It Appears That SCOTUS Admitting That There Is No Constitutional Right To Abortion Didn’t Save The Life Of Anyone: Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I dived down Alice’s rabbit hole after seeing this head-exploder on Twitter/”X”. Planned Parenthood really is evil. It wants to kill as many unborn human beings as possible by bombarding vulnerable women with lies and euphemisms. I went to its website and couldn’t find the illogical nonsense above anywhere on that promotional and fundraising site, but there are many almost as absurd assertions:

  • “The U.S. Supreme Court is now dominated by justices hostile to our freedom.” If anything, this Court is more determined to preserve individual liberty than any preceeding court in memory, notably by reining in the power of federal agencies.
  • “[I]n June 2022, the court took away our federal constitutional right to abortion.” There never was a constitutional right to abortion, because Roe was a legally indefensible exercise of judicial activism and legislation.
  • “[I]t goes against the will of the American people, 80% of whom believe that abortion should be legal.” The Court didn’t say abortion was illegal. The Court says it isn’t a right. The public is too ignorant to grasp the distinction, but Planned Parenthood is deliberately trying to make it dumber: they can have more babies killed that way.
  • “This ruling robbed us of our power to make personal decisions about our own bodies, and gave that control to politicians.” No it did not. Women have the power not to get pregnant. No American has the power to take an innocent human life because it is inconvenient or its existence is badly timed. In a republic, the people delegate their lawmaking to elected representatives. That is the Constitution.
  • “Reproductive freedom means every person gets to decide what’s right for their own body. No exceptions.” Ah yes, the big lie. “Every person”…except the vulnerable, genetically unique, innocent and powerless person who others get to decide that being dead is what’s “right for their own body.”

But “Abortion is gender-affirming care” is worst of all. Planned Parenthood is just parroting a deliberate euphemism for the ugly process of distorting an individual’s mind, organs, hormones and secondary sex characteristics to conform with the current social pathogen of gender-warping, the opposite of “gender affirming.” How could an abortion be gender-affirming? I guess the theory is that if you have an abortion you are female, so congratulations? But being pregnant (without some weird zygote implantation process worthy of Dr. Frankenstein) is also gender-affirming. Is Planned Parenthood saying that a woman who really wants to affirm her womanhood should have an abortion? It would be in character for the group, which is Machiavellian.

Lisa Carr, an abortion opponent writes in part at Victory Girls:

“The language is Orwellian, really. The language has gone from “women’s healthcare” to “choice”, to “bodily autonomy”, to “reproductive freedom” through the years. Now, abortion is “gender-affirming care”. Everything BUT what it actually is.Mutilation of body parts is “gender-affirming”. Murder of an innocent and perfectly-formed CHILD is also “gender-affirming”. Planned Parenthood is not only mutilating lives but language here and this is very dangerous and indicative of the depths to which we’ve lowered. May God help us.”

I think PP is playing cognitive dissonance games. It is working hard to find an metaphor for abortion that leaves out the icky unborn baby-killing part and paints a positive, appealing picture for the Woke and easily indoctrinated. Apparently the little matter of some actual connection to abortion is now dispensable, which is great for abortion promotion. Abortion is a romantic walk on a warm Hawaii beach! Abortion is a basket of golden retriever puppies! Abortion is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows!

Meanwhile, according to the US Abortion Data Dashboard, the number of abortions—that is, deaths of human beings who would be alive today if given the chance—has increased each year from 2023. Last year’s total: 1,129,650. Oh, but if only it could have been more! (I’m channeling the ghouls at Planned Parenthood.)

If women want to keep killing the unborn, there’s nothing more that can be done about it, is there?

Another discouraging note: approximately 40% of abortions eliminate black babies, in a U.S. population that is less than 14% black.

Ethics Alarms Challenge: Name All The Ways This Meme Is Misleading and Breathtakingly Stupid….

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

My Facebook friends really like it!

This is the level of intellect at which foes of enforcing immigration laws are functioning. The director of the Smithsonian American History Museum gives land acknowledgements, meaning that she must think that map is profound.

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep.Chuck Edwards, R-N.C.

