I have several of these posts on the EA runway, but I’ve been thinking about posting on the Ritz Brothers for an especially long time.
I mysteriously started getting Turner Classic Movies again from DirecTV several months ago without having it in my package. (“We do that sometimes” was the explanation I got when I asked the satellite service about it.) I had started using a lesser package for economy reasons following the near collapse of my company as a result of what I will forever call “The Stupid Lockdown.” TCM is the cinema equivalent of my now defunct professional regional theater company, “The American Century Theater,” which mounted stage productions that had cultural significance but that the more practical companies never present any more. Since the channel’s return I have been struck by how many major talents have been almost completely forgotten despite the fact that 1) they were once very famous and popular and 2) they deserved to be.
The video above is probably the quickest way to get a crash course in Ritz Brothers lore. In one of the clips in the video , Dick Cavett introduces a segment of his show by saying that “today” most people under the age of 40 probably have never heard of the Ritz Brothers. That “today” was in the 1980s. I have never received a positive response from anyone I have asked about the brothers. Yet The Ritz Bothers, which can best be described as a spectacular vaudeville act that peaked in films in the Thirties and Forties and then almost totally avoided TV while starring in nightclubs, were memorable. Unlike the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges, two other trios whose cultural legacy is more secure, the Ritz Brothers did not highlight individual members of their team but rather emphasized remarkable unity and coordination. They danced, they sang, they did carefully choreographed physical comedy and slapstick, and were almost completely indistinguishable. Almost. Harry, “the One in the Middle,” clearly had an extra measure of presence and charisma, and it is he who is most cited by succeeding generations of comics as an icon.
The latest hyperventilating outrage for the Trump Deranged to get furious over is this:
“President Donald Trump gave $45,000 cash gifts to his executive assistant Natalie Harp and two of his other young, loyal White House employees, according to financial disclosures released by the administration. On their disclosure forms, which were released publicly late last week, the three women described the payments as “Cash Gift for Holidays.” The gifts amount to about one-third of the $150,000 salaries they each earn from their White House positions, according to an annual report to Congress.”
The Washington Post predictably runs to NeverTrump Bush White House legal ethicist Richard Painter, who wanted to impeach Trump in 2016 before he took office. “Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and a critic of Trump,” the Post tells us, “said the payments appear to violate a federal statute that prohibits the supplementation of federal employees’ salaries from outside sources.” “He’s clearly trying to make it easier for them financially to work in government service at the White House,” Painter said. “You can’t do that.”
Wouldn’t you think a responsible and objective news source would begin by highlighting the opinion of a lawyer and ethicist who hadn’t already made it clear that one of his main goals in life is to “Get Trump”? If the gifts were the slam-dunk offense Painter says it is, shouldn’t it be easy to find other “experts” to weigh in on the matter? Eventually, the Post does bring another “expert” into the mix, but only after quoting Painter extensively. [Full Disclosure:the best legal ethics website that I have ever had the pleasure to visit was John Steele’s Legal Ethics Forum. It managed to stay non-partisan and therefore useful until Painter ruined it with his routine anti-Trump rants. Steele eventually gave up and let the website slide into misuse. The partisan ethics rot that killed that site has also seeped into the listserv of the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers. I can’t blame Painter for the whole phenomenon, but he was one of its architects, and yes, I resent it.]
That second voice does not echo Painter’s predictable condemnation. Don Fox, the former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) in the Obama administration, tells the Post:
“…it was not clear from the available facts that the payments violate the prohibition on supplementation. He said that would be the case if Trump made the gifts after one of the employees said they were leaving for the private sector because they couldn’t live on what they were making, and he gave them a supplement to level the disparity in salaries. There are rules that restrict employees from giving gifts to their superiors over concerns they could be abused to curry favor. But a large payment to a subordinate is “not a circumstance that OGE ever really envisioned,” Fox said. “This just doesn’t happen.”…Even in the absence of any violation, however, Fox said he still found the payments “troublesome” because they could leave the aides indebted to Trump. “I would feel somewhere between really uncomfortable and then beholden to the person who gave me such a large gift,” he said.
