The stained glass windows in the National Cathedral show different scenes from American history. Someone made the dunderheaded decision when the cathedral was being designed to have windows honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which seemed, in a setting with limited opportunities to highlight American heroes, an odd choice even back when the structure was opened to the public.
After a gunman shot and killed nine Black worshipers at a church in South Carolina in 2015 and the movement began to ban all things Confederate, the cathedral management decided that Stonewall and Lee had to go. Six years after the glass’s removal in 2017, National Cathedral has unveiled their replacement, which you can see above. The new windows , titled Now and Forever, show black protesters holding protest signs bearing the words “No,” “Not,” “Fairness” and “No foul play.”
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is this a responsible, appropriate, ethical decoration for the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.?
Something made me watch Ken Burns’ documentary “The Roosevelts” again last week. I was not looking for current perspective or political enlightenment, and the stories told are all very familiar to me, being an admirer of Teddy from childhood and fascinated by the complexities and contradictions that were Franklin. But history always surprises, and it often resonated differently depending on when it is examined. I realized, for the first time, that the Roosevelts have much to teach us about the conflict roiling the nation now….and the worse roiling that seems to be on its way.
It is ironic that serial Ethics Villain and NEA president Randi Weingarten writes that her tweet “speaks for itself” when it is indeed a wonderful example of res ipsa loquitur, but not in the way Weingarten would have us believe.
The teacher was not fired for reading the “Diary of Anne Frank” to her class, but for using “Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation” without proper authorization from the school and using it to launch a class discussion of sexual molestation. The graphic version, in the style of a comic book…
…is true to Frank’s original diary but contains the sexual and other content that was taken out of the original version published by Frank’s father. The graphic novel-syle version has been critically praised, but the previously redacted material it includes are of a nature that require sensitive instruction and certainly prior approval by parents.
Weingarten misidentified the book involved due to carelessness, devotion to her political agenda, or deliberate deception, none of which are qualities any responsible parent wants in their child’s teachers. Yet Weingarten is the teacher the teachers’ union chose to represent and lead it.
People who don’t adequately research what they write about as pundits, experts or authorities spread their own biases, ignorance and misconceptions like a virus-infected audience member coughing in a crowded theater. Two annoying examples of the phenomenon have surfaced in the last week, but the phenomenon is widespread and frequent.
“Sadly, time machines don’t exist, or I’d transport you back a few decades to a wonderful tradition this country has abandoned: the World’s Fair,” Tatano writes. “This piece of Americana sadly made its last appearance in New Orleans in 1984. The event moved every few years from one major city to another, and there was always something new to experience….I was fortunate enough to grow up a 30-minute drive from the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York. It ran from April to October both years, and we made plenty of visits. Combining entertaining rides with a time travel element, it blew away anything you could experience in Orlando…The fair was so big there was an actual cable car called the “Swiss Sky Ride” which took you airborne from one end of the fair to another…It’s been almost 40 years since the last World’s Fair. I find it sad that an entire generation never got to experience one and wonder if we’ll ever see such an amazing event again.”
Tatiano bashes Disney several times in his article, but I found myself wondering, “Has this guy been to Walt Disney World?” and “Did no one tell him that the 1964 World’s Fair was substantially a preview of Walt’s last great project?” About half the New York World’s Fair major attractions Tatiano nostalgically marvels at were designed by Disney engineers and transferred to the new theme park as soon as the New York World’s Fair closed. He doesn’t mention others Disney contributions, like the G.E. “Carousel of Progress” and the audio-animatronic Abe Lincoln, who starred at the Illinois state pavilion. The experience at Flushing Meadows in Queens in 1964-65 didn’t “blow away anything you could experience in Orlando,” it was exactly what Disney World visitors a couple of years later experienced in Orlando: I was at the ’64 World’s Fair, and the similarities were the first thing that struck me when I finally got to Disney’s mega-park ten years later.
