Etiquette and manners

Stop Making Me Defend Jimmy Kimmel!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Boy, that’s a headline I never thought I’d write. I detest Jimmy Kimmel. I loathe him. He is the most revolting of all the Left-Licking late night and cable progressive comics, worse than Colbert, Maher, Samantha Bee, all of them. All of them combined. He is an ongoing blight on the ethics of American society, and yet he is self-righteous in the process. I long ago decided that the Emmys were even more rigged and less ethical than other award shows, so I never watch the broadcast. Kimmel was the host this year, so that made the show even less appealing, if indeed that is possible. Thus I missed an incident which, had I witnessed it in real time, would have ensured that I wrote this post before this one, from yesterday: “A Case Study Of How Race-Baiting And Race-Bullying Undermines “Diversity” And “Inclusion”: The New Yorker’s Cartoons.” 

For they are essentially about the same phenomenon.

What happened was this: Will Arnett, before presenting the nominees for best writing in a comedy series, dragged a supposedly unconscious and drunken Kimmel onto the stage with him.  Arnett told the audience that  Kimmel had lost again as a nominee in the late night comedy category, and  “he just got into the skinny margaritas back there.” The host who is chagrined at not getting a award in the show he is hosting is an old, old joke: Bob Hope used it every year at the Oscars. Kimmel was just adding a new wrinkle. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Return Of Sacheen Littlefeather

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Apparently the Oscars are looking hard for virtue-signaling opportunities.

In this instance, they had to travel back in time 50 years and decide to make amends for one of the more ludicrous examples of celebrity grandstanding in pop culture lore. Marlon Brando, a cinch to win the Best Actor statuette for “The Godfather” in 1973, decided to snub the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences, his Hollywood colleagues and the Oscars’ TV audience by sending an obscure, Native American actress named Sacheen Littlefeather to go to the podium when Marlon’s name was read and make a statement about the abuse of Indians at Hollywood’s hands while announcing that Brando was rejecting his honor in protest. You know, because “The Godfather” was all about Native American mobs, or something.

It was a complete non sequitur, and many suspected that the whole stunt had little to do with Native American portrayals in film (about which Brando had previously said nothing) and more to do with the famously weird actor’s desire to stick his thumb in the eye of the industry that had made him rich and famous. He might have just as well had his statuette rejected by Bozo the Clown; maybe it came down to a coin flip: heads, Sasheen (it was an Indian Head nickel), tails, Bozo.

The young woman’s appearance did not go over well. “Mr. Brando very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award,” Littlefeather said. “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.”  That was a reference to a protest a month earlier,when the American Indian Movement had occupied the South Dakota town of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre, to protest Hollywood’s killing and..no wait, it was the U.S. government’s treatment of Native Americans that protest was about. What did it have to do with movies, Brando, and the Oscars?

Oh, nothing. Continue reading →

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 →

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.

Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Hitler’s Watch

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Adolf Hitler’s watch, shown above, recently sold at auction for over a million dollars. (The auction house had been expecting more, between 2 and 4 million.) The sale provoke some angry rhetoric online: many believe that it is unethical, indeed immoral, to acquire, keep or sell artifacts from Nazi Germany. In several countries, putting such things up for sale is illegal.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is this:

Is it unethical to sell or buy Hitler’s watch?

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:

Continue reading →

Tuesday Morning Ethics Warm-Up. 7/19/2022: Harvard, Redheads, Uvalde, Bad House Guests And More

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

A lot of people find images like this, and the motto, offensive, presumably because of the association with Ronald Reagan, who brilliantly appropriated optimistic patriotism as a conservative value in response to Jimmy Carter’s “malaise” vision of the nation. Being negatively triggered by one’s own flag and expressions of pride and enthusiasm regarding the nation it represents is not a healthy state of mind, and therefore it is unethical conduct to actively promote such an attitude…which we now see being done every day.

1. It may be unethical, but Harvard at least has gall…In April, Harvard University set out to exceed its previous record for virtue signaling, committing $100 million to “redress its ties to slavery” after a report concluded that slavery played an “integral” role in shaping the University. This is the Cambridge version of reparations, and the flagrant act of misusing donated non-profit funds wasn’t even controversial. The whole board signed on without dissent, which shows how Borg-like the Harvard leadership is. “Diversity” of thought when wokeness is at issue is not welcome. In this month’s alumni magazine, amusingly, Harvard begs for contributions to keep the magazine operating at a high level (it is an excellent alumni magazine), as if  tossing away 100 million dollars on non-educational matters didn’t make the appeal ridiculous. As one contrarian alum noted in a letter to the editor, if Harvard can give away all that money to assuage its conscience about supporting and benefiting long ago from a legal and predominant practice that had gone on for centuries, “it doesn’t need mine.”

