Month: March 2022

The Great Smith-Rock Rumble Ethics Round-Up!, Part 1

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

As Glenn Reynolds often says, “You’re going to need a bigger blog!” But there are many ethics alarms a-ring in this fiasco, so attention must be paid.

Let’s get to it:

1. Will Smith’s apology, posted last night on Instagram:

Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally.

I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.  

I would also like to apologize to the Academy, the producers of the show, all the attendees and everyone watching around the world. I would like to apologize to the Williams Family and my King Richard Family. I deeply regret that my behavior has stained what has been an otherwise gorgeous journey for all of us.

I am a work in progress.

  • There are some acts that cannot be apologized for, and this was one. “I’m sorry I hit a fellow performer in the face during the live TV broadcast’ is required pro forma, but nobody should treat it as anything more than that. The conduct can’t be excused or forgiven.
  • As Tim LeVier noted in his Comment of the Day yesterday, Smith is obligated to apologize to his victim, Chris Rock, face-to-face. He did not mention Rock in his half-mea culpa while accepting his Oscar. Rock will be professionally obligated to be gracious, of course, when and if that happens.
  • Do not think for a second that Smith composed that statement. I wonder how much he paid for it. I would have written him a better one for less. I’m sure.
  • I would have, for example, omitted: “Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally.” Jokes at Jada’s expense are also part of her job: she’s a celebrity, actress and talk show host. Furthermore, the joke was abut her shaved haircut, not her “medical condition”—this advances the dishonest “It’s Chris Rock’s fault” spin the Smith lobby is pushing. Hair loss is a medical condition, but as I wrote yesterday as a target of bald jokes and before that, “losing your hair” jokes since my early 20s, women are not exempt, by their own rules.

Oh, you acted emotionally by dashing up on stage, smacking Rock, and then shouting for him to keep the name of your wife out of his “fucking mouth”? Thanks for that clarification. Continue reading →

Will Smith-Free Zone Ethics Sign-Off, 3/28/22

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I count this as a good day for Ethics Alarms. Mrs. Q even made an appearance, and any day in which she weigh in is a good one. There were excellent comments, and even the loss of two “echo chamber” counter-echoes of recent weeks couldn’t spoil the day. One broke the stated rules here, was given a chance to apologize and resume her often dubious commentary, and she refused: her 7 pm. deadline came and went. Too bad. The other thought he was so intrinsically indispensable to the proceedings here that he actually tried to force me to reinstate said rule-breaker lest he take his leave. For “A Friend,” he sure doesn’t know me very well.

There are a lot, and I mean a lot, of ethics related news regarding the Will Smith-Chris Rock slap, or as various members of our spinning rather than reporting news organizations called it, a “confrontation” or an “apparent” slap. I’m going to deal with as many of those as I can stand tomorrow, and leave this collection to other issues.

1. Jon Stewart, non-Ethics Hero. The former “clown nose on/clown nose off” star of “The Daily Show” made a play for integrity by using his Apple TV show, “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” to attack the coverage of the frame-up Mueller investigation as the orgy of dishonest and biased journalism that it was. News Busters reports, “On March 17’s edition…the comedian set his sights on the media as he spelled out how their outdated use of ratings coupled with perverse incentives were driving them into oblivion. And to make this point, Stewart focused on how the media was addicted to the largest story of the Trump presidency: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election, aka the Russia collusion hoax.”

Conservative gad-fly blogger Don Surber called this one nicely, sneering,

I checked that posting’s date 3 times. Each time it came up 2022, not 2018 when the Mueller investigation was relevant.Had Stewart spoken up then, why Republicans might have done better in the midterm election and Nancy Pelosi would never have been speaker again. Of course, Stewart would have ticked a lot of people in the media off, and he never would have gotten his Apple gig. But now that Mueller and Trump are off the stage, Stewart knows it is safe to say what he should have said back then…

A real man of virtue who tells it like it is would take on the media’s refusal to call Will Thomas out as he broke women’s swimming records. A real man of virtue who tells it like it is would take on the media’s labeling the protest at the National Mall on January 6, 2021, an insurrection….

Now, 40 bucks short and 4 years too late, Jon Stewart dares to mock the media’s coverage of Mueller…I look forward to his mocking Judge Ketanji Jackson’s inability to define a woman in 2030.

That’s about right.

