Etiquette and manners

Former President Barack Obama Runs For 2024’s “Hypocrite Of The Year”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Oh, shut up, Barack!

In a speech yesterday at his foundation’s Democracy Forum, Barack Obama demonstrated his abundance of gall by calling for an end to “divisiveness” and for Americans to embrace compromise while building coalitions, something he refused to do as President.

Obama, after pledging to be a President of all the people, “bringing black and white together,”also exacerbated racial divisions like no President before him since Woodrow Wilson, a big Jim Crow fan. He chose to avoid political compromise during his entire term, laying the foundations of the gridlock we have seen since with the enthusiastic assistance of Nancy Pelosi in the House and the now thankfully dead Harry Reid Senate. As a former President, Obama did not extend his successor the same courtesy George W. Bush extended to him, which was to stay on the sidelines and withhold public criticism. He vividly illustrated why the unwritten rule and “democratic norm” in the U.S. has been that former Presidents, as the New York Times stated in 2007, “should speak respectfully of their successors, or at least with some measure of restraint.”

Did you know that Donald Trump doesn’t respect “democratic norms”?

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Unethical Tweet Of The Week: President-Elect Donald Trump (Sigh!)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I didn’t see this until I had already put up the previous post about “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks.” If I had, it would have been included. Above all else, the tweet is stupid.

I know, I know…this may be Julie Principle territory. Still, the conduct of the President of the United States is always of special significance, so I am loathe to declare before the second roller-coaster Trump term begins that he will be given an Ethics Alarms pass for the inevitable social media outbursts to come. What is so discouraging, not to mention unethical, about Trump’s Thanksgiving Day tweet is that it shows, again unfortunately, that our soon-to-be 47th President has a flat learning curve, at least in the area of public statements.

There is no reason for Trump to issue a back-handed  “Happy Thanksgiving” message, and so many reason not to. He certainly knows that somehow managing to at least alleviate the toxic partisan divisions in America is not only an important task he must face and treat seriously, but also essential to the success of his administration. Trump Derangement is also approaching national health emergency status. What ethical objective can a tweet like that possibly accomplish? The answer is, I hope all can agree, none. Well, none except making Trump feel good. How juvenile and self-indulgent, in addition to selfish. The tweet is essentially gloating, a “Nyah, nyah, nyah!” to his foes. All it does is make them angrier, more hateful, more irrational, and more convinced that all Trump wants to do is inflict revenge on “Radical Left Lunatics.” The substantive goals he has claimed to be seeking will require his full attention; there is no time for such pettiness.

Yet there is it. No self-control, no hint of appropriate priorities, no sense of “I could tweet this, but it would be wrong.” No nation will be respected whose elected leader behaves that way.

 

Ethics Quiz: The Offensive Compliment

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This quiz comes from the latest inquiry to “The Ethicist.” I disagree with much of Prof. Appiah’s answer, as I often have lately, but I do concede that the question is worthy of a serious ponder.

On their way out a restaurant, a family group was interrupted by a stranger who had also dined there. He said to the inquirer’s comely daughter-in-law, “With all due respect, you are very attractive.” The inquirer rebuked him saying, “That is wholly inappropriate, sir.” The inquiry continued,

“My cousin snapped at me that it was only a compliment. My sister got mad at me for upsetting my cousin. My daughter-in-law appreciated my reaction but said that she has had “way creepier men say way creepier things to her.” I responded to them all that a stranger has no business commenting on the looks of a person, good or bad, and that this man would never have said a word if any man had been standing with us. Who is right?”

Before I give you The Ethicist’s answer and mine,

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

“Are spontaneous  compliments on a stranger’s appearance per se unethical?”

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Megyn and Mika and Joe, Oh My! Three Ethics Dunces

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Not merely social media chatterers but many others (like Nikki Haley, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Fox News (of course) and CNN’s John Berman, and, if anyone cares, Keith Olberman) are castigating MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who chattered away yesterday about how they had flown to Mar-A-Largo to kiss the ring, or ass, or whatever, of President-Elect Trump. This seemed like a craven reversal of their stance during the entire campaign, one that became more extreme and shrill as Election Day approached, that Trump was a fool, a racist, an enemy of democracy, a threat to the nation, and literally an American Hitler. The pilgrimage to Florida seemed like a craven reversal because that’s what it was. Joe and Mika proved that they are, at heart, “Good Germans.”

Trump has done nothing since his election that would warrant the Trump-Deranged from abandoning their hysterical position, since he had done nothing to justify it in the first place. All the obsequious reversal by the “Morning Joe” duo indicated was hypocrisy and a complete lack of integrity, not that we didn’t already know that. To be fair to Joe and Mika, they work for MSNBC, where nobody knows the meaning of integrity, honesty, or “ethics.” It’s a propaganda arm of the Angry Left. All “Morning Joe” does is follow orders. This spectacular double-reverse backflip in mid-air (I’m mentally humming “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite”) however, is despicable even by MSNBC’s wretched standards.

