Category Archives: morality

A Poll

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And a cynically timed one, at that. FiveThirtyEight ran a poll against the backdrop of a potential Supreme Court ruling regarding abortion, asking for abortion stories from women who’d had them.

And they ran that poll on Christmas Day, a day when hundreds of millions of Americans, and billions of Christians globally, celebrate the birth—not the abortion—of a child.

Aside from that tone-deaf, if not cynical, timing, the crowd also didn’t get the answers for which it was looking, even though it equally cynically distorted the subject altogether.

[FiveThirtyEight] states…”And now it seems likely that the Supreme Court will limit the right to abortion even further. As we document the impact of these shifts, we want to include the voices of people who have had abortions in the U.S.”

That’s the cynical mischaracterization of a potential (it’s far from a done deal) Supreme Court outcome.

What the Supreme Court might do is acknowledge the right of babies to their life by limiting access to medical procedures for killing those babies before they’re born.

The voices of those who choose a baby’s life answered the poll far more so than those who favor a mother’s “right” to kill her baby, so long as it’s not yet born. It’ll be interesting to see whether FiveThirtyEight‘s managers publish their poll’s outcome, and if they do, how they characterize it.

What She Said

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Cynthia Millen, the erstwhile USA Swimming official who resigned over the NCAA’s and UPenn’s decision to let transgender swimmer Lia Thomas compete in women’s swimming meets, had some further thoughts on the larger matter.

The fact is that swimming is a sport in which bodies compete against bodies. Identities do not compete against identities[.]

And

The statement for women then is you do not matter, what you do is not important, and little girls are going to be thrown under the bus by all of this[.]

And

…boys will always have larger lung capacity, larger hearts, greater circulation, a bigger skeleton, and less fat.

And

While Lia Thomas is a child of God, he is a biological male who is competing against women. And no matter how much testosterone suppression drugs he takes, he will always be a biological male and have the advantage.

And

All these women who worked so hard before Title IX when they didn’t have the opportunities that men had. It would be such a shame, such a travesty to throw it away now. This is what will happen.

Indeed, where is Title IX? Transgender athletes should have their own, equally funded and equally supported, athletic programs.

“Ethical Dilemma”

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Walmart is getting blowback from the citizens and government personnel of the People’s Republic of China in response to the company’s apparent decision to stop selling products—in accordance with US law—sourced from or with components sourced from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of the PRC, where the men of the PRC government are practicing genocide and using the so-far survivors for slave labor.

In her Wall Street Journal article on the matter and the blowback other US companies also are getting for following US law, Liza Lin had this remark, which illustrates the far-too-wide misunderstanding of the situation that too many journalists have.

The northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, home to millions of mostly Muslim minorities, has become a geopolitical flashpoint and an ethical dilemma for US multinationals doing business in China.

There’s no ethical dilemma here. US companies, multinational or other, have no ethical business—no moral ability—to do business within a nation that practices genocide or to do business with businesses that are domiciled in nations that practice genocide.

Full stop.

Walmart, and those other companies, would do well to withdraw altogether from the PRC, not just from the Region. Aside from the moral aspect, there are plenty of markets around the world other than those in genocidal countries.

Disingenuosity in Advertising

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Advertisers think they need to be careful this winter. Maybe they do.

Advertisers are treading carefully when it comes to peddling their products and services during February’s Beijing Winter Olympics….

And

Some brands are considering not including any references to the host city in their Olympic marketing efforts, according to advertising and marketing executives. Others plan to run non-Olympic-themed ads during the Games.

Never mind the disingenuousness of advertising on a network during that network’s Winter Olympics coverage, but carefully not mentioning the host city’s name. The who and the where remain obvious. And the who and the where remain the seat of a government that practices genocide and threatens invasion and conquering of other nations.

Nor is it all that hard. There’s no fine line to walk, there’s no need to tread carefully.

The advertisers don’t need to advertise at all on any network during that network’s coverage of this season’s Winter Olympics; let the networks carry the games ad-free. Advertisers can advertise elsewhere during the hours of games coverage to their hearts’ content, just stay true to their putative intent of remaining games-free during with those ads.

And this:

Brands are “concerned how their actions could be interpreted by the Chinese government,” and history has shown that China could take action against them if they speak out[.]

Advertisers don’t need to be cowardly, either. As soon as advertisers surrender themselves to threats of PRC government action, they become prisoners of that government. Advertisers that are American companies should act like Americans, not supplicants of the PRC’s government men.

Let the rest of us ignore the games. We’ll be watching who supports the People’s Republic of China and its atrocities.

Cowardice

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This time, by Intel’s Chairman Omar Ishrak and CEO Pat Gelsinger. This management team, a short time ago, sent out a letter to Intel suppliers asking them to avoid sourcing from the [People’s Republic of China’s] region of Xinjiang, where the Chinese government has conducted a campaign of forcible assimilation against religious minorities.

Intel called on its business partners to steer clear of the remote northwestern region of China, noting that “multiple governments have imposed restrictions on products sourced from the Xinjiang region. Therefore, Intel is required to ensure our supply chain does not use any labor or source goods or services from the Xinjiang region.”

After a hue and cry on PRC social media, though, Ishrak and Gelsinger cringed and ducked under their separate desks, and had the company issue a carefully unsigned corporate statement expressing “Intel’s” regret over having offended the PRC.

…its letter was written only to comply with US law and didn’t represent Intel’s stance on Xinjiang.

Please don’t hurt us, please. We didn’t mean it. And this plea:

We deeply apologize for the confusion caused to our respected Chinese customers, partners, and the public[.]

There’s this, too, illustrating the artificial nature of the conundrum:

Multinational companies have been caught in the middle as Western governments have pressured companies to disentangle their supply chains from Xinjiang.

No, they’re not caught in any middle. They just need to find the moral courage to shift their supply sources and their markets out of the PRC. They have the economic wherewithal, even if the transition processes will be near-term expensive. An earlier First Lady identified the position to take: “Just say no.” Even that infamous shoe-maker, Nike, has the right words, if not the integrity to honor them: “Just do it.”

Never mind that it’s PRC President Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party cronies who should be apologizing for their ongoing atrocities against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

This is disgusting cowardice, and it should be unacceptable for American company managers to put lucre from the PRC above morality.