Ethics Dunces

Saturday In The Great Stupid Continues: The “Waiting For Godot” Catch-22

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I love this dispatch from The Great Stupid! It has everything…

  • It involves a theater production…
  • It’s woke academia at its worst…
  • Copyright and artistic integrity principles are at issue..
  • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mania is at its core…
  • It’s another “It isn’t what it is” (Yoo’s Rationalization) classic….
  • It didn’t happen here, but I could easily see it happening here, and…
  • It’s really, really, really stupid.

A bit of background: Samuel Beckett, the late Irish novelist and playwright of Theater of the Absurd fame ,best known for his minimalist drama and “Waiting For Godot” in particular, was a cantankerous old coot who didn’t trust directors (with good cause, say I), and directed them in his texts to change neither lines nor character, or risk legal action. Edward Albee was similarly strict on this point, having seen what happens to plays in the public domain (like Shakespeare’s works) when far less talented “artists” decide to make them “relevant.” So if you are going to produce a Beckett play, it’s Beckett’s way or the metaphorical highway.

Oisín Moyne, a fellow countryman of Beckett, was directing “Waiting for Godot” in the Netherlands and auditioned only men for the all-male cast of characters, as he was legally and artistically obligated to do. the college production been in rehearsals since November and was due to be presented at the University of Groningen’s Usva student cultural center in March. (Don’t ask me how or why it would take more than three months to rehearse this play, which primarily involves two guys sitting around talking, but never mind.) Continue reading →

From The Res Ipsa Loquitur Files: This Isn’t Diversity. This Isn’t Inclusion. This Isn’t LGBTQ Respect…

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

This is cruel and stupid.

And unethical.

The organizers of an international figure skating event in Finland last week decided to show their oneness with the times, known at Ethics Alarms as “The Great Stupid,” by featuring Markku-Pekka Antikainen in the opening ceremony of the ISU European Figure Skating Championships. Antikainen is a 59-year-old man who at age 50 decided to “transition” and become a female figure skater. He would have been just as successful aspiring to be a bunch of carrots. His skating name, which he will presumably use when he is featured in “Disney on Ice” (can you really say with confidence that that won’t happen?), is Minna-Maaria Antikainen. Continue reading →

Law Prof. Ethics Rule: Don’t Say Anything To A Student That You Wouldn’t Say Over An Open Mic…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Oops! Law professor Daniel Capra, an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, responded to a student complaint that he spoke too quickly in his lectures and international students were having trouble keeping up with a foreign language. Capra dismissed the compliant and and dismissed the students’ problems following hm as “assumption of risk.” Then, after the student walked away, he said, “Fuck!”

His class was being recorded, and a nearby microphone was live. Of course, the episode is being given maximal attention, life today being what it is. Above the Law gleefully weighed in, so did Law.com. Aditi Thakur, president of Columbia Law’s student senate, released a statement announcing that the student senate is “deeply alarmed” by Capra’s conduct. Gillian Lester, the dean of Columbia Law, said that she has told Capra that his “language, and the disrespectful attitude it conveyed, were unacceptable.” She also told students that she wanted to “express my own sorrow about this incident.” Sorrow!

Capra is also a professor at the Fordham University School of Law, so Matthew Diller, the dean there, had to pile on, saying, “His conduct was not consistent with his reputation as a teacher and scholar over many years or the spirit of inclusiveness and care for others that is at the heart of a Fordham education.”

Continue reading →

Gee, Could Massachusetts Democrats Come Up With A MORE Unethical Bill?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

[You know,  writing this blog of late has made me feel like I’m Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill I,” fighting O-Ren Ishii’s (Lucy Liu) personal army, The Crazy 88’s. The ethics stories just get worse and worse, especially from the world of government and politics, and they keep on coming. The mission of this blog is to, in some small way, try to encourage ethical analysis and sensitivity in the culture of a nation uniquely dependent on it, and all I see is the ethics in our culture, especially in the professions (which exist to be trusted) and our institutions (all of them) deteriorating rapidly and seemingly deliberately. The effort feels hopeless. Maybe a better analogy than The Bride’s mass battle in “Kill Bill I” is Viking king Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine) fighting gleefully and futilely in a pit full of hungry wolves in “The Vikings.” After all, Uma wins her fight. But Ethics Alarms is not directed by Quentin Tarantino.

What prompts these musings? This item from the State of my birth: Massachusetts Democrats have offered a bill giving prison inmates reduced sentences when they donate their kidneys and bone marrow. State Reps. Carlos Gonzalez and Judith Garcia came up with this monstrosity, which aims to create “The Bone Marrow and Organ Donation Program” within the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. Prisoners would be able to shave between 60 days to a year off their sentences. 

