I had to post an ethics quiz on this, especially after beginning the day writing, “I’d say anyone celebrating Star Wars Day today (“May the Fourth be with you!”) on this May 4 needs to get out more. In addition to being a day that promises further depressing developments on college campuses as the decades of progressive, anti-American, and Marxist indoctrination have their predictable (and probably intentional) consequences—though somehow the ivory tower revolutionaries in charge of those campuses were oddly unprepared for them!—this date has an ominous history.”
And there he is, J.B. Pritzker, the Governor of Illinois, posing with his wife on social media to celebrate “Star Wars” in a pose apparently evoking a yet-to-be released “Star Wars” sequel in which Luke and Leia are victims of the Empire’s diabolical fat ray.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is it responsible for high-ranking elected officials to present themselves to the public looking and acting ridiculous?
I have strong feelings on this issue, which I acknowledge may be extreme and even unreasonable. I first started thinking about the issue when I was 10 and started reading about the Presidents of the United States. This photo bothered me…
Later, there were other examples, notably this…
I also shudder when past elected officials do this sort of thing. Sarah Palin, for example, on “The Masked Singer”…
…or this frightening spectacle…
Now, as Claudine Gay might say, context matters. Rudy Giuliani appeared in drag on Saturday Might Live when he was being widely hailed for doing such a great job running New York City. Illinois is not doing well, in contrast, under Pritzger’s watch. Its public pension debt has ballooned to nearly $150 billion. People are leaving the state, hurting tax income. Unemployment rates are very high; wage growth is lagging. Bryce Hill, the director of fiscal and economic research at the Illinois Policy Institute, told the Daily Caller: ‘The Census Bureau has reported that residents are leaving the state en masse to the tune of hundreds of thousands every single year, so much so that the state’s population has actually been declining for the past 10 years.”
It would seem that citizens of a state with such pressing issues would like to see their governor showing that he is working hard to solve these problems rather than farting around.
But maybe that’s just me…
Ethics Alarms 
“It would seem that citizens of a state with such pressing issues would like to see their governor showing that he is working hard to solve these problems rather than farting around.”
Au contraire, mon frere. I’ve come to the conclusion lefties are a breed apart. They WANT to ruin everything. They want to turn the country into the largest shithole country in the world. Gavin Newsom? He’s a stud. Kathy Hochul? She’s wonderful. The last five or six mayors of Chicago? The greatest! They’ll all show those Republicans. Nope, Pritzker’s a Democrat. He takes care of the teachers and the public employee unions membership. What’s not to like. What’s one and a half billion dollars? The Feds will bail out the state.
The last two paragraphs clinch it for me. It’s better for public officials to engage in acts of frivolity when things are going well and their poll numbers are up. As long as such moments are few and far between and aren’t vulgar or obscene, I find them harmless, When things are NOT going well and poll numbers are down, then the frivolous behavior looks more like desperate pandering.
And to think that my tax dollars as an Illinois resident paid the portion of the Governor’s salary which paid for those costumes — sheesh! :(
Our son, daughter-in-law and grandson are moving to Illinois this month from low tax Arizona so daughter-in-law can work in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Seeing the Daily Mail article Jack references about Illinois’ reminded me what a longstanding slow-motion car wreck Illinois has been in recent memory. They will live in IL because the schools are better for grandson number one. But the IL real property taxes are massive. I hope his HS is as good as it is billed to be.
Oh, bloody hell, Jack. Even politicians you don’t like are allowed to have a little harmless fun. And fat-shaming isn’t a good look.
It’s idiot shaming! If you look like Orson Welles, you don’t go to a costume party dressed as Fred Astaire and expect everyone to applaud. If you look like Kate Smith and pretend to be Audrey Hepburn, you deserve all the mockery you get.
But I accept the theoretical validity of the “harmless” fun argument.
“Empire’s diabolical fat ray”. Not fat shaming. If you say so, I guess. It’s your house.
Go ahead, explain why ridiculing someone who deliberately places themselves in a situation where their physical features are inappropriate to the task at hand is not justifiable criticism. You’re just giving a reflex and thought-free standard response. I’m a director: if I tell an actress, sorry, you’re too heavy to play the lead in “The Twiggy Story,” is that “fat shaming”? It is not. A good friend wanted to play Tony in West Side Story when he was 35. Was telling him he was too old (and out of his mind) AGE shaming?
Make an argument. The joke wasn’t “fat-shaming” because it’s “my house.” It wasn’t and isn’t fat-shaming because IT ISN’T FAT SHAMING.
Not a thought-free and standard response, but an empathetic one. I personally am not into cosplay, but don’t begrudge them or anyone else their interests. Politicians engage in photo ops, some work, some don’t. The post achieved the desired effect without the enhancement.
Bravo: that’s as a good a response as I can imagine. And you convinced me a post in in order…
Ah yes, only the morally superior left can shame others. Trump’s fat while the Pritzkers are victims of the evil American, capitalist food industrial complex and its pernicious, soul crushing plenty. Springfield, Illinois is an infamous food desert.
Again: calling Trump, Rush Limbaugh et al. “fat” as an ad hominem attack is unethical and “fat-shaming.” Saying that King Farouk should probably wear more modest bathing attire at the beach is not. This distinction escapes those who are determined to signal their woke credentials.
“Have you no shame?” was heralded. Shithole societies don’t do shame.
Excising shame from a society’s arsenal of protections is a tactic used to enhance and enable the spread of moral relativism. As they’d say over at Althouse, “I call bull shit” on “this or that shaming.”
In principle, I agree that high-elected officials should display more decorum than Pritzker. HelI, I think society in general should exhibit more decorum than it does. However, social media has obliterated even hints of decorum as its users clamor for attention. Ever since Clinton defined what is and isn’t acceptable to the electorate the gulf between acceptable and unacceptable has widened.
J.B. Pritzker will suffer no repercussions for his antics. The brain-dead electorate votes based on party affiliation and not on a candidate’s performance. If the electorate were concerned about results versus rhetoric, incumbents would not keep their jobs beyond a couple of terms. For a politician to remain in office the formula is simple:
We need leaders or at least competent managers in all levels of government, not grifters. Sadly, we continue to elect self-serving, narcissistic, power-hungry, feckless politicians. Pritzker is not the problem. We the electorate are the problem. We need to demand problem-solving results and throw the bums out if we don’t get them. Instead, we get:
Jack,
I think word presss blocked my comment please fix.
Sorry, Tom…on a phone call. It’s up!
I… Don’t know. I think that high-profile people can be seen in ridiculous circumstances, so long as they don’t look ridiculous, and that’s a subjective bar dependent in no small way to who we’re talking about:
Vladimir Putin riding a bear, shirtless: Funny, memeable, ridiculous situation, but he kind of looked cool doing it. Joe Biden riding a bear, shirtless? Slightly different story.
There’s also a matter of expectation. There’s also a matter of skill. There’s also a matter of execution.
These are the kind of things that are so easy to fuck up that it could be close to a concrete rule to avoid them, but if done in an authentic, believable way, maybe it actually comes off as endearing: If you’re going to play the piano and sing publicly, you better as hell be able to play well and sing.