“Carlos Danger,” running for an office that won’t have anything to do with him if he wins it, he tells us. Where is Monty Python when we need them?
There are periodic moments when I feel I am wasting my life. A recent one occurred when I heard Huma Abedin, the humiliated wife of New York mayoral candidate and serial penis-texter Anthony Weiner, or, as his friend call him when he’s showing his junk, “Carlos Danger,” say that his pathological and gross conduct, bolstered by public lies, deceit and posturing, isn’t a legitimate concern for voters, and that it is just “between us, and our marriage.”
As Stephen King would put it, a muffled scream builds to inevitability deep in my chest. Continue reading →
I began the day, to my surprise, with tears in my eyes from reading an obituary on the front page of today’s Washington Post.
The story announced the death of Willie Reed, who as an African American teenager in 1955, risked his life by testifying in a Mississippi court against the white men who had tortured and murdered Emmet Till, another black teenager, for the Jim Crow “crime” of allegedly whistling at a white woman.
The intensity of my emotional reaction surprised me. I think it was the product of being reminded of the horrific tragedy that befell Till and other black citizens at the height of segregation, and being slapped in the face with the reality, known to me but kept deep in the place in my brain where the ugliest things are sealed away to keep me from incurable despair, of the deranged hate that festered so long—and destroyed so many— in the country I love. I was also overcome with admiration and wonder at the almost unimaginable courage of Reed, who knew that by testifying in open court he was simultaneously guaranteeing that he would be marked for Till’s fate for the rest of his life. Maybe most of all, I wept out of anger at my ignorance and the warped priorities of our culture and educational system, which ensures that we know the names and life stories of insignificant narcissists like Kim Kardashian, embarrassing political leaders like Michele Bachman, greedy athletes like Lance Armstrong, and cynical demagogues like Al Sharpton, but know nothing of the lives and deeds of unglamorous American heroes like Willis Reed. I consider myself an educated man, but I had never heard of him, which means I am not educated enough. I wish I could apologize to Reed. I wish I could shake his hand. I wish I could say, “thank you.” Continue reading →
“It’s entirely fitting that her name should be forever linked to the motto “Racist and Proud,” because that isn’t a lie. It’s true. It is racist to press the racism template onto the Zimmerman story, and it is done with full intent to stimulate feelings of race-based anxiety in vulnerable minds. That is heartless and evil.”
–—-Law professor/blogger Ann Althouse on the recent Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck passenger, progressive environmental activist Michele Renee. Renee attended a George Zimmerman support rally in Texas and held a sign reading “We’re Racist & Proud!” to falsely tar the group as racist
“It’s a harsh consequence to become — for all time, on the web — Renee “Racist and Proud” Vaughan. She’s apologized — sorry she got busted. You know how apologies are. But I doubt that she’d be sorry if her trick had worked and amplified the legend of the racism of Zimmerman and his defenders.”
Michele Renee has written two extravagant apologies, but Althouse is right: they are unbelievable. This is signature significance: no honest, fair, decent and ethical person sets out to brand others as racist with a false flag stunt, not one, not as a mistake, not ever, because ethical people don’t have horrible ideas like that, or if they do, they certainly don’t act on them. Am I unfair to guess that her MSNBC-cheering colleagues and friends are giving her high fives and telling her “nice try”? I don’t think so. Althouse is correct: Renee’s actions smack of evil, and she arises out of an increasingly hateful and divisive culture on the left that seeks to demonize innocent people for the crime of not seeing the world their way.
Having said that, I find the whole idea of pro-Zimmerman rallies disturbing, offensive, and misguided. Rally for the jury system; rally against race-baiting; rally against the calculated and cynical racial politics of Obama and Holder. But Zimmerman, though he does not deserve to be a hunted man and the face of racial profiling, also doesn’t deserve any rallies. His reckless conduct got a young man killed. What is there to support?
Hey, Mayor Filner, if San Diegans decide they have a problem being led by a serial sexual harasser, you can run for Mayor of New York!
The mandate for leaders and potential leaders who have engaged in blatantly dishonest, corrupt, undignified or otherwise unethical conduct to remove themselves from office or consideration for office is not that, as hundreds of foolish pundits (like this guy) will try to convince you, hypocrites with a keyboard or a vote falsely pretend that such conduct is unique. There are two justifications for the unethical to resign from office, both undeniable and ancient. I have written enough, for now, about the first—that such conduct demonstrates untrustworthiness, the quality a leader must not have— and want to focus on the second, which is this: if they do not step down and away, such leaders and potential leaders mock the aspirations of democracy, insult its underlying hopes, and degrade, by their persistence, the standards of future leadership.
