Washington Post

Dispatches From The Great Stupid, “D.E.I.” Division: This Story From The Washington Post Was Not A Joke…Well, Not Intended As One, Anyway

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Yes, sadly, it’s come to this.

Not only has the Left’s obsession with group identification, quotas and “diversity, equity and inclusion” reached peak madness, but the purveyors of this cult, including the mainstream media, are no longer capable of perceiving its excesses.

The article in yesterday’s Post was not a parody. The headline was not supposed to be funny. The tragically biased Post reporter responsible for this insanity is Daniel Wu, a reporting intern in the Post’s Metro section. Stanford University made him this way. And the editors who agreed to insult Post readers with it? Who knows what made them impervious to common sense? Well, let me take that back: “It’s the Great Stupid, Charlie Brown!”

The piece begins by describing the tragic circumstances of LisaWhitenack, now a biology professor at Allegheny College, a shark researcher who was tormented as a child she didn’t see many shark researchers on the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” that looked like her. So she decided to study this dire and under-recognized phenomenon “Was “Shark Week” feeding audiences the wrong messages about sharks — and who studies them?” The Post continues,

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Look! The Washington Post Realizes That The John Fetterman Senate Campaign In Pennsylvania Is A Threat To Democracy!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Wow. CNN starting to criticize Democrats is remarkable enough, but the Washington Post biting the metaphorical hand that feeds it?

Theories abound. Maybe, as my freind Tom Fuller says, the Post editors have concluded that “there is some shit I will not eat.” Maybe Biden’s Speech From Hell that had fascist techniques all over it while calling half the nation fascist was too much even for these long-time accessories. I don’t know, but yesterday the Post editors erupted with rare disgust over the unethical machinations of Democrat John Fetterman, who is, essentially, trying to cheat his way to a victory in the crucial Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race.

Maybe what aroused the Post’s dormant sense of ethics was Fetterman’s absurd pandering to the pro-abortion crown in a 9/11 campaign rally—kind of appropriate, since 9/11 was about taking innocent lives just like abortion is—in which he shouted, “My name is John FetterWoman!” to a cheering crowd of idiots.  Fetterman reiterated his support for abortion until  birth, and pledged that he would vote to codify Roe v. Wade, which makes no sense since Roe outlawed most abortions after the first trimester.

“Women are the reason we can win. Let me say that again: Women are the reason we win.” Fetterman told the crowd. “Don’t piss women off!”

To quote Olson Johnson in “Blazing Saddles,” “Now who can argue with that?” Continue reading →

The Washington Post Found An “Expert” To Explain Why Trump Is “Semi-Fascist”…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Some Big Lies die hard…particularly if the mainstream media is committed to keeping them alive. The “Trump is a fascist” smear was one of the first out of the box when the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance”/Democrats/news media) reacted to being foiled in the glorious post-Obama re-making of America they had assumed was assured by setting out to cancel the verdict of the electoral system and sabotage a legally elected President of the United States. (Nah, nothing undemocratic about that!) The claim that Trump and his supporters are crypto-fascists has been nonsensical from the start (as President, Donald Trump eliminated many kinds of government control over individual liberties, and opposed others), and the absurdity has exploded as the Biden Administration and the Democratic Congress have embraced so many markers of totalitarianism, like legally favored groups, censorship by a captured media, political show trials, politically manipulated science and a “truth agency” (which, fortunately, never got off the ground. Then we have the attempted government intimidation of political opposition, lock-step partisan indoctrination in the universities and public schools, official disinformation (“Recession? What recession?”), the effort to punish judges for opinions that go against the party, demonizing the opposing party and, most notably, the targeting of political opponents for prosecution and imprisonment. Tonight, the President of the United States will give a national address accusing the opposing party of being a threat to democracy.

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What Do You Call Those Who Deliberately Encourage Hate And Division?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

A much-esteemed member of the Ethics Alarms commentariate alerted me yesterday that he would be eschewing the blog indefinitely because it was making him anxious and depressed. I’m glad he won’t be reading this post. It made me anxious and depressed.

Fresh off of yesterday’s note about the woman who asked “The Ethicist” whether she was ethically obligated to “out” a friend at work who harbored horrible conservative opinions—you know, like not believing that there is a Constitutional right to kill human fetuses—and news of another study showing that Democrats increasingly don’t want to associate with anyone not buying into their progressive, crypt-totalitarian world view (I can’t locate the recent one right now; a similar study from last December found that “5% of Republicans said they wouldn’t be friends with someone from the opposite party, compared to 37% of Democrats,” and “71% of Democrats wouldn’t go on a date with someone with opposing views, versus 31% of Republicans.”), comes more evidence that hate-mongering and Big Lies are working for the Left. They will destroy the democracy in order to save it, and promoting incurable divisiveness and distrust is just the way to do it.

