Arts & Entertainment

Do Progressives Realize What They Are Becoming?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

It’s a serious question. Several episodes lately have reminded me of the ubiquitous saying about how we all risk becoming the thing we most hated in our youth, or that we inevitably turn into the person we hate most, etc. There are too many versions of the quotation to list.

I started my mind wandering down these dark corridors while researching a post I may never write about Harvard’s gobsmacking alumni magazine this month, as various writers and revered minds tried (and failed) to make sense out of the university’s recent travails without, somehow, saying anything critical about the woman at the center of them, deposed Harvard president Claudine Gay. After all, she is still on the faculty (and black, and a woman, and a DEI warrior), so being overtly negative about her conduct—as in making her accept responsibility—apparently would be too transparent to countenance.

In an essay reprinted from the “Chronicle of Higher Education,” Derek Bok (who became president of Harvard while I was a student there) wrote about the school’s cultural challenges, and, I noticed, never mentioned the term “progressive” once in his article, only the term “liberal.” And I thought, “Wow. Talk about being out of touch.” Does Bok really think today’s militant, intolerant, censoring, bullying, doctrinaire progressives would qualify as liberals in his era? Sure, they embrace many of the same agenda items, being anti-war, pro-drug use, wanting abortion on demand and other Sixties obsessions. But they are anything but liberal in the classic sense.

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Thinking About “The Box”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I recently re-watched “The Box,” which my wife and I had first seen more than a decade ago. It is a horror movie based on the 1970 short story “Button, Button” by Richard Matheson, one of the writers of the original “Twilight Zone,” and Matheson’s conceit, a mash-up of science fiction and ethics as his work often was, had been turned into an episode of one of the reboots of Rod Serling’s creation.

If I recall, I didn’t make it to the end of the film the first time, because the set-up was so annoying. A strange, disfigured man shows up at a couple’s door with a strange box in his hands. It consists of a red button under a locked glass dome that must be opened with a key. The man explains to the stunned wife (her husband is at work, getting bad news about his job) that they have been chosen to be the recipients of a gift. All they have to do is push the red button, and the man will return to hand over a brief case filled with a million dollars, which will be tax free. However, when the button is pushed, someone, somewhere in the world, will die. He assures the wife that they won’t know the doomed individual. They have only 24 hours to consider the offer, at the conclusion of which the man will return and take the box away to offer to someone else.

It is, obviously, an ethics hypothetical that has been posed in many different ways through the years. What bothered me originally, and worries me now, is that anyone I would care to have in my community would ever push the button. (As you can guess, one of the couple does—“Why not? It’s just a box…” and a chain reaction is launched that causes havoc.)

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OK, I Know “Mary Poppins” Well Enough That When I Heard That the BBC Had Ruled That It Contained “Offensive Language,” I Immediately Knew Why

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Why, that is, other than the fact that the UK has been lobotomized by The Great Stupid even more than the U.S. has.

Do you know what was “offensive” in one of my all-time favorite movies without cheating? Think, now…

Time’s up!

It’s this: Admiral Boom, a senile neighbor of the Banks family whose sole purpose in the plot is to set up a running gag showing how the Banks’ and their servants routinely deal with his shooting off a cannon (the house shakes, furniture slides around, things fall off shelves, hilarity reigns), twice refers to “Hottentots.”

The British Board of Film Classification announced that the film was resubmitted for a rating this month in preparation for a theatrical re-release. The Borad reclassified if from “G” to “PG” for discriminatory language, a spokesperson explained. “Mary Poppins (1964) includes two uses of the discriminatory term ‘Hottentots’…While “Mary Poppins” has a historical context, the use of discriminatory language is not condemned, and ultimately exceeds our guidelines for acceptable language. We therefore classified the film PG for discriminatory language.” The term was once used by the British to describe the Khoikhoi and San nomadic tribes in southern Africa—surely you remember them?

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Did Oscar Hammerstein Jr. Have an Ethics Problem?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A series of random events have caused my mind to wander over to “Carousel,”the second musical by the legendary team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), following their ground-breaking “Oklahoma!” The 1945 work was adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play “Liliom,” and although it is a favorite of most critics (declared by TIME as the best musical of the 20th Century, for example, but what does TIME know?), its plot and characters become more troubling the longer one thinks about them. Rodgers said it was his favorite of his musicals with Oscar, and he was definitely in top form; I think his Overture to “Carousel” may be the best thing he ever wrote.

