Unethical Quotes of the Month: President Trump and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

First Trump’s…

Now Jeffries….

“Well, it’s an extraordinary insult, but he continues to repeat it. And what’s so ironic is that Donald Trump is clearly the dumbest person ever to sit at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…”

Jeffries was talking to the execrable Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNOW so of course there was no push-back. Such a classy exchange between a President and a Congressional leader! “You’re stupid!” “Oh yeah? Well you’re stupider!” I can just imaging Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun talking to each other like that.

Actually I can’t. Those career-long adversaries has respect for the positions they held, our institutions, and, yes, each other. They also understood the importance of civility.

Donald Trump’s penchant for stooping to ad hominem attacks is another one of his obnoxious and self-destructive habits. I wish someone would explain to him that “IQ” does not mean “intelligence” and that it is ignorant, indeed stupid, to think so. I’d bet at some point Trump’s IQ was tested, probably as a kid, registered in the relatively high range, and his parents or teachers told him it meant something. (My father told me that what proved one’s intelligence was what you did, not how you scored on a test.) The President has always been obsessed with ratings, scores and numbers (“Subscriptions way down!). Heck, if I used that to measure the value of my life, I would have killed this blog years ago. Maybe myself too.

You could excuse Trump a bit, especially given his “tit for tat” reflex, for resorting to ad hominem since his political foes constantly use the practice. Trump is fat, he’s orange, his hair is weird, he’s nuts, he’s demented, he’s stupid. It’s still no excuse for him returning fire in kind. Furthermore, it is extremely unlikely that Hakeem Jeffries is “low IQ.” He had an impressive academic record, he was a law review editor in law school and graduated at the top of his class, clerked for a judge and was a corporate litigator before entering politics.

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List Incompetence Again: “The Ultimate Classic Halloween Watchlist”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

You know I have a low tolerance for publicized lists that are badly researched, careless, lazy, and reflect cultural illiteracy. Many are the product of unresolved biases The latter was the obvious crime of the last list that set my brain oozing out of my ears: CNBC’s “Worst States to Live In,” which, I’m sure you can guess since the list emanated from CNBC, meant “States That Haven’t Been Overrun By Democrats.” Recent non-political lists that exploded my poor head with the compilers’ total lack of qualifications to create included The Guardian’s “Greatest Novels” list (that included “The Handmaiden’s Tale” but no Mark Twain) and the “The 100 Best Vocalists of All Time” compiled by “experts” whose average age was about 25 and who apparently never heard of Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Julie Andrews or Linda Ronstadt.

What annoyed me so much about the list of “Ultimate Classic Halloween Classics” that somehow ended up in my mailbox is that it accused me of picking this careless top ten list, because I have made the mistake now and then of landing on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie rating and review compilation site (that has no integrity and is regularly manipulated to cheer bad movies and sink good ones for political reasons). I wouldn’t have picked that dog’s breakfast of alleged “scary” movies after I had been hit over the head with a shovel. I know horror films: my late wife was addicted to them, and there are undoubtedly some great ones I haven’t seen, I also have the perspective and taste to know what doesn’t qualify as a top ten “classic” scary movie. “Classic” implies historic. I wrote in one of my first essays on this topic, ““If you are going to write about history, there is a duty to perform diligent research, even for a silly online list.” Anyone who looked at the list and assumed that these are the top ten scary movies of all time would be seriously misinformed. And if you are going to use “ultimate” to describe your list, is sure as hell better reflect some consistent criteria and astute critical thought.

These are the movies on Rotten Tomatoes’ “Ultimate Classic Halloween Watchlist” ranked 1 to 10:

  1. “Halloween”
  2. “Nightmare on Elm Street”
  3. “The Exorcist”
  4. “The Shining”
  5. “Beetlejuice”
  6. “Friday the 13th”
  7. “Poltergeist”
  8. “The Nightmare Before Christmas”
  9. “Psycho”
  10. “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”

To begin with, the ranking is indefensible and reflects the ignorance of the voters, which figures, since they are people who hang out at Rotten Tomatoes. I won’t quibble that the original “Halloween” now qualifies as a classic: it launched a franchise and too many imitations to count as well as a best-selling Halloween mask, but it isn’t the #1 horror movie of all time by any legitimate criteria. “Black Christmas,” originally “Silent Night, Evil Night” (1975) was before John Carpenter’s hit, the real progenitor of the serial slasher film, and is scarier as well as much better acted.

