I apologize for not posting anything in the last two days on the anniversary of D-Day. This past Memorial Day, Grace and I, and my sister were completely immersed in World War II as we honored my father, and I had watched “The Longest Day” again during the weekend. Somehow June 6 came up too fast this year. Even acknowledging its many flaws, my Dad liked that WWII movie far more than most, because all of the anecdotes (right out of Cornelius Ryan’s book, which is better than his screenplay) reminded him of his own weird experiences in combat. (Dad’s least favorite war movies? A tie between “The Battle of the Bulge—with barely any snow in evidence and Sherman tanks playing Tiger tanks, and “Saving Private Ryan.”)

D-Day also had a strange place in the Marshall family’s consciousness. Dad was scheduled to be an observer during the invasion, but was sidelined when an idiot in his platoon used the pin of a live hand-grenade to dig mud out of his boot, blowing up himself, two other soldiers and my father’s right foot, and sending Dad to a hospital for months. The surgeon who later fixed Ted Kennedy’s broken back rebuilt my father’s foot sufficiently that it could be stuffed in a boot to allow him to get back into the war during the Battle of the Bulge. But he liked to remind my sister and me that we probably owed our existence to D-Day, specifically the fact that he wasn’t killed “observing” it.

1. The arrogance of anti-gun zealots. I just inserted myself into a thread launched by a Facebook friend expressing horror that parents entering a pediatric hospital would (legally) carry their guns inside. One of the Facebook friend’s Facebook friends wrote “I’m sick of your rights” and another wrote,”No one needs a gun.” Signature significance in both cases, and I told them both why.

2. Ethics Alarms Thread of the Year. I spent a long time trying to choose which of the uniformly excellent comments on the post Update: The Great Stupid Meets The Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck, and decided that there were just too many. I therefore declare the whole thread Comment of the Day-worthy, something I’ve never done before, but, looking back, probably should have. Some highlights to send you over there:

• “Remember that the people pushing for gun control laws are the same people pushing for restorative justice.”
• “Forty percent of Americans believe in ghosts, and fifty percent think UFOs are alien spacecraft. Let’s not start making policy based on what people believe, especially the dim bulbs who answer phone surveys.”
• “Wait! Are Democrats okay with convicted felons and the mentally ill being discriminated against? What’s up with that? Didn’t Terry McAuliffe get felons the right to vote in Virginia (because felons evidently always vote Democrat)? And the mentally ill are a protected group. They are allowed to live on the street and do whatever they want wherever they want to. Who’s really in favor of them not having the rights of all other people? Will the felon lobby and the mentally ill lobby stand for this?”
• “It seems to be legal for the mentally ill to stab or beat people to death in one on one situations on the street. That results in a stern warning not to do it again. It also seems to be legal for the mentally ill to break into homes and kill people, even via gun violence. It is only when the mentally ill break into schools and commit mass murder that anyone cares, and even then you aren’t allowed to point out that untreated mental illness was the root cause…”
• “Regarding “priorities”… there’s millions and millions of brains in this country. I’d be surprised if we can’t figure out five problems at once….”

And many more: those are just examples, not necessarily the highlights. Continue reading →

The most famous event that occurred on this day in U.S. history was the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. Assassinations are unethical, of course, though Bobby Kennedy was quite likely a dangerous man to have in the White House, as he was perhaps even more of a sociopath than the typical Kennedy, such as Jack and Teddy. Less dissonant as an ethical landmark is George Marshall’s 1947 speech planting the seeds of the Marshall Plan—the name has a certain ring to it, somehow!—by calling on the United States to aid in the economic recovery of postwar Europe, which it did by sending billions of dollars to Western Europe to rebuild the war-torn countries. This was not altruism, however, but pragmatism: there was a quite legitimate fear that the contagion of Communism was in the air and likely to spread. The Marshall Plan was a Cold War strategy, and nobody can say whether it “worked” or not. Western Europe was able to resist communism, but that might have just been moral luck.

A notable unethical historical episode was the work of President Grover Cleveland, known as “Grover the Good.” The name “Grover the Mixed Bag” would be more accurate. This time, in 1888 (as Jack The Ripper was getting ready to murder his first victim in Whitechapel). Johanna Loewinger’s Civil War veteran husband died 14 years after being discharged from the army. Upon his death in 1876, his pension was discontinued. Johanna, applied for a widow’s pension, but was denied since her husband died from suicide by cutting his own throat rather from wounds suffered while fighting for the Union. (He had been discharged for chronic diarrhea.)  His widow claimed that the war had driven him mad and was the reason for his death. After she failed to get the pension she felt she was owed, Johanna appealed to a member of Congress to petition the President. Grover denied the widow’s petition.

1. I don’t even know what to say about this. Here are Burger King Austria’s special Pride Month Whoppers, with two bottom rolls or two tops. I thought it was a joke. It’s not.

2. Who does he think he is, Ricky Gervais? David Weigel, who covers politics for the Washington Post, retweeted a tweet that said,: “Every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.” His colleague Felicia Sonmez, who also covers politics, wrote: “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!” Allowed! I agree that the tweet was inappropriate in a workplace setting, but the proper response would be a little reminder from the brass.  Weigel, however, felt it necessary to grovel, and tweeted, “I just removed a retweet of an offensive joke. I apologize and did not mean to cause any harm.”  Washington Post COO Kris Coratti Kelly announced, “Editors have made clear to the staff that the tweet was reprehensible and demeaning language or actions like that will not be tolerated.”

The action was a joke. It had the form of a joke, and was intended as a joke. If I cared enough and my sock drawer weren’t a mess, I’d do some research into the kinds of jokes about men, Republicans, President Trump and his supporters Post staff have retweeted. I’m pretty sure what I’d find. Like everything else, satirical humor goes in only one direction in D.C., and the reverse “will not be tolerated.”

3. Speaking of bias..Take the New York Times. Please! I have a Facebook friend who really and truly announced that he was a fan of Times op-edderess Michelle Goldberg. She is biased as well as intellectually dishonest, and does not deserve a regular platform in the Poughkeepsie Weekle Packet, much less the New York Times. Her continued existence there is signature significance, so I felt vindicated to see this column last week:  “The Amber Heard Verdict Was a Travesty. Others Will Follow.”It began, “The verdict in Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard is difficult to explain logically.” Difficult to explain logically to whom? Heard got the Washington Post to publish her op-ed that made defamatory accusations against Depp that she couldn’t back up, statements that alleged as fact matters that could not be shown to be fact, which is the essence of libel. Not only that, she promised the ACLU a large contribution in exchange for assisting in writing the piece, and the organization testified that she stiffed them, not that they didn’t deserve being stiffed, since taking sides in celebrity domestic disputes is not exactly in the organization’s mission statement. Heard was unequivocally exposed as a serial liar, but never mind: Goldberg makes it clear Heard should have won the suit because other women have been abused by powerful men, and because “Believe all women” must be the norm. The jury should have rejected Depp’s defamation claim because his victory hurt the cause. “Even if Heard lied about everything during the trial — even if she’d never suffered domestic abuse — she still would have represented it,” Goldberg writes. Continue reading →