Author: Jack Marshall

Black Friday Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Sorry, this is up late for many reasons, but primarily because 1) I am blotto and exhausted after an emotional week, as well as dreading the next stage of Holiday Horrors, 2) I forgot it was Friday. I really did. Pathetic.

Let’s see what kind of new ethics topic you can come up with. If you’re really in a black mood, you might want to watch the tongue-in-cheek “Halloween”-inspired horror film “Thanksgiving,” in which a mysterious slasher disguised as a pilgrim creatively knocks off the people he (or she?) holds responsible for a Black Friday riot at a local retail store that resulted in the trampling deaths of several shoppers. Do I need to tell you what the maniac’s ultimate murder in a movie with that title is?

Comment of the Day: “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks” [Item #1]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Gregg Wiggins, an old friend and frequent theater production colleague, issued this Comment of the Day in explanation of the reasons for my complaint yesterday about NBC’s crack staff repeatedly mispronouncing the name of the Radio City Musical Hall Rockettes during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast yesterday…. three different ways!

Not very related to Gregg’s post but related to the parade: The New York Tines reported yesterday that the parade became “the most-watched entertainment show in the United States only over the past three years.” Theories for the reasons this has happened vary. One is that the event is still completely apolitical (unlike almost every other form of entertainment programming); another is that the public increasingly longs for a simpler time, remembering that their families watched the parade when they were children and the holidays seemed magical. Yet another holds that a lot of people can’t afford to go to see shows in New York City any more, and the parade’s (lip-synced) street performances of current Broadway fare is the closest they will ever get. I think the development may be an encouraging example of how the culture can still be unified and brought together by shared traditions and experiences. The closest thing to a consensus that the New York Times found is that everyone agrees about the parade remaining essentially the same decade after decade, unlike almost everything else.

Except that the network broadcasters no longer know how to pronounce “Rockettes.”

Here’s Gregg Wiggins on the post, “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks”…

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Museum Ethics: The Draft-Dodging Playboy and the Wright Bros. Plane

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The old TV show “Naked City” used to intone at the end of every episode, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” There are far more than eight million ethics stories in our country’s rich and surprising history. This is one of those, and I pass it along to you.

The Franklin Institute, a museum in Philadelphia inspired by the work of Ben Franklin and dedicated to the study of science, exhibits a plane built in 1911 by the Wright brothers. It was, they say, a gift from Grover C. Bergdoll, a strange man with a strange history who was once an infamous national figure but who is now forgotten.

He was a wealthy playboy who was heir to  a Philadelphia beer brewing fortune. He dodged the Great War draft in 1917, failing to report for military service. He was already known for his irresponsible conduct, taking flying lessons from Orville Wright and buying a plane from the Wright brothers that he used to buzz buildings among other stunts. He had  multiple accidents and traffic violations in automobile as a teenager, and served two months in jail after a head-on crash in 1913. Since he was rich and well known, the government decided to an example of him to discourage draft-dodgers, It  distributing wanted posters with his face and name, and when the soldier who supposedly was drafted to take Bergdoll’s place died in combat,  the New York had a front page headline, “Died Hero in Battle in Bergdoll’s Place.”

The story gets stranger. Bergdoll was finally captured in 1920 after an ongoing manhunt, and sentenced to prison for five years. He escaped after less than a year. He convinced authorities to temporarily release him from prison to  help them find a “pot of gold” that he claimed to have buried. Bergdahl escaped while his two U.S. Army escorts became distracted (they were playing pool at his family mansion), fleeing in his chauffeur-driven car to Canada, from which he travelled to Germany. He married there, but often returned secretly to the United States. Reported sightings of Grover were headlines news.

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Unethical Tweet Of The Week: President-Elect Donald Trump (Sigh!)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I didn’t see this until I had already put up the previous post about “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks.” If I had, it would have been included. Above all else, the tweet is stupid.

I know, I know…this may be Julie Principle territory. Still, the conduct of the President of the United States is always of special significance, so I am loathe to declare before the second roller-coaster Trump term begins that he will be given an Ethics Alarms pass for the inevitable social media outbursts to come. What is so discouraging, not to mention unethical, about Trump’s Thanksgiving Day tweet is that it shows, again unfortunately, that our soon-to-be 47th President has a flat learning curve, at least in the area of public statements.

