Month: May 2024

Authority Malpractice, Broadway Division [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Looking back over the nearly 17,000 posts here, I realize that the ethical issue of authority abuse has come up often, apparently because it drives me crazy. Experts and authorities, alleged, self-proclaimed or otherwise, are supposed to make everyone else better informed and smarter, not more ignorant and stupid. The “experts” that Ethics Alarms has fingered most frequently are pundits, politicians, historians (notably partisan Presidential historians like Jon Meacham, Michael Beschloss, and the late Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. ) elected officials and baseball writers (with a special place reserved in Baseball Writer Hell for Tom Boswell).

One of the requirements for this sub-category on Ethics Alarms is that I personally know enough about the topic the expert is mangling to detect the authority abuse. Musical theater happens to be one of those topics on which I am qualified to speak and write with some credibility, so I was annoyed yesterday to hear Sirius/XM’s Broadway channel host Seth Rudetsky emit an inexcusable whopper.

Rudetsky is what is called an “industry star,” meaning that the Broadway community knows and appreciates his work though he is largely unknown to anyone outside that community except certifiable American musical nuts. He does have a little empire on Sirius, though, hosting and commenting upon about 50% of the content on the Broadway channel while apparently going out of his way to sound as screamingly gay as possible. (I believe this indulgence damages the popularity, cultural status and prospects of musical theater, but that’s a topic for another day).

Rudetsky styles himself as an “expert on Broadway history and trivia” (as it is phrased on his Wikipedia page), so I was gobsmacked when I heard him say, in his introduction to the “Annie Get Your Gun” duet “Old Fashioned Wedding,” that “there was this thing that Irving Berlin did” in his musicals where two characters would sing different songs and then Irving put the songs together, and they “fit.” Rudetsky recalled the “You’re Just in Love” duet in Berlin’s “Call Me Madam” (above) as an example, and said that “Old Fashioned Wedding” from the revival of “Annie Get Your Gun”was another instance of Berlin’s “thing.”

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A Quick Note of Interest…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Prof. Mayer has responded to my critique of his USA Today Editorial. I was hardly restrained or respectful, but his rebuttal is measured, spirited, and appreciated. How I wish more objects of criticism here would join in the discussion.

This was diabolical of the professor, because now I can’t help liking him.

He concludes by saying “Let the roasting begin!” Don’t let him down, now.

And remember, the topic is ethics.

The Late “Supersize Me” Documentarian Was a Big Fraud

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Documentaries can be informative, entertaining and influential, but the more I watch them and the more accessible they become through the streaming platforms, the more it is apparent that they are too often pure propaganda instruments and inherently untrustworthy. Almost no documentaries are made from a neutral or objective points of view. In today’s indoctrination-oriented educational system, they are increasingly weaponized to advance political agendas. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” despite having many of its “truths” debunked and declared bad science, is still turning up in classrooms as if it weren’t the slick manipulative advocacy production it is. There is the despicable Michael Moore, of course, all of whose documentaries cheat with deceptive editing and politically slanted deceit. Even Ken Burns, whom I once admired, proved with his “The US and the Holocaust” that he could not be trusted. I’m a fool: he is affiliated with PBS. Of course he’s pushing a progressive agenda.

Documentaries should be watched with the presumption that they are dishonest, made from biased perspectives, and untrustworthy. Then it is the burden of the documentary to prove otherwise.

Morgan Spurlock died this week of cancer at the relatively young age of 53. He had one great idea for a gimmick documentary, pulled it off with humor and wit, and made himself famous and rich in the process. The idea became his Oscar-nominated 2004 film “Super Size Me,” documenting his physical deterioration as he ate nothing but McDonald’s fast food for 30 days. The movie followed Spurlock and his girlfriend throughout his Golden Arches orgy, with intermittent interviews with health experts and visits to his alarmed physician as he packed on 25 unhealthy pounds and found his liver function deteriorating. Naturally, many schools across the country couldn’t resist showing the film to gullible students. But the documentary, which earned more than $22 million at the box office, was entirely a scam. (Spurlock certainly left some clues: his production company was called “The Con.”) It was pretty obvious from the beginning, or should have been, that this was hardly a valid scientific experiment, but the same woke, anti-corporate dictators that cheered when Michael Bloomberg taxed jumbo sugary drinks in New York City were thrilled to pretend it was.

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Note to the “Wise Latina”: There’s No Crying on the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried. There have been those days. And there are likely to be more.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, where she was being honored….for what, I can’t imagine.

Awww! Poor Sonja! What’s she crying about? That she’s obviously over her head on the Supreme Court with actual legal scholars and experts who can make persuasive arguments about what the law is and what the Constitution means instead of just relying on warm, fuzzy feelings and mandatory progressive sentiment? That mean old conservatives aren’t buying her “But…but…it would be nicer if we decided this way” routine?

