Good evening.
1. World Series ethics observations:
- It was little noticed, but Houston Astros pitcher Gerrit Cole did something admirable and unusual last night on the way to dominating Washington Nationals hitters and leading his team to a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series. At one point in the game, Nationals first-baseman Ryan Zimmerman laid off a tantalizing pitch just off the plate with two strikes on him. Cole could be seen saluting the batter and saying “Good take!” It is rare to see a baseball player acknowledge an adversary’s skill on the field.
I wouldn’t mind seeing such gestures more often.
- The President not only attended the game last night, but stayed unusually long for a dignitary, who usually go to baseball games to be seen more than to watch. Trump stayed until the 8th inning, when much of the discouraged Nats fandom was streaming to the exits. I wrote last week that I hoped he would subject himself to the fans’ ugliness, and they responded as we knew they would, loudly jeering and chanting “Lock him up!” It was a black eye for Washington, D.C., not President Trump.
2. This is who and what they are, and denying it is becoming increasingly difficult. John Legend has co-written a bowdlerized version of Frank Loesser’s duet “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” that jettisons the recently controversial banter in the lyrics in which the hormonally-charged Lothario tries to persuade a hesitant date to stay over for the night. Legend replaces them with woke, certifiably god-awful lyrics like these:
Her: “What will my friends think…?
Him: I think they should rejoice…
Her: If I have one more drink?
Him: It’s your body and your choice!
These people will be re-writing “Huckleberry Finn,” changing the plots of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, and cleansing the lyrics of “Satisfaction” if we give them the chance, all to promote “Goodthink.”
I hereby express contrition for once referring to “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” as “date-rapey.” That was unfair and irresponsible, but it was also back in 2015 before Harvey Weinstein handed the totalitarian Left an excuse to topple the metaphorical statues of 20th Century culture that don’t conform in lockstep with #MeToo ideology. I still don’t like the song much, but from now on I’ll be singing along with Dean or Steve or Frank or whoever else’s version is playing just to foil the attempts to ban the song (also here) for not sufficiently pleasing the feminists and militant progressives who demand a signed and notarized consent form for a woman to prove she wasn’t sexually assaulted when kissed by her boyfriend.
3. Remember, Donald Trump has destroyed the civility of our political discourse!
In a an interview for ‘Pod Save The World,’ a podcast hosted by former Obama staffers Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes, former U.N Ambassador and National Security Advisor Susan Rice referred to Senator Lindsey Graham as ” a piece of shit.” Twice.
While we’re on the topic of lies the enablers of the assault on the Presidency engage in, I encountered one of the worst again today, as a friend and lawyer who considers himself reasonable and unbiased actually attempted to minimize the booing of President Trump at the World Series by saying that Trump has been no more roughly treated than other recent Presidents. He even had the guts to include Barack Obama in that assertion.
I know pointing out that a rodeo clown lost his job for wearing a rubber Obama mask while clowning is now a right-wing website cliche, but a rodeo clown lost his job for wearing an Obama mask.
The other common lie of the “resistance” enablers is, of course, that there’s no mainstream media bias.
4. Want to see something REALLY unethical? Kelly Renee Turner has been arrested in connection with the 2017 death of 7-year-old Olivia Gant, her daughter. Turner had raised nearly $23,000 on a GoFundMe page after writing that her daughter suffered from autism, seizure disorder, and cancer, among other health problems. The Make-A-Wish Foundation and DaVita Inc., a Denver-based dialysis company, helped Olivia dress up as “Bat Princess” to fulfill the girl’s “bucket list.”
Olivia died of an neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy leading to intestinal failure, her mother said, but investigators found no evidence of it. They believe the girl was a victim of a mother with Munchausen by proxy syndrome, in which a caretaker exaggerates or induces illness in a child for attention and sympathy.
Turner is now being charged with first-degree murder, child abuse, theft, charitable fraud, attempt to influence a public servant and second-degree forgery.
Ethics Alarms 
“So it goes.”~Kurt Vonnegut
“Susan Rice referred to Senator Lindsey Graham as ” a piece of shit.” Twice.”
That’s rich coming from someone who stated in a room full of her peers that the Clinton White House should lie and deny the ongoing genocide in Rwanda, abandoning the Hutus quietly so as not to negatively affect the 1994 midterms (which they then did.) It was one of the most despicable actions by a public servant of the entire century. She should have slunk away into private life forever when that happened, but instead she kept falling upwards.
*abandoning the Tutsi* whoops
Don’t forget Rice went out and knowingly lied on multiple Sunday news programs to cover up the Benghazi terrorist attack before the election. So, pot meet kettle…assuming she’s even right about Senator Graham.
