Character

On Art, Conspicuous Consumption, Bananas and More

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I missed this pre-Great Stupid story in 2019, when it was a harbinger of stupid things to come, and so missed it again this year, when it was back in the news a few days ago. It wasn’t too long ago that Fred and Pennagain reliably alerted me to ethics stories around the web that I otherwise might have missed. A few of you do send me story ideas regularly, but something like this shouldn’t slip through the cracks.

“This” is this (Source of that movie quote?): Absurdist artist Maurizio Cattelan taped a banana to a wall at an art show in 2019 and called it “Comedian. He claimed that it was intended to force critics to consider how modern “art” is defined, but it just as easily have been a publicity stunt or a con. My wige considered Jackson Pollock paintings no more “art” than bananas taped to a wall. Performance artist David Datuna ripped the banana off the wall and ate it, so Cattalan just taped another banana to another wall. The New York Post recreated “Comedian” for just $5.75, but, see, because the Post isn’t an “artist,” that didn’t count.

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From the Harris Campaign, a Post Mortem That Will Stand As a “Bias Makes You Stupid!” Monument For the Ages…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

A social media commentator called Caesar listened to a long, long podcast exploring the Harris loss with her chief advisors and the architects—if you can call them that without choking—of her campaign, then summarized what he heard here. His summary is too long to summarize on Ethics Alarms, and based on the little I could stand listening to of the podcast, it seems accurate.

The major ethical use of the jaw-dropping results is as a perfect example of the Ethics Alarms motto, “Bias makes you stupid,” in its full, destructive, mind-blowing glory. There is denial and delusion here in abundance, beginning with Caesars first two summaries of what he heard in the post mortem:

  1. The campaign was perfect, and
  2. Harris was perfect.

They also tell you how warped the perception of these presumably intelligent people was and is.

Another unavoidable takeaway from the summary is that Democrats and progressives should be terrified about the prospects for their party if this stunning blindness is typical of their compatriots. They literally don’t understand, not merely why they lost, but also the nation, American society, our culture, our history, Donald Trump, how to process unwelcome data, the essential skills of self-examination and learning from mistakes, and more.

The summary also supports a conclusion I came to shortly after Kamala Harris was installed as Biden’s replacement as the Democrat’s Presidential nominee. The party will never be able to nominate a male, especially a white male, again until a woman finally is elected President. Like General Burnside’s doomed troops at the battle of Fredericksburg, it will keep charging up the hill with inadequate forcesas if there is realistic chance of victory though each failed charge makes the odds worse.

Museum Ethics: The Draft-Dodging Playboy and the Wright Bros. Plane

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The old TV show “Naked City” used to intone at the end of every episode, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” There are far more than eight million ethics stories in our country’s rich and surprising history. This is one of those, and I pass it along to you.

The Franklin Institute, a museum in Philadelphia inspired by the work of Ben Franklin and dedicated to the study of science, exhibits a plane built in 1911 by the Wright brothers. It was, they say, a gift from Grover C. Bergdoll, a strange man with a strange history who was once an infamous national figure but who is now forgotten.

He was a wealthy playboy who was heir to  a Philadelphia beer brewing fortune. He dodged the Great War draft in 1917, failing to report for military service. He was already known for his irresponsible conduct, taking flying lessons from Orville Wright and buying a plane from the Wright brothers that he used to buzz buildings among other stunts. He had  multiple accidents and traffic violations in automobile as a teenager, and served two months in jail after a head-on crash in 1913. Since he was rich and well known, the government decided to an example of him to discourage draft-dodgers, It  distributing wanted posters with his face and name, and when the soldier who supposedly was drafted to take Bergdoll’s place died in combat,  the New York had a front page headline, “Died Hero in Battle in Bergdoll’s Place.”

The story gets stranger. Bergdoll was finally captured in 1920 after an ongoing manhunt, and sentenced to prison for five years. He escaped after less than a year. He convinced authorities to temporarily release him from prison to  help them find a “pot of gold” that he claimed to have buried. Bergdahl escaped while his two U.S. Army escorts became distracted (they were playing pool at his family mansion), fleeing in his chauffeur-driven car to Canada, from which he travelled to Germany. He married there, but often returned secretly to the United States. Reported sightings of Grover were headlines news.

