History

Wow, Look at All the Nice People and Respectable Organizations Profiting From Listerine Killing Alcoholics!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I last posted “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit” in March of 2024, about a week after my wife Grace died suddenly. Her death was almost certainly a direct consequence of her alcoholism, which she frequently serviced through the surreptitious consumption of alcohol-containing mouthwash, usually Listerine. I was not planning on re-posting the piece so soon afterwards, but today I discovered the weird story of how botched contract drafting in 1881 resulted in Johnson & Johnson having to pay six dollars for every 2,016 ounces of Listerine sold, (the equivalent to 144 14-oz. bottles) to Listerine’s many royalty holders. Even though the royalties have been split, sold and traded, they are still worth a lot of money because Listerine is the best selling mouthwash (and secret alcoholic beverage) in the world. You can read the whole, strange tale here , but what matters ethically is this: among the organizations making money off of this deadly stuff are…

  • Wellesley College
  • The American Bible Society
  • The Salvation Army
  • The Rockefeller Foundation
  • The Bell Telephone Company

…and the Catholic Archdiocese of New York owned a 50% stake in Listerine royalties for nearly two decades, making almost $13 million over 16 years.

Shame on all of them. As I first explained in 2010 in a post that has been read over 50,000 times (it’s still not enough), Listerine is a destructive resource for alcoholics, and that use represents an untold, but definitely large, percentage of Listerine sales. The companies that have owned Listerine have deliberately maintained the deception that it can’t be guzzled, and the deception benefits their huge market of addicts, and of course, the companies, their shareholders, and royalty owners.

In my 2016 introduction to the post, I wrote in part, “Most of all, I am revolted that what I increasingly have come to believe is an intentional, profit-motivated deception by manufacturers continues, despite their knowledge that their product is killing alcoholics and destroying families. I know proof would be difficult, but there have been successful class action lawsuits with millions in punitive damage settlements for less despicable conduct. Somewhere, there must be an employee or executive who acknowledges that the makers of mouthwash with alcohol know their product is being swallowed rather than swished, and are happy to profit from it….People are killing themselves right under our noses, and we are being thrown of by the minty smell of their breath.”

And now I know that all sorts of nice people and admirable organizations profit from their deaths.

Once again, here is “The Amazing Mouthwash Deception: Helping Alcoholics Relapse For Profit,” dedicated, as it always will be, to brilliant, beautiful, kind, loving—and dead—- Grace Bowen Marshall:

Continue reading →

Mis-Remembering the Mutiny on the Bounty, a “Print the Legend” Classic

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Today, April 28, is the anniversary of the famous mutiny on board the H.M.S. Bounty, when Fletcher Christian, the ship’s “master’s mate,” seized control of the ship and set its captain, William Bligh, adrift in the Pacific with a small group of sailors who refused to join Christian’s rebellion. The story of the mutiny and its aftermath has become a romantic cautionary tale that inspired three major Hollywood treatments, each with star-studded casts. If you ask the average American what happened on The Bounty, he or she will probably reply that a cruel captain who abused his crew was challenged by an honorable and courageous officer who took over the ship from a monster, and met with tragedy himself. Virtually no accounts of the event support that version of events, but that is the legend, and it persists to this day.

Why? It’s a better story, at least a clearer and more morally uplifting story than the truth, that’s why. Real life is messy and our heroes and villains tend to be more complicated than our emotions can handle, and this is especially true of the Bounty story. You see above the most famous moment from the great John Ford film, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” when the old newspaper editor refuses to report the shocking discovery that the heroic deed leading to the successful political career of a famous statesman and U.S. Senator never occurred. Ethics Alarms has discussed the “Print the legend” phenomenon so many times that it has its own tag. None of the examples that I have examined deserve that tag more than the mutiny on the Bounty.

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Oh-Oh! President Trump Violated Another Norm!”

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I confess (and it has been many months since my last confession): I was hoping to trigger this Comment of the Day or its equivalent with my criticism of the late Pope and the degree of influence and respect the position is still accorded by the news media and world leaders. Had I thought about it, esteemed commenter proe32754 would have probably been my top candidate for providing it too.