There is no reason for Trump to issue a back-handed  “Happy Thanksgiving” message, and so many reason not to. He certainly knows that somehow managing to at least alleviate the toxic partisan divisions in America is not only an important task he must face and treat seriously, but also essential to the success of his administration. Trump Derangement is also approaching national health emergency status. What ethical objective can a tweet like that possibly accomplish? The answer is, I hope all can agree, none. Well, none except making Trump feel good. How juvenile and self-indulgent, in addition to selfish. The tweet is essentially gloating, a “Nyah, nyah, nyah!” to his foes. All it does is make them angrier, more hateful, more irrational, and more convinced that all Trump wants to do is inflict revenge on “Radical Left Lunatics.” The substantive goals he has claimed to be seeking will require his full attention; there is no time for such pettiness.

Yet there is it. No self-control, no hint of appropriate priorities, no sense of “I could tweet this, but it would be wrong.” No nation will be respected whose elected leader behaves that way.

 

Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks [Repaired]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“It’s The Great Stupid, Charlie Brown!”

1. I saw that meme on Facebook today. Is that the kind of misinformation social media platforms are supposed to censor, or is there value in learning that one’s Facebook friend is a moron?

2. On today’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast on NBC, three separate hosts mispronounced “Rockettes.” One called them the “Rockets,” another said “Rockeets,” and a third said “ROCK-ettes, with the accent on the first syllable. The Radio City Music Hall iconic kick-line dancers have been part of the parade for decades, and NBC has had broadcast rights for the event all year. Yet their “journalists” couldn’t bother to check to see what the perennial act is called? (Or learn to read?)

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The Ethics Alarms 2024 “It’s A Wonderful Life” Ethics Guide, Revised, Expanded, With A New Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

2024 INTRODUCTION

Last year I concluded that “It’s A Wonderful Life” really belonged in the Thanksgiving movie canon, not Christmas, but I still waited until the pre-Christmas madness to post the 2023 version. This year, I’m finally putting the classic where it belongs. I have always identified with George Bailey, though this year it is for different reasons. Like George, I often feel like I didn’t achieve and experience what I could and should have, that my choices too often didn’t pan out, that I barely missed some breaks (but not all) that I needed when I most needed them. This year, which has been clouded since Leap Year by the sudden death of my wife, best friend, business partner and #1 fan—that’s Grace Elizabeth Bowen Marshall in all categories—I have never felt the lesson of “It’s A Wonderful Life” more powerfully: “No man is a failure who has friends.” I don’t believe that, frankly, but my friends, neighbors, clients, colleagues and blog readers have sustained me generously in this difficult period, and I will always be grateful for that.

Last year I wrote, “This is a tough time for my business and my family, and a lot of the problems are the result of my own selfish choices and mistakes as well as my hard-wired proclivity to cause trouble and not back down after the consequences start becoming clear. I’m seriously considering not celebrating Christmas this year, and we have always been a big Christmas family, because several recent disasters  require the money to go elsewhere.” In retrospect, this reminds me of a joke my father was fond of: “One day as I sat musing, sad and lonely without a friend, a voice came to me from out of the gloom saying, ‘Cheer up. Things could be worse.’ So I cheered up and sure enough—things got worse.” Everything got much worse after I wrote that last year.

I re-watched the movie last night in preparation for revising the Guide. It made me cry at the end, because Grace so loved the final scene, and would tear up at Harry Bailey’s toast, “To my big brother George, the luckiest man on earth.”

Frank Capra must have felt that the movie was bitterly ironic. It was a huge flop, and destroyed his infant project with some other prominent directors to launch a production company called “Liberty” because it would give directors the liberty to put their artistic visions on the screen without interference from the studios. “It’s A Wonderful Life” was the first and last film produced by Liberty: it not only killed the partnership, it just about ended Capra’s career.

James Stewart was, by all accounts, miserable during the shooting. He suffered from PTSD after his extensive combat experience, and the stress he was under shows in many of the scenes, though to the benefit of the film. It is interesting that the movie is scored by Dmitri Tiompkin, a Russian expatriate who is best known for scoring Westerns like “Red River” and “High Noon.” He wasn’t exactly an expert in small town America, but his trademark, using familiar tunes and folk melodies, is certainly on display. Clarence, George’s Guardian Angel (Second Class), is frequently underscored with the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” because he is represented by a star in the opening scene in Heaven. The old bawdy tune “Buffalo Girls” is another recurring theme, an odd one for a wholesome film since the buffalo girls were prostitutes.

