Fads occur when the culture embraces a concept for emotional, selfish, foolish or otherwise irrational reasons. Usually they are harmless; sometimes they are not. This meme crystalized the reality of a current fad, an especially destructive one being advanced in pursuit of a social and political agenda, so deftly that Ethics Alarms is momentarily suspending its opposition to memes.
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Pointer: Powerline
From now on, I’m going to use that clip from “The Naked Gun” for all of the Twitter Files reports.
The fact that the mainstream media still is determined to bury this story that has serious implications for health of our democracy, public trust in the government, the apparent independent agendas of government departments and agencies, the threats posed by the “Deep State” and social media’s efforts to control whose opinions and what information the public is able to receive and assess is itself a major revelation, making the “Twitter Files” one of the most urgent and important news stories of the year.
And it is being ladled out on Twitter in short tweets, which is why the mainstream media thinks its efforts to suffocate the story may work.
The messenger this time is Intercept reporter Lee Fang. This is Part 8; Part 9 came out on Christmas Eve, and I’ll get that posted later today.
Happy Boxing Day, for those of you who have servants, butler and and the like! Do make sure your underlings enjoy a Christmas-like experience a day late, after caring for you and your family yesterday!
Ethics Alarms will kick off its Boxing Day festivities with another terrific Comment of the Day by Mrs, Q. I’m hopping it over two other COTD in waiting, in part because I feel guilty: her post was stuck in moderation because I was “making a bit merry yesterday” (Source?) and neglected the blog comments. I apologize to Mrs.Q and my readers. Her comment was stuck because it included many invaluable links to additional information.
She addressed the horrible incident discussed in yesterday’s commentary regarding a fatal dog attack last week that took the life of a couple’s newborn child. Mrs. Q concentrates her ethics marksmanship on an aspect of the story that I mentioned, but only broadly: the parents’ accountability for the tragedy.
Here is Mrs. Q’s Comment of the Day on the post, “At Least This Time They Didn’t Blame Pitbulls…“
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Perhaps I’m being harsh, but I do think the parents and every parent or guardian this happens to, should be charged.
We have an incredibly irresponsible ethos going on in the world of dog ownership. People who willingly choose to have a dog, of any size dog, around small children, without educating themselves on danger behavior signals, is complicit in spreading such violence.
The killings of children is just a part of it. 50% of kids under 12 have been bitten by dogs. Most dog bites children experience happen over 70% of the time on the face and neck. Continue reading
I’m a bit behind in posts covering the Twitter Files; I’m also behind in posting Comments of the Day. Ethics Alarms veteran Glenn Logan authored one more than a week ago, and had it not been for a recent comment that rang my “Glenn Logan” alarm, this one might have been lost.
Here is Glenn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Still More Twitter Ethics: Musk’s Cynical Poll And Another”Twitter Files” Summary”…
Jack wrote:
“Musk can’t run Twitter by poll, though, if he is truly devoted to promoting free and open public discourse.“
No, you’re right about that. It needs to stop. The optics are very poor to anyone not invested in Twitter at the expense of rational thought.
“The past seven years (or more) make the conclusion unavoidable that the FBI is untrustworthy, partisan, corrupt,dangerous, and a threat to undermine the Republic. That is not a news that easy to process or accept, but it can’t be ignored or shrugged off any more…”
The FBI has always been a problematic venture. It was corrupt nearly from birth, and we are surprised that it somehow has changed its spots over the decades? Sure, there have been a few stretches where it was less corrupt than at others, but at its core, it is a functioning federal bureaucracy with a law enforcement component, largely governed by political partisans.
That partisanship has clearly been allowed to filter down to at least middle management and even the rank-and-file. Throw in the “You’re either with me or against me” politics of the social media age, and how can you not have a corrupt catastrophe?
Disbanding the FBI root and branch would be a huge public service. Continue reading
This is such a horrible Christmas story that even my fecund imagination couldn’t devise an appropriate graphic for it, yet attention should be paid.
On December 23 in Cave Spring, Arkansas, a family’s dog attacked and killed a four-day old infant girl. The dog bit the baby’s head, fatally injuring the infant’s skull. When I read the story, my second thought after the obvious first one was “Now watch: this will be called another pit bull attack.” Amazingly, it wasn’t: the dog was a Siberian Husky. That didn’t stop the news media from attaching alleged pit bull horror stories to this one, like the attack by two Staffordshire terriers, one of several breeds called pit bulls, that killed two small children and injured their mother in October. I did learn something from the various articles: 32% of all fatalities from dog bites in the U.S. are children 4 years-old and under. Continue reading
Ever heard that one before? It’s the late Art Carney, best known for his reliably brilliant portrayal of sewer worker Ed Norton as Jackie Gleason’s foil on “The Honeymooners” pioneering Christmas rap. Carney also won an Oscar, like a lot of comics managing a successful late career pivot from clowning to drama, and had another Christmas credit on his CV. Art starred in “The Night of the Meek,” a memorable “Twilight Zone” episode in 1960 that aired on December 23. Carney played a drunk and depressed department store Santa who, through wishes, fate and the regular “Twilight Zone” magic, becomes the real Santa Claus in the show’s climax. Rod Serling, who wrote the episode, ended it thusly,
A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There’s a wondrous magic to Christmas and there’s a special power reserved for little people. In short, there’s nothing mightier than the meek.
