Ick or Ethics? The Hyrox Affair

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Ew.

Joanna Wietrzyk is the world champion of Hyrox, a sport I had never heard of before today and was not the worse for it. It is an indoor fitness competition where athletes alternate between completing eight 1km runs and eight workout stations until they win or drop. Wietrzyk won the age 16-24 elite event in Beijing over the weekend, but the stress of the ordeal caused her to have a diarrhea attack mid-race. Video online shows Wietrzyk with brown stuff running down her legs as she ran.

It isn’t that rare for athletes to have such accidents while competing in high-stress endurance events. Severe stomach cramps forced Paula Radcliffe, a champion marathon runner, to, uh, relieve herself by the side of the road during the 2005 London Marathon. In 1998, Ireland’s Catherina McKiernan had the same mishap while winning the same race. It isn’t only the endurance competitions either where such involuntary occurances happen. Kansas City Royals pitcher Craig Kimbrel vomited on the pitcher’s mound this month while playing baseball in extreme heat.

Oddly, participants and fans of an athletic event that they know puts competitors under extreme conditions revealed themselves as weenies after the Wietrzyk episode. One male competitor in Beijing wrote on Instagram: “For people who were exposed to that situation, there could be genuine physical and psychological consequences. I paid Hyrox to provide a professionally organised and safe event. [Yes, competitors pay an entrance fee] So while I understand the athlete perspective, ultimately my contract and expectation is with Hyrox. If the organisation accepts that something went wrong, why not offer affected participants refunds, credits, or some meaningful form of compensation?”

Other social media mobsters attacked the organizers and Joanna Wietrzyk. What, exactly, did they expect the competition to do in the name of avoiding “genuine physical and psychological consequences”? Drop a tarp over her? Call in a HAZMAT team? Hose her down as she ran?

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A Theater Lore Ethics Story

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It’s depressing, but most readers here have probably never heard of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. They were (and are still) the most acclaimed husband and wife acting team in theater history, legendary in the field.

If you have never heard of Lunt and Fontaine, I doubt that you’ll recognize the name of actor Cameron Mitchell, though he had a long, varied and successful career in movies and television. He was never considered a star: in his 1994 obituaries, Mitchell’s supporting role in the long-running TV western “The High Chaparral,” a “Bonanza” rip-off, usually dominated. I first took note of his talents when he appeared in a TV production of the drama “The Andersonville Trial” as Judge Advocate Lew Wallace. In interviews and in his autobiography, Mitchell told the story many times about a crucial moment in his career when the ethics heroism of the Lunts changed the course of his life.

Mitchell was a 21-year-old aspiring actor frustrated in his efforts to get cast in New York City. For two years he struggled to survive, taking dozens of dead-end jobs, like ushering at movie theaters, mail clerking, and washing dishes. Then Cameron Mitzell (his name before he changed it) saw the 1931 film adaptation of “The Guardsman” starring Alfred Lunt, and was overcome with resentment, feeling that the supposedly brilliant actor’s performance hadn’t shown that he deserved his exalted reputation. So Mitchell wrote what he later described as “the world’s worst letter.” Mitchell wrote Lunt the opposite of a fan letter; it was a “You stink! letter stating that he was certain that he was a better actor than Lunt, but no one would give him a chance to prove it. After listing the inadequacies of Lunt’s performance as he saw it, he concluded the letter by writing, “If you think you can act, you should see me.”

Far from being insulted, Lunt was intrigued by the writer’s confidence and audacity. He wrote back to Mitchell and offered him an opportunity to, as the saying goes,”put his money where is mouth is,” by auditioning for Lunt and his wife. Mitchell was terrified but wasn’t about to chicken out. He came to the auditions and immediately apologized to Lunt. Lynn Fontanne told him there was nothing to be sorry about. “Don’t worry about what you’ve done,” she said. “Acting is your life’s work, and you’re not only going to be a good actor, but you’re going to be a great one!” The Lunts then cast the young actor in their production of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” on Broadway. Fontaine also persuaded him to adopt the stage name, “Cameron Mitchell.”

Mitchell went on to be a successful working actor for more than five decades. And he made certain that at every opportunity he would tell the story of how he owed his career to the Lunts’ spontaneous act of support and kindness to a rude and cocky young actor.

Confronting My Biases #31: Giggling Girls and Women

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is one of my biases that I am certain is completely justified, and I’m not giving it up. It also is linked to the recent posts about why the U.S. hasn’t yet had a female President.

I am involved in a project right now anchored by two qualified, smart women. However, much of the time when they make a suggestion or a decision, they giggle afterwards, often looking to each other for affirmation and getting a return giggle in response. This habit does not enhance their status, respect within the group, or perceived effectiveness, indeed quite the opposite. I have been observing this behavior, with alarm and disdain, for most of my life.

In my family, the women did not giggle, cackle, or feel it necessary to defuse their opinions with inappropriate laughter. As a result, I was puzzled when I started noticing the practice, which must be ancient: in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “The Mikado,” the “Three Little Maids from School” giggle to punctuate their famous song. For heaven’s sake, why?

One online forum on the question concluded that women giggle as “a natural physical and emotional response to nervousness, polite social easing, shared humor, or romantic attraction.” Giggling is a gender-based coping mechanism for anxiety, stress, or embarrassment; in short, it signals insecurity. I know that is my reaction to it: when a woman follows a statement with a giggle that isn’t a response to humor, I think that she isn’t confident and is girding herself for rejection.

