In honor of King Tut’s tomb being opened on this date in 1922, here is a recovered lost treasure from the Ethics Alarms vault…

I know there are many, maybe hundreds, of Comment of the Day-worthy reactions to Ethics Alarms posts that never made it to this point, for a welter of reasons good and bad. If all of them could be tracked down and resuscitated, I could avoid writing about Donald Trump or the ethics rot of the increasingly disturbing American Left for months—wow, an old COTD archeology project sounds better the more I think of it! Stop it, Jack, get back to the point…

The point is that I found this excellent Comment of the Day by Marie Dowd by pure chance as I was researching the site on another matter, and was annoyed with myself for missing it the first time, way back in 2019.

I apologize, Marie! I can only plead that I was distracted: there were 24 comments on that ethics and TV trivia post, but only two that could be called substantive. Three alerted me to my careless mistakes (like calling the collective noun for critics a “snivel” instead of a “shrivel”), and most of the rest were jokes. Actually, there was a second excellent comment in the thread, that one by Pennagain, who has been missing from the ethics wars for quite a while. (I’m worried.)

Anyway, the topic, like the Joker’s hair, is ever-green, so Marie’s Comment of the Day on the burning issue of Cesar Romero leaving his mustache on despite being cast to play Batman’s clean-shaven arch-nemisis remains as fresh today as it was more than four years ago. So here it is, on “Ethics And The Joker’s Mustache”:

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I’ve thought about this mustache far too many times for my own comfort.

As a kid, the intended audience even if I was too young to care during its run, I really did not notice. The reception was always fuzzy out in the country. >not a problem

In-universe, Joker’s insane. Merry prankster is the most forgiving way to tag him. Any version would grow a handlebar or do anything to mess with people’s heads, especially the Bat. Annoying Batman would be a laugh in character. >not a problem!

As far as the character’s mentality, psychotic, violent sociopath does not go far enough to describe his character for the last fifty years. (the TV show was really the last full expression of the pablum comics after the Comics Code censored all comics for decades starting in ’54 ‘because of the children.’ The comics for the next kid generation are mostly unreadable today as Little Lulu and Tubby were supposedly what people wanted and needed. On the DC side which barely survived the censorship, only the big three of Supes, Bats, and Wonder Woman had unbroken runs. Other publishers that had thrived on horror and tru crime went belly-up) But Joker is horrible, and not someone to be lauded and admired in any way to be edgy or relevant or hip. I question the validity of making him the lead instead of antagonist. Someone to emulate instead of reject… Joker has a huge ego and would not hide a mustache if he wanted one, he would have done something violent if it was shaved unwilling- like take one he liked. After eighty years as a character pancaking it? >does not fit

And lastly the actor’s viewpoint. As a part-time gig, I really doubt they were paying enough to not require other gigs. He might not have any lined up, but he would not have wanted to negate better jobs for a silly camp show. Also, the part more recently has come under focus for being hard on the psyches of the actors playing Joker. Ledger being the most prominent, but the other actors have agreed. Having the tangible mustache might have kept the clown as a psychotic skin over substance. This may not be true, but I suspect many actors who play villains regularly have a mental or physical talisman, Vincent Price was a cultured gourmet. That makes the ‘error’ a safety belt. >good idea

But these viewpoints are not equal in importance. Just because kids don’t notice or the actor gets too much into the character for their own comfort, doesn’t mean the actor can shirk playing the character to the best of their ability. If they can’t through counseling or a less visible talisman, they should get out. The mustache is a signature for incompetence to not play the part properly going in. They could have changed the look and painted it the same green as the hair or some other fix. It does look a little pathetic and even the silly King Tut seemed more villainous as he played it a little more authentic. (around this time in comics the first big Marvel titles like Spidey were making waves by being more authentic and the 70s was the resurgence of the detective and the in the Batman tales) I can respect that he was the first memorable screen Joker, but he never left the shallows to even become scarey. I wonder how much of “It” was influenced by darker aspects of the Joker?