I usually use this video clip…
…from the memorable “Seinfeld” episode where George tries to talk his way out of being fired for having sex with the office cleaning lady on his desk, when someone does something so spectacularly and obviously unethical that it can’t reasonably be called “a mistake.” Lately, stories where George’s query seems appropriate have been an almost daily occurrence…like the high school teacher who accidentally showed porn on the class projector.
Turner Movie Classics decided to kick off Easter with an abject lesson in art and life for us all. The movie is 1965’s “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” One of the very greatest of American film directors was George Stevens, who specialized in smart comedies (the Hepburn/Tracy classic “Woman of the Year”), light-hearted adventure films (“Gunga Din”) and musicals (“Swing Time,” the best in the Astaire-Rogers canon). Then, as wonderfully told in the documentary “Five Came Back,” he joined fellow directing greats John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler and Frank Capra in documenting World War II for the public, the troops, and posterity at the high cost, for all of them, of their emotional and mental health. (Wyler and Ford also suffered serious service-related injuries).
Stevens, though, drew the assignment of filming the horrors at the liberated extermination camps. When he returned to Hollywood, he didn’t feel light-hearted any more. From then on he directed dramas with serious themes, and they were his best films, like “Shane,” “Giant,” and “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Finally, he took on his most daunting challenge, filming the life of Christ with an all-star cast befitting of the project’s importance. “The Greatest Story Ever Told” is terrible; I find the film unwatchable, and I’m not alone. Imagine the embarrassment of titling your movie “The Greatest Story Ever Told” and watching to turn out to be one of the worst movies ever made.
The bomb even has a special kick at the end when John Wayne appears as a Roman centurion staring up at Jesus on the cross, and says in the Duke’s trademark drawl, “Surely this man was the son of God!”
The Duke could shrug off, after all the resulting mockery; he had been more embarrassed playing Genghis Kahn throughout an entire film, Howard Hughes’ camp classic “The Conqueror.”
George Stevens, however, wasn’t used to bombing. The movie was a critical and box office bust, and the fiasco sent Stevens into retirement for five years. When he finally tried again, the director’s heart not only wasn’t light, it wasn’t in his work any more. “The Only Game in Town,” with Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty, was an even bigger disaster than “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” though it’s easier to sit though. After all, it’s an hour shorter, and John Wayne doesn’t show up as a centurion.
The life lessons? Hubris and humility…don’t get cocky. Next: Nobody is too good or talented to fail, even at what they are best at. Finally: Aim for the stars, but be prepared to crash and burn.
1. Speaking of Stevens’ “The Diary of Anne Frank,” there was a weird episode on Ann Althouse’s blog. In one post she quoted David Mamet in his just-published book, as saying in part,
“Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich… took an adolescent girl’s diary and raped it into “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a sitcom….”
Anne has many and large holes in her cultural literacy, especially regarding film. Her commentary left it open to question whether she really believed that Hackett and Goodrich had written a comedy based on Frank’s diary (They wrote a Tony Award-winning drama as well as the acclaimed film based on it), and passed on several comments by readers who took Mamet literally as well. An example: “Joan Rivers did an interview once about what things should never be the fodder for humor….Perhaps, younger people today are distanced enough from it for a sitcom about a Jewish family hiding in an attic for over two years who are then found and killed by the Nazis to not be in poor taste.” Another “Turning the Diary of Ann Frank into a comedy is a pretty loathsome thing to do. Things like Hogan’s Heroes worked because the Nazis were the main objects of the jokes. The victims of the Nazis aren’t.” There are others. Why would Ann let those comments through to make the commenters look like fools, especially since she helped lead them astray? Or is she, as I very much suspect, unfamiliar with the movie (which is moving and excellent)? Continue reading
I have been intending to examine the Disney empire’s misbegotten entry into the battle over Florida’s recently passed “Parental Rights in Education” law for weeks, but postponed the project because it is too complicated to do correctly without involving other complex issues that are closely related to it. Unfortunately, these issues have proliferated during the delay.
