Arts & Entertainment

If This Poll Is Accurate, The American Public May Be Too Incompetent and Irresponsible to Live In a Democracy…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

A poll conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek found that 18% of voters are “more likely” or “significantly more likely” to vote for a candidate endorsed by pop singer Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift has been essentially dedicated to music since she was 14, though she did graduate from high school in three years. There is nothing she has to offer in trenchant political commentary besides celebrity, and to a large number of Americans, as we already know, that’s enough.

So naturally, as the buzz was in Washington, D.C. today, the Biden campaign is working hard to get Swift to endorse Joe, if possible at the Super Bowl.

It is estimated that 8 million new voters will enter the ranks of the US electorate this year, making a total of 41 million Gen Z voters. This is also a group that surveys show has a low opinion of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, free enterprise and the United States generally, so maybe they don’t even need Swift’s OK to vote Democratic. My guess, and maybe I’m whistling past the metaphorical graveyard, is that most of that 18% may be more likely to vote if Taylor tells them who to vote for, but the majority of them won’t be engaged enough to vote anyway.

If the election is going to turn on somethings as trivial and meaningless as celebrity endorsements, its not even worth worrying about. Those idiots will deserve what they get, and so will their elders, for letting society and the culture get that stupid.

Comment of the Day: “When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring,” Big Law Firm Edition”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The question of why good people do unethical things is always ripe for consideration. Often, and perhaps even usually, the answer is that nobody was think about ethics at all, or thinking at all. The tale about how a cheerful piece of artwork depicting a lynching ended up on the walls of a large law firm’s office is a cautionary tale, and in his Comment of the Day on the post, “When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring,” Big Law Firm Edition,” johnburger2013 neatly explains how such gaffes occur. The one feature that John left out was the subsequent publicity, including on ethics websites.

The lesson: Be careful out there….

***

I suspect the art was selected to coincide with Black History Month and the powers who made the decision (“First Decider”) simply said, “Hey, we have a ton of art from renowned African American Artists. We should display that during February.” To which someone else (“Second Decider”) said, “Awesome. Let’s get the staff to put the paintings on the wall.” Then, First Decider said, “Cool, I’ll email my people and get them on it.” Second Decider: “Great. What’s for lunch?”

Then, First Decider emailed maintenance: “Good morning. We are honoring Black History Month in February. We have a number of really interesting paintings in our storage room. Would you be awesome and hang them on the walls?” Maintenance Engineer responded, “Sure. We will get it done this evening.” Maintenance Engineer told the staff who merely displayed the art on the walls without really thinking about it.

Then, somebody walked by and looked at that particular painting and blood ran cold in the veins, with an audible, “Oh, crap! That’s gonna hurt!” The problem took on a life of its own after that. Rather than simply state, “Really? You are pissed/hurt by a painting depicting something terrible? Have you seen ‘Schindler’s List’? How about stuff painted by Frida Kahlo? Or Picasso? And you call yourself lawyers? What kind of intestinal fortitude do you lack that you can’t look at a painting – which, frankly, I find juvenile and simplistic in quality and style – and realize, ‘yeah, we had some really awful times in our history. Hopefully we have moved beyond that.’” But, no, they have a Chief DIE officer whose job it is to make mountains out of anthills and recommend sensitivity training for all involved.

If I were a client, I’d pull my cases from that firm. Immediately.

“When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring,” Big Law Firm Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

One morning, lawyers and other employees at the mega-firm Duane Morris‘s Philadelphia headquarters arrived to see the artwork above hung on a hallway wall. It was not appreciated. What was going on? Apparently it was time to switch out some of the firm’s publicly displayed artwork. One of the firm’s non-legal staff picked something out from the inventory of originals in storage, and efficiently hung one of 20th century African American artist Herbert Singleton’s painting depicting events he says he experienced growing up in the southern U.S. before anyone was troubled by a blank space. A placard explaining the work might have helped, but for some reason none was posted.

This prompted a long, long mea culpa by the firm’s senior partners and management after the painting was removed, presumably with the speed of light. I’ve bolded and numbered appropriate sections.

