I guess you can figure out what my mood is like this morning…
Pass along some Christmas season cheer by providing brilliant, trenchant and timely ethics analysis. I’ll be here, reading and poisoning eggnog…
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Ethics Alarms 
I’m just wondering which is the drippier song: Imagine or So this Is Christmas?
Oh, Imagine, easily. The closer call is whether Paul’s “Having a Wonderful Christmastime” is worse than John’s trite attempt at a Christmas song.
I won’t claim Paul McCartney’s song is good, but it really is about simply having a Wonderful Christmas Time.
Lennon’s has some vague but explicit anti-war political messaging woven in.
Paul’s is about on the level of Ren and Stimpy’s “Happyhappy” song.
We were at “Jingle Jam” with our kids and grandkids at their church last year, riding on a trolley car. I jokingly told them that McCartney’s “Having a Wonderful Christmastime” was the worst song on the planet. Three minutes later, guess what came on over the trolley-car speakers? Our son and daughter-in-law looked at me, then burst out laughing.
I retract that statement and re-issue a new one: McCartney’s “Having a Wonderful Christmastime” is the worst song…in the universe!!!
I’ve been mulling over the “Me Too!” movement of late. I’m thinking it was a massive, and successful power move. The trigger for me was the eradication from the language of the word “seduction.” Almost all sex became rape. “Seduction” disappeared. How many of the “Me Too!” “victims” were complicit to a significant and even disqualifying degree in what they deem to have been “rape.” Of course, nowadays, Don Giovanni would be deemed a rapist when in fact, he was a seducer. Big difference.
A college (shall I say) acquaintance, left her college boyfriend and their apartment behind, driving off in said boyfriend’s truck, to spend the night in the apartment of a college professor at the school they’d attended three hours away. She’d taken a course with said professor a semester and a summer earlier. The trip had originally been planned by the boyfriend and the girl to include both of them. The professor talked to the girl and all of a sudden, she was going on the trip alone! According to the girl, the professor came into the guest bedroom in which she was sleeping “and raped her.” Obviously, he’d been working on her for months and succeeded in luring her into his lair. She says he “raped” her. Baloney. He seduced her. But that word has been removed from the parlance. She was complicit. She chose to make the trip alone and put herself at risk. She returned to the apartment she shared with the guy and dumped him and took up long distance with the professor. She acted as if she was under a spell. Which she was. But to claim she had no agency is simply wrong. She was not raped, she was seduced.
So, when you hear “Baby It’s Cold Outside” this Christmas season, remember, it’s not a rape song, it’s, at worst, a seduction song. (I think of it more as simply a coy, charming, sexual banter lyric between two eager and consenting adults.) The “Me Too!” thing may have been a massive scam. All these women had to do was say “no” and absent themselves early on in the proceedings. All the girl with the boyfriend had to do at any point was say, “Uh, no thanks, professor. I’ve already got a boyfriend.” If you snooze, you lose, girls. I’m beginning to think people like Harvey Weinstein have actually suffered a major injustice.
This video gives some credence to your remark.
The last administration has had several embarrassing events connected with social media influencers, so many that I initially felt an “ick” sensation to this video by Louis Rossmann:
While watching, I realized he’s more of the character of the founding era pamphlet publishers. The medium is no longer pulp booklets published by press, but videos posted online. Among other unethical modern business practices, he even discusses the broken subscription model that was a recent topic here.
I was going to bring up the Lily Phillips story, but I think maybe that’s just Res ispa loquitur to really add anything more.
Follow up to a previous EA post, the ETHICS VILLIAN kayaker who tried to fake his death IS BACK in WESconsin.
It may come as no surprise that his wife is filing for divorce.
PWS