Etiquette and manners

The Ethicist Answers An Officious Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

…and much more nicely than I would have,

“Name Withheld” says that a member of her book club typically regurgitates online reviews of the assigned books that she seldom reads, aggressively presents them as her own, and is begging for a slapdown. “In the days before a meeting, she will casually share with me that she ‘couldn’t get into it,’ but she never says so to the other members. I sit there steaming but don’t reveal her duplicity. What would you do?,” she asks Prof. Appiah, the Times Magazine ethics advice columnist in lat week’s column, “A Woman in My Book Club Never Reads the Books. Can I Expose Her?”

“I get why you’re peeved,” the professor says. So do I: she thinks a social book club is a seminar for credit. “Still, the first rule of book clubs is that someone will always show up having read only the first chapter and the last page, armed with three profound observations from Goodreads.” No, that’s the second rule of book clubs. The first rule is to provide a regular opportunity for people to get together and socialize in the context of a structure more potentially engaging than arguing about Donald Trump. “Your job, in any case, isn’t to police her page turns. Cast yourself as the enforcer, and you betray the spirit of a group dedicated to forging connections through stories.”

Bingo.

“But the goal isn’t to humiliate her…maintain your small, imperfect community. One thing you’ll have learned from your books, after all, is that the flawed characters are always the most human.” Yadayadayada. Maybe she’s having cognitive issues. Maybe she’s dyslexic. Maybe she’s lonely and just wants company. Maybe she’s insecure about her analytical ability. The woman’s cheating in her book club exploits literally hurts nobody but herself at worst, and possibly allows her some human contact that she desperately needs at small cost to the other members.

Sure, the inquirer can expose her. To me, however, the fact that she’d even consider it means I’d rather have the book faker in my club than her.

“Can The Princess Treatment Go Too Far?” Answer: No, If Your Ethics Alarms Function…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I heard the term “The Princess Treatment” for the first time last week, then right on cue the New York Times produced a feature called, “Can the ‘Princess Treatment’ Go Too Far? A popular video has prompted discussions about how to treat your significant other, what qualifies as “the bare minimum” and how this all relates to traditional gender roles.” It begins in part,

A husband opening the car door for his wife. A boyfriend surprising his girlfriend with flowers. Remembering her birthday. Tying her shoes. Paying for her nail appointment. Are these normal expectations or examples of the “princess treatment”? A recent slew of popular videos on social media have debated the concept, and what it means for women in relationships…Last week, Courtney Palmer, 37, reignited that discussion with a video that has garnered more than three million views. In it, she describes how princess treatment informs her relationship, including how she will sometimes defer to her husband. “If I am at a restaurant with my husband, I do not talk to the hostess, I do not open any doors and I do not order my own food,” she says in the opening of the nearly six-minute video, which has prompted a wide-ranging discussion about gender roles, restaurant etiquette and relationship expectations…

You can read it all: it’s a stupid debate. Not only with “significant others” but with all women (and, for that matter all men), how I treat them in private and social situations is based on 1) how I would like to be treated, Golden Rule 101, 2) how I have been told or discerned that they would like to be treated, and 3) what I have concluded is basic manners, and ethical societal norms that I believe should be cultivated. Why is this hard? Continue reading →

If Trump Derangement (And Groupthink) Can Make Intelligent and Informed People Post Junk Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

.

…what hope is there for sanity and rational discourse in the near future?

I am distraught. The meme above was posted with approval by a elite college history professor I have known for 50 years. I know he’s smarter than this, wildly so, and that he would flunk any student exercising such poor critical thinking skills in an essay or thesis. So how did he come to post such obvious crap, and how can he be helped? Continue reading →

Message to Simone Biles: “Shut Up and Vault!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

It shouldn’t matter than cute little Simone Biles isn’t very bright. She’s a talented gymnast, and has parlayed that skill into a fortune, a brand, and enough fame to last her a while. There was that choking episode at the 2020 Olympics, but never mind: she’s won enough championships and medals to qualify as one of the all-time greats.

Unfortunately, Biles, like so many other jocks and celebrities,, has let her popularity and acclaim in a very narrow field go to her head. She thinks she has something to contribute to national debates that have nothing to do with floor exercises and the balance beam, and she doesn’t. I’d love to know what books, if any, Biles has read while being essentially a full time gymnast since she was knee-high to a praying mantis. The fact that she never attended high school (she was home-schooled) and eventually got a college degree from a non-profit, online college doesn’t mean Simone necessarily is lacking in critical thinking skills, but her engaging in a name-calling battle with Riley Gaines—the former competitive swimmer who has become a critic of trans men who still have to shave every morning throttling girls and women in women’s sports because they can— does.

