Arts & Entertainment

Return to “Ozark”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In 2018, I included a brief note about the Netflix streaming series “Ozark” in a morning “warm-up.” I wrote,

“Call me an old ethics fogey, but I don’t think these kinds of TV series are culturally healthy. I’ve been watching the Netflix series “Ozark,” and hating myself for it. The show is well acted and even has its ethics dilemmas, but like “Breaking Bad,” which was obviously its inspiration, there are no admirable characters, and the “heroes” are criminals. In the Golden Age of TV, there were unwritten (and sometimes written) rules that shows could not rationalize, trivialize or romanticize illegal, immoral or unethical behavior, and needed to reaffirm positive values. In “Ozark,” “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul,” the latter’s spin-off, as well as “House of Cards,” and “Shameless,” among others, there are virtually no admirable characters at all. I have been watching “Ozark” in part because I like the actors, in part because there’s nothing I want to watch anywhere else except baseball, and, yes, in part because of voyeurism. Still, it makes me want to take a shower, and I felt that the increasing tendency of Hollywood to portray everything and everyone as corrupt makes a “the ends justify the means” rationalization seem like a matter of survival.”

Well, that was a shallow and unfair analysis, I am now compelled to say. Living alone with non-work time being a constant challenge between baseball seasons and disappointed by so many other series, I have returned to some old ones that I recalled as at least consistently excellent in scripting and performances, including consensus classics like “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under,” “Ray Donovan” and the best of them all, “Lonesome Dove.”

My reaction to “Ozark” the second time through has been completely different from the first time. For one thing, there is so much of it I don’t remember that I have to believe that I didn’t give the show my complete attention on the first viewing. Secondly, I realize now that “Ozark” is an ethics series as much as “The Walking Dead” is an ethics series, and for a similar reason. A normal family is thrust by a confluence of events beyond its control into a set of extreme circumstances beyond their experience and comprehension. They find themselves in a true Bizarro World ethical environment where what is considered ethical in a normal culture will not work, requiring the acceptance of new values and the mastering of new skills, with the alternative being death.

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Ethics Alarms Will Now Be Kind To Kamala…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I always feel for the losers in Presidential elections. It has to be one of the most crushing career failures that any human being has to endure, certainly in politics.

In “Inherit the Wind,” Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee’s famous play based on the Scopes Trial, the wife of “William Harrison Brady,” the character who is a thinly veiled version of William Jennings Bryan, has a moving speech about how no one can imagine the pain her husband has suffered losing three Presidential races, as Bryan did (a record). In modern times, losing just once usually ends a candidate’s political career, no matter how young they may be or how close the election.

I think that it is highly unlikely that Kamala Harris, the DEI Vice-President who had no business running even once, will break the recent pattern. She will sign a book deal, cash in, and fade into obscurity, a bad memory for Democrats, a living joke to everyone else. Unfortunately for her, Harris is still our Vice-President, and cannot start fading away yet.

Yesterday she was again the object of derision and mirth on social media and on the conservative websites for her very Harris-like performance during an unscripted Oval Office briefing on the Palisades fire crisis. It was this section, a trademarked Harris “word salad,” that attracted the ridicule:

“It’s critically important that, to the extent you can find anything that gives you an ability to be patient in this extremely dangerous and unprecedented crisis, that you do.”

I can’t say anything nice about the idiotic content of that statement, for telling people whose houses are burning to be “patient” is about as tone-deaf as a political figure can be. However, I finally have figured out why she keeps issuing those “word salads.” It isn’t because she is a dullard, although she is. The reason for her malady should have occurred to me earlier when I considered giving her a permanent Julie Principle pass on them.

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Clearly Tattoo Artists Need An Ethics Code or Better Yet, the Common Sense God Gave a Cabbage

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

That’s a photo of a brand new tattoo on the arm of a nine-year-old girl.

The tattoo artist, who goes by the Instagram handle of “Cutzsosa,” posted a video of him giving the girl the permanent brand, and now he’s shocked that he’s getting a bad reaction on social media.

Yes, he’s an idiot. And an Ethics Dunce.

