You know, I used to choreograph crap like that.

1. Reading assignment! Esteemed Ethics Alarms commenter Curmie has, as promised, posted an essay on his blog discussing the revolting development described here in item #3. I really should have devoted a whole post to it myself: that’s the saga of the San Francisco eighth-grade teacher who was pounced on by her school by being too informative in her instruction on American slavery: She actually brought cotton bolls into class. As he always has done, Curmie’s commentary is sharp and persuasive, and I recommend it highly. Here’s a sample…

Of course, there are those who need to be perceived as victims or they would evaporate like dew in an Arizona August morning. If they can’t complain that the real history of this country isn’t being taught, they’ll complain that it is. Naturally, the teacher in question was suspended for five weeks, and one can reasonably suspect that her subsequent apology was coerced as a condition of her reinstatement. It has all the authenticity of the fake confessions of American POWs in the Korean War. The problem here goes beyond punishing a teacher for doing nothing wrong. Her travails are the direct result of doing something right.  Humiliating good teachers for doing their jobs has become a blood sport.  This must stop.

Indeed it must, along with a lot of other things we are seeing lately courtesy of the Wonderful World of Woke. The question is how?

2. Wilful ignorance or sinister propaganda? Here’s a second reading assignment: progressive columnist Frank Bruni’s op-ed in the Times opposing the idea that parents should exert oversight on what their children are taught in school. Somehow he managed to miss entirely the core element of trust. Once too many teachers decided that their function was to engage in political indoctrination, once the web allowed parents to read about school punishing students for making finger guns and teaching their kids to sing songs extolling Obama, and when an unexpected side effect of (wrongly) closing the schools was to allow parents to witness the kind of instruction that goes on and the kinds of social justice warriors who handled it, responsible parents decided that it was time to assert themselves. And they have, and are. Good. Continue reading →

I had two and a half hours of painful dental work (bill, with insurance, 2,300 bucks) this morning, followed by blood tests from my doctor in the afternoon. This followed the Red Sox losing a game in Toronto after a two-run homer by the Jays with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. The dental work was more fun. Then I learned that my drug prescription insurance had been cancelled thanks to an administrative screw-up on their end. Life is bleak.

1. Is it me? It’s possible that “Gaslit,” the Starz move purporting to be about Martha Mitchell, strike me as more ham-handed anti-Republican/conservative propaganda because there is so much of that now from all angles of the media that my eye is permanently jaundiced. It’s also possible that it’s one more smug “Remember, conservatives are evil and stupid!” entry employing the same broad, unfunny approach that characterized Alec “Oops!” Baldwin’s Trump imitation and “Don’t Look Up!” Whatever the Watergate crowd was, they weren’t stupid, but that’s the version of history we get in “Gaslit.” Julia Roberts is getting races for a completely lazy performance that doesn’t evoke Mitchell at all, ad isn’t amusing either. (She can do better.) Then there was the portrayal of John Mitchell by some obviously too-young actor who was so smothered in padding and double-chin latex that he looked like Jiminy Glick’s father. He still didn’t look like Mitchell, sound like him, move like him or evoke Nixon’s Attorney General and bag man in any way, but he was gross and repulsive, and that’s clearly what mattered to the director and producers. Similarly unrecognizable to anyone remotely familiar with the Watergate cast is the portrayal of John Dean, who would be a fascinating character in a drama. In this amateurish satire, he’s just another idiot, something Dean was definitely not. I guess its not as ridiculous as it seems that the actor playing G. Gordon Liddy is getting raves for playing him as certifiably insane; in fact, it’s predictable, since the cheering reviewers are of the same bias as the film-makers, but it’s a lousy impression. They couldn’t even get the mustache right! Making Liddy into a buffoon removes all menace from the character, and Liddy was genuinely scary, because he was not stupid. In fact, it is clear that there are quite a few G. Gordon Liddy types behind the scenes in the Biden Administration (as there were in the Trump White House), but never mind: only Republicans threaten democracy.

The fact is the Nixon and the gang almost got away with their attack on democracy; that they didn’t was just chance. It remains to be seen if Biden’s puppeteers will do better. To me, “Gaslit” seems like one more diversionary tactic from the Hollywood wing of the Democratic Party.

But it might just be a crummy movie.

Continue reading →

Captain Compliance brings ethics reliance!

After I wrote here that I was inclined to return to Twitter once it stopped partisan censorship and double standards, commenter Michael West asked if I would keep the same handle, “Captain Compliance.” I realized I had never featured my alter ego, the visitor from the distant Ethics Planet who ethics-bombed corporate meetings, conventions and retreats to inculcate eager managers and employees in workplace ethics. I portrayed the always masked Captain primarily under the auspices of Altria, which even sent me to try to inject ethics into the operations of its subsidiary R.J. Reynolds. (It did not go well.) I created the character as one of the “out there” options for introducing Altria’s new compliance program, and, to my amazement, they bought it. (They were especially impressed that I shaved my head for the role.)

That photo was part of a feature on the Captain in the D.C. bar’s magazine, showing CC as he burst into a local home to point out some neighborhood ethics. Now the Captain is all but forgotten…did he really exist? Has he gone to the Ethics Planet for good? Nobody knows.

But I still have his costume, should he decide to return…

1. Some progressives, it seems, have just nightmares, not dreams. Here is how the New York Times reviewer began her critique of the new revival of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth”:

[H]ave human beings really proved their worth? We have brought the world calculus, the sonnet, no-knead bread. But think of what we have inflicted: environmental devastation, species collapse, atrocities of various complexions. Humans keep surviving. We’re fit that way. But when you think about it — should we?

Once, I would have dismissed such a reflection as reviewer gamesmanship, but now I wonder. The Left’s recent tantrums and excesses have made me wonder if progressives are permanently and irredeemably unhappy, literally dissatisfied not only with their nation, its culture and and their heritage, but also with humanity and life in general. The Times reviewer praises the director for reversing the ultimately optimistic view of Wilder’s 1942 comedy. She muses, “The stage blooms with a thousand flowers, and when characters traverse that meadow, it feels like a dream. Do we really want to wake from it? When “The Skin of Our Teeth” first opened, in 1942, the world wobbled on the threshold of disaster. Now, it seems, we are wobbling again.”

Yes, she really compares 2022 to World War II. Well who can blame her? The mask mandate was overturned! Elon Musk might let Donald Trump back on Twitter! Republicans are requiring voters to prove they are who they say they are! The Supreme Court is about to rule that nascent human beings can’t be killed if they are more than 15 weeks old!!!! People seem to resist the international dictatorship that will eliminate capitalism and individual liberties to save humanity from a fiery death in ten years! Well, 20 maybe. OK, a hundred at the most…

Of less import, but significant nonetheless, the Times critic notes that

[I]n most productions, the Antrobuses are white, but here they are Black, which lends that choice particular resonance, twisting the knife of human cruelty. This strategy doesn’t warp the play so much as deepen it.

I have never seen a production of “The Skin of Our Teeth” in which the Antrobus  family, the play’s stand-in for the human race, wasn’t multi-racial. But as we have all learned after the George Floyd Freak-Out, everything is “deepened” and improved by replacing white people with black people. Jake from State Farm! Vice-Presidents! Supreme Court Justices! Continue reading →