Ethics Dunces

Stop Making Me Defend Pete Rose!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Pete Rose, baseball’s all-time hit leader who received a lifetime (and justified) ban from baseball for betting on games while a manager, was my very first Ethics Dunce, way back in January of 2004, on the old Ethics Scoreboard. Since then Pete has come up here often, with a thick and varied ethics dossier. The man is a slimeball; there is no disputing it. He knowingly violated baseball’s most inviolate rule; he lied about it in more than one way; he ended up in jail for defrauding the IRS; he has attempted multiple schemes to cash in on his own misconduct. Rose is the poster boy for the King’s Pass: he assumed that rules and laws didn’t apply to him because he was a Great and Beloved Player. Yes, he was a great, beloved, unique and entertaining player, but Pete Rose wouldn’t know an ethical value if it were nailed to his forehead.

And yet…the most recent attack on Rose’s character is contrived and unfair.

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Performing Arts Ethics: Amateur And Professional Ethics Dunces, Part 2…The Amateurs [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In Part 1, I wrote: “Performance artists generally and across all levels and regions tend to be incompetent at ethical analysis, and their ethics alarms aren’t merely dysfunctional, they are warped.” Unfortunately, this applies to aspiring performance artists among amateur ranks as well.

RGV Productions works  with The Door Christian Fellowship Ministries of McAllen, and thus was responsible for live-streamed performances of a youth production of the Broadway hit “Hamilton” this weekend at the Door McAllen Church in McAllen, Texas. The production added scenes and dialogue and changed lines. During the climactic (and historical) duel between Aaron Burr and Hamilton, for example, the titular character says, “What is a legacy? It’s knowing you repented and accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ that sets men free. You sent your sinless son of man on Calvary to die for me!”

Sure doesn’t sound like Alexander to me! At the end of the show, a pastor delivered a sermon that included a passage you will never hear on Broadway, except as satire: “Maybe you struggle with alcohol, with drugs, with homosexuality, maybe you struggle with other things in life, your finances, whatever, God can help you tonight. He wants to forgive you for your sins.”

Uh, can’t do that.  The licensing rights to perform any show that hasn’t passed into the public domain specifically forbid it. Now, to be fair, RGV Productions and the church never obtained the rights: they are still unavailable, as is the norm when a Broadway show is in its initial run. Never mind: these disrespectful scofflaws did the show, or their mutant version of it, anyway. Continue reading →

Performing Arts Ethics: Amateur And Professional Ethics Dunces, Part I…The Professional

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

More than a decade ago, while I was the artistic director for a Northern Virginia professional theater I had co-founded, I offered the greater D.C. theater association a draft ethics code that I had developed after I realizes that the ethics alarms of the typical area theater professional were approximately the same as those of the average drug cartel boss. The response was telling: I received a formal thank-you, but was told that the theater community had no interest in ethics, and had done just fine without any code.

This attitude is not unique to Washington D.C. and environs, or regional theater. Performance artists generally and across all levels and regions tend to be incompetent at ethical analysis, and their ethics alarms aren’t merely dysfunctional, they are warped.

From the world of professional performing, for example, we have this controversy, arising from the announcement that actor James Franco (far left), a Portugese-Swedish-Jewish American, has been cast as Fidel Castro in a film project, and celebrated Hispanic actor John Lequizamo (on the right) was outraged over the casting choice.  “How is this still going on? How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well?” Leguizamo wrote. “No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers! Boycott! This F’d up! Plus seriously difficult story to tell without aggrandizement which would b wrong!”

As you can see, the actor was so upset that he lost the ability to communicate in coherent English.

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It’s “Be Kind To (Cute) Rapist Teachers Week” In Texas

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

That’s former Houston-area middle school teacher Marka Bodine above. Isn’t she pretty? Much too pretty to have to be in an icky old jail. So despite the fact that she was convicted of grooming, harassing, raping and continuously sexually abusing a 13-year-old student until he was 16 years old and finally alerted authorities, Bodine was only sentenced to to 60 days in jail with 10 years of probation. Shades of the infamous 2005 case of Debra Lafave, another sick but comely teacher who raped one of her 14-year-old students! Her lawyer successfully convinced the judge that their client was “too pretty for prison,” and honestly, who can argue with that? Here’s Debra:

As you can see, Marka isn’t quite the hottie that Debra was, so it’s only fair that she got some jail time. But wait! There’s more! Because Marka had given birth shortly before her sentencing (the baby was not her rape victim’s—Whew!— that would be the saga of teacher rapist Mary Kay LeTourneau), Harris County Judge Greg Glass postponed her imprisonment for a full year. Continue reading →

Rationalization #22 Hall Of Fame: Ana Navarro

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Normally a truly stupid statement by a punditry bottom-of-the barrel (that is, “The View”) feeder like Ana Navarro wouldn’t justify a stand-alone post on Ethics Alarms. However, Rationalization #22, The Comparative Virtue Excuse or “There are worse things,” is a blight on human thought, an excuse for the inexcusable, and the rationalization that opens the door to endless society blunders and maladies. This desperately needs to be understood by a controlling majority of American society, and getting utter fools like Navarro laughed and mocked off of television, even arid ranges like “The View”—where the dolts and the idiots play, and all of the words are discouraging—is paramount.

Oh, right, I almost forgot: her Hall of Fame-worthy statement. Here it is:

“I’ve yet to see a kid that dies from being exposed to a drag queen.”

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When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring: The Self-Disqualification Of Rep. Louise Frankel (D-Fla.)

