Yikes. A performer who did this in one of my shows would have to enter the witness protection program, because I would be hunting her down. With a crossbow.
South Korean tenor Alfred Kim, responding to uproarious applause, was performing an encore of “E lucevan le stelle,” a famous aria in the third act of Puccini’s “Tosca” at an opera house in Seoul. His co-star, celebrated soprano Angela Gheorghiu who was singing the title role, marched onstage and demanded that he stop.
In the much-revered 1988 Kevin Costner film “Bull Durham,” veteran minor league catcher “Crash” Davis mentors a raw, talented rookie pitcher (Tim Robbins) and gets him ready for major league stardom. One of the catcher’s most audacious teaching devices is that when the cocky and none-too-bright pitcher insists on shaking off his signs, “Crash” tells the batter what the next pitch is going to be. Resulst: a massive home run and an chastened pitcher. It’s funny in the film.
The Minnesota Twins apparently have no sense of humor. The team released minor league catcher Derek Bender yesterday for emulating “Crash.” Bender was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Twins’ Low-A affiliate, and in the second game of a doubleheader last week, Bender tipped off several hitters for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, a Detroit farm team, regarding the next pitch starter Ross Dunn was going to throw. Lakeland scored four runs in the second inning and won the game 6-0 to capture the Florida State League West division and eliminate the Mighty Mussels from playoff contention.
Winston Churchill is often quoted as as observing that democracy is “the worst form of government except for all others.” In truth he was not so cynical: what he really said in a speech to the House of Commons in 1947 was that “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, and that public opinion expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.”
If he were around today and watching recent developments in our depressing Presidential race, however, I think Winston might go with the misquoted version.
Item: MoveOn, a progressive public policy advocacy group that has been much-derided on Ethics Alarms over the years, is partnering with Ben & Jerry’s radical Left co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield to release a special Kamala Harris-inspired ice cream flavor. (Send in related joke suggestions, by all means.) Limited edition pints of “Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee”are being released in a limited edition; it is a coconut flavored ice cream layered with caramel and topped with red, white and blue star sprinkles. Why coconut? This, apparently. (Winston is starting to roll already.)
The new flavor will be the center of the “Scoop the Vote” free ice cream truck tour that kicks off next week. Cohen and Greenfield will be on board while the truck makes 20 stops in the so-called battleground states as part of a push to register voters. Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, told USA TODAY that the tour aims to inspire voters to register and cast their votes for Harris in the 2024 presidential election, noting that even non-political activities like getting free ice cream have an impact on the election.
Norfolk Southern’s board has fired CEO Alan Shaw after an investigation found that he has been “engaging in a consensual relationship with the company’s chief legal officer,” the colorfully named Nabanita Nag. She was also canned from her positions as executive vice president corporate affairs, chief legal officer and corporate secretary.
Those are the lovebirds above.
Because this is a firing for cause, Shaw might have lost millions of dollars in what otherwise would be a “golden parachute.” This kind of vertical messing around is always stupid and unethical (but so romantic!), but it is particularly reckless for a CEO who is on metaphorical thin ice already, for then the “King’s Pass” is not going to be in play.
His two-year tenure included bitter labor negotiations that nearly resulted in an economy-crippling strike and the horrific derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that released tank cars full of toxic materials. This was not a good time for the company’s chief executive to go all Woody Allen.
But there is never a good time. When Cupid’s dart strikes, the only professional, ethical decision is to suck it up and resist, or play Edward the Eighth and abdicate “for the woman you love.”
The fact that Shaw was married to someone else should have giving him a strong hint that his ethics alarms should be ringing.
