Arts & Entertainment

Ethics Quiz: Christmas Dancing At The White House

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Relax…today’s ethics quiz has nothing to do with whether Jill Biden’s Christmas video featuring the modern ballet troupe Dorrance Dance is your cup of eggnog.

Rather it is this…

Is it responsible and ethical for the White House to use the holidays to promote a politically radical, anti-police, anti-white, Marxist organization like Dorrance Dance?

For Dorrance Dance is an overtly and outspokenly Marxist dance company that even prominently displays a quote from Angela Davis on its website: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” The group advocates defunding the police across the country, and prominently endorses Black Lives Matters, another Marxist organization.

The group’s radical politics are a bit buried on its website behind standard aspirational artistic blather like “Our goal is to engage with audiences on a musical and emotional level, and to share the complex history and powerful legacy of this American art form throughout the country and the world.” Well, yes, that, and ending capitalism and the United States of America as we know it in order to achieve “racial justice.”

My answer to the quiz is that as long as the group keeps its politics out of its work for the White House, good luck to them. They were engaged—I hope—because of their dance artistry rather than their contempt for the United States. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bidens had no idea what the group advocates.

Yes, it’s annoying that Dorrance Dance will undoubtedly use its White House gig as cognitive dissonance helium to elevate their public image into more positive territory than any organization connected to Angela Davis, Black Lives Matter and Karl Marx deserves. But if we chose our art based on the political sophistication and delusions of artists, we’d just end up with bad art.

Ethics And The 700 Million Dollar Baseball Player

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In Mike Flanagan’s latest horror epic, the Poe mash-up in which “The Fall of the House of Usher” is repurposed into a nightmare scenario for the Sackler family of Oxycontin infamy, the avenging demon named Verna, who sometimes appears as a raven, lectures a soon-to-be victim on the evils of greed:

So much money. One of my favorite things about human beings. Starvation, poverty, disease, you could fix all that, just with money. And you don’t. I mean, if you took just a little bit of time off the vanity voyages, pleasure cruising, billionaire space race, hell, you stopped making movies and TV for one year and you spent that money on what you really need, you could solve it all. With some to spare.

Yes, Verna is a communist and deluded, but it was impossible to read about the $700 million ten-year contract the Los Angeles Dodgers just gave baseball free agent Shohei Ohtani without that speech creeping into my thoughts. $700 million dollars?

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A Boy Who Identifies As A Girl Won An Irish Dancing Competition…Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I was thinking of making this an ethics quiz, but I couldn’t decide what to ask.

The Daily Signal reports—an exclusive!—that a teenage boy who identifies as a girl is heading to the Irish Dancing World Championships after placing first in the U14 2023 Southern Region Oireachtas competitions. The conservative website tells us that the winner competed as a boy and placed 11th in the world in the Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG) World Championships just eight months ago, in April 2023. (These kids just grow up and change sex so darn fast these days!). In the meantime, a “non-binary” contestant won another Irish dancing competition in August.

Irish dancing competitions are typically divided by gender. The Daily Signal reports, “Parents of girls competing in Irish dance are frustrated and outraged, saying that they cannot understand why a boy with physical advantages is allowed to dance against their daughters.” Huh? I would think a male would have only physical disadvantages in competing against girls in a dancing competition, just as a male dancer would be at a disadvantage trying to win the part of the Sugarplum Fairy in “The Nutcracker.” I assume female Irish dancers are supposed to appear, well, feminine while wowing judges with their footwork. If not, why is the competition restricted to girls?

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“Dr. Who” Ethics: Isaac Newton Was Indian? I Did Not Know That!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In the latest “Dr. Who” adventure on the BBC (if you don’t know about this long-running cult scifi show, google it), Sir Isaac Newton is played by an actor of Indian heritage:

This raises several issues, most of which Ethics Alarms has delved into before:

1. Does it matter? As Curmie declared in his Comment of the Day regarding my post about another BBC production in which Anne Boleyn was played by a black actress…yes, it does, but it depends on the context and the objective of the casting. The major consideration in any non-traditional casting is whether it works, meaning that the casting isn’t distracting, that it adds something to the work beyond being just a gimmick. (The black Anne Boleyn was a gimmick.) In Curmie’s opinion, almost nobody was likely to see the black actress in the role and think, ““I didn’t know Anne Boleyn was black.” I am less certain of that assumption in the case of a brown Isaac Newton.

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Magic Ethics: Making Sexism Appear Out Of Nothing!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I was not a bit surprised to learn that only around 8% of professional magicians are women, as yesterday’s New York Times feature informed me. Magic was one of my main hobbies well into high school, and I even put on a few magic shows. (I still have a trunk full of magic apparatus under my bed.) It was clear early on that while boys were suckers for magic tricks, girls were mostly bored by them. It is one of those pursuits like fast cars, baseball, ventriloquism, juggling, playing soldier, and poker that somehow tend to be hot-wired into male genes while being mostly absent from the females of the species. I don’t know why, and I don’t care why, frankly.