Once, this was thoroughly understood. Leaders who were exposed as lacking honesty, integrity, responsibility and respect for their own office resigned or withdrew from public life, as self-executed punishment and their last chance at redemption. Democracy, as John Adams wrote, is supposed to be a system that elevates the most accomplished, the most able, the most trusted and the most ethically sound to leadership, for obvious reasons. They are qualified to be leaders because, bluntly, they are better than the rest of us. They are also, because they are better, supposed to be capable of sacrifice and humility, and to recognize that power is a privilege, not a possession to be retained at all costs. Continue reading →
I wasn’t going to mention my current theater (at Arlington, Virginia’s American Century Theater) project here, until I dropped Ethics Alarms’ conservative warrior Steven Mark Pilling a note on Facebook that I had just posted on the topic he is most passionate about, preventing the abuse of child actors in Hollywood. Steven is not, to say the least, a fan of gay marriage (this might be the topic he is next most passionate about) , and I realized that my Facebook thumbnail, showing two same-sex couples in an intimate moment from my show, might put him off.
The show I just finished directing ( with the assistance of Quinn Anderson and my musical director Tom Fuller) the old Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones chestnut, “I Do! I Do!”, ( Remember “My Cup Runneth Over,“ Ed Ames fans? Hello? ) the tw0-actor Broadway musical based on the 1950 play “The Fourposter.” Back in 1966, when Robert Preston and Mary Martin starred in the musical, it was considered an affectionate and perceptive look at the institution of marriage, and the show has attracted nostalgic, usually elderly married couples to regional and dinner theaters ever since. Productions of “I Do! I Do!” are becoming rarer, however, because the societal developments have rendered the tale of the epic marriage of Agnes and Michael Snow increasingly alien to the current American scene. In particular, what was once a musical intended to speak to all married couples and candidates for future nuptials now appears to exclude the very group that comprises musical theater’s hardiest supporters: gays.
In marked abandonment of my theater’s usual principles (we don’t update shows, believing that it is more interesting and fair to the authors to let audiences reflect on what has changed since an original production, and what has not), I decided that for the benefit of audiences, the culture and the show itself, it was time to re-conceive “I Do! I Do!” so it would gain renewed relevance and vitality in a post DOMA age. My approach, courageously and generously approved by the authors, was to show the marriage of the show’s couple through a constantly rotating prism that alternately revealed them as a same-sex female couple, a same-sex male couple, and the traditional heterosexual couple of the 1966 version. This required four very versatile and gutsy actors who could pull off the illusion of showing one marriage three different ways without giving the audience whiplash or confusing them hopelessly. In Steve Lebens, Esther Covington, Chad Fournwalt and Mary Beth Luckenbaugh, I found the dream cast. Continue reading →
I posed this question years ago to Paul Petersen, a noted child performer himself (on the classic “The Donna Reed Show”) and for decades the courageous advocate for past and present child stars. He has fought for legislation to protect their assets and their welfare, often attracting hatred and attacks from stage parents in the process, but draws a hard line at banning kids in stage, screen and TV. “Gotta have those cute kids, Jack” he replied, essentially admitting that as brutal as pre-adult careers in show business often were, the public would never give up their lovable moppets. I don’t dispute Paul’s clear-eyed acceptance of reality, but I also think his answer ducks the question. As he knows better than anyone (you should check out the website of his non-profit organization here, and consider sending a contribution his way), the carnage on young lives a too-early introduction into one of the most callous and mind-warping of professions brings is well-documented and undeniable. Enablers and apologists, not to mention greedy parents willing to cash in their kids’ chances at a healthy childhood for fees and residuals, point to the prominent child stars (Shirley Temple, Brooke Shields) who did not grow up miserable, dysfunctional, and lost, but that is like arguing that child abuse is tolerable because some victims recover from its wounds.
The evidence of child stardom’s destructive effects is ever-present, so much so that the public has become inured to it, and hardly notices. Incidents and quotes exposing Justin Bieber’s gradual evolution into a narcissistic jerk have been regular features of the tabloid news, as have weekly hints that former Disney star Miley Cyrus is heading off the rails. Her infamous fellow alumna from the Mouse Factory, Lindsay Lohan, continues to cement her credentials as the poster girl for child stars gone bad, and just yesterday, former Nickelodeon comic Amanda Bynes was ordered to undergo psychiatric examination following the latest in a year’s worth of weird conduct.
