Month: November 2024

Rita Moreno Thought She Was Justifying Hollywood and Broadway’s Woke Casting, But Instead Proved Its Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Last December, right before New Year’s Eve, there was a blow-out Broadway celebration of the 80th anniversary of the memorable Rodgers and Hammerstein musical partnership that produced the acclaimed musicals “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “The Sound of Music,” and a couple of clunkers. It was a manufactured event to say the least. Why the 80th anniversary, for example? The team’s first successful collaboration was “Oklahoma!” in 1943, but it opened on March 31 of that year, so they were celebrating the so-called anniversary a full nine months late. (Try THAT with your wife!) But the real anniversary of the team’s formation was when Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated on the 1920 Varsity Show, Fly With Me when the two were at Columbia University together. Nobody remembers that show, however, but Broadway could have celebrated the 100th Anniversary of R&H in 2020 right before the stupid pandemic lockdown almost killed live theater.

PBS has been showing the event on its “Great Performances” series, and it’s not that great. I was tipped off that the thing would drive me crazy when for some perverse reason the opening number, after the 40 piece symphony orchestra performed an overture that was a medley of well-known R&H tunes, featured a group of gay young men singing “There Is Nothing Like a Dame” from “South Pacific.” There might have been one straight guy among them, but my Gaydar meter almost blew up. Whose idea was that? If you’re going to have gays singing that lament supposedly belted out by horny, sex-deprived sailors in WWII, at least tell them to butch up, or better yet, pick a different song.

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In New York, Dishonest Progressive Math: Not Charging Commuters As Much As Was Originally Proposed Saves Them Money

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What is this? Gaslighting? Misdirection? Whatever it is, it’s unethical.

But typical.

“I always have and I always will fight to put more money in the pockets of everyday New Yorkers,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said, as she imposed a new 9 dollar commuter toll on New Yorkers who drive into the Manhattan business district. How is a new toll that will go into effect in January 2025 for the first tine saving New Yorkers money by putting more money in their pockets? It isn’t.

Follow closely, now. The original “NYC congestion plan” was supposed to cost $15 when it was proposed, but the plan was suspended by Hochul until after the election, because she was afraid it would cost her party votes. Now that the election is safely over in the state, she’s reinstating the plan, but at a lower cost. Nonetheless, lowering the cost of a new state expense being imposed on commuters isn’t putting more money in anyone’s pocket but the state’s. The new toll takes money away from commuters, just not as much money as was originally announced.

I’m not evaluating whether the toll is a responsible and fair policy; I don’t care. I do care about the apparently never-ending “It isn’t what it is” addiction of elected officials who try their damnedest to confuse and mislead the public. Hochul is literally saying to the public, “Be grateful that I’m not taking more of your money than I might. Why, it’s almost like I am giving you money!”

No, charging commuters more than nothing, which is what they had been paying to come into Manhattan, is taking money, not giving it. War is Peace, and the state taking your money is putting money in your pocket, because it could be taking even more.

Got it.

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Sources: NYT 1, 2, and 3.

An Arizona Judge Does The Right Thing And Recuses, But Not Until He Shows That Bias Has Made Him Stupid…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

What does it say about a judge’s competence and judicial temperament when he can’t restrain himself from posting attacks on conservatives while presiding over a politically-charged trial? It says, I think, “Time to retire!” In the case at hand, it also said; “Your recusal light is flashing.”

Maricopa County Judge Bruce Cohen, the judge overseeing Arizona’s case against allies of Once and Future President Donald Trump based on their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, recused himself last week after it was revealed that he had emailed colleagues urging them to speak out against conservative attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign.

In an email sent to fellow judicial officers on August 29, Cohen criticized those who labeled Harris a “DEI hire” and said he was “sickened” when Fox News host Jesse Watters said on air that if she were elected, she would “get paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.”

“White men…must speak out,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by state Rep. Travis Grantham (R) and reported by local news media. Based on the email, one of the defendants’ lawyers called for his dismissal. Based on that email I conclude that the call for the judge’s recusal was a proper response. Even if the message didn’t prove that he would be biased against the pro-Trump defendants, it definitely proves he is incapable of processing information, either because bias has made him stupid, age has crippled his faculties, or because he was dumb to begin with.

