Author: Jack Marshall

Mid-Christmas Season Unopened Ethics Packages

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m avoiding most Christmas music this time around, though I will still post about a few favorites that warm my heart. And I will dutifully watch the same Christmas season movie classics that I always did with my late wife, whose love of Christmas combined with our awful last version of the holiday and her shocking sudden death are three ghosts too many to bear, even after almost two years. I just posted, with wan response so far, the updated Ethics Companion to “White Christmas,” which includes one of our five commenters Michael West’s entertaining analysis of the military sequence that begins the film. [You are welcome to update or re-think any of that, MW, and I’ll add it right in.]

I’ve been appreciating Bing, Danny, Rosemary and Vera-Ellen more with each viewing recently, perhaps because I’ve been taking them for granted. As narrator Frank Sinatra says in “That’s Entertainment,” the great MGM retrospective about the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals, “You can sit around and hope, but you will never see the likes of this ever again.”

Ol’ Blue Eyes was talking about an epic dance duel between Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, but he just as easily could have been talking about The “White Christmas” Four. Or for me, I’m afraid, a sadness-free Christmas.

But enough of that:

1. Yup, she’s a con-artist, a law-breaker and a liar: now what? The Washington Free Beacon mounts an airtight case that Minnesota “Somalia First” Rep. Omar indeed married her brother and has lied about it for years. Why don’t Democrats care about this as much as the conservative press? I thought Democrats were the party of “no one is above the law”? The rubber-stamp response to all legitimate questions about this weird story always rebounds to Omar’s original claim that the issue was just “Trump-style misogyny, racism, anti-immigration rhetoric and Islamophobic division.”

2. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a GOP embarrassment in the House, has been making a farewell tour apparently aimed at annoying as many Republicans as possible: for example, she cozied up recently to the far left fanatic group “Code Pink.” She seems less interested in principles than in setting herself up to be Liz Cheney,The Sequel, though GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert suggests that her soon to be ex-colleague is flying the metaphorical coop to avoid new regulations stopping House members from trading stocks. MTG executed over 450 stock trades since joining the House and bought $3.89 million in stocks in 2024 alone. She has a better success rate than most hedge funds.

A “Victory Girls” pundit ruefully writes, “I keep thinking about the people who defended her when it wasn’t fashionable. They absorbed the ridicule and trusted that beneath the mess there was something solid. Greene repaid that trust by posing with Code Pink and then turning around to sabotage her own party on the way out.” Funny, I keep thinking how Greene proved that her supporters, when she was an obvious self-promoting Dunning-Kruger victim who had no business being in Congress, were dupes, fools, and marks. It wasn’t hard to see how unqualified and unfit she was, if bias hadn’t made them stupid.

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Prof. Turley Calls “False Light” on House Democrats Sleazy Epstein Photos Smear

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I hate that I am tempted to write this every day now, often several times a day, but how can anyone of good character and admirable values continue to support a political party, whatever its claimed beliefs are, that behaves this way?

Yesterday EA discussed the desperate Democratic Party tactic of picking 19 photos (out of thousands) that showed a young Donald Trump (and other progressive hate-objects, like Alan Dershowitz and Steve Bannon) in the company of sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein when he was known as just another billionaire on the celebrity party circuit or in the company of unidentified women. These were described in some of the Axis media as “bombshell” and “explosive” photos, though it is unclear when and where most of the photos were taken, many of them had been publicly released before, and none of them suggested any criminal, illicit or even unethical activity.

Despite that, political hack Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) had the gall to say, “These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth.”

He might as well have added, “And we won’t stop lying about this phony Epstein scandal either until we Get Trump!”

Today Professor Jonathan Turley, a one-time Democrat who is obviously disgusted with Democrats, pointed out that what his former party has done with the photos is a classic example of a tort known as “false light,” where true photos are presented in a misleading and harmful way to damage a reputation or otherwise harm an individual via innuendo . It is essentially photographic deceit. He writes,

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An Inquirer Asks, “How Can I Stop My Wife From Badgering Our Friends About Climate Change?” How About….

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

…showing her that her hysteria is based on lies, bad stats, politicized “science” and hooey?

I admit it, that headline sucked me in to reading “Social Q’s,” a Times advice column that puts wokeness over wisdom, causing me to put it on the EA blacklist.

“My wife has become an eco-warrior,” a married weenie writes. “She has strong feelings about the environment and other people’s carbon footprints. She challenges our friends repeatedly about their lifestyle choices. I agree with her in principle, but I can’t support her moral outrage. …Help!“

Predictably, the column’s proprietor, Phillip Galanes, begins by saying, “I would begin by praising her, rightfully, for her commitment to an important issue.” I’ll fix it for him: “an important issue that nobody really knows much about, especially indoctrinated progressives who are passionate about what their bubble-mates are passionate about regardless of facts.”

