Etiquette and manners

How Cultural Norms Change…or Rot, Depending On Your Perspective

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Jefry Yan, a minor league pitcher renowned as an oddity for his bizarre and unique manner of celebrating strikeouts finally got to perform on the major-league stage this week. In the New York Mets’ 6-5, 10-inning win over with the Cleveland Guardians this week, Yan preserved a one-run New York lead in the sixth inning, striking out two Guardians in the process and punctuating each strikeout with his characteristic, er, flair.

Not long ago, maybe a couple of decades, a rookie pitcher who acted like that during a game would be taken to the metaphorical woodshed by a coach or a veteran player and told, “Kid, that’s not how we act in the Big Leagues. Don’t do it again.” One reason would be that the team he “showed up” by celebrating would make sure their pitcher hit his team’s star player in the ribs with a fast ball as soon as the player came to bat. Before the Designated Hitter, when pitchers had to bat, a hurler who behaved like Yan would be taking his life into his hands.

Now MLB has adopted the attitude of “let the kids play” to appeal to younger fans. Being a “Get off my lawn” guy, I don’t like Yan’s antics much, and I suspect a lot of batters don’t either. But I also remember how Dick Radatz, aka “The Monster,”the huge Red Sox closer in the Sixties who for three years may have been the greatest relief pitcher ever, used to throw up both arms over his head in a victory gesture when he ended a game with a swinging strike-out, as he inevitably did. It wasn’t as outrageous as Yan’s split, but at the time it was considered audacious.

And the fans loved it.

Mets Manager Any Green isn’t worried that Yan’s antics will cause any issues with the opposition. “I worry far less (today) than 20 years ago,” Green said. “I think he has developed a reputation throughout the game that this isn’t showing up anybody else, and people have accepted, largely, that this is a good-natured human who’s enjoying being on the field playing baseball. We didn’t have many minor-league teams take issue with his enthusiasm. They end up smiling at it if they’re not the one getting punched out.”

Yan is a bit defiant. “I’m going to continue to go out there the same way, to go out there with the same emotion to have fun as if I’m playing a kids’ game, like I always have,” Yan said before his Mets debut. “I’m going to enjoy that first (strikeout), like it’s my first and last one. I’ve worked a long time for that moment.”

I would offer two points. One: his displays of joy will become less tolerable if he doesn’t have consistent value to his team. The second is that I worry about the gimmick becoming a slippery slope. At what point do such eccentricities constitute “making a travesty of the game,” an offense that remains in the rulebook? What’s next? Pitcher’s doing “the worm” after strikeouts? Trotting out a home run backwards, as emotionally-troubled baseball star Jimmy Piersall once did? Cultural norms exist for reasons. Sometimes we don’t remember those reasons until it’s too late.

Hey Asshole: Look Up and Say “Hello!”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I had a doctor’s appointment today. Taking the elevator from the 9th floor to the lobby, I encounter one you man riding in the elevator already, with his face buried in his phone. Two more riders got on at stops as we went down. All walked in already focused entirely on their phones, and their eyes didn’t move. I looked around for a friendly face, a smile, some hint of humanity. Nothing. I came this close to booming out, “Well, hello, everybody!” (I did that once.)

I regard this behavior as simply rude, and its slow but steady development into a social norm as ominous for society and the species. I was already pondering the problem earlier in the week after seeing another one of those Progressive ads about the coach who tries to stop young couples who have become home-owners from “turning into their parents.” It’s a funny series, but in this particular installment, most of the conduct from the young homeowner was simple friendliness to a stranger.

Indeed, my father was always prone to chat up strangers. Not my mother: if you weren’t Greek, a family member, or someone already known to her, you were presumptively an enemy agent or a disguised invader from outer space. In this realm, as with many others, I took Dad as a role model, and experience has taught me that it is the right approach to the world and society around us. For one thing, I have learned how a random act of attention and kindness can brighten an otherwise dreary day.

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Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Rep.Chuck Edwards, R-N.C.

