Character

They Just Couldn’t Do It…Critic Wesley Morris And The New York Times Blow Up Standards, Ethics And My Head To Try To Excuse Will Smith

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Two graphics are called for to introduce this ethics horror. This:

..because I had hoped against hope that I wouldn’t have to write another post about Will Smith’s attack on Chris Rock during the Oscars broadcast. But it is obviously and ethics train wreck now, and I have no choice. And this…

…because I am stunned, shocked, and disgusted, and think, or perhaps hope, that we have reached a tipping point where the sensible people in this nation say, “Enough!”

Spuds had woken me from a sound sleep up to go outside, good boy that he is, and though I was ready to go back to bed, I made the mistake of picking up the New York Times from my lawn. Then I made the bigger mistake of taking it to the bathroom with me, and the bigger mistake yet of turning to the Arts section. And there it was: an epic, head-exploding, all-in screed by Times critic Wesley Morris explaining why Will Smith was not really to blame for his astounding, incredible, unethical, unprofessional, unjust, infantile, and criminal attack on comedian Chris Rock (who will get his Ethics Hero award from me today). but just about everyone else and everything else was.

I’m taking a pause now because my head feels ready to go off again…

They just couldn’t do it, could they? The Left, the race-baiters, black activists, the news media and the opinion-making elite could not stop themselves from turning an attack by one black celebrity on another into another bigoted weapon in the “antiracism” war against American culture. I’m such an idiot. With everything we’ve seen, I just didn’t see it coming. Oh, I expected the racists and bigots on the right to try to make Smith actions symbolic of something rotten and predictable in black culture; except for the hypocrisy of its source, I agree with the assessment of Bernice A. King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King wrote, “Anybody who thinks ‘Black people look bad’ after the #Oscars already thought Black people look bad.” But I should have seen this stage coming, the desperate need to make Smith the victim instead of Rock, and someone, something, the wrongdoer instead of Smith. The big clue was the Oscar audience giving Smith a huge ovation after he had slapped Rock for an award he should not have been allowed to accept. I should read what I write sometimes: I already mused in one post about how different the response would have been if it had been Alec Baldwin slapping Rock.

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Additional Morning Thoughts: “Smith Vs. Rock At The Oscars” [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Last Night, I was shutting down my computer when I saw the Rock-Smith story, and dashed out a post at about 1am. Those were literally immediate reactions, and I knew nothing else about the broadcast except that Smith was allowed to stay, and that he later won the Oscar for Best Actor for a movie I didn’t see and am unlikely to, especially after his behavior last night.

I had some additional thoughts after my first coffee this morning.

  • Some people are suggesting that the episode was staged, even Ann Althouse, an Oscars fan for some reason. Ann needs to get out more. Trust me on this: it wasn’t staged. I am a stage director; I have staged such things. Actors are notoriously terrible at faking contact, and Chris Rock isn’t exactly a professional stunt man. Smith hit him with the flat of his hand, which saves him from broken bones: if it had been staged, it would have been a fist.

Furthermore, what happens near the beginning of any live show vastly influences the audience’s reaction to the whole evening: if the episode was staged, it would have been at the beginning, otherwise there was no point. That bit of ugliness toward the end clouded the ceremonies both for the live audience and the home audience, and especially undermined Smith’s  Best Actor moment. In addition, as Althouse finally convinced herself as she wrote her post, it put Smith’s wife in a bad light as well as the actor, embarrassed Rock, and made no sense except as a temper tantrum (or protective husband grandstanding) by Will Smith. Later, the Academy put out a pro forma statement that it didn’t condone violence, which would have been reasonable coming from anywhere but Hollywood.

  • I hadn’t seen what Jada Pinkett Smith looked like at the Oscars when I wrote the post last night, nor heard exactly what Rock said. She has shaved her head…you know, like me. And Bruce Willis. And the TCM co-host, Jacqueline Stewart. See?

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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Pledges To Recuse Herself From The Harvard University Affirmative Action Case

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

And that, as they say, is that.

I was wrong, Prof. Turley was right. He was certain that Jackson would recuse from the case because of the screaming conflict she faced by sitting on Harvard’s Board of Overseers. He wrote,

“It would be profoundly inappropriate for a jurist to sit on a case for a school in which she has held a governing position and a role in setting institutional policies. This would be akin to a justice sitting on a case on oil leases for Exxon while being a member of the oil company’s board of directors.”

I wrote, “That’s exactly right. But I bet Jackson doesn’t recuse.” Continue reading →

Well THAT Unethical Tweet Aged Particularly Poorly…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Biden’s tweet would have been unconscionable even if it hadn’t quickly turned out that Smollett was a hate-crime faker, a liar, and racial division-mongering fool. Like his former boss Obama, Biden didn’t have the sense to keep his uninformed and biased opinions from interfering with the judicial system, and not to try to exploit alleged crimes, uncertain crimes and uninvestigated events, accounts and rumors to exacerbate suspicion, fear and hate.

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ex-NY Governor Andrew Cuomo

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“If you want to cancel something, cancel federal gridlock, cancel the incompetence, cancel the infighting, cancel crime, cancel homelessness, cancel education inequality, cancel poverty, cancel racism.”

—-Disgraced Democratic ex-NY Governor  Andrew Cuomo, speaking at a Brooklyn church and claiming victim status in the “cancel culture.”

