Dean Martin’s renditions of popular Christmas songs like the one above, along with “Let It Snow,” “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (among others) just make me smile. Dean wasn’t the right singer for the carols, but I’m convinced his recordings and his memory will endure because of the innate sense of fun and irreverence he brought to the lighter ballads. Who fills that niche today? I can’t think of anyone.

Since I mentioned Frank Loesser’s controversial contribution to the popular holiday canon, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” allow me to digress. It seems like the withering away of #MeToo as a result of the revealed hypocrisy of the movement social justice warrior advocates has restored this unfairly maligned song (which won an Academy Award!) to respectability. If so good, and I hope John Legend’s certifiably awful politically correct version (with lines like “It’s your body and your choice!”) is mocked mercilessly forever more. Yesterday, I heard one of the gay male hosts on the Sirius Broadway channel (all the men on that channel appear to be trying to sound as gay as possible) talking about the song, and saying that the context of the lyrics are everything. Then he said that the version he was going to play (from “Glee’) was a perfect example of how the song, in the right context, could be sweet and inoffensive. It was sung by two gay men, not that thee’s anything wrong with that, but as far as I could determine, it was no different in “context” from any version in which a male is desperately trying to talk a woman into a winter sleepover.

1. Speaking of LRTBQ+ matters, this would seem to be a superfluous headline: “Study shows sex could be a better predictor of sports performance than gender identity.” Gee, ya think? I wonder if feminists will ever have the integrity to support Ethics Heroes like Riley Gaines, the collegiate swimmer who has become a vocal advocate for keeping trans-males out of women’s sports. I didn’t get around to highlighting her testimony in Congress, in which another incompetent member, Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee, accused Gaines of engaging in “transphobic bigotry.” Gaines, who is gutsy and outspoken, returned fire by calling Lee a misogynist, goading Lee into making an ass of herself when she stopped the testimony to demand that Gaines’ insult be stricken from the record. (Statements that are unwelcome to Democrats and progressives are “hate speech,” you see.)

2. Regarding the previous post: my Harvard alumna sister opined that beleaguered president Gay will be able to hold on for enough time that Harvard can credibly claim her withdrawal for “personal reasons” isn’t the result of pressure from the Evil Right. I agreed with her at the time, but now I’m not so sure. The mockery of the school is wide ranging, sharp and effective…

..and the ridicule of Gay herself is apparently irresistible, as with this parody letter of resignation by the plagiarizing scholar:

[Source: Power Line]

3. As the capper on a really bad year for Disney, Mickey Mouse finally loses its copyright protection on Jan. 1, 2024, and goes into the public domain. Disney unethically used its lobbying power to use its iconic founding rodent to persuade the U.S. Congress to extend copyright protection beyond all reason. Disney’s monopoly over Mickey will end95 years after his debut in the short film “Steamboat Willie,” long, long after the original copyright protection would have expired based on the correct theory that once an artist has gleaned a reasonable benefit and profit from a creation, it benefits the culture and society to be able to use the work to spark innovation and new uses for the original work.

4. Free associating some more: a member of a book club asks Ethics Alarms about the group’s December choice, “Demon Copperhead,” the 2022 novel by Barbara Kingsolver that was a co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and won the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction. The book is an updating of Charles Dicken’s classic “David Copperfield,” moving the setting to Appalachia. Almost all of the characters are based on Dickens’ original. The EA inquirer likes the book, but asks if a novel that depends so strongly on another author’s work can be properly deserving of a Pulitzer. My answer, having not read the novel (and being able to imagine easily how I might like it better than “David Copperfield”) is a definite yes. Ethics Alarms already discussed another successful mash-up of public domain literature this month, the Netflix “Fall of the House of Usher.”

5. I have been trying to think of a good analogy for the absurd argument, now firmly planted in the Left’s “It isn’t what it is” narrative to try to hold onto the power it has thoroughly abused, that the Biden administration deserves praise and credit for the gradual abatement of the disastrous inflation it inflicted on the nation. Paul Krugman, one of the New York Times’ poster boys for “Bias Makes You Stupid,” has an op-ed that celebrates the reduction in the inflation rate from 40-year highs last year. It’s gaslighting: “From an economic point of view, 2023 will go down in the record books as one of the best years ever — a year in which inflation came down amazingly fast at no visible cost, defying the predictions of many economists that disinflation would require years of high unemployment,” Krugman writes.

“One of the best years ever”—-though prices are still far higher than pre-pandemic levels and syill rising, and Americans’ personal savings rate is less than half of the historical average. Speaking for one family, mine has had to cut back markedly on many pleasures of life—like a Christmas tree!—this year because of prices that no longer make such luxuries defensible. Let’s see: imagine you are a man and a careless flirtation with the supernatural forces by a neighbor causes the love of your life to suddenly sprout thick hair all over her body. It grows so fast that shaving and cutting don’t work, and she is both miserable and progressively more unattractive. Then the neighbor comes up with a spell that greatly slows the rapid growth of your love’s hair. She still looks like a werewolf, but at least the results of the original curse aren’t accelerating. How grateful should you be?

6. Dumbest Ann Althouse statement ever? I am usually a fan of the iconoclastic law prof-blogger, so this was a shock. Writing about a quote by Eliot Spitzer regarding Donald Trump refusing to withdraw fom the Presidential race despite all of his legal problems, she called Spitzer “a man who resigned for nothing more than using prostitutes” and wrote,

I think the reason Spitzer — and let’s throw in Al Franken — didn’t stand their ground and fight is that they were beholden to their political party…Maybe some of these others — Spitzer, Franken — would have prevailed if they’d fought. 

What? Has Ann forgotten why Spitzer resigned? He was elected Governor of New York after building a reputation as a tough on crime prosecutor who had focused special energy on organized crime and breaking up prostitution rings. In fact, Spitzer, who was married and had children, had been using the services of a prostitution ring while Attorney General and later as Governor, and flagrantly so. He was almost certainly going to be impeached, and had he not resigned, probably would have been prosecuted. There is no comparison with Trump’s situation, and comparing Spitzer to Franken, who did nothing illegal, is wildly unfair to Franken. Spitzer couldn’t “fight.” He was caught doing what he had condemned and prosecuted other for doing, and lied about it repeatedly. He was, and is, thoroughly disgraced.

7. Finally, what’s the ethical way to treat incredibly ignorant political grandstanding by friends and relatives on social media? One of my Facebook friends, a woman I knew both in one job and also in several productions I directed her in, posted that she was “so proud of Colorado” (where she now lives.), linking to the idiotic, hyper-partisan, dangerous, unconstitutional and certain to be reversed decision declaring Donald Trump ineligible to run for President. She’s a nice, not-too-bright, kind and enthusiastic woman, but this dumb post attracted scores of “likes” and “loves,” meaning that it is contributing to the already perilous stupidity of the public.