“whataboutism”

I Guess It’s Nice That NBC Is So Open About Its Bias, Loyalties and Motives Now…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Anyone: give me a benign explanation for this tweet from NBC News today…

Any takers?

The least damning explanations for this would be that whoever is running the NBC News X account is an idiot. But who hired him? Who trained him?

To state the obvious, the fact that the head of the Biden autopen investigation used an autopen is not newsworthy, ironic, or hypocritical. First, there is no evidence that Comer didn’t fully control the procedure. Second, he’s not President. Third, a subpoena does not confer a benefit on anyone. Fourth, there are no allegations of other serious usurpations of Comer’s power and position. Fifth, there is no indication that Comer is suffering from crippling dementia.

The tweet is an extraordinary example of really, really desperate whataboutism. It would be embarrassing f it came from a hyper-partisan junior House member. For such partisan spin to come from a major news organization is nauseating.

Who Didn’t See the “Whataboutism” Defense of the Biden Dementia Cover-up Coming?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I call this pathetic, and depressing evidence of just how low the Axis and its supporters are willing to stoop to avoid admitting their obvious wrongdoing.

Desperate Democrats in my life started resorting to this in early 2024, despite its being strained and unethical. Trump, you see, was just as mentally fading as Biden. Sure, whatever you say, Trump Derangement Face! Maybe they even have convinced themselves that they believe this. “Listen to his rambling! The crazy things he says!”

Of course, Trump has always been like this, at least for as long as I’ve paid attention to him which has been several decades now. Nevertheless, no one can miss his extraordinary energy, his willingness to be seen and interviewed, and his resilience. There is, literally, no comparison with Biden’s obvious physical and mental deterioration, nor does it seem plausible that anyone would be able to hijack Trump’s power in the White House like Biden’s aides did to poor Joe.

But here’s Mediaite this week with a headline identical to several other Axis propaganda sites—yup, a memo must have gone out!—“Trump Drops Papers He Just Signed and Mistakenly Refers to the U.K. as ‘The European Union.’”

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Addendum to “Ethics Dunce : President Trump. Again.”: Ethics Dunce: V.P. J.D. Vance

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Ugh. Then conservative pundit at Townhall writes, “JD Vance Absolutely Wrecked an Anti-Trump Commentator Over This Trump White House Post.“

No, Matt, that is not a witty, persuasive or devastating reply to poor, useless Bill Kristol’s tweet. Vance’s retort is the equivalent of “Oh, yeah? Well, your mother is fat!” or You suck!” or “Your favorite President, Bush, would make an even worse Pope!” Or George Costanza’s immortal, “Oh, yeah? Well, I had sex with your wife!”

True, there are some mitigating elements here. Vance, as Veep, is obligated to defend the President even when Trump’s words or conduct are indefensible. It is also true that Bill Kristol, who became so Trump-Deranged that he has turned against principles his entire career was dedicated to advocating and defending, is such an embarrassment that the response he deserves would be, “Bill, nobody cares what you think about anything any more, including me. Go away.”

But Vance resorting to flagrant deflection and “whataboutism” further corrupts civic discourse by endorsing logical fallacies and rationalizations. And for Vespa to cheer such lazy argumentation on compounds the sin.

What About Whataboutism?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The agreed-upon “resistance”/Democratic/mainstream media rebuttal of complaints that the Justice Department has fashioned a new set of standards for prosecution in order to neutralized Donald Trump is being met by smug accusations of “Whataboutism.” Whataboutism is one of the Ethics Alarms rationalizations on the list, and high up that list, at #2. Before I wrote this post, I checked what I had written, which was short and to the point:

The mongrel offspring of The Golden Rationalization and the Bible-based dodges a bit farther down the list, the “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse is both a rationalization and a distraction. As a rationalization, it posits the absurd argument that because there is other wrongdoing by others that is similar, as bad or worse than the unethical conduct under examination, the wrongdoer’s conduct shouldn’t be criticized or noticed. As a distraction, the excuse is a pathetic attempt to focus a critic’s attention elsewhere, by shouting, “Never mind me! Why aren’t you going after those guys?”

Moved by the current “Axis of Unethical Conduct’s distortion of the concept, I added the following to avoid future confusion (or corrupt rhetorical misappropriation):

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A Conservative Whataboutism And Rationalization #22 Spectacular!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Republican George Santos’s election to a Long Island seat in Congress helped Republicans achieve their  narrow majority in the House of Representatives. He ran as  the “full embodiment of the American dream.”

His campaign biography said he was the son of Brazilian immigrants who raised himself from humble credentials at a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved the lives of more than 2,500 dogs and cats. But Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the  Wall Street firms Santos said he worked for, have no record of  Santis ever working there.  Baruch College, which Rep. Santos  said he graduated from in 2010, has no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating. That  animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, isn’t, as Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: the IRS has no record of a registered charity with that name. The New York Times also alleges that important information on Santos’s personal financial disclosures were withheld. Then there are some criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil that Santos never included in that shining campaign biography. Continue reading →

The Washington Post “Factchecker” Wants Us To Know That President Biden Lying About the Georgia Voting Law Isn’t So Bad Because President Trump Lied All The Time.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Who couldn’t see this coming?