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Is it really that hard to not be a total asshole while you are an elected representative supposedly serving the public good? Members of Congress represent the nation, our Constitution and the Founders while they have that honor. Why can’t they all recognize their duties, which include being a role model and not bringing disrepute upon the institution, and conduct themselves accordingly? (To turn it around a bit: why are voters so lazy and inattentive that they elect such creeps?)

Today’s featured creep is GOP Rep.Chuck Edwards, who just dropped out of the race for his seat, leaving his party with no candidate and no incumbant going into a crucial mid-term election that will determine whether Congress spends the next two years impeaching the President. He wrote on “X” yesterday,

“After much prayer and reflection, I’ve decided to withdraw from my re-election campaign. I will complete my current term. Serving Western North Carolina has been the honor of my life. Thank you for your trust, prayers, and support. God bless WNC and America.”

Gee, he mentioned prayer twice and God once in a 43 word post; I guess that means he must be a good man. (I’m sure a disturbing number of people believe that.) If serving was such an honor, why did he behave like Harpo Marx ? The House Ethics Committee recommended this week that Edwards be censured for “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.” Translation: he engaged in sexual harassment in the workplace.

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Trump Derangement Update: The New England Sports Network

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

One of the few downsides of my resuming full attention to the weird Boston Red Sox 2026 season is that I now have to watch the paid political ads between innings on NESN, the New England Sports Network that broadcasts Sox and Bruins games.

As background [Note: this is NOT a baseball-related post, so ye who have been deprived of love for the National Pastime by a quirks of mysterious God, don’t stop reading], the team played so wretchedly for so long—three full months—that I was forced to suspend viewership just to preserve my sanity, as all rational analysis led to the unavoidable conclusion that the team was a hopeless, inexplicable flop despite what should have been sufficient talent to compete, and watching the group find infuriating ways to lose was a waste of time and emotion. Unexpectedly, and almost without precedent in baseball history, Boston climbed from a dismal 32–46 record on June 24 and a 1% playoff probability to 61–51, capturing the second American League Wild Card spot and tying an 80-year-old franchise record with a 15-game winning streak. They are now in the midst of a new 6 game streak now, and are playing exciting, spirited baseball, most recently sweeping the Best Team Money Can Buy, the L.A. Dodgers, in the Evil Empire’s home stadium.

But the political ads! They are insulting, as the authors obviously believe Red Sox fans are morons, and, to be fair since I read the comments after team reports, many certainly are.

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Trans Activism Ethics Train Wreck Caboose: The “Hadestown” Affair [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

The producers of hit Broadway musical “Hadestown” have fired veteran musical theater star Geno Segers from the cast. Though the the production did not announce a reason for the decision, everyone in the industry knows what lost him the job.

Segers had taken to social media to posted his views on transgender athletes playing in women’s sports. “I don’t see transgender people becoming oppressed or being oppressed … life is unfair” he posted, along with, “I’m not against anyone living out their lives the way they want, but I am against their rights superseding the rights of other people. That’s a little bit foul.” He also mocked the posting of preferred pronouns: “If you asked me what my preferred pronouns are and it’s not obvious to you that I’m a he/him, that I’m good with he/him — Surely you don’t need any help. I’m not wearing a dress.”

The social media Furies descended on the actor with a vengeance, accusing him of being transphobic, homophobic, yada yada. You know the script.

Prof. Turley believes that the performer’s human rights have been unfairly and hypocritically “curtailed,” writing in part,

“Other actors have expressed support for transgender players without any response other than praise in the latest example of the rising McCarthyism on the left.This is only the latest termination over the political views of artists in New York. As the song states in Hadestown, “It’s an old song. It’s a sad song. But we’re gonna sing it anyway.” We have previously discussed how private companies can fire employees for public conduct or statements that bring controversy to their business or products. However, even though the First Amendment does not govern such controversies, there remains a free speech issue. Free speech goes beyond the confines of the First Amendment and private companies can engage in censorship that curtails this human right. The question often comes down to consistency in companies enforcing content-based standards. I did not like some of the comments of Segers, but there is little question that equally strong comments against “cisgender” athletes or for transgender athletes would not result in such termination…Whether it is actors, athletes, or academics, there is a demonstrably different level of tolerance for controversial views on gender. Take Segers’ statements, swap the nouns or pronouns, and ask yourself if there would have been a cancel campaign, let alone a termination. It is not the fact of the controversy but the lack of consistency that is so problematic in these areas.”