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The Ethics Alarms 2024 “It’s A Wonderful Life” Ethics Guide, Revised, Expanded, With A New Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

2024 INTRODUCTION

Last year I concluded that “It’s A Wonderful Life” really belonged in the Thanksgiving movie canon, not Christmas, but I still waited until the pre-Christmas madness to post the 2023 version. This year, I’m finally putting the classic where it belongs. I have always identified with George Bailey, though this year it is for different reasons. Like George, I often feel like I didn’t achieve and experience what I could and should have, that my choices too often didn’t pan out, that I barely missed some breaks (but not all) that I needed when I most needed them. This year, which has been clouded since Leap Year by the sudden death of my wife, best friend, business partner and #1 fan—that’s Grace Elizabeth Bowen Marshall in all categories—I have never felt the lesson of “It’s A Wonderful Life” more powerfully: “No man is a failure who has friends.” I don’t believe that, frankly, but my friends, neighbors, clients, colleagues and blog readers have sustained me generously in this difficult period, and I will always be grateful for that.

Last year I wrote, “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.” In retrospect, this reminds me of a joke my father was fond of: “One day as I sat musing, sad and lonely without a friend, a voice came to me from out of the gloom saying, ‘Cheer up. Things could be worse.’ So I cheered up and sure enough—things got worse.” Everything got much worse after I wrote that last year.

I re-watched the movie last night in preparation for revising the Guide. It made me cry at the end, because Grace so loved the final scene, and would tear up at Harry Bailey’s toast, “To my big brother George, the luckiest man on earth.”

Frank Capra must have felt that the movie was bitterly ironic. It was a huge flop, and destroyed his infant project with some other prominent directors to launch a production company called “Liberty” because it would give directors the liberty to put their artistic visions on the screen without interference from the studios. “It’s A Wonderful Life” was the first and last film produced by Liberty: it not only killed the partnership, it just about ended Capra’s career.

James Stewart was, by all accounts, miserable during the shooting. He suffered from PTSD after his extensive combat experience, and the stress he was under shows in many of the scenes, though to the benefit of the film. It is interesting that the movie is scored by Dmitri Tiompkin, a Russian expatriate who is best known for scoring Westerns like “Red River” and “High Noon.” He wasn’t exactly an expert in small town America, but his trademark, using familiar tunes and folk melodies, is certainly on display. Clarence, George’s Guardian Angel (Second Class), is frequently underscored with the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” because he is represented by a star in the opening scene in Heaven. The old bawdy tune “Buffalo Girls” is another recurring theme, an odd one for a wholesome film since the buffalo girls were prostitutes.

As usual, I noticed details in the film this time that escaped me in earlier viewings, and for better or worse, I have appended the Guide accordingly. I also must say that although I wrote the Guide, I enjoyed reading it, and, amazingly, some of my own words made me feel a little better at a time when my spirits are near an all-time low. In particular, the section on regret resonated with me. Good point, Jack!

Now let’s go to Bedford Falls…but first, a stop in Heaven…

1. A Religious Movie Where There Is No Religion

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I went back and forth whether to include Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz or Lauren Boebert in the early November post listing the most unethical candidates on the ballot from each party; I only had room for two more Republicans.  Ultimately I went with Greene and Gaetz, and now I’m kicking myself. In addition to being a repeat winner in this damning category and having a terrible Ethics Alarms dossier, Boebert may be the least credentialed member of Congress in a hundred years: a high school drop-out, she was the owner of a bar and restaurant called “Shooter’s Grille”(where she  encouraged the restaurant’s staff to carry guns openly) before getting herself elected to Congress by Second Amendment fans. She also could be the lost twin of Lacey Chaubert, the former child actress who played one of the high school idiots plaguing Lindsey Lohan in “Mean Girls” (and now a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie regular), except that Chaubert’s character (“That’s so fetch!”) appeared to be smarter than Boebert.

The woman literally is clueless regarding the proper behavior and comportment owed to her constituents and the nation as a U.S. Representative. Shortly after the election this month (she was elected to a second term) Boebert joined Cameo, a website where celebrities sell personalized videos to fans. Stay classy, Lauren!

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Ethics Villain: Ryan Borgwardt

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In “Double Jeopardy,” a 1999 thriller co-starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ashley Judd plays a woman whose apparently loving husband fakes his own death while on a romantic yachting trip with her, leaving behind manufactured evidence that gets Ashley convicted of murdering him. To be fair, Wisconsin resident Ryan Borgwardt wasn’t quite that diabolical. He just faked his death while  pretending to be on kayaking fishing trip and fled the country. Then again, Ashley Judd’s husband only inflicted his plot on his wife and a single child, while Borgwalt has three kids.