Continue reading →

Look! Here’s a Performing Ethics Dunce Who’s Even More Unprofessional Than Madonna!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ethics Alarms commented on Madonna’s inexcusable two-hour tardy appearance at her concert (item #4) without realizing that The Grand Ol’ Opry could have said “Hold my beer!” The Nashville shrine to Country Music officially apologized to fans and audience members after four-time Grammy Award nominee Elle King disgraced the venue and herself with a vulgar and drunken performance on an evening last week that was supposed to honor Dolly Parton. “We deeply regret and apologize for the language that was used during last night’s second Opry performance,” the Opry wrote on X/Twitter over the weekend. That was an understatement of what happened.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Emmy-Winner’s Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Neicy Nash-Betts won an Emmy last night in”Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie”—love those Emmy categories— for playing Glenda Cleveland in Netflix’s “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.” I didn’t see it: there are some topics too distasteful—no pun intended—even for me. Neicy’s acceptance speech is being cheered all across the news media as “inspirational,” ”powerful” (Huffington Post) “blazing” (The Times) and other superlatives.

“I’m a winner, baby! Thank you to the most high for this divine moment,” Nash-Betts said as she held her trophy. “Thank you, Ryan Murphy, for seeing me. Evan Peters, I love you. Netflix. Every single person who voted for me. Thank you. My better half, who picked me up when I was gutted from this work. Thank you.”

“I want to thank me, for believing in me and doing what they said I could not do,” she added. “I want to say to myself in front of all you beautiful people, ‘Go, girl, with your bad self. You did that!’ Finally, I accept this award on behalf of every Black and Brown woman who have gone unheard, yet overpoliced, like Glenda Cleveland, like Sandra Bland, like Breonna Taylor! As an artist, my job is to speak truth to power. And, baby, I’ma do it till the day I die.”

Personally, I hated the speech.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Am I being unfair? Continue reading →

Incompetent Toddler’s Birthday Party Entertainer of the Month….

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It is safe to say the illusion was shattered.

This video is all over the web, but I couldn’t resist.

Racial Bias and Prejudice at the Golden Globes Awards

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The Golden Globes audience of the Hollywood woke laughed and applauded at the lame and insulting recitation of white stereotypes by a black and an Asian presenter over the weekend. In fact, I don’t object to racial and ethnic stereotypes used for humor, as long as there is a single standard for all. However, it is not news that at this point in our increasingly unethical culture, there isn’t any taboo on making racially denigrating jokes about whites while the same kinds of jokes about any other group will lead to shunning, unemployment, and career disruption. If you want to ensure that racial disharmony gets worse instead of better, that’s a brilliant strategy. Yes, it is hypocrisy exemplified, but those who benefit from this double standard rationalize its appropriateness in a number of ways, or just don’t care.

The Golden Globes were back on prime time after a couple of years’ exile for, among other problems, complaints about their dearth of “diversity,” so you know what the new regime’s priorities were. Signalling their sincerity, the choice of host for the evening was ‘historic”: we are told that Jo Kay was the first Filipino American comedian to serve as MC for the broadcast, and only the second Asian. He was also, if not the first embarrassingly incompetent host, a reminder that choosing a comedian because of his ethnicity rather than his comedy skills is a dubious strategy. Even the reliably woke audience in the seats couldn’t manage to make themselves laugh at him, historic Filipino or not, and Jo Kay bombed. Good.

Watch him be asked back…

In such a warped and rigged environment, how proud of her award could Lily Gladstone be when she became became the “historic” first indigenous person to win a Golden Globe for best actress, for her turn in “Killers of the Flower Moon”? Naturally, she basked in a standing ovation, which at this Golden Globes ceremony, was probably recognition for not being white.

The Vagina Dress: What’s Going On Here?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Actress Gillian Anderson of “X Files” fame caused a stir at last night’s Golden Globe awards by wearing a dress decorated with meticulously embroidered vaginas. They were impossible to see on TV since they were the same color as the dress (thank goodness for that) but see? Look closely now…

Vaginas. Though she later said they were “peonies,” Anderson told several reporters that her dress was embroidered with vaginas. Why? “For so many reasons. It’s brand-appropriate,” Anderson explained cryptically.

What is this? A feminist statement, like the infamous “pussy hats”? A diabolical insult to the Golden Globes? If an obscene design can only be detected up close and with the aid of hints, does that make it less obscene? Would a male tux with almost invisible embroidered black penises in the fabric be considered appropriate formal wear? How about nearly invisible embroidery showing various graphic sex acts? What if the designs reveal to the sharp-of-eye acts of pederasty? What if Gillian dress had “Fuck you!” beautifully embroidered on it? Is a vulgar design at a public event not vulgar if nobody notices it? Has polite society vanished so completely that a stunt like this is considered acceptable? Social media apparently loved it.