Did Sandra Day O’Connor, when she was in the minority on a liberal majority court, ever say she just went into her office and wept when a SCOTUS vote didn’t go her way? Did Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she was on the losing end of a 5-4 ruling? Did Scalia? No, but this Justice not only weeps over her defeats, she thinks its something to be proud of.

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Stop Making Me Defend the FBI!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is truly a 1) blight on the nation; 2) completely incompetent and irresponsible, and 3) an idiot. Her latest outburst of inflammatory and unforgivable rhetoric to mislead the kind of people who would vote for someone like her—you know, morons—is to claim that the FBI was planning on assassinating former President Trump when it raided his Florida residence on August 8, 2022 and seized hundreds of classified documents that Trump had refused to return to the National Archives despite being instructed to do so.

Her basis for this latest freak-out was a newly-unsealed filing including the raid order. It stated, “Law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force when necessary.” Being the reckless and toxic half-wit she is, MJG, without doing the minimal due diligence and research required, exclaimed on “X” this week: “The Biden DOJ and FBI were planning to assassinate Trump and gave the green light.”

Did I mention that she is an irresponsible idiot? She wasn’t the only one in this case, however. Steve Bannon and Mike Davis issued a video in which they discussed the search of Mar-a-Lago, and Bannon says on it, “They authorized deadly force, they had a medic, they had a plan to triage the wounded, they had a trauma center 18 miles away on a map. This was an attempted assassination on Donald John Trump or people associated with him. They wanted a gun fight.”

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Ethics Dunce: Wells Fargo

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I received the notice above in my email inbox two days ago. Wow! That deal looks almost too good to be true!

It was. When I examined the terms, I discovered that the bank had made a teeny mistake. It didn’t take a deposit of just 25 dollars to earn the $525 bonus. It required a deposit of 25 THOUSAND dollars.

Details, details.

That’s a three decimal point error. It doesn’t exactly engender trust in the bank’s staff, its management, or it quality control procedures, does it?

Wells Fargo has a notable dossier on Ethics Alarms, notably here, but also here, here and most recently here. And the hits just keep on coming: this was an item from yesterday: Wells Fargo Accused of Draining Customers’ Accounts Without Notice or Authorization in ‘Blatant Disregard’ of Consumer Loan Protections: Class-Action Lawsuit.

Yeah yeah, anyone can make a typo (don’t I know it!) but a bank’s business is getting numbers right. I would think that especially after its terrible publicity over the past several years, Wells Fargo would check and triple check a mailing that goes out to all of its depositors to make absolutely certain no unnerving mistakes are in the copy.

I would think that, and apparently I would be wrong.

Being a helpful, responsible customer, I sent a screen shot of the botched email to my banker at the local branch. I got no reply; I also never received any error acknowledgment from the bank.

They probably are still sending that promotion out.

A Serial Killer’s Mother’s Lament

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I was watching an old “48 Hours” episode last night about Todd Kohlhepp, a serial killer convicted of murdering seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016. He also kidnapped and raped at least two women and claims to have killed many more. The interesting part of the show was the interview with his 70-year-old mother.

Even though she had been told about her son confessing to committing seven murders, including a mass shooting in a bicycle shop where he wiped out the entire staff, she insisted that her son was misunderstood. “He’s not a monster,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “He’s a good person.”

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American Airlines and the Offensive Defense

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Oooh, I’ll be using this one in a legal ethics seminar for sure.

A sicko American Airlines flight attendant (Estes Carter Thompson III, above) allegedly hid a camera under the First Class toilet seat and filmed the nether regions of several little girls between the ages of 7 and 14 during a seven-month span last year. One of the victims, aged 14, spotted a phone’s camera flash underneath the toilet seat, which was covered by tape. She took a cell phone photo of it and showed it to her mother. As you might expect, the girls’ parents were perplexed.

A lawsuit ensued by the parents of another victim, age 9. The American Airlines lawyers came up with a true “Hail Mary” defense theory, stating in court filings, “Any injuries or illnesses alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff, Mary Doe, were proximately caused by plaintiff’s own fault and negligence, were proximately caused by Plaintiff’s use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”

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Nope, Can’t Watch “Bridgerton’ and Respect Myself in the Morning

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I was looking for a new series to stream, as the time it takes on the streaming services for me to choose a movie almost requires as much time as watching the movie. At least with a series, your choice is pre-determined for many sessions. “Bridgerton” has a new season (#3), and I had never tested it; Grace had it on her list for future viewing, because she was an English literature major and knew the Regency period in England well.

I had quite a bit of trepidation approaching “Bridgerton” because it’s another Shandaland production. I eventually baled on every Shonda Rhimes show I’ve ever sampled, including her flagship, “Grey’s Anatomy”: they are all over-heated soap operas with less nuance than “Dallas.”

But what the hell. I started Episode 1 last night and made it maybe a third of the way through. The production values were high, and the acting was Masterpiece Theater-level at least. It had only two gratuitous and vigorous coitus scenes, which is less than the average for a Shondaland production. I could not, however, stomach the African-Americans and British aristocrats-of-color wandering around early 19th Century English social scene.

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