Arts & Entertainment

Political Correctness Files: X-Men, People Magazine And The Case Of The 6’4″ Dwarf

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments
"Hey, look! It's Tom Selleck!"

“Hey, look! It’s Tom Selleck!”

Apparently political correctness in the media now requires affirmative misrepresentation.

The People Magazine review of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” contains this sentence:

“You’ll understand her motivation when you meet Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage), a government type who creates the sentinel project, and is even more sinister than his Magnum P.I.-by-way-of-IBM looks would suggest.”

For anyone who has seen the movie, or even anyone familiar with the (excellent) actor, Peter Dinklage, I have this question: What is odd about that quote?

For it is extremely odd. Continue reading →

The “Bernie” Sentence’s Message: The Lives Of Mean People Aren’t Worth As Much As Those Of Nice People

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
Jack Black as Bernie, the nicest murderer you'd ever want to know.

Jack Black as Bernie, the nicest murderer you’d ever want to know.

“Bernie” is a quirky 2011 movie telling a strange and true story. Jack Black plays Bernie Tiede, an oddly cheery mortician who became a small town community favorite for his kind deeds and upbeat manner. Bernie even befriends the town pariah, a mean, rich old woman named Marjorie Nugent (played by Shirley Maclaine) whom he managed to reform–slightly–until she finally became even too much for him to bear, and in 1996 he shot her dead.

He was loved, she was hated, and the community (Carthage, Texas) rallied behind the murderer even though he hid his friend’s body in a freezer for nine months and spent about 2 million dollars of her money.  The pro-Bernie bias was so strong  prosecutors had to seek a change of venue, since no local jury would convict him. They got it, and a jury that knew neither charming Bernie nor his nasty victim found him guilty (because he was) and sent him to jail for life in 1997.

After the film was released, however, attorney Jodi Cole took up Tiede’s appeal. She discovered that he had a collection of books aimed at survivors of sexual abuse, and got Bernie to admit, for the first time, that he was abused as a child. Cole hired a psychiatrist who testified that Tiede’s abuse probably influenced the murder and his willingness to endure an abusive relationship with Nugent, until he finally snapped. This changed the mind of Panola County District Attorney Danny Buck Davidson, who told a judge Tuesday that he supported reducing the sentence to time served. State District Judge Diane DeVasto agreed. Bernie is now a free man, living in the apartment over the garage of the man who directed the film about him.
Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Replacing The Sideline Babe

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments
Before and After

Before and After

In a nakedly cynical effort to appeal to male TV audience members, most of the major league baseball teams employ “sideline babes” in their local broadcasts—young, lovely, shapely women who impart little nuggets of “behind the scenes” information about the local team during lulls in the action, of which baseball has many. It often seems like these women can’t tell a ball from a bat, but who cares? Hubba hubba!

The Boston Red Sox however, have had a string of bad luck with their lovelies. The last two became romantically involved with Red Sox players, in one case a potential scandal (the player was married), and in the most recent, as sideline babe Jenny Dell began dating Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks, a conflict of interest in the view of NESN, the Red Sox network. Who would have guessed that having fold-out ready young women roaming  dugouts filled with rich young male athletes would lead to this?

This season, the Sox sidelines have a different look. The game broadcast cutaways now lead to a large, handsome, undeniably male member of the broadcast squad, Gary Striewski. (That’s Gary on the right in the photo above, Jenny on the left.)  Coincidence? I think not. I think NESN got tired of the off-field whoopee, and decided to go in a different direction that minimized the risk. Assuming this is true (and recognizing that it may not be), your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is this:

Does choosing to have a male sideline reporter to avoid romantic conflicts with the players constitute unfair and unethical gender discrimination?

 

 

HGTV And Corporate Cowardice: Hold Companies Accountable For Stifling Speech, Opinion, And Thought

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
"Remodeling Homes, and Wrecking Democracy"

“HGTV: Remodeling Homes, and Wrecking Democracy”

Once again,  a company that is in effect punishing an American for his or her views on a complex social or political issue is being excused as simply “watching out for the bottom line.” This time, it is cable network HGTV, which cancelled a planned cable show about home repair because one of the prospective stars expressed an opinion adverse to gay activists. Last week, it was the NBA; before that, the agent of activist vengeance was Mozilla, and before that, A&E, until it decided that it was more profitable to do one “right thing” (not punish the duck call eccentrics for being open about who the network and its viewers always knew they were) rather than what it had decided earlier was the “right thing” (“STONE THE BIGOTS!!!”). None of these profit-making organizations are the least bit interested in what is right or wrong, of course, and probably don’t give the ethical implications of their acts a moment’s thought. All they are worried about is money, and what they will grandstand as their “principled decision” will always, amazingly, coincide with whose bullying tactics are more likely to succeed. Continue reading →

A Donald Sterling Ethics Train Wreck Surprise: Something GOOD May Come Out Of This Mess!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

French_Revolution_GuillotineBut I doubt that it will feel very good.

