Category Archives: Ethics

Update II: How Shall I Praise Thee, Oh Bloody Congress?!

COINAGE FOR CONGRESS. In the post titled “Energy Independence Isolationism”, reader Steve protests my uncharacteristic choice of language for Congress members.

I responded by asking him what else would he have me call them? I have run out of adjectival niceties. Maybe readers have some, but I’m all out.

I’ve been in the trenches for over a decade, and have been pretty polite throughout. (Okay, in “Bush’s 16 Words Miss the Big Picture,” I likened Bush’s “Bring ‘Em On” grin to “the grimace on the face of a demented patient with end-stage syphilis.”)

Have the Leaders returned the courtesy? Have they refrained, at the very least, from bloodletting and thieving and all other manner of immorality and dishonor? No.

To everything there is a season, it is written in Ecclesiastes. The time is ripe to call a F-ck Face a FF.

I’ll tell you what: I’ll change “Congressional Cockroaches” to “Congressional Creeps.” I was being grossly unfair to cockroaches.

Updated (June 24): Steve has forgiven me (although he posted his reply to the wrong post). He writes:

Ilana, touché. No need to pull punches. They are f-ck faces. Libertarian small-g goddess-hood intact. Now, I just have more than your intellect by which to be intimidated. My use of the f bomb tends to be more mundane and unimaginative, and almost universally traffic-related. Props!

Thanks for feeling my pain, Steve. I’m glad my fall from grace has been halted. As a first-time offender (scroll down), let me say in my defense that mitigating circumstances were–are–in abundance. Actually, believe it or not, christening Congress as I did was no “crime” of passion. I had thought of removing the risqué moniker, and then decided that the time was ripe to “Out [these] damned spots.”

Update II: Has anyone noticed that this is blog number 666? The Number of the Beast. Speaking of the Devil. (The Number of the Beast Iron-Maiden style is cool).

By the way, in case of a misunderstanding, the honorifics in this post apply, naturally, to members of both Houses (sans Ron Paul). A pox on both Houses.

‘Colorectal Crusader’ Couric Cries Foul

Ethics, General, Hillary Clinton, Journalism, Media

What never fails to amaze me about the anointed Idiocracy of America (Peggy Noonan comes to mind here) is that, no matter how evil and erroneous their way, they always get curtain calls; they retain their status as philosopher-kings. Or queens.

Colonic Crusader” Katie Couric said this at an award ceremony for her cherished self:

“However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I’ve ever seen.”

[Note the grating “I feel” locution]

Rewind to February this year:

Sly Katie recently interviewed Clinton while intoxicated—drunk with love for Obama. Couric’s below-the-belt barbs and blithe probes about Obama—but not the issues—made Hillary appear elevated by comparison. The Senator was courteous where Katie was cruel.

‘Someone told me your nickname in school was Miss Frigidaire. Is that true?’ Couric asked. ‘Only with some boys,’ Clinton said, laughing

The answer was quick, and, I must confess, classy. The question was base and bitchy. (It’s of a piece with another iconic ‘journalist’s’ cruelty—that of Barbara Walters. She prefaced an interview with Celine Dion by pronouncing: ‘you are not beautiful.’ Tears welled in Dion’s beautiful eyes.)

Excerpted from my “Militant Mama Obama.”

Spitzer Also Edited The Harvard Law Review

Business, Constitution, Democrats, Ethics, Justice, Law, Natural Law

(The title of the post is a tad unfair to Obama, I know. But editing The Harvard Law Review is clearly no litmus test for purity of intellect or ethics.)

One thing is for sure, Spitzer did not forge his political and fiscal fortunes by means of voluntary exchanges on the free market. The Spitzer piranha didn’t give law teeth; but used bad law to bite business to the bone.

Daniel Gross of Slate had this to say back in 2004:

Spitzer made maximum hay out of the “New York State’s Martin Act. The 1921 legislation, as Nicholas Thompson noted in this Legal Affairs piece, gives extraordinary powers and discretion to an attorney general fighting financial fraud. He can ‘subpoena any document he wants from anyone doing business in the state,’ make investigations secret or public at his whim, and ‘choose between filing civil or criminal charges whenever he wants.’ Extraordinarily, Thompson notes, ‘people called in for questioning during Martin Act investigations do not have a right to counsel or a right against self-incrimination. Combined, the act’s powers exceed those given any regulator in any other state.’”

Spitzer embodied abuse of power. As a government goon, he was an extortionist extraordinaire. “He didn’t simply indict. He issued press releases. When Spitzer published a press release detailing a shocking betrayal of trust by” this or the other “of Wall Street’s most trusted names,” the company would lose billions in market value in a matter of days and would quickly settle with the thug.

