, “I missed the time when people were SHOT DEAD trying to get into the Kennedy Center for 40 years. What a clown.” That clown was permitted to be CNN’s official representative at White House press briefings for Trump’s entire first term! If that isn’t a smoking gun regarding the state of our mainstream media’s objectivity, I don’t know what is. The Trump Deranged are so crazed that they get ecstatic over the slightest foiling of any Trump project, policy or initiative, big or small, wise or foolish, right or wrong. These are lives whose values are governed by the cognitive dissonance scale, which is emotional, not rational. It has been suggested in jest that Trump louse up Democratic primaries by endorsing the Democrats he wants to see lose. It’s a great idea. Democrats and progressives are so batty that it would work.
When the Trump Deranged say “I’d be happy to argue facts,” don’t believe a word of it. I did recently, and found myself talking to a brick wall.
I recently had a discussion over on Nextdoor with a gentleman we shall call “Kurt.” I had shared my recent blog post that talked about what I saw as I drove around eleven states on a recent two week vacation. The post focused mainly on how I perceived the surrounding economy as I traveled through the states, cities, suburbs, and rural areas. The content of that “The Sky Isn’t Falling!” blog post isn’t the ethics matter at hand, but rather how Kurt reacted it.
I started the whole interaction with me writing “Come on folks, the sky isn’t falling” including a link to my blog post. This was on Friday morning, June 12th. I posted this because I wanted to see what kind of reaction I’d get from people on Nextdoor, especially the Trump Deranged, so you could say I went fishing and I snagged a big one. Nextdoor traffic is usually higher on the weekends. As is typically the case, I got some approving and disapproving comments. The comment that caught my attention was the one Kurt posted on Saturday morning.
Here’s the part of Kurt’s comment that caught my attention. [His comments are in quote boxes, and an my commentary to each part follows]
“Ignore economic reality and Trump’s assault on democracy and decency.”
What caught my attention within that sentence was the phrase “Trump’s assault on democracy.” This is an assertion of fact claim/accusation. I replied, in part, to Kurt,”I’m no fan of Donald Trump; but, do you understand that parroting nonsensical anti-Trump partisan propaganda like “Trump’s assault on democracy” pigeonholes you with others suffering from acute TDS? That is a rhetorical question.”
“I’d be happy to argue facts…I believe he is a despicable, incompetent and immoral human being.You object to my characterization of him, while he routinely calls anyone he dislikes using terms like “vile scum,” etc.”“
Some recent studies suggest that Trump Derangement is taking on the characteristics of mental illness. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who isn’t suffering from it, and this latest example should go into the research files.
Anne Schedeen was one of those moderately successful, fungible and forgettable actresses who can most charitably described as a “working professional.” When a sitcom role that has you starring as a puppet’s protector—Alf was an illegal alien from outer space who had crash-landed in a family’s garage, and Schedeen played the mother in the family that helped keep him secret from government authorities—-is your most famous credit, you will not get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But upon her death at 77, Schedeen’s family thought it appropriate to virtue-signal to their fellow Trump Haters by issuing this tribute:
“She leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of creative energy, whip smart humor, delight in her family, adoration for little dogs, burning hatred for Trump, passion for second-hand thrifting, and love for a good story. We are bereft without her. We loved her so so much, as did all who met her.”
That, my friends, is insane. Variety, meanwhile, the so-called bible of the entertainment trade, didn’t have to put that feature in the statement in its headline, but did. None of the other outlets reporting the death thought that weird section was any more worthy of highlighting than Anne’s “passion for second-hand thrifting,” because it isn’t. Variety’s typical reader, however, is just as insane as Anne Schedeen.
I cannot imagine any previous President being used in this manner. Being noted for hatred of anything as a life highlight is hardly impressive; to me, that headline demonstrates what a wan career Schedeen had. No, she was never in a successful movie, never had a big role, never was nominated for an Oscar or Emmy, BUT she did hate the President of the United States, so there’s that.
The family might as well have pointed out that she won an award in the fourth grade for an essay about her goldfish. Having one’s family hurl your hatred at a President from beyond the grave is hardly as impressive as Ahab screaming at Moby Dick right before the Whaie Whale drags him down, “Thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee!” Ahab was nuts, but at least he wasn’t mad at Moby for mean tweets and enforcing immigration laws.