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Ethics Quiz: The Maori MP Protest

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Wow. Now THAT’s a protest!

New Zealand’s Parliament was temporarily suspended yesterday when Māori lawmakers suddenly launched into a haka, a traditional group dance. It was intended to demonstrated the nation’s Indigenous people’s community’s passionate objections to a bill that would reinterpret the country’s founding treaty with the Maoris.

When the proposal was read, and Māori lawmaker Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke was asked how her party, Te Pāti Māori, would vote on the Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi Bill. The response was what you see above.

‘So, you’re not in favor of it, then?”

Other opposition members joined the performance on the floor, and onlooker is the gallery also started dancing. The chamber’s speaker, Gerry Brownlee, temporarily stopped the session. Maipi-Clarke was suspended over the protest.

I’m not going to get in the high weeds of the bill, but will only present…

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day, which is…

Was this an unethical demonstration—disrespectful, disruptive, and a breach of proper decorum—or an ethical one?

I am decidedly undecided on this one. I sure don’t want to give AOC any ideas. The routine was cool, though, and effective.

Ethics Hero: Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

He didn’t have to be gracious. Few would have blamed him if he was not. He could have followed through with the obligatory meeting between an outgoing POTUS and an incoming one from the other party stiffly, coldly and as formally as possible. After all, Donald Trump had refused to extend the courtesy of such a meeting to him, when Biden won the election in 2020.

But instead of tit-for-tat, payback, bitterness or resentment, President Biden said, “Welcome back.” Never mind that this is an odd thing to say to man whom his party (and Biden himself) had pronounced a fascist and an existentialist threat to democracy. Trump, himself addicted to outrageous hyperbole as a lifestyle, knows more than most that this was just a campaign ploy, albeit a particularly divisive and unfair one. “Welcome back” is as close as President Biden could come to saying, “It’s over, you won, and no hard feelings,” even if the hard feelings are there, for how could they not be?

It is supremely ironic that Joe Biden’s most remembered quote as President will be this one, uttered as he his administration is going out not with a bang, but a whimper. (George Washington also had a famous quote acknowledging his successor: “I am fairly out and you fairly in! George said to John Adams. “See which of us will be happiest!”)

At the end of ” MacBeth”Malcolm says of vanquished Thane of Cawdor, “Nothing dignified him in this life more than his leaving it.” It may be said of Joe Biden that “Nothing so dignified his Presidency as his leaving it.” I suspect that it will be.

Unethical Website “Above the Law” Provides a Vivid Example of What Americans Voted Against This Week.

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I keep banishing “Above the Law,” (ABL) the wildly unethical partisan and woke-biased legal gossip site, from my email and it keeps sneaking back in. This story, by Kathryn Rubino (who once concocted an alleged “scandal” about me), is so outrageous it is beneath the site’s previous bottom of the barrel lows. I didn’t think that was possible. Impressive.

A tax partner in a major law firm (his name isn’t necessary, since the issue is ABL’s abuse of him, not the lawyer himself) engaged in a dispute over the management of his apartment building and the behavior of fellow residents. ABL’s breathless headline, “Biglaw Partner Drops Slur In Dustup With Neighbors.” ‘Oh oh,’ I thought, as did many other readers. “He must have called someone a ‘nigger.’ That’s going to get him in trouble with the firm.”

That wasn’t the slur, however. He emailed a complaint that read, “The retarded tenants of 6W opened the fire alarm door to my terrace.”

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Obama’s Clever Fake Magnanimity

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I’m sorry, but to those who are saluting the allegedly classiness of our 44th President, I say “Fool me once, shame on him, fool me 2,576 times, he can bite me.”

Now make no mistake: Obama know how to fake virtues he doesn’t have, and that’s an important leadership skill. Most Americans probably think he really was trying to be a “President for all Americans,” when he was in fact one most disastrously divisive Presidents in our history. He knew how to act Presidential: if only Donald Trump had that skill (or wanted to have it), he might be far more effective. On the other hand, enough people figured out Obama’s act (and Hillary’s, and Biden’s, and Bill Clinton’s, and Joe Biden’s, and Kamala Harris’s…) that they decided that an open vulgarian that didn’t pretend to be something he isn’t (like nice, kind, respectful, dignified, civil, even-tempered…well, ethical, frankly).

There are several tells in the statement, which, of course, is being fawned over as if Michelle and BO didn’t attack Trump personally when they played cavalry to Kamala’s ill-fated metaphorical wagon train to the White House. Obama suggested that Trump was senile, which takes quite a bit of gall for any Democrat, considering that they pretended that Joe Biden was solving Rubik’s Cube blindfolded for years when he really belonged in a home with a drool cup. I don’t call that “good faith and grace.”

