From 4/13: In which the woman who not only was responsible for the Black Lives Matter fundraising arm but who also illicitly spent donors’ money says that requiring charities to be transparent and accountable is racist.
This will be an interesting test of the gullibility and brain mass of the American public. Faced with epic inflation greatly worsened by the Democrat’s wild spending sprees, incompetent handling of supply chain disruptions, and virtue-signaling suppression of oil production that cannot possibly have any ameliorating effects on global climate change whatsoever, the Donkey High Command has apparently decided on a carpet-bombing “Jumbo” strategy: “Inflation? What inflation?”
We have discussed already the “Putin price hike” mantra Jen Psaki keeps repeating. Last week, I saw a White House release admitting the inflation explosion but noting that if you took out food and gas prices, the rate of inflation increase had declined thanks to deft Biden policies. This, of course, brought back memories of former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry’s immortal statement that if you didn’t include all the murders, D.C. crime rate was actually pretty good! Nancy Pelosi, Psaki and Biden have all distorted the meaning of a letter from a group of acclaimed economists endorsing the trillion dollar infrastructure bill to falsely claim that they said spending all that money would reduce inflation, so, SEE? It’s can’t be Biden’s fault! (The letter actually said, correctly, that repairing and upgrading the infrastructure would make commerce more efficient and less costly in the long-term. As the Washington Post confirmed, they were not making any statement about current inflation.)
Last week we learned that the Biden new military budget assumes only 2% inflation, meaning that its numbers are fictional.
…from the memorable “Seinfeld” episode where George tries to talk his way out of being fired for having sex with the office cleaning lady on his desk, when someone does something so spectacularly and obviously unethical that it can’t reasonably be called “a mistake.” Lately, stories where George’s query seems appropriate have been an almost daily occurrence…like the high school teacher who accidentally showed porn on the class projector.
Turner Movie Classics decided to kick off Easter with an abject lesson in art and life for us all. The movie is 1965’s “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” One of the very greatest of American film directors was George Stevens, who specialized in smart comedies (the Hepburn/Tracy classic “Woman of the Year”), light-hearted adventure films (“Gunga Din”) and musicals (“Swing Time,” the best in the Astaire-Rogers canon). Then, as wonderfully told in the documentary “Five Came Back,” he joined fellow directing greats John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler and Frank Capra in documenting World War II for the public, the troops, and posterity at the high cost, for all of them, of their emotional and mental health. (Wyler and Ford also suffered serious service-related injuries).
Stevens, though, drew the assignment of filming the horrors at the liberated extermination camps. When he returned to Hollywood, he didn’t feel light-hearted any more. From then on he directed dramas with serious themes, and they were his best films, like “Shane,” “Giant,” and “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Finally, he took on his most daunting challenge, filming the life of Christ with an all-star cast befitting of the project’s importance. “The Greatest Story Ever Told” is terrible; I find the film unwatchable, and I’m not alone. Imagine the embarrassment of titling your movie “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and watching to turn out to be one of the worst movies ever made.
The bomb even has a special kick at the end when John Wayne appears as a Roman centurion staring up at Jesus on the cross, and says in the Duke’s trademark drawl, “Surely this man was the son of God!”
The Duke could shrug off, after all the resulting mockery; he had been more embarrassed playing Genghis Kahn throughout an entire film, Howard Hughes’ camp classic “The Conqueror.”
George Stevens, however, wasn’t used to bombing. The movie was a critical and box office bust, and the fiasco sent Stevens into retirement for five years. When he finally tried again, the director’s heart not only wasn’t light, it wasn’t in his work any more. “The Only Game in Town,” with Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty, was an even bigger disaster than “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” though it’s easier to sit though. After all, it’s an hour shorter, and John Wayne doesn’t show up as a centurion.
The life lessons? Hubris and humility…don’t get cocky. Next: Nobody is too good or talented to fail, even at what they are best at. Finally: Aim for the stars, but be prepared to crash and burn.