The family and Variety using the death of a minor actress to spit at the President, however, is a sad, foolish madness.
It it was great sadness that Ethics Alarms must confirm the death of former Pope Hat blogger and lawyer Ken White’s brain. As with the brains of Bill Kristol and so many friends and colleagues I once respected, including Ethics Alarms’ AWOL columnist Curmie, Ken’s neural headquarters expired of acute Trump Derangement.
The malady was first diagnosed in his case when he joined the Axis stalwart magazine “The Atlantic,” though I personally had hoped for a recovery based on my satisfying personal contacts with Ken over the years and the fact that compared to what the Democrats have become, Donald Trump seems as reasonable and rational as James Monroe.
Meanwhile, the anti-white racism and low-IQ bluster coming from certain presumed Democratic Part base segments is, if not surprising, provocative. I would rather slice off my lips than vote with such self-evident fools. It is amusing, I must admit, to see how easy it is to own them on social media. As in…
Nothing helps, however.
Over at Althouse, Ann Althouse devotes a post to taking issue with President Trump calling Graham Platner a pig. It is certainly a less creative ad hominem than most of Trump’s insults, but there are some things even I find too trivial to criticize. She does have a good quote about the news that someone cut “8647” into the National Mall, getting there by discussing the newly refurbished Reflecting Pool that my Trump Deranged Facebook friends find so offensive:
“The more grim, puritanical, humorless, imperious, and repressive you are, the funnier it is to make fun of you.” There’s a similar concept at play here: The more you show how much you care about pristine beauty, the more exciting it becomes to besmirch it. We can’t have nice things. Oh, but those who endorse the idea “86 47” might respond, these “nice things” are not nice. They are Trump things and therefore the ugliest things of all. To desecrate them is to move in the direction of true beauty. “
My thoughts about the latest “8647” are a bit different. Comey’s juvenile pleasure at seeing that shell formation would have vanished into internet obscurity if the Trump Justice Dept. wasn’t so foolish as to indict him for it. The Streisand Effect is real, and rather obvious by now, wouldn’t you think? Apparently not, at least among MAGA zombies.
“Now go do that voodoo that you do so weeeeeeeell!“
This post, which attracted a surprising amount of traffic for a sleepy Sunday, was also the target of cherry-picking criticism from some quarter, because that’s what progressives, Democrats and the Trump Deranged do when they can’t debate fairly on the substance.
“Your friend never ends up on substantive outrages? Not one? Ever?” “Does that mean the discussion always ends up on non-substantive outrages and never substantive outrages?” The theme of the post was clear to anyone willing to consider it. A numbered point in the post also immediately became a current news flashpoint: I wrote,
4. The discussion keeps coming back to the Capitol riot and the fact that Trump keeps claiming that he “won” the 2020 election. My response is that it’s quite possible that he did win in 2020, though unlikely, and that nobody should care what he says he believes. (I suspect that Trump keeps saying this to drive people like my friend to the edge of madness.)
Now, see, let me be clear because there are readers out there incapable of fairly absorbing the issue. I regard the fact that Trump keeps saying that he won the election as non-substantive. It’s trolling. I regard his motivation for saying this very substantive. The Trump Deranged’s fury over his style and trolling technique is emblematic of how they (and the Axis that has indoctrinated them) are unwilling to focus on the serious, indeed dangerous, destruction of public trust that the Left’s assault on election integrity has inflicted on the nation. Here is a perfect example of where the reflex news media deflection to “Republicans pounce!” in order to distract the public from the unethical Democrat conduct that caused them to “pounce” is blazingly obvious.
When Trump walked out of the “Meet the Press” interview yesterday, the catalyst was his accusation that the primaries in California for Mayor of Los Angeles and Governor were rigged, just as the 2020 Presidential election was rigged. “Meet the Press” hostess Kristen Welker immediately, her face contorted with anger…
…took the Axis position: “You have no evidence!” But there is evidence. It is mostly circumstantial, but it is still evidence:
Ethics Alarms 