History

Fairness Test: “What’s Going On Here?”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The short video clip above shows Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar referring to World War II as “World War Eleven.” The clip has been reposted by numerous social media accounts and has collectively drawn millions of views. Some versions leave out the Congresswoman quickly correcting herself and smiling at her own gaffe.

Omar’s “speako” has also spawned many memes, like…

All in good fun…except that if Donald Trump made a gaffe like that my Trump Deranged Facebook friends would be screaming that it was time to invoke the 25th Amendment. I am willing to accept the protests of Democrats that Omar’s incident was a forgivable momentary botch with no greater significance and not proof that she misunderstands Roman numerals or lacks a basic knowledge of history…if they stop using Trump’s occassional verbal stumbles as evidence that he is demented.

And you know they won’t.

On the other hand…what the hell? How can someone who has read anything about World War II and seen the numbering as often as educated Americans do—what, hundreds of times? Thousands?—make that mistake? Several years ago, a local news hostess was fired after making the same error; the assumption was that she must be an idiot. Maybe because my sister and I were immersed in World War II history, lore and memorabilia from the time we could speak, this particular gaffe seems particularly weird to me. If Omar pronounced “USA” as “ussa,” would it be reasonable for us to shrug it off as a mistake any member of Congress could make? This is an elected official, after all, whose American bona fides are tad shaky.

Now, now, Jack. You have exonerated Obama for saying there were more than 50 states, and yourself for mixing up this guy…

….with this guy…

so let’s not jump to conclusions about Rep. Omar just because she has said her first duty is to Somalians.

Through A Rear-View Cultural Mirror: Ethics Observations on “Bye Bye Birdie” (1963)

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

In the weekend’s interview on The Steven Speirer Show, I explained the distinction between morality and ethics in part by noting that ethics, unlike morality, is constantly evolving over time, and thus requires constant reflection and reassessment. This was the theory behind my now defunct professional theater company in Northern Virginia, The American Century Theater, which revived older American plays and musicals now considered “dated” by the theater community. Old art is never dated, because we have to know where we have been in order to understand how we got where we are and where we are going.

A fascinating time capsule in this vein is “Bye Bye Birdie,” the 1963 film of the hit 1961 Broadway musical. That show, the “Grease” of its generation, was a current events satire of the rock idol phenomenon, inspired by the cultural uproar when Elvis Presley, at the peak of his first wave popularity, was drafted. The Broadway show launched the careers of Dick Van Dyke and Paul Lynde, and included several hits songs (“Put on a Happy Face,” “I’ve Got a Lot of Living To Do,” and others by Adams and Strouse, who later wrote “Applause” and “Annie”) as well as one of the most famous opening numbers in musical theater history, “The Telephone Hour.”

For a number of reasons, I was moved to watch the movie again for the first time since I saw it in a movie theater. Naturally, when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I’ve got some other tools to evaluate performance art, but the ethical issues raised by the film are many.

Most notably, the casting of Janet Leigh in the role of Rosie DeLeon, struggling songwriter Dick Van Dyke’s long-suffering girlfriend, would be castigated today. The role on Broadway was played by Chita Rivera, and this was considered a break-through: no Latina had ever played the romantic lead in a musical before. Rivera was already a major stage star and was nominated for a Tony for her performance as Rosie, but while Dick Van Dyke and Lynde from the original cast were carried over to the film version, Rivera was replaced by Janet Leigh of “Psycho” fame, in an unbecoming black wig.

Leigh was a movie star and considered good for the box office, and Rivera was not movie close-up beautiful by Hollywood standards. Nevertheless, this would be called “whitewashing” today. Rivera was crushed by the decision, but such injustices in the translation of shows from stage to screen were and still are standard practice, one of the most famous being Audrey Hepburn taking Julie Andrews’ place as Eliza in the movie version of “My Fair Lady.”

Pages: 1 2

Rueful Observations On A Trump Derangement Outburst…

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

1. Nah, Trump Derangement is a myth!

2. If you want to see this orgy of hate and violence without the annoying commentary, here’s a link I couldn’t embed.

2. How does a mush-mouth like Topping have the gall to host a show of any kind? Jeeeez, whatever your first name is, get a coach! Learn to speak clearly. Slow the hell down. Not only are you hard to understand, your speech pattern is excruciating to listen to. This is malpractice.

Why hasn’t anyone told him?

