Jack Marshall Watch 2018-09-10

Jack started the week with a bang, as he tore into… wait, let me check my notes… Senator John McCain’s funeral, which he describes as “a perfect example of hypocrisy for the ages.”

It was undeniably uncivil to dis-invite the President of the United States from what would otherwise be a display of unified and bi-partisan Washington community respect for a departed public servant. That was an insult, and intended as one.

Maybe, but it was also a courtesy to McCain’s family and friends. I certainly wouldn’t want President Trump at my funeral, because I love my family and wouldn’t want to subject them to that. It’s arguable that McCain also did Trump a favor, because you know that if Trump was there he would have said some stupid shit.

Jack likes rules, so here’s a rule that applies: Don’t invite a clown to perform at a funeral.*

Insults are not civil. The retort to this is that the President was not civil to McCain, which is true. However, if the professional duty of civility is waived by another’s breach of it, then there is no such duty.

Correct. There is no such duty. This is not like a customer service situation, where employees are supposed to remain unilaterally polite even to the rudest of customers. Civility is a two-way street. If you don’t give it, you have no right to claim it from others. Trump is reaping what he has sown.

McCain’s own daughter launched the proceedings with her own uncivil rant, saying in part, “We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness—the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.” Later, she added, “The America of John McCain has no need to be made great again, because America was always great.”

Defending her father at his funeral? What a bitch! Why wasn’t she thinking more about Donald Trump’s feelings!

In addition to being uncivil […] the attacks on the President, like Meagan McCain’s, were cowardly. The man (and the office) being savaged wasn’t present, and the crowd was united in its hostility to the target. George Washington’s 110 Rules of Civility cover that kind of conduct neatly:

89. Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.

I guess by the time Washington got to number 89 he was just padding out the list, because that makes no sense. It’s an impossibly restrictive standard. Also, I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure Washington had some nasty things to say about King George. And if Jack is really concerned about speaking ill of the absent, why is he calling Meagan McCain a coward when she’d not around? For that matter, Jack also criticizes Senator McCain, who is about as absent as it gets.

Seriously though, I don’t know what Washington meant when he wrote this, but the usual social rule about not speaking ill of someone behind their back is an admonition against spreading rumors that they won’t know about therefore cannot attempt to counter if they are untrue. That’s not relevant here because Meagan McCain was’t passing around rumors. She was expressing an opinion. And she wasn’t saying this behind Trump’s back. She spoke in public, in front of the news media, where Trump could easily find out about it and respond.

On Tuesday, Jack complains about this passage from a story about the family of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, after a police officer was sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing him:

Edwards also acknowledged that before the start of the murder trial she was pessimistic about the prosecution’s chances, after watching police shooting cases like those involving Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Clinton Allen, Alton Sterling, Terence Crutcher and others.

Jack objects, not without some merit, to the article’s grouping together of those cases.

Michael Brown attacked a police officer and was shot.

That’s a fair description, given what we know. But Jack doesn’t stop there.

Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy, died as the result of a series of mistakes by all involved, at the hands of a police officer who never should have been allowed to carry a gun. Rice’s death was negligence, not murder.

Tamir Rice was innocent, and he was shot dead by a police officer, and no one was ever charged for killing him. Jack’s remark about it being negligence changes nothing. No one was charged with negligence either. It’s not hard to see how this would make someone worry that a child shot dead by a police officer might not receive justice.

Philadro Castile, a black motorist who insisted on reaching into his pocket for his license after announcing to a panicky officer that he was carrying a gun, was shot after the officer screamed, “Don’t pull it out!” more than once. I don’t think any jury would guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in that fact pattern, and the officer’s jury didn’t.

This is a bit disingenuous. For one thing, you wouldn’t know from Jack’s description that after the officer screamed “Don’t pull it out!”, Castile did not, in fact, pull out his gun. Jack also omits the salient fact that the officer also asked Castile for his driver’s license and registration. In other words, he told Castile to get something he’d have to reach for, and then shot him for reaching for something. This is bad police work and arguably a criminally bad shooting.

Jack also has this to say:

I honestly don’t know what the right approach is to sentencing police officers who kill citizens without justification or cause in the throes of panic, bad judgment, poor training, or tragic error. I believe that the perilous job police officers perform should be a mitigating factor in sentencing.

Which contrasts disturbingly with his next post, about some people who encountered a moose near a bike path and accidentally frightened it into a body of water, where it drowned:

This is a pointless, tragic, negligent killing of an innocent animal. No photograph is worth the life of a vole, much less a moose, yet too many human beings are so addicted to recording the images of their oh so fascinating lives that they disconnect the ethics alarms and common sense alerts that should tell them instinctively that…

• Intruding on nature threatens and harms it.
• Reality is not best experienced through a camera lens.
• Nobody else can enjoy a natural scene when human beings insist on imposing on it.
• The welfare of the wildlife should be the first consideration, not an afterthought.

What is an appropriate practical punishment for tourists who do things like this? Fines are not enough, and I guess public flogging is excessive.

These people didn’t intrude on nature. They were in their community. The moose was the intruder. That’s not the moose’s fault — moose will be moose — but Jack wants these people punished for not understanding the risk of a situation they stumbled into by accident.