Yes, but. This is Broadway, and a Broadway musical. Broadway’s audience pool is shrinking and its ticket prices exclude all but the relatively wealthy. Musicals are especially dependent on the the affluent LGTBQ demographic: I would wager that the percentage of gay Americans who have heard of “Hadestown” is double or more the percentage of non-LGTBQ members of the public. Having a prominent cast member in a Broadway musical making public comments that are likely to offend its core audience is unacceptable, and the producers were only protecting their show, their investment, and the rest of the company by sending Segers packing.

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Wrong! Athletes Should Shut Up About Political and Social Issues and Do What They Are Paid To Do.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I remember sports columnist Steve Buckley, now with the Athletic (the Times’ captive sports publication) from my halcyon days in Boston. Now he’s issuing badly-reasoned, ethically blind sports commentary from a national platform. Yecchh.

As a special annoyance, his poorly-reasoned observations on sports figures weighing in on national controversies are under a misleading headline: “Aaron Rodgers, Sophie Cunningham speak out. Caitlin Clark doesn’t. Either way, they lose.” I assumed from those words that Steve was going to echo my long-time position regarding narrow-range celebrities in general: “Shut up and sing/dance/act/ dribble/run/kick/pitch.”

But no.

“…Sports people (and this includes sports media people) who weigh in on political and social issues can count on being inundated with anonymous directives that they should “stick to sports.” It’s a mystery who these people are who feel empowered to tell others to stick to sports. The mere utterance suggests somebody with a doctorate in government affairs, or who perhaps has served in Congress or the diplomatic corps. The hypocrisy is at once comical and frightening. We like it when our athletes offer their opinions on this or that issue, except when we disagree with those opinions. (Stick to sports!) And athletes who choose not to play this silly parlor game are dismissed as cowards. At the risk of boring you with seventh-grade civics, but to use a kitschy sports term to make the point, this would be a good time to have a Turn Back the Clock event that teaches and celebrates the protections of the First Amendment. And if you happen to be a member of a championship team who’s been invited to the White House, go ahead and go. Or don’t go. Do that First Amendment thing and tell everyone else to screw off. For sports people who want to take a stand on this or that issue and who are prepared to deal with the avalanche of positive and negative commentary that ensues, go right ahead. For athletes who choose to say nothing, allow them that right. Why does everything have to be so complicated?”

Because things are complicated, Steve—now I remember why I skipped your work at the Boston Herald—and because they are complicated, most sports celebrities have nothing of value to contribute in understanding them. Celebrities do, however, have outsized metaphorical megaphones that give their usually simple-minded opinions far more influence on the public than is healthy for democracy and the quality of civic discourse. I know why Buckley has his own simple-minded view of this issue: sportswriters are, with few exceptions (not him, obviously), also unqualified by intellect, education, experience and skill, to comment publicly on political and social policy matters. Like all journalists, they think they are smarter than they are. This column is a useful piece of evidence to the contrary.

The inspiration for Buckley’s piece was Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci after the Ethics Villain repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment during a Senate hearing last week, plus Sophie Cunningham‘s public statements regarding trans-females competing in women’s sports, along with fellow WNBA star and team mate Caitlin Clark’s refusal to get drawn into the controversy. Right off the bat (that’s a sports metaphor), Steve trips on his sneaker laces by mixing apples and oranges (a fruit analogy).

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A Final Complaint About “The Odyssey”…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

If I don’t get this posted, it will keep me up all night…

I keep reading that Sinon, that non-Homeric character played by Eliot Page, is crucial to understanding Odysseus’s guilt. Sinon, after he’s dead (above), complains that Odysseus deceived him and set him up to be killed. Odysseus argues that he was necessary collateral damage, which by any standard of warfare, especially ancient warfare, is exactly right, but never mind that: I can’t imagine how the deception of Sinon was achieved. His fellow colleagues were building a huge wooden horse on the beach. It took a long time. Odysseus and the other Greek soldiers had to climb into the horse. Where was Sinon when this was happening?