For example, Florida is threatening to remove Disney’s special status that allowed it to operate Disney World as an autonomous municipal government because of the company’s political action. Is that kind of punishment for a political opposition ethical? Should Disney have such special status, regardless of why it is being threatened with its removal? If the special status should be removed anyway, does it matter if it is done in response to political speech?
Here’s another: Republicans in Congress are threatening to end Disney’s copyright on Mickey Mouse, also in response to its LBGTQ activism. But that copyright should have ended decades ago, and its artificial endurance has stifled creative works blocked by thousands of other drawn-out copyrights that aren’t Disney. Now I am dealing with copyright law policy, the importance of Disney to the culture, and what, if anything, the government should do to–what? Reward it? Strengthen it? Direct it? Control it?
The Disney LGTBQ advocacy issue also involves, as virtually every issue does now, media ethics, as almost all outlets other than Fox have a clear pro-LGTBQ bias. The New York Times reporter assigned to covering Disney and the Florida law controversy is Brooks Barnes, and he can’t be trusted. In an earlier story last month, the reporter wrote,
Earlier in the week, Mr. Chapek, the company’s chief executive, botched an internal email to Disney employees. He was seeking to explain Disney’s public silence on anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation in Florida that activists have labeled the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
April 14 will always be the date that I associate above all else with Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, which occurred 157 years ago. Lincoln and the audience at Ford’s Theater laughed uproariously, as John Wilkes Booth knew they would, at the line “Why you sockdologizing old man-trap!” in the play the Lincolns and their guests were watching, “Our American Cousin.” Booth fired a single-shot derringer into the back of Lincoln’s skull, dreew a dagger and stabbed Major Rathbone, also in Lincoln’s box along with Mrs. Lincoln and Rathbone’s fiancee, in the arm, and dramatically leaped down onto the stage, shouting Virginia’s motto,“Sic semper tyrannis! (Thus ever to tyrants!) The South is avenged!” Booth caught his spur on a draped flag on the way down and broke his leg, but limped across the stage and out to waiting horse through a back stage exit. Lincoln never regained consciousness.
Not only was it the first and still most spectacular of the four Presidential assassinations [Notice of Correction: I originally wrote “five,” not because I can’t count, which is what usually happens, but because I was counting Reagan, because he was actually shot. Moron. Thanks to Steve-O-in NJ for alerting me, or I’d have to ban myself from the blog for passing on “misinformation”], Booth’s act and subsequent events, oddities and coincidences launched perhaps the first widespread political conspiracy theory. I wrote in 2010,
[A]s a teenager, I became fascinated by the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. A best-seller at the time was “Web of Conspiracy,” an over-heated brief for the theory that Lincoln’s War Secretary, Edwin Stanton, and others in the military were in league with John Wilkes Booth. The author, a mystery writer named Theodore Roscoe, was constantly suggesting sinister motives by asking questions like “The sealed records of the official assassination investigation were destroyed in a mysterious fire. Was the War Department afraid of what the documents would prove? Would they have implicated Stanton? We will never know.” This tactic is on view regularly today, used generously by the purveyors of modern conspiracies…
Then again, sometimes conspiracy theories, even unlikely ones, turn out to be true. There was sure a lot of smoke around Lincoln’s assassination (after all, there really was a conspiracy, as Booth had at least five co-conspirators working on his plot for months), and it didn’t help when Robert Lincoln, Abe’s son, was caught burning his papers and told the man who interrupted him (allegedly) that he was doing so because the contained proof that a member of his father’s own cabinet was involved in his assassination. Yet none of the components of the Lincoln conspiracy narrative have held up to scrutiny, except as tantalizing suspicions.