3. Look at the hate on this crazy old bat’s face! What could possibly justify that?

4. There are several places on the web where one can purchase Trump pinatas. Here, for instance.

5. The onlookers cheering her on epitomize the description “angry mob.” The Axis of Unethical Conduct made them this way, hammering away at “Trump is a Nazi” and related slander and libel, day after day, for ten years. And it has caused brain damage. The remedy to speech is, we have decided as a nation, more speech, and “hate speech” is still protected speech. Inciting riots, however, is not protected speech. Nonetheless, inciting riots in slow motion, over long periods of time, by repeating demonizing and violence-triggering propaganda and rhetoric over and over again until it is embedded in weak minds, is legal. It is also unethical.

6. Do you think the crazy woman doing this while wearing a shirt that extols kindness on the front and the Golden Rule on the back recognizes the double standards she is embracing? It it intentional satire? Is she just an idiot?

7. Democrats cheer on this kind of lunacy while insisting that their “8647” rhetoric plays no part in the repeated assassination attempts. The only President I can find whose avatars were subjected to such vicarious and symbolic violence was Abraham Lincoln during protests like the draft riots in New York. (Confederate equivalents don’t count.) True, he wasn’t…

Oh. Right.

8. I react emotionally to people attacking and defiling images of the President of the United States. just as I do to flag burning. It is an attack on my nation, its institutions, its history and its values. The conduct shows civic disrespect that cannot be rationalized away.

______________

Pointer: Steve Witherspoon

Another Really Bad Trump Idea: “The National Garden of American Heroes,” Part III: The First “Hall of Fame”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here.

To put a final period on this fiasco, we should recall that Trump’s idea was tried before.

The Hall of Fame for Great Americans was established in 1901. It was the country’s first hall of fame, inspiring the Cooperstown baseball hall and all the rest. For a while, it was a tourist attraction. Located at the uptown campus of New York University (now Bronx Community College), there were bronze busts of Presidents, generals, scientists, artists and scholars. Then it fell out of date, new inductees were not inducted, and The Hall of Fame for Great Americans was ignored and forgotten, as were many of the names on the busts. Who, for example, was Sidney Lanier?

There are 98 busts in the Hall. How many can you idientify? (And yes, Robert E. Lee is among them…)

John Adams

John Quincy Adams

Jane Addams

Louis Agassiz

Susan B. Anthony

John James Audubon

George Bancroft

Clara Barton

Henry Ward Beecher

Alexander Graham Bell

Daniel Boone

Edwin Booth

Louis Brandeis

Phillips Brooks

William Cullen Bryant

Luther Burbank

Andrew Carnegie

George Washington Carver

William Ellery Channing

Rufus Choate

Henry Clay

Grover Cleveland

James Fenimore Cooper

Peter Cooper

Charlotte Cushman

James Buchanan Eads

Thomas Edison

Jonathan Edwards

Ralph Waldo Emerson

David Farragut

Stephen Foster

Benjamin Franklin

Robert Fulton

Josiah Willard Gibbs

William C. Gorgas

Ulysses S. Grant

Asa Gray

Alexander Hamilton

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Joseph Henry

Patrick Henry

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Mark Hopkins (educator)

Elias Howe

Washington Irving

Andrew Jackson

Stonewall Jackson

Thomas Jefferson

John Paul Jones

James Kent

Sidney Lanier

Robert E. Lee

Abraham Lincoln

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

James Russell Lowell

Mary Lyon

Edward MacDowell

Horace Mann

John Marshall

Matthew Fontaine Maury

Albert A. Michelson

Maria Mitchell

James Monroe

Samuel Morse

William T. G. Morton

John Lothrop Motley

Simon Newcomb

Thomas Paine

Alice Freeman Palmer

Francis Parkman

George Peabody

William Penn

Edgar Allan Poe

Walter Reed

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

William Tecumseh Sherman

John Philip Sousa

Joseph Story

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Gilbert Stuart

Sylvanus Thayer

Henry David Thoreau     ]

Lillian Wald

Booker T. Washington

George Washington

Daniel Webster

George Westinghouse

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Walt Whitman

Eli Whitney

John Greenleaf Whittier

***

I rate this selection, despite being 125 years old, as far better than the proposed members of Trump’s “Garden of Heroes.”




Another Really Bad Trump Idea: “The National Garden of American Heroes,” Part II.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Part I is here, and you should read it first.

Warning: My head exploded several times while writing this part. Also: For some reason WordPress insists on listing the names weirdly. I tried to fix it once. I’ll keep trying. Sorry.