2. Speaking of “the insurrection”...The Washington Post, as I mentioned once today already, called the stupid and pointless riot on Jan. 6 an “insurrection,” keeping it in Big Lie territory, in the process of explaining why Chris Wallace jumped from Fox News to CNN. Wallace says he quit, the Post’s Greg Sargent writes, “in part because of Fox host Tucker Carlson’s depiction of the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt as a “false flag” operation….” Wallace quit because Tucker Carlson was making stuff up? This was a shock to him? Sargent’s piece uses the Times’ interview with Wallace that has this telling quote: “I’m fine with opinion: conservative opinion, liberal opinion. But when people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable.” The TRUTH to Chris Wallace that must not denied is that Jan.6, 2021 was an insurrection: “an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence.” “Organized?” “Attempt?” “Defeat?” “Take control?” The Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 came a lot closer to that definition, and still didn’t make it. Chris Wallace thinks calling the riot by 300 drunks with sticks and bear spray an “insurrection” is unquestionable fact. No wonder he ended up at CNN.

3. Today’s IIPTDXTTNMIAFB, (“Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden.”) This exchange with Peter Doocy, who almost makes Fox News’ nepotism look good. (Almost.):

Doocy: “Are you worried that other leaders in the world are going to start to doubt that America is back if some of these big things that you say on the world stage keep getting walked back?”

Biden: “What getting walked back?”

Doocy: “It sounded like you told U.S. troops they were going Ukraine. It sounded like you said it was possible the U.S. would use a chemical weapon. And it sounded like you were calling for regime change in Russia and we know—”

Biden: “None of the three occurred.”

Doocy: “None of the three occurred?”

Biden: “None of the three.”

(All three occurred.) Continue reading →

Now That Judge Jackson Has Settled One SCOTUS Recusal Issue, Another, Much Tougher One, Looms, Part 2: The Decision

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Under normal circumstances—but what is normal any more?—my conclusion regarding whether Clarence Thomas should or should not recuse himself in any cases involving the January 6 riot (which the Washington Post again calls “an insurrection” today)because of his conservative activist wife’s vocal support of vigorous responses by the Trump White House in response to what she felt was a fraudulent 2020 election would follow the same reasoning that my analysis of Justice Scalia’s recusal controversy trod almost exactly 18 years ago. The question then was whether Scalia’s participation in a duck hunt with Vice-president Cheney and his pals created a sufficient conflict of interest to trigger the “appearance of impropriety” standard that is supposed to govern judicial decisions whether to recuse, since Cheney was technically—but only technically—a party to lawsuit that had ended up in the Supreme Court.

Scalia adamantly insisted that there was no conflict and no impropriety, and authored an impressive memorandum to support his position. He indeed judged that case. I wrote in part,

Those who have criticized Scalia for his stance on this controversy have an obligation to read the Justice’s memorandum. They are sure to learn some things, such as why it is unwise to trust media accounts regarding anything more complicated than your typical Sponge Bob Square Pants episode; what constitutes a legally persuasive argument and why even Scalia’s ideological foes admire his sharp intellect and lively writing….

[I make] no pretense of being able to match Justice Scalia’s intellect or knowledge of the law. And he makes one especially chilling point: is appearance of impropriety sufficient to force recusal when that appearance is a false illusion created by inaccurate reporting, sloppy analysis, and misinformed reading of the law? It looked like an easy call based on what appeared in the papers; Scalia’s memorandum is a clarification that shows that his position is not just a product of stubbornness, but of careful scholarship. He wins the debate, hands down.

He should still recuse himself….

Scalia is right: there is the potential here for more than one bad precedent, and justices should not permit themselves to be run out of deliberating on politically sensitive cases by partisan misinformation campaigns. But the damage is done. To most of the public, the raw circumstances of the Scalia-Cheney outing will call Scalia’s impartiality into question, and because it is a high profile case, this will damage the public’s faith in the Supreme Court. It isn’t worth it. Americans, even Americans that don’t comprehend the legal requirements of recusal, need to believe in the integrity of the Supreme Court.

Next, the Court should recognize the new political realities of its role, and devise a review system that would make the whole court the arbiter of whether one of the brethren has a conflict, or an unacceptable appearance of one. Such a system would have made Scalia’s current dilemma less of a lightning rod for criticism.

For now, though, Justice Scalia needs to face facts: he may be right on the law, but he’s a dead man walking.

I like that post a great deal; I think I was right. (I also look wistfully back at the time when I could spend up to a week a week polishing a single post.) The parallels between Justice Thomas’s Left-and-news media contrived conflict is similar to Scalia’s. But if you think that means that I now must side with those who are pushing for Thomas’s recusal, you are wrong. Continue reading →

Looking Back: This Week’s Ethics Alarms Monday Retrospective

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I guess I should mark this weeks selection “BWSC”: Before Will Slapped Chris.”