Wow.

This goes right into the Ethics Alarms “What an asshole!” file. It’s sickening virtue signalling (Hey look everyone! I’m against all these bad things! How can you not love me?) combined with throbbing demagoguery—not one of those problems can be “cancelled,” and he knows it—mixed with misdirection. We can and should cancel corrupt, abusive, bullying, ruthless sexually harassing men like Cuomo by finding them unfit to hold positions of influence and power, then kicking them out of public favor and their jobs permanently, because they are not worthy of trust.

Cuomo isn’t quite the monster Harvey Weinstein is, but his protestations ring just as offensively as they would coming from Harvey, who was, after all, just a Hollywood producer. Cuomo was entrusted by his state’s citizens with their welfare. Nobody, not even Harvey, deserves to be “cancelled” more than he does.

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Pointer: Althouse

Is This The Most Unethical Job In The World That Isn’t Illegal?

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Carolina Lekker, a Playboy model, says that she charges women up to $2,000 to approach their boyfriends on social media to test how faithful they really are.

She approaches unsuspecting men whose spouses or lovers suspect of being potentially unfaithful using Instagram and other social media platforms. After  enticing exchanges, she invites them to meet with her, and if they do, they are busted. Lekker then keeps the money and exposes their perfidy to their partner. If they resist their charms and prove their faithfulness, she returns the fee to the client.

Nice. (Incidentally, this is similar to the plot of Netflix’s “Clickbait,” on which I still have not managed to arrange the promised Zoom colloquy.) Continue reading →

Serious Question: What Kind Of Person Would Want Someone To Be U.S. President Who Would Consider Something Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 172 Comments

…never mind say it out loud?

During a speech to donors in New Orleans, Louisiana a few days ago, Donald Trump actually, really, honest-to-goodness said that maybe the U.S. could trick Moscow and Beijing into fighting each other by disguising its F-22 fighter jets with Chinese flags “and bomb the shit out” out of Russia! “And then we say, China did it, we didn’t do, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch.”

Oooh, good plan!

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Ethics Quote Of The Week: Actor Tim Considine (1940-2022)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Thank God there’s no justice in this world.”

Disney and “My Three Sons” actor Tim Considine, who died last week at age 82, in an interview quoted in his New York Times obituary.

Considine was referring to his success and rich experiences in life, which he felt were relatively undeserved. He did not regard himself as especially talented or ambitious.

The more I ponder his statement, the more profound I think it is. Understanding that there is no justice in the world is a necessary predicate for committing to an ethical life for the right reasons. Society needs as many people as possible striving to be good, having their lives exert a net benefit on others, and being exemplars of ethical values as often as they can. These habits and objectives must be committed to while fully understanding that they only collectively and on balance result in desirable results, and sometimes not even that. Continue reading →

Integrity Test: Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Will Be Conflicted Out Of The Harvard Affirmative Action Case If She’s Confirmed. Which Progressives Will Have The Ethics To Say So? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

And will she?

Stipulated: Judge Jackson is a fully qualified choice to succeed Justice Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. Also stipulated: she should be and will be confirmed and by a large majority, unless Republicans are as petty and foolish as I think they are.

However, the soon to be Justice Jackson has an unwaivable conflict of interest in the contentious Harvard admissions case, which I would term a “scandal.” Harvard unambiguously discriminates against Asian-American applicants to inflate the numbers of lesser qualified black and Hispanic students admitted to the college. In the era of The Great Stupid, when racial discrimination is treated as “antiracism,” this SCOTUS case is a high profile and significant one, and Future Justice Jackson has a dog in the hunt, as they say. Jackson serves on Harvard’s board of overseers, one of the University’s two governing boards. The board plays “an integral role in the governance of the university.” End of controversy. She’s integrally involved with a party in the case. It is a classic conflict, and cause for recusal. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: The Alamo, March 3, 1836

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Michael West’s dedicated account of the last days of the Alamo in 1836 continues with Day 10 of the siege, March 3. Michael’s mention below of the Alamo couriers reminds me of what I found to be the most moving of the commemorative bronze plaques at Alamo National Monument in San Antonio. It lists the couriers, and reminds us that every one of them headed back to the make-shift fort, knowing what was probably in store for them.

As far as I can determine, two of Travis’s final couriers didn’t arrive in time to participate in the final battle, and thus lived to tell the tale. James L. Allen (1815-1901) was probably the last courier to be sent by Travis, as he carried a final appeal to Fannin at Goliad. He reached Goliad on March 8, and was preparing to return to the Alamo when he learned that it had fallen. John William Smith  (1792-1845), who had been sent out from the Alamo by Travis previously, was sent again on March 3 1836. Smith was returning with 25 volunteers from when the Alamo fell. In John Wayne’s movie, Smith is played by Frankie Avalon, and is a composite of Allen, who was young (21) like Frankie, and the real Smith, who actually made it back only to find that the battle was over. Frankie’s big scene occurs when, having delivered a message relaying the fort’s dire situation to Sam Houston (Richard Boone), Houston offers him food and rest. “No sir!” “Smitty” says, turning his horse. “I gotta get back to the Alamo!”

Here’s Michael’s Comment of the Day on Day 10 of the Alamo story...

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