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Sunday Morning Ethics Reflections, 11/17/24: ‘Dreading  the Next Seven Weeks’ Edition, Part II, The Usual Stuff

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

[Having whined sufficiently for several months in the introduction, I finally present the ethics items…]

1. Is this really an appropriate column for the Opinion Section of the New York Times? Even by her own standards, the latest column by Maureen Dowd is particularly nasty, catty, and offensive. It is just slightly more fair and civil than Keith Olbermann tweeting out “Fuck Trump!” 50 times. Like so much we are hearing from the humiliated and exposed Axis these day, this is just a tantrum by Dowd (other tantrums from the Times opinion page: this, by Roxanne Gay: “Donald Trump Is Already Starting to Fail,” by NeverTrumper David French) who writes in part,

“Melania wondered if the notion of “respect” had become obsolete. Good question to ponder as we watch people with no respect for Washington tearing it apart from the inside — starting with her husband’s bizarre nominations of people with contempt for the institutions they would run, a quartet of scandalous foxes in the hen houses: R.F.K. Jr., Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz. (If the odious, barely-a-lawyer Gaetz is confirmed, which is a long shot, even with obedient Senate Republicans, will he heed MAGA calls to reinvestigate 2020 with an eye toward proving Trump won?)”

It’s pretty audacious for a member of the cabal that refused to extend to Donald Trump any respect or the traditional deference due to any President to complain that he is not being properly “respectful” to the corrupt and incompetently run “institutions” he now controls. Why should anyone respect the politically weaponized Justice Department of the Biden Administration? The DEI obsessed Defense Department? The incompetent State Department, still chasing the impossible “two state solution” and validating terrorism in the process? Education? Transportation? Homeland Security, run by a DEI toady who laughably declared the Southern border “secure”? Respecting incompetence and lack of responsibility is a dangerous habit.

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Sunday Morning Ethics Reflections, 11/17/24: ‘Dreading  the Next Seven Weeks’ Edition, Part I, “The Horror”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I always dread the period coming up as the equivalent of whitewater rapids my metaphorical raft has floated into while I am missing a paddle. This year’s rapids promise to be especially emotionally perilous. It will be my first Thanksgiving since my wife died on Leap Year, my son has his own concerns and is unlikely to be available, and joining an “orphan’s Thanksgiving” at the home of some pitying friend is less attractive to me than spending the day alone with my dog. Even before that terrible date come two other bad ones.

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Creative! Funny! But Unethical [Video Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A video submitted as part of an insurance claim in January appeared to show a brown bear tearing up the interior of a Rolls-Royce.Similar videos involving other cars were turned in to two additional insurers. All together, the three insurance companies collectively paid out over $140,000.

But an investigation called Operation Bear Claw revealed that the attacks were really insurance scams.“Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume,” the department said in a news release. This bear suit…

Those things at the bottom were used to imitate bear claw marks.

The California Department of Insurance has arrested Ruben Tamrazian, 26; Ararat Chirkinian, 39; and Vahe Muradkhanyan, 32, all of Glendale, Calif.; and Alfiya Zuckerman, 39, of Los Angeles. They face charges of insurance fraud and conspiracy.

Ethics Dunce: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

[And with this, Frank Drebbin becomes the first star of an Ethics Alarms film clip to be featured in consecutive posts!]

Speaker Mike Johnson is saying he does not think the House Ethics report into the conduct of Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz should be released, even though Gaetz must face a Senate confirmation hearing. “I’m going to strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report, because that is not the way we do things in the House,” Johnson said. “And I think that would be a terrible precedent to set.”

“The rules of the House have always been that a former member is beyond the jurisdiction of the Ethics Committee,” Johnson said, when asked if the public has a right to see the report. “And so I don’t think that’s relevant.”

Of course the report is relevant. In fact, what the report contains is essential to determining whether President Trump has nominated a pedophile, criminal drug users and general slimeball as the nation’s top lawyer or not. “That is not the way we do things in the House” is no argument at all. How many times as a member of Congress been nominated for Attorney General with an ethics investigation pending? “Never”is the answer, so “how they do thing in the House” in this situation will be decided by the House. The House has a duty to the American people first, not to its members, or in Gaetz’s case, non-members. It wouldn’t be a terrible precedent—why does Johnson think that? For the House to willfully withhold relevant information from a Senate confirmation hearing for a key position in a President’s Cabinet would be the terrible precedent. Johnson’s position looks like part of a cover-up operation.

Now, if Gaetz were really a trustworthy and admirable nominee, he would publicly request that the Hose Ethics Committee release the results of their inquiry, since there wouldn’t be anything damning in it.