Here are my top five picks from last week:

I’m cheating a bit here; this one was 8 days ago, but I didn’t do a Monday Retrospective last week (I forgot) and this is an important topic. Come for the post, stay for the comments.

From 3/21, and too astounding to miss.

On 3/22, we discussed how the District government, among others, are trying to over-ride parental rights.

From 3/24…, and,

From 2/26, just in time for Part 2 today.

Comment Of The Day: “Additional Morning Thoughts: ‘Smith Vs. Rock At The Oscars'”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

You never know.

I assumed yesterday that I wouldn’t be writing anything about the Oscars, which have politicized and wokified the ceremony into irrelevance, and here we are with the third Oscars-related post, following my my earlier ones here and here. This, a Comment of the Day by one of Ethics Alarms’ most veteran (and most restrained) commenters, Tim LeVier, is also by far the best, delving fearlessly and perceptively into the ethical issues raised by Will Smith’s astounding physical attack on Chris Rock in front  of the Hollywood glitterati and an American TV audience of diminished but still significant numbers.

Before turning things over to Tim, I will mention here, because I may forget later, that my print version of the New York Times today included a story covering last night’s awards and broadcast that did not mention the Smith-Rock episode at all. How do you explain that? The story included Oscar fashions and the “historic” awards (apparently whoever plays Anita in “West Side Story” must get a statuette); it mentioned the three smug hosts’ infantile “Gay, gay, gay!” chant. But a major star attacking a major comic on stage in an iconic awards ceremony wasn’t deemed by the New York Times as “news.”

What a great newspaper. If anything called for the “Naked Gun” clip, this does...

Now, here is Tim’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Additional Morning Thoughts: ‘Smith Vs. Rock At The Oscars'”….

***

Honestly, I’m more interested in the public reaction than the event itself. People seem to have this immediate need for clear thinking and the next chapter of the story. It’s a problem in our society more commonly referred to as instant gratification. Most of the posts and hot takes are in this vein but with varying objectives.

The pearl clutchers are the worst. “Why didn’t a police officer go an arrest him?” “Why didn’t the show director eject him?” “Why didn’t security intervene?”

Police need a complaint. The director needs time. Security aren’t in on the performance and have a tough time knowing reality from fiction particularly when the assaulted party engages with the assaulter and the assaulter casually moves into position.

It will be interesting to hear from Glenn Wiess the director and any producer about the mental gymnastics they were doing to figure out how to proceed. In the moment, during that commercial break, I’m sure it was “Is everyone cooled down now?” “Can we get through the remainder of the program?” “Am I required to take action?” “What does Chris Rock have to say?”

It was an unprecedented moment for sure and I guarantee there are some figures having discussions this morning on how to treat this going forward. There will be bright line rules put in place for the future. Everyone has now considered this predicament. Should it happen again, that person will be ejected….and then we’ll get to hear about “double standards” and “hypocrisy”. Continue reading →

Additional Morning Thoughts: “Smith Vs. Rock At The Oscars” [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Last Night, I was shutting down my computer when I saw the Rock-Smith story, and dashed out a post at about 1am. Those were literally immediate reactions, and I knew nothing else about the broadcast except that Smith was allowed to stay, and that he later won the Oscar for Best Actor for a movie I didn’t see and am unlikely to, especially after his behavior last night.

I had some additional thoughts after my first coffee this morning.

  • Some people are suggesting that the episode was staged, even Ann Althouse, an Oscars fan for some reason. Ann needs to get out more. Trust me on this: it wasn’t staged. I am a stage director; I have staged such things. Actors are notoriously terrible at faking contact, and Chris Rock isn’t exactly a professional stunt man. Smith hit him with the flat of his hand, which saves him from broken bones: if it had been staged, it would have been a fist.

Furthermore, what happens near the beginning of any live show vastly influences the audience’s reaction to the whole evening: if the episode was staged, it would have been at the beginning, otherwise there was no point. That bit of ugliness toward the end clouded the ceremonies both for the live audience and the home audience, and especially undermined Smith’s  Best Actor moment. In addition, as Althouse finally convinced herself as she wrote her post, it put Smith’s wife in a bad light as well as the actor, embarrassed Rock, and made no sense except as a temper tantrum (or protective husband grandstanding) by Will Smith. Later, the Academy put out a pro forma statement that it didn’t condone violence, which would have been reasonable coming from anywhere but Hollywood.

  • I hadn’t seen what Jada Pinkett Smith looked like at the Oscars when I wrote the post last night, nor heard exactly what Rock said. She has shaved her head…you know, like me. And Bruce Willis. And the TCM co-host, Jacqueline Stewart. See?