Much better.

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The Rep. Henry Cuellar Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I had missed this story until one of Trump Deranged Facebook friends made an arch comment about me teaching “Presidential pardon ethics.” Huh, I wondered, what this old fool blathering on about now? It can’t be Biden’s advance pardons of his whole corrupt family because this guy never criticizes Democrats, so it must be something Trump did!” The Deranged have their uses: if Trump has done anything that by any possible stretch of the imagination could be bitched about, these people are like human Geiger-counters.

Sure enough, an op-ed in the Times came out yesterday called “The Pardon That Represents the New Era of Corruption.” [Gift link!] Wait, would that be President Clinton’s outrageous pardon of international fugitive from justice Marc Rich in exchange for a huge donation to the Clinton Library by his ex-wife? No. Democratic federal prosecutors Molly Gaston, who was part of the “Get Trump!” DOJ prosecution, and J.P. Cooney, special prosecutor Jack Smith’s deputy at DOJ, wrote the opinion piece because the President pardoned Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat awaiting trial on federal bribery charges. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say the wrote the opinion piece because they could see the potential in the story to impugn President Trump.

For good measure, to style the partisan hit job as “non-partisan,” the two prosecutors also attacked Hakeem Jeffries for praising Trump’s pardon of a Democratic House member. “Rather than be critical or perhaps stay silent, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, welcomed the pardon and engaged in shameful pandering, apparently to maintain Mr. Cuellar’s party loyalty,” they write. “Most disturbingly, Mr. Jeffries did so by attacking the legitimacy of the criminal case against Mr. Cuellar, publicly dismissing the indictment against him as “very thin.” As former federal prosecutors who spent our careers rooting out public corruption, we see this for the wagon-circling that it is. The jury’s detailed, 54-page, multicount indictment against Mr. Cuellar was anything but thin, and he should have had to stand trial before a jury of his peers.” They continue, “Mr. Jeffries’s embrace of Mr. Cuellar was a disturbing sign that Democratic leaders, when it is politically advantageous, may be willing to join in Mr. Trump’s degradation of the justice system.”

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So It’s Guilt By Association, Then? That’s It? Really, Democrats? Wow. Five Questions….

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

With great hoopla, Democrats have released photographs from the Dark Ages showing a young Donald Trump and other personages of note at social gatherings in the company of Jeffrey Epstein. “It’s unclear when all of these pictures were taken,” says NBC News. It also notes, “They do not appear to show illegal activity by these individuals,” and that Trump, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon and Woody Allen, among others, appeared among 19 photos out of more than 95,000 photos in the infamous Epstein Files.

Based on this, House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) actually said, he really did, “It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends.These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW.”

Why are those photographs “disturbing” except to someone who has already decided that they suggest something that isn’t in the photographs? [Q 1]

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Friday Open Forum: 13 Ethics Issues…

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

…or whatever you can come up with.

I have a tough day (and night) ahead with a major deadline looming, an anxious client, and some kind of digestive disruption that has me guzzling Pepto-Bisnol like there’s no tomorrow. I’m counting on the commentariate to keep things ethical and lively around here if I’m unable to add much.

One minor note of interest: apparantly at some point or other, as she’s been boasting about her eventual bust in the Capitol, Kamala Harris slipped up and referred to herself as the first Veep “of color.” This prompted several conservative news sources to bring up a fact check from USA Today in 2021 that pointed out that while Harris was the first female U.S. VP, the first black (sort of) VP, the first VP of “South Asian ancestry,” and the first woman of color to be elected to the office, first U.S. Vice-President “of color” is not on her dance card, that distinction going to this guy…

…Charles Curtis, who was Herbert Hoover’s VP from 1929-1933. His mother was one-quarter Kaw Indian (his father was all-white) making Curtis 12.5% Native American. Blecchh. Who…Cares? By my standards, Curtis isn’t “of-color” but white, and how I long for the day when these kinds of “historic distinctions” end up in history’s metaphorical dustbin where they belong.

Fun Fact: William M. Evarts, Rutherford B. Hayes’ Secretary of State, was the highest ranking U.S. official in history with a third nipple! Okay, I made that up, but that’s about the level of distinction Curtis deserves for having one Native American great-grandparent.

Now I have to get to work, and so do you….

