On the Kelly Clarkson “Pretty Woman” Kerfuffle…[Too Many Typos Finally Fixed (Sorry)]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

[ I didn’t do my final typo check because I had phone consult, and the result was about 12 typos that I just fixed. I am properly remorseful]

I opened this can of worms (celebrity ethics) so it’s only right that I put the squirmy things on the hook.

After delving into the annoying Crystal Hefner-Jon Lovitz feud (D-list celebrity vs. fading C-list celebrity), I was tasked by esteemed commenter John Paul to weigh in on the incident earlier this month when singer and talk-show hostess Kelly Clarkson claimed on social media that she got the “Pretty Woman treatment” when she went shopping at the Brooklyn-based Art of Play store, which sells home goods, puzzles, games, toys and books and also features a 26-seat theater for performances by magicians. This prompted a social media rebuttal by the store’s owner, and another rebuke by Clarkson.

I was aware of the incident but chose to organize my sock drawer instead of investigating. One reason is that “Pretty Woman” is one of the few famous movies I have never been moved to see. I have it on my list, but Richard Gere irritates me, and romantic comedies about prostitutes have never been my cup of metaphorical tea. So, until I researched it today, I didn’t know what the “Pretty Woman” treatment even is. As a cultural literacy bug, I deserve a rebuke for that—sorry. In the 1990 romantic comedy Roberts plays Vivian, a prostitute who walks into an upscale boutique on Rodeo Drive and is instantly treated by a sales clerk as unworthy of service because she does not appear to be sufficiently wealthy or cultured. The clerk refuses to show Julia any merchandise, and tells her to leave because she does not fit their clientele. Julia returns after she has entranced her sugar-daddy (I’m beginning to remember why the movie didn’t appeal to me), flashes expensive accessories from rival boutiques, and delivers an apparently classic “So there!” kill shot.

Clarkson had posted: “Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me. Wow, dude. You’re an idiot and just lost a huge sale. But y’all should go check out Art of Play in Brooklyn if you enjoy being treated like Julia Roberts character in Pretty Woman. For sure, check it out 👎”

The store slapped back,

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Friday Open Forum, and a Blazing Hypocrisy Episode

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Celebrity dust-ups are usually too trivial even for me to get concerned about, but the behavior of pseudo-celebrity Crystal Hefner, Hugh’s gold-digger widow, is truly gobsmacking, and attention must be paid.

Crystal married the wealthy Playboy founder in his dotage after she was a centerfold in the magazine, for love, I’m sure. Now, having become rich herself (estimated worth: $20-30 million)on the profits from Hugh Hefner’s female objectifying enterprises, she is a feminist. Recently she decided to impugn has-been Saturday Night Live alum Jon Lovitz, saying that he had been the “Playboy Mansion’s No. 1 customer.” Lovitz responded that “Any time someone says I’m No. 1, it’s a compliment.” For some reason, the former Mrs. Hefner thought it made sense to get in a war of words with someone a lot quicker on the uptake than she is.

“I think Jon Lovitz is part of the problem,” she told Page Six. “I think many men who came up to that mansion [and] were very sexist and misogynistic are all part of that problem. If I could dismantle that toxic masculinity and patriarchy just a little bit, I will feel happy. It’s very sad.”

The woman married the man who invited everyone to the Playboy mansion! She was at those parties flaunting her sexual assets; she is ethically estopped from wielding the woke patriarchy blather when she owes her status in life to embracing and promoting it.

She targeting Lovitz after a July exchange, when the comic reacted to her Instagram statement that she “regretted” marrying Hugh. “Do you regret the house he bought for you to live in, after his death?” Lovitz responded. “And keeping the money, after you sold it?… And do you regret all he did for you?”

Good questions. Hefner, proving she was fighting above her metaphorical weight class, said, “Jon Lovitz had mentioned to me that Hef had bought something for me or paid for something and that I have no reason to speak because of that. I think his thinking is very outdated. That’s really sad that, just because someone buys you something, it guarantees silence.”

Once a bimbo, always a bimbo.

Well, as Jimmy Durante would say, “I’m glad I got that out: on my x-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”

This is the last Open Forum before the Most Important Election In The History of Mankind. Make it count!

More on the Democrats’ “Confuse the Voters!” Plot In Alaska

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The big story yesterday was the revelation of the Democratic Party’s plot to steal an Alaska U.S. Senate seat by confusing voters.…well, that, and the fact that the New York Times reported damning conduct by the party it pimps for most of the year. Stephen Green, usually an astute political analyst from the Right, thinks that the scandal may have national impact, that the GOP should use it nationally as it makes the final pitch to voters. He says, “[I]f the Republicans play their cards right, they can make the fallout go national. Because it DESERVES to go national. In fact, this ought to be one of the defining issues of the 2026 midterms.” Got it. Since it ought to be, it will be. Welcome to Fantasy Land. Green adds, [O]nce again, the same people screaming about “saving democracy” and “democracy is on the ballot” have been caught trying to rig an election.”

