Arts & Entertainment

“White Lotus” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

[Warning! Lots of spoilers ahead: if you haven’t see all three seasons of HBO’s hit series “The White Lotus” and want to be shocked, surprised, amused or nauseated, you may want to skip this post.]

I just finished watching the third season of HBO’s “The White Lotus” after reviewing the first two. The show is virtually a cult at this point, a black “dramedy” in which each season follows the multiple story lines involving wealthy guests during their stays at a different resort hotel in the fictional international “White Lotus” chain. (Think Four Seasons.) Season One took place at a luxury hotel in Maui; Season Two was in Sicily, and the 2025 season (a fourth is in production) featured a White Lotus in Thailand.

There are scant ethical or admirable people in any of the three seasons, and that assessment spans a lot of characters. Yet the show’s dialogue, plotting and acting style are not pitched at a satirical level so these flaws are amusing; me, I found it depressing. We meet a wide range of people with a wide range of problems and challenges, but I didn’t leave any of the seasons feeling like I had met a single character who was both memorable and likable. Dead ethics alarms and warped values are the rule at the White Lotus hotels. At least there were moral and ethical lessons built into “Fantasy Island.”

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Ethics Meltdown at American Family Field: Who’s The Ethics Miscreant? A Test…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Shannon Kobylarczyk (above, from the phone video that became her undoing) was attending one of the National League Championship Series games between the Dodgers and the Brewers at American Family Field when her interaction with another fan altered the course of her life.

Ricardo Fosado, an out-of-town visitor from L.A. who favored the Dodgers, engaged in a little friendly needling with Sharon, a passionate Brewers partisan, when the Los Angeles team took the lead. (The Dodgers eventually won the 7-game series, sending them to the World Series, which begins this week.) “Why is everybody quiet?” he asked.

Kobylarczyk was in no mood for gloating. She shouted at Fosado: “Real men drink beer, pussy!” and threatened to call I.C.E. on the apparently Hispanic spectator. She then told the man in front of her that he should sic immigration enforcement on Fosado. Now he was annoyed. “Call ICE! Call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran, baby girl. War veteran, two wars. ICE is not gonna do nothing to me. Good luck!” he said.

Why do we know all this? Because someone in the crowd who should have been watching the game and minding his or her own business was recording the whole confrontation.

Kobylarczyk escalated: she went to stadium security and reported Fosado for disrupting her baseball experience, or something. They ushered him out of the stadium citing “public intoxication.”

The team is the Milwaukee Brewers, mind you.

But wait! There’s more! The asshole who videoed the episode put it on social media, where it went “viral.” This resulted in Kobylarczyk being labeled a racist, so her company, a Milwaukee-based recruitment and staffing outfit called the Manpower Group, fired her ( she was the associate general counsel) and issued a standard virtue-signaling announcement to take credit for standing up for “a culture grounded in respect, integrity, and accountability.” Then Kobylarczyk was forced to quit the board of directors at Make-A-Wish Wisconsin, which also issued a statement condemning her. Naturally the Brewers also had to get into the act, so they released this statement:

“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark.” 

Then the team banned both Fosado and Kobylarczyk from the ballpark forever. Yeesh! Talk about a mini-Ethics Train Wreck!

The candidates for Worst Ethics Dunce is this mess are:

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Unethical (and Stupid) Quote of the Day: Comic/Pundit Jon Stewart

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Fuck You, James Madison!”

—“Clown nose on/clown nose off” Comedy Central comic Jon Stewart, in the course of blaming the Founders for the current Democrat Party shutdown of the Federal government.

Imagine: a large proportion of young Americans look to this fake authority for their news and political analysis. True, they could do even worse: Kimmel or Colbert; MSNBC, NPR, you know, what Capt. Renault in “Casablanca” would call “the usual suspects.” This latest outburst from the smug, intermittently witty know-it-all, failed actor (like Bill Maher), however, may represent his absolute low point, and he has had many previous stinkers.