On August 12, Watertown, Wisconsin’s big news was the disappearance of devoted family man, Borgwardt, 44. An emergency search found his capsized kayak on Green Lake and his vehicle and trailer parked nearby. A local fishermen found Ryan’s fishing rod and a tacklebox containing his wallet and other belongings. Such a tragedy!

But Borgwalt was not as clever as the husband in “Double Jeopardy,” however, so an investigation eventually uncovered evidence that he was alive and had crossed into Canada. Border authorities confirmed that they had checked his passport a day after his “drowning.” After that, Borgwardt’s elaborate plot to abandon his family, apparently to begin a new life with another woman (this was also the motive of Ashley’s evil spouse), began to come into focus.

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Whoa! “The View” Has Had To Issue 36 “Legal Notes” So Far This Year

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The imposition of “legal notes” on “The View’s” panel of bigots, incompetents, liars and fools received a lot of attention last week because there were four of them, as ABC’s lawyers were quick to force clarifications on potentially defamatory statements by Sunny Hostin and the rest of the coven. Because I don’t watch the show ( because anyone who does is risking permanent brain damage or a stroke), I assumed this was a new development. The indispensable Axis media watchdog Media Research Center, which monitors this leftist clown act so I don’t have to, reports that in fact Whoopi’s gang has had to read 36 such disclaimers so far in 2024.

The ladies of “The View” seem to think this is funny. It’s not. The fact that so much of what they bleat on this daily show, which is, incredibly, categorized as a news program on ABC, has to be corrected in real time lest the network be subject to law suits is indisputable evidence that the cast is incompetent, lazy and vicious, and that ABC is irresponsible to allow them to remain on the air.

Condign justice may be coming Disney’s way: ABC News is being sued by Trump over on-air comments made on “Good Morning America” by co-host (and Clinton-allied hack) George Stephanopoulos when he kept asking Rep. Nancy Mace to comment on how Trump had been “found liable for rape.” Trump was not found liable for rape in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll even after New York stacked the legal deck against him as part of the Democrats’ lawfare strategy. ABC’s lawyers have so far failed to get the lawsuit dismissed and it is entering the deposition phase.

Asks PJ Media columnist Rick Moran regarding “The View” panel, “Is it that they feel so entitled that the truth shouldn’t matter, or are they so stupid they think that just because they believe something, it must be so?”

I’m pretty sure the answer is “Both.”

Ethics Verdict: The Trump-Deranged Harris Voters Are The Most Infantile Losers In US. Political History

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

There’s really no contest. EA has discussed the whining celebrities like Ellen DeGeneris who have abandoned their native country and the most remarkable democracy in world history because their favorite candidate—a spectacularly poor one—lost. We have discussed Rob Reiner, committing himself to a rest home because he can’t handle a competitive political process. We have talked about the social media hysteria and the progressives isolating themselves at BlueSky, a platform that censors conservatives. I have written about the people who are announcing on Facebook that if you voted for Trump, you are a racist and a fascist and not worthy of their friendship any more. But there is more…

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Breaking: Trump Has A New Attorney General Nominee, and Arguably, She’s Worse Than Matt Gaetz…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

It’s Pam Bondi.

Ugh.

  • She was the Ethics Alarms Unethical Prosecutor of the Year in 2016.
  • That year I wrote,

    “Florida’s attorney general Pam Bondi personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump while she considered joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates, AP reports Trump’s $25,000 donation to Bondi came from a Trump family foundation in a likely violation of rules surrounding legitimate activities by 501 C (3) charities, which are not allowed to engage in political grant-making. And Justice for All, a political group backing Bondi’s re-election,  reported receiving the check on Sept. 17, 2013 — four days after Bondi’s office publicly announced she was considering joining a New York state probe of Trump University’s activities.”

  • Still later, after the 2016 election, I wrote,

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Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Maybe The Year): Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia [Updated and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law, it’s because I want a court to pay attention to it. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”

—Bucks County Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, excusing Bucks County’s decision to count misdated or undated mail-in ballots after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court clearly stated that such ballots were invalid.

[Expanded commentary is below, after the original post.]

You can’t get much more unethical than that in so few words.

1. The edict about the invalid ballots wasn’t a court precedent, it was a ruling.  If she doesn’t know the difference, she has no business being a commissioner. If she does know the difference, then she was lying.

2. Next she invokes the hoariest unethical rationalization of them all, #1 on the list,, “Everybody Does It.”

3. The statement that people violate laws any time they want is false and a direct attack on the Rule of Law as well as the character of Americans. In fact, the vast majority of American obey the law. Continue reading →