There is no film on the list before “Psycho”(1960). The Hitchcock film looks surprisingly stilted and tame today (yes, even the famous shower scene), but audiences had never seen anything like it, so sure, it belongs on a “classic scary movie” list—but so do the silent “The Phantom of the Opera,” Todd Browning’s “Freaks,” both of James Whale’s “Frankenstein” movies (“Bride of Frankenstein” is even scarier than the first) and some others we could debate about before 1950.

Leaving out all the Fifties horror movies is indefensible: two absolute classics from that decade, which generated in horror movies as in popular music unmatched creativity and variety, were the original “The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers” (1956) and Howard Hawk’s “The Thing From Another World” (1951). The decade also gave us the original “The Fly”(1958) and the iconic “The Creature From The Black Lagoon” (another movie that launched a great Halloween mask.)

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On the No Longer Upcoming Public Execution of Nidal Malik Hasan

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

President Trump last week capitulated to common sense and reality and canceled the Pentagon’s planned livestream of the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

Secretary of War Hegseth had said that the execution would be broadcast via livestream, and initially the President agreed. However, Trump consulted his advisers in the wake of widespread criticism, and it seems that the fact that Hasan is paralyzed tipped the scales against a public firing squad execution.

Maybe, as I did, he had flashes of “Blazing Saddles,” when the executioner “Boris” is about to hang a man in a wheelchair. Be that as it may, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he still believed a televised execution would be a “strong deterrent for the World to witness how America deals with terrorists and SCUM,” but was now hesitant because “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device.” Neither half of that statement makes any sense, but you know, that’s our President. Public, private, the deterrent is the execution, not who gets to see it. No one who would rather not watch Hasan die had to watch. Well, what matters is the decision, not how or why he made it, and cancelling the live stream was the ethical and practical move. I explained in the previous post on this topic why the public execution was unethical.

Only immediate families of Hasan’s victims will be allowed to witness the execution.

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Ethics Hero: Former ESPN Producer Nicole Noren

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Noren, an ESPN employee for two decades, revealed in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review that her resignation in 2023 was provoked by the network’s decision to launch its own branded sports gambling app, ESPN Bet. Noren said that she knew first hand the dangers of gambling, and had good reason to believe encouraging or enabling it, and certainly profiting by it, was unconscionable.

“My brother died thirteen years ago on the sidewalk in downtown Las Vegas,” she said. “It’s a stark reality, but it illustrates the tragic arc of being brought there as kids so our dad could gamble at sportsbooks, to then surviving on the streets there as a homeless person and dying at thirty-six.”

Her grandfather and father, as well as her brother “were pretty much destroyed by sports gambling addiction,” Noren told the publication. “I grew up in Ventura, California, and multiple times, we suddenly had to move because of extreme financial ups and downs. I mean, I grew up in a sportsbook. We didn’t go to museums and typical places kids go to. We were dragged to Las Vegas in the eighties and hanging out in the Hilton and Caesars sportsbooks, when kids weren’t supposed to be around there. I remember going to the horse track, going to the dog track.”

So when ESPN decided to embrace legalized sports gambling in’23, “I was out,” she says. “I’m not going to work for a gambling company and have blood on my hands.”

Noren also accused the network of suppressing stories critical of the gambling industry.“What was telling to me was that I had pitched numerous stories that would take a harder look at some of the gambling companies and addiction, and none of those stories were greenlit,” she told the Review. “They ended up doing a show on it around that time, but it became very neutered. Some of the people involved intended to make it much more hard-hitting and hold the gambling companies accountable. Let’s just say the final product didn’t end up doing that.”

There was even an interactive primer on point spreads, totals, and parlays for new bettors with animations that were “pretty much made for kids.” “What bothered me most was a seeming disregard for the dangers and not thinking about the ramifications of ESPN normalizing gambling for an audience that looks to ESPN as sort of their sports guide, essentially—not looking down the road at the parallels between gambling and other addictive things in our country that have been normalized, such as opioids and cigarettes, that ended up becoming major public health crises.”

Brava, though Noren’s resignation was until now only a personal statement with no broader impact on society or this expanding ethics problem, which EA has been discussing for many years. ESPN Bet is dead, lasting only through last year, but that’s just moral luck. Noren was right: her employer willing to get “blood on its hands” in exchange for money in its metaphorical pockets, so the ethical course was to refuse to be a part of a corrupt organization and its culture.

What are desperately needed now are executives, broadcasters, celebrities and athletes who are willing to take similar stands against teams and sponsors. A politician or two would be nice too.

“No Kings” Is Moronic, But I Might Be On Board With “No 13-Year-Olds”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ugh.

