Spuds is feeling needy, or something, and though he usually sleeps on the sofa in the breakfast room, he decided to creep up to our bedroom and slam himself against me. Even though I’m exhausted after a three-hour legal ethics seminar last evening, I just can’t get to sleep, and don’t want to kick him out: something’s troubling him. So here I am in the office…

Because of all the prep yesterday for that seminar, which was not only brand new but also covered a lot of complicated issues, I missed an ethics milestone that Ethics Alarms cannot ignore. I started my first ethics website, The Ethics Scoreboard, in disgust at the ethically ignorant and inert commentary by the news media regarding Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Something must have been lurking in my brain, because I alluded to Clinton’s practiced deceit in last might’s program, describing a lawyer’s technical excuse for unethical conduct as “Clintonian.”

On August 17, 1998, President Clinton becames the first sitting president to testify as the subject of a grand-jury investigation. His testimony came after a four-year investigation into Clinton and his wife Hillary’s alleged involvement in several scandals. One could argue with some fairness that Clinton was the first President targeted with a long prosecutorial fishing expedition by partisan foes determined “get him” one way or another.

The independent prosecutor, Kenneth Starr,  uncovered an affair between Clinton and a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky, as well as evidence that it had been covered up by a coordinated effort.  Clinton famously denied that he “had sex with that woman,”, which prompted Starr to charge the him with perjury and obstruction of justice. After his August 17 testimony, Clinton addressed the nation on live television. He admitted to an “inappropriate relationship” with Lewinsky—it was, in fact, sexual harassment under the terms defined by Clinton’s own feminist supporters— but insisted that he had given “legally accurate” answers in his testimony. Later the President claimed that while he had not been “helpful” to the grand jury, he hadn’t lied.

Balderdash.

1 How can supporters of the Democratic Party look at themselves in the mirror? CNN correspondent John Harwood, as openly partisan a reporter as one can find, admitted this week that the “Inflation Reduction Act” title to the massive tax and spending bill just signed into law by President Biden was a “marketing device” designed to gull Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) into supporting the bill. “No, it doesn’t live up to its name,” Harwood said on CNN’s “New Day.” “Let’s be real: They called it the Inflation Reduction Act as a marketing device, in part to lock down the vote of Joe Manchin or to reassure Joe Manchin that they were focused on his issue.” “It is going to have a negligible effect on inflation,” Harwood said, now, after the trick had worked. “If it does anything, it might reduce inflation a tiny, tiny bit, but that’s not what it’s about.”

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Wow. Yeah, this Washington Post article isn’t biased or anything. Here’s how Isaac Arnsdorf, a Post “national political reporter,” starts, after warning readers that something strange and sinister is afoot:

He promises a break from American history if elected, with a federal government stacked with loyalists and unleashed to harm his perceived enemies.

There has never been a potential candidate like Trump: a defeated former president whose followers attacked the Capitol, who still insists he never lost, and who openly pledges revenge on those he views as having wronged him.

Imagine: the Post employs this guy as a reporter, and he doesn’t even try to hide his extreme bias. “Trump’s supporters” didn’t attack the Capitol, a couple hundred of his most deranged whackos went inside and trashed the place. Would the post allow a reporter to write, “Democrats rioted across the country demanding that police departments be defunded”?

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I decided it was time to finally see “C.H.U.D.,” the cult 1980s horror movie about mutant cannibals running around under Manhattan. What horrified me most was a conversation between the film’s hero, played by John Heard (he was Kevin’s father in the “Home Alone’ films) and his girl friend, When she announces that she is pregnant with his child, he asks, with all the emotion of someone asking if she plans on getting her nails done, “Well, do you want to keep it?” She replies, “Do you want me to?,” and he literally shrugs. “Hey, it’s up to you: your body and all. I have no say in the matter,” he says disinterestedly. She then says, “If I wanted to have it, would you be want to have it then?” And he lights up with a smile and says, “YES!” Then they embrace, because they are going to have a baby. The completely off-hand manner in which these two characters discuss whether an existing human being in a vulnerable state will live or die is chilling, or should be. It represents the casual denial of reality by everyone involved, and, of course, the audience as well, that the Roe v. Wade decision cultivated.

1. St. Joan is non-binery now. Should you care? The Globe Theatre in London, will open their production of “I, Joan” on August 25 in which the historical figure and Catholic saint will be portrayed as a non-binary character who uses they/them pronouns. Joan is certainly an androgynous figure, so it makes as much sense to pull this stunt with her, ah, “them” as with anyone, I guess. I’m seeing a lot of conservative blogs fulminating about it. Here’s Joan, by the way:

There can be several ways to justify this. One is if there is a spectacular actress/actor/whatsis who can make the interpretation work. Another is to get publicity, sell tickets, and make enough money to help the company thrive. I don’t care if Joan of Arc is played as an anteater if it results in good theater: a non-binary Joan is less of stretch than a Hispanic Alexander Hamilton, and that worked out pretty well. Continue reading →