For the “hero” of the musical, Billy Bigelow, is a thug, a dolt, and a domestic abuser. I found the musical hard to take even as a kid for those reasons. When, in his justly famous song “My Boy Bill” after learning that he is going to be a father, Billy suddenly realizes that he might end up with a daughter instead (this only occurs to the big dummy two-third of the way through), his immediate conclusion is that he’ll rob and steal if that’s what it takes to raise her. Sure enough, that’s what he does: ultimately Billy gets himself mixed up in a dumb robbery scheme that goes sideways, and he is killed. The whole show is about his bad decisions and an ultimate opportunity given to him by God (or someone) to leave Purgatory (where everyone has to polish stars) and go back to Earth for a day to try to clean up the mess he’s made.

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Curmie’s Conjectures: Court Storming and the Absence of ‘Sprezzatura’

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

by Curmie

After the Wake Forest Demon Deacons beat the Duke Blue Devils 83-79 in basketball Saturday afternoon in Winston-Salem, hordes of Deac fans stormed the court .  Actually, the previous sentence isn’t quite accurate.  Video footage shows that several fans who had gathered under one of the baskets ran onto the court and were already at the free throw line before the game even ended.

These incidents are increasingly commonplace, abetted by television coverage of the events, even as the networks pretend to be appalled by the potential for injuries resulting from the practice.  Court-storming may be part of the culture of the sport, but there are—or at the very least should be—limits.  I have no problem with displays of post-adolescent exuberance, but the safety of players, coaches, and officials must be paramount.

The inevitable finally happened, and Duke star Kyle Filipowski was not merely jostled, but injured, in the melee, seriously enough that he had to be helped off the court.  As the recipient of a degree from the University of Kansas, I am morally and ethically obligated to despise all things related to Duke basketball 😉, but whereas I want them to lose every game, I don’t really want anyone to get hurt.

The exact extent of Filipowski’s injury is still unclear, but it certainly could affect both the Blue Devils’ chances for the rest of the season and post-season, and, importantly, Filipowski’s future.  He’s projected as a first-round draft choice, possibly even a lottery pick, in the upcoming NBA draft.  He stands to make tens of millions of dollars over the course of his career… assuming he can play.  There is such a thing as a career-ending injury, especially when we’re talking about knees, and that’s what this is; if this injury wasn’t severe, that’s only because of what Jack would call “moral luck.” 

The video shows that at least three different Wake Forest fans made contact with Filipowski as he was trying to leave the court.  Whether or not the bumping was “intentional” and “personal,” as Filipowski alleges, it was at best reckless and at worst criminal.  Let’s face it: the man is seven feet tall; it’s not like he couldn’t be seen.  The ethics of the situation, of course, would be the same if it had been a bench player, a student manager, a coach, or a referee who was injured.  The incident attracts more headlines because it was Kyle Filipowski who needed to be helped off the court, but the rationale for banning court storming would be the same. 

At least two other visiting players have been bumped into by opposing fans in court stormings this season.  One of them is Iowa’s Caitlin Clark , probably the most famous women’s basketball player in the country—even more so than WNBA stars.  She was “blind-sided” and actually knocked to the floor by an Ohio State fan in a court storming in Columbus. 

Imagine if she’d been seriously injured.  She wouldn’t have broken the NCAA scoring record for the women’s game, and she wouldn’t be closing in on the real record, held by Lynette Woodard.  (The NCAA wasn’t the organization in charge of the women’s game when Woodard played, and they’re being predictably petty, narcissistic, and anal retentive about recognizing Woodard.)

Oops.  Once again, I indulged in a little inaccuracy.  What I referred to above as “the inevitable” had long since happened, as ESPN’s William Weinbaum reports:

 In a 2004 court storm, Tucson H.S. star Joe Kay suffered a stroke & was partially paralyzed. “It’s way too long that we’ve been putting up with this,” Kay told ESPN Sat. after Duke’s Kyle Filipowski got hurt. “I’m completely in favor of banning court storms & field storms.”  Now 38, Kay said, “The police should arrest people for going places they are not allowed to go… enforce the rules as they do at other places. It’s exactly the same thing.” “Hopefully people will now come to their senses.”