As usual, I noticed details in the film this time that escaped me in earlier viewings, and for better or worse, I have appended the Guide accordingly. I also must say that although I wrote the Guide, I enjoyed reading it, and, amazingly, some of my own words made me feel a little better at a time when my spirits are near an all-time low. In particular, the section on regret resonated with me. Good point, Jack!

Now let’s go to Bedford Falls…but first, a stop in Heaven…

1. A Religious Movie Where There Is No Religion

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Ethics Hero: Some Rich Person In Idaho

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The holiday-appropriate heart-warming tale is told in this video I can’t embed here. Apparently a wealthy “Secret Santa” is giving $1 million to “deserving people in eastern Idaho,” and the East Idaho News is publicizing the plan with daily surprise visit to the lucky recipient. “Brenda in Blackfoot”is first up. From the News: “She is a single mom with eight adopted children who all have special needs. She works from 4:30 a.m. to approximately 1 p.m. every day to support her children… She has really struggled… In May, they experienced a small house fire, which caused a lot of damage to her home….Googling the repairs for instructions , [Brenda] did all of the repairs herself. Her family also had a flood in their home about six weeks ago….Brenda went through cancer treatment last year as well…”

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It’s About Time! Finally Another Progressive Fake Stat Used To Justify Open Borders Has Been Debunked

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Thank you, Crime Prevention Research Center, John R. Lott Jr, and RealClearInvestigations. But what took you so long?

This ridiculous-on-its-face fake statistic started being prominently wielded by Democrats and progressives in 2024: “Statistics show that [“immigrants”/”undocumented aliens”/”migrants”] are less likely to commit crimes than American citizens.” Fortunately, for a statistic that sounded dubious from the second it was first claimed, the rationalization was unpersuasive even if it had been true. Ethics Alarms swatted this intellectually dishonest talking point away several times, pointing out that crimes committed by individuals here illegally should never have been committed at all because the perpetrators should never have been in a position to commit them. Such crimes are all the direct result of U.S. government negligence, incompetence, or deliberate failure to enforce existing immigration laws. A single murder, rape or other crime committed by an illegal immigrant is still one too many, and inexcusable.

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Ethics Observations On The 2024 Presidential Election Spin

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The facts: As of this date, Trump has about a 1.5% edge in the popular vote, and a decisive win, 312 to 226 over Harris in the Electoral College. By any analysis, it was a very close election. A single percentage point of votes flipping would have given Harris the popular vote lead, though her winning the Electoral College would have required pinpoint distribution of those votes.

What is a fair and ethical interpretation of this? Who’s lying, spinning, exaggerating or telling it like it is?

1. Today stories came out about Harris’s staff saying that internal polls showed her behind Trump from the start, and that they knew everything would have to break right for her to win. This in part is the campaign ducking responsibility: if Harris lost by only 1.5%, obviously she could have won. They are saying, absurdly, “It wasn’t our fault, the deck was stacked against us!” Harris ran a terrible campaign, and still came close. If she had run a better campaign, and got better advice (that she paid dearly for) that 1.5% would have been within reach. If she had competently answered a soft-ball question she got on “The View,” for heaven’s sake, that might have been enough. Or if she had agreed to the interview with Joe Rogan (and not fallen flat on her face, which is a big if). If she had not chosen The Knucklehead as her running mate. Any of these might have allowed Harris to prevail despite everything else.

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Ethics Dunces: The Trump-Deranged Michigan Women Who Did THIS…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861766333160993165

Why is this unethical? Let me count the ways…

1. It is grandstanding and virtue-signaling without purpose.

2. It demeans women. This is the kind of stereotypical, weak, emotional female behavior that causes biases to linger. I am constantly irritated at movies and TV shows that depitctwomen screaming like little girls if they see a dead body or witness some other traumatic event. I never heard my mother scream; I don’t think she ever did. I’ve never heard my sister scream. My late wife screamed exactly once in our 43 years of marriage, when she saw her cat in the jaws of a stray dog on our porch. Screaming over the results of an election is the mark of, if not mental illness, serious arrested adolescence.

3. The stunt makes progressives look incompetent, desperate and untrustworthy. They may be all of these things, but it is the duty of members of any group not to bring disrepute and ridicule down on other members.

4. Being proud of Trump Derangement shows a distinct distortion of values, such as proportion, prudence, dignity and responsibility.

Is it possible that this was done entirely as satire? If so, the stunt failed spectacularly, because no one seems to have seen it that way.