Even more than usual, I was physically nauseated by the Sunday morning network news shows this weekend, which all blurred together in a nightmarish display of how lazy and biased the news media is, and how aggressively it now seeks to make Americans complacent, ignorant, and ethically stunted. I’m not sure which of these journalistic disgraces it was—I think it was “Meet the Press”—where the host, briefly attempting to inject some content into his panel’s obligatory Donald Sterling bashing, asked if it mattered that his comments were intended as private. “There is no privacy any more!” a female panelist exclaimed, not as protest or complaint, but as a dismissive rebuttal. Oh. Well, that settles it then! We should now assume that any of us can be publicly pilloried and humiliated for what we say in our homes, bedroom, automobiles, and safe rooms.  Next issue! Boy, the President killed at the White House Correspondents dinner, didn’t he?

Over at ABC, the token conservative this week in that “roundtable,” Laura Ingraham—the allegedly smart, ultra-right wing, acerbic former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Thomas turned radio host—couldn’t manage the presence of mind or the wit to point out that fellow panelist Van Jones had just compared NBA players—you know, the African Americans who make more money in a week than you make all year?—-to black slaves, and twice at that. What good are you, Laura, if you can be intimidated like that, and allow a shimmering opportunity to illustrate the racial double standard being used today for cynical political ends, so the public might start paying attention? No, Laura had her own agenda, so she wasn’t paying attention. She was there to use the Oklahoma “botched” execution as a platform to inveigh against—abortion. I would call her performance pundit malpractice, but how one can be judged incompetent on a Sunday public issues show, when the shows themselves are journalistic abortions?

Retribution is coming for all, however. Eventually, thanks to the excessive and imprudently unrestrained abuse being heaped on Donald Sterling, these knaves, bumblers and hypocrites are going to have to face the reality of the dilemma they have created for themselves, because the standard they so happily apply to Sterling—deceptively safe and easy because he’s objectively repulsive–is now going to be applied to everyone including their champions and heroes, , and the carnage will be unrelenting. And it will be good for the culture, I think, because like the French Revolution, the force unleashed by the politically correctness bullies, race-hucksters and Bigotry Furies will prove unmanageable, and consume its creators. Continue reading →

All Aboard The Sterling Train Wreck: The Foolish, The Grandstanders, The Dishonest And The Irresponsible

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Hypocrites

The question is, which is which?

I’ll let you puzzle it out; I’ll be busy retching:

And now, the latest and deplorable passengers on this distasteful Ethics Train Wreck…

Sen. Harry Reid

Reid saluted NBA Commissioner Adam Silver for his “work to swiftly move to stamp out bigotry in its ranks,” as if that had any thing at all to do with what Silver was doing. Reid’s endorsement, however, places a high elected official’s stamp of approval on the proposition that those with unpopular ideas and biases should be punished and have their property taken away from them. Reid said that the league has set a new standard for how professional sports leagues should respond to racism. Of course, Sterling did nothing racist at all, not did he attempt to, or publicly announce such intent. The “new standard” that Reid is applauding is economic penalties for non-conforming beliefs. Finally, Reid attempted to make the absurd parallel to the Washington Redskins’ controversial name: “How long will the NFL continue to do nothing — zero — as one of its teams bears a name that inflicts so much pain on Native Americans?” Reid asked Continue reading →

The Washington Post, Faking it.

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

This one’s for you, Bob Hoskins.

You deserved better.

Who-framed-roger-rabbit-Jessica-RabbitIf you come here frequently, you know that I deeply resent lazy, inadequate or inaccurate obituaries of famous and accomplished figures. Obituaries are the beginnings of their legacies, and set the foundations for how, and even if, they will be remembered. Not fairly representing these lives is lousy and lazy journalism, and worse, it is disrespectful to the deceased and contemptuous of history.

Bob Hoskins, the superb and versatile British actor, died this week. He was one of my personal favorites—a better, cockney version of Joe Pesci—but even if he meant nothing to me, the Washington Post’s sloppy and factually wrong obituary today would have been inexcusable. I liked Hoskins’ various tough guys and mobsters, but the film role that blew me away was his amazing portrayal of the human detective trying to unravel a cartoon mystery in the 1988 Disney classic, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” Hoskins, in addition to wielding a perfect American accent (he was really a Cockney), was intense, funny, moving and entracing while interacting with characters that were drawn into the scenes long after he performed them. He made the complex conceit of the movie work, and I would rank it among the most impressive acting turns of all time.

Here is how obituary writer Adam Bernstein described Hoskins’ most famous role in the print version of the Post today:

“(He) won over American audiences as a detective who falls in love with a voluptuous cartoon character in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”‘

and

“Mr. Hoskins was a boozing detective who falls for Jessica Rabbit, a cartoon human of pneumatic proportions who can’t help but bewitch men. “I’m not bad,” insists Jessica (voiced by Kathleen Turner). “I’m just drawn that way.””

Continue reading →

My Friend, Greg

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

stand by me

I’m not sure exactly what this post has to do with ethics. Obligation, perhaps. Still, I have to write it.