To begin with, Gaines is smart, articulate and knows her topic. Biles’ contribution to the debate has consisted of social media posts the equivalent of “Oh yeah?” and “Well, I’m better at my sport than you were at yours, so there!” Here’s one…

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Oh Dear! Patti Lupone Took My Advice and Now Broadway Wants Her “Cancelled”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Back in November of last year, I wrote about the silly–but instructive—Broadway feud between diva Patti Lupone and performer Kecia Lewis, who is black, and who has received some accolades herself. Lewis was starring in “Hell’s Kitchen,” a 2024 jukebox musical about the life and career of Alicia Keys in a theater that shared a wall with the theater featuring “The Roommate,” a quiet, two-actor drama starring Mia Farrow and LuPone. The amplified sound in “Hell’s Kitchen” at two points in the musical could be heard by the audience LuPone’s show, so LuPone sent a polite note to the “Hell’s Kitchen” producers asking them to turn down the volume at those points in the sound design that were loud enough to interfere with her show. (The producer of “The Roommate”should have handled that, but Patti has power and influence and has never been shy about using them.) “Hell’s Kitchen” complied. LuPone, in gratitude, sent a thank-you note to the producers and flowers to the stage management and sound staff.

But Lewis decided to play the race card, because that’s what so many of the Woke of Color have been taught to do, because it works. She posted a video on Instagram reprimanding LuPone for supposedly engaging in race-based “microagressions.” I wrote in “Dear Patty LuPone: Please, PLEASE Tell Kecia Lewis ‘Oh, Bite Me!’” that I was ” hoping against hope that LuPone, who is the epitome of a diva (as this Ethics Alarms post demonstrates), either issues an emphatic “Bite Me!” to Lewis or ignores her completely as not worthy of attention from Patti’s perch on Broadway Olympus. Lewis is the racist here; she is the one who is stereotyping a white performer as insensitive and dismissive.”

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Stop Making Me Defend the Supreme Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Almost a year ago, Ethics Alarms discussed the case of Liam Morrison (above), a seventh grader who was told that his “There are only two genders” T-shirt was inappropriate as school attire. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld a District Court decision from 2023 that the Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts didn’t violate Liam’s First Amendment rights by telling him to change his shirt.

Chief Justice David Barron, writing for the Court, concluded that “the question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them – educators or federal judges.” He continued, “We cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make ‘an environment conducive to learning’ at NMS to use rather than to the educators closest to the scene.”

I wrote, in a post agreeing with the decision both ethically and legally,

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“Welcome Summer!” Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Last week on YouTube’s “The Morning Meeting,” Mark Halperin and Dan Turrentine appeared to acknowledge Ethics Alarms’ “Julie Principle.” They just didn’t know what it was called.

President Trump had delivered the commencement address at West Point while wearing a red MAGA cap (Oh NOOOO! He’s violating “norms” again!) and on Monday published a Memorial Day Truth Social post like some of his previous holiday wishes—you know, one of his “Merry Christmas, you filthy animal!” style shots. Halperin noted that many Democratic critics and pundits, right on cue, were freaking out.

“If you read [historian] Heather Cox Richardson or the emails and texts I get from my Democratic sources, as I said before, the Trump administration’s over. And it’s just a bankrupt, you know, corrupt mess and he’s already a failed president and he’s not getting anything done. That’s their point of view. They also are very taken with his wearing a MAGA hat … to give … a West Point graduation speech,” Halperin said. “They’re taken with his tweet, his Truth Social post, saying ‘Happy Memorial Day’ and criticizing Joe Biden. And they’re back to a Adam Schiffian and [biased and Trump Deranged historian] Heather Cox Richardson point of view, which is everything Trump does is an epic disaster and that the American people will turn on him and Republicans in the midterms because he’s impolite.”