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Is it really that hard to not be a total asshole while you are an elected representative supposedly serving the public good? Members of Congress represent the nation, our Constitution and the Founders while they have that honor. Why can’t they all recognize their duties, which include being a role model and not bringing disrepute upon the institution, and conduct themselves accordingly? (To turn it around a bit: why are voters so lazy and inattentive that they elect such creeps?)

Today’s featured creep is GOP Rep.Chuck Edwards, who just dropped out of the race for his seat, leaving his party with no candidate and no incumbant going into a crucial mid-term election that will determine whether Congress spends the next two years impeaching the President. He wrote on “X” yesterday,

“After much prayer and reflection, I’ve decided to withdraw from my re-election campaign. I will complete my current term. Serving Western North Carolina has been the honor of my life. Thank you for your trust, prayers, and support. God bless WNC and America.”

Gee, he mentioned prayer twice and God once in a 43 word post; I guess that means he must be a good man. (I’m sure a disturbing number of people believe that.) If serving was such an honor, why did he behave like Harpo Marx ? The House Ethics Committee recommended this week that Edwards be censured for “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers.” Translation: he engaged in sexual harassment in the workplace.

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Trans Activism Ethics Train Wreck Caboose: The “Hadestown” Affair [Revised]

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

The producers of hit Broadway musical “Hadestown” have fired veteran musical theater star Geno Segers from the cast. Though the the production did not announce a reason for the decision, everyone in the industry knows what lost him the job.

Segers had taken to social media to posted his views on transgender athletes playing in women’s sports. “I don’t see transgender people becoming oppressed or being oppressed … life is unfair” he posted, along with, “I’m not against anyone living out their lives the way they want, but I am against their rights superseding the rights of other people. That’s a little bit foul.” He also mocked the posting of preferred pronouns: “If you asked me what my preferred pronouns are and it’s not obvious to you that I’m a he/him, that I’m good with he/him — Surely you don’t need any help. I’m not wearing a dress.”

The social media Furies descended on the actor with a vengeance, accusing him of being transphobic, homophobic, yada yada. You know the script.

Prof. Turley believes that the performer’s human rights have been unfairly and hypocritically “curtailed,” writing in part,

“Other actors have expressed support for transgender players without any response other than praise in the latest example of the rising McCarthyism on the left.This is only the latest termination over the political views of artists in New York. As the song states in Hadestown, “It’s an old song. It’s a sad song. But we’re gonna sing it anyway.” We have previously discussed how private companies can fire employees for public conduct or statements that bring controversy to their business or products. However, even though the First Amendment does not govern such controversies, there remains a free speech issue. Free speech goes beyond the confines of the First Amendment and private companies can engage in censorship that curtails this human right. The question often comes down to consistency in companies enforcing content-based standards. I did not like some of the comments of Segers, but there is little question that equally strong comments against “cisgender” athletes or for transgender athletes would not result in such termination…Whether it is actors, athletes, or academics, there is a demonstrably different level of tolerance for controversial views on gender. Take Segers’ statements, swap the nouns or pronouns, and ask yourself if there would have been a cancel campaign, let alone a termination. It is not the fact of the controversy but the lack of consistency that is so problematic in these areas.”

Yes, but. This is Broadway, and a Broadway musical. Broadway’s audience pool is shrinking and its ticket prices exclude all but the relatively wealthy. Musicals are especially dependent on the the affluent LGTBQ demographic: I would wager that the percentage of gay Americans who have heard of “Hadestown” is double or more the percentage of non-LGTBQ members of the public. Having a prominent cast member in a Broadway musical making public comments that are likely to offend its core audience is unacceptable, and the producers were only protecting their show, their investment, and the rest of the company by sending Segers packing.

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Trump Derangement Update, 7/30/26

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

One of my oldest (in both senses of the word) friends is a history professor at a major university here in the D.C. area. The things he posts on Facebook are head-exploding: like the mutation of his former rational self that EA expatriate Curmie has morphed into under the gamma rays of Trump Derangement, my scholarly friend frequently makes arguments I would expect from Ben Stiller’s character in “Tropic Thunder.”