One of the stunning aspects of the proposed list of 250, other than its general incompetence, is that there was so much DEI pollution of the various categories. For example, there are very few, if any, respectable legal scholars who regard either Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Thurgood Marshall as belonging among our most admirable jurists. Marshall was the first black Supreme Court Justice, but that alone doesn’t make him a hero. Why is his trail-blazing credentials sufficient to get him a slot as one of the 250 “heroes,” but Ginsburg gets the nod over the first female Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor? What landmark ruling did Ginsberg produce.

This is a terrible list. I would hope (probably in vain) that a well-educated freshman at a state college could do better. Well, on with the critique…

4. Jurists: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Robert H. Jackson, Thurgood Marshall, William
Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia.

Comment: Ugh. In addition to the absurd inclusions (Rehnquist? Why?), the omissions are striking and unforgivable. John Marshall (no relation) is the most important and influential Chief Justice as well as the longest serving. Marbury v. Madison is the basis of the Supreme Court’s modern power. Where are the acknowledged giants of the Court: Benjamin Cardozo, Louis Brandeis, Hugo Black and both Harlans? Earl Warren was probably the second most influential and consequential Chief Justice, and the Warren Court, liberal as it was, still hold the record for transformative rulings. I’m not a big Oliver Wendell Holmes fan, but even his detractors (like Popehat’s Ken White) would concede that he was a major legal theorist who deserves to be listed among the greats. Moreover, nobody but a legal illiterate would believe that only SCOTUS members are great judges. Judge Learned Hand was dubbed “the Tenth Justice” and “the greatest judge never to be appointed to the Supreme Court.” His opinions and quotes are standard fare in law school. Judge Richard Posner, more recently, was an acclaimed legal thinker; so was Robert Bork, robbed of his place on the Supreme Court when the Democrats decided to violate a “democratic norm.”

Military Heroes and Patriots, defined as “Defenders of freedom who risked everything on the battlefield to preserve the Union and protect the innocent.”

1. Revolutionary & Early Era: Crispus Attucks, Joshua Chamberlain, David Farragut, Nathanael Greene, Nathan Hale, Henry Knox, Tadeusz Kościuszko, the Marquis de La Fayette, Paul Revere, Robert Gould Shaw.

Comment: I see Paul Revere turned up here. If he’s here, so too should William Dawes, who shared the task of alerting town a around Boston that “the British are coming!” Why is Crispus Attucks any more of a hero than the Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, and Patrick Carr, who were also victims in the Boston Massacre? Oh, right, he was black. Got it. Race equals heroism. Similarly, why is Shaw on the list for losing an obscure battle with black union soldiers? Generals Sherman, Sheridan, and Hancock deserve the honor more. So, in fact, does George Armstrong Custer, as I explained here. Andrew Jackson won the most decisive military battle in U.S. history against crazy odds at the Battle of New Orleans. And what are non-Americans doing on the list, when deserving Americans are missing?

2. World War Leaders: William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Jimmy Doolittle, Gabby Gabreski, William Frederick “Bull” Halsey, Jr., Douglas MacArthur, GeorgeMarshall, George S. Patton, Jr., John J. Pershing, Matthew Ridgway, Hyman Rickover, Norman Schwarzkopf, Maxwell Taylor.

Comment: Where’s Admiral Raymond Spruance, who won the Battle of Midway? Where’s Dusty Kleiss another hero in the same battle, as the dive bomber who managed to hit the Japanese fleet with sub-par airplanes? Omar Bradley had far more to do with the U.S. victory than McArthur. Why are the officer heroes of D-Day omitted, like General Theodore Roosevelt Jr, and Gen. Norman Cota? Didn’t Trump watch “The Longest Day”?

2.Medal of Honor & Valor: Roy Benavidez, Desmond Doss, Audie Murphy, Alvin C. York

Comment: I get it, the only Medal of Honor recipients who count are the ones who have movies made about them.

3. Athletes and Competitors (Champions who demonstrated the American virtues of discipline, perseverance, and sportsmanship): Muhammad Ali, Herb Brooks, Kobe Bryant, Roberto Clemente, Lou Gehrig, Vince Lombardi, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Cy Young.

Pages: 1 2

Another Really Bad Trump Idea: “The National Garden of American Heroes,” Part I. [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

President Trump’s method in some of his madness is to restore and reinforce the core American values that have been eroded, corrupted and in some cases denied by the ethics and cultural rot wreaked by the Far Left’s capture of our national institutions. The motives deserve applause, but his execution in many cases, like his “National Garden of American Heroes” obsession, is often hopelessly flawed. I’m being too nice: the theory that it is possible to create a fair and historically valid list of “American heroes” is, as Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers) so sagely remarks above, is stupid, and ultimately harmful.