When I recently noted on Facebook the fact, and it is a fact, that Biden has intentionally told the public that the Georgia voting reform bill limits the times for voting when in fact it expands them, the Trump Deranged reacted predictably, immediately alluding to President Trump’s alleged lies as a justification for giving Biden a pass. First of all, a basic principle of ethics holds that an unethical act is not mitigated by similar or worse conduct by someone else. More importantly, however, when discussing leadership credibility, both quality and quantity matters. As Ethics Alarms pointed out early in the Trump administration, he had such a well-established proclivity for exaggeration, hyperbole, boasting, eccentric views of reality, selective memory and gibberish that it was difficult to take his assertions seriously. Moreover, the news media and anti-Trump fanatics refused to distinguish between actual lies—falsehoods designed to deceive—and Trump’s opinions they disagreed with or statements they deliberately misinterpreted—or lied about themselves, in some cases for years.

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Comment Of The Day: “Unethical Quote Of The Month: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I want to apologize to the legitimate Comments of the Day that are still waiting on the runway, but this one ticked me off. If you want to know why we don’t get more progressive perspective around here, it’s because I end up dinging submissions like this using the Ethics Alarms Stupidity Rule. However, a first time commenter named Mike Fitzgerald offered this, and I decided it was worth highlighting because it has all the features of the average missive from the Left. Mike says he’s not a liberal, so I will take him at his word. His assertion, however,  that President Trump is a “would-be dictator” is signature significance for a non-liberal who doesn’t have the historical knowledge, perspective or awareness not to swallow  “resistance” Big Lies whole.

In truth, the “dictator”smear has been used against many Presidents by political opponents, always when they use their legitimate powers to seek ends the opponents object to. Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, TR, and FDR are prominent among the so-accused. Such Presidents, whatever their virtues and deficits otherwise, are known as strong Presidents. The opposition always hates strong Presidents, and tries to use fear-mongering to undermine them.

But you have to know some Presidential history to realize this.

Here’s Mike’s comment, in response to “Unethical Quote Of The Month: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace,” to be followed immediately by my restrained reply to it.

In honesty the point(s) raised about Wallace are valid but Trump supporters pretend the Fox is a balanced unbiased news agency, None of you mentioned Hannity or Shapiro or the three geniuses on the morning couch. Very selective memories to support a would be dictator.

PS. I am not a liberal

My reply: Continue reading →

Super Bowl Sunday Ethics Warm-Up, 2/3/219…To Remind You That You Can’t Be Serious About Ethics And Support The NFL. Sorry.

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME

...ethics?

Started this post in the morning; now, after another wipeout sick day, I’m trying to get it up before midnight. I’m sorry.

1. As a refresher...here’s last year’s Super Bowl guilt trip. I’d write a fresh one, but believe it or not, I’m still sick and in bed. Key quote:

It’s your choice. If you do choose to cheer on the Pats and the Eagles [this year, the Rams], though, don’t pretend that you don’t know that what you’re really cheering, enabling, and ensuring will keep ruining lives.

Incidentally, NFL TV ratings are way up this year. DEE-FENCE!

2. Today’s blackface news...This is not a parody; academics really are this ridiculous: in New York Times op-ed too dumb to link to, headlined ‘Mary Poppins, and a Nanny’s Shameful Flirting With Blackface,’ Professor Daniel Pollack-Pelzner argues that the scene in the original 1964 film in which Mary cavorts with the chimney sweeps and ends up with her face blackened by soot is racially offensive, because it emulates blackface. Points:

  • This utterly deranged PC nonsense was actually seemed worthy of publication.
  • This tells us the risks parents of today take by entrusting the minds of their children to irresponsible institutions and educators who have devolved into advocates for racial paranoia.
  • Linfield College, in Oregon, employs this lunatic, meaning that its administrators think that someone who watches a fantasy dance number performed by chimney sweeps and sees a racist message can be trusted to teach its students.

  • Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, who collaborated on the 2004 stage adaptation of Mary Poppins that returns to the West End later this year, explained for the benefit of the Times, the crazy professor, and anyone so gullibve as to take either of them seriously, that Mary’s acceptance of the soot on her face is meant to be a gesture of support for the sweeps. “All she wants to do is join the sweeps and show them she isn’t standing apart – that she wants to belong to that group. It’s a touching scene and it displays a warm friendliness towards the sweeps,” he said. Funny, I was able to figure that out when I saw the film the first time, and I was 14-years old.

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Noonish Ethics Warm-Up, 11/30/18: The Trouble With Sloth, Bing Misplaced, And Reader Pointers

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Hi there…

1. Thank you to the readers who immediately took my call for tips and links to heart. This post ends with three of them, and there are more on the way.