The 2025 Complete “White Christmas” Ethics Companion, With a New Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

2025 Introduction

In the 2022 introduction I wondered whether the 1954 Christmas movie musical “White Christmas” was on the way out of the Christmas movie canon as anti-white racism took root during “The Great Stupid.”  I wrote, “If there comes a time when an innocent musical fable about kindness toward an old hero down on his luck no longer resonates because of the skin-shades of the characters, the values and priorities of American arts and society will have reached a dangerous level of confusion.”

I have been rather blue of late, and a dear friend (and old love) ordered me to watch “White Christmas,” her favorite movie, as a tonic. She was right, as usual: it helped. She had expressed annoyance with earlier versions of the Ethics Companion, arguing that a lot of my complaints were (and are) petty for a feel-good Christmas movie. I think she was right about that, too.

I think I enjoyed the movie more this year than in past viewings because I watched it with a house guest who had never seen “White Christmas” before, and hadn’t experienced the brilliance of the four stars, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen often enough to take them for granted. “Wow, what a voice!” he said of Bing. “Nobody dances like that any more!” he said after watching Vera-Ellen tap her way through “Mandy.”An ex-Marine, he got choked up when the old General gets the surprise of his life with many of his old comrades showing up at Christmas Eve to fill his struggling Vermont Inn.

Last year I noted that Bing Crosby had complained that the movie could and should have been better than it was. I agreed with him in my comments last year; now I’m not so sure. How, exactly, could it have been better? The cast was perfect; the sentimental ending works today as much as ever: my house guest was quietly tearful at the end.

One of the most ethical features of “White Christmas” was behind the scenes, an ethical act that allowed it to be made, undertaken by one of the most unlikely people imaginable, Danny Kaye.  Kaye was a major factor in launching my interest in performing, musicals, and comedy, but my research into the real man, when I was in the process of collaborating on a musical about his relationship with his wife and muse, songwriter Sylvia Fine, revealed that the real Danny Kaye was a miserable, paranoid, selfish, mean and insecure sociopath when he wasn’t playing “Danny Kaye,” which could be on stage or off it. In this case, however—and nobody knows why—the abused Jewish kid went to unusual lengths to save a Christmas movie.

“White Christmas” had been conceived as a remake of “Holiday Inn” with the same stars as that black-and-white musical, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Fred couldn’t do the project, so his part was re-written for Donald O’Connor, who became ill so close to shooting that there was no time to retool the whole script and have the film ready for its target holiday release. In desperation, the producers asked Kaye if he would play Bing’s sidekick even though it meant 1) playing a support, which Kaye had never done in a movie since becoming a star 2) playing a role that didn’t’ highlight his special talents (for those, watch “The Court Jester”), and 3) subordinating himself to Bing Crosby, who was indeed the bigger star and box office draw, and 4) most daring of all, exposing his own limitations by doing dance numbers created for Donald O’Connor. Kaye was not a trained dancer, just a gifted mimic and athlete who could do almost anything he tried to do well. Danny demanded $200,000 and 10% of the gross to rescue the project, but he still was doing so at considerable personal risk…and he didn’t need the money, because Sylvia was a financial whiz.

Everyone around Danny Kaye was shocked that he agreed to all of this. Not only did he agree, he also amazed everyone by not playing the under-appreciated star on set, by doing O’Connor’s choreography as well as he did, and by knowing how not to steal focus from the star, something he infamously refused to do on Broadway when he was in “Lady in the Dark” with Gertrude Lawrence.

“White Christmas” was the top grossing film of 1954 and the most financially successful movie musical up to that time. Kaye’s uncharacteristic unselfishness and characteristic versatility made that level of success possible. The secret of why Danny was on his best behavior was another one of his pathologies from an abused childhood: he was always in awe of the superstars like Bing Crosby, and felt inferior to them. (He wasn’t.)

Yes the movie works ; you just have to turn off your brain to fully enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed. It has many high points, musical and comedic, for most viewer they justify the flaws, and we will never see the likes of Crosby, Kaye and Clooney again (and Vera-Ellen was no slouch). I miss all of them, which adds an extra bit of wistfulness to my annual viewing.

And whatever faults “White Christmas” may have, it’s whiteness isn’t one of them.

This is another sad Christmas for me.  Once again there will be no Christmas tree that takes me five hours to decorate, no festive banquet at a table surrounded by family and friends, no stockings or presents…just a big empty house with a needy dog and a lot of scary problems to solve and ticking time bombs to defuse. The sappy Christmas movie that ends with two happy couples, an old man being reassured that his life had meaning and Bing singing “White Christmas” is, as it was last year, just what the psych ward prescribed. I’m trying to count my blessings. What choice do I have? I have no sheep.

1. The First Scene

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Another Dispatch From the Trump Deranged….

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

This is persuasive anti-Trump data, don’t you think?