I will only point out by way of rebuttal is that Pope Francis’s Ethics Alarms dossier is a long as other prominent individuals who I have, fairly and correctly, designated Ethics Villains. Let’s see: he had four official Ethics Dunce awards and a couple more that I chose to frame differently. He has many Unethical Quotes on his record. He repeatedly presumed to meddle in the policies and politics of the United States (but his Holy predecessor during World War II refused to ever condemn Hitler’s Third Reich by name.) I have so many favorite outrages to choose from, but I think my favorite was when he dared to address Congress to pimp for the Democrats’ dream of open borders, despite severely limiting who is allowed to live in his own domain, The Vatican. Normally, anyone with a record like Pope Francis would be the star of a funeral no world leaders would dare to attend, lest they enter Cognitive Dissonance Hell with public opinion.

Yes, I suppose my remarks about the late Pope were “snide,” but I stand by them (and I do believe they were “called for.”) They were even mild compared to what I have written before; for example, here was my introduction to a post after the Pope’s visit in 2015:

I have been touched by the passionate defenses of the Pope during his visit here, by sincere believers who desperately wanted not to see what was going on. If only Pope Francis respected his supporters enough to live up to the ideals they projected on him, which included insisting, against all evidence, that he was merely talking in broad, moral generalities to Congress rather than lobbying for progressive policies, like making illegal immigration legal.

He was, we were told, only showing us where “true North” was according to the Church. I guess he just forgot to bring up abortion, which the Church regards as murder (and Joe Biden too, when he’s not playing politics) as he was lecturing our legislators about “human rights.”

The second he returned home, the Pope threw gay couples under the Popemobile, stating that Kim Davis’s position as a government official refusing to obey the law was a “right.” Again, his defenders insisted that this was just an abstraction. Now we hear from Davis’s lawyers that she had a secret meeting with Pope Francis. Davis says that he hugged her, gave her a rosary, and told her to “stay strong.”

“That was a great encouragement. Just knowing that the pope is on track with what we’re doing, it kind of validates everything to have someone of that stature,” Davis said.

Naturally, those who can’t handle the truth will say she is lying. There is no evidence that Kim Davis is untruthful, and her lawyer would be facing discipline if they falsely reported what did not occur. This really happened.

Got that, Popophiles? While a guest in this country, while progressives were tripping all over their usually Christian-mocking selves to proclaim him as a moral exemplar for setting U.S. policy, while he was being honored by the President and treated with more deference by the news media than any foreign leader, Pope Francis was surreptitiously encouraging an anti-gay zealot to defy the U.S. Supreme Court and the rule of law, while withholding the human right to be married from gay Americans.

I have already pointed out that the Pope is a hypocrite and a coward. With this conduct, he showed that he is a sneak as well, and blatantly disrespectful of the laws of the nation in which he was an honored guest. This was a breach of manners, protocol and a betrayal of trust on a massive scale.

I understand that religious faith by its very nature is an exercise in “My mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts,” and also that organized religion has a traditional and important role to play in maintaining civilization in a world where the vast majority of human beings won’t be civilized on their own. Thus I am not only sympathetic but in some respects encouraged by the passion and the passion and the loyalty of Catholic Church defenders like proe32754, who is obviously more articulate and capable than most.

Here is the Comment of the Day on: “Oh-Oh! President Trump Violated Another Norm!”…

Continue reading →

A “Ripley” For MSNBC: It Actually Practiced Journalism!

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Wow. Will wonders never cease…

Yesterday, the continually ridiculous John Kerry must have thought he was in safe territory when he appeared with MSNBC’s Chris Jansing at the Vatican before Pope Francis’s funeral. But Jansing stunned the fake Irishman, pathetic Democratic Presidential nominee and inept Secretary of State under Obama by asking, “You were Secretary of State when Russia annexed Crimea, and I want to ask you…”

“But when they stated they were…” Kerry interrupted.

Oh, right. The Obama position was that Russia really didn’t take over Crimea, it just said it did, because doing so violated “international law,” so occupying the region and refusing to leave doesn’t count. By that logic, Hitler never invaded France.

“When they, when they stated, yeah,” Jansing said, then Kerry insisted, lying as he so frequently does, badly: “We did not allow them to annex it.”

Suuure, John. You hold on to that fantasy. President Obama was asleep at the metaphorical switch, Russia took the region, and Barack’s response consisted of a few weak sanctions. Jansing, endorsed Kerry’s “it isn’t what it is” spin—this is MSNBC, after all—but still pressed Kerry, saying, “Right. But they said that it was theirs.” And Kerry ludicrously replied, “And we stood up against it and called it against international law. Yeah, they said it, but that doesn’t…Under international law, that does not make it theirs.”