It’s been slim ethics pickin’s of late, probably because everyone is obsessed with the campaign and the Debate To Decide The Fate Of Democracy (or DTDTFOD for short). These things always launch ridiculous numbers of fake news items, like “How Trump and Harris Will Try to Attack Each Other at the Debate” on the Times website, a variety of what I call “psychic fake news;” “How Trump Has Used Debates to Belittle Women” (‘poisoning the well”) on its front page, and also “As Debate Looms, Trump Is Now the One Facing Questions About Age and Capacity.” Translation: The mainstream media Democratic shills want to make the election about “age and capacity.” Then we have the hilarious “Hillary Clinton Has Advice on Debating Trump: ‘He Can Be Rattled’” Taking advice from Hillary on how to beat Trump is like taking advice from George Foreman about how to beat Muhammad Ali. I chuckled at “Liz Cheney Accuses G.O.P. Trump Backers of Betraying Their Principles.” Kamala Harris literally represents the opposite of everything she and her father at least pretended to stand for until Trump Derangement struck. Still, there are some issues lying around that need to be cleared…
I love this story! It has everything…except any certainty about who is telling the truth.
Chad Condit, California Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil’s former chief of staff, has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her. He alleges that she pressured him into performing sex acts for her enjoyment when they were traveling together on her official business.
Point of interest #1: Does that name ring a bell? Yes, Chad is the son of Gary Condit, the former Congressman who was a suspect in the Chandra Levy disappearance and murder. He allegedly was having a sexual affair with her, an intern who worked in his office. Now, for this family, the alleged sexual harassment is on the other foot—well, you know what I mean.
Point of interest #2: Alvarado-Gila, meanwhile, is a longtime Democrat who recently got national headlines when she switched to the Republican Party, saying that the Democratic Party had become so extreme that she could no longer support it. I’m ruling that she is—if guilty, of course—is an embarrassment to both parties.
It continues to amaze to me that there are (once) intelligent and objective people who regard Liz Cheney as anything but a raging, emotion-driven, warped political hack at this point. The Axis and the Trump-Deranged like her for the obvious reasons, but isn’t there some point where even a mouth-foaming Trump-Hater is too silly to take seriously? Cheney crashed through that DETOUR sign when she signed onto Nancy Pelosi’s “Get Trump!” star chamber “investigating” the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol.
It isn’t even a non-apology apology.
Littlemore than two weeks ago, both Curmie and I wrote about the ridiculous “RayGun,” aka. Rachel Gunn, who made a travesty of the Olympics breakdancing event (which was arguably a travesty from its inception anyway) and who may have rigged the Oceana competition to represent Australia in order to get a free trip to Paris in exchange for making an ass of herself.
Now, apparently sensing that her metaphorical 15 minutes of infamy was expiring, she’s in the news again for issuing what the ethically-inert news media is terming an “apology.” In an interview with the Australian current affairs show “The Project” the 37-year-old university lecturer said this week that she is “very sorry for the backlash that the [break-dancing] community has experienced” following her performance.
The announcement that the shamelessly biased and wildly incompetent “media expert” Brian Stelter is returning to CNN and that the network is resurrecting “Reliable Sources,” the once legitimate media watchdog show that Howard Kurtz ably and fairly hosted until it was corrupted by Stelter, proves one thing. CNN, after a brief (and only partial) attack of conscience, is fully committed to being a metaphorical whore for the Left again. After all, it has to help save democracy! Here’s Stelter’s announcement:
This revolting development means that Stelter, Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, CNN’s most flaming propagandists and untrustworthy talking heads who were fired for disgracing even what is now laughingly called broadcast journalism, have found gainful employment, not at Hardee’s where they belong, but again in the field that they sullied by their presence. Continue reading
Clearly, I don’t follow pro golf like I once did: I never heard of this guy (at first I thought his name was the second row on my keyboard). Now I think I may write in his name for President.
Playing in the PGA’s $100 million Tour Championship, (never heard of that tournament, either) at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Sahith Reddy Theegala, an American professional golfer from Orange, California, called a rules infraction on himself, costing him two strokes. The self-reporting ended up preventing Theegala from tying for third place, and may have cost him five million dollars.
Ethics Alarms 