How was all of the noisy and complex operation kept from Sinon? When did Odysseus communicate the “This horse is a gift from the gods so be sure to tell the Trojans that” lie to him? Then what, he told Sinon to close his eyes and count to ten, and when Sinon opened his eyes, he didn’t suspect that his general had climbed into the wooden horse? Or did wily Odysseus leave a note for Sinon on the beach that said, “Hey, sorry, I’ve left with the rest of the ships, but I saw a big wooden horse on the beach. My guess is that it’s a gift from Poseidon. Hang around and tell the Trojans. Good luck!”?

The classic myth about Sinon is that he was a willing martyr to the cause, and stayed behind to assist in the deadly deception of the Trojans. That makes sense, but Nolan’s rewrite seems impossible.

It’s like the mystery of the Mary Celeste! No matter how I try, I can’t construct a plausible sequence where the Greeks fake leaving, everyone climbs into a wooden horse that was assembled on the beach, and Odysseus lies successfully to the sole remaining Greek soldier about the provenance of the horse.

Well, I Finally Saw “The Odyssey,” Kind Of, And I Have Some Ethics Observations, PART II [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
More about an unethically disappointing movie

When I left you in Part I, I was cataloguing the incompetence of the movie’s director, who some critics, probably all Batman fans, appear to regard as Orson Welles, John Ford, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg and William Wyler rolled up in one.

Upon reflection, I need to mention another example at the risk of exposing my lack of fair reference since I never saw the second half of the movie.

Based on various reviews and analyses, I know that many aspects of the performances (Damon seems depressed and unengaged) and the unfolding story ( Why is Athena so passive?) are allegedly explained or justified by revelations in the film’s last scenes. However, with the exception of gimmick films like “The Sixth Sense,” in which fooling the audience is the central purpose of the movie, that is unconscionable story-telling, especially in a three hour movie. Finding out after Matt Damon has bored you stiff for hours and you’ve been wondering “Where the hell are all the gods?” the answer to the puzzle—“Oh! I see! Odysseus is depressed! Its complex PTSD! Now I realize in retrospect that I really enjoyed his nuanced portrayal of a serious human malady!” and “That’s it! There aren’t any gods, and “Athena” was just the hero’s way of dealing with the girls he saw beheaded!”—is unfair to the audience, to the actors, and to the source material. Rare directors, with the right material, can pull that trick off. If the first half of the movie loses the audience, it’s impossible.

2. Incompetence: The screenplay! The dialogue! Nolan is responsible for both, and shame on him. I don’t know that I have ever watched a major movie with such amateurish, hackneyed, stilted dialogue…when you could hear the dialogue. Here I have to also blame the actors as well. At least the stars have some control over what they say. Damon’s dialogue in particular was awful. He has the juice (so does Hathaway) to pull the director aside and say, “Come on. I can’t say that. Fix it.” This may be another example of how Nolan’s inflated reputation for being a genius harmed the film.

As for the screenplay, whoever got Nolan hooked on “Zeus’s Law” should be stuffed in a barrel filled with fat Lithuanian midgets. The best take-down of this thematic conceit comes from Emily Wilson appropriately enough, the scholar who wrote the translation of Homer that Nolan allegedly adapted for his movie, and who wrote, by far, the most thorough and intelligent review of it as well. (She hated it.)

After noting the obvious, that it’s weird how everyone blathers on about Zeus’s Law but Zeus is nowhere to be seen, and Odysseus doesn’t believe in the gods anyway unless they hang around as surrogates for headless girls, Wilson writes,

(See, Alizia? That’s an ethical “appeal to authority,” the opinion of a Homer scholar who has read the work in Greek and wrote the translation the film she’s critiquing was based on.)

Bingo! The movie, characters and plot as envisioned by Nolan are ethically incoherent. (I had the same complaint about Nolan’s Batman movies.)