Also, trees have leaves! Why would any indoctrinated, progressive, Trump Deranged voter anywhere but Alaska—heck, even in Alaska!—suddenly think “THIS is the final straw!”? The Democratic Party had its puppet President call Republicans Nazis and threat to democracy…

…as it knowingly inflicted a demented POTUS on the nation, let a former President pull the strings, had its captive media lie that the shuffling geezer was “sharp as a tack,” and then replaced him as the 2024 candidate with a far left dim bulb who never faced a single primary opponent or a competitive convention vote. Its favorite Communism-loving Senator, Bernie Sanders, assured radical voters that what she was saying on the campaign trail were just lies to placate moderates until she was elected. The party has been trying to inflame its wackos to kill Donald Trump for years, and came within inches of succeeding—then tried to claim the assassination attempt was a MAGA hoax. It has repeatedly tried to defy election results by concocting one scheme after another (and the Big Lies to support them) to remove an opposing party’s President, including an audacious, Obama White House-engineered investigation of “collusion” with Russia.

It flooded the nation with illegal aliens, all the better to get census results that give Democratic states more electoral votes and representatives. Democrats in Virginia tried to sneak an illegal and unconstitutional redistricting scheme into law by lying about it on a referendum. In Maine, Democratic leadership kept insisting that a fake oyster fisherman who abuses women was a legitimate Senate candidate while he lied about the Nazi tattoo he had on his chest. In Minnesota, a Democratic rep almost certainly engaged in fraud to become a U.S. citizen and has been lying about it ever since, while stating that her first loyalty is to a foreign, Muslim nation. House Democrats let one of their Reps break the law to delay a House vote and lie about it. The party has successfully blocked efforts to ensure election integrity on multiple fronts, but the late revelation of another Democratic cheat in Alaska is going to finally make Americans figure out where the real danger to democracy comes from?

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Attempted Government Halloween Censorship In Bristol Borough, Pa.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Guess what the political affiliation of those responsible is. Come on, guess.

A homeowner in Bristol Borough, a suburb near Philadelphia, festooned his yard with a small graveyard, two scary scarecrows, and five mannequins hanging from a rope on a large tree. The “bodies” are wrapped in black plastic and circled with duct tape. At an Oct. 12 borough council meeting, Karla Scott complained about the display, calling the decorations are “very offensive, not just to the black people in the community, but the community as a whole.” Scott told reporters that her “mind went back to what my ancestors went through being hung from trees with nooses around their neck.”

Huh. Did her mind go back to when victims of lynchings were covered with black plastic and duct tape? Because there never was such a time. The decorations reminded me of this scene, the hanging of John Wilkes Booth’s conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.

But then I don’t make up history to advance social justice narratives [See: the “1619 Project”], I just study it.

Now government officials are visiting the house and pressuring the owner to remove the “offensive” display, even though there is no claim that there is anything illegal about it. He refuses. Council President Ralph DiGuiseppe says that the town will “continue” to do this. I wish I could find out the name of the owner because I would declare him an Ethics Hero: he has told officials that his Halloween decorations are staying up. No weenie he!

Says FIRE:

“This behavior by borough leadership and staff looks very much like jawboning, which is when government officials try to chill private citizens from exercising their constitutional rights through pressure or indirect threats.While Scott and other community members may prefer there be a rule to prevent such decorations, an ordinance banning “offensive” lawn displays would be dead on arrival, constitutionally speaking. It would be viewpoint discrimination and a direct violation of the First Amendment.”

The local NAACP chapter has weighed in on behalf of the censors because of course they have. Here’s another chance to show power and bend others to their will. It said in a statement on Facebook, “Something can be legally permissible and still be profoundly harmful.” The statement also called for “continued engagement by borough leadership and voluntary reconsideration of the display. This is not about restricting Halloween celebrations or freedom of expression. It is about historical awareness, empathy, and respect for our neighbors.”

Translation: “We want the government to bully the law abiding citizen into bowing to our contrived sensitivities.” Their position is precisely about restricting freedom of expression, and worse, using government power to do it.

The so far unnamed Halloween decorator now says that he might have considered removing the display then had officials not tried to pressure him into it but that now it’s “a matter of principle.”

Damn right.