In other damning news from Old Ivy, the Harvard  web site calls Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard,  currently pending before the Supreme Court, as a “politically motivated lawsuit.”  That’s the case in which Asian-American students allege that Harvard discriminates against them (like it discriminates against whites) in its admissions policies.  The web site states, “Harvard College does not discriminate against applicants from any group in its admission processes.” This is pure “it isn’t what it is” gaslighting. One can argue that affirmative action, which is the real issue  in the case, should continue and that it passes ethical standards via utilitarian balancing, but it cannot be denied that  the practice isn’t discrimination. The statement is a lie. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: UC Berkeley Law Prof. Khiara Bridges

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“I’m answering a more interesting question to me”

—-Insufferably arrogant and disrespectful witness Prof. Khiara Bridges, after being told  by Senator John Cornyn (R-Tx) during today’s Senate hearing,regarding the fall of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision, that she hadn’t answered the question he asked.

The question Cornyn asked was, “Do you think that a baby that is not yet born has value?” She answered, “I believe that a person with a capacity for pregnancy has value.”

And there it is. A flat-out, defiant refusal to acknowledge the existence of the other life in the abortion equation. Her response to Cornyn’s protest that she hadn’t asked the question insulted both the Senator and the professor’s supposed area of expertise, the law. No witness in a trial could say that she was answering a question of her own conceit that interested her more than the one she was asked. No witness at a Congressional hearing can ethically do it either. Nor could a law student in class or on an exam. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: R.I. State Senator Tiara Mack

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I’m late to the party on this one, but it deserves a special post.

That’s Rhode Island state senator Tiara Mack’s Fourth of July video, showing her (as you can see) twerking upside-down in a bikini. Mack says to the camera, “Vote Senator Mack.” Classy!

The mind boggles. Elected officials are obligated to represent high standards of decorum and respect for their office. Does it really have to be explained why this conduct is irresponsible and disrespectful, as well as civically incompetent? If twerking half-naked on one’s head is acceptable public behavior by a legislator, what isn’t? This is, in the words of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defining deviancy down.” Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 6/22/2022: Let’s Hit The Ground Running!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. It’s a joke!!! That tweet is just the tip of the moronic iceberg for Republican Senate candidate in Missouri Eric Greitens. In a new fundraising video for his U.S. Senate campaign released this week, Greitens, a former Missouri governor who resigned before he could be impeached on multiple grounds including sexual assault, holds a pump-action shotgun and introduces himself as a Navy SEAL. (He is not a Seal: he resigned shortly before announcing his Senate run this year.) The video then shows him with a group of men in tactical gear hunting “RINOs”—Republicans who are not conservative enough for his tastes. He says, “Join the MAGA crew! Get a RINO hunting permit. There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn’t expire until we save our country!”

And Sarah Palin was once accused of inciting murder by having little gun-sights on a campaign map!

Predictably, the irresponsible ad is being used by the mainstream news media and Democrats to characterize all conservatives and Republicans while hyping more anti-gun hysteria. Here’s CNN:

Some of history’s leading fascist movements used the strategy of armed volunteer militias intimidating, threatening and attacking political opponents. And the implications of Greitens’ ad are stunning: Line up behind the most extreme right-wing policies — and implicitly behind former President Donald Trump — or be hunted down by armed, jackbooted thugs.

Right. The implications of Greitens’ ad are that he’s a liar and an asshole, and that he is only slightly more fit to serve in the Senate than Herschel Walker, who defines the bottom of the bottom of the barrel… but presumably Missouri voters know that already. The ad and Greitens himself are metaphorical albatrosses around the GOP’s neck, but the party hung them there. He has been endorsed by several GOP luminaries, though so far, not by Trump.

2. Poll check: President Biden’s latest Civiqs approval rating hit 32%, with 56% disapproving of Joe. Again I ask: Who are those 32% that approve of Biden? What is it they approve of? What democracy can function if fully a third of the electorate have the IQs of flatworms and are happy to see the country rot?

Continue reading →