The tough conservative blogger who writes The New Neo reported on a Washington Post opinion piece from last week headlined, “No, Trump voters aren’t incapable of changing their minds about him.” I confess: I saw the article and jettisoned it after this section in the third paragraph:

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Even More Weird Tales Of The Great Stupid! WaPo Publishes A Peak Stupid Op-Ed, Then Censors Readers Who Say It’s Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I really do wonder at what point the vast majority of Americans who have not become irreversibly deranged by the confluence of the Trump Freakout, the George Floyd Freakout, the Trans Freakout ,the Wuhan Virus Freakout and the Roe Reversal Freakout sharply slap their foreheads “I could have had a V8!” style and ask, “Why are we letting these unstable, untrustworthy people dominate our discourse and manipulate our culture?”

For the provocation keep escalating. The Washington Post’s editors actually thought that a Poe’s Law evoking piece headlined “My name is a Confederate monument, so I cross it out when I write it” was worthy of publication. In an orgy of narcissism, U.S. history-hatred and virtue-signalling, a writer named Bayard Woods saluted his ridiculous habit of crossing out his own name, which he says, “had stood as a Confederate monument over every story I had ever written.” See, the Bayards and the Woodses had owned slaves. By this brilliant logic, I should cross out my name too, since Chief Justice John Marshall was a slaveholder and “Jack” honors Jack the Ripper.

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Today’s Intellectually Dishonest Dobbs Leak Freakout: “A Lot Of Powerful People Seem To Have No Clue What Motherhood Means” (Washington Post)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

You have to admit, the pro-abortion hysterics and fanatics are doing a bang-up job proclaiming their fury at the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court may be about to strike down Roe v. Wade without making anything that hints of a good faith argument on the merits. The latest example of this massive exercise in “appeal to emotion” and “let’s keep the American public as dumb as we can, all the better to manipulate them” is an op-ed by Monica Hesse, the Washington Post’s resident gender bigot. Previously, Ethics Alarms had highlighted her fantasy that Mary, Donna Reed’s character in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” is the “real hero” of the classic (Right–she’s the one who gave up her chance at al education and a career to save her father’s rinky-dink savings and loan so Bedford Falls didn’t become a cesspool under the thumb of the richest and meanest man in town) and this article attacking the Trump White House Christmas decorations and using them to excoriate Melania Trump for existing, sneering that any one who referred to Trump’s First Lady as “elegant” meant it as a code word for “White.” Yes, she’s a race bigot too. I would no more have sampled a Hesse column in the Post than tried a fried centipede as a snack, except the Ann Althouse pointed me to it.

[A side note regarding Ann: she’s written 14 posts including the May 2 entry in which she reported on the leak and proclaimed the looming cancellation of Roe “a calamity.” She has never explained why she thinks it’s a calamity, although in 2006 she opined on what the results of Roe going down might be. She’s a law professor, and her blog has no borders, like this one, which is constrained to examine ethics only. Those 14 posts cover everything from her usual linguistic nit-picking to musing about the leak, but there is no explanation of the “calamity” verdict. That’s irresponsible, and, frankly, cowardly. But I digress.]

Here’s the crux of Hesse’s argument, if you can call it that: the supply chain-triggered shortage in baby formula shows how cruel and ignorant the Supreme Court majority is. She writes,

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Ethics Quiz: The George Washington Hating George Washington Student’s Washington Post Op-Ed

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

A black college senior named Caleb Francois who is currently attending George Washington University in Washington, D.C. persuaded the Washington Post to publish his op-ed of surpassing ignorance and stupidity. His thesis (or theses)?

The racist visions of James Madison, Winston Churchill and others are glorified through building names, programs, statues and libraries that honor their memory.

The controversial Winston Churchill Library must go. The university’s contentious colonial moniker must go. Even the university’s name, mascot and motto — “Hail Thee George Washington”— must be replaced. The hypocrisy of GW in not addressing these issues is an example of how Black voices and Black grievances go ignored and highlights the importance of strong Black leadership.

The Post is being roasted in various conservative forums for publishing the 800-word essay.  One pundit (at Breitbart) writes,

The arrogance of the Post knows no bounds. Publishing this editorial is just another troll from the Post, a way for the Post to stick its finger in the eye of its critics by relishing the hypocritical double standards the former newspaper now lives by.

I hate to defend the Post, but I don’t think for a second that the paper finds the student’s argument persuasive. It’s just provocative, and like other off-the-wall opinion pieces published by both the Post and The New York Times (remember the op-ed recommending that children and babies get to vote?), publication doesn’t imply endorsement. Yet the author in this case isn’t a historian or a crackpot professor; it’s a maleducated, indoctrinated young black man imbued with the 20-something’s unique certitude that he has everything figured out. If Caleb learns anything after graduation, I think it is very likely that he will want change his name and keep a bag over his head. Should a national newspaper help a young man to make a fool of himself?

Predictably, even the Post’s progressive readership entered an overwhelmingly negative verdict on the piece (which the author will surely dismiss as more racism and white supremacy.) Here is the “most liked” and the most representative of the over 1200 comments:

History professor here. If GW was only known for being a Confederate General or a slave owner, cancel away and rename away. But he was not. He is known for so much more… one of the biggest things is the idea that a president is not a king. And the office is not for life. Without him, our country would not be free. He kept order at a time when fractions would have torn us asunder. For God’s sake, do not rename George Washington University… I’m a liberal, and I believe in equality for all. But this is just stupid.