The latest plans for the monstrosity include reflecting pools, dining facilities and an amphitheater alongside 250 life-size statues of notable Americans. It will require a significant redevelopment of West Potomac Park in D.C., and the statues alone could cost more than the $40 million approved for the project by Congress. But never mind all that: the fact is unavoidable that choosing just 250 Americans to be honored as “heroes” guarantees exorbitant praise for some prominent Americans and unjust exclusion for others. There are probably thousands of American lives that meet the Ethics Alarms criteria for the public to have a “duty to remember” them. Furthermore, perhaps reflecting President Trump’s limited public vocabulary, not all important and productive Americans qualify as heroes, and not all American heroes had much effect on the country and its history. Is the proposed “garden” intended to honor character, achievements, or both? Finally, the choices of who to honor in such a project will be distorted by bias and politics. In fact, that has already occurred.

The list of 250 that has been published confirms all of these fears; indeed, its even worse than I expected.  Here are the current proposed “heroes” by category; the list is introduced as being categorized by their primary contributions to our national story, representing “the tapestry of American greatness, men and women who, through faith, courage, and hard work, built the United States into a beacon of hope and industry.”

Right.

I’ll comment after each section.

Pages: 1 2

Friday Open Forum, God Save The King Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

As usual, a tour of the U.S. by a major head of state is causing a news stir and ethics issues. Perhaps nothing will ever top the uproar over Nikita Khrushchev’s visit during the Kennedy administration, when Nikita wanted to go to Disneyland and Walt wouldn’t let him in. President Trump has been on good behavior with King Charles and didn’t even slam the monarch on Truth Social after Charles delivered a number of subtle shots at Trump during his speech before Congress.

What is it about the royal family that makes so many Americans go all weak in the knees? My father strenuously objected to it, saying more than 50 years ago that the U.S. public should treat Great Britain’s kings, queens, princes and princes as what they are: embarrassing relics of a feudal system that we rejected and that should have died out in the 18th Century. He said he wouldn’t cross the road we lived on (Brunswick Road, Arlington—it had a “dead end” sign on each end) to greet any of them.

Dad would have probably approved of Mayor Mamdani’s brush off regarding King Charles, as when asked what he would say to the king if the two spoke, answered, “I would probably encourage him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond.” That’s one of the crowns jewels.

Meanwhile, there is much to talk about in the Wide, Wide World of Ethics. So talk, already…

Predictable Aftermath To Assassination Attempt #3 That Still Must Be Aggressively Addressed…Somehow

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Above is the guy who was trying to kill the President and as many of his aides and Cabinet members as possible last night. (I don’t care what his name is.) You can read his “manifesto”  here. The news media is calling it “unhinged.” It’s not unhinged. This is an arrogant, well-educated, erudite narcissist who has been indoctrinated by the Axis of Unethical Conduct’s propaganda over ten years to the point where he believed that assassinating the President of the United States is a patriotic act. John Wilkes Booth believed the same thing. He wasn’t unhinged either.

The key quote in the message is: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” There is no evidence that Trump is a pedophile. There is no evidence that he is a rapist. There is no evidence that he is a traitor, or that he has committed any crimes in office. But the news media and its message-makers within “the resistance” and the Democratic Party have been working hard to convince the weak of mind or narrow of perception that up is down and black is white. Outside the White House Correspondents Dinner, demonstrators carried signs saying “Death to tyrants” and “Death to all of them.” The failed assassin isn’t the wacko outlier that the Trump Deranged want sane people to think he is. He is one of them. He got his news and information from MSNBC and CNN, and believed this…

Last night Richard Grennell tweeted to CNN’s Jake Tapper, “You encourage the mentally unstable to take action against Trump every night.” Grennell is wrong. Tapper and his colleagues encourage normal, functioning Americans to hate and oppose their President every night. Another “X” used wrote, “Most of the people in that Washington Hilton ballroom tonight are morally responsible for what just happened. For over 10 years they’ve pushed the most hateful, vile conspiracies: Trump is a threat to democracy, a dictator, literally Hitler 2.0. They demonized him nonstop, normalized violence in their rhetoric, then acted shocked when the inevitable keeps occurring.” That is correct. So is the Instapundit contributor who wrote that MSNBC is complicit in last night’s attempted murder.

I played Scrabble last night with a smart, passionate, kind neighbor who is a private tutor who does wonderful work for various charities, and who devotes her spare time to helping the poor. She texted me today that she was in “mourning” because President Trump was still alive.

If there aren’t enough sane, principled, informed voters who care sufficiently in November to make sure that the party and the parties responsible for inflicting this hate plague on the nation do not gain control of the government, then American society will have proven that it is no longer worthy of a republic.

