History

I Know It’s Too Easy But I Can’t Resist: “An Irish Actor Playing Oppenheimer Proves Once Again That Jews Don’t Count” May Be The Most Hilariously Confused Casting Ethics Rant Yet

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

There is only one ethical way to cast a play, musical or movie: pick the actor whose portrayal will most entertain the audience and realize the full potential of the script. Casting is not the place (if anywhere is) for political correctness, quotas, “diversity,” or affirmative action.

Ethics Alarms is full of discussions of this issue, most recently here, in the post just last week about how Disney decided it was offensive to cast seven little people as the Seven Dwarfs in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Hollywood and Broadway are completely confused and hypocritical in this area, because the people who run both places are 1) desperate to be seen as progressive and to signal their virtue at every opportunity, 2) terrified of being branded as non-woke, giving extreme activist groups representing various tribes and interests groups the upper hand in their bullying efforts, and 3) not very bright, frankly.

This is why a Samoan-African American actor was found insufficiently black to play folk legend John Henry, but a black woman was cast as red-headed fish-girl Ariel in “The Little Mermaid,” and the Founding Fathers ended up being portrayed by black, Asian, and Hispanic women and “non-binary” performers in the revival of “1776.” Tom Hanks now says only gay actors should play gay characters, but a director who refused to cast a gay actor as a non-gay character would be run out of the business. It is, as I have written here before, Calvinball.

All of which brings us to the head-exploding essay by Malina Saval, editor in Chief of Pasadena Magazine, titled “An Irish Actor Playing Oppenheimer Proves Once Again That Jews Don’t Count.”

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Indiana Jones And The March Of Folly

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

I have to ask: what the hell is going on with Harrison Ford’s nose in the photo above from “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”? It looks like he borrowed it from Dustin Hoffman’s make-up kit from “Little Big Man,” when Dustin played a 111-year old man. But I digress…

It is now certain that Disney’s fifth and one hopes final Indiana Jones movie will be a financial disaster. It cost $300,000,000 to make, and with marketing and other costs, a big Hollywood film has to clear about twice its filming costs to break even. That’s not happening; three weeks after its release, “Dial of Destiny” is already trailing two less-hyped summer films, and is being treated as “dud on arrival.”

“Movie Web” has done the best analyses I’ve seen regarding the film’s conceptual, artistic and marketing problems (here and here), and I’d love to write about those, but this is an ethics blog, so I’m officially interested in just one aspect of the debacle: Why didn’t anyone stop it?

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Comment Of The Day: “Flagrant Virtue-Signaling Of The Century: Ben & Jerry’s”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

There are more than the usual reasons to publish JutGory’s overview of the absurdity riddling Ben & Jerry’s fatuous July 4th Tweet exhorting the U.S. to “return” “stolen indigenous land” to the Native American tribes. The most unusual one is that WordPress has temporarily (I hope!) lost its damn mind, and has replaced all commenter names on the recent posts with the Borg-like “[1].” As a result, readers are unable to tell who wrote Jut’s comment, for which we should all be grateful.

The main one is that the oft-heard demand that the United States should return the nation to “the Indians” is historically, legally, ethically and realistically batty and ignorant, and drives me nuts every time I hear or read it. Jut concisely explains why it’s nuts historically and legally. He does not go into the aspect of the matter than is usually ignored by shallow thinkers like whoever wrote the Ben & Jerry tweet, which is that if the U.S. hadn’t been in possession of its current mainland North American territory in the 1940s, Nazi Germany would have overrun it and probably the world, and reduced the happy, innocent hunter-gatherers there to either slaves or ashes. Tragic as the current status of the tribes is today, it is a lot better than that. Similarly Hawaii, where there is no question that the residents were robbed of their islands, would have been conquered by the Japanese. If Secretary Seward had not bought Alaska from the Russians, all of us, including the Native Americans, might have been blasted into the Stone Age (where, admittedly, the tribes would have been more confortable than the Europeans) by the Soviets.

I am not exactly saying that Native Americans should be grateful they were over-run, but rather that, as JutGory correctly points out, you can’t turn back the clock.