Continue reading →

Smith Vs Rock At The Oscars: Res Ipsa Loquitur, And In So Many Ways

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Yes, that’s actor Will Smith, who later was awarded the Best Actor Oscar, physically battering comedian Chris Rock during the live Academy Awards Broadcast last night. Rock staggered back and said,  “Wow, Will Smith just smacked the shit out of me!” Then Smith returned to his seat and shouted: “Keep my wife’s name out of your fucking mouth!”

Rock had made an ill-considered wisecrack about Jada Pinkett, Mrs. Will Smith.

I know the headline is “Res Ipsa Loquitur” (“The thing speaks for itself”) and the photo does, but I’m going to list some ethics observations anyway. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Sen. Amy Klobuchar

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“The facts are clear here. This is unbelievable. You have the wife of a sitting Supreme Court justice … advocating for overturning a legal election to the sitting president’s chief of staff. She also knows this election — these cases are going to come before her husband. This is a textbook case for removing him, recusing him from these decisions.”

—-Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) on ABC’s “This Week,” blathering nonsense to co-anchor Jonathan Karl today, as he, predictably, showed neither the erudition nor the guts to correct he, as she insisted that a conflict of interest that does not exist in law is a “textbook case.”

I was tempted to let the Senator’s outrageous misinformation (Will Twitter suspend her for it? Nah….) slide, except that 1) Too many lawyers and reasonable progressives of my acquaintance settled on her as their favored 2020 Democratic Presidential hopeful, and she said ridiculous things like this throughout the debates, using false certitude for fact and reason, and it ticked me off; 2) her statement isn’t just wrong, but spectacularly wrong, and 3) you know how I hate to see high officials that the public trusts use their megaphones and influence to make it even more ignorant than it already is.

Continue reading →

Sunday Ethics Break, 3/27/2022: An Oscars Date That Will Live In Infamy

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I’m squeezing today’s potpourri in while I labor to finish a client’s opinion letter on a weird type of lawyer conflict of interest where an attorney represents multiple clients seeking damages from the same defendant who doesn’t have the assets to satisfy everyone. Yes, compared to technical legal ethics, thinking about the rest is recreation.

Tonight is the Oscars broadcast, which I will assiduously miss despite having seen at least some of more Best Picture nominees than in recent years. From an ethics point of view, I must note that on this date in 1973, Marlon Brando confirmed his status as one of the biggest jerks in Hollywood by declines his Academy Award for Best Actor in “The Godfather.” Instead, he inflicted Native American activist Sasheen Littlefeather (that’s her, today and then) on the attendees and the TV audience. She appeared in Brando’s place and said that the actor “very regretfully” would not accept the award, in protest of the portrayals of Native Americans in film. This abuse of the ceremony for narcissistic political grandstanding helped start the Oscars on their long decline from being a celebration of popular entertainment to becoming an obnoxious platform for ill-educated and ill-informed celebrities to presume to lecture the American public.

1. From New York City, a “laws are for the little people” classic. NYC Mayor Eric Adams formally announced last week that he was lifting the vaccine mandate in for professional athletes and performers. He can spin all he wants, and the news media will spin for him, but there is no ethical way out of the hypocrisy. Adams claimed that his decision was driven by concern for the economic recovery of the city from the pandemic, noting that sports and entertainment played vital roles in generating jobs and tax dollars. Yes, and they also poured thousands of dollars into lobbying for this exemption. Adams said he had always believed it to be unfair that New York City-based athletes had to be vaccinated to play but visiting players did not, under an earlier Mayor De Blasio executive order dating to the prior administration. The disparate treatment of highly paid, celebrity workers and less starry, influential and powerful ones looks bad, and is bad.

Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: NY Prosecutor Mark Pomeranz

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Last week, the New York Times and other media gleefully reported that Mark  Pomeranz, one of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who was part of the “Get Trump” effort that has been ongoing in New York almost from the minute he was Trump elected President, believed that the he was “guilty of numerous felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to hold him accountable.” This information came as his resignation letter somehow was released to the press.  Pomeranz submitted his resignation last month after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg stopped pursuing an indictment of Donald Trump. Bragg had picked up the long-running attempt to charge Trump from his predecessor Cyrus Vance, Trump’s own personal Javert, who did not run for re-election.

What neither the Times nor any other source bothered to point out was that Pomeranz’s public statement that Trump was guilty of crimes were bright line violations of prosecutor ethics both in New York and across the profession.

Continue reading →