Now, it seems clear that the girl’s parents are worse: Cutzsosa says the girl and her parents traveled to his tattoo parlor, the Black Onyx Empire Tattoo parlor in Yuma, Arizona, from out of state specifically to get her the tattoo she wanted. What she wanted was a portrait of Donald Trump on her neck, and apparently her loving parents were determined to give their little darling what she desired. The artist claims he talked the girl into letting him ink a US flag on her arm instead. He thinks he deserves credit for that, since the neck-tattoo of Trump would probably get her beheaded in California. This is currently the basis of his Rationalization #22 (“There are worse things”) excuse for putting a tattoo on a child who cannot give informed consent for, well, anything, except maybe puberty blockers, but that’s “gender affirming care,” see, so it’s benign.

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Cultural Literacy Note: “Drinking the Kool-Aid”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

The Daily Mail headline is beyond stupid—-“People are only just realizing the dark origin of ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ phrase”—-but sharp-eyed commenter Other Bill was quite astute to draw it to my attention (Thanks, OB) with an email this morning.

Apparently several historically and culturally illiterate whipper-snappers on social media expressed surprise at the “dark origin” of the common phrase “he (or she) drank the Kool-Aid” to describe someone who has been gulled into believing something false or dangerous. Yet this gap in the younger generations’ knowledge shouldn’t be surprising. Oh, there was a movie about the horrible incident and it is one of the best examples of the dangers of cults. But the Jonestown mass suicide of the 918 American followers of cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana occurred almost 50 years ago, in 1978. As unusual and shocking as it was, the poisoned powered drink massacre is not the kind of event likely to be covered in history courses: schools barely cover World War I. How would someone under the age of 50 come to know about the event?

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“Too White A Christmas”: Additional Ethics Observations

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

As promised, I am adding some of my own concerns to Curmie’s post two days ago on the controversy regarding the lack of “diversity” among the ensemble in a Sacramento production of the meh Broadway musical, “Elf.” I know many out there in EA Reader Land don’t give a rip about casting ethics. Ethics Alarms has posted on it often, because I believe, as with a lot of ethics issues in particular industries and areas of the culture, it has larger significance than only where the controversy arose.

Curmie covered most of the ethical issues in this kerfuffle well, as he always does, but I have some pointed conclusions that I think bear emphasis.

The whole episode illustrates what’s fatally wrong with DEI in general and the Left’s obsession with it. It has become an ideology unmoored to the real world. The mission of a theater director or producer must be, first and beyond all else, to put on the best production possible. We can argue about other priorities, but not that. Putting on the best production possible means, without exception, casting and staffing the production with the most talented, experienced, reliable professionals the production can afford. The entire discussion Curmie explores among four theater professional reveals the crippling mission confusion and ideological fanaticism that has infected if not most of the entertainment business, far too much of it.

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Curmie’s Conjectures: Too White A Christmas?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

by Curmie

[Curmie raises so many casting ethics issues that fascinate me in this post that I’m going to announce right now that I’ll post a veritable “Part II” tomorrow, although it will be “Jack’s Conjectures”, or something. Not that I disagree with anything the esteemed Ethics Alarms featured columnist writes here, because I don’t. Here’s a clue about one issue I’ll be covering which Curmie only hints at: for a cast to be sufficiently “diverse,” do the BIPOC members have to obviously LOOK like they are “of color”? I’m thinking of performers like Jennifer Beals, the late Olivia Hussey, and Jessica Alba—JM]

Jack and I exchanged a couple of emails about this story, which I first saw on the OnStageBlog back around Thanksgiving, when this was still news.  I’m pretty sure both of us wanted the other to write about it.  So, a little late, here we go…

The case involves the casting of the Christmas-themed musical Elf at Broadway at Music Circus in Sacramento.  OnStageBlog’s founder Chris Peterson often gets what Curmie’s grad school mentor would call “foam-flecked,” and his editorial here is no exception.  But he does have a point.  Sort of.