Some politically correct idiot at CBS deleted Rod’s Merry Christmas wish from the episode in the 1980s. Can you believe that? “And a Merry Christmas to each and all” is not heard in reruns, VHS releases and the five-DVD set “The Twilight Zone: The Definitive Edition.”
1. Here’s as good as an apology as you can make when you are videoed trying to kill someone. New England Patriots great Willie McGinest, a three-time Super Bowl winner, issued an abject mea culpa on social media after an ugly incident in which he attacked someone in a restaurant this month in California turned up streaming on the web. The onetime star linebacker was seen on video obtained by TMZ Sports punching a man in the face and then attacking him with a bottle. McGinest was arrested for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon, then was released on bond. He wrote on Instagram:
This apology would rate a #1 on the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale, as it hits all the marks. It also convinces me that the scale needs to be revised, something that has been suggested by several commenters over the years. There has to be a special category for professionally-crafted public apologies designed to avoid the natural consequences of outrageous conduct. Can one adequately and credibly apologize for attacking someone in a restaurant? Should they be trusted again? Attacking someone with bottle in a public place is signature significance, is it not? Someone with adequate ethics alarms doesn’t do that even once.
Oh, I’m sure Willie is sorry: that video can cost him a great deal…much more than he paid his PR firm to draft it. [Pointer: Arthur in Maine] Continue reading
The online petition can demand until it is blue in the face, if petitions could be blue in the face, or had a face, for that matter.
The comments of the citizen in the video clip are 100% First Amendment protected speech. There is no valid argument to the contrary. Signatories of such a petition have announced that a) they don’t believe in free speech; b) they want the government to censor individual opinions they disagree with and c) they are unfit to participate or benefit from a democratic republic, preferring a totalitarian government provided its agendas aligns with those of the petition-signers.
Our ethical standards and ethics alarms are affected by what we see, hear, like and respond to, and this is why even a wonderful holiday classic like “Miracle on 34th Street” has to be looked at critically. If popular holiday movies inject bad ethics habits and rationalizations into our character, especially at a young age, that is something we should at least be aware of by the tenth or eleventh time we watch one of them. Parents are wise to talk about films and the lessons contained in them with their children. I’m not sure what the right age is to show this movie to children: probably as soon after they express skepticism about Santa Claus as possible.
The production of “Miracle on 34th Street” itself epitomizes the ethical values of competence and integrity. Watch any of the attempts to remake the film over the years; some aren’t bad, but none equal the original, or even justify a remake that places the story in contemporary times.There have been four remakes starring, as Kris Kringle, Thomas Mitchell, Ed Wynn, Sebastian Cabot, and Richard Attenborough. That’s a distinguished crew, to be sure. Mitchell was one of the greatest character actors in Hollywood history. Wynn was nominated for an Academy Award (for “The Diary of Ann Frank”) and Attenborough won one, Best Supporting Actor Award in 1967 for “The Sand Pebbles.” Cabot wasn’t quite in their class, but he was a solid pro, and looked more like Santa Clause than Mitchell, Wynn, or Richard Attenborough.
None of them, however, were as convincing as Edmund Gwenn. He made many movies—all without a white beard— and had a distinguished career in films and on stage, but even audience members who knew his work had a hard time reminding themselves that he wasn’t Kris Kringle while they watched the movie. I still have a hard time.
The film is one more example of the special, unappreciated talent of Maureen O’Hara, who never seemed like a movie star, as lovely and strong an on-screen presence as she was. Her ability to anchor great movies while never dominating them is the epitome of the “collaborative art” they always blather about during the Oscars, but which is seldom truly honored. O’Hara was the female lead in four genuine classics: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “The Quiet Man,” “How Green Was My Valley,” and “Miracle on 34th Street.”
“Miracle on 34th Street” is an ethics movie in part because its artists committed to telling a magical story and charming audiences by working as an ensemble selflessly and efficiently. John Payne, as the idealistic lawyer in love with Maureen, is never flashy, just completely convincing. One reason may have been that, as he told an interviewer once, the role of Fred Gaily perfectly matched his own ideals and beliefs. This is the magic of performing talent: they make audiences suspend disbelief because they seem to believe in the story and characters too. The director, George Seaton (who also directed “Airport,” which is NOT an ethics movie), also wrote the script that won him an Oscar. He cast his movie brilliantly, and also made the correct decision to stick with a matter-of-fact, realistic, unadorned style that keeps the story grounded. There are none of the corny features or inexplicable gaffes in this film that make other holiday-themed classics inherently unbelievable, like the cheesy battlefield sets in “White Christmas” or the heavenly dialogues in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
I think this is the best Christmas holidays movie for 2022. It is about the importance of believing in good things, hopeful things, even impossible things. Today many of my friends, colleagues and associates are depressed and fearful of the future—their future, the future of the nation, even the future of the planet. (The planet will be fine…the rest? As Samuel L. Jackson says in “Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butts.”) “Miracle on 34th Street” stands for the idealistic proposition that wonderful things can happen even when they seem impossible, and that life is better when we believe that every day of our lives.