Today he posted several defenses of Anthony Fauci, who is literally indefensible, comparing Rand Paul’s correct, factual and fair evisceration of the villain to a Soviet show-trial. Before that, the Professor posted with approval the following attack on the late Lindsay Graham by professional snot Andy Borowitz. I knew Andy in college. He was a standard issue Harvard Lampoon guy, overly convinced of his own wit and a sucker for a cheap shot. Whatever formula he developed over the years obviously works: he’s created and written successful sit-coms, has been a successful stand-up comic, and his satirical columns have been syndicated all over. That his major employers have been The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The New Yorker should tell you all you need to know about Andy’s biases, and partially explains this effort which my Trump Deranged friend found so trenchant.

I think I’ll footnote it to make my commentary more accessible…

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The Revolting Shiloh Hendrix Case

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

The last time I wrote about this Minnesota ethics train wreck more than a year ago, I began with “Yecchh! Pooey!” I would now like to add, “Ick! Barf!” I hate this story.

The latest revolting development is that a Minnesota jury convicted Shiloh Hendrix of a single charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct last week for repeatedly calling a black man who confronted and filmed her at a Rochester playground “nigger.” Hendrix also directed the slur at an 8-year-old black boy who had been going through her purse.

Because Hendrix’s speech was the conduct underlying the disorderly conduct charge according toMinnesota law, we have a controversy over whether using “nigger” as this awful woman did falls within the narrow “fighting words” exception to speech protected under the First Amendment.

The six-person jury returned its verdict after four days of testimony in Olmsted County District Court, finding Hendrix, 37, guilty on the count involving using “nigger” in her exchanges with videographer Sharmake Omar. She was not found guilty on the count involving the child. The full sentence: a stayed 90-day jail sentence, supervised probation, 200 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.

We are told Hendrix did not speak before sentencing. Good.

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National Anthem Ethics: Mini-Drama At Wrigley Field

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The ethics in the now viral incident at the start of a Chicago Cubs baseball game are clear as a mountain stream. A Gen Z slug was ignoring the National Anthem, a Vietnam vet sitting behind him took offense and demanded that he stand, and when the kid resisted, gave him a sharp slap “upside the head.” Then the young fan finally stood up.

The online debate is contrived. Of course…

  • …the young fan was being disrespectful and deserved the rebuke
  • …he was also being ignorant, forgetting that there are a lot of veterans who take loyalty and reverence to the nation they served very seriously; my father would have said something to him
  • …he still had a right to sit if he chose to, though doing so was unethical,
  • …hitting the kid was indefensible, even if the contact was light and more symbolic than serious, and
  • …the young fan showed good judgment by capitulating and not allowing the conflict to escalate.

Further observations…

1. To his credit, the slapper says that he regrets the slap.

2. He also says he and the kid shared a beer at the game. That speaks well of the young man. It is also very typical of the kind of human comradery I have witnessed at baseball games many times over the years. Everyone there has a bond with everyone else—they are baseball fans and usually fans of the same team.

3. Lots of the critics of the veteran remind us that the slap was battery. No, it wasn’t assault: assault is when the victim is placed in fearful anticipation of unwelcome contact; battery is the contact itself. Since the slappee was hit from behind and didn’t see it coming, there was no assault, just battery.

4. Though technically a tort and a crime, the chances of either getting substantive legal redress is about zero. De minimis non curat lex.

5. If the slapper was the kid’s father, mother, or sibling, we never would have heard about the episode

5. Questions: would the veteran have handled the situation the same way if the kid had been black? Female? A Muslim? My guess: no, no, and no.

6. If the kid was with a group of peers, would he have stood? Would the vet have confronted him if he were with friends?

7. Would a black fan have behaved the same as the white kid? Maybe. If not, however, the incident would be characterized as a racial clash by the media.

Yikes! An Entire State Supreme Court Flips Out And Attacks The U.S. Supreme Court! (Yes, That Is Unethical)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Several Ethics Alarms reader alerted me to this gobsmacking story, further evidence that the political left in this country is in the process of suffering a nervous breakdown. I am still not certain I am glad they did.