The only thing that’s changed is that Filipowski is known by virtually all college basketball fans across the country, whereas Kay may have been a local celebrity, but folks like me in East Texas weren’t saying “OMG, Joe Kay got hurt in a court storm.”  Now, maybe, something will happen… but not unless the powers-that-be actually want it to, and that, despite the copious tut-tutting from the NCAA, conferences, universities, and the media, doesn’t seem to be the case.  Indeed, statements of concern and promises of future action from the likes of ACC commissioner Jim Phillips seem very much to be what my mom would call “balloon juice.”

Among those who have engaged in court storming this season, both in games in which their team beat Kentucky, were LSU women’s star Angel Reese and South Carolina President emeritus Harris Pastides, who even took to social media to boast about his participation.  The problem isn’t going to go away, even in the wake of an injury to a star player, unless there are real, enforceable, guidelines designed both to allow celebrations and to protect the visiting team.  And by “enforceable,” I mean sanctions that will be felt, not petty fines of a few thousand dollars to multimillion-dollar programs.

Jay Bilas, probably ESPN’s best analyst (and a former star big man for Duke himself), is outspoken about this issue:

“It’s got to stop but it’s not going to.  There’s no appetite in college basketball to stop it. The SEC has a rule against it but the institutions are happy to pay the fine because they like the visual. And the truth is, we in the media like the visual too.  We put it at the end of every highlight. Years ago, when people used to run out on the field or on the floor, we wouldn’t show it. That was our policy. We don’t have that kind of policies with court stormings. We like it. It’s not stopping and it’s a shame.“

Duke coach Jon Scheyer said after the game that when he played, “at least it was 10 seconds and then you could storm the court. Now, it’s the buzzer doesn’t even go off and they’re running on the floor.” 

Ten seconds isn’t enough, but 30 probably is.  It wouldn’t be difficult to institute a rule that no fans are allowed onto the court, ever, until 30 seconds after the final buzzer.  The mechanism already exists in the 30-second clock; let it serve another purpose.  The home university can forbid court storming altogether, but they must enforce the ban for 30 seconds.  If fans want to celebrate on the court and the home team doesn’t object, so be it, but not until the officials and the opposing team are out of harm’s way.

And if fans are on the court before the game clock has expired, that should be a technical foul on the home team in addition to the other penalties.  Would it have mattered this weekend?  Duke would have had two free throws and the ball with about a second left in the game.  Could they have forced overtime or even won in regulation?  It’s extremely unlikely, but the chances wouldn’t have been quite zero.

Whatever the exact rules become, violations must be punished severely.  At present, neither the NCAA nor the ACC (in which Wake Forest and Duke play) have any specific sanctions at all in place for court storming.  The home university must be responsible for enforcing the rules; failure to do so should be punishable by a significant fine even for the first offense.  I’d suggest $500,000 for the first offense, with half paid to the NCAA or the conference and the other half to the opposing school.  Subsequent offenses within a 36-month period would involve stiffer fines, loss of scholarships, and perhaps a prohibition against post-season play.

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Now, Both Sides of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” Performance at the Grammys

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I had decided, after exchanging views with EA columnist Curmie, that I would let this one go, but alas, I cannot. I have waited a long while to try to talk myself out of posting, but I won the argument with myself. Or lost.

There are few TV productions that interest me less than the Grammys, even in the narrow category of awards shows, which I abandoned for good after the quality of Broadway fare approached rock bottom (no more Tonys for me) and the Academy Awards decided to prioritize infantile politics over movies (Bye-bye Oscars!). The Emmys were always boring and terrible, and the Grammys interested me not one bit, ever. After the fact, however, two events at this year’s Grammys broadcast two weeks ago pinged my ethics alarms. First was the spectacle of a triple winner being arrested at the ceremony and hauled off in cuffs: silly me, I thought the police only set out to arrest people in the most embarrassing manner possible on “Law and Order.” The second was superannuated stroke victim singer/song-writer Joni Mitchell singing at the Grammys for the first time and getting an ovation for staggering through a mournful rendition of her most famous composition, “Both Sides Now.”

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When Ethics Alarms Don’t Sound (or Were Never Installed): Comedian Paul Currie Emulates Michael Richards

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

What was this guy thinking?