Women have also been socialized from girlhood to think that the male of the species finds the rote light laughter appealing, in part because it sends a message of submissiveness and determination not to offend.

Boy, did the women in the Marshall family not share that theory.

In a Medium essay from 2023, Emma Radmilovic wrote of giggling in part,

I noticed myself doing it when I spoke to colleagues, friends, acquaintances…it was incessant.Then, I started noticing it in the women around me.

I have one friend who laughs loudly at the end of her sentences, but only when she’s trying to be assertive or make a point. The giggling obviously has the opposite effect, and leaves her listeners (me included) a bit confused. Is it supposed to be funny? Is she upset, or nervous, or confused, or all those things at once? It makes her sound more friendly, sure, but it robs her sentences of the intended effect…Somewhere along the line, my brain said — if you giggle at the end of sentences you will seem more likable! It will stop the end of your sentences from sounding harsh! It will cover any awkwardness or nervousness you feel! Oh, and you’ll sound like a complete weirdo, but that’s a small price to pay to come across as amiable surely?

…It reminds me of how many women feel the need to say sorry so often, or use too many exclamation points in communications to maintain a positive tone. Chalk it up to years of being told to be mindful about “how you come across.”

How giggling women “come across” to me is as lacking confidence and character, people trying to force themselves into roles where, deep down, they don’t believe they belong.

If you want your daughter to grow up to be President, teach her not to giggle. It won’t be enough all by itself, but its a start.

Ponder, Consider, and Discuss:

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

White leftists are the only groups that considers the natural human preference for one’s own ethnic group to be wrong, toxic, racist and a mark of bigotry.

This certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention for the past, oh, 50 years or so.

Now what?

My reflex instinct is to presume that a group that vilifies those who display natural human characteristics that are not only permitted for everyone else but extolled (“I want to see performers/ elected officials/ judges/ Cabinet members/ etc. who look like me!”) is an unethical group.

Is that instinct wrong?

What Does AI Have To Do With President Trump? Oh, Just Nothing, But Don’t Ask The Trump Deranged…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I must credit Ann Althouse for pointing me to an August opinion piece by the New York Times’s NeverTrump fake conservative Bret Stephens (who wants to repeal the Second Amendment!). I guess I should check out the Times more often; it’s just that it is an enemy of the people, one of the worst, and I resent what the paper has done to American journalism and, as a consequence, our nation.

But I digress. The subject of Stephens’ August column, “I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I.,” is that learning to write clearly and well is an essential human skill, and one that has important feedback. In addition to making communication between human beings better (more effective, more persuasive, more rational) writing also clarifies the writer’s thoughts, requires close examination of arguments, biases and assumptions, and, essentially, the more one writes, the more adept one becomes at life competence.

I agree with the theory, with a blazing caveat. Stephens is speaking from the biased perspective of one whose associates are all in the upper echelons of educated society, are well above average intelligence, and who work, play and live among the minority of Americans who read, have articulate conversations, and place a high priority on verbal interaction. My late wife and I would sometimes change our table at a restaurant because the conversation at a table next to us was so banal and inarticulate that we wanted to scream.

Military analysts have noted that one of the reason Ulysses S. Grant was such a successful general during the civil war was that his written orders were masterpieces of clarity, telling subordinate exactly what they had to do in straightforward prose. You can see that same skill in his autobiography, which Grant wrote in his final days while dying of throat cancer so his family could pay off his debts with the income from its sale. (Which it did. Mark Twain published Grant’s story.) Today, most students graduate from high school unable to write well, or even coherently. You learn to write by reading and writing; I had to compose five-page essays in the 5th grade, ten-page essays in the sixth grade, and up to 20-page compositions, (with footnotes!) in high school. I wrote a 116 page honors thesis as a senior in college. Later, when I was an administrator at Georgetown University Law Center, I was stunned to learn that GULC was admitting students who had never written a substantive paper at all.

I’m digressing again, but my point is that for, tragically, the majority of Americans, being able to let a chatbot turn their jumbled thoughts, flawed logic and infantile vocabularies into clear prose is a major boon for them and the people they are trying to communicate with. Is it likely to be great writing or even good writing? Not right now, it isn’t. I am working on a project that requires a clear web page to describe it, and the content I have seen was heavily dependent on AI. Nobody had to tell me that; it was obvious, and bot-writing usually is. And it’s bad.

However. the theme of this post is that Stephens felt that he had to somehow virtue-signal to the Trump Deranged. Here is how he ended the column:

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The Ritz Brothers and The Duty To Remember

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

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.

Comedy historian Anthony Scibelli writes,

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On Trump’s “Gifts” To His Staff

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

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.

Here is the Federal law that Painter references, 18 U.S. Code § 209 – Salary of Government officials and employees payable only by United States, which states in relevant part,

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A 9-11 Memory…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

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.

Naturally, no one corrected him.

And The Lindsay Clancy Ethics Train Wreck Keeps Gathering Steam…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

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.

In the post-mistrial juror interviews, we had the moronic quote from one juror that she was shocked that the prosecutor didn’t show more “compassion” for the defendant (in a child murder case!) in his opening statement, and what may be the Unethical Quote of 2026 from another juror, that the holdout “had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”

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…

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?

9-11 Open Forum…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

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…