Confronting My Biases #33: Not Liking When People Say “Like”

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

That’s Erin Andrews above. She’s a broadcast professional, a long-time sidelines reporter in NFL games. She a professional public communicator. Here she is on one of her recent podcasts:

“And then I’m like, ‘Wait, wait, fuck, what did he say about going for it?’ Because I never want to quote a coach and get it wrong, so I’m like, ‘Oh my god’…I’m fully fucking out of breath, which is inappropriate. Like, get it together, sister! In through the nose, out through the mouth. It was all because the ramp was so long. And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, how many people are watching … I’m so much better than that!”

And I’m like, “You sound like a moron, Erin, and this kind of illiterate blather just further embeds that toxic speech pattern in the next generation.”

Never mind the gratuitous “fucks,” that usage of “like” is worse than “um,” which was metaphorically beaten out of me as a child, and since I speak in public for a living, thanks, Mom, Dad, Miss Barrett, Mrs. Penwarden and the rest of my vigilent teachers. Are today’s teachers even trying to stop the “like” contagion? I doubt it: I bet they are infected themselves, and besides, they are too busy teaching kids to be communists.

My own daughter, after being taught by two articulate parents to speak grammatical and articulate English, now uses “like” every seven words, because that’s the kind of speech everyone around her all day uses. And I’m not about to correct a 32-year-old. Nonetheless, when I hear someone use “like” that way, my respect for them takes a nosedive, just as when I hear someone use “ain’t” or “we was” or “irregardless.” I can’t help it.

Frankly, I don’t want to.

From The “Res Ipsa Loquitur” Files:

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I am genuinely afraid to ask my Facebook friends if they find this tweet trenchant. It’s a perfect “Has bias made you stupid?” test.

Of course, none of the Brewers are illegal immigrants.

Details, details….

Democrats Cheat, Episode 72,679 (est.): The Alaska “Confuse the Voters!” Plot

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Cheating in elections isn’t just a traditional part of democracy, it is anti-democracy, totalitarian in fact. It is how bad people—yes, they are bad people— seek to gain power they don’t deserve (the fact that they will cheat proves that all by itself). Any candidate who tries to cheat is by definition untrustworthy, and any edition of a political party that supports such a candidate is untrustworthy as well. Both parties have unforgivable records of cheating behind them; perhaps the worst was Richard Nixon secretly sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks to improve his chances of willing the Presidency in 1968, but then he might have won the Presidency legitimately had not the Kennedy mob cheated so effectively in 1960.

Since 2015, the Democratic Party has raised cheating in elections to a core value, adopting the Radical Left’s traditional “by any means necessary” commandment. There hasn’t been a party so corrupt in this respect since the Republican Party of the Reconstruction Era. Long-time readers here may recall that when I realized how much cheating Democrats had engaged in to elect Hillary Clinton, I changed my stated intention to hold my nose, wear a gas mask and keep my gorge from rising as I voted for her over the GOP candidate, whom I had declared unfit for the Presidency in every respect. (I wrote in a name on the 2016 ballot: the man the Democrats had cheated out the White House in 2012.)

The New York Times yesterday exposed their usual heartthrobs with a full report on the brazen Democratic plot to steal a U.S. Senate seat in Alaska. It was so flagrant and outrageous that the Times decided they couldn’t spin or bury the incident without looking like the print version of MSNOW. They deserve no credit for this, and anyone who claims this proves the Times isn’t an “enemy of the people” should get a pie in the face. The Times knows it has to periodically pretend to be an objective and independent news source or it wouldn’t be able to fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. The paper’s staff is unethical, but it ain’t stupid.

The whole article is here (all Times links now get past the pay wall), but a few highlights are in order:

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Malcolm Gladwell Jumps The Shark

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I’ve enjoyed several of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, though their quality has been on a definite downward slope since “The Tipping Point.” But like so, so many other relatively intelligent people who have let political bubbles and partisan bias infect their brains, Malcolm finally capitulated to the progressive mob and decided to wade into fact-infested waters he wasn’t prepared for. Too bad.

Don’t you love it when non-lawyers, especially journalists, start criticizing Supreme Court decisions that they haven’t read carefully and can’t understand? That’s Gladwell’s new, pro-gun control screed “The American Way of Killing,” released last month. American law isn’t all Gladwell doesn’t understand: he’s clueless about American culture too (Malcolm is Canadian). In this interview with TIME, he says, “There’s no reason why the United States cannot have the same level of homicide as its Western European peers. It just chose a different direction.” That statement is ignorant and delusional, but I’m not writing about his unfamiliarity with U.S. roots, culture and history here. The issue at hand is guns.

