All of a sudden, a post from 2011 is attracting more views in the last four days than it did in the previous four years. Odd are you missed it too, so so to avoid the anomaly of non-Ethics Alarms fans being more attuned to a post here than the loyal throng, I’m going to point the way to the link. The essay is titled “Clark Gable, Loretta Young, and the Betrayal of Judy Lewis,” and told the heart-breaking story of how Clark Gable denied his parenthood of his own daughter (that’s her to his left) to avoid a career-damaging scandal, while the child’s mother, Loretta Young, lied to her as well. It was and is an interesting and disturbing chapter in Hollywood history, and my commentary generated some furious defenses from fans of “The King,” who marshal every rationalization imaginable to try to justify a rich and famous father neglecting his only child, even after she became aware of who her father was. That phenomenon is as illuminating as the sad tale itself. Here, for example, is “Seeker”—see how many rationalizations you can find. I see at least four:
“Shame on anyone who thinks Loretta didn’t do what she thought was best for JUDY!
1935 is NOT 2011! Judy, even as a teen would have been labeled a bastard and born the stigma of that. I bet her mother was thinking it would be easier on her not to know who her famous father was…not in that era, and unwed babies still were labeled up through the early 70’s. She’s so fortunate that her own birth mother was able to adopt her…at least she knew her real mother, unlike Joan Crawford’s daughter…and Judy wasn’t beaten by an alcoholic, fame obsessed, ill-tempered psychopath. Plus Judy got to meet her real father at least once. So many children never get to know either of their birth parents…”
Why is this post so popular now? I haven’t a clue.
Ethics Alarms 
Isn’t there a feature in the control panel that shows the major originating sources for inbound traffic for any given word press post? Check that out and see if someone internet famous came across it and brought it up to their audience.
You would think. It often misses this. There is no source that explains the sudden volume, but obviously someone linked to it.
Could well be a bot. Most of my most-viewed posts get that way because someone else links to them. You have provided a specific link to three of my ten most-viewed posts, for example. But my most viewed post got 10 times as many hits–an overwhelming percentage of which were from Russia–in one day a while back as it had in the previous two years it was up. I can’t find any links to it, and it wasn’t on a topic that would inspire a lot of re-examination. I don’t understand what advantage would be gained by pointing a Russian bot at that particular post, but I’m pretty sure it happened. And more than once, as it has received more than 9 times as many hits as my #4 post, which you linked to, and a link to which was tweeted by “Firefly” actor Adam Baldwin.
It is generally pretty easy to figure out a surge of interest for reasons like those. When there’s no rationale, chance are there’s really no rationale.
It’s fascinating. When EA had its “Instalanche,” I saw where the visitors were coming from. Not this one. Kerry Washington found the post from the mystery source, by only a few links have come from her blog—I guess she’s not as popular as Adam Baldwin, which is hard to imagine.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some movie buff happened to stumble on it and passed the word to a movie fan club or a Facebook group. While the poster made some points, it still comes down to a case of two actors who refused to come to terms with the consequences of their actions for the sake of their careers.
“She’s so fortunate that her own birth mother was able to adopt her.”
Seriously? If I hadn’t read the whole ridiculous comment, I would have thought this particular line was meant to be sarcastic.
Ah, Clark’s bedroom eyes melt hearts and brains even now.
That lucky stiff Judy: imagine, her own mother, a wealthy Hollywood star, was actually willing to “adopt” the child she gave birth to! Is the subtext that Judy is “lucky” she wasn’t just aborted, as she would probably would be today? That’s my guess. And since aborting her is now regarded as “good,” I suppose adopting her and lying to her most of her life is really good. A gift, in fact.
The whole comment reeks of “It’s Not the Worst Thing”. However, it would appear that a lot of the defense of Young & Gable centers around the mores of the time and the consequences of violating them. Do we have a rationalization that tries to excuse unethical behavior because of the way people thought during a previous time period?
I’m not sure that would be a rationalization. It’s more a context than a rationalization. Of course, within the historical context there is still unethical behavior. But, that behavior is already covered in the other rationalizations. We do need to keep our current societal values from coloring the behaviors of people in the past.
I would agree that worse things could have happened to Judy Lewis. I would also argue that “worse things could have happened” is not a standard most people would consider even minimally acceptable for parenting. Loretta Young saw her daughter as a “walking mortal sin” and Clark Gable never once stepped up to be a father. Plus, everyone knew the truth anyway, except for the one person it concerned most. Miss Young and Mr. Gable might have been fine entertainers, but ethically speaking, they flunked.