Month: September 2022

Today’s Dumb Woke Hollywood Casting Question: “Why Does Hollywood Keep Using Fat Suits?” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The New York Times today decides to try a new frontier in the woke casting double standard adventure—you know, the incoherent theory that minority actors should be considered for all roles and all character types regardless of sex, race, size or physical characteristics, but it is unethical for white performers to play any character that they have to act and use make-up to evoke. You know, like good Hollywood liberal Tom Hanks claimed when he issued his recent  mea culpa for playing a gay, AIDS battling lawyer in “Philadelphia.”  So, using the same logic, Tom must have been equally hostile to “diversity, equity and inclusion” when he took a role away from some brilliant, unknown actor with a 75 IQ to play Forrest Gump, just as an autistic actor should have starred in “Rain Man” instead of Dustin Hoffman.

Suuuure. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Great Stupid often has that effect on me. Sorry.

The Times’ query, in the headline to a column by Arts Section pundit Farah Fleurima, is “Why Does Hollywood Keep Using Fat Suits?” Gee, it’s a mystery! And come to think of it, why does Hollywood keep using make-up? Special effects? Fake blood?

Here’s a much tougher question: why does the New York Times let people who know nothing about performing, entertainment, business, audiences, comedy, and casting write columns like this? Continue reading →

The Saturday Evening (Ethics) Post, 9/24/2022: Jokes, Unintentional And Otherwise…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka. the Mormons has been much on my mind of late thanks to the horrific Netflix documentary “Sins of Our Mother,” about a sensational double child murder in 2019 that will have a presumably sensational trial early in 2023. I have had a great deal of experience with members of the church, almost all of it good. One of my Freshman roommates in college was a devout Morman; a long-time high school crush was a not-so-devout Mormon, and  one of my bosses in my first job out of law school was a Mormon. It’s a fascinating culture with a unique history. On this date in 1890, the Church’s  leaders issued, under duress, the “Mormon Manifesto” commanding all Latter-day Saints to uphold the anti-polygamy laws. Polygamy is unethical, but it never quite vanished among Mormons, just going underground. In the last half-century or so the Sixties mentality hangover pretty much caused law-enforcement to ignore all but the most egregious examples, and it looks as if the acceptance of same sex marriage in the law and culture may eventually slippery-slope its way to making polygamy legal too. That would be a dire societal ethics misfire, but as with the current transsexual mess, feminists will be torn between their “woke” loyalties and the fact that polygamy degrades and abuses women. Based on how feminists have handled the transgender wave so far, I am not optimistic.

1. Sure, these idiots were going to pull off an “insurrection”…Doug Jensen, an Iowa man who was one of the first ten rioters to enter the Capitol ( “during the insurrection” says NBC, thus injecting Democratic propaganda into an alleged news report)  was found guilty this week on seven counts, including felony charges of civil disorder, and assaulting, resisting or impeding officers. The evidence indicates that Jensen didn’t realize until 24 hours after the riot that he had been part of a siege of the Capitol rather than the White House. But he was a supporter of Donald Trump, and that’s crime enough….

2. Speaking of desperate and unethical excuses, disgraced GOP congressional candidate J.R. Majewski, who was outed by the Associated Press as misrepresenting his military service resulting in the GOP pulling his campaign support, now says that there is no evidence of his combat experience because “All of my deployments are listed as classified.” Why was he boasting about them in his campaign literature, in interviews and in speeches, then, if they were classified? Continue reading →

Observations On Another Capital Punishment Fiasco

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

That’s Alan Eugene Miller, who was convicted of murdering three men in 1999. Nobody disputes that he is guilty. The only question is how and when he will be executed, as he received the death penalty and deserved to. The fact that he is still breathing 23 years after his crimes speaks for itself, and is self-evidently absurd, a direct consequence of the moral and ethical confusion over capitol punishment. People like Miller—that is, people who have forfeited their right to continue living in a civilized society—cost law abiding citizens millions by the time they finally get their just desserts.

