Since yesterday’s trivia quiz was so well received, I’m also going to begin today with more non-ethics light-heartedness, sort of. [The answer to that trivia question is Carl Switzer, better known by his “Our Gang” character’s name, “Alfalfa.” It was a trick question in that I deliberately asked about what actor “appeared” in two of the Ethics Alarms Christmas classics that have a viewers guide published annually here (the third is “Miracle on 34th Street). Switzer, his career as an adult actor sinking fast, is the high school student who makes George Bailey and Mary fall into a gym swimming pool while they are doing the Charleston in “IAWL” It’s also his face in the photo (above) of the Haines Sister’s brother, “the Dog-Faced Boy” who served with Bing and Danny in the army. Switzer wasn’t credited for that “appearance.” A couple of commenters alluded to the answer by saying that they were sure “our gang” at Ethics Alarms could come up with the answer, and that there was “a grain of truth in that.” Grain, alfalafa…get it?

This morning I have a joke for you. There is a bizarre 2022 tongue-in-cheek slasher movie on cable now called “The Blackening.” A group of young blacks are tormented, stalked and slaughtered by a serial killer in a blackface mask. At one point, as they are trapped in an old house, he forces them to play a game called “The Blackening” in which they must correctly answer questions related to black culture or history or be the next on the kill list. He rqeuires one to sing the second verse of “the black national anthem,” for example. Other challenges include the maniac telling them that if they sacrifice “the blackest” member of their group, the rest will be spared. They decide the least popular and most dispensable in the group is “the blackest,” to which he objects strenuously, pointing out that he voted for Donald Trump. As he leaves the house to certain death, he defiantly shouts, “All lives matter!”).

I laughed out loud exactly once before I quit watching. (Apparently the film was sufficiently well-received that a sequel is planned. Standards for franchises are lower than ever. The Wayans brothers could have done it better.) One of the young women can’t handle the stress of their predicament, and announces that she’s tired of running. She sits down and tells the others to leave her; she’s ready to be a victim. (This is a horror movie trope for those of you who are not fans of the genre.)

The others try to persuade her to keep fighting. “That’s what we do, we don’t give up, we fight!” one says (that’s paraphrasing: even I don’t memorize this crap). “Would Rosa Parks just give up? Would she just sit down?”

“Actually, that’s exactly what she did,” the woman replies.