1. Speaking of Stevens’ “The Diary of Anne Frank,” there was a weird episode on Ann Althouse’s blog. In one post she quoted David Mamet in his just-published book, as saying in part,
“Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich… took an adolescent girl’s diary and raped it into “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a sitcom….”
Anne has many and large holes in her cultural literacy, especially regarding film. Her commentary left it open to question whether she really believed that Hackett and Goodrich had written a comedy based on Frank’s diary (They wrote a Tony Award-winning drama as well as the acclaimed film based on it), and passed on several comments by readers who took Mamet literally as well. An example: “Joan Rivers did an interview once about what things should never be the fodder for humor….Perhaps, younger people today are distanced enough from it for a sitcom about a Jewish family hiding in an attic for over two years who are then found and killed by the Nazis to not be in poor taste.” Another “Turning the Diary of Ann Frank into a comedy is a pretty loathsome thing to do. Things like Hogan’s Heroes worked because the Nazis were the main objects of the jokes. The victims of the Nazis aren’t.” There are others. Why would Ann let those comments through to make the commenters look like fools, especially since she helped lead them astray? Or is she, as I very much suspect, unfamiliar with the movie (which is moving and excellent)? Continue reading →
A woman using climbing apparatus became ensnared upside down as she tried to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico by going over a 30-foot-high steel border fence in southeastern Arizona last week. By the time authorities found her, she had died.
She was responsible. 100%
The presence of a fence or wall at a border says, “Stay Out!” Anyone who tries to climb or scale the fence is voluntarily attempting to break the law. The woman’s death is a tragedy, but it was a self-activated tragedy. Perhaps, if one were determined to spread blame around, one could hold the illegal immigration activists partially responsible. They promote the message that wrong is right, and that breaking U.S. laws because a foreign citizen wants to do so isn’t wrongdoing, but noble, or fair, or “a matter of the heart,” as Jeb Bush so fatuously put it. Joe Biden and his administration similarly encouraged the woman by signalling lax immigration law enforcement policies. Continue reading →
I have been intending to examine the Disney empire’s misbegotten entry into the battle over Florida’s recently passed “Parental Rights in Education” law for weeks, but postponed the project because it is too complicated to do correctly without involving other complex issues that are closely related to it. Unfortunately, these issues have proliferated during the delay.
For example, Florida is threatening to remove Disney’s special status that allowed it to operate Disney World as an autonomous municipal government because of the company’s political action. Is that kind of punishment for a political opposition ethical? Should Disney have such special status, regardless of why it is being threatened with its removal? If the special status should be removed anyway, does it matter if it is done in response to political speech?
Here’s another: Republicans in Congress are threatening to end Disney’s copyright on Mickey Mouse, also in response to its LBGTQ activism. But that copyright should have ended decades ago, and its artificial endurance has stifled creative works blocked by thousands of other drawn-out copyrights that aren’t Disney. Now I am dealing with copyright law policy, the importance of Disney to the culture, and what, if anything, the government should do to–what? Reward it? Strengthen it? Direct it? Control it?
The Disney LGTBQ advocacy issue also involves, as virtually every issue does now, media ethics, as almost all outlets other than Fox have a clear pro-LGTBQ bias. The New York Times reporter assigned to covering Disney and the Florida law controversy is Brooks Barnes, and he can’t be trusted. In an earlier story last month, the reporter wrote,
Earlier in the week, Mr. Chapek, the company’s chief executive, botched an internal email to Disney employees. He was seeking to explain Disney’s public silence on anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation in Florida that activists have labeled the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
I hate having to devote a whole post to someone as trivial as Joy Behar, and I wish I didn’t have to start Easter morning by highlighting her idiocy, but as Linda Loman would say, “Attention must be paid.”