Flashback: “Ethics Reflections On The Trump Assassination Attempt Prelude and Aftermath” and Observations on the Latest Attempt

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Fact: The Axis of Unethical Conduct is 100% responsible for the third serious attempt on President Trump’s life in less than two years. 100%. Denying this is spin.

I’m not tolerating it or allowing the Mad Left to duck responsibility. It has been pushing hate for years, mostly focusing on Trump but also on Republicans, conservatives, the United States of America, capitalism and our founding values. Many on the Left (including Senator Elizabeth Warren) cheered on or rationalized the murderous act of the man who murdered a health care insurance executive by shooting him in the back—you know, evil corporations, evil capitalism. Many on the Left cheered the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The “resistance,” Democrats and their propaganda engines, aka. “the news media,” have been calling Trump a dictator, a fascist, Hitler, a sexual predator, a convicted felon, a racist, a monster, an existential threat to democracy, a practitioner of genocide, constantly and repeatedly. A lot of people really believe these labels are justified; a lot more people are cynically and irresponsibly spreading those accusation because they will help the Democrats achieve their ultimate goal of single party rule.

I believe that a very large percentage of American progressives want Trump dead, one way or another. A Rutgers study, you may recall, found more than half of the progressive respondents to a survey said it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Donald Trump. I believe that this conclusion is inescapable.

It’s too bad for these corrupt and despicable Americans that Trump is really good at reacting to assassination attempt. Then again, he’s had more practice than anybody in U.S. history. In his comments to the media last night, the President said in part,

“This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way it did…I saw a room that was totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful — a very beautiful thing to see…In light of this evening’s events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences. You had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives in that room — a big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together.

“We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight. It’s not a particularly secure building. I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House. It’s actually a larger room and it’s much more secure. It’s got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom.
 
“This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin. In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago — you all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close again. We had some great work done by law enforcement.
 
…I’ve studied assassinations. The most impactful people, the people that do the most, are the ones they go after. Abraham Lincoln, the big names. I hate to say I’m honored by that, but we’ve done a lot. We’ve changed this country. There are a lot of people that are not happy about that.”

Trump’s assassination history is flawed, but in his case, it has some legitimacy. Abe Lincoln, of course, fits his narrative, but the other assassinated Presidents do not: McKinley, Garfield, and Kennedy. The President Trump just surpassed to become the failed assassination record-holder with three is Gerald Ford, not exactly one of the “big names.” Nevertheless, the resistance, Democrats and the Axis media have been vilifying this President because he has “done a lot.” and has foiled them again and again. Yes, Trump’s trolling, gloating, deliberately inflammatory rhetoric and defiant style make the target they have placed on his back a bit more vivid, but make no mistake: the Trump Deranged and the totalitarian-tilting Left put it there.

Before I get to the EA post I authored right after the 2024 assassination attempt, I want to quote from the later post on the same topic:

Pages: 1 2

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month and Stupidest Quote of the Year (So Far): Virginia State Senator Lamont Bagby (D)

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Wow. What an idiot.

Democratic Virginia state Sen. Lamont Bagby, during a floor debate on the Democratic Party’s dishonest gerrymandering scheme, was trying to refute Republicans who argued that Democrats don’t understand the needs of that rural Virginians they are trying to disenfranchise.

So he said this. He really did. No, I wouldn’t make this up, I’m an ethicist!

“I grew up watching ‘The Waltons.’ I grew up with Opie. I even watched ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ I think I know a little bit about rural America “I’m not just here for Theo. I’m not just here for Arnold or Willis. I’m here for Opie, John Boy. Blossom, Topanga.”

Bagby was saying that he understands 21st Century rural communities in Virginia because he watched a TV show about a Virginia mountain family during the Depression, an idealized Sixties sitcom about a small town sheriff in North Carolina, and a notorious good ol’ boy TV farce about bootleggers in Georgia that lowered one’s IQ by several points every time one watched it. This is on the same plane as arguing that you are qualified to work for NASA because you were a fan of William Shatner’s “Star Trek.”

As for his other TV references, they make even less sense. “Blossom” lived in Los Angeles. “Boy Meets World,” which is his “Topanga” reference, was set in the Philadelphia suburbs. “Different Strokes” (Arnold and Willis) was set in penthouse at 900 Park Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City.

This moron couldn’t even get his own ridiculous argument straight. I’ll tolerate political cretinism, but when these fools start misrepresenting old TV show, I really get angry.

Be proud, Virginia Democrats. This is the quality of the people you chose to govern your state.