The company came under criticism when they announced the cast list for Elf; although a number of the leads were non-white, the entire chorus (seen above) looks pretty vanilla, white-passing if not literally white. Actress (or is she a “social media manager for major hotel brands”?) Victoria Price is one of those who led the charge, pointing to the difference between the Broadway ensemble and the one in Sacramento, and noting that any comments critical of the casting were being deleted.  (I assume she’s telling the truth about this.)

Tony nominee Amber Imam joined the fray, writing that Price’s criticism of both the casting and the removal of negative comments was “absolutely right.  A show that takes place in NEW YORK CITY cannot… CAN NOT have an ensemble that LOOKS LIKE THIS!!!  Do better.  Have you learned nothing?????”

The company’s CEO Scott Klier issued a response that made the situation much, much worse: “cover-up worse than the crime” worse.  Here’s part of it:

“Inclusivity has been and remains my casting and staffing goal for every production. I fell short of that goal for ELF. There is an uncomfortable truth here: Our industry as a whole has largely failed to attract, train and foster the artists necessary to meet today’s demand, and I fear this conversation will continue until it does. It will unfortunately take time. The painful reality of ELF’s casting process was that both the casting submissions and audition attendance revealed few candidates of color and, while those few were undoubtedly talented, they did not meet the dance, music and acting criteria set by our team.”

Hoo boy… Claiming inclusivity as a “goal” and then going 0-for-15 at fulfilling it?  Blaming other people while admitting the decision was yours?  Admitting there’s a “demand” and then ignoring it? 

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Political Cartoon Ethics: Talk About Picking The Wrong Hill To Die On!

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Ann Telnaes, “a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist” (So what?) for The Washington Post, announced that she was resigning after editors rejected a cartoon depicting WaPo’s owner, Jeff Bezos, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

On her substack, Telnaes called the newspaper’s decision to kill her cartoon a “game changer” that was “dangerous for a free press.”

Riiight. The cartoon shows Jeff Bezos and other media figures prostrating themselves to Trump, which is not only untrue, it’s juvenile. That cartoon could have been published in a middle school newspaper. The Post has had a succession of knee-jerk, shrill progressive scolds as political cartoonists in an unbroken line since the partisan-biased Herb Block was also a “Pulitzer Prize winner”—- you know, like the Post was for its false reporting on the Russian Collusion hoax. Like Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times were Pulitzered for creating the anti-America propaganda screed called “The 1619 Project.”

Ethics Alarms has long maintained that political cartoons don’t warrant presence on editorial pages because 90% of them or more communicate grade-school level political sophistication through the jaundiced eyes of artists lacking education, perspective and critical thinking skills. That drawing above illustrates the Ethics Alarms position nicely.

Telnaes is throwing a hissy-fit because she isn’t allowed to publish an obnoxious and simple-minded cartoon—it also isn’t remotely funny—attacking her employer with a cheap shot. The Trump-Deranged, progressives and Democrats on the Post—that is, 98% of the staff, were triggered because Bezos chose not to have his paper endorse Kamala Harris, the worst candidate a major party has run for President since, oh, maybe Horace Greeley in 1872, except that Horace was smarter than Kamala and he never waffled on his positions, which were a matter of record.

It would be a different if the cartoon the artist is so determined to see promoted was interesting, trenchant, original or clever, but it isn’t. The baseball equivalent would be a .216 hitting player quitting his team because the manager chose to leave him off the line-up card.

Why Are Women Still Screaming In Movies?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This has bugged me for a long time, but my pique came to a head yesterday when I was watching the early Ray Harryhausen effort “It Came From Beneath the Sea”—you know, the one with the giant octopus that attacks San Francisco?

A lovely actress whom I had never been aware of before named Faith Domergue played a female scientist specializing in marine biology. Throughout the movie, despite being Kenneth Tobey’s love interest (You remember him, right? The hero in the original “The Thing From Outer Space”? Later a villain in “Billy Jack” and one of the air traffic controllers in “Airplane”?) she was completely professional, always composed, bristling at sexist comments and assumptions from the male pigs around her (this was in 1955, remember). And yet when the giant octopus that she had insisted was real while everyone else pooh-poohed the idea finally appeared, she screamed like a teenage girl at an Elvis concert. Why would she do that? She was the only one who was expecting to see a giant octopus! The men around her, in contrast, looked startled or went into action (getting the hell off the beach); only the woman screamed.