But with his latest rant, we can see just how useless, ignorant and incompetent Stewart is when he isn’t mugging or being funny. At the end of the latest “The Weekly Show” podcast, Stewart was asked who to blame for the government shutdown. Of course he wouldn’t say “The Democrats, dummy!” though that is the only factual answer. Instead he blamed the Founders. Here’s his “hilarious” answer:

“Who is responsible for the government shutdown? I’m gonna go with the Founders, who came up with this fucking fakakta, overly complex bureaucratic web of nonsense that it takes to get anything done, and I think it’s very difficult when one political party that represents 75 million voters has zero say, authority, heft, and in a functioning political environment that isn’t a zero-sum game, there would have been conversations up until now that took some consideration. Some, I’m not saying a lot.”

Oh, stop, stop, Jon, my sides are splitting! The funny man went on,

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Riddle Me This: “Why Is The Guthrie Theater Like Stephen Colbert?”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

In “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Louis Carroll’s Mad Hatter asks Alice the riddle, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” One would think that the question in the headline above is equally obscure (the Guthrie, in Minneapolis, is one of the most respected and celebrated regional theaters in the country) but it has an answer. Like the Colbert late night show, which has since its inception sought to exclude anyone who isn’t woke, obsessed with progressive politics or, since 2015, Trump Deranged, the Guthrie now aims at entertaining only that same audience, except in its case only the wealthy, white, upper-middle class demographic within that audience, or others willing to sit still for relentless leftist propaganda and cant.

A recent audience member for The Guthrie’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s “A Dolls House” wrote about his experience. “A Doll’s House” is about as moldy a feminist tract as there is (I once called the play the drama equivalent of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” but much longer, and even more over-exposed (it was written in 1879, so its analogies with the real state of womanhood, especially in the U.S., have been increasingly forced as time goes by. (No, her husband did not stop Nora from having an abortion: she would never have dreamed of killing an unborn child.)

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Stop Making Me Defend Tilly Norwood!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Hollywood actors are freaking out over fake actress “Tilly Norwood.” That’s already a plus to the AI-generated performer’s credit: Hollywood actors deserve to be freaked out as often possible (within the boundaries of law and ethics, of course). It gives them something to scream about other than how the President of the United States is a fascist, or how as more unborn babies should be killed. And cases like this one, where their freaking out reveals just how hypocritical and intellectually shallow they are, it’s a public service: NOW do you understand why you shouldn’t pay attention to these one-trick millionaires?

Tilly Norwood, in case you never watch E! or read Variety, is an AI-generated fake actress with about 40,000 Instagram followers who don’t have a life. Tilly was created by Xicoia, the AI division of the production company Particle6, from the rib of an AI-created actor. OK, I’m kidding about that.

Eline Van der Velden, the Dutch producer who founded Particle6, claims to be seeking an agent to represent Norwood to place her in real films, ads and TV shows, unlike the fake, AI created scenes in her videos.

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Tales of The Great Stupid: Race-baiting Serena Williams Shows “Why We Can’t Have Nice Things” Like Harmonious Race Relations

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Why in the world would Serena Williams, of all people, think it is necessary or appropriate to engage in public race-baiting? The woman is rich and famous, and became a national idol playing a sport that has an overwhelmingly white fan base. Never mind: Serena was triggered when she encountered a decorative cotton plant (reportedly fake) in an un-named luxury hotel. The retired women’s tennis legend, now 43, took a video of the vase holding a cotton plant on a table in the hallway, and asked her Instagram followers, “Alright, everyone. How do we feel about cotton as decoration? Personally for me, it doesn’t feel great.”

Yeah, you’re right, Serena, the New York hotel placed a cotton plant in the hallway to slyly remind you that 150 years ago black slaves were forced to pick cotton in states hundreds of miles away. I think you should organize a boycott and start a protest organization called Cotton Plants Matter.

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Mets Announcer Gary Cohen Was Right and Cubs Rookie Matt Shaw Is…What, Exactly? And What Am I?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Chicago Cubs rookie third baseman Matt Shaw skipped the Cubs’ game against the Reds on Sunday after receiving a call from Charley Kirk’s widow. Instead, the player attended the memorial event for the assassinated activist at State Farm Stadium in Arizona. Shaw is not just a Kirk admirer: Shaw had something of a personal relationship with Kirk that he described as important to him, though they were not close friends.