Remaining notes:

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Well, I Finally Saw “The Odyssey,” Kind Of, And I Have Some Ethics Observations, PART I [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Let me begin with a few critical observations, some with ethical overtones.

First of all, “The Odyssey” stinks.** It isn’t a massive, A-bomb of a movie, like “Snow White,” but its quality has to be measured in contrast to a) the embarrassing number of critical raves by people who are supposedly watching movies for a living, and b) the movie’s undeserved box office success. Hollywood is excited that Christopher Nolan’s latest over-praised film is getting people to leave their TV screens for the audience experience, and they should be. It is tragic that the draw isn’t a great movie. Or a good one. Or even a meh one.

I went into the theater with a completely open mind. I love both “The Illiad” and “The Odyssey.” I love classic spectacles, and many reviews told me I would see one worthy of the great Cecil B. DeMille. I have no bias against Nolan or for him. I do not understand his critical sanctification.

In full disclosure, I must reveal that I did not see the whole movie. At almost exactly the half-way mark (90 minutes), my female companion, a private tutor who knew Homer’s version well and whom I had invited to see the film after she complained that none of her friends would see it with her, turned to me (I thought she was asleep) and said, “I have to get up early tomorrow, and this is terrible. Let me know how bad it is from here.” And I said: “I’m coming with you.” As a director and performer, I caught several media reviewers publishing full reviews of a show of mine when they had left mid-way and not revealed this in their review. That’s unethical: I got one of them fired for doing it. In this instance, I will issue a disclaimer: It is possible that the second half of “The Odyssey” redeems the first half. If so, out of the hundreds of films I have seen over my life, it would be the first movie that accomplished that feat after such a soporific, pompous, annoying beginning. It would be like “The Terror of Tiny Town” suddenly turning into “High Noon.”

My second point is that, to my surprise, there is nothing overtly political (or “woke”) about Nolan’s film at all, which means that confirmation bias warped the perceptions of both the Left and the Right on a grand scale. All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye. I would add “politics ruins everything” in 2026, but the film hit the screen ruined, and politics isn’t what ruined it.

On to the ethical and quasi-ethical observations…

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National Anthem Ethics, or “Poor Martha Reeves!”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

What was the Motown legend thinking? This rendition is epically, tragically bad, if not the worst “Star Spangled Banner” ever, certainly the worst within memory by a professional performer. Then, of course, there was this…

But I digress., As you can see from the video at the first game of the new Women’s Professional Baseball League, people were trying to suppress giggles during this musical train wreck. Martha tried to maintain some shred of dignity and talk her way out of near certain enshrinement in the National Anthem Rendition Hall of Shame with such worthies as Robert Goulet and Fergie, telling TMZ,

“Having just celebrated my 85th birthday, I’ve learned a great deal over more than 60 years of performing live. It was an incredible honor to be invited to perform at the inaugural Women’s Professional Baseball League event and to help celebrate such a historic moment for women in sports. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. The field conditions were wet and windy, and without stage monitors I wasn’t able to hear myself as I normally would. While it wasn’t the performance I had hoped for, I’m grateful to have been there in support of these remarkable athletes and this groundbreaking league.”

Ah. So we now know Martha’s 85, that the field conditions were against her and the tech was inadequate. Uh-uh. Martha can’t sing that difficult song now, and that’s nothing to feel badly about at her age. Why did she agree to do it? Did she really want to have her performance judged by the “It was pretty good for an 85-year-old whose voice is shot” standard? A crucial moment for all ethical performers (including athletes) is to know when to quit. The critical sub category for vocalists of note: Knowing when to stop trying to sing the National Anthem before baseball games.

I will give Martha this compliment, and I mean it sincerely. When the song was falling apart, she never hesitated, never showed her distress, and soldiered on bravely to the end. That’s a pro in action. I have been where Martha was, not on a baseball field but on stages where my moment in the spot light was spinning out of control. You can’t stop the music and you can’t hide. You don’t show your horror, and you do your job—badly, but you finish it.

Then you smile, take your bow, leave, and find a good friend to talk you out of shooting yourself.

___________________

Pointer: JutGory.