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Addendum to “The Jimmy Carter Assessment”: Bless Those Libertarians’ Hearts!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Libertarians contribute significantly to civic policy discourse by staking out an extreme position that serves as useful ballast against extreme statists from the other side of the spectrum. I often use Reason, which I used to subscribe to in its print format, for ethics topics. Unfortunately, libertarians constantly erode their credibility by taking absurd positions, arguing for open borders, wanting to legalize heroin, and mu particular favorite, arguing that the U.S. should have sat out World War II.

Today the libertarians, or at least too many of them (one would be too many) are arguing that Jimmy Carter was an excellent President. Yes, I am really reading that. Here is Reason quoting Gene Healy, a vice president at the Cato Institute, with favor:

“Abroad, he favored diplomacy over war, garnering the least bloody record of any post–World War II president. So what if he didn’t look tough, or even particularly competent, as he did it? A clear-eyed look at the Carter record reveals something surprising: This bumbling, brittle, unloveable man was, by the standards that ought to matter, our best modern president.”

Because, you see, the standards that “ought to matter” mean that reducing the American Presidency in influence, prestige and power is a good thing. So what if Americans have no respect for the office or the man holding it? So what if the new template for future leaders is fecklessness and apathy? What “matters” is that if chaos reigns all over the globe, the United States canconfidently eschew all responsibility because no one we care about gets hurt.

Heck, if diminishing the Presidency is an accomplishment, Joe Biden must stand as one of the all-time greats!

I have tried arguing with libertarians periodically over the years, and found them to be cultists, like climate change fanatics, abortion activists and the Trump Deranged. Reality doesn’t impose on their beliefs at all, at least not the libertarians who have swallowed the whole philosophical enchilada. It is useful to have vocal individuals who express principled objections to government over-reach, but when they declare weak leaders good leaders and praise passivity as an absolute virtue, such voices disqualify themselves as serious advocates.

In short, if Jimmy Carter was our best modern President, I’m Woody Woodpecker.

Comments of the Day (In the Thread of the Month!): “Wait…So Everyone’s Been Lying To Me All These Years About What Angels Look Like?”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

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The commentariate on EA always surprises and delights me, and the response I got to an off the wall post inspired by an AP story about “biblically correct” angels was a perfect example. The resulting thread was a veritable primer on anglelology, with Ryan Harkins weighing in with three substantive posts and several others contributing valuable insight as well.

I don’t deserve you.

One more Christmas tradition that I left fallow this year—like almost all of them—in the absence of my wife was our Christmas Eve reading aloud of the children’s book “The Littlest Angel,” by Charles Tazwell. Grace loved the story so. She would always cry at the place where the Littlest Angel gives his most cherished possession, a simple wooden box where he kept his earthly treasures when he was a child on Earth, as his gift to the soon-to-be-born son of God:

“The Littlest Angel trembled as the box was opened, and there, before the Eyes of God and all His Heavenly Host, was what he offered to the Christ Child. And what was his gift to the Blessed Infant?

“Well, there was a butterfly with golden wings, captured one bright summer day on the high hills above Jerusalem, and a sky blue egg from a bird’s nest in the olive tree that stood to shade his mother’s kitchen door. Yes, and two white stones, found on a muddy river bank, where he and his friends had played like small brown beavers. And, at the bottom of the box, a limp, tooth-marked leather strap, once worn as a collar by his mongrel dog, who had died as he had lived, in absolute love and infinite devotion.”

Somehow, it doesn’t work quite as well if one is thinking of the Cherubim as having eyeballs all over his wings or three heads. But that’s just me…

Here are two of the many remarkable comments first from Ryan Harkins, and then from Sara B. on the post, “Wait…So Everyone’s Been Lying To Me All These Years About What Angels Look Like?” :

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(First, Ryan…)

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