1. First, the rest of a story...Two weeks ago Ethics Alarms covered the story of Kychelle Del Rosario, a fourth-year medical student at Wake Forest School of Medicine, who appeared to admit in a tweet that she deliberately caused pain and discomfort to a patient because he had mocked her “preferred pronoun” pin. After her tweet was seen, circulated and attacked on social media, she deleted it in an attempted cover-up. Wake Forest suspended her pending an investigation, which is now complete. It’s conclusion: Del Rosario was grandstanding, implying that she stuck the patient a second time when she had turned the job over to a supervisor. “Our documentation verifies that after the student physician was unsuccessful in obtaining the blood draw, the student appropriately deferred a second attempt to one of our certified professionals. The student did not attempt to draw blood again,” the university stated.
But had she deliberately missed the vein the first time to punish the “transphobic” patient? Wake Forest believed her statements that she had not, saying, “Our review revealed that the description of the patient encounter on social media does not reflect what actually occurred. We also determined that all of our procedures were followed while caring for this patient.” For her part, Del Rosarion, who expects to be reinstated, said,
“For the event mentioned in the tweet, I was performing a blood draw on a patient and during our conversation they had shown dismay at my pronoun pin,” she said. “I calmly shared my thoughts about pronouns and did not escalate the situation further. When I was doing the blood draw, I missed the first time due to my inexperience as a student, and per our policy, my supervisor performed the successful blood draw the second time….[I] never intended to harm the patient.”
She also wrote an apology to the school for her inflammatory tweet, admitting to “poorly representing” the school and the healthcare system. [Source: Campus Reform] Continue reading
This sign was apparent seen on the Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis campus.
What’s going on here?
Is Purdue taking a stand against the miserable treatment of free speech on so many other campuses? Is this a student prank? Is it satire? Should we find it depressing or encouraging? If it is the work of students, will Purdue remove it? If it is a statement by the school, will students or faculty protest?
This story combines many Ethics Alarms themes of late: Georgetown University’s ethics corruption, progressive racial discrimination, woke hypocrisy, and, of course, The Great Stupid.
Georgetown’s Campus Ministry has scheduled to two events specifically for black students. First is an online “Black Hoya Meditation” tomorrow, advertised as a gathering “grounded in belonging and centered on healing and wellness.”
Isn’t “belonging” the opposite of “inclusion” when it is limited my color or group membership? “Healing” from what? Presumably from all the white supremacy-inflicted carnage. Or something Continue reading
For “don’t ring,” maybe substituting “don’t exist” would be appropriate. I question the competence and sanity of any parent who would allow their child to attend Sarah Lawrence College after this.
You can read the details of the astounding story here and here, but I’m not especially interested in the evil Larry Ray, who was just convicted in New York on 15 counts including extortion, forced labor, sex trafficking, obstruction of justice, and various financial crimes, and faces life in prison. Nobody needs an ethicist to explain that his conduct was unethical (I hope!). I’m interested in this [From the Washington Post]:
After a federal securities fraud conviction, charges related to a custody dispute and a bail-jumping case, Ray was released from a stint behind bars in 2010.He began living at his daughter Talia’s dorm suite at Sarah Lawrence, a private liberal arts college in Westchester County, just north of New York City. There, he encountered Talia’s roommates and injected himself into their lives. Ray cooked meals and hosted late-night chats for the college sophomores, promising them he could help them lead “better, more honest lives…He told them that he had special training that could help them gain clarity and discipline…He said if they shared their deepest feelings with him, he could help resolve their problems…
Claudia Drury was 19 when she met Ray at the dorm suite called Slonim Woods 9. She testified that after drawing her into his orbit, Ray eventually physically abused her. At the same time, she said, he convinced Drury that she had tried to poison him and owed him huge sums of money as a result.
Eventually, Drury told jurors, she worked four years as a prostitute, meeting clients in hotel rooms and paying Ray $10,000 to $50,000 per week. In 2018, she said, Ray suffocated her with a plastic bag after she told a regular client that his name was on a website Ray created to post embarrassing and damaging information he could use to control her.