This story is especially infuriating as well as ridiculous. Alabama passed a law in 2018 that gave death row prisoners a choice between being killed by a lethal injection and dying by a nitrogen hypoxia, which is death by being deprived of oxygen.

[Observation: Why a condemned prisoner should be given any choice at all is beyond me. As Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, said, Miller’s three victims didn’t get to choose whether they would be shot in the chest.]

Miller is, we are told, afraid of needles, so he chose suffocation.

[Observation:  This already sounds like a Monty Python skit. Again, who cares what he’s afraid of? Presumably he’s also a bit afraid to die. So what? Why should the state, or the society he betrayed, have any ethical obligation to yield to his delicate sensitivities?] Continue reading →

This Is Comforting: “The Great Stupid” Is Greater And Stupider In Canada, As You Can See…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

But for how long?

That’s a male, Oakville High School (about 20 miles from Toronto) “transitioning” shop teacher, parading with his, or her—it really doesn’t matter— gigantic prosthetic boobs. The Halton District School Board defends “her” completely voluntary appearance and attire in the name of “gender rights.” Meanwhile some students have skipped class, some are protesting, and parents are objecting.

My heavens, what could they be upset about?

“This teacher is an extremely effective teacher,” the board’s chair told the media. (Other than creating a completely unnecessary distraction by choosing to wear fake breasts twice the size of his head, of course—picky, picky...)The school board is creating a “safety plan” to ensure this serious professional can continue teaching without incident.

Yes, this Canadian variant of The Great Stupid virus could spread over the border. Continue reading →

A New “All-Time Most Outrageous Excuse” Champion! [Link Fixed!]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Fifteen-and-a-half years ago, when Lindsay Lohan was young, vibrant, and in the process of destroying her career, I took to the old Ethics Scoreboard to declare her explanation to the police who had arrested her for driving intoxicated and in possession of cocaine the “most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever.” The coke had been found in her pants pockets, so Lindsay claimed that they weren’t her pants, launching the TAMP (These Aren’t My Pants) standard for outrageous excuses.

In 2012, the drunken captain who piloted the Costa Concordia cruise ship onto the rocks claimed that he left the capsizing vessel before his passengers because the he “fell into a life boat.” That was close to TAMP, but not quite, I ruled on Ethics Alarms. But the same month, The Smoking Gun reported that in Wisconsin, police responding to a domestic abuse episode that left a Mrs. Michael West bleeding were told by Mr. West (no, not the esteemed Ethics Alarms contributor) that she had been beaten and nearly strangled to death by a ghost. Ethics Alarms ruled that West had taken the crown from Lindsey, who has done little to distinguish herself since.

Continue reading →

Would It Be Ethical To End Public School Education? Is It Ethical To Even Consider it?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

The second question in the headline is based on an Ethics Alarms core principle: it isn’t ethical to propose policies and social changes that are impossible. Would it be possible to eliminate public school education, after it served the nation so well for so long? Still, another Ethics Alarms core principle is “Fix the problem!” Public school education is a serious problem for the nation, the culture, democracy and the future, and it is getting worse. If the problem can be fixed without eliminating public schools entirely, then it should be, though I am dubious about the practicality of that too. If the only way to fix the problem is to come up with a new model and fight for it, ethics tells us that it would be irresponsible not to make the effort.

I am thinking about this as a result of a few things. One is my own unshakeable conclusion that public education now is in a state of irreversible rot, and does more damage than good. I see evidence of this literally every day, and, as regular readers here know, we pulled my smart, curious, knowledge-hungry and authority-resisting son out of public school and eventually out of private school as well, having witnessed just how horrible the process of education was thanks to the institutions and the people who now provide it. Another thing is the now open embrace by schools, teachers and local governments of a deliberately anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Western culture indoctrination.

A third prompt comes from the recent writings of conservative science fiction novelist Sarah Hoyt, Glenn Reynold’s usual late night blogsitter for Instapundit. Sarah is a bit extreme for me most of the time—here’s her Ethics Alarms dossier—but I always take notice when a serious thinker starts thinking the same thoughts I’ve been thinking, or the equivalents thereof.