Oh-oh! There’s another one of those “democratic norms” that Trump keeps breaching!
The Post reveals,
Harp, Martin, Harris and Nauta all have ties to Trump dating from his first term, and they were all among a small inner circle of aides who worked for Trump in Florida in between his presidencies. Harp, Martin and Harris have limited work experience that isn’t tied to Trump…Harp gained national attention in 2019 for a LinkedIn post in which she credited a law Trump signed in 2018 expanding access to experimental treatments with saving her life following a Stage 2 bone cancer diagnosis. Medical experts have cast doubt on those claims. Harp spoke about the experience at the 2020 Republican National Convention. As an anchor with One America News, she frequently promoted Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election. She began working for Trump in 2022 after leaving the network.
Martin began working for the Trump White House as a press assistant in 2019 and continued to work as a press secretary for Trump after the inauguration of President Joe Biden. Harris began her career at the White House and was known as the “receptionist of the United States” during Trump’s first term.
Nauta is a Guam native who enlisted in the Navy in 2001. By 2021, he was promoted to the rank of senior chief culinary specialist, according to military records. Nauta was working in the White House at that time, and Trump promoted him to be his valet, according to court records. Valets are often known as “body men,” following politicians closely so that they can provide them with everything from snacks to schedules.
It was when I first realized that an unacceptable proportion of news broadcasters were morons.
We were watching PBS for some reason, when the second plane hit the tower. And a reporter said, I swear, “I want to caution everyone not to jump to conclusions. At this point, there is no evidence that this is an attack.”
No, it could be just a coincidence that two passenger jets hit the same structure on the same day within minutes of each other. Sure. That makes perfect sense. Thanks, PBS, for your professional restraint and expert analysis.
Ugh. The Lindsay Clancy Ethics Train Wreck is a particularly ugly one getting uglier by the minute.
We began with a triple child murder and the abortion-addled women who think the murderer is a heroic figure for showing why it’s a good thing to kill babies before they are born (so you don’t have to kill them later). Then we had jury misconduct, as it was revealed drip-drip-drip style by a series of individual juror interviews in which we learned that a nurse on the jury introduced her own expert testimony into the evidence ( forbidden), and that a lone juror holding out for a guilty verdict was wrongly targeted by the jury foreman to get him off the jury so the murderous mother could be acquitted.
I believe that while not a technical ethics violation, the judge reading the Foreman’s note in open court rather than only to the lawyers was irresponsible and incompetent. No one outside of the lawyers and the jurors needed to know what the impasse was, and the judge adding that detail made the Lone Juror a likely target.
Next, the defense attorney publicly vilified the hold-out juror. Prof. Turley correctly condemned that act by Attorney Kevin Reddington, but failed to mention that it was an ethics violation: Rule 8.4, “Misconduct” forbids Massachusetts lawyers from engaging “in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.” Sending the message to future perspective jurors that they risk being publicly attacked and denigrated for doing their civic duty is potentially disastrous to the administration of justice. I’m a Massachusetts lawyer: I may file a complaint against Reddington. In fact, I will.
Yet another juror seemed to say that a majority of the women on the jury were determined to acquit Clancy from the beginning of deliberations, and perhaps from the outset of the trial. She also seemed to suggest that she had been pressured to change her vote and didn’t have the integrity to stand up for what she believed…unlike the Lone Juror.
After the defense counsel’s ethics breach, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz addressed the media and engaged in prosecutorial misconduct. He stated that the investigation did not establish postpartum depression as the cause of the killings, maintained that Clancy was in control of her actions and that first-degree murder charges remain justified. In response to suggestions that the state was being insensitive to postpartum mental health issues, Cruz said, “Insensitive is killing three children” and that the prosecution’s job is to give a voice to those “who can no longer speak for themselves.” He added that the evidence gathered in the investigation showed that Clancy made a “cruel and calculated” decision and was legally responsible for her actions during the homicides. Massachusetts Rule 3.8. “Special Duties of Prosecutors,” forbids prosecutors from “making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”
I may file a complaint against Cruz, too.