But he isn’t, so he won’t, because there is.

Why Doesn’t The New York Times Think Kamala Harris Paying For Al Sharpton and Oprah To Give Her Suck-Up Interviews Is “Fit To Print”?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Apparently the lessons of the past election are not sinking in for many as quickly as some thought.

Since the election, it has been confirmed that the Harris campaign paid Oprah Winfrey’s production company Harpo a million dollars for the elaborate event including Winfrey’s fawning interview of Harris on stage, and that it paid Al Sharpton’s National Action Network a half-million dollars before Sharpton did his Harrs interview. This is unethical. It is cheating. To the extent that the interviews were  journalism ( Winfrey used to be a journalist and is still accorded the credibility and status of one, Sharpton pretends to be a journalist rather than what he is, a race-hustler, on MNBC) accepting such payments create a conflict of interest and a breach of journalism ethics. Even if they are not technically unethical journalism, the lack of transparency is.

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Stop Making Me Feel Like a White Supremacist!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The phenomenon has been intruding on my consciousness for some time, but I never focused on it before. Last week, I had occasion to call up the young man selling Verizon high speed wireless whom I wrote about in this post. He called me “Mister Jack.” It suddenly struck me that other black men whom I have dealt with in a service context have called me that. In fact, the Verizon tech who switched me over from Comcast also addressed me as “Mister Jack.” As I thought about it, I recalled some black women who have used that name as well, like one of my mail carriers.

If any white person has ever called me “Mr. Jack,” I didn’t notice it. The name reminds me of “Gone With The Wind.” If someone calls me “Mr. Marshall” and I expect to have further contact with them, I tell them my name is Jack. I’m not sure what to do about “Mr. Jack;” it’s formal and informal simultaneously, but worse than the dichotomy, it sounds obsequious and submissive to my ear.

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Three Arrogant Pundits, One Crippling Delusion

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The delusion is that the American people are stupid.

I easily could have written “hundreds of pundits” instead of three, but these three, CNN’s Michael Smerconish, often said to be the most fair and objective of CNN’s talking heads, which tells you something, the New York Times’ David Brooks, once an arrogant, pseudo-intellectual neocon conservative and now a fully indoctrinated Stockholm Syndrome progressive rationalizer, and Times guest Trump-basher Roger Rosenblatt, a writer of some note.

I read about Smerconish last night, and his assertion irritated me the most of all. His theory about why Harris lost and Trump won was based on what he calls “The Boomerang Effect,” “I don’t want it all distilled into this one sound bite or conclusion, but at the top of my list, I’ll say it that way … It’s like a parenting lesson. The more that you tell people what they can’t do, what’s intolerable, you must not do this, you should not do this, the more they’re going to rebel,” Smerconish said. “Maybe they would have ultimately come to their own conclusion and rejected Donald Trump. I don’t know. But I think that the constant browbeating and the combination of the media influence and the four indictments, one conviction, and showing that god-awful joke from Madison Square Garden a week in advance of the election on a loop — and I felt it, and I said it.” He went on, “I can’t sit here, Aiden, telling you, well, this is the way I called the election, but I definitely felt the potential for a boomerang effect, and I think that came true. I really do.”

Translation: “The American people are like children, and we superior intellects in the news media must lead them in such a way that the poor, ignorant, foolish dears think they are coming to their own conclusions.”

I was immediately reminded of song from the musical “The Fantastiks,” in which two father muse about the complexities of parenting. It’s called “Don’t Say No.” Sample lyrics:

“Why did the kids put beans in their ears?
No one can hear with beans in their ears.
After a while the reason appears.
They did it cause we said no.”

It never occurred to Smerconish, or any of the myriad other pundits who bias has made so stupid that they are useless, that the public, or enough of them to prove Abe right again, voted after correctly evaluating the issues, the choices offered to them and alternative courses for the nation going forward. No, they only voted for Trump because the Axis propaganda was too aggressive. After all, voting for Hitler is like putting beans in your ears.

Next up we have David Brooks. I’m sick of reading Brooks, who masks a simplistic view of politics with psychobabble that some might take and complex analysis. I have to give Ann Althouse a pointer for flagging his column titled ““Why We Got It So Wrong.” Ann writes, “If you were “so wrong” before, why would I look to you for right answers now?” Heh. She says she just skimmed it. I read the whole thing.

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