Today is the anniversary of the Beatles arriving in New York to begin what was to be an epic ten-day tour of the U.S. in 1964, sending Beatlemania to new heights. There are few things that make me laugh out loud in pure joy these days—MSNBC freakouts cause rueful laughter if not my Nelson Muntz imitation—but one of them is when the Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM plays recordings of the Fab Four’s concerts from those days, with the teenage girls screaming their lungs out. It’s just so innocent, happy, wonderful….and weird. And we will never, never see the like again.
But “Help!” (Grace told me that she and her best friend went to the movie ten times) is up there for a different reason. I need it. It makes me feel a little better to read so many other bloggers, commentators, social media whizzes and pundits complaining that the opening Trump Presidency whirlwind has them overwhelmed and frustrated, but it doesn’t, you know, help. These are important issues that require ethical perspectives (since almost nobody else is supplying them), and I literally cannot afford to spend all my time on this for all the reasons regular readers here are used to me complaining about.
And this is an especially crucial month, not because I have a lot of paying work—-this is always a dead period for ProEthics—but because I have set this month aside to take care of many crucial administrative, business and personal tasks that I have accumulated while trying to keep a two-person operation functioning by myself and trying to ignore the Call of the Woodchipper. Yesterday I spent so much time researching, thinking about and writing about the topics here that I got nothing productive done on anything else.
Thorough, thoughtful, articulate discussions of current ethics event on the open forums do help, but what I really need right now is focused guest columns on the daily Trump vs. Axis War. EA has one excellent regular columnist now, the ineffable Curmie, but the political arena is not his favored field, and thank goodness for that. This month I need guest columns on the accelerating government/cultural/societal upheaval, and I need them quickly. I also want to be able to write about non-political matters without having to whiff on an ethics issue of importance thrown at me from the world of politics.
I will still have to edit these guest posts (lightly) and I can’t guarantee that every one will be published; if I decide that a submission isn’t what I need, I will ask that it go up on the next Forum. And you can consider it an audition for a regular gig, if an unpaid one.
My email, again, is jamproethics@verizon.net. Send your submissions to that address, and to all you frustrated banned commenters out there: Yes, you can have a guest column published too! You just have to make sure it doesn’t begin by calling me an asshole.
End of plea. Now, as Hedley Lamarr so memorably said, “Go do that voodoo that you do so weeeeeell!
Ethics Alarms 
I’d like to nominate Van Jones for … something.
Van Jones: Donald Trump Is Smarter Than All Of Us | Video | RealClearPolitics
I remember thinking this back in 2016 when Trump pretty much embarrassed the entire political class by single-handedly winning the biggest electoral prize in the business and embarrassing all the career political hacks. Of all people, Van Jones is bringing this to the attention of the insufferable jerks on the left. The “he can’t be smart because he’s not one of us” thinking is really debilitating for these people. “He didn’t run for student council president in high school” is not way to respond to a self-taught campaigner. It’s amazing to see someone on the left actually saying this out loud.
Van is nothing if not adaptable. He always find some angle to take him out of the knee-jerk, me-too, Obama-hack mob, though in fact that’s where he belongs. He’s a little like Bill Maher in that regard. I never believe that anything he says is sincere.
You’re right. Every now and again he says something lucid. But he never really leaves the reservation. And he’s never attacked for saying anything lucid. I guess it’s because he’s black.
Anyway, it was fun seeing that insufferable and inexplicably ubiquitous Chris Cillizza being told he’s not as smart as Trump and seemingly agreeing.
I think it’s a no-brainer for Trump to do Joe Rogan’s show just as it was for him to take to Twitter before forming his own Social Media. He recognized the influence of these new forms of communication would help his campaign. He also knew he wouldn’t be treated fairly by most other media sources.
It’s funny. I remember playing in an eighth-grade basketball game on the outdoor court at St. Mike’s in Miami, Florida when the Beatles were on tour. It must have been on the day of their arrival in New York in 1964. (All these years, I’ve mistakenly thought it was the day they flew into Jacksonville, Florida. But that didn’t occur until the summer of 1964 on their second tour.)
Anyway, the event was memorable because all the girls, including the cheerleaders, who were supposedly our girlfriends and on site to, you know, cheer us on to victory, were ignoring us entirely and were instead huddled around a transistor radio to hear the broadcast of the Beatles arrival in New York. The girls all squealed when it was announced the boys were coming out of the plane. Really remarkable, and frankly, more than a little humiliating to our twelve- and thirteen-year-old egos.
Girls had to be enamored of a particular Beatle. Mrs. OB is a Paul McCartney girl. She’s also a Humphrey Bogart girl (go figure) and a Sean Connery girl and a Cary Grant girl and a James Taylor girl and a….
Jack wrote, “This month I need guest columns on the accelerating government/cultural/societal upheaval, and I need them quickly.”
I happened to be working on just such a thing that might work for you, I submitted it. If it doesn’t fit your niche, no problem.
This is a topic that has been bothering me for a while. Colorado voted to legalize marijuana while ago now… from a 2018 article…”Many Coloradans who voted in 2012 to legalize recreational marijuana wonder the same thing as John Sawyer. They recall one television ad in particular that declared, “Let’s have marijuana tax money go to our schools rather than criminals in Mexico.”
By voting ‘yes’, many Coloradans believed it was a solution to public schools financial woes, underscored by one screen shot in the ad that said, “Colorado ranks 35th among states in school funding.” The implication being that with pot taxes, the ranking would change.”
This was a clear campaign promise that the sin tax revenue would go to schools.
Now a decade later
From another article “But over time, lawmakers have expanded the possible uses for marijuana taxes to as many as 21 categories, including housing, entrepreneurial programs, trial courts and veterans services.”
Texas did the same thing to get voters to vote for the Lottery. They said, “well, by gosh, all that revenue will go to fund the schools! Who doesn’t love the schools? We need schools.” Voters said, “oh, cool. We like that.’ Then, after the Lottery was approved, well some nasty person sued, asserting that the State did not have the right to take tax money (which lottery ticket sales really are) and allocate it for one purpose. Texas Supreme Court said, “uh, you know, that guy is right. Texas can’t do that.” Now, all the money goes to the general fund. Whoddathunk?
jvb
Our schools are severely underfunded and what does the small pittance of money actually allocated go to? The buildings… who likely have construction companies that are buddies with the mystery committee members. It’s our state’s very own version of US AID.
It’s our state’s very own version of US AID.
Beat me to it!
Native American Group Calls Commanders Name Change ‘DEGRADING’ And Demands Action
MONEY QUOTE: “They argue that the “Redskins” name, despite its controversial history, WAS SUPPORTED BY A MAJORITY OF NATIVE AMERICANS, citing a survey claiming 90% APPROVAL.“ (bolds/caps mine)
Oh, the deeply viscid irony!
PWS
NOW they tell us. No sympathy. I wrote years and years ago about how the mania to eliminate Native America mascots and team names was just erasing cultural memory in the interest of virtue-signaling and victim-mongering. I have Commanders and I hate Guardians, but I’m glad both weak and boring names that denied history and tradition to remind future generations of the wages of historical airbrushing. Assholes…
A dark day indeed, the death of American rock and Roll.
“And while Lenin read a book on Marx
the quarted practiceed in park
and we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died”
Testing.