These are some of Hoyt’s trenchant thoughts in the post (Do read it all Sarah is always fun), “Let’s Separate State and Education”…

Continue reading →

The Boston Celtics Reject “The King’s Pass”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Short analysis: “GOOD!“

Longer analysis: The Boston Celtics suspended coach Ime Udoka, widely credited with engineering the team’s surprising turn-around this past NBA season, making the play-offs and making the NBA finals after wandering in the pro basketball wilderness for the previous 12 years. He will sit out the 2022-23 season after it was determined that Udoka had a sexual relationship with a female member of the Celtics staff. The Celtics say that a decision about Udoka’s future with the team will be made later.

Conservative media, especially conservative sports reporters, are already embarrassing themselves with attacks on the Celtics decision. “Boston Celtics, this is insane” commented the Citizen Free Press, which has been stealing The Drudge Report’s traffic since Matt Drudge went NeverTrump. On the other side of The Great Divide I will expect to read fan comments that the Celtics punishment is racist. Udoka was part of last season’s NBA rush to hire black head coaches, including several who had been assistants for many years, and the league is dominated by black players, partially explaining the NBA’s total capitulation to “Black Lives Matter” agitprop. Naturally, it had to jump on the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” bandwagon, but the league’s lack of black leadership in contrast with its demographics on the court was already hard to justify.

Continue reading →

Open Forum, Rebound Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

The Open Forum has been a dud so far in September 2022…why is that? Quality, of course, always quality, but participation is way, way down from past months.

Or, it could be a hopeful sign that all of the ethics problems in our culture and society are being resolved!

Yeah, that’s the ticket…

Sundown Ethics Shadows, 9/22/2022: Mirabile Dictu!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I did not expect this; heck, I never expect this: an ethical, responsible decision, quickly and without public pressure, by the national Republican Party. The House GOP campaign organization canceled a $960,000 promotional campaign targeting Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), whom the GOP candidate, JR Majewski, was regarded as a good bet to unseat. But as your friendly neighborhood ethicist explained today, Majewski was exposed by the Associated Press as having fabricated his military record. The GOP was right to shun him, but it is unusual. The Democratic Party took no such action when it was revealed that Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal had lied for years about his service in Vietnam. Blumenthal is now a two term U.S. Senator from Connecticut.

I did not mention it, but Majewski has lied about other aspects of his career as well, describing himself as an “executive in the nuclear power industry,” which his former employer did not substantiate. Why do people do this? It is certain to be discovered. And why don’t political parties properly vet their candidates?

Morons. Our nation is in the hands of morons.

Also disappointing is the fact that most of the conservative media and rightish blogs were apparently going to ignore this story as long as possible. Instapundit, for example, the granddaddy of conservative blogs, hasn’t seen fit to mention Majewski’s disgrace yet, though it has had multiple notes about Stacey Abrams’ various ethics misadventures. This is a site that routinely mocks the mainstream media for burying stories that reflect poorly on Democrats, posting these two ancient tweets as a running joke:

Who can we trust? Continue reading →

A Magnificent Jumbo! “Partisan Bias? What Partisan Bias?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) exposed Colleen Shogan, Biden’s nominee to lead the U.S. Archives, as both a deep-dyed partisan and a lying Jumbo-ist, and not a very deft one at that. In the video above, he brings up a 2007 academic article she wrote for the American Political Science Association, titled “Anti-intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: Republican Populism.” Shogan resolutely denies that she wrote what she wrote, then that she meant what she wrote, and finally, that she can’t be trusted to behave like someone who would write what she wrote.

She looks and sounds insincere, dishonest and untrustworthy, because she is insincere, dishonest and untrustworthy. On the basis of character alone, no Senator of either party should vote to confirm her.

Jimmy Durante, when he replied (in “Jumbo”) to the sheriff’s query “Where do you think you’re going with that elephant?” with “Elephant? What elephant?,” at least had the sense not to begin his futile deflection with, “Thank-you, Sheriff, for that question.”