President Trump posted an AI-generated video last week that showed him chasing, tackling and befriending a Siberian tiger, obviously inspired by the horrible incident at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster, England where a mentally disturbed young man, William Chapman, entered a tiger enclosure and was mauled to death. Trump posted the fake video, which was accompanied by The Tokens classic, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

That might be excusable for a junior high school student today, but since a man died in the tragedy it should be obvious to anyone at least as mature as Ralph Malph that the video is in terrible taste, and would be even for a sanitation worker. This is the President of the United States posting such junk, however. I don’t care if it’s “trolling,” or if it’s ‘just a joke,” no American can feel secure and confident about the leader of their nation when he acts like that.

What’s wrong with him? Whatever it is, it’s been wrong with him for a long time, and he’s clearly not going to get over it. The same instinct that served Trump well when he did his McDonald’s bit during the campaign undermines his authority, trust and support when he slips down several notches to this, having fun with a the death of a troubled man. I’ve been trying to imagine any previous POTUS who, given the technology, would behave similarly in his most rash and irresponsible moments. There isn’t one. Reagan, Lyndon Johnson and even Calvin Coolidge were known to play practical jokes on friends and staffers. Silent Cal was fond of pressing his desk buzzer to summon Secret Service agents and then hiding under his desk. But none of them would think posting the tiger video was wise, or anything but harmful to both the office and Trump’s policy agenda.

I’ll take this opportunity to comment on the “No Kings” protests yesterday. Several friends posted photos of themselves, family members and others embarrassing themselves, apparently unaware that anyone, like me for example, would conclude that their participating in this foolishness reflects terribly on them all. It does seem that the majority of these protesters are seniors, and I suspect that many of the geezers participate out of boredom. They meet other wokified, Trump Deranged Democrats, and maybe hook up for a canasta date or an early dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s.

I sure hope that’s the reason, because I care about some of the people participating in these rallies, and I have to fight myself tooth and nail to avoid losing respect for them completely.

From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

And completely consistent with the previous post.

The most frightening thing is that they are so open about it, as if there is nothing wrong with a party saying, “When we get in power, we’ll make sure no one feels safe opposing us.”

Santa Rosa City (Cal.) Schools: Unethical, Illegal, Unconstitutional, Un-American—Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The Cornell Rape Ethics Train Wreck just made a nasty stop.

The captain of the Piner High School football team posted the phrase “Free the Cornell Seven” on Instagram.

So what? That post is entirely, completely, protected free speech, and any semi-informed American dolt over the age of 18 should know it. That message does not involve the school or its students in any way. It is pure opinion.

Never mind. Santa Rosa City Schools officials announced last week that the student had been punished. So far, all we know about the punishment is that the player was barred from attending a team dinner. It doesn’t matter if the punishment was a reprimand in the principal’s office. A school can’t do that.

Not punished, however, were the approximately 200 students—nobody bothered to take names or count them— who walked out of class to protest the fact that their school hadn’t sufficiently punished a fellow student for making a statement of opinion that could not be legally, ethically or constitutionally punished. This is bonkers. The conduct of those students must be punished. Not only that, the teachers and administrators responsible for them not comprehending the essentials of free speech, the First Amendment and the Constitution at such an advanced age should be sacked.

The protesters demanded “accountability” for the football team captain. So did many parents, who complained to the school district that the message “makes light of sexual assault and should not be tolerated.” Not be tolerated? The school’s principal’s answer to the parents should have been,

“Mind your own damn business and get out of my face. You need to go back to high school yourself. You don’t know what you are talking about. First, anyone, including a student here, is free to post any opinion on a controversy in New York on his or her personal social media accounts any time they choose. We have to “tolerate it.” Second, there is no evidence that a sexual assault occurred, despite your fellow travelers on the Left seeking to wreck the lives of young men as a show of solidarity with the worst of American feminists.”

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Final Ethics Thoughts On The Katie Zacharia Debacle

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

1. Shame on Trump for appointing her in the first place, but credit is due for his moving quickly to can her.

2. The President’s quotes regarding her exit were unusually kind, as he implied that the news media was out to get her and said he suggested that she would be happier doing something else. He did fire her, though.

3. The rumor mill in D.C. holds that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles engineered Katie’s exit. Good, if true.That’s her job.

4. Zacharia accepted an important position that she was unqualified to fill. That’s unethical and irresponsible, and also stupid.

5. The more she blathered on about the fake “lawyer” claims, the more she sounded like an idiot. If so, she is one more mediocre talent who cut in front of better candidates because of her looks. Women have every right to resent that.