In his book, Gladwell defaults to the hoary “1619 Project”-redolent claim that the Second Amendment was designed to protect Southern slave patrols, which would be quite a surprise to the Massachusetts delegation to the Constitutional Convention. That’s dumb, but he goes beyond that to attack the SCOTUS ruling that the right to bear arms is not restricted to militias but is an individual right. Gladwell compliant is its alleged reliance on an old English case from the 17th Century. He states that Court’s conclusion that the Founders believed there was a right to bear arms for self-defense was “bananas” because it used an old obscure precedent to interpret a law in the 20th Century. What Justices should use to address legal controversies is “common sense,” the British-Canadian intellectual without a whiff of legal comprehension intones.

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How Woke and Whacked-Out Is Harvard? This Woke and Whacked-Out…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I’m supposed to turn in my Harvard reunion report on my life since Old Ivy for the school’s “red book.” Last time, I devoted my essay to explaining why my alma mater was an embarrassment. This time, I’m tempted to skip the whole exercise. It’s futile.

Harvard Medical School held an absurd event called “the Pathology of Unruly Bodies.” A panel devoid of doctors or medical experts declared that anti-obesity drugs were part of an imperialistic “indoctrination” of society. Gee, I never thought of it that way! I never thought of it that way because it’s irredeemably stupid.

The panel included Da’Shaun L Harrison, who claims that GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic and Zepbound are weapons of “genocide” against fat people. [See this post from yesterday. “Genocide” no longer means genocide to the Left, so when Israel is accused of genocide, who knows what they mean?] It also includes Ethics Villain Roxane Gay, hilariously the occupant of Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture, and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University. She’s also the “artist-in-residence”—whatever that means— at Harvard Medical School and has a column in the New York Times (of course she does!).

Gay (she’s the cousin of disgraced former Harvard University President Claudine Gay, which I did not know when she was in the process of proving what an unforgivable DEI selection she was) has called for the release of Luigi Mangione, the man whjo murdered the CEO of UnitedHealthcare two years ago. That alone should disqualify her from participation in any event that is supposed to enlighten young minds, but Harvard decided she was a font of wisdom.

In the panel discussion, Harrison argued that the companies offering the anti-obesity drugs are, well, let me quote her or him (I can’t figure out which so far, and frankly, I don’t care): “This practice of forcing people into manipulating and changing or shifting how they look is oftentimes about making bodies militarisable. Building up a military to defend an imperialist state…A lot of doctors, medical professionals and folks who collaborate with them — be it through the government or media — are advocating for atrocities that are directly impacting our citizens, but also citizens around the globe. It then becomes about creating this ideal body that you are always being pushed and pulled towards, as a way to represent this patriotism that is intended to indoctrinate one into the military, into the defense of the country.”

Okayyyy..Uh, what color is the sky on your planet, Da’Shaun?

Professor Turley comments, “The suggestion that weight loss drugs serve imperialist, militaristic goals is obviously bonkers. It is the kind of raving you would expect on a subway from someone wearing a handmade cardboard sign and a tin foil hat.”

Not to Harvard’s leaders and administrators, though! Maybe I’ll post this essay in the “red book.”

Oh.. I almost forgot. This is what Roxane Gay looks like…

I wonder why she’s convinced weight loss drugs are part of a right wing plot?

Hilarious. The New York Times Admits It Might Be a Little Bit Biased

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The confession is cynical and mordantly amusing. The Times really thinks its “transparency” will support the myth that the paper isn’t a partisan spin and propaganda organ for the Democratic Party. Well, it might be right. The Times is part of a long-running effort to make Americans stupid.

Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston and a frequent contributor to The Volokh Conspiracy, complained to the Times after he was described twice as a “conservative law professor” earlier this yera. He didn’t object to the conservative description, which is accurate, but that in the Times, a conservative expert or analyst is labelled as such but those quoted from the Left are just “professors.”

Blackman reviewed a New York Times database and found that the Times would routinely brand a conservative but rarely label a progressive, thus representing conservatives as “the other” while left-biased analysts and experts were just good old reliable, trustworthy authorities.

Or, as the freaks chant in “Freaks”: “One of us, one of us! We accept them, one of us!”

Patrick Healy, the Times’s assistant managing editor for trust and standards, acknowledged that Blackman had a valid point. “It can come off like The Times treats liberals as normal and conservatives as unique and worthy of labeling,” Healy told Blackman.

Oh, it “can come off” that way, can it? How big of Healy to concede that. It can come off that way because that’s how the Times reporters, pundits and editors think, how its readers think, and what the paper wants as many members of the public to think as well. All the better to elect those Democrats! [Here is another example of Healy’s weaseldom. Also here, in Item #7]

Healy said the Times needed to be more “discerning” about its labels going forward. Right. Its current practice helps observant readers like Blackman realize just how biased and manipulative the New York Times is. Can’t have that! Healy’s sort-of apology is a perfect Level 10 sinister and unethical apology on the EA Apology Scale:

10. An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.

It’s not a laughing matter.