Arts & Entertainment

“What Would Jesus Do?” My Guess: Devote His Energy To Something Other Than Forcing A Free Citizen To Re-Name His Own NFL Team

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

jesus football

The Central Atlantic Conference of the United Church of Christ, consisting of 180 congregations with 40,000 members from Richmond to New Jersey, voted unanimously to boycott of the Washington Redskins’ games and merchandize at its annual meeting. This decision is expected to pass to the national governing body of the church, which oversees 5,100 congregations with about 1 million members, which is expected to endorse it.

It would be good to know that the world is in such fine shape that this is the most pressing of our earthly challenges as far as United Church of Christ can see. Unfortunately, that’s not the import of this story. The story shows how political correctness, illicitly pursued by the abuse of official power, can and will spread throughout the culture, leading institution and organizations to believe that it is ethical to try to bend others to their will based on subjective views of “offensiveness.” It is not, however. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce (Live Performance Division): “Fox and Friends” Host Steve Doocy

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Daughtry

Boy, do I hate when someone does this.

Especially when they do it to me. Unfortunately, for him, the victim this time was Chris Daughtry.

On June 6, the 70th anniversary of the D-Day, Fox and Friends had rocker Chris Daughtry and his band performing (for some reason: D for Daughtry?). Later, during the after-show, host Steve Doocy was overcome with patriotism and bad musical taste and suggested that Daughtry return to sing a “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee” extemporaneously with the other hosts, Anna Kooiman, Clayton Morris, and Heather Childers.

Daughtry, nicely but unequivocally, refused, causing an awkward scene, and also bringing down a barrage of abuse on himself from Fox viewers, so much so that he later felt the need to explain and apologize in a video.

He shouldn’t have. Doocy was way out of line, incredibly so, for someone supposedly in a branch of show business. It is rude and unfair to put a performer on the spot in front of an audience and 1) ask him or her to perform something unplanned and unrehearsed; 2) to request musical services that were not required in the contract, essentially as free entertainment,  and 3) worst of all, to frame it as a patriotic act, making Daughtry look like a villain when he refused, as he should have, when the singer was in truth the victim of Doocy’s clueless presumptuousness.

Doocy and Fox owe Daughtry an apology. No performer, ever, should be put in this  position without his prior knowledge and consent.

________________

Pointer and Facts: Mediaite

 

No, There Is No “Absurdly Bearded Sociology Professor On A Beer Can Principle”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

follicle beer

This is just unfair, that’s all.

 Paul Roof, a professor of sociology at Charleston Southern University, a Christian school, learned that a photo of him taken by a professional photographer at a beard contest was about to appear on “Chucktown Follicle Brown” beer cans.  “I’m not compensated for the image, I don’t own the image, and the use of the image was a surprise to me,” the Roof told the media. His (amazing/ outrageous/ ridiculous—choose one) four-section beard has been used for other promotions, including for Christian services. Charleston Southern University never expressed any objection to its employee looking like an escapee from “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” Nevertheless, the school fired him, saying that a professor having his image on a beer can “was not representative of a Christian environment.” Continue reading →

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 →