It is decidedly strange for any stand-up comic to decide to emulate Michael Richards, the talented physical comic who played “Kramer” on “Seinfeld.” Richards inexplicably blew up his career and reputation during a stand-up appearance on November 17, 2006, at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. Richards was annoyed by some heckling from a group of black and Hispanic audience members, and lost his mind, screaming “Nigger!” several times and making other racist references as the audience sat stunned and unamused. His career never recovered, nor should it have. Richards has never adequately explained the incident.

Australian comedian Paul Currie, however, must have been impressed, or something. For his finale to a stand-up show at London’s Soho Theatre, the comedian placed a Ukrainian and a Palestinian flag on the stage and invited audience members to stand and applaud. Hilarious! Wait, no, it had to be a set-up for a gag, right?

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My Annual Boycott the Super Bowl Edition…[Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Feb. 9th was the 60th anniversary of the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show, leading me to muse on what other momentous cultural (as opposed to political and international) events American society has shared in caring about and observing since. There haven’t been many. I remember that the first Super Bowl, when the AFL and the NFL agreed on a championship game between the upstart rebel league and the establishment attracted such intense interest and coverage (two networks covered the game—when has that happened since?) which was a wipe-out by the NFL’s Green Bay Packers. I didn’t know any families that didn’t watch that first one. Once upon a time, everybody tuned in to the Academy Awards: it was a unifying ritual, but no more. It is disturbing to think that there can’t be a unifying cultural event in the U.S. today, but I’m coming to that depressing conclusion.

Meanwhile, I hope you are boycotting the annual hoop-de-doo by the evil NFL, which happily kills its player for profit. This NFL season I didn’t catch a second of a single game, and wrote less about the cynical, ethics-free league than I have in years. The most recently discussed incident when an NFL head coach was pilloried for trying to inspire his players by extolling the teamwork of the plane hijackers who brought down the Twin Towers and bombed the Pentagon. I didn’t write about, but should have, a study from almost exactly a year ago that found chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of 345 former NFL players among 376 former players studied. That’s 91.7% compared to the normal incidence of CTE in the general public, which is in the vicinity of .4% I didn’t write about it because, as far as I can tell, none of the sources, ethics and news, that I usually check for ethics stories bothered to treat the study as newsworthy. I assume that’s because they chose not to issue a buzzkill on Super Bowl week.

Think about that for a while, assuming that you haven’t played professional football and can think.

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From the “Rules Are Rules” Files: The Matchstick Eiffel Tower

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

47-year-old Richard Plaud of France spent the past eight years assembling a model of the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks in order to become the Guinness Book of Records record-holder in that cherished category, “World’s Tallest Eiffel Tower Model Made Out of Matchsticks.”

Aside: How many parts of that sentence justify a “What? For God’s sake, why, and who cares?” Why is there a published record for matchstick models of anything? Does the Guinness Book of Records include records for matchstick Chrysler Buildings, Pentagons, Statues of Liberty, Golden Gate Bridges? Big Ben, the London Eye? What’s special about the Eiffel Tower? Why should holding an obscure record in a book few people read or care about matter to anyone except pathetic losers desperate to give meaning to their empty lives? How shallow must a man be to devote eight years to assembling something with no utility whatsoever other than to win him mention in that silly tome?

Back to poor Richard: after he completed his project, he discovered that even though his model, at 7.19 meters, is easily taller than the current record holder for matchstick Eiffel Towers, the 6.53-meter-tall model built by Toufic Daher in 2009, his opus was ineligible for the honor. Why, you ask? 

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Ethics Hero Elon Musk vs. Ethics Villain Disney

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Elon Musk is weird, impulsive, sometimes hypocritical and often infuriating. He is also a national treasure: a true Ethics Hero in the culture wars.

Back in 2021, Disney fired Gina Carano, one of the stars of the Disney+ series “The Mandalorian” because her social media posts were insufficiently supportive of the progressive cant Disney is obsessed with (to its financial and cultural sorrow). The triggering tweet was one in which Carano, a conservative (can’t have that in Hollywood!) compared Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish propaganda to efforts by the political left to demonize people based on their political beliefs. Proving her point, Disney canned her, explaining, falsely, that her “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Carano is now suing Disney and Lucasfilms. Her complaint can be read here. She is suing under California law, which states that
“No employer shall make, adopt, or enforce any rule, regulation, or policy: (a) Forbidding or preventing employees from engaging or participating in politics or from becoming candidates for public office. (b) Controlling or directing, or tending to control or direct the political activities or affiliations of employees.”

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