After all, as the Fairy Godmother in the musical version of “Cinderella” sings, “Impossible things are happening every day.”
The movie tells us right at the start that 1) the charming old man in the white beard can’t possibly be Santa Claus, and 2) that he’s nuts. He tells adults who are paying attention this as soon as he starts complaining to a New York City storekeeper that his window display has the reindeer mixed up: “You’ve got Cupid where Blitzen should be. And Dasher should be on my right-hand side. And another thing…Donner’s antlers have got four points instead of three!”
Let’s see:
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN!
On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DUNDER and BLIXEN!
…and anyway, if he did, those were their names 120 years before the movie takes place. Nobody has ever claimed the reindeer were immortal, either. I suppose Santa Claus, in a nod to the poem’s popularity (it has been called the most famous poem of all time), could have adopted the practice of always having the reindeer named after the poem’s versions, and when one Vixen dropped of old age, the young reindeer that took her place became the new Vixen.
I suppose.
Never mind that: why would he call Dunder “Donner”? The “real” Santa wouldn’t. Though the original version of the poem got the names right (we know it’s Blixen and not “Blitzen” because it rhymes with Vixen), various editors, transcribers and the author himself kept changing the names in subsequent printings. Dunder became “Donder” and eventually “Donner,” which is a meaningless Anglicizing of “Dunder.”
Santa Clause, aka Sinterklaas,wouldn’t be confused: he named the beasts. He’s correcting the shop-keeper while passing along a misnomer?
Baloney.
Well, enough of that. The next scene shows Kris encountering the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Santa pre-parade. He instructs him in the use of his whip on the reindeer! In the German Santa mythology, the jolly old elf used the whip on naughty children, but nowadays, using a whip on either kids or reindeer is pretty much excised from Santa’s methods, and should have been in 1947. It’s an unethical image…
…even though artists have worked hard to confuse us….
No, an ethical Santa Claus wouldn’t use a whip. He also wouldn’t put a poor old guy with a drinking problem out of work during the holidays, but that’s what Kris does next. He smells liquor on the costumed Santa, and shows no mercy:
“Don’t you realize there are thousands of children… lining the streets waiting to see you… children who have been dreaming of this moment for weeks? You’re a disgrace to the tradition of Christmas… and I refuse to have you malign me in this fashion. Disgusting!”
Then he tracks down Doris Walker, who is in charge of the parade, and gets the man fired. That’s just mean; there’s no way around it. I bet a lot of Macy Santas have had a few nips before and during the parade, and so what? How hard is it to say “Ho Ho Ho”?
Kris manages to get Drunk Santa’s job, having single-handedly gotten him sacked, no pun intended.
Why is Kris, if he’s the real Santa Claus, hanging around New York City and moonlighting in the Macy’s parade when the big night is just around the corner? This is no time for a vacation or boondoggles. If he’s really Santa, he’s goofing off, and he has the gall to tell a temporary parade Santa that he’s risking disappointing children!
Kris is not off to a good start. Continue reading
I tried to find a straight video of KWWL-TV’s Mark Woodley, its sports reporter, modeling unethical workplace conduct and a complete lack of professionalism in his emergency stint this week as a weather reporter. I couldn’t: every available clip compilation is presented like the CNN version above. Isn’t this cute and hilarious?
It isn’t either. I can see that CNN’s talking heads might thinks so, since that network allows unprofessional conduct by the ‘talent” regularly, like Don Lemon getting bombed on the New Year Eve. Unless Woodley was told to be whiny prima donna as a publicity stunt and he might have been, given the state of journalism, broadcast and otherwise, in 2022, his attitude and ostentatious bitching should have guaranteed a suspension or worse.
When one is called upon by one’s employer or leader to fill in, do extra duties, help get through a crisis or emergency, or to be a team player and do what the team needs to have done, the ethical and professional response is to do the best possible job you can with good cheer and without complaint. Woodley, who did the opposite, helped metastasize “quiet quitting” and many other forms of workplace societal rot.
This is how society becomes miserable in a Nation of Assholes. Continue reading
Republican George Santos’s election to a Long Island seat in Congress helped Republicans achieve their narrow majority in the House of Representatives. He ran as the “full embodiment of the American dream.”
His campaign biography said he was the son of Brazilian immigrants who raised himself from humble credentials at a New York City public college to become a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor” with a family-owned real estate portfolio of 13 properties and an animal rescue charity that saved the lives of more than 2,500 dogs and cats. But Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firms Santos said he worked for, have no record of Santis ever working there. Baruch College, which Rep. Santos said he graduated from in 2010, has no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating. That animal rescue group, Friends of Pets United, isn’t, as Santos claimed, a tax-exempt organization: the IRS has no record of a registered charity with that name. The New York Times also alleges that important information on Santos’s personal financial disclosures were withheld. Then there are some criminal charges for check fraud in Brazil that Santos never included in that shining campaign biography. Continue reading
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