History

Ethics Quiz: Harvard’s Human Skin-Bound Book

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

As if it doesn’t have enough to worry about, Harvard University announced yesterday that its copy of Arsène Houssaye’s “Des Destinées de L’Ame,” or “The Destiny of Souls” had been stripped of the very feature that made it unusual enough to be worth collecting. The book (above) had been bound in human skin, just like the book in “The Evil Dead” movies. Its first owner, Dr. Ludovic Bouland, a French doctor, had inserted in the volume a handwritten note saying that “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.” The alumnus who gave the book to Harvard in 1934, the American diplomat (and the famous hat family heir) John B. Stetson, had informed the Houghton Library (Harvard’s rare book collection), that Bouland had taken the skin from an unknown woman who died in a French psychiatric hospital.

Harvard removed the binding and said it would be exploring options for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.” “After careful study, stakeholder engagement, and consideration, Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book’s binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history,” the university’s statement read.

Incidentally, the word for binding books in human skin is anthropodermic bibliopegy.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was this really ethically necessary?

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A Kaufman for John Hinckley

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

It is time to hand out another Kaufman, the special award given to an alleged example of unethical treatment so dubious and so trivial that it warrants the reaction famed wit and playwright George S. Kaufman once gave spontaneously on a Fifties TV panel show, after aging crooner Eddie Fisher (father of Carrie, husband of Debby Reynold and Elizabeth Taylor) had complained that he wasn’t able to interest young women in dating him as easily as he used to. Kaufman’s reaction:

“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope.  The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.”

And yet John Hinckley’s recent lament interests me even less than this. I assume you will feel similarly.

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It’s a Simple Rule: If You Are an Important Public Figure, Don’t Try to Hide a Health Crisis

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This has always been true, though some figures have been substantially successful at doing it.

We are reminded of the rule once again as Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced that she was undergoing chemotherapy after a cancer diagnosis in a two-minute video released yesterday. That announcement only came after weeks of wild speculation about Kate’s whereabouts, marriage status and health. It was, therefore, too late—too late to prevent the damage to her reputation and that of the royal family by proving that she and Prince William were capable of avoiding transparency when it suited them. The official excuse was that it had taken “time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them,” as she said in the video. As explanations for deceiving the public go, a “think if the children!” strategy is as good as one is liable to find, but even it leaves a scar.

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Ethics Dunce: Don Surber

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Don Surber is a former journalist and current conservative pundit whose blog and substack I occasionally peruse, usually without too much alarm. However, he has issued a substack essay that, if I had to summarize in three words my objections to it and any culture wars guerilla who cited him as authority would be, “This doesn’t help.” A longer version follows.

Surber’s piece is called “In praise of ties” and carries the subheading, “They helped build a society that we are destroying.” If Glenn Reynolds had not endorsed the link, I would have stopped reading right there. I know ties are going to be used as a metaphor for the decline of elegance, respect, adulthood, civility, dignity, elan and eclat, blattity-blah, but still. Don’t insult my intelligence. This is the equivalent of “In praise of stovepipe hats,” “In praise of spats,” “In praise of derbies” or “In praise of bustles.” These are all fashions, and fashions rise and fall like steam and autumn leaves. We get used to them, if they hang around long enough, and yes, sometimes their demise are linked to cultural factors that have little to do with fashion. Nonetheless, longing for a time when men wore ties as a matter of societal conformity makes one seem like Grandpa Simpson, screaming at clouds. Worse, in fact.

Surber writes, “Chuck Berry always wore a tie. Gas station attendants wore them. You could trust your car to the man who wore the star because he had a tie on. Men wore ties to ballgames because men were civilized. Ties were important because they gave a sense of authority but ties also showed that a man wants to belong in society. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Eat to please thyself, but dress to please others.”

Sure, Don. I always thought those pictures of men wearing ties at baseball games were ridiculous. Ted Williams, one of my father’s heroes whom he passed on to me, famously refused to wear a tie: he had a very long neck and didn’t think ties looked good on him. Ben was right, but when the tie as a symbol of wanting to appear formal and serious wane—it hasn’t waned completely —then people will adopt other ways of “dressing to please.” It is the way of the world, and there is nothing about these transitions to lament.