In an orgy of ignorant anti-gun hysteria on “The View” following last week’s subway shooter in New York City, Joy Behar predictably took the prize for Most Outrageous Statement, and there was tough competition. Are you ready? I don’t want brains and skull fragments to mess up your Easter baskets.
The Supreme Court is poised to pass a bill contradicting the New York City State laws. We have very strict gun laws here, and they would like it to be apparently somebody has put it on their desk that New York should be an open carry state, and an open carry city with all of the density in this city. They want people running around with guns. People – middle-class people will be leaving in droves if that happens.
Yes, Joy Behar thinks that the Supreme Court passes bills that “somebody has put on their desk.” She’s 79 years old, with a college degree and a Masters (so much for the benefits of higher education) , and still lacks the civic literacy of a 6th grader. She also said that New York City is a state, but that’s within her usual range of sloppiness. Later, Behar claimed that there had been “more than 130” mass shootings in the U.S. this year. Continue reading →
Ed Wood was never so profound as in that profound snippet of dialogue from “Plan Nine From Outer Space.”
Last week a female dolphin was washed up on the sand at Quintana Beach County Park in Texas. According to the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network, which posted about the incident on Facebook, beach-goers discovered the distressed sea mammal and, not having a clue what they were doing, tried to push it back out into the ocean. Then some of the morons attempted to ride the creature, which soon ended up back on the beach. Again stranded, it was harassed by the crowd that had gathered until it expired. By the time rescuers arrived to take care of it, officials said, it was too late. Continue reading →
It seems like Jackie Robinson Day received more publicity and commentary than usual yesterday, which was appropriate, and besides, Robinson deserves it. In fact, I would support a national holiday honoring him. I watched, again, the 2017 film “42” last night in Robinson’s honor. At the same time I was watching that film, TCM was showing “The Jackie Robinson Story,” a remarkable independent film made in 1950 while Robinson was still playing. Amazingly, Jackie played himself, a very brave thing to do. There were no black male stars in 1950 who could have sold the film to white audiences, and Robinson recognized how important his journey was to tell, so he agreed to play himself. Sure, he’s a bit stiff, but Robinson doesn’t embarrass himself at all. Like so many old movies and plays, “The Jackie Robinson Story” is a window on a different era and how racially divided America was. (Of course, according to the antiracism, “1619,” BLM cult, nothing has changed.)
Back to “42”: I had forgotten its classic entry into the “print the legend” sweepstakes, which I wrote about here.
Finally, I have a bone to pick with Joe Castiglione, Boston’s Red Sox play-by-play broadcaster for the past 40 years, and as astute a student of the game as one could find. While I was listening to the Sox play the Twins in Fenway yesterday (Boston lost), Joe called Jackie Robinson “the most important player in baseball history.” That description is understandable hyperbole on a day honoring Robinson, but it’s wrong. Jackie Robinson is the most important baseball player in American history, but Babe Ruth has to be acknowledged as the most important player in baseball history. Not to diminish Robinson’s achievements in any way, but if he had not existed, another black player, like the great Larry Doby, who was the first black man to play in the American League a year after Robinson, would have broken the color line. However, there were no other Babe Ruths, and without him, it’s very possible baseball wouldn’t exist today.
Reckless hyperbole can cause confusion and long-term misconceptions.
1. Hey! That obnoxious “Black Lives Matter” sign that has stood in front of my neighbor’s house for two years (along with a suit of armor, for some reason) is gone! I hope the various Ethics Alarms posts about BLM’s scams I left with the knight influenced her decision….
Here is a paragraph from yesterday’s news article by reporter Jonathan Weisman in the New York Times:
In Missouri, Georgia, Ohio and now Nebraska, Republican men running for high office face significant allegations of domestic violence, stalking, even sexual assault — accusations that once would have derailed any run for office. But in an era of Republican politics when Donald J. Trump could survive and thrive amid accusations of sexual assault, opposing candidates are finding little traction in dwelling on the issues…
Now think about that for 30 seconds. What’s missing?Cue the thinking music…
