Maybe John Nolte of Breitbart had the best of intentions, but his essay “We Should Accept Jane Fonda’s Apology About Vietnam” is an ethics mess.
To begin with, the title is deliberately misleading: his real point has nothing to do with Jane Fonda. He begins with Jane to set up an analogy that doesn’t even work. “After 35 years of apologies, isn’t it time to forgive and move on? Should someone who has repeatedly apologized over four decades still be called on the carpet and asked to continue to explain herself?,” Nolte asks, referring to Fonda’s self-created infamy when she went to North Vietnam and praised Ho Chi Minh while condemning American GIs who were fighting and dying in combat with his army. Who is Nolte talking about? Most American under the age of 60 don’t know anything about Fonda’s war protest activities. “Move on” to what? Fonda hasn’t suffered any horrible fate because of her betrayal. Nobody “canceled” her. OK, the woman is nearly 90 and regrets some of her past decisions. What old lady doesn’t? I believe she’s sorry; her anti-American rhetoric probably cost her some work-out video income. It sure didn’t cost her any roles or party invites in Hollywood. She’s also probably sorry that she did the Atlanta Braves “tomahawk chop” when she was Ted Turner’s trophy wife, too. So what? If a 75-year-old Vietnam vet chooses not to forgive Jane Fonda for aiding and providing comfort to the enemy who was trying to kill him in the jungles of Vietnam, who is Nolte to say he has to?
I confess, I am pre-conditioned not to take anything published on Breitbart as persuasive; it has been on the Ethics Alarms banned list for many years and will remains so. Nolte also loses credibility with me when he gushes that Jane “is one of the greatest actresses who has ever lived.” He needs to apologize for that, and the apology needs to be addressed to Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Greer Garson [I left Garson out when this was first posted: unforgivable.], Maggie Smith, Viola Davis, Cicely Tyson, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Page, Nicole Kidman, Glenda Jackson, Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Norma Shearer, Greer Garson, Ingrid Bergman, Judi Dench, Judith Anderson and Ann Bancroft, among others. Fonda has been a capable actress in a narrow range for a long time. She was better than her brother and not as good as her father. But one of the greatest of all time?
Stay in your lane, John.
But I digress. Fonda was disingenuously used by Nolte to tee up a terrible analogy. He writes,
All of America’s manufactured racial problems come down to a group of leftists (of all colors) who refuse to forgive and move on when it comes to slavery and Jim Crow. It’s not enough that hundreds of thousands of white Americans died to settle the matter of slavery. It’s not enough that after 5,000 generations where slavery was accepted as normal, it was Western Civilization that put an end to it. It’s not enough that two Constitutional amendments were passed to end American discrimination or that a black president was elected and re-elected, or that no American living today has ever owned or been a slave.
Why is it not enough?
Because with these race hustlers, fascists, and crybabies, it can never be enough. By not accepting America’s countless apologies and countless attempts to atone, they keep us divided, at each other’s throats, angry, and unable to heal.
You see, that’s the whole thing: If you don’t want a relationship to heal, you refuse to accept the apology and move on. That’s the secret to destroying a friendship or a marriage… No matter how sorry and contrite the offender is, you can destroy the relationship by constantly throwing whatever this person did in their face. And that’s what the left is doing to America and to millions of Americans…
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Ethics Alarms 
The tricky ethics balancing act engaged in by professional athletes’ agents has been a regular topic of examination here from the very start, particularly the apparent conflicts of interest facing agents who might be inclined to tell a client to take less than the top monetary offer for other factor that might affect a player’s career and enjoyment of life.
I don’t know why you’re paying attention to me, though: Ethics Alarms has a real former player agent among the commentariat, and below are some of his thoughts on Padres star Manny Machado opting out of his contract to seek riches he neither needs nor could possible use.
[Since 77Zommie offered this Comment of the Day, it was reported that Manny has indicated that he is discussing an extension with the Padres, meaning that he’s taking advantage of his contract that allows him to become a free agent after only five years (the contact he signed in 2010 was for ten at 30 million bucks a year) but giving his current team an opportunity to craft a new deal to keep him around. This, after saying he would be going on the open market.]
Here is 77Zoomie’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Baseball Ethics Dunce: San Diego Padres Third Baseman Manny Machado”…
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A couple of thoughts on this post from the vantage point of a 20-year-plus former National Football League Players’ Association agent.
Most of the younger professional athletes with whom I interacted were fixated solely on money as a marker of professional success. This was especially true for players who came from poor or underprivileged backgrounds where financial success was almost unheard of and any affection directed their way tended to be purely mercenary. This is particularly true of those athletes who were identified as potential superstars early on in middle and high school. Those kids were surrounded by peers, adults, and an army of hangers-on who hoped to make some type of claim in the event the athlete strikes it rich. The culture surrounding many of these future superstars instructs them that without money, they have no respect, few friendships, and little access to members of the opposite sex. In other words, these players come into the professional leagues with a well-developed sense that money is virtually the only way they can define themselves as a success.
This attitude usually starts to change as the player matures after several years in the leagues. He interacts with similarly situated peers, many of whom are older, and understand how fleeting is the fame and how phony are the friendships and romantic relationships that are contingent on his paycheck. At some point, several of my clients came to understand that their professional and personal success involved more than simply being the biggest contract number, as they started to build a network of other players, coaches, sportscasters, and, in unusual cases, former teachers or professors and work toward a post-playing career.
But, as George Costanza frequently said, “ you just can’t help some people.” I had other clients who never got beyond the numbers game and remained unable or unwilling to assess the intangibles that really are the rewards of an athletic career. For those folks, I simply worked to get the best number that I could while trying to inject some sense of reality into their worldview.
There are other factors at work in these situations, as well. My father was an NFL coach from the mid-60s through the early 90s and I had an inside view on how the relationship between the players and their communities changed dramatically as more money moved into professional sports. NFL players were not particularly well-paid through the first two decades of my father’s NFL coaching career. Every one of them had to have some kind of backup employment in the offseason to make ends meet. As a result, players had to integrate Into their communities with jobs and careers that in many cases proved to be more lucrative than football. Considerations of family stability, fan loyalty, and team camaraderie are much more important when you don’t have the financial security to walk away and do nothing else to make a living.
Finally, do not discount the influence of the agent in these negotiations. The only effective marketing tool for professional sports agents is public knowledge of the value of the contracts they negotiate for their clients. The agent will push the player to demand the biggest contract possible, and then push the player to renegotiate if the market changes. An agent who is not doing this consistently will very quickly find himself or herself being undercut by other agents who will reach out to the client to say that money is still on the table that should be in the player’s pocket.
I’m sure there are elements of all of these factors in Machado’s situation.