The court alluded to in the title is the Hawaii Supreme Court. That state needs to be given a bit of leeway for its excesses and delusions: Hawaii, even after more than half a century as our 50th state, is still a very different culture from the other 49. That’s part of its charm when you visit there, but it also has allowed a problematic mindset to linger. Hawaiians just don’t think the usual rules should apply to them, even in relation to the Constitution. Two years ago, in State v. Wilson, the Hawaii Supreme Court wrote that “[t]he spirit of Aloha clashes with a federally-mandated lifestyle that lets citizens walk around with deadly weapons,” and that Hawaii would read the Second Amendment “differently than the current United States Supreme Court.”

Oh. Except that a state can’t do that.

More recently, the same justice who wrote that defiant legal nonsense authored a full-on attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, tacked onto a rather mundane case about prosecutorial misconduct. I will re-publish the whole amazing section below, but KABOOM! It is head-exploding. The diatribe, because that’s what it is, covers voting rights, campaign finance, abortion, religious liberty, the Second Amendment, the major questions doctrine, Chevron deference, the spending power, the removal power, and birthright citizenship, while accusing the Roberts Court of being racist.

Such tangential rhetoric is known as dicta, parts of a legal opinion that carry no substantive legal weight at all since it is pure opinion without definitive case authority. Even dicta, however, is subject to certain professional and ethical constraints. The Hawaiian Supreme Court rantis a bright line breach of several tenets in state’s Code of Judicial Conduct.

Canon I states, “A JUDGE SHALL UPHOLD AND PROMOTE THE INDEPENDENCE, INTEGRITY, AND IMPARTIALITY OF THE JUDICIARY AND SHALL AVOID IMPROPRIETY AND THE APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY.“

Under that banner are three mandates: Rule 1.1. Compliance with the Law, Rule 1.2. Promoting Confidence in the Judiciary, and Rule 1.3. Avoiding Misuse of the Prestige of Judicial Office. A statement that announces that a judge does not feel bound by U.S. Supreme Court decisions violates Rule 1.1. A judge attacking the integrity and motives of the U.S. Supreme Court undermines confidence in the judiciary, as prohibited by Rule 1.2. A judge using the prestige of his office to impugn a higher court is by definition an abuse of office, breaching Rule 1.3.

But wait! There’s more!

Canon 2 states, “A JUDGE SHALL PERFORM THE DUTIES OF JUDICIAL OFFICE
IMPARTIALLY, COMPETENTLY, AND DILIGENTLY.”

The anti-SCOTUS section shows a judge giving priority to his partisan and political beliefs over his duties as a judge, violating Rule 2.1. His unhinged attack on past SCOTUS jurisprudence indicates that he is incapable of “upholding the law,” and that he is also incapable of “impartial” conduct. Moreover, the opinion constitutes a flagrant bias based on political affiliation, breaching Rule 2.3.

The outburst is even worse than the many rules violations suggest. The logic is tortured, the law is bad, and the arguments are hysterical as well as not based in reality; worst of all, the Hawaiian judges appear not to understand how SCOTUS fits into the Constitutional governance formula. The core goal underlying the tantrum is an arrogant belief in judicial activism and judges usurping legislatures, as the Warren court did habitually.

As a final rotten cherry on this putrid sundae of unethical judicial conduct, The National Review noticed that a bot probably wrote the text. Nice. My position is that judges using AI to write their opinions is impeachable conduct, but then so is issuing such an attack on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here is the section, and I must add, having just read it through again, the naked Trump Derangement and partisan extremism is shocking. This isn’t just unethical. It is judicial insurrection. Luckily, progressives don’t read court opinions…

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Is This Movie Marquee Clever, Unethical or Just Stupid? It’s Unethical, and Here’s Why…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I guess this is Ambiguous Bigotry Sunday.

Following a theme that began with this morning’s ethics quiz, we now have the viral controversy over the obnoxious Lake Aswego (Oregon) Theater and Cafe marquee for “The Odyssey.”