No ethics warm-up for two straight days leaves me with a big pile of stinking undiscussed and aging issues and events….
1. So much of “in sickness or in health”...Baseball Hall of Fame lock Albert Pujols, recently signed to another multi-million dollar contract to be the St. Louis Cardinals designated hitter, waited a couple of days after his wife Deidre underwent surgery removing a brain tumor to announce he was divorcing her. “I realize this is not the most opportune time with Opening Day approaching and other family events that have recently taken place. These situations are never easy and isn’t something that just happened overnight,” he wrote in part. Yeah, I’d put the baseball stuff after the family stuff, Albert. I’m sure this came as no surprise to his wife (at least I hope so), and whatever part of the $344 million he has been paid through the years will definitely help, but especially with five children, letting his wife at least recuperate from a traumatic operation before dumping her would seem to be the more ethical course. Pujols’ reputation is one of being a nice guy; you know, like Will Smith.
2. Watching free speech get “chilled” in real time...at the Grammys—who watches the Grammys?—host Trevor Noah began by promising that the he would be keeping “people’s names out of [his] mouth,” referring to Smith’s shouted demand after he went slap-happy. And he did. Today the New York Times critic approved of Noah not taking “meanspirited swipes.” If Chris Rock’s mild joke about a woman choosing to shave her head for a public appearance is now “mean-spirited,” the Left’s attempt to shut-down all comedy (except meanspirited swipes at men, whites and Republicans, of course, is nearing success.
3. Calling the Humane Society and the ASPCA! Martha Stewart announced that her four dogs killed her cat when they “mistook her for an interloper and killed her defenseless little self.” Did the dogs sign a statement to that effect? Her four dogs constituted a pack, and making a cat try to coexist with a pack of dogs is irresponsible. What really happened, I’s surmise, is that the cat and one of the dogs had what would have normally been a brief altercation, and the pack instinct kicked in for the other three. Continue reading
There is nothing discriminatory, bigoted, ant-gay, anti-trans or unethical in the “Parental Rights in Education Bill’ signed into law by Florida Governor Jim DeSantis. Have you read it, or just relied on the hysterical and dishonest characterizations of the bill by the news media and woke activists like the three Oscar co-hosts, who chanted “Gay, gay,gay, gay!’ like four-year-olds in supposed bold and hilarious defiance of what progressives have been calling the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Read the law. It doesn’t prohibit saying “gay” at all (the word doesn’t appear in the law), and as unfortunately vague as the wording sometimes is, no fair interpretation would find that it inhibits free speech.
Here is the closest wording in the bill to an “anti-LGBTQ” provision, in Section 3, page 4:
3. Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.
The Horror. Only the most committed and unhinged gay activist could find that provision problematic, and the fact that so many progressives do is signature significance: they lave lost touch with common sense and reality. The law isn’t anti-gay, it’s pro-parent (and student). Any parents who really think their 4-8 year olds need to be trained in human sexuality are welcome to do it themselves. I would not want my child introduced to those topic by kindergarten through third grade teachers, even if I had the opportunity to closely examine the teachers’ qualifications for doing so and the way it would be done. This is not their job, and no, I wouldn’t trust them to take it on if it were. They have a hard enough time teaching language, arts, math, science and history. I don’t trust them to teach ethics. Continue reading
I wasn’t exaggerating when I noted in the morning ethics horrors round-up today that March, 2022 was an ethics catastrophe speeding up, if anything, in the month’s waning hours.
The above revolting tweet was authored by Kychelle Del Rosario, a fourth-year medical student at Wake Forest School of Medicine. In answer to a tweet by someone complaining about “transphobia,” the future doctor—you know, “First, Do No Harm”?—appeared to admit—with pride!—that she deliberately caused pain and discomfort to a patient because he had mocked her (obnoxious) “preferred pronoun” pin. Then, when her despicable tweet was seen, circulated and justly condemned on social media, she courageously deleted the evidence in an attempted cover-up.