Yes, the same lawyer friend who posted the previous Occupy Democrats attack on I.C.E. to Facebook just endorsed that brilliant analysis. Scandinavian nations gorging on anti-American propaganda have decided to boycott the U.S. for vacations because they don’t like the government Americans elected? Brilliant. Bite me. Nobody’s telling you to dump your character-suffocating nanny states. You want to eschew the glories of the USA to make some kind of ideological point? Go ahead. It’s your loss, Sven

I don’t think I’ve ever vacationed in a foreign nation whose government I did like. Great Britain is rotting on the vine, but I’d go to see Westminster Abbey, the Tower, the Lake District and the British Museum in a heartbeat if I could afford it. All of Africa is a hopelessly corruption-crippled mess, but I’d go to see landscape and the wildlife. I’ll visit Broadway even after Mamdani turns the Big Apple into worm-eaten mush.

Or maybe the gentle Swedes et al. don’t want to be killed and raped by our illegal aliens, after so many of them have been victimized by their legal ones. Just spitballing here.

I am worried that sooner or later one of these moronic posts is going to cause me to snap and lay out in unrestrained terms how stupid and offensive I find this bombardment of intellectually dishonest and biased garbage by someone whom lots of people look to for enlightenment and perspective. It is an inexcusable misuse of influence and status, and worst of all, it’s boring. Every day, it’s the same thing. He’s still talking about Epstein, for heaven’s sake.

If I snap, I will instantly see my list of friends crater to 12, and probably lose more clients. But I won’t…

I’m trying real hard, as Samuel Jackson says in his epic monologue in “Pulp Fiction,” to be the shepherd here. But I don’t know how much longer I can stand this…

Comment of the Day: “If A.I. Wrote a WAPO Op-Ed Piece to Set Us Up For a Take-Over By the Bots, This Is What It Would Be Like…”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Jon’s excellent comment began by marveling that the commentariate here at Ethics Alarms doesn’t seem to be vary interested in the artificial intelligence issue, which is the focus of TIME’s annual “Person of the Year” issue. See?

I immediately felt it was a Comment of the Day; now we’ll find out if this essay also inspires apathy and shrugs.

Here is Jon’s Comment of the Day on the post, “If A.I. Wrote a WAPO Op-Ed Piece to Set Us Up For a Take-Over By the Bots, This Is What It Would Be Like…”

***

It’s interesting that this post has only garnered a couple of comments, and your previous AI post on the 7th didn’t get any. Not to oversell it, but AI may be the most important issue ever.  Already entry-level white collar jobs are disappearing.  I heard of a recent study that 13% of such jobs were gone, and that was published back in August. AI is being compared to the industrial revolution in terms of workforce displacement, but exponentially more disruptive since it’s taking place in the span of a few years rather than several decades. As if that’s not enough, there’s serious talk that we may be ushering in an extinction event for homo-sapiens.  On the plus side, though, my AI heavy stock portfolio is doing quite well, thank you.

My own experience with AI has been less than encouraging.  I really hadn’t made much use of it, but last week I was putting together a spreadsheet to project annual returns on some weekly stock market moves I was considering.  Creating the spreadsheet and then populating the data for about 20 stocks was going to take me the better part of an hour, and then updating the data in real time would be difficult.  It struck me that AI might do it better and more quickly than I could.

My first task was to determining which AI to use.  I figured I’d have to subscribe to one of them to get the job done decently and in a timely fashion, so I asked Google which AI was best for real-time data.  The answer both from the Google AI and various Reddit forums was that an AI model I hadn’t heard of, Perplexity, was superior when dealing with pulling information from the web in real time.  I found I could get a year-long free trial, so that’s what I went with.

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From the Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: A Democratic House Member Says White Children Should Be Taught To Feel Guilty About Their Skin Color

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

What this says about her party and its ideological moorings is obvious. So is what it tells us about anyone who would vote for someone like this to have any power or influence over our society. We have had the “gotcha!” privilege debate here extensively in the 20-teens, and it was insufficiently slapped down to prevent the DEI and “presumed racism” pathogens.

The ethics mystery is why anyone white swallows this crap? I can see the advantages to minorities, since they can, by accepting it, absolve themselves of all failures, misdeeds and shortcomings. However, whites (and men) who fall for this argument are agreeing to be metaphorically hobbled, like Kunta Kinte in “Roots.” Worse, they are endorsing the hobbling of their children too.

I get why extreme, ruthless, unethical progressives push such garbage: it’s a means to an end, and the end is power. I do not understand why anyone privileged with a functioning brain and critical thinking skills tolerates officials like Stalker, never mind actually voting for her.