Here is [1]’s…sorry, JutGory’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Flagrant Virtue-Signaling Of The Century: Ben & Jerry’s”:

***

Just another example of Twitter’s inability to facilitate an exploration of subtle thoughts.

Does the US exist on “stolen land”?

Sort of.

Apparently, Manhattan was purchased from indigenous people, just not the ones who “owned” the land. That would make the US a good faith purchaser for value.

But, really, that was a fraud perpetrated on the Dutch, or maybe the English. But, we got it from England fair and square in the Treaty of Paris. All of the original states were stolen from England.

We bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon. That was another big portion of the US.

And, the Mexican-American War, contrived as it may have been, was settled legally.

Then, there was Texas.

A huge portion of the US was obtained legally from other thieves.

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When Ethics Alarms Don’t Ring AND You’re A Moron: The Roman Colosseum Vandal

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

First, the moral: Cultural literacy is a life competence obligation both at home and abroad. Now the tale:

I had been planning on a post about the manhunt in Rome for the unethical tourist caught on video carving “Ivan + Hayley 23/6/23” into a brick on a wall of the Colosseum. Authorities went looking for “Ivan;” meanwhile, not only is destruction of natural and historical sites an occasional Ethics Alarms theme, but in this case the video-taker’s conduct was also questionable: he was more interested in taking a viral video than he was in stopping the vandalism.

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Ethics Zugzwang And High School Theater

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I have no idea what can be done about this now, but it is among the saddest consequences of the culture wars and The Great Stupid, and, as is so often the case, the casualties are children….which means that in the long-term, the casualty will be American society itself.

Ethics Alarms has periodically chronicled the sagas of high school theatrical productions halted or distorted by various politics- or ideology-based complaints and protests, but I never focused on what a tightening strangle-hold on cultural education this phenomenon represents. The New York Times examined the problem here, and though the Times slant seeks to blame it all on conservatives (you know, those meanies who also want to “ban books”), the description of the problem is accurate and gloomy. A sample:

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Ethics Quotes For The Fourth: On Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy [Part II]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

US-original-Declaration-1776

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

—-The Declaration of Independence

“It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment, independence now and independence forever. “

—-Daniel Webster, U.S. politician and orator

“Liberty is the soul’s right to breathe, and when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.”

—-Henry Ward Beecher, abolitionist.

“Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense – the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen.”

—- Senator William Borah (R-ID), 1917

 “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

—-George Orwell
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Ethics Quotes For The Fourth: On Liberty, Freedom, and Democracy [Part I]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“

“Hurrah for the flag of the free!
May it wave as our standard forever,
The gem of the land and the sea,
The banner of the right.

“Let despots remember the day
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
That by their might and by their right
It waves forever.”

—–John Phillip Sousa, “The Stars and Stripes Forever”

“Democracy is like sex. When it is good, it is very very good. And when its is bad, it is still pretty good.”

—–Anonymous.

“The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.”

—-Henry Ward Beecher, American preacher

“Democracy is moral before it is political.”

—- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice

“The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.”

—-  Jimmy  Carter

“A constitutional democracy like ours is perhaps the most difficult of man’s social arrangements to manage successfully. Our scheme of society is more dependent than any other form of government on knowledge and wisdom and self-discipline for the achievement of its aims. For our democracy implies the reign of reason on the most extensive scale. The Founders of this Nation were not imbued with the modern cynicism that the only thing that history teaches is that it teaches nothing. They acted on the conviction that the experience of man sheds a good deal of light on his nature. It sheds a good deal of light not merely on the need for effective power if a society is to be at once cohesive and civilized, but also on the need for limitations on the power of governors over the governed.”

—- Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court Justice

“In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can face and live with the truth about itself.”

—-Sidney Hook, American philosopher and historian

“America’s experiment with government of the people, by the people, and for the people depends not only on constitutional structure and organization but also on the commitment, person to person, that we make to each other.”

—-Robert Hutchins Continue reading →

Baseball Ethics: Everything Isn’t About Race, Kurt

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Kurt Streeter is allegedly the New York Times; primary sports pundit, but if he has written more than a handful of columns that didn’t drag race into his commentary, I’d be surprised. Most sports fans would be happy never to have to think about the obsessions of partisans and social justice warriors while following their favorite teams and athletes, but it is the mission of activists posing as sports analysts to have that hope a pipe dream.