Dana expresses my reaction perfectly…

I just don’t know, Dana. I really don’t.

Observations on Media Research Center’s 2023 Political Joke Survey

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Media Research Center, a conservative “media watchdog” roughly the Right’s equivalent of Media Matters but with a much bigger job, analyzed six of the daily late night comedy shows: Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”, NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and “The Late Late Show with James Corden” until its April exit, from January 3, 2023 through December 22, 2023. The results are here. The researchers counted 9,518 jokes they judged political in nature, and broke them down into categories. 1,601 targeted progressive, Democrats and figures on the left of the political spectrum. 186 aimed at people, groups, or institutions not associated with either side. 7,729 or 81% of the jokes were considered barbs at were directed at individual, organization or positions considered to be conservative. 493 targets were the objects of a single joke, with 285 of these on the right, 167 on the left, and the remaining 41 on non-partisan topics.

The unbalanced percentages are only a surprise in that they are less lopsided than I would have guessed, but still obviously showan absurdly unfair partisan bias. If, as was once the norm in all political comedy, all sides and parties were mocked relatively equally with the President in the White House taking most of the fire, political humor can be fairly categorized as entertainment with the primary objective being to make as many people laugh as possible. Distorted to this extent, however, late night comedy becomes a self-evident propaganda weapon that plays a significant part in the mainstream media mission to sway elections and manipulate public opinion.

Some telling findings:

Continue reading →

Curmie’s Conjectures: The Belfry Theatre’s Crisis of Nerve

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

by Curmie

[ JM here: I want to let Curmie’s Conjectures stand on their own, so I apologize at the outset by intruding with a brief introduction. Lest anyone be dissuaded from reading the whole post because the author’s scholarly tone and apparent focus at the start suggests that this will be a narrow discourse on topics rather more relished by Curmie and me than by the majority of EA readers—theater and the performing arts—fear not. The tags on the article will be “Canada, censorship, the Hamas-Israel War Ethics Train Wreck, and political theater.” The post also involves some of the same considerations as one of mine two days ago. ]

There is a theory, one to which I subscribe, which suggests that the Dionysian Festival of classical Athens began not really as a religious observance in honor of a demi-god but rather as a means of consolidating the political power of the tyrant Peisistratus.  Whether or not this is true, there is no doubt that by 458 BCE Aeschylus’ Oresteia, widely acclaimed as “the world’s first dramatic masterpiece,” offers commentary on the reforms of the Areopagus enacted by the strategos Ephialtes some three years earlier.

There is no question that since that time the theatre has often—not always, but often—been political.  The 20th century offered more than a few examples of playwrights and production companies who, often at personal risk, critiqued the power structures around them: Jean-Paul Sartre took on the Nazis; Lorraine Hansberry, racism in the US; Athol Fugard, apartheid; Václav Havel, communism in Eastern Europe.

Not all such efforts were for causes most of us would endorse, of course.  Socialist Realism was a Stalinist policy under which all art had to support The Revolution: not just avoid criticism of the regime, but actively and explicitly endorse it.  More recently, the Freedom Theatre of Jenin (on the occupied West Bank) has been in the news.  A few weeks ago, one of the student organizations at my university posted an encomium to the company, which they described as “an example of creating liberating theatre and serving communities through theatrical pedagogy and profound performance.”  I remembered having written about that theatre a dozen or so years ago.  If I might quote myself for a moment: “Turns out that the Freedom Theatre was pretty damned proud of having turned out alumni who engaged in armed insurrection, and at least one of whom, a suicide bomber, richly merited description as a terrorist.” 

So no, propagandistic theatre isn’t always a good thing… but engaging with the world is.  Even subtle messages matter.  Under normal circumstances, Aunt Eller’s wish that “the farmer and the cowman can be friends” doesn’t amount to much.  But Oklahoma! hit Broadway after the declaration of war against the Axis powers and before D-Day.  “Territory folks” need to put aside their petty grievances when there’s a guy with a funny mustache who’s far worse than any of your neighbors will ever be.

Continue reading →