[Oh: when I tried to find Mass. Rules of Professional Conduct 3.8 online, I got a message that said I was not authorized to view the page! Well, I guess that’s one way to avoid having your unethical prosecutors exposed…]
But wait! There’s more…
Reddington asked for the President to pardon Clancy. The President can’t pardon a defendant in a state prosecution, and as a lawyer, Reddington must know that. His plea was misleading grandstanding, and dishonest, designed to mislead the public.
I’ll add that to my ethics complaint.
And this, from Oprah…
Black woman argues that black women who murder their kids deserve support too, not just white women. The entire room of women cheers deliriously. This is mass psychosis. pic.twitter.com/xSZLJFqwRC
By all means, white women shouldn’t be the only ones privileged to kill their children…
We also learned that from juror Paula Devlin on ‘CBS Mornings’ today that the Lone Juror who voted to find Clancy guilty of murdering her children was the sole black on the jury. Oprah’s gal-pal Gayle King, who has never displayed to me any particular talent or acumen justifying her position as a CBS morning hostess other than her relationship with O, was stunned:
King: A black man is the holdout juror?
Devlin: Yes.
King: Well, I have to sit with that for just a second.
Why does she have to sit with that for a second? Black men are not supposed to vote guilty in criminal trials? Black men are supposed to be sympathetic to child killers? Black men are supposed to bend to the will of white women?
I have been given the ridiculous assignment of trying to produce a useful legal ethics presentation to lawyers association in 75 minutes this morning. On top of that, I can hardly ignore the metaphorical elephant in the room, the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and yet the connection between that event and legal ethics is attenuated. The chief one is that lawyers who defended some of the alleged terrorists were and still are vilified in the conservative news media and by other ignorant critics.
Rule 1.2 (b):
(b) A lawyer’s representation of a client, including representation by appointment, does not constitute an endorsement of the client’s political, economic, social, or moral views or activities.
Anyway, I’m off to downtown D.C. in the rain. More posts when I get back, I promise…
Incredibly, the conservative website “Not the Bee” called that “an absolute masterclass in dealing with godless commies.” Where’s Extradimensional Cephalopod when we need him/it?
I know the EA herald of respectful disagreement would be all over this. On the other hand, Debra Lipstadt, the Holocaust historian, has maintained that engaging in debate with Holocaust deniers give them too much credibility, and I believe it is valid to hold that Communists warrant the same dismissive treatment. It is pretty funny that when asked to name an accomplishment of Communism, all the male Communist can come up with is “The Bolshevik Revolution.
However, shouting insults and talking over people is not an ethical debate practice no matter what the topic or who is involved.
My current state of legal residence has gone nuts.
On November’s Virginia ballot, Virginia’s voters will consider “Amendment 1,” which would:
Make abortion freely available throughout the third trimester of pregnancy, all the way up to birth;
Abolish the right of parents to be consulted on, and to consent to, abortions sought by their young daughters; and
Enable anyone to perform an abortion and to escape legal responsibility for botching an abortion.
Enable a child, without her parents’ knowledge or consent, to receive puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sterilization surgery.
Like the earlier Democratic attempt to sneak a Constitutional amendment past voters with a dishonest description on the ballot, this one employs misleading and deceitful language (“reproductive health” standing in for “the ability to kill unborn babies in the ninth month of pregnancy”) and belies Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger’s promise that she would govern as a “moderate Democrat.”
But wait…there’s more!
The Arlington County Board just voted to put aside $50,000 for families whose head of the household is an illegal immigrant and has been detained or deported by ICE. Moreover, the county won’t require families to prove detention or deportation or provide employment records. Each eligible family can get up to $2,000. The money will be distributed by Arlington Thrive, a non-profit organization that provides emergency financial assistance.
“This investment in our families is about the urgency we have seen in our community in the last month,” said Arlington County Board Chairman Matt de Ferranti. “And we are going to respond with care. and we are going to respond proudly. That’s what this $50,000 is toward with Thrive.”