See, because Kerry’s State Department and Obama refused to “recognize” Russia’s annexation of Crimea, it wasn’t annexed. Standing up to Russia in Obama-Kerry Land is: Russia: “We’ve got Crimea!” The U.S.: No you don’t!” Russia: “Yes, we really do.” The U.S.: “Uh-uh, not until we say so!” Russia: “How the hell did we lose the Cold War to these bozos?”

The current Ukraine-Russia war is a direct consequence of the weakness projected by Presidents Obama and Biden, and it has cost our treasury billions while destabilizing the region. Kerry, winner of an Ethics Alarms Lifetime Weasel Award, has been an expert at ducking accountability (“I was against the war before I was for it!”) just like the inept (but historic!) President who appointed him Secretary of State despite a lifetime of failure.

MSNBC, amazingly, reminded us. Bravo.

Friday Open Forum: Trying to Remember

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Ugh. I woke up this morning, immediately got into a substantive discussion, and found myself unable to think of not one but two names I believe are important to remember. The most important of the two was Kurt Gödel, whose “Incompleteness Theorems” led me to the Ethics Incompleteness Theorem, which is an important concept I haven’t discussed lately but is in the Ethics Alarms concepts and special terms list above.

The other name that I had to dig into my neurons to locate was Jill Corey, whom I had vowed to remember because it is so unfair that she has been almost totally forgotten. I wrote about her in 2023, here, on the occasion of Corey’s death.

Try to remember what you have been thinking about in the world of ethics over the last week and share it with us, will you?

(Incidentally, almost nobody except musical theater geeks remember that before he starred in “Law and Order,” Jerry Orbach was the star of “The Fantasticks,” the longest running musical ever. That’s him singing in the video above, when he was in his twenties, in the original Off-Broadway production.

Patriots Day Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The proper and necessary celebration of “The Shot Heard Round the World” and the Battles of Lexington and Concord is, for some strange reason—-I’m guessing apathy and incompetence—diffused and unfocused. Although April 19, 1775, was the momentous day, we haven’t agreed when it should honored, or even what the day should be called.

Only six states—Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Florida recognize Patriots Day, though Maine, being perverse, calls it “Patriot’s Day.” It is a legal holiday in Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and North Dakota. In Florida and Wisconsin, it is recognized without being a state holiday. Massachusetts and Maine celebrate the day on the third Monday of April. The other states that observe the date celebrate on the 19th, when they should. Why Massachusetts and Maine (which was part of the Bay State when “The Shot” was fired), of all states, don’t use the historically correct date is bewildering. Wisconsin designates April 19 is a special observance day for schools, which are required to teach students about the events and key figures of Patriots’ Day. but the observance is moved to Friday, April 18, if April 19 is a Saturday and to Monday, April 20, if April 19 falls on a Sunday. Got that?

Continue reading →

Got It: Candace Owens Is An Idiot.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I am happy to say that I was never especially impressed with Owens, but when she first emerged as a conservative black woman who was not deceived by Black Lives Matter and was an articulate and attractive pundit on the Right, many were. Lately the proverbial blush has been off the rose since she has displayed ugly anti-Semitic attitudes, but never mind: that video makes everything that has come before irrelevant.

That’s signature significance. Anyone who believes that space travel is a hoax is, by definition, an idiot. No one should take Candace Owens seriously. Ever.

Let us never speak of her again.

The Unethical Obscurity of Larry Doby

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Yesterday was “Jackie Robinson Day” in baseball, with every player wearing the civil rights and baseball icon’s retired uniform number 42. April 15, 1947 is the day Robinson, following the bold plan of Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey to desegregate baseball, officially broke the game’s color barrier in an event with national, cultural and societal significance. (I’ve written a lot about Jackie, a great man as well as a great baseball player.) Baseball is justly proud of its role in advancing civil rights (and justly ashamed of its long exclusion of black players before and after Robinson’s trailblazing), but commenter “Old Bill” reminded me this morning of the undeserved and unfair relative obscurity of Cleveland Indians great Larry Doby, the second black man to play Major League Baseball.

“It was 11 weeks between the time Jackie Robinson and I came into the majors. I can’t see how things were any different for me than they were for him,” Doby once said. Well, they weren’t. Doby’s courage and fortitude while battling bigotry and hostility to integrate what had been a white man’s game were no less than what Robinson displayed.