But that’s not the message the Times wants to convey. Focusing on a few female professional magicians (one of whom is performing because her late husband, Harry Blackstone, Jr, did), it tells us that the dearth of female wand-wavers is due to “sexism, wardrobe limitations and the enduring stereotype that women best serve as the audience’s distraction.”

Yes, it’s the disparate impact fallacy again. “I think for many years, no one really thought of the need for women to be the magician,” Gay Blackstone told the Times. “But now, as we’re coming up with different roles and different things we want to be doing, then there’s no reason why women can’t be just as great as men.”

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The Ethics Alarms 2023 “It’s A Wonderful Life” Ethics Guide, With A New Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

2023 INTRODUCTION

It’s time again for the Ethics Alarms annual posting of its ethics guide to perhaps the best ethics movie ever made, Frank Capra’s now iconic “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Past time, in fact: last year I concluded that the movie really belonged in the Thanksgiving movie canon, not Christmas. However, as I wrote in the 2022 preface,

 Like George, I often feel like I didn’t achieve and experience what I could have, that my choices too often didn’t pan out, that I barely missed the breaks that I needed when I most needed them…What makes our lives successful (or not), and what makes makes our existence meaningful is not how much money we accumulate, or how much power we wield, or how famous we are. What matters is how we affect the lives of those who share our lives, and whether we leave our neighborhood, communities, associations and nation better or worse than it would have been “if we had never been born.” It’s a tough lesson, and some of us, perhaps most, never learn it…I’m not sure I have learned it yet, to be honest with myself. Intellectually, perhaps, but not emotionally.

I have to admit that I still haven’t genuinely accepted the lesson of the film. Maybe it’s time to watch it again; I haven’t since last year, and recently I’ve been feeling a bit too much like George to get up the courage. I’m posting this the day after my birthday, an all-time low for the number of friends, colleagues and relatives who remembered it (five, and my wife didn’t recall until mid-morning, with my son remembering around 10 pm), cards (one) and gifts (none). I don’t care about any of those things really, but I once believed that with as much ability and talent I had been lucky enough to be born with, and the additional advantages of wonderful parents and citizenship in the United States, I would have achieved enough that, oh, I don’t know, I might have earned a Wikipedia page by now. It’s stupid; I know it is. This is a tough time for my business and my family, and a lot of the problems are the result of my own selfish choices and mistakes as well as my hard-wired proclivity to cause trouble and not back down after the consequences start becoming clear. I’m seriously considering not celebrating Christmas this year, and we have always been a big Christmas family, because several recent disasters  require the money to go elsewhere.

And yet, as I have been musing about all of this lately, I cannot deny that I, like George, have had a wonderful life, and, frankly, one that has been a lot more interesting and varied than George’s was. My various crazy projects and eventually defunct missions have been responsible for many marriages and many children, and now grandchildren. I’ve inspired some people to take risks that panned out well for them, and have advanced the careers of several artists. I’ve made a lot of people laugh. There are some plays and musical being performed more frequently now that my theater company rescued from obscurity, and, weirdest of all, a student theater organization that I started is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. And, of course, there is my son, who we adopted from a hell-hole in Russia and who is making the most of his opportunities in the land of opportunity.

It’s not a bad legacy. I’m not heading to the bridge, but I need to snap out of this mood…cue Cher!

I guess it is time for me to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” again….

1. “If It’s About Ethics, God Must Be Involved”

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Ethics Quiz: The Star’s Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Last month, actress Susan Sarandon became a deserving casualty of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck after she spoke at at a pro-Palestinian rally and said that American Jews feeling threatened by the pro-Hamas protesters, demonstrators and rioters (like the Cornell students who had to hide in their dorms)were “getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country, so often subjected to violence.” This epically stupid comment got her dropped by United Talent Agency, whose management is Jewish. As I noted here, “the agency concluded, probably accurately, that Sarandon’s comments diminished her value to them, and perhaps having a pro-terrorism client might deter more rational artists from seeking their aid.”

Apparently Sarandon, who has progressed through her romantic lead stage into and out of her mother role stage and now is getting grandmother parts isn’t quite ready to hang up her acting spurs, and decided that she had made a potential career-ending mistake that needed fixing. So she has now issued this apology:

Your first Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of December is…

Is her apology sincere, trustworthy, and sufficient?

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The Big Lies Of The “Resistance”: A Directory, Updated (11/29/2023)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[When I wrote the previous post adding Big Lie #10 to this compendium, I decided to read the whole thing again. That occasioned numerous updates (and repaired typos, of course.). I found it worth reading again; heck, I wrote it, and I had forgotten most of it. So I’m re-posting the revised version now…]

Introduction

The “Big Lie” strategy of public opinion manipulation, most infamously championed by Adolf Hitler and his propaganda master Joseph Goebbels, has, in sinister fashion, become a routine and ubiquitous component of the Left’s efforts to remove President Donald J. Trump from office without having to defeat him at the polls, and subsequently after his defeat, to attempt to prevent him from defeating a hopelessly inept failed successor. One of the most publicized Big Lies, that Trump had “colluded” with the Russian government to “steal” the Presidential election from Hillary Clinton was eventually exposed as such by the results of the Mueller investigation, the discrediting of the Steele Dossier, and the revelation that Democrats (like Adam Schiff) and the mainstream news media deliberately misled the public. and Democrats, with blazing speed, replaced it with another Big Lie that there was a “Constitutional crisis.” I could have added that one to the list, I suppose, but the list of Big Lies is dauntingly long already, and this one is really just a hybrid of the Big Lies below.