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Signature Significance: Washington Post Editorial Board’s Fantasy

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

How can anyone take seriously, much less trust, a newspaper with an editorial board that would publish something like this?

The headline was clickbait, at least for me: “Biden shows once again why he is a huge upgrade from Trump.” I had to read it. “Once again”? “Huge upgrade”? I wondered what on earth the Post could be referring to. The answer took me by surprise.

The editorial was lauding Biden’s pardoning or commuting convicted criminals who committed nonviolent federal crimes. Well, I’m not going to quibble: the traditional POTUS use of the Presidential pardon power is a low, low, lower than low bar to clear. I haven’t seen the full information on those who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted, but they were overwhelmingly drug offenders, and overwhelmingly “of color,” because that’s how this Administration rolls. There is, I surmise, virtually no chance that Joe was personally involved in the choice of who to pardon, and scant chance that he had to do anything more than sign off on the selections made by Elizabeth G. Oyer, the Justice Department’s pardon chief.

Still, the Presidential pardon power is shamefully underused, and has been grossly misused in the past, notably when Bill Clinton, in the waning days of his Presidency, pardoned fugitive Marc Rich, who had been indicted on federal charges of tax evasion, wire fraud, racketeering, and making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. Why did Clinton do this? His ex-wife pledged millions to Clinton’s Presidential library, and suddenly Rich was pardoned.

It was a bribe, straight up. How does the Post describe what Clinton did? A “pardon of a Democratic donor looked like a quid pro quo.” Is that a fair or accurate description? No, but the deceit allows the Post editors to say “President Donald Trump was far worse.” Really? Far worse than taking millions of dollars to pardon scum like Marc Rich? That deliberate misrepresentation is also an excellent reason not to trust the Post.

Trump is condemned by the Post because he pardoned some of his loyalists like Mike Flynn, Joe Arpaio and Steve Bannon, all of whom the Post ranks as worse than Rich by virtue of being connected to Trump. I hold most of those pardons justifiable. The Democrats criminalized politics when Trump was elected: those associated with the President had targets on their backs for partisan prosecutors to aim at. Though the Post’s editors don’t mention it, Trump also pardoned a lot of non-violent offenders who were worthy of mercy.

Here is something else that they don’t mention: if all we are talking about is pardons and commutations, Biden is a “huge upgrade” over Barack Obama, and so was Trump. By Thanksgiving of 2010, a full two years into his first term, Obama had pardoned two turkeys (one the previous year) and no human beings.

But of course the Washington Post doesn’t have the integrity to mention that.

The larger point is this: It is ridiculous to cite the use of the pardon power as evidence of any President’s virtues as a leader. There are literally millions of Americans who would be spectacular at issuing pardons. That doesn’t mean that they would be effective Presidents. How often are numbers of pardons and commutations cited by historians in assessing Presidencies? I can answer that: almost never. It is a relatively minor part of the job, and being a responsible and competent wielder of that power (giving Joe a very large benefit of the doubt) doesn’t make Biden a “huge upgrade” over any of his predecessors.

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Ethics Observations On The Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Senate Hearings, Part 1

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Now take The Washington Post….please.

Yesterday’s Editorial Board screed about the hearings serve a single useful purpose for any readers with a smidgen of memory and a dash of objectivity. It serves as the equivalent of a neon sign reading, “We are shameless partisan hacks!”

Consider its headline: “Republicans boast they have not pulled a Kavanaugh. In fact, they’ve treated Jackson worse.”

Did Republicans dig up a witness (and pro-abortion activist—merely a coincidence, I’m sure) who used a three decade old “discovered memory” to accuse a a 50-year-old judge with an impeccable record as a responsible citizen and a devoted father and spouse of an attempted sexual assault when he was a teenager? No. Did they do this despite the fact that the alleged incident had no individual other than the accuser who could confirm it, nor even a definite date or place where the “assault” occurred? No. Has anything said in the hearings resulted in demonstrators calling the judge a rapist? Continue reading →

“Democracy Dies In Dickness”*: The Washington Post’s Racism

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

This article in the Washington Post yesterday, authored by two “reports of color,” Cleve R. Wootson Jr., a White House reporter for the Post, and Marianna Sotomayor (no relation to that other Sotomayor) who now covers the House of Representatives for the Post after coming over from NBC, gained quite a bit of notice from the conservative news media (and none at all from the much larger other side, for this passage when it was first published:

 
 
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Nice! The two post reporters managed to insult Thomas by reducing his legal opinions to knee-jerk bias, and to attack conservatives based on their race. The obvious rejoinder to this slur would be whether the Post would tolerate an article that criticized, say, Justice Kagan as issuing opinions that are in lockstep with the advocacy of “black progressives.” What does race have to do with either observation, the actual one or the hypothetical reverse negative?

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