I know I’ve defended the naturally licit actions of scum such as Scooter Libby against naturally illicit prosecutions. And yes, I support the decriminalization of prostitution (but not its moral elevation). Yes again: I believe Spitzer’s funds are his to move about, and that his transactions were perfectly licit. So call me inconsistent on this count, but this character is so evil, contemptible, and uncontrollable (and nauseatingly hypocritical), I consider it a mitzvah that he has been removed from office and taken DOWN, if by unjust means.

I want to see Spitzer’s name live on in infamy; he ought to ultimately die disgraced, and if we lived under a just legal system, be prosecuted—but for his crimes against innocent members of the business community. Unfortunately—and I guess I’m nothing if not consistent—I’m with Alan Dershowitz on the following count: Spitzer ought not to be prosecuted for his moral failings. Although I’m filled with schadenfreude at the spectacle of Spitzer, there is no case to be made for his prosecution in libertarian law.

More later on Spitzer’s ho—or rather on the manner in which media have infantilized the girl and turned her into a victim.

Updated: Putrid Presidential Plagiarism

Democrats, Ethics, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, Journalism, Morality

As you know, the plagiarism of ideas is, especially to this writer, a litmus test for bottom-feeding scum, plain and simple. Why is lifting ideas worse than verbatim copying? Because only the latter is legally actionable. “Smart” people know this—they know how easy it is to get away with lifting ideas, since that’s legally kosher, if utterly odious and unethical.
Those familiar with my work know that I cite religiously and faithfully—I cite even when I don’t have to really. That’s because of my ethics. On a personal level, it’s because I’m not threatened by anyone. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. Why borrow what I may be able to best?
My last brush with this contemptible conduct came about because of a brilliant and ethical colleague—if not for him, I would not have known I had been kind of victimized yet again. He was incredulous when he came across what he recognized to be my ideas, and those of a primary source I had quoted diligently in my essay, all appropriated as the offending writer’s own.
I fought back, and got a citation appended to this second-hand text. I believe you must fight back, so that those who imagine they deserve credit for your ideas pay by losing face. They now know you’re on to them.
In my case, oddly enough, people whom I quite respected have nicked my rather idiosyncratic formulations. Sean nailed it (I could credit myself with this insight, but it’s his): “what’s at play in these instances,” he explained, “is someone who believes he has said what you said, and in the event that he hasn’t, he, being so great, thinks he deserved to have said it.” Something along the lines of, “Who the hell is Ilana to write stuff that sounds as though I ought to have written it?”
Ugly, unmanly sentiments indeed.
Prior to this last episode, about which I would not have been the wiser without my ethical colleague, there was the “professor”—they are a dime a dozen—with no paper or pixel trail to his name, who decided he deserved credit for my vindicating of Michael Vick.
If you recall, I was the first to offer a detailed and rather idiosyncratic defense of Vick’s dog fighting. Sean Hannity said he had not found anyone other than me to offer a coherent defense, which is why he criss-crossed me on his show. My piece was later published in the Orange County Register too.
Google “Defense Michael Vick.” Who’s right up there after Whoopi Goldberg (who, for obvious reasons, would come first)?
My arguments continued on the blog and took a very distinguishing tack, to which the good “professor” adhered closely. His editor defended this no-name dog of a writer. Yeah, this from a bunch that never shuts up about values—the Values Vulgarizers. (Not to mention the violators of the injunction against Second-Handerism.)
So what do I think of the allegation that Obama lifted words not his for one of his uninspiring Hear Me Roar speeches? If it’s true, I agree with Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, that, “When an author plagiarizes from another author there is damage done to two different parties. One is to the person he plagiarized from. The other is to the reader.”
While Obama is accused of some lengthy appropriating absent any word of credit to the primary source, his come-back to Hillary is as impoverished as his plagiarism practice. Obama says she borrowed his “signature chant ‘fired up and ready to go’ in Davenport, Iowa, and later her echoing of his rally cry, ‘Yes, we can!’”
Puh-leeze. Next our “intellectual” will be accusing Hillary of stealing the “You Go Girl” bimbo battle cry. The above is clearly Hillary’s mocking paraphrase of Obama’s call to arms. Before he makes his next empty accusation, Imam Obama ought to know that “Ouch” has also moved into the public domain.
This particular professor is a bit shabby in this department. All not very surprising, considering my own tales of woe with professors.

Update: Obama ought to have said, “To paraphrase my friend, x,” or something along those lines. However you spin it, it’s not very elevated, coming from a man who prides himself on the proper use of words. Sourcing is part of the proper use of words.