On social media (and elsewhere), the theater’s owners are being accused of “disgustingly blatant antisemitism” as Hen Mazzig, an Israeli writer and senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute put it on “X.” I’m sorry I haven’t kept up on Lake Oswego movie theater marketing trends: apparently this one makes a habit of cheeky, politically provocative or otherwise controversial marquee messages. In February, for example, the theater’s message promoting “Melania,” the Amazon MGM documentary about First Lady Melania Trump, read, “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. Melania starts Friday.” Amazon pulled the movie from the theater, and the proprietors reacted with a “Who, us?” shrug.

That example is not irrelevant: Lake Oswego is heavily Democratic, reliably voting for Democratic candidates for all federal and state offices. The last time a Republican was favored by voters was in 2016, when it narrowly favored Republican Secretary of State candidate Dennis Richardson while the city and the state went into Hillary Clinton’s column in the Presidential race. Lake Oswego is in Oregon, one of the most fanatically progressive, Democratic and woke states in the union. 80% of Democrats, the Pew Research Center says, hold “an unfavorable view of Israel” as of June 2026, an 11-point increase from 2025.

How likely is it that the marquee in a place like Lake Oswego, was deliberately praising “the Jews” (You know, as in “the Jews made a heroic odyssey”to Canaan”) as opposed to cheekily denigrating them? Not bloody likely at all. Is the message an innocent comparison of the endless warring between Israel and Palestinians to the Trojan War? If so, then why only mention “the Jews”?

The online debate has seen a suspicious effort to deflect the real issue by arguing over whether “the Odyssey” was really before “the Jews.” Does the theater mean the actual voyage (there probably wasn’t one), or Homer’s poetic description of it? That’s not the real issue, and the debate over it is pedantic sophistry. The issue is whether the marquee is anti-Semitic, designed to appeal to anti-Semites (you know, progressives and Democrats), and cleverly composed to do so while giving the theater and fans of the smear plausible deniability.

The answers are yes, yes, and yes.

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Ethics Quiz: The “Protected Species”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

For a sports league that few care about and fewer watch, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sure gets into a lot of ethics controversies. Take this one, for example:

The WNBA suspended Toronto Tempo head coach Sandy Brondello without pay for one game after she referred to black Atlanta Dream star Angel Reese as a “protected species” in a remark that was picked up by a hot mic during a game.

In the Dream’s 111-92 win over the Tempo last week a Toronto player had a foul called on her after an offensive rebound tussle involving Reese. As the foul call was being reviewed, Brondello yelled at the referees, “Angel…she’s a protected species!” The WNBA announced the next day that Brondello must sit out the Tempo’s next game, and won’t be paid for it, adding,”The WNBA expects all coaches and team personnel to uphold the highest standards of professionalism and respect that are fundamental to our league.”

Brondello, who is white, had issued a written apology earlier, reflexively groveling so she wouldn’t be cancelled as a racist in a league where 81% of the players are “of color.” She wrote,

“Angel, I’m sorry. Last night, in the emotion of the moment after Nyara’s injury, I used a phrase that I shouldn’t have used, and I take full responsibility for that. My frustration was with the officiating, but my words unfairly put the focus on you. I also understand that my words carried an impact beyond what I intended, particularly for Black women in our league, and I’m deeply sorry for that. I’ve spent my career competing with, coaching and learning from incredible Black women. I regret that my words caused hurt to a community I respect so deeply. I have a lot of respect for you as both a player and a person, and I sincerely apologize to you, your teammates, and the Dream organization for my comment.”

Reese, meanwhile, couldn’t resist the urge to play victim and to imply that either everyone knows that Brondello is a bigot or that white people in general think of blacks as a separate species. She piled on thusly on “X”:

Nice. What Brondello should have said about Reese was “She’s an asshole.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was it fair and responsible for the WNBA to suspend Brondello for calling a black star a “protected species”?

Zach Dean, a pan-sports commentator for Outkick, the conservative sports commentary website absorbed by Fox New, pronounced the suspension wrongful and even dangerous. He wrote in part,

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