On the other hand, when a trained police officer working for by the community deliberately inserts himself into a situation where he unnecessarily shoots someone, Jack is all “Eh…I don’t know…it’s complicated…there are mitigating circumstances…”

I doubt Jack literally thinks Moose Lives Matter more than black lives, but the juxtaposition of those posts is food for thought.

On Thursday, Jack wrote about the an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times by a member of the Trump administration who claims that Trump’s staff are managing him like a toddler to keep him from screwing things up real bad.

If the op-ed is not a hoax, and if there are, as the writer says, highly placed members of the Trump Administration who are pretending to be loyal government employees but who are actually trying to undermine the President and his policies from within, then the assertions by conservatives and Trump supporters of the existence of a “deep state,” much mocked by the news media and Democrats, have been accurate all along.

Not even close. The “deep state” refers to career bureaucrats who are so well entrenched that pretty much just keep doing what they’re doing no matter who is president. The author of the op-ed, and everyone he refers to, are the “best people” that Trump picked to be in his administration. This is a problem he brought on himself.

In his Friday morning round-up, Jack took on Twentieth Century Fox for removing actor Wilder Striegel’s scenes from the new version of Predator after actress Olivia Munn discovered he was a registered sex offender. He had served six months in jail on charges of risk of injury to a child and enticing a minor by computer in connection with a 14-year-old girl.

Jack’s response is a thing of beauty:

This reminds me of the scene in Ship of Fools when a passenger is exiled from the captain’s table on a German ship because a Nazi complains that he is Jewish.

I did not see that coming. I know Jack supports the War on Drugs, but he must have been smoking something to think it was appropriate to compare this situation to the Nazi persecution of the Jews. 

I don’t like the way we treat sex offenders in this country. The registration requirements and living restrictions are draconian, yet there is little evidence that sex offender registration reduces crime rates. But not wanting a registered sex offender to appear in your big studio film does not make you Hitler.

I know some registered sex offenders. One of them is a good friend, and a terrific human being in all respects that I have observed. I would cast him in a play I was directing, and in fact have. If an actress objected, or anyone else, my response would be the same as it would to a performer who complained that he or she had discovered that my friend was part black, Muslim, or a transsexual.

On the other hand, if she discovered that one of the performers had been brought to American illegally by his parents when he was eight, Jack would probably want her to call ICE on him.

On Saturday, Jack posted from his business trip to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and the second item is 100% classic Jack. He’s angry about an article listing countries where you would probably enjoy retirement more than in the United States, based on something called the 2017 Global Retirement Index.

The entire attitude underlying this article, “16 countries where you can retire ‘happier’ than in the US.” is selfish and irresponsible. You are an American citizen and this is a participatory democracy. I don’t care if you’re retired; you still have a lifetime obligation to contribute to society, your community, and the nation.

No. No you don’t. Nobody owns you like a piece of fucking property. And you certainly aren’t owned by the government. You’re free people and you can do what you want.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a guy who gets so angry over people coming here from other countries would also get angry over people leaving. This is just Jack showing his ugly totalitarian streak. It’s values like this that make me think it’s a waste of time to leave comments on his posts.

Jack also writes about some unexpected encounters he had with transgender people on his trip. Don’t worry, it’s more amusing than horrifying.

At our hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, a convention of either transvestites, transgender individuals, or some combination of the two dominated the hotel. The organization was “Himmaher”…I think I’m spelling it right.

He’s not spelling it right. The first entry Google finds for the word “”Himmaher” — and I had to force a literal search — is Jack’s post.

I’m just guessing, but I think Jack must have been staying at the Riverside Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale, which from September 6 through 8 was hosting the Southern Comfort Transgender Conference. The conference occupies four of the hotels’s conference rooms: The New River room, Abeona room, Merritt room, and…the Himarshee room. I’m guessing Jack saw or heard that last room and thought it sounded like some kind of transgender reference. It’s actually the Native American name for a nearby river. (Jack has sort of corrected this in his post since.)

I had several illuminating encounters. I don’t know that this is true of all such people, but the members of this association or club all seemed to want to make any non-club member they saw as uncomfortable as possible. Yes, that’s unethical.

Yes, that must be what they were up to. They’re freaking the squares. It’s the only possible explanation for a convention of hundreds of transgender people walking around looking like they are transgender people.

But what these people seemed to be seeking was imposed ethics zugswang. If you looked directly at them, the response was a chip-on-the-shoulder, “Go ahead and stare, honey: never seen a freak before?” If you appeared to be avoiding staring—I regard a six-foot ex-male standing in the middle of a hotel lobby in a wig, skimpy bathing suit, 6 inch heels and speaking loudly in a base voice as parading a psychological problem or ten, and deserving the same social courtesy I would offer to a Tourette’s victim or a hebephrenic—then the individual decided to make it a project to get you to stare, as if your failure to provide the attention they craved was an insult.

So it’s all a trap, you see. Transgender people are trying to make you feel guilty for not starting at them, but when you look at them, they snark at you. Don’t say Jack hasn’t warned you!

*Unless, of course, the deceased and/or close family and friends are actual clowns, in which case a sketch suitable for the somber occasion may be appropriate. Windypundit does not discriminate against clowns. We are less tolerant of fools.