But my favorites were the words he used on Kamala and her pathetic campaign.

In the theater world, a constant ethical dilemma is what to say when you go to a friend’s show and the show, or the friend’s performance, stinks on ice. Books have been written about this problem. “I’ve never seen you better!” is a classic response; pure deceit, of course, but effective. “That was memorable!” is another. Obama chooses his words carefully, and the carefully chosen deceitful word he used for Harris’s disastrous campaign was “remarkable.” It was remarkable all right: remarkably inept and ineffective. Before that, Obama calls Knucklehead and Harris “extraordinary.” Same trick. Actually, in theater circles, using more than one of these deliberately two-edged superlatives is considered risky, but I don’t think Obama cares: he has plausible deniability.

Finally, he says, “he couldn’t be more proud.” That one’s a version of the theater classic, “I couldn’t have enjoyed the show/your performance more!” (My personal favorite variation, “I’ve never seen you better!”)

Oh yeah, this guy’s good.

Dear Patty LuPone: Please, PLEASE Tell Kecia Lewis “Oh, Bite Me!”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Does this outrageous story of contrived race-baiting on Broadway relate to tomorrow’s election? Sure it does. I’ll explain after you finish gagging following the facts of the incident.

Kecia Lewis  is a talented black Broadway actress. She won a Tony for her performance in “Hell’s Kitchen,” a 2024 jukebox musical (that means the show has no original music and uses previous pop hits to try to tell a story). The show, about the life and career of Alicia Keys, shares a wall with another Broadway theater and creates a problem that actors, directors and producers have complained about for decades: the amplified sound in “Hell’s Kitchen” can be heard by the audience of the show next door. (You know when you’re in a multi-screen “cineplex” watching an intimate drama and the movie showing in the next theater is “Pearl Harbor”? It’s like that.)

The show next door to “Hell’s Kitchen” is “The Roommate,” a quiet, two-actor drama starring Mia Farrow and Broadway legend Patti LuPone of “Evita” fame. LuPone sent a polite note to the “Hell’s Kitchen” producers asking them to turn down the volume at two points in the sound design that were loud enough to interfere with her show. They did. LuPone, in gratitude, sent a thank-you note to the producers and flowers to the stage management and sound staff.

In a normal world, that would be the end of it. I’m certain this exact scenario has played out many times over the years as simple professional courtesy and consideration. Ethics!

But no. Kecia Lewis decided to be offended. She posted a video on Instagram reprimanding LuPone for engaging in “microagressions.” She complained,  

 “After our sound design was adjusted, [you] sent flowers to our sound and stage management team thanking them”… “I want to explain what a microaggression is – These are subtle, unintentional comments or actions that convey stereotypes, biases or negative assumptions about someone based on their race. Microaggressions can seem harmless or minor, but can accumulate and cause significant stress or discomfort for the recipient. Examples include calling a Black show loud in a way that dismisses it. In our industry, language holds power and shapes perception, often in ways that we may not immediately realize. Referring to a predominantly Black Broadway show as loud can unintentionally reinforce harmful stereotypes, and it also feels dismissive of the artistry and the voices that are being celebrated on stage. Comments like these can be seen as racial microaggressions, which have a real impact on both artists and audiences. While gestures like sending thank you flowers may appear courteous, it was dismissive and out of touch, especially following a formal complaint that you made that resulted in the changes that impacted our entire production, primarily the people who have to go out on stage and perform.” 

Yes, she really says that. She does. I’m not making it up! This insufferable actress not only felt that was a reasonable response to a request, a thank-you, and flowers, but decided to issue her complaint publicly rather than having the guts to tell LuPone that she’s a racist to her face.

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Ethics Dunce: The National Park Service

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Yeah, about violating “norms”….

The National Mall is supposed to contain unifying and patriotic memorials and monuments and to be a place of pride for all Americans. It is certainly not a venue for partisan grandstanding and electioneering, or, at least wasn’t designed to be. Never mind, though: as part of the Biden Administration’s effort to try to snatch victory from the maw of the most utterly deserved defeats in American Presidential election history, the National Park Service provided a permit for an ugly, satirical, attack on Donald Trump and his supporters (they are garbage, after all) on the Mall, neatly timed to coincide with the last ditch “anything goes” assault on traditional election campaign civility and fairness because, well, “saving democracy” justifies anything.

The bronze sculpture features a pile of Dairy Queen-arranged shit on the desk of ex-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, complete with nameplate. The elegant plaque reads,

“This memorial honors the brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls in order to overturn an election. President Trump celebrates these heroes of January 6th as ‘unbelievable patriots’ and ‘warriors.’ This monument stands as a testament to their daring sacrifice and lasting legacy.”

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