Arts & Entertainment

A Popeye: I Know It’s Just Another Stupid Slide Show But I Can’t Let “The Worst Actors Of All Time, Ranked” Pass Without Spitting On It

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I tried to restrain myself, I really did. I have a heavy backlog of ethics topics and some Comments of the Day from all of you languishing. But a post headlined “The Worst Actors of All Time, Ranked” on a website called Definitions.org sucked me in, and I’m annoyed.

To begin with, the clickbait headline is a lie, several lies in fact. Since every actor in the list of 50 “worst actors” is alive and was active in the 21st century, it can’t possibly be an “all time” list. Then, once you click on the title, the list magically becomes “the 50 actors the critics can’t stand.” Well, at least that explains why Natalie Portman didn’t make the list of 50 Worst.

I’m not even sure what criteria one could or should use to decide on the “worst actors.” Most over-rated (like Portman)? Narrowest range? If an actor plays a particular type better than anyone, even if he or she never tries anything else, that doesn’t make them bad actors. As a director, I have always maintained that at least 85% of the public could play at least one role in a major movie well.

Continue reading →

Last May 2023 Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I had one last chance to use the cheery song from “Camelot” again, so I took it. The 2023 revival of that show opened to near unanimous pans from critics in April (ironically); the book had been over-hauled by “The West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin, and arrived with black knights of the Round Table among other panders to the woke Broadway crowd. It also arrived without Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, which was the real killer: the original “Camelot” had iconic stars, lovely stars, spectacle, and a really bad book (unlike the classic book it was based on, “The Once and Future King” by T.H. White. It also had a wistful title song that was turned into the valedictory of the Kennedy Presidency, ending with “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot!“

In Sorkin’s version, Guenevere refers to the song as “dumb” and, later, as “that stupid song about the weather.” Nice.

Cheer me up with fascinating ethics observations, please:

Cognitive Dissonance Alert! Can I Still Ethically Enjoy “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’ve enjoyed that early Sixties novelty song “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport!” since I first heard it. It’s genuinely funny, employed black humor ahead of its time, and is cleverly written and performed. But I never bothered to learn who sang it or wrote it, until I learned the answer to both questions this morning when I read the obituary of Rolf Harris, who did both.

Rolf Harris was a popular British entertainer and TV personality who was convicted of sexually abusing young girls, and sent to prison. He never apologized to any of his victims (though he did apologize for using the racially charged slang “abo” in his hit song).

Ick. Here’s the Cognitive Dissonance Scale again…

The scale indicates positive and negative attitudes regarding people, places, subjects, events and ideas. Remember that like it or not, things that are connected tend to pull the things they are connected to up or down the scale. “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport!” is far from my favorite song, but it’s a solid +5 on the scale. Famous male celebrities who use their power and fame to sexually abuse children, however, are at least at -100, or lower. I don’t know how I can listen to a silly song and still be amused while my mind is telling me that the singer and author was a predatory monster.

And yet…and yet…I have written here many times that it is unethical to downgrade a critical assessment of a work of art because of the character of its creator, and that the art and the artist should be considered separately,

I believe that. I just don’t know that I can do it.

Boy, Is The Pro-Trans Mania Leading Us In Strange Places Or What? Now It Has Conservatives Accusing “The Life Of Brian” Of Not Being Bold Enough….

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Well, I sure didn’t see THIS coming.

When the Monty Python satire “The Life of Brian” was released in 1979, conservative groups, calling it blasphemous, called for protests and boycotts in the U.S. and Great Britain. Now, as two of the living and not-completely-senile members of the comedy troupe, Eric Idle and John Cleese, prepare to launch a stage version of the movie, conservatives are complaining that they aren’t willing to make the adaptation edgy enough.

In one scene that has taken on more significance lately than it seemed to have 40 years ago, a discussion between “People’s Front of Judea” members Stan (played by Idle, on the left above) and Reg (Cleese) involves Stan saying that he wants to be known as Loretta and to have babies. ‘It’s every man’s right to have babies if you want them,” Stan insists. When Reg points out that, as a man, he can’t have babies, Stan protests, “Don’t you oppress me.”