 2. Can we have a little Christmas music station integrity, please? There are currently three holiday music channels on Sirius-XM: an all instrumental channel, aka. department store muzak; “Holly,” which is supposedly “contemporary” Christmas music, meaning either bad songs, endless covers of “Last Christmas,” or horrific versions of classics so stylized that they are unrecognizable, like Destiny’s Child’s jarring version of “O Holy Night;” and “Traditions,” which is the all-dead people channel, with actual tunes, occasional references to Jesus, angels, and Bethlehem, and only a couple of songs written before 1963.

But it’s complicated. John Lennon is dead, but his awful Christmas song shows up on “Holly.” Paul NcCartney’s awful Christmas song has been on both channels: he’s alive, BUT the song is crap. However, I nearly drove off the road just now when Holly featured Bing Crosby singing “Mele kalikimaka” with the Andrews Sisters, whose recording of the same sone without Der Bingle turned up yesterday on Traditions. I don’t get it.

3. This is a good test as to whether the public is smart enough to know when it’s being manipulated. Paul Manfort’s plea deal about his dealings with the Ukraine and other questionable machinations unrelated to his time with the Trump campaign has nothing to do with the Russian 2016 election meddling. Michael Cohen admitting that he lies about his activities connected to the Trump organization building a hotel in Moscow also has no connection to the Left’s Russian collusion fantasies. So why is the news media hyperventilating about “big breaks” in the Mueller investigation? I’d say a) confirmation bias b) they aren’t very bright c) they don’t think the public is very bright, and d) they think they can continue to undermine the public trust by flogging this narrative. This is a fact: there was and is nothing illegal about Donald Trump pursuing a business project in Russia while running for President. It does not suggest or constitute collusion, and the fact that his ridiculous ex-lawyer lied about it is irrelevant to the Trump Presidency.

Nonetheless, here’s CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin yesterday: Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/4/2018: A Frivolous Lawsuit, An Unscripted Actress, A Lesson In Assuming, And Fake News

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Good Morning!

1 On feminist integrity. The reader poll on the post about the interesting silence of US women’s rights organizations and their component feminists as their Iranian sisters protest oppression in Iran has already had more participation that the last four Ethics Alarms polls combined. Why is that? In more news related to that post, some determined spinners here claimed that the feminists have been burning up the blogs and websites with supportive essays and blog posts, so the radio silence is a myth. No, THAT was a myth: there is nothing on those sites, or if there is, it didn’t surface when I checked Ms., Jezebel, NOW and four prominent blogs. (Update: Reader Humble Talent has checked two more. Also nothing.)

Please don’t make up stuff or assume facts you haven’t checked when you don’t want to accept reality, friends. It’s not fair, and it’s not ethical debating practice. Because I trust and respect the commenter in question, I just assumed she was right, because I assumed she had checked. No, it appears she had assumed, and was not right.  And you know what Felix Unger proved happens when you assume..

2. This is why they give actors scripts. I enjoy actress Meryl Streep as an artist, but for me she is fast entering Alec Baldwin territory, a performer whose personal character deficits are becoming so overpowering that even her undeniable talent can’t make watching the performer on screen endurable. Streep is in a deep hole she keeps digging. Being a Harvey Weinstein acolyte and beneficiary for years (and a Roman Polanski apologist), she is denying culpability as an enabler of his serial sexual predation because, she says, she didn’t know. Almost nobody finds her denial credible. Yesterday the Times published a joint interview with Streep and her “The Post” co-star, Tom Hanks. Told by the interviewer that in light of the doubts about what she knew, the public wants to hear more from her, she responded,

“I don’t want to hear about the silence of me. I want to hear about the silence of Melania Trump. I want to hear from her. She has so much that’s valuable to say. And so does Ivanka. I want her to speak now.”

Streep locks up the 2018 Whataboutism of the Year title with that one, along with adding a ridiculous sentence into my personal collection of statements that deserve note because they had never been said before in the history of the English language. I started my collection decades ago at a family Thanksgiving dinner, when my sister said, “You know, the fish looks so good, I think I’ll wear my bra on my head.” And a collection was born.

“I don’t want to hear about the silence of me” has an elegant simplicity about it. In addition to being a strange sentiment, Streep also misses the whole concept of an interview—surprising, since she has done so many of them. See, Meryl, these questions are about what the public wants to hear about, not what you want to hear about. Was that really unclear to you until now? This was not an open invitation to announce all the things you’d like to hear about that have absolutely nothing to do with Harvey Weinstein. This is “Look! Squirrel!” carried to a demented extreme. Streep revealed herself as seriously Trump Deranged, as she thinks that the way out of every personal crisis is to declare, “But what about TRUMP????”

Looks like I won’t be watching “The River Wild” again. Pity. (I won’t watch “The Dear Hunter” again either, but then you never could have made me watch that thing a second time, not under torture or extortion.)

3. Now THIS is a frivolous law suit.  From CNN:
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