Jason Patterson, an African American artist who is obsessed with flags and who apparently can sniff out racism that normal people don’t notice, managed to convince the Washington Post to validate his hysterical assessment that the seven state flags pictured above (on a field of “The Stars and Bars” flags) are all secretly sending anti-black, racist, pro-slavery and pro-Confederate messages. He thinks they all should be removed, even though (I’m estimating here) not one American in 10,000 would detect any such messages at all. This is the weird state of mind that has led to statue-toppling across the country, movements to end the honoring of essential Founders like Washington, Jefferson and Madison, and, at its silliest, the elimination of “Turkey in the Straw” as the tinkly tune played by ice cream trucks. It’s fair to describe Patterson as obsessed and unhealthily so, making the Post’s effort to spread his paranoia unethical and irresponsible.
Yes, it’s Bluto’s (John Belushi) now iconic gaffe in “Animal House” come true: “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” Those are German planes on the cover of Michael J. Clark’s history book for young readers about the sneak attack that brought the U.S. into World War II.
Just think about all of the careless, irresponsible boobs, including the author and the cover artist, who had to breach the ethical values of competence, diligence and respect for that book to be published and put on the market. How many must it have been? Then you can add to that List of Shame our pathetic, ruinous education system, which has produced such a nation of dolts that not even a humble secretary or passing clerk had the knowledge to point out, when they saw the book as it made its way through production, “Uh, aren’t those German planes?” Anyone who did, thus preventing this epic embarrassment, might have received a promotion or a bonus. Or at least someone would have bought him or her a nice lunch.
And this is one more example where cultural literacy rot matters. If you can’t learn your American history, at least know your classic films.
Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents near John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, has suddenly decided to reveal relevant actions and observations from that terrible day 60 years ago. His new perspectives, as the New York Times puts it, may “rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way,” and “encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries.” The appropriate responses to Landis’s sudden urge to tell all are 1) “What took you so long?” and 2) “Oh, shut up.”
TRUMP: "To every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom – Hear these words: WE WILL NOT COMPLY. So, don't even think about it." pic.twitter.com/008tq7o3Yu
Ethics Alarms has consistently taken the position that as disastrous as the measures taken under the Trump Administration to deal with the unprecedented Wuhan virus pandemic were, Trump as President had no politically viable options but to follow the advice of the CDC and Ethics Villain Dr. Anthony Fauci—not with the mortality figured being exaggerated and hyped by the news media, not with unscrupulous critics like Joe Biden telling the public that he had “blood on his hands.” Within the range of decisions within his power to execute, Trump handled the situation as well as it could have been handled, and criticism of his performance now constitutes the worst kind of hindsight bias and consequentialism.
However 2023 Presidential candidate Trump (I’m holding out hope that he will not be one in 2024) is ethically estopped from grandstanding now about “Covid tyrants” and refusing to comply with whatever measures the Democrats attempt to inflict as progressive maskophilia resumes. The Platform Formally Known as Twitter’s inconvenient context is fair and apt. Trump was for the draconian measures before he was against them. Again, I don’t blame him for his conduct then, but he can’t credibly pose as a defender of personal liberty now when he did not push back against the Democratic governors and mayors who were inflicting absurdly extreme restrictions on Americans based on bad science and totalitarian aspirations.
During his a match at the US Open yesterday, German player Alexander Zverev complained that he heard a fan sing out, “Deutschland über alles!” Zverev went to umpire James Keothavong and said, “He just said the most famous Hitler phrase there is in this world, it’s unacceptable. This is unbelievable.”
The phrase, which translates to “Germany above all,” has been removed from the German national anthem, which is sung to melody composed by Haydn, (NOT Handel. as was initially posted). The original lyrics were written way back in 1800, but “Deutschland über alles” is associated with Hitler, the Nazis, the Holocaust, WW II, all sorts of bad things. It’s a casualty of the cognitive dissonance scale.
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