Arts & Entertainment

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.

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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?”

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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?

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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

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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.

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Actor Richard Dreyfuss

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“Am I being told that I will never have a chance to play a black man? Is someone else being told that if they’re not Jewish, they shouldn’t play the Merchant of Venice? Are we crazy? Do we not know that art is art?…This is so patronizing. It’s so thoughtless and treating people like children.”

—-Actor Richard Dreyfuss, Academy Award-winner, lamenting the successful invasion of “diversity, equity and inclusion” into his profession and the movie industry.

Dreyfuss’s outburst was provoked when he was asked in an interview with PBS’s Firing Line about his opinion of the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences’ new DEI mandates, which will kick in for the 2025 Oscars. “They make me vomit,” the famously outspoken Hollywood liberal said. “No one should be telling me as an artist that I have to give in to the latest, most current idea of what morality is. What are we risking? Are we really risking hurting people’s feelings? You can’t legislate that. You have to let life be life and I’m sorry, I don’t think there is a minority or majority in the country that has to be catered to like that.”

The answers to Dreyfuss’s queries are, in order,

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If You Need Additional Evidence That Paying Attention To Celebrities’ Political Posturing Is Evidence of Crippling Gullibility—And You Shouldn’t—Here It Is

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

That’s Kim Kardashian above, the perfect embodiment of empty celebrity. She was one of many “glitterati” who attended the 2023 Met Gala on May 1, and willingly participated in the theme, “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty.” The whole event was billed as a tribute to the late fashion icon one of the all-time great designers, who was also indisputably a terrible person, at least according to the public pronouncements and signaled values of Hollywood’s, New York’s, cosmopolitan and the fashion world’s stars.

Piers Morgan, who, like a stopped clock, occasionally is spot-on accurate, was outraged by the event’s hypocrisy, writing,

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Hollywood Writers Fear That AI Might Replace Them. Tough!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The first Hollywood strike in 15 years began today, as talks with the studios broke down and the economic pressures of the streaming era sent unionized TV and film writers to picket for better pay. The strike has shut down most late-night talk shows, so it is already benefiting society. “No contracts, no content!” sign-carrying members of the Writers Guild of America chant outside various office buildings in Manhattan and L.A. The last writer’s strike shut down the industry for 100 days and helped send California into a recession.

As usual, the strike is about money. But far down the list of objectives for its contract negotiations under a section titled “Professional Standards and Protection in the Employment of Writers,” the union says it wants to “regulate use of material produced using artificial intelligence or similar technologies.”

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