To hear conservatives describe the scene now, one would think it was the funniest scene in the film. It wasn’t even the funniest scene involving the People’s Front of Judea. But I digress: apparently after trial readings of the script for the stage version, Idle and Cleese decided that they should cut the bit.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Deceptive Magician

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Well, I just had my CLE program for tomorrow postponed for too few registrations, so I’m drowning my sorrows and salving my bruised ego with a weird ethics quiz. (It’s a really good seminar, too. Sigh!)

This one harkens back to the issue posed by my “David Manning Liar of the Month” feature on the old Ethics Scoreboard. Can someone everyone knows is probably dissembling, exaggerating, mis-stating matters or lying be judged by the same ethics standards as a normal person? The question obviously applies to habitual offenders like Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, but this quiz involves a professional liar. (No, not like Karine Jean-Pierre.)

Magician David Copperfield told CBS Sunday Morning that he sometimes posts fake videos online to mislead people who are trying to figure out how he pulls off his various illusions. Videos that explain how magic tricks work have become popular on the web, and Copperfield says he creates fake “explainers,” as they are called, to intentionally misdirect fans. Asked why, he replied, “Because it’s fun!”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it ethically excusable for a well-known magician to post a misleading video on the web, when a similarly misleading video would be unethical for someone else?

“The Ethicist” Tackles Diversity Casting in “Fiddler On The Roof”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I have to weigh in on this one, having dealt with non-traditional casting as a stage director, an artistic director of a professional theater, and as an ethicist.

Not following Ethics Alarms, an inquirer enmeshed in amateur theater had to resort to Kwame Anthony Appiah for advice regarding a controversy roiling a “well-regarded community theater.” “The director proposing the production has committed himself to colorblind casting,” the letter explains. “Others involved say that, in view of the Jewish community the play is about, they would consider this to be a cultural appropriation. How should we approach this conflict in values?”

Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Cal)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

That clip from yesterday has “gone viral,” as it should. It is also signature significance for an incompetent member of Congress and a party with no ethical standards.

First of all, why the Democrats think it is responsible or wise to treat FBI whistleblowers with the kind f contempt usually reserved for pedophiles, human traffickers and Klan members is a mystery. Then there is the grander question of why the news media is supporting the Democrats in this: after all, at issue is a corrupt and out-of control law enforcement agency.

Second, and most embarrassing of all, is the ineptitude of Rep. Sanchez and her staff, which obviously was ordered to do a deep dive into the social media accounts of the whistleblower witnesses in the Weaponization committee hearings to find dirt that could be used to discredit them. They found the wrong Twitter account, and yet Sanchez, adopting the accusatory approach and tone of Joe McCarthy, used a tweet from it anyway, demanding to know if the witness “agreed” with the mystery tweeter’s sentiment. Then Sanchez ended her self-humiliating questioning as if she had proven something other than the fact that she is an unapologetic fool.

What she should have said, when the witness told her she had the wrong account, was “I’m sorry,” then shut the hell up. I was immediately reminded of the memorable line delivered by Albert Finney (as attorney Ed Masry) at the end of “Erin Brockavich.” I wish the witness being abused by Sanchez had slightly rephrased it, and asked, “Do they teach members of Congress to apologize? Because you suck at it!”

Wait! Is THIS Peak Stupid In The Age Of The Great Stupid?

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

It’s a now-familiar tactic when minority groups seek attention and enhanced self-esteem: find a universally admired historical figure of note and claim that he or she was a member of that group. Abraham Lincoln was gay! Cleopatra was black! (That worked out well…) Jesus was gay AND black! Still, I didn’t see this coming, but the Great Stupid knows no bounds, apparently:

Worshipers at a Trinity College at Cambridge were treated to a sermon by Joshua Heath, currently seeking a PhD in theology. He argued that Christ takes on a transgender body in historical artwork, appearing both masculine and feminine in different paintings.  As proof, he displayed Jean Malouel’s painting called “The Pieta,” in which the body of Christ is shown with blood running down his side. Heath noted that the blood coming down from the side wound of Christ to the groin in the painting “takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance.”  “[I]f the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,” Heath concluded.