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Fan Ethics: The Diane and Joe Saga [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Guest column by AM Golden

[From your host: This scary, poignant guest post sat un-noticed in my in-box for many weeks. I would have posted it immediately if I hadn’t missed it. Regular commenter AM Golden paints a vivid picture of how celebrity worship, then pursuit, can lead down dark alleys and perhaps to tragedy. At the end of this cautionary tale, AM writes, “Joe can obviously handle this situation himself.” I’m not sure it’s so obvious. Rebecca Shaeffer couldn’t handle it. Jody Foster didn’t handle it sufficiently wee to prevent her fan from nearly killing Ronald Reagan. John Lennon couldn’t handle it. Among AM’s provocative questions at the end of this case study is what ethical obligations an observer has to try to persuade someone in the throes of a dangerous obsession to change course, back off, or seek help. My reflex instinct is to say there is such an obligation, as there always is when one is in a unique position to prevent harm and fix a serious problem. That is a far easier position to defend in the abstract than in reality.–JM]

About 18 months ago, I made a comment about the importance of one’s Good Name – one’s reputation – that was honored with a Comment of the Day.   Among the stories related in that comment was the recent crushing experience of a fan I called Diane, who had a less-than stellar encounter with her favorite actor whom I dubbed “Joe Darling”. 

It seems that Diane had been sending Joe emails through the public contact option on his website.  Many emails.  She had also been sending gifts to his private residence: All unsolicited; all unanswered.  This had gone on for three years before she met him at a pop culture convention.  Her thinking seems to have been that he would have told her if he wanted her to stop.  She’d also ordered a Cameo from him that had gone unfulfilled. I’d admitted back then that I had gotten vibes from her social media comments that she was a little fixated on Joe, who by all accounts a happily married man.  It had never occurred to me that she had been contacting him directly. 

When she went to his table at the convention, he figured out who she was.  He told her that he considered her behavior borderline stalking and that it needed to stop or he would take further action.  Mortified, she apologized and assured him she would leave him alone.  She admitted online that she feels like she ruins everything.

Admittedly, I felt sorry for her.  No fan likes these kinds of stories.  They reflect poorly on all of us.  I also felt that she had probably overlooked warning signs along the way that would have spared her such embarrassment.   Could there have been a misunderstanding?  Curious, I looked over her public social media page.  Sure enough, there was enough evidence there to indict her as an obsessed fan and a particularly obtuse one. Her behavior since then has not changed my opinion.

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In a Competitive Commencement Season, Evelyn Harris Makes a Strong Bid For Most Unethical Speech of 2025

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Favorites Tim Walz, Scott Pelley and Kermit the Frog may have fallen to an underdog: “musician and activist” Evelyn Harris (whoever she is) may have succeeded in embarrassing her host school the most of all with her 2025 commencement speech.

For some reason, Smith College, which has apparently become too woke to function, included Harris, a relatively obscure singer (but more importantly, an activist) among its all female honorees this year. The most prominent one of these would probably be far-left historian Danielle Allen, who has several items in her Ethics Alarms dossier. Or maybe it would be the (historic!) highest ranking trans official in US history, former assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service Rachel Levine, one of Biden’s DEI appointments. Then there was new age-y guru Preeti Simran Sethi, the only one of the four who is a Smith grad. All of these, however, whatever their issues, at least managed to compose their own speech to give to the graduates.

Harris didn’t. Smith officials learned that her entire speech had been cribbed from other sources without attribution (you know, like Joe Biden once did), and had to inform the Smith community that it had been deceived. “It has come to our attention that one of our honorary degree recipients — musician Evelyn M. Harris — borrowed much of her speech to graduates and their families from the commencement speeches of others without the attribution typical of and central to the ideals of academic integrity,” the letter read in part.

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Ethics Hero: Hugo Monteiro

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Who is Hugo? He’s a 31-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Brazil who was arrested outside Cambridge District Court in Medford, Massachusetts last week. Four plainclothes officers approached him as he was leaving the courthouse, escorted him to a Jeep Cherokee and placed him in handcuffs. ” I was calm because I knew I didn’t do anything wrong,” Monteiro said later. “They were just, like, telling me I was under arrest, that I was in trouble. I was confused.”

So were they, as it turned out. When the officers tried to confirm that they had arrested the the right person, they discovered their mistake. “I showed them my ID, my passport and my picture, and they confirmed that it was not me,” Hugo said. So the officers returned Monteiro to the courthouse. The whole episode took less than 20 minutes.

Hugo didn’t scream police brutality or run to the press to condemn “people being scooped off the street and disappeared.” He said that he knew the officers were “doing their job” and supported their efforts.

“Unfortunately, they called the wrong person, but I still support whatever they’re doing,” Monteiro said. “I voted for Trump. There are a lot of bad people in this country, to be honest with you, [who] don’t deserve to be here. No hard feelings,” he added.

Spoken like a good citizen.