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Now THAT was a freak-out…and a particularly telling one.

Richard Kline, owner of City Diner in West Palm Beach, Florida, dared to display the campaign poster above, promoting Rep. Louise Frankel’s Republican opponent in the upcoming November election. Frankel has eaten at the diner for many years, and made it clear that this obligated the owner to support her re-election campaign, or at least not to oppose it. When someone told her about the presence of the poster in the diner, she stormed into Kline’s establishment and began berating and threatening him. Of course someone caught it all on cell phone video, and posted the scene on YouTube.

What did she think would happen? In addition to indicating that the Congresswoman has no self-control, believes she is entitled to power, and has no respect for a constituent’s right to support whatever candidate he or she chooses, the outburst demonstrates that she’s not smart enough to be entrusted with lawmaking.

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“A Nation Of Assholes,” Congressional Division

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Nice! There has been a recent outbreak of further uncivil, undignified speech and communication from members of Congress, who are, unfortunately role models and set help societal standards. The recent outburst have come from Democrats, though the phenomenon is not limited to that more rapidly rotting party….on the other hand, no Republican House member has yet said, in reference to President Biden, “Let’s impeach the motherfucker!” as Rep. Rashida Tlaib  did regarding President Trump. On the other hand, two Republican House members, Bill Posey and Jeff Duncan, evoked “Let’s go Brandon!” during House, which is the equivalent of  “Fuck Joe Biden.”

Chuy Garcia’s tweet is special, though. The Cook County House rep’s deep dive into vulgarity against  a random critic on Twitter was in print (though he deleted it eventually) and was unethical, unprofessional and unseemly in many ways. “Retarded,” of course, is a banned word in Progressive World. “Dipshit” is not acceptable discourse by an elected official, nor is “fucking” and its variations, though Rep. Talaib would doubtless argue that the normal rules don’t apply when the target is Donald Trump, just like “journalists” now argue that his existence justifies their routinely—but righteous!—biased and misleading reporting. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Ex CNN Anchor Chris Cuomo

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I saw a lot of brave men and women deciding to take somebody on who had a tremendous amount of power and who had come at them by name too and that’s a scary thing.”

—-Disgraced CNN star Chris Cuomo, celebrating himself and CNN for slanting new reports in order to oppose Donald Trump.

Cuomo could not have made a stronger case against the left-biased news media if that had been his objective. Many of his statements to Bill Maher in Cuomo’s appearance on HBO’s “Real Time” would serve as well as the above to prove just how arrogant and unethical Cuomo’s previous profession has become. For example, there is this: Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month (And Unethical Quote Of The Month Too!): Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Really…what an idiot. There is no excuse for a political party allowing someone this obnoxious and stupid to run under its banner for Congress. After all, stupid people have a strong majority in many districts, and parties have an obligation to mitigate this democracy-mocking problem by at least trying not to nominate candidates like Matt Gaetz. Ethics Alarms didn’t need his latest embarrassment to make this observation about Gaetz: he already earned it several times over. Just peruse his EA dossier. Gaetz’s most recent mention here for being like he is was in April, and a year earlier I expounded on his creepiness at length, concluding in part,

I have seen enough to conclude that Rep. Gaetz is a creep. I don’t like creeps, and as a general proposition I don’t think creeps should be in positions of influence and power, because you can’t trust creeps. They are ethically “bent”….I know that Gaetz is a creep because he screams creepiness, like his stunt of wearing a gas mask on the floor of the House of Representatives during debate over the first pandemic aid bill, and joining a group of Republicans who forced their way into a closed congressional witness deposition during the run-up to Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. ...Then there’s his revelation last year that he has been living with a 19-year-old non-biological male, un-adopted “son”, Cuban immigrant Nestor Galban, whom he met when Galban was 12 and Gaetz was dating his older sister.

Or just listen to the guy.

As in so many other cases, the fact that someone like him could be elected speaks horribly about the voters in his district, the party that nominated him, and the state of democracy generally. His various statements show him to have a scarlet “C” on his forehead.

All of which is a prelude to his most recent episode: saying this to a crowd of Turning Point conservatives yesterday:

“Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.”

But that’s Matt!

Observations:

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Wow! Extreme Ideology And Resistance To Stubborn Reality Leads To Astoundingly Unethical And Irresponsible Policies…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand how intelligent officials—and by “intelligent” here I only mean “smart enough to put their socks on before their shoes”—-can possibly convince themselves that ignoring common sense and the collected wisdom of centuries as well as the acquired knowledge of recent decades will have anything but disastrous results. But here we stand:

  • In June, the California Highway Patrol arrested two men after a search of their vehicle revealed a stash of cocaine and 150,000 fentanyl pills. Based on the amount of drugs involved, they were booked into jail with an initial bail amount of $1 million each. (Fentanyl kills people.) But a pre-trial risk assessment of the suspects resulted in the men being classified  “low risk,” so they were released on their own recognizance without either the local D.A. or law enforcement officials being consulted. The two men, 25-year-old Jose Zendejas and 19-year-old Benito Madrigal, faced up to 14 years in state prison. They were expected to show up back in court on July 21. Shockingly, they did not. Nobody knows where they are.Their release is part of the social justice movement to eliminate bail because it discriminates against poor people. It also helps with the over-incarceration problem, because it allows criminals to get away with their crimes and harm society again, while broadcasting the message to other would be criminals that they are in a low-risk, high rewards profession as long as they stay where fantasy-blinded progressives run things….like California.

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