But Surber was just getting started. Here he is at full speed:

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A Popeye: Sorry, I Can’t Let Trump’s Presidential History Nonsense Go Unflagged…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The latest kerfuffle spawned by Donald Trump’s loose lips ensnared Keith Olbermann. In an interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly last week, Trump blathered about persecuted Presidents, “I was always told that Andrew Jackson was treated the absolute worst. I heard Abraham Lincoln was second. I don’t care,” Trump said. “Andrew Jackson or anybody else. Nobody, when you think of the fake things, nobody’s been treated like Trump in terms of badly.”

Olbermann, being the jerk that he is, re-tweeted the Biden Campaign’s “Trump says he has been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated,” with the comment, “There’s always the hope.” This isn’t the point of this post, but 1) Trump was referring to Lincoln’s vilification in both the South and much of the North when he spoke of bad treatment, and 2) Olbermann’s snark was inevitable, in character, and obviously not a “true threat.”

But then people, including some Fox talking heads, started calling for him to be kicked off Twitter/”X,” and Keith pulled his tweet. Then he lied about what he meant, tweeting, “I know nobody with an IQ greater than a halibut’s has believed @FoxNews since 1996 but even from their whores this is idiotic The RT clearly shows I’m hoping Trump’s right, that he IS treated worse than Lincoln. As I’ve said for 9 years: THAT HE’S CONVICTED, THEN DIES IN PRISON ”

Sure Keith. Do you really believe anyone but a few halibut, Fox News, and the nearly million idiots who follow you on Twitter give a fig what you tweet, ever?

But I digress. What I want to point out is that neither Lincoln nor Andrew Jackson top the list of mistreated Presidents. It’s an especially dumb thing to say about Jackson. Jackson was the most popular President since George Washington, cruised to re-election, and left office an icon. I assume what Trump is alluding to is the scandal over Jackson’s wife Rachel, because of her inadvertent bigamy when she eloped with Andy. Jackson didn’t take any criticism well, but he was still mostly worshiped as President, though roundly hated by his political foes for consistently besting them.

Trump has a slightly stronger case with Lincoln, but Abe still was re-elected, and almost immediately deified after he was killed. The following Presidents were treated much worse than Jackson; whether they were treated worse than Lincoln is a matter of perspective: John Adams, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. I could even make an argument for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Trump has a strong case that he was the most unfairly and viciously treated of all, but the two Johnsons, Hoover and Nixon have strong cases as well. I do give Trump the award for knowing less about American Presidential history than any other POTUS.

That’s something.

Ethics Quote of the Month: Missouri and Louisiana

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“The bully pulpit is not a pulpit to bully.”

—-The attorneys for Missouri and Louisiana in their U.S. Supreme Court opposition to staying the unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit order declaring that officials from the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the F.B.I. had violated the First Amendment by secretly pressuring social media platforms to take down posts as “misinformation.”

What a great line! I’m amazed it has never been used before: an instant classic and useful quote.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the oral arguments in a case to determine whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in combating that endlessly useful word to progressive and Democratic censors, “misinformation,” on social media platforms. There are four case before SCOTUS on this topic, which, among other expressions of alarm, was the target of the so-called “Twitter Files” posts organized by Elon Musk in 2022.

The case being argued today, like the other ones, arose from revealed communications from administration officials urging/ persuading/ threatening social media platforms to take down Left-unfriendly posts on the Wuhan virus vaccines, the 2020 election and Hunter Biden’s laptop and other matters. Last year, the Fifth Circuit hit the Biden administration with an injunction that severely limited this tactic. The three judge panel wrote,

Defendants, and their employees and agents, shall take no
actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or
significantly encourage social-media companies to remove,
delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their
algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected
free speech. That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the
platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of
punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or
supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling
the social-media companies’ decision-making processes.

And the Biden administration opposed that language. Let me repeat that for emphasis: the Biden administration opposed that language. This is, you will recall, the administration and the party that has based its campaign against Republicans before the election this year on the premise that it is the Republicans and their presumptive Presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who pose an existential threat to democracy. Yet these are the same aspiring totalitarians who used the power of the government—“Nice little business you have here…be a shame if anything were to happen to it!”—to secretly coerce, pressure, and infiltrate (read the whole order linked above) social media and Big Tech platforms to do their bidding regarding what opinions and assertions could be communicated by citizens.