Yesterday, I learned that Greg Davidson had died. The news thrust me into the heart of some intense and strange hybrid of “Stand By Me,” “Animal House,” “Mister Roberts,” and “The Sandlot.” I hadn’t seen or talked to Greg for 41 years, since the day he sold me my first car, a red Nova that I paid for with cash, using my bank account started for me by my Dad when I was a baby. Wiped it out, too. But that’s not why Greg Davidson was important in my life.

I met Greg in the 7th Grade, when we were both 12. He was the first un-self-consciously cool kid I ever met, and one of the few people I have known had this distinction. (I will embarrass him by saying this, but my son is one of them too.) If you can picture the character of Chris (River Phoenix) in “Stand by Me,” that was Greg—athletic, physically graceful, blond, with a buzz cut, relatively quiet, and a natural leader. He was, essentially, a man in attitude and conduct long before the rest of us (some of us are still working at it)—he won the affections of my 6th grade crush, Margie, and formed a famous, much admired steady couple with her that lasted well into high school.

He was smart, but defiant in a puckish and courageous way: this was the early Sixties, and we all regarded the regimentation of school as an insult. Greg undermined that, regularly, and at considerable personal cost, by waging clever, chaotic war against authority that he considered an affront to human dignity—the equivalent of Mr.Roberts throwing the Captain’s palm tree into the drink. One of my favorites was when he tweaked a pompous high school English teacher who chafed under the nick-name Greg had devised for him—“Tweety Bird”—because it caught on, and because it was so dead-on accurate. Greg went to the trouble of making stationery with a small picture of the Warner Brothers avian in the corner, distributed it, and that week poor Mr. Hendrickson received an assigned essay from every student on Tweety paper. Greg denied that he had anything to do with the plot, but accompanied his denials with Otter’s iconic wink to Dean Wormer, so he left no doubt who Mr. H’s true tormenter was, not there was any doubt.

The teacher did not take it well. Continue reading →

More Proof, As If More Were Needed, That The American Education System Breeds Hopelessly Dim And Foolish Administrators Who Understand Neither Children, Education, Childhood, Or Life, And Therefore Should Not And Must Not Be Entrusted With The Welfare Of Our Young In Any Way, Since These Fools Possess Neither Common Sense Nor The Judgment Possessed By The Average Garden Slug:

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Kindergarten-1

Here’s the easy-reading version:

April 25, 2014

Dear Kindergarten Parents and Guardians,

We hope this letter serves to help you better understand how the demands of the 21st century are changing schools, and, more specifically, to clarify, misperceptions about the Kindergarten show. It is most important to keep in mind is [sic] that this issue is not unique to Elwood. Although the movement toward more rigorous learning standards has been in the national news for more than a decade, the changing face of education is beginning to feel unsettling for some people. What and how we teach is changing to meet the demands of a changing world.

The reason for eliminating the Kindergarten show is simple. We are responsible for preparing children for college and career with valuable lifelong skills and know that we can best do that by having them become strong readers, writers, coworkers and problem solvers. Please do not fault us for making professional decisions that we know will never be able to please everyone. But know that we are making these decisions with the interests of all children in mind.

 

Continue reading →

The Donald Sterling Mess: Watching An Ethics Train Wreck Develop Before Our Eyes

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Circus Train wreck

I realized that the Donald Sterling controversy was going to be a full-blown ethics train wreck when, as I should have predicted but didn’t, President Obama once again tossed his office, authority and power into a completely non-governmental matter that his involvement could only confound, and can’t possibly help. “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk,” the President responded during a news conference in Kuala Lumpur,  after being asked about Sterling’s alleged remarks. At least he didn’t say that V. Stiviano, the NBA owner’s mistress who recorded the comments, could have been his daughter.

This continues a pattern, exemplified by the President’s gratuitous statements as the Trayvon Martin case was unfolding, of Obama being willfully ignorant of the injustice done when the President of the United States uses his bullhorn to warp independent investigations before they are complete, and attempts to sway public opinion in matters outside his proper duties. The NBA is currently examining the circumstances of Sterling’s statements, and Obama’s irresponsible interjections can do nothing but upset the process. He simply cannot or will not restrain himself. My view: this stuff is easy, an approximation of being Presidential for a leader who is foundering in dealing with the important, legitimate challenges of his job. It is an expression of weakness.

Meanwhile, it is increasingly likely that, in classic ethics train wreck fashion, everyone connected to and responding to this episode is or will be tainted. Sterling’s girlfriend, for example, broke the law: California is a state like Maryland ( Hello, Linda Tripp, wherever you are!) and others, where it is illegal to record anyone without their consent. Her motives were also despicable: reputedly she had vowed vengeance because Sterling’s wife (oh, yes, her sugar-daddy is still married) has sued her for embezzlement. His wife calls her a gold-digger; perhaps that is unfair, and perhaps she really loves the 80-year-old evident racist for the purity of his soul and vitality in the sack rather than his bank account, just as I may be secretly a bighorn sheep. But the incident roiling the worlds of sports and culture is clearly the product of domestic warfare and at least two thoroughly awful people. Continue reading →