Oh. So if someone paints a portrait of me a few centuries from now showing me with the head of an aardvark, that would be solid evidence that I had the head of an an aardvark? Good thinking there, Ace. Paintings of Jesus prove absolutely nothing, as the “Jesus was black” advocates correctly pointed out. The evidence indicates he was probably dark-skinned and swarthy, and less than five feet tall. But trans is “in,” so we now have to debate whether Christ “identified” as a woman.

The residents of Woke World are apparently incapable of saying, “That’s ridiculous” when an “in” group is the topic, so Michael Banner, the Dean and Director of Studies in Theology and Religious Studies at Trinity College felt it necessary to endorse Heath’s fantasy. He wrote in response to a complaint about the sermon that Heath’s “speculation was legitimate, whether or not you or I or anyone else disagrees with the interpretation.” 

Can The Great Stupid get more stupid than this?

_______________

Source: Campus Reform

Two For The “Shut Up And Act” Files

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The ethical formula is to concentrate critical evaluations on the message rather than the messenger, but celebrities using their popularity and influence to push for policies they are unqualified to evaluate and activism they are too corrupt to promote have to be in a separate category. They use their cognitive dissonance scale weight to make irresponsible positions seem reasonable to those sad and numerous members of the public who assume that being rich, beautiful and talented automatically makes one wise.

I know the temptation for these stars of both the glittering and the shooting- variety is great, but it is their duty to resist it except in the rare instances where they have more practical experience and knowledge of an issue than the average airport show-shine stand proprietor, and fully functioning ethics alarms. (Remember: Hollywood shorts out ethics alarms .)

Two prominent actresses in recent days have illustrated the principle.

1. Kate Winslet

Winslet is one of my favorite actresses, but unfortunately she’s British. The British don’t understand or support freedom of speech and expression, as anyone who watched the anti-monarchists being hauled away by police at King Charles’ coronation can attest. Accepting a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for her performance in a show about the dangers of social media, Winslet said,

To people in power and to people who can make change, please criminalize harmful content. Please eradicate harmful content. We don’t want it. We want our children back.”

Shut up, Kate.

Who is “we”? What is “harmful?” Dim bulbs like Winslet, waving the “Think of the Children!” banner, will lead us right to Big Brother’s door. If you’re worried about what your children see online, set rules for them and enforce them yourself. Better yet, teach them about what social media is and how to avoid its many perils. Monitor what they are hearing from their teachers in school, if you want them “back.” Educate yourself, and then educate them. It’s your job, not the government’s.

2. Natalie Portman

Continue reading →

Civic Debate Ethics Tip: Don’t Use Words As Accusations If You Don’t Know What They Mean [Missing Link Restored!]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

That’s the newly designed Utah state flag flying above this post. A bill signed into law in March adopted it to replace the 1911 version that has been the standard for over a century. It looked like this:

Now I’ve been involved in the equivalent of flag redesign controversies several times: logo changes. It is always a mess. No matter how stodgy or outdated the current logo was, people were used to it, and hated the idea of a new one. No matter how innovative or well-designed the potential replacement was, board members would subjectively conclude it was ugly. Inevitably someone with no artistic skill or background would whip out a pad and doodle his or her idea of a good logo.

However, the issue at hand is the term being used in ultra-conservative Utah to turn the public against the new flag. It is being accused of being “woke.”

“Woke”? The flag includes at its center a beehive, just like the old flag, honoring the pioneers who arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Gov. Spencer Cox had declared that the beehive had to be prominent on any re-imagined flag, and promised to veto any design without it.

Continue reading →