Ethics Alarms commented on Madonna’s inexcusable two-hour tardy appearance at her concert (item #4) without realizing that The Grand Ol’ Opry could have said “Hold my beer!” The Nashville shrine to Country Music officially apologized to fans and audience members after four-time Grammy Award nominee Elle King disgraced the venue and herself with a vulgar and drunken performance on an evening last week that was supposed to honor Dolly Parton. “We deeply regret and apologize for the language that was used during last night’s second Opry performance,” the Opry wrote on X/Twitter over the weekend. That was an understatement of what happened.
My first reaction was to have sympathy for Brittany Pietsch, the Cloudfare account executive who somehow thought recording her Zoomed firing and posting it on social media would be a good idea. Then I learned she was 27. That’s much too old to behave like she did, much less to be self-righteous about it. Her experience ended up on every social media platform and was covered by media outlets from the New York Post to the The Wall Street Journal, and now she is the official “poster girl” for deluded and entitled young workers who don’t get the capitalist system and the competitive workplace.
You can see her nine-minute clip here. If you don’t wince through it, you may need a refresher course in workplace ethics yourself. An at-will employee, Brittany argues with the HR staff who were assigned to dismiss her. Here’s a typical exchange:
The NBA’s Chicago Bulls celebrated their “inaugural class” in the team’s new Ring of Honor ceremony during halftime of its game against the Golden State Warriors last week. The first Ring of Honor class included 13 men and the entire 1995-96 team, which went 72-10 and won the NBA championship. It didn’t help that the current Bulls gave up a season high in points in a 140-131 loss, but that was the least of the night’s low points.
The most popular and famous stars of that team, Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen and Dennis Rodman, didn’t show up. The team wasn’t expecting them to, because all three declined, but it allowed the fans to believe otherwise, at least the fans who didn’t research the matter beforehand. Continue reading →
Actress Gillian Anderson of “X Files” fame caused a stir at last night’s Golden Globe awards by wearing a dress decorated with meticulously embroidered vaginas. They were impossible to see on TV since they were the same color as the dress (thank goodness for that) but see? Look closely now…
Vaginas. Though she later said they were “peonies,” Anderson told several reporters that her dress was embroidered with vaginas. Why? “For so many reasons. It’s brand-appropriate,” Anderson explained cryptically.
What is this? A feminist statement, like the infamous “pussy hats”? A diabolical insult to the Golden Globes? If an obscene design can only be detected up close and with the aid of hints, does that make it less obscene? Would a male tux with almost invisible embroidered black penises in the fabric be considered appropriate formal wear? How about nearly invisible embroidery showing various graphic sex acts? What if the designs reveal to the sharp-of-eye acts of pederasty? What if Gillian dress had “Fuck you!” beautifully embroidered on it? Is a vulgar design at a public event not vulgar if nobody notices it? Has polite society vanished so completely that a stunt like this is considered acceptable? Social media apparently loved it.
It took the Pentagon three and a half days to inform the White House that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had been hospitalized on New Year’s Day following complications from an elective procedure, two U.S. officials said Saturday.
The extraordinary breach of protocol — Mr. Austin is in charge of the country’s 1.4 million active-duty military at a time when the wars in Gaza and Ukraine have dominated the American national security landscape — has baffled officials across the government, including at the Pentagon.
Senior defense officials say Mr. Austin did not inform them until Thursday that he had been admitted to the intensive care unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The Pentagon then informed the White House.
The Pentagon’s belated notification, first reported by Politico, confounded White House officials, one Biden administration official said.
Meanwhile, conservatives “pounced”: “What possible motive could there be for doing this? Who knows? It didn’t make a lot of sense, but the Biden administration has an extensive record of covering up scandals, so it wasn’t exactly out of character for the Biden administration to cover something up,” wrote PJ media’s Matt Margolis. Other wags noted that hiding such health-related information about important government officials is the kind of thing China does.
A group of about 60 Christmas carolers the the local Cure Church staged a good cheer invasion at a Kansas City, Kansas, Walmart last Sunday. Shoppers and employees stopped to listen and some sang along. Naturally the scene was caught on video, and, predictably, the video “went viral” on social media.
Also predictably, Scrooges were out in force on social media. Reddit patrons were especially hostile. “Not the Bee” was depressed at the reaction, sniffing, “This is Christmas we’re talking about! We used to understand that things were a little more magical and glorious this time of year.”