She’s not right. Graham isn’t always correct, but he’s a decent and ethical man who cares about integrity. I can’t think of anyone in Congress who I would trust more to be President, but he lacks so many of the characteristics that Presidents must have to be elected that there’s no chance.
2. I admit some versions of the song are a little creepy, it works better as a flirty duet. But this blanket hatred for flirty performers and songs from mid-century is way overboard. They don’t get that seduction is not rape, the target has the choice to say no for any of the excuses they consider but aren’t convinced of. That’s why Bond has shifted to action and less an about town, and why the recent outing have lost their charm.
The sad thing is that flirting and seduction have been oversimplified into issues of raw sex alone and not the wit and playfulness that was once admired. There is more involved in any relationship than sex appeal and assets. Anything else gets a short shrift, which is too bad as all the other less tangible things are better bases for the long term, including humor, grit, playfulness, temper, balance, values, etc. Wham bam thank you ma’am/dude- don’t indicate a stayer. This impatience, more short attention with one thing has softened or removed so many of the old checks and balances without making new ones. The Big Brother of the social media is too binary and has no off setting and no mercy. It only creates more alienated who are outside the golden spotlight. The mass shootings are the warnings that excluding the harder to like from society is not consequence-free.
The various woke groups like to pretend they are open and tolerant, but the exclude far more harshly, un-peopling everyone from different philosophies in flirting, to political, to the President… Extreme bias not seen in decades if not longer.
A flirty old-style song is just not worth this level of hatred. Have they ever heard the lyrics of madrigals or Chaucer’s Wife of Bath?
The true hatred of the song is expressed when you inflict hack lyrics on it like Legend’s,
How many want to watch or perform in Bowdlerized Shakespeare again? I may not like certain art forms, and I support dedicated amateurs more than over-Woke pros.
Does anyone see that if a man tells a woman that it is her body and her choice just to get into her pants is no different than any other rhetoric or lyrics employed.
This is the worst case of virtue signaling and suggests women in general are too stupid to see right through such self serving lines.
Plus find me the woman who truly thinks “Your body and your choice!” is sexy and clever, not cringey and patronizing. I”ll wait. (Not to mention guys who adopt “sex positive” language seem to feel the most entitled to sex.)
My body, my choice is the default. The way they push it in cringe-worthy ways is more like they are trying to convince themselves. Like some kid denying they’re afraid of something, you start wondering if they really believe it, that they don’t want the freedom and responsibility of their own agency.
With “They don’t get that seduction is not rape, the target has the choice to say no for any of the excuses they consider but aren’t convinced of.” and the song, Baby it’s cold outside as a background audio track do have a look at, Exclusive: Video shows Harvey Weinstein behaving inappropriately
And for the record, my 2 favorite renditions of the song are,
(a) Baby it’s cold outside.
The original from Neptune’s Daughter
Neptune’s Daughter is a 1949 musical romantic comedy film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalbán, Betty Garrett, Keenan Wynn, Xavier Cugat and Mel Blanc. It was directed by Edward Buzzell, and features the Academy Award winning song Baby, It’s Cold Outside by Frank Loesser.
and
(b) GLEE – Baby, It’s Cold Outside (Full Performance) HD. Season 2, Episode 10 – “A Very Glee Christmas”
Weinstein was not flirting with someone, he was taking advantage of his huge power. Making a video of sexual harassment does not make the song a harasser. Weinstein was the criminal moron, not some singer or song.
Interestingly, the sport with perhaps the most congratulating and recognizing of opponents skills is football. Presumably it’s because the players are always near each other and there are convenient breaks after each play, but you constantly see back pats and nods and approving words after good plays.
Tennis as well. Baseball’s old culture, in contrast, was to treat the other team and its players as sworn enemies. A player got fined for smiling and chatting with the opposition during a game. Today a lot of the old-timers in broadcast booths still say the detest the new normal.
”It is rare to see a baseball player acknowledge an adversary’s skill on the field.”
Seems Cole’s expertise was…um…ACKNOWLEDGED…
Does anybody, anybody at all, really believe they “were trying to promote awareness of breast cancer”?
Can we expect John Legend et al to come out against the lifetime ban these ladies received from the MLB for their, uh, enthusiasm? After all, I’ve been informed that it’s their body and their choice.
Yeah, but it’s my EYES.
“a signed and notarized consent form”
Even that wouldn’t do you much good, as the current fashion is that consent can be revoked retroactively if the woman later feels regret for her actions. Until we develop technology that can read human minds, thus ensuring an unbroken chain of consent through the entire encounter and for the ensuing fifty years after, it’s best to remain celibate.
Who, beside a few crackpots, say that consent can be retroactively revoked?