6. It is undeniable that the President’s bias toward attractive (and loyal) women causes him to entrust important jobs to untrustworthy people.

7. My theory is that Trump still doesn’t think the job of White House spokesperson requires much ability or talent, because that kind of improvised interaction with the press is easy for him. He stuck with the bumbling Sean Spicer for a long time and for no discernible reason. I also think he doesn’t pay much attention to the briefings because he has so little regard for reporters,

Can’t blame him there.

8. Democrats, which means the news media, are estopped from mocking Trump for this episode. I can, but they can’t. Biden’s paid liar for most of his term, poor dim-bulb, mop-topped Karine, was an embarrassment from the start, and the Axis media let her blunder along. They also didn’t criticize Biden for keeping her behind the podium no matter how awful she was because…well, you know why.

9. The Babylon Bee made that gag above about Trump appointing Jessica Rabbit as Katie’s successor. If Trump could, I wouldn’t bet against it.

How Bad Is Trump Derangement In DC? This Bad…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Today I go to Annapolis where the Annapolis Opera has engaged me to do a presentation for its members on “Gilbert & Sullivan in America” in advance of the company’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” two weeks from now. By pure coincidence, D.C.’s prestigious regional theater Arena Stage is hosting a production of “Makado,” a parody of the Victorian pair’s greatest work “The Mikado.”

To say the thing is witless and a vile blight on culture, intelligence, and one of the greatest entertainment repertoires in the English language would be to engage in criminal understatement. At a full 2.5 hours, a group of talented singers do relative justice to Sullivan’s melodies while emitting pointlessly and incompetently re-written lyrics. In between the songs is dialogue that either quotes Gilbert’s original libretto out of sync with what passes for the “plot,” or injects what the brainless—but woke!—adapters think is hilarious. (The mostly puzzled audience seldom agreed.)

“Makado” is an acronym for “Make America Kingly, Do!” Yet there is literally not a single reference in the new lyrics or the dialogue that makes a satiric observation relating to the title. The role of Ko-Ko in the show is a Donald Trump imitator, who announces the parody version of the famous “Little List”song as “The Lord High Retributioner.” That’s not bad, except that Ko-Ko isn’t the “king” either in the original or in this abortion. That would be the Mikado, you know, the Emperor of Japan, and the character arrives and behaves like the despot he is. The role is also played by a woman despite the Mikado’s iconic “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” solo being written for a bass-baritone and sounding awful in the soloist’s mush-mouthed contralto.

The level of humor in the show is exemplified by the lead female character of Yum-Yum being called “Num-Num.” The original’s opening chorus (“If you want to know who we are, we are gentlemen of Japan”) is now sung by a chorus of two characters, and they are “billionaires of Japan.”

As is so often the case with adapted and even straight productions of G&S shows, the director and collaborators didn’t do their homework, don’t understand the genre, don’t respect their betters, and delude themselves into thinking they can improve the originals that have endured for over a century for good reason. The Savoy Operas are in the public domain and have been for decades, so, like Will Shakespeare’s canon , they suffer this abuse frequently. This pathetic attempt, however, is so incompetent and odoriferous that it could only be tolerated by Trump Deranged hysterics who would applaud a musical version “My Mother the Car” as long as someone sang a song called “Trump is a Poopy-Head.” That the renowned Arena Stage would agree to let its name be sullied by association with such amateurish junk nicely illustrates how bonkers the Distict’s elite have become.

I an hoping Annapolis is a bit better.

EA has four posts about “The Mikado” and progressive politics (Full Disclosure: I have played Ko-Ko twice and directed the show once). You can find them here.

From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files:

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

By all means, let us, as Barack Obama sagely advises, have more women in leadership positions.

I guess that loony scene doesn’t entirely speak for itself. I have questions.

Can anyone imagine men behaving like this? Can anyone imagine trustworthy, rational women behaving like this?

What, exactly, are they screaming about?

What good do they think screaming will do?

Who suggested that screaming was the ideal way to support Lucy Craig, aka. “Jane Doe,” who is accusing seven men of sexual assault that took place two years ago after texting one of her alleged assailants that everything was consensual and signing a document that stated that no rape occurred?

After whoever it was suggested this brilliant and articulate protest, what kind of woman would react with, “Perfect! That’s exactly what needs to be done in the interest of justice!”?

Is it possible that the women above think that more viewers will think, “Hey, they make a good point! I’m convinced Lucy was raped!” than will conclude, “Women in this country have completely lost their minds!”?

And again: this is the constituency voters will be siding with when they vote for Democrats next month.

Yikes.