Becoming addicted to relying on Big Lies as a political strategy is not the sign of ethical political parties, movements, or ideologies. Perhaps there is a useful distinction between Big Lies and “false narratives,” but I can’t define one. Both are intentional falsehoods designed to frame events in a confounding and deceptive manner, so public policy debates either begin with them as assumptions, thus warping the discussion, or they result in permanent bias, distrust and suspicion of the lie/narrative’s target. For simplicity’s sake, because I believe it is fair to do so, and also because “Big Lie” more accurately reflects just how unethical the tactic is, that is the term I will use.

Big Lie #1. “Trump is just a reality TV star.”

This is #1 because it began at the very start of Trump’s candidacy. It’s pure deceit: technically accurate in part but completely misleading. Ronald Reagan was subjected to a similar Big Lie when Democrats strategically tried to denigrate his legitimacy by  referring to him as just an actor, conveniently ignoring the fact that he had served as Governor of the largest state in the nation for eight years, and had split his time between acting and politics for many years before that, gradually becoming more involved in politics and public policy. (Reagan once expressed faux puzzlement about the denigration of his acting background, saying that he thought acting was an invaluable skill in politics. He was right, of course.)

In Trump’s case, the disinformation was even more misleading, He was a successful international businessman and entrepreneur in real estate, hotels and casinos, and it was that experience, not his successful, late career foray into “The Apprentice” (as a branding exercise, and a brilliant one), that was the basis of his claim to the Presidency.

The “reality star” smear still appears in attack pieces, even though it makes even less sense for a man who has been President for four years. The tactic is ethically indefensible . It is not only dishonest, intentionally distorting the President’s legitimate executive experience and success,  expertise and credentials, it is also an ad hominem attack. Reality TV primarily consists of modern freak shows allowing viewers to look down on assorted lower class drunks, vulgarians, has-been, exhibitionists,  idiots and freaks. Class bigotry has always been a core part of the NeverTrump cabal, with elitist snobs like Bill Kristol, Mitt Romney, the Bushes, and George Will revealing that they would rather capitulate to the Leftist ideology they have spent their professional lives opposing (well, not Mitt in all cases) than accept being on the same team as a common vulgarian like Donald Trump. Continue reading →

Revisiting 2005’s “Good Night And Good Luck”: Yikes!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Re-posted below from July, 2019 is an Ethics Alarms essay about the ironic and troubling thoughts George Clooney’s film “Good Night And Good Luck” triggered when I viewed the 2005 film for the first time.  I watched it again last night, and its commentary on politics, journalism, the McCarthy era and television struck me as even more relevant than it did the first time. I highly recommend seeing the film again, and definitely watch it if you missed the movie entirely.

The last line in the post was “I think George Clooney might want to watch it again.” Now, maybe not: I think George is smart enough to  understand its resonances now.  July 2019 was in the middle of the Trump Presidency, and the McCarthy era’s political use of imaginary conspiracy theories to impugn and destroy its enemies seemed uncannily similar to the Russian collusion witch hunt recently completed to try to bring down President Trump. But 2019 was before the Biden administration, and its concerted effort to use any means necessary to make the U.S. a single -party nation. McCarthy wanted to the public think the Democrats were surreptitiously advocating Communism as he and his allies employed totalitarian tactics to prevail. Today it is the Democrats who have chosen to make the public fear the other party, only in 2023, they really are embracing Marxism, and use Orwellian tactics to cast Republican as aspiring fascists. Continue reading →

The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: Yeah, Thanks Lincoln Center, But I Think I’ll Skip “Jungle Book Reimagined”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Surely there are still some live theater production that are not arm-twusting agitprop and woke propaganda. Surely.

The production is described on the Lincoln Center website as a “rethinking of the Rudyard Kipling classic ‘The Jungle Book'” that “updates the original’s colonizer-centric perspective.” More specifically, the New York Times review tells us,

“Instead of a boy raised by wolves, Mowgli is a refugee girl separated from her family as sea levels surge. She is adopted by animals who have formed a peaceable kingdom in a city that humans have left behind. Many familiar characters appear, slightly altered. Baloo the bear is now a bear who was forced to dance by humans before escaping the humiliation. The Bandar-log monkeys are now former lab specimens, still traumatized by being experimented on but longing to replace their former masters. Kaa the python is dangerous and hypnotizing but also hung up on memories of captivity in a zoo.”

Gee-what-fun. Can a Disney version be far behind?