Former Acting ICE Director and former federal prosecutor Jonathan Fahey said the county may be violating federal law, arguing, “Arlington County is putting aside money for presumably people that are not even legal in the country, as opposed to giving it to Arlington County residents or American citizens.” “But I think the one thing that’s really interesting about what they’re doing here, there’s this alien harboring statute, a federal statute that makes it illegal to do something that induces or encourages someone to come to the country illegally or to reside in the country illegally, and I think Arlington County has a real problem with that statute.”
“They’re going to induce more illegal aliens into Arlington County, which will also cost the taxpayers even more money,” added Fahey. “There’s probably so many things that could be done that are better for the taxpayers and the residents and the legal residents of Arlington County.”
I could write full posts about many of these, and if I had time, I would. The networks and the Axis want to ignore it and are trying to bury it in negatives, but the event is obviously news, and attention should be paid….
Observations:
1. Competence! If this was the President’s idea, it was a great one. The GOP has to get voters to the polls (or to mailboxes, if he can’t stem mail-in balloting). If the event picks up just one or two percentage points in Republican voter participation, it will have been a success. If Republicans hold Congress, I guarantee both parties will make this tactic a tradition.
Incidentally, adding a mid-term convention is another so-called “democratic norm” that Trump is violating. The Horror.
2. Fetterman! One of the two biggest stories to come out of last night’s opening of the convention was Senator John Fetterman’s surprise video appearance, shot in front of a steel mill. Fetterman praised and endorsed his fellow Pennsylvania Senator David McCormick, a Republican, and said that they would work together “and work with President Trump and defend the steel way of life.” This makes Fetterman the Ethics Hero of the convention thus far. It also tells Democrats that if they are going to try convict Trump after a House impeachment and try to pack the Supreme Court, they will need to flip an extra Senate seat to their side.
This juror is telling you from the prosecution’s opening statement that she was team free Lindsay regardless of any evidence they would produce. pic.twitter.com/HsTxl54EXA
As EA noted from the beginning of the Lindsay Clancy Ethics Train Wreck, the trial presents an excellent argument for why women should be subject to peremptory challenges in voir dire when their biases are likely to result in jurors like this woman.
The prosecution isn’t supposed to show “compassion” for accused murderers. Nor are prosecution opening statements supposed to be warm and fuzzy toward a defendant. The state’s concern is with the victims, as well as the fabric of society wounded by terrible crimes.
Moreover, no “character witnesses” need testify that a woman who murders her own children is a “bad mother.” In a sane world, a woman who strangles her own children is by definition a bad mother. Presuming that a mother must be insane to do this is a pre-existing bias that should have disqualified this juror and any juror.
New data provides a sobering indication: At least one in four of all the people who have played in the N.F.L. might expect to end up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, according to a study of hundreds of cases over a recent six-year period.
Researchers considered every former N.F.L. player who died from 2016 to 2021. There were 878. Some died in their 20s, some in their 80s, most in between.
The study’s main finding was simple math: At least 215 of those 878 former players — 24.5 percent — had C.T.E.
The actual prevalence could be far higher. The roughly 25 percent rate does not consider the 643 brains that were not examined. Some of those, maybe many of them, likely had C.T.E. too.
C.T.E. is a progressive neurological disease caused by repeated impacts to the head. It can be definitively diagnosed only by examining the brain after death.
Studies have shown that the rate of C.T.E. in people who have not sustained repeated impacts to the head is nearly zero.
If the new study’s statistics were applied to today’s players — 1,696 on the league’s 32 regular-season rosters, not including more than 500 members of practice squads and those ineligible due to injury — at least 400 of them would be diagnosed with C.T.E.
Experts say that the rate of brain disease represents an occupational safety hazard with little comparison in the American workplace.
I have written this before, and had this story on the EA runway for a long time because it makes me angry. People who cheer on football are literally encouraging young men to cripple themselves for their entertainment. It is unethical, and indefensible.
Ethics Alarms 