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The Latest Chaos in Haiti Brings Into Focus a Taboo Ethics Subject

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Once again, Haiti is in the throes of violence and upheaval. It has ever been thus. While the nation Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with, the Dominican Republic, has been relatively thriving (the key word is “relatively”) Haiti is in almost perpetual chaos. Florida is expecting another mass flotilla of refugees fleeing the hell-hole, and make no mistake, Haiti is a hell-hole. Under current law, and certainly under the warped Biden administration’s immigration policies, it is hard to imagine any scenario where thousands of Haitians do not enter the American populace.

Here is the ethics dilemma that it is politically incorrect to mention above a whisper: Haiti has a toxic, violent, ugly and undemocratic culture that has been ossifying for centuries. People who come from bad cultures, and this is a truly terrible culture, tend to have values and behavior traits that are antithetical to American society. Many in our “Imagine” subculture refuse to accept the fact that any culture is inferior to any other culture; hence they oppose “assimilation,” celebrating multi-culturalism instead. Multi-culturalism eventually metastasized into the DEI religion, and the success of the United States as a nation and a culture has been built on a once-solid foundation embodying the principle that immigrants come here to become Americans, with all the values and priorities that implies. Much of the division and cultural rot we are witnessing in the 21st century is a direct result of several decades of undermining that foundation.

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Searching For the Most Apt Analogy for George Santos Turning Up at the SOTU…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Is it Scarlet O’Hara, forced by Rhett Butler to play the seductive Woman in Red at Melanie Wilkes’ birthday party, after he discovers her flirtations with Melanie’s husband? Is it the proverbial skunk at the picnic? Or was the expelled GOP Rep. emulating Davey Crockett in the most recent film account of the Alamo (which, I note with shame, I barely acknowledged this year since my week was occupied with another more personal tragedy), defiantly staring down his foes after the battle was lost?

Or do you have a better analogy? Whatever George Santos was doing by showing up last night, it took gall, which we know the serial liar, fraudster and poseur has in abundance.

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The Ethical Conflict of the Artist’s Self-Rejected Art

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I was certain that Ethics Alarms had explored the problem of estates issuing, publishing and otherwise profiting from famous artists’ works when the artists have specifically said that the works involved were to be withheld from the public. It has not, however. I suppose the issue is ripe for an ethics quiz. However, as this is an issue that has always intrigued me, I’m going to use a current controversy to delve into the matter now.

Gabriel García Márquez (of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” fame, among other works) labored on a final novel in his last years. After five versions and constant edits, additions and deletions, he gave up. He ordered his son to destroy all versions of “Until August” upon his death. That occurred in 2014, but the novel was not destroyed as he requested. All the drafts, notes and fragments were deposited at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, in its Gabriel García Márquez archives. Now Márquez’s sons are defying their father’s wishes further and having the novel published this month. Because the author is a major international literary figure, the “new” work is considered to be a major publishing event.

But is it ethical to publish the novel at all, if 1) it wasn’t finished 2) its creator decided it wasn’t up to his standards, 3) the work risks diminishing the author’s reputation, and 4) the artist specifically directed that it be destroyed?

There just aren’t any clear rules for this problem. Whose interests take precedence, the creator of work of art, or the public and future generations that might benefit from it?

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Ethics Quiz: Slapping Down the Daughters of the Confederacy

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

On the heels of the previous post about intolerant progressives came my awareness of the news that both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly, dominated by Democrats, passed bills that would eliminate long-standing tax exemptions for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that was founded in 1894 for female descendants of Confederate soldiers. The group’s mission was and is to honor Confederate ancestors through memorial preservation—an increasingly difficult job—and charity work. It is currently exempt from paying property taxes and recordation taxes, which are charged when property sales are registered.

This week the State House of Delegates passed a bill revoking the group’s exemptions as well as the property tax exemptions for two other Confederate heritage groups, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Inc. and the Confederate Memorial Literary Society.

To state the obvious, the three non-profit groups have been targeted because many legislators don’t like their beliefs and activities. Don Scott, the Democratic speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, said it was important to revoke the exemptions from “organizations that continue to promote the myth of the romantic version of the Confederacy.”

How dare they?

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