During Tuesday’s Mets-Cubs game at Wrigley Field, game, Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen said, “Shaw had Cubs world in a tizzy this weekend when he was not here for the Cubs game with the Reds — a game they lost (1-0) and in which his lack of presence was felt. It was later revealed that he had been given permission to attend Charlie Kirk’s funeral.”

Cohen added, “I don’t want to talk about any of the politics of it, but the thought of leaving your team in the middle of a race for any reason other than a family emergency really strikes me as weird.”

Naturally, Kirk-worshiping Mets fans erupted on social media, with some pledging to boycott any games announced by Cohen and others insisting that he be fired. Now, Cohen didn’t say anything negative about Charley Kirk at all. Moreover, he was 100% right. It is very weird, although weird would not be my word for it. Skipping an important game in the waning days of a baseball season when your team seeks your services is selfish and unprofessional. Shaw is a rookie and “only” makes the MLB minimum of $760,000; nonetheless, that salary commits him to being available to play if he is healthy. This wasn’t his wife giving birth or a desperately sick child or the death of a parent—the MLB Players’ Union bargained for special leave for such events.

Some wags have pointed out that the rookie is hardly a star: he’s about a league average hitter, though his fielding at third is outstanding. That misses the point. He was obligated to play baseball, not to go to a memorial ceremony. An actress bailed on an ethics program she was supposed to assist me on, with almost no notice, because her grandmother died. ProEthics, as in me, blackballed her after that, and I told her not to bother auditioning for any professional shows in the D.C. area I directed. Woody Allen said that 80% of success is just showing up, and I couldn’t trust this alleged professional to do that.

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The Irrational Premature Death Response

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

At least I am consistent. The phenomenon of public figures and celebrities immediately having their influence and perceived importance and value elevated by a sudden death that they had no control over has always bewildered me. I got my first taste of hostility for bucking conventional wisdom when I wrote an editorial for my junior high school newspaper questioning the fairness of the rush to rename airports, highways and buildings after President Kennedy in the aftermath of his assassination. “Honor Him…Quietly” was my title, and I questioned whether it was responsible to strip names honoring other worthy Americans from various landmarks because Lee Harvey Oswald happened to have access to a warehouse window in Dallas. Since I was living in a Boston suburb at the time and Kennedys were considered just short of deities, this was not a popular point of view.

When his rival and frequent adversary Truman Capote drank and drugged himself to death at 59, Gore Vidal famously said, “Good career move!” Nasty as that assessment was (and was intended to be), whether at the the hand of another or the public figures themselves, early death is almost always a good career move.

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On Re-Watching “The Magnificent Seven” and Finally Realizing What It’s About

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I am trying hard to write about something other than the Charley Kirk Ethics Train Wreck despite the din making even thinking about other ethics issues difficult. Naturally, my default solution is the Great American Ethics Genre: the American Western.

I have been bringing a younger friend up to speed in his cultural literacy pursuits, and recently had him view the original John Sturgis-directed version of “The Magnificent Seven,” a great ethics movie and one of the ten best Hollywood Westerns ever made, a tough field. I have written about the movie several times on EA, but I am abashed to say that it never quite sunk in what the film was really about until that last viewing.

The film is about professionalism. Once that bell rang, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t realized it before. It is a filmed course in professionalism—the quality of justifying the trust a particular practitioner of an occupation dedicated to public service must maintain to be considered a professional. I would love to teach a professionalism course using the movie as the centerpiece.

Years ago, retired EA commenter Bob Stone-–I hope he isn’t Trump-Deranged now—wrote a piece for his own blog about how the film illustrated the difference between law and ethics. He wrote in part,

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Stop Making Me Defend (Ugh) Jimmy Kimmel!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I have used that headline. I also used it in 2017 in a post I began thusly: “I detest Jimmy Kimmel. I loathe him. He is the most revolting of all the Left-Licking late night and cable progressive comics, worse than Colbert, Maher, Samantha Bee, all of them. All of them combined. He is an ongoing blight on the ethics of American society, and yet he is self-righteous in the process.” My opinion of Kimmel has, if anything, deteriorated since I wrote that.

Nonetheless, fair is fair and ethics are ethics, and Kimmel’s suspension by ABC for a comment that was so much less objectionable than his biased, unfunny, obnoxious blather nightly is cowardly and indefensible.

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