Talk about killing bills—I’d love that bill as a hypothetical in an ethics class, though I would think it might be too easy for anyone old enough to vote. In The Guardian’s story, we read that the bill “has raised ethical concerns.” YA THINK??? Continue reading →

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring Because They Were Installed Upside-Down And Backwards…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

There’s not a lot one can say about this astounding story or that needs to be said, but it still must be told because the head-exploding incident demonstrates just how completely ethically inert some alleged adults in authority can be. From there we must consider how our culture is failing if anyone could be raised in it for 22 years and do what Arlisha Boykins did.

That’s her above, taking a free throw in a basketball game. That game was being played by the Churchland High JV team, on which the players were 13-to 15-year-old girls. Arlisha was the assistant coach of that team—as I noted, she’s 22-years old—and when one of her team’s players who is 13 had to miss a game, Boykins masqueraded as her, wearing the player’s uniform and taking her place on the court for a January 21 contest.

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On The Plus Side, At Least There’s No Reason To Hold Any Illusions That American Journalists Will Even Try To Be Ethical Journalists In The Foreseeable Future…

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It looks like honking will do as much good as anything else.

Former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward interviewed over 75 media leaders to assess how the industry views the concept of “objectivity.”

The message they got was that objectivity was over-rated, and what really matters is diversity. Sure, that makes sense. Not really, but it was predictable.  Journalists, Downey and Heyward were told,  should include their own beliefs, biases, and experiences to convey “truth.” Journalistic objectivity was either unrealistic or undesirable.

“Objectivity has got to go,” said Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy,” said Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press. USA Today editor-in-chief Nicole Carroll said that she allows  reporters to write about their own experiences, so long as the stories aren’t “too biased.”

[That’s signature significance for editorial incompetence. Any bias is too biased.] Continue reading →

When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring…Or Were Never Installed: The Caring Asst. Principal

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

First of all, has Ms. Harvey (idiot/idiot/idiot’s) been fired yet? Why not? At least the principal reacted quickly, sending out this: Continue reading →

Cartoon Ethics, Part II: There…

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

AleXsandro Palombo, an edgy Italian artist who often uses pop culture images to make serious points, was hired to paint appropriate murals around Milan’s Holocaust memorial, which is located at Platform 21 inside the city’s main train station from which approximately  1,200 Jews were sent to Nazi death camps in 1943. Shortly before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Shoah Memorial Foundation discovered what the artist felt was appropriate art: characters from “The Simpsons” dressed as Jews at various stages of the Final Solution.

Doh! Continue reading →

Lies, Delusions And Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Rep. George Santos (R-Atlantis) is fortunate that he is surrounded by so many liars, hypocrites and fabulists that it is difficult to give him the attention and contempt that he deserves. The Clintons have been mercifully quiet lately, but George has still been fortunate in the culture that surrounds him.

For example, today President Biden (well, whoever he has authorized to tweet for him) once again invoked the oath “my word as a Biden,” declaring on Twitter, “My word as a Biden: I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am today.” Maybe Joe is really optimistic: he is, after all, a dolt. However, as that meme above by Newsmax’s Greg Kelly illustrates, the word of the Biden swearing that mighty oath has the credibility of Jon Lovitz’s Tommy Flanagan. (I have many more recent Biden lies archived at Ethics Alarms, notably his claim that he has never discussed Hunter’s business dealings with his son.) The biggest lie in that tweet is that there is any reason to trust this President.

Then there is the hypocrisy of retired tycoon Bill Gates, who now flies around the world telling ordinary people to lower their carbon footprints. Here’s a clip from a recent “60 Minutes””:” highlighted on “The Rubin Report,” whatever that is:

I don’t see Gates as particularly angry, just ridiculous. Not is he the worst climate change hypocrite: as one wag noted, if the elite who just met in Switzerland to discuss saving the world were serious, they would have held their conclave via Zoom and, I’d add, not have hired a biased, disgraced fool like Brian Stelter as a panel moderator. Gates is still a fine representative of this arrogant, obnoxious and unethical club.

Back to Lyingland from a short side trip to Hypocrisy Heights: Rep. Ilhan Omar visited CNN Sunday morning to claim that the anti-Semitic comments she has made, cited by House Speaker McCarthy as the main reason she has been booted from the House Foreign Affairs committee, were innocent and accidental. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Jack Phillips (of Masterpiece Cakeshop):

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

It is a basic life skill: quit while you’re ahead.

In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission acted in the grip of anti-religious bias when it enforced an anti-discrimination law against baker Jack Phillips. He had famously refused to bake a wedding cake celebrating the wedding of same sex couple Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins in 2012. But that was just a technical victory for Baker; SCOTUS chose not to rule did not rule on the macro-controversies over whether a business can invoke religious objections to deny service to LGBTQ people, whether a cake is art or just a product offered by a public accommodation, or whether forcing a baker to create a cake for a gay wedding is compelled speech.

Sadly, annoyingly, unethically and stupidly, neither Baker nor the activists who are determined to bend him to their will had the sense to declare a truce.

Continue reading →