Over at Cracked, a former child star who managed to escape the Biz with her sanity, values and reputation intact weighed in with an unusually sensitive (for Cracked) essay entitled, “7 Reasons Child Stars Go Crazy.” The author is Mara Wilson, now virtually forgotten despite the fact that she is barely in her thirties and the Broadway musical adapted from her most popular film, “Matilda,” was a 2013 Tony winner. Wilson identifies the key factors dooming her less fortunate colleagues as… Continue reading →
“It’s unclear if his latest admission will hurt his standing with voters.”
—-NBC News, after revealing on its website that New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who resigned from Congress in 2011 amid a sexting scandal, admitted today that there were more episodes like the one that forced his resignation. He issued the statement after a gossip website published an interview with an anonymous woman who claimed she had a six-month online relationship with him that continued after his earlier online activities were, uh, exposed.
The once and future studmuffin…”Mayor Studmuffin?” Really, New York?
Weiner’s statement was Clintonian with heavy dash of weasel, saying,
“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have. As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.”
Note: Weiner also said the behavior was behind him when he resigned. (Actually, based on the photos, the behavior is clearly in front of him.) Given his talent for Clintonesque deceit, perhaps he means that all past behavior is behind him, since he’s talking in the present, and only future internet flashing is ahead of him.
Regular readers of Ethics Alarms may have surmised that I detest rigid ideologies. Like moral codes, they are short-cuts for the intellectually and ethically lazy, “how-To” manuals for policy-making and problem-solving that eliminate the need for analysis and critical thought, and that therefore cause untold misery. Ideologies, whether they involve small government, caring for the poor or always bring in your closer in the ninth inning, are among the primary reasons that the country and the world are in the mess that they are.
An awful story from Melbourne, Australia is the best metaphor for this that I have encountered in a while. A vegan couple decided that their virtuous lifestyle dictated that they make a vegan out of their kitten—cats, unlike dogs, must eat meat to survive—so they force-fed the little fluffy animal a vegan diet of potatoes, rice milk and pasta. Naturally, the kitten became deathly ill and was barely saved by an animal hospital after three days of intensive care.
Human babies have also been made sick and sometimes killed by similar misapplied ideologies. These people are, of course, idiots, but are they that much more irresponsible than elected leaders who are incapable of setting aside their ideological biases to care for cities, states, and nations, and deal with the non-conforming, non-ideologically neat crises they find themselves in?
A fed-up husband named Jim decided to pave the ground for his impending divorce announcement by uploading a video of his wife’s ridiculous tantrum to YouTube, where it went viral. The wife, known to us only by her first name of Whitney, reacts to her husband’s refusal to “take her to the lake” with the kind of meltdown that would get any seven-year old to time-out. During her antics, Jim sounds alternately resigned and amused, playing the role of a long-suffering spouse who is tolerating, once again, his wife’s and abusive bizarre behavior.
But then he knew he was being recorded.
Here’s the video.
Obviously Whitney has problems. Jim, however, is a cur. Every marriage has its moments where one or both partners behave outrageously, childishly, disgracefully, foolishly, abusively, embarrassingly, and it is a vital component of the unspoken pact of wedlock that these moments are private and confidential. Marriage is a relationship of trust, the one safe environment in which husband and wife can be completely free to be themselves without fear of wider exposure, criticism or humiliation, because each is secure in the belief that the other’s conduct is governed by unconditional love. What Jim did to Whitney is a horrible betrayal, a vicious act of cruelty designed to cause humiliation and shame to someone who trusted him.
You can say he couldn’t stand her tantrums any more, you can say he had been pushed to his limit, you can say that she got what such immaturity deserves, you can find all manner of rationalizations. Nevertheless, placing this video of a private encounter on the web is indefensible and unforgivable, a breach of trust, honesty, fairness and respect. It causes me to wonder what other cruelties accumulated to make his wife into the unstable basket case she appears to be. She is the victim here.
Post script:Once again, I am faced here with the dilemma we have debated before, regarding the ethics of my posting the video, the vehicle of the unethical web-shaming, and thus adding to the victim’s humiliation. My decision is to post it, because the video is so easily accessible on the link provided and elsewhere, because realistically, my contribution to its circulation is minimal, and most of all, because it is presented here in a context that is very different from that of the original sites, like Gawker, that initially commented on it. This is presented as an example of unethical web-shaming, with the message that the treatment of the wife that it represents is unethical, unconscionable, and cruel. I do not believe there is sufficient basis for considering the issue without viewing the video itself. If this additional circulation adds to Whitney’s pain, I am genuinely sorry. My hope is that I can make some progress is stemming what I consider to be a dangerous social trend of using the internet as a weapon of revenge and gratuitous meanness.
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