Well, yes, I am certainly sympathetic, but it was still a disruption in a private business without prior consent, and if anything flies in the face of “diversity” cant, it’s a public demonstration of a particular religion’s beliefs to a captive audience. After all, the group wasn’t singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” One person’s Christmas magic is another’s inappropriate proselytizing.
Last month Steven Mintz, aka.”The Ethics Sage,” wrote a plaintive lament about how far civility has declined in our society. Steven is a distinguished philosopher and writes passionately about ethics. He’s passionate about this topic too, but can offer little in the way of solutions to a problem he has visited before. His most recent essay mostly describes the problem. He writes in part,
“Who should we blame for the decline in civility? There is enough blame to go around, but I will focus on the primary culprits. The ABA survey reports that 34% of those polled said family and friends should hold the primary responsibility for improving civility in society, while 27% said that responsibility should fall to public officials. And 90% of respondents said parents and families are most responsible for instilling civility in children,followed by schools at 6%. This result is surprising. What should a school do if not to foster good behavior, concern for others, kindness and empathy? We have clearly lost our way in that regard. We are only in control of our own actions. However, our behavior can influence others in a positive way. We need to model civil behavior, so our kids learn how to behave in the classroom and at home.”
Mintz ultimately concludes “call me a cynic but I expect things to get worse before they get better.” What would make them get better? The Ethics Sage is whistling past the graveyard to suggest that parents and school have the power to turn things around. The culture itself now encourages and glamorizes incivility.
[I am especially grateful for this story because it gives me a perfect oportunity to post my favorite John Wayne clip, from “McClintock!”]
One of the scholars that Harvard President Claudine Gay ripped off without proper attribution has issued a full-throated condemnation in the Wall Street Journal. Carol Swain, author, researcher and a retired Vanderbilt professor considered one of the pioneers in the field of race in politics and government doesn’t get into the high weeds of Gay’s pathetic performance before Congress on the matter of her campus’s harassment of Jewish students, focusing instead on the other reason the Harvard diversity hire is demonstrably unqualified for her prestigious position. Swain writes in part,
The New York Time’s Magazine’s ethicist answers ethics questions arising in everyday life. I ask them. I guess that’s why he gets paid…
But I digress: here’s my dilemma…I just received a nice Hickory Farms box of cheeses and summer sausage. There was no card, and no clue as to who might have sent it. I have a few candidates for the Secret Santa, but all of them, in the past, have included cards. A couple are long-time clients, but neither of them is under any obligation to send me gifts, and I am genuinely surprised when they arrive, as they have now for many years. If I thank them, and they didn’t send the box and have no plans on sending me anything this year, that will be awkward for both of us. If one of them did send the box, and the card that was supposed to accompany it was left out somehow the packing, I don’t want to seem like an ungrateful wretch.
“Unhinged” is a Russell Crowe horror movie about a woman in a bad mood one morning who honks angrily at the driver of a car in front of her when a light turns green at an intersection. Unfortunately for her, she finds out that she has triggered a lunatic who decides to ruin her life as revenge for her impulsive honk. In the background to this Very Special Comment of the Day, I am the equivalent of the woman, and the author, “Stacey’s Friend Chad” is Russell Crowe, if the Russell Crowe character waited over six years to decide to go on his rampage.
Welcome to my world. I woke up this morning to not one but six posts scattered around Ethics Alarms by a commenter whose first comment had him banned from Ethics Alarms on this post, a tongue-in-cheek bit of fluff that I wrote in 2017 after reading about a flag dispute between Romania and Chad. Two commenters didn’t appreciate my whimsy (out of over 40 comments—I’ll take that ratio any day), one of whom was writing from Romania to defend his country, and another who launched into diatribe about my “dishonesty.”
Normally such a comment wouldn’t get out of moderation, but I was in a bad mood that day for some reason, and posted the comment just so I could abuse the jerk for all to see. That was stupid and unethical. I’ve done it a couple of times, and even warn commenters about my occasional outbursts in the Comment Policies above, but still, reading what I wrote in 2017 is embarrassing. This is my penance: that banned commenter returned with a vengeance this morning, and it is all my fault. Thus for the second time I’m posting one of his attack comments instead of sending it to spam hellimmediately (which is where the other five comments are now.)
I’m hoping I remember this episode the next time I’m tempted to call a commenter a “butt-head.”Here you go…
Ethics Alarms 