Lawrence Eugene Doby was born on December 13, 1923, in Camden, South Carolina. Larry’s father, David, was a stable hand, grooming the horses of many wealthy New Jersey families. When Larry was eight years old, his father died in a tragic accident. After that the boy was cared for by his aunt and uncle as well as his mother and moved from locale to locale, finally settling in Patterson, N.J. Even before graduating from high school, Doby was playing second base in the Negro Leagues under the assumed name of Larry Walker for the Newark Eagles. Despite is tender years, he was considered a rising star. He entered college, where he was a basketball stand-out, and was drafted and joined the Navy during W.W. II. Doby was honorably discharged from the military in January 1946, and inspired by the news that the Dodgers had signed a black player, Robinson of course, he changed his career plans from teaching to baseball. Doby sensed that the times they were a-changing. He rejoined the Negro League Eagles, believing that might be a path to the Major Leagues.

When his team went on to win the Negro Leagues World Series in 1946, Doby attracted the attention of maverick Cleveland Indians owner Bill Veeck, now best known as the man who sent a midget up to bat. Veeck, like Rickey, had long sought to integrate baseball, which for Veeck was the American League. He became convinced that Doby was the right player to do it. Veeck decided that he would purchase Doby’s contract and bring him up to join Cleveland right after the 1947 All-Star break. Doby’s white team mates on the Indians refused to look at or speak to him. Doby told an interviewer in 2002, “I knew it was segregated times, but I had never seen anything like that in athletics. I was embarrassed. It was tough.” 

He didn’t win a place in the Indians regular line-up until the next season, when the Indians won the AL pennant with him playing the outfield every day. That fall Doby became the first black player to hit a home run in the World Series, winning Game Four 2-1 and sending the Indians to a World Series victory the next day. A remarkable photo taken after Game Four showed Doby embracing white Cleveland pitcher Steve Gromek. (I was told that this photo is famous: I’ve followed baseball and baseball history most of my life, and I had never seen it. But there is a statue of Pee Wee Reese with his hand on Jackie Robinson’s shoulder! ) in what was supposedly a watershed for race relations.

Continue reading →

‘The Great Stupid’ Marches On: “Good Morning” Is Racist, Apparently

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Here is woman beyond help, miserable because she sees racism in everything, and is actively searching for features of daily life to make her feel insecure, unsafe, and angry:

What can you say about such a poisoned individual? How did she get this way? Does she think Gene, Donald and Debbie are sending racist “dog whistles” to white supremacists in the audience? Oh probably. But now she can solemnly lecture anyone who greets her with “Good morning!” about their racial insensitivity.

There has to be a clinical name for this proclivity, but for now, “The Great Stupid” will just have to suffice.

_______________

Pointer: Moonbattery

KABOOM! Ethics Dunces: George Clooney and Any Audience Member Who Doesn’t Jeer the End of “Good Night and Good Luck”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I honestly thought this was a joke. As a stage director, I couldn’t believe that a Broadway show—a drama, supposedly— would stoop this low. My head has been in a continuous state of eruption since I found out the report was accurate.

George Clooney has a vanity project on Broadway, a stage adaptation of his well-received 2005 movie about Edward R. Murrow’s high stakes showdown with demagogue Joe McCarthy at the height of his power. He co-wrote the screenplay and directed while also playing a supporting role. Now, twenty years later, Clooney has moved himself into the starring role as Murrow (previously played by a better and more Murrow-like actor, David Strathairn).

The play has been getting luke-warm reviews, but none of the ones I read mentioned this little detail: At the end of the play, which is supposed to be about the importance of a courageous press that “speaks truth to power” and is trusted by the public to be fair and uncorruptible, a giant photo of Elon Musk giving the alleged “Nazi salute” is projected on the backdrop.

It was not a Nazi salute, and the Axis news media that represented it as such proved just how far the profession of journalism has fallen since the halcyon days of Edward R. Morrow. But the photo surely isn’t intended to convey that message. Clooney, or some lunatic, with Clooney’s approval, was trying to equate McCarthyism with the Trump administration, and McCarthy’s totalitarian methods with Musk. It’s such a bizarre and idiotic analogy that I can’t properly critique it because I don’t comprehend the thinking behind it. It is lizard-brain level at best, and I always thought Clooney was smarter than that. (My dog Spuds is smarter than that.)

But reports are that the Trump Deranged Broadway audiences gasp and react as if this is brilliant commentary. I would have walked out. Any decent American or responsible theater-goer should walk out.

I still am hoping this is a hoax.