In his latest column, Streeter marvels at Luis Arraez, a Miami Marlins infielder and last year’s American League batting champion, who is making the first plausible run at a season-long .400 average since George Brett came close (.390) in 1980. Arraez, who makes the softest contact in the Major Leagues and might best be compared to “Wee” Willie Keeler, a 19th Century star known for poking baseballs “where they ain’t,” is a fun story this season, but Streeter being Streeter, he must examine Arraez through a racial lens. “No player,” Streeter informs us portentously, “has ever finished a season batting at or above .400 since Major League Baseball became an integrated game.”

Ah! I get it: Streeter is saying that all those other.400 seasons by white players aren’t really legit, because they didn’t have to face all the great black pitchers who were being kept out of the game by racism. In this he includes Ted Williams, the last .400 hitter (.406 in 1941), just a bit short of Babe Ruth as the greatest hitter in MLB history, implying that if “Teddy Ballgame” was playing in a fair league, he might not have hit .400 at all.

The contention can’t be proved or disproved, of course, but this is the second time in a week I’ve heard the argument and it is illogical and offensive. Consider:

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Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Incompetent Elected Official): Vice-President Kamala Harris

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“How dare they?”

—Vice-President Kamala Harris on June 24 referring to the U.S. Supreme Court on the anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. ruling that finally overturned Roe v. Wade.

This wasn’t the usual infantile babbling that characterizes most of Harris’s public appearances: Ethics Alarms has pledged to skip most of those in fealty to the Julie Principle. That quote is far worse, more significant and sinister. It’s so unethical and outrageous that I initially didn’t believe she could have been referring to the Supreme Court: most of the mainstream media accounts and even the edited videos left out the context of that outburst, so, giving the Vice-President of the United States the benefit of the doubt and assuming that surely, surely, she could not be framing a duly rendered majority ruling on the U.S. Constitution by the independent branch of the government charged with that duty by the Founders in such an ignorant, misleading and inflammatory manner.

She was, however. In fact, she had made the same fatuous, irresponsible and obnoxious statement before, a year ago, and is apparently so proud of her demagoguery that she deemed it worthy of an encore. I thought, and hoped, that her “How dare they?” was at least in the context she placed it in this past January, but no. (That is also an unethical and despicable bit of demogoguery, notable for Harris’s characterization of the famous statement in Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece as “A promise we made in the Declaration of Independence that we are each endowed with the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Huh. Sounds funny. Isn’t there something missing there? Something that unborn Americans might think is important? I’m sure I’ll think of it in a minute…

But no. I could find no news report that placed this “How dare they?” in the context Harris placed it last week, but a video I can’t embed, available here on the Washington Post website, makes it clear.

In order to make such a dangerous statement, Harris has to also mislead the public into believing that, as she falsely said in January and periodically since, the United States Supreme Court “took away… a fundamental right, a basic freedom from the people of America.” Whatever one thinks should be the law or laws regarding abortion, it was never “a fundamental right, a basic freedom.” It was a Court-made right, and the Supreme Court isn’t empowered to make rights. “Fundamental rights” are the enumerated rights in the Bill of Rights and the subsequent amendments, passed by Congress and the states, in the Constitution. Roe was a bad, political, incompetent decision that most legal scholars, even those who favor abortion, admitted was wrongly decided. (If she ever had chosen to be candid about the issue, it is likely that even the sainted Ruth Bader Ginsburg recognized this.) Roe survived for so long because a parade of Justices lacked the votes and guts to overturn it.

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Hitler Quote Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The June newsletter for the Hamilton County, Indiana, chapter of Moms for Liberty included Adolf Hitler’s famous quote from a Nazi rally in 1935 on the front page: “He alone who owns the youth gains the future.” Since the group is opposing government indoctrination in the public schools, the substance of the quote was not inappropriate, but never mind: the agents and operatives supporting such indoctrination both freaked out and encouraged the public to freak out as well.

After all, the Southern Poverty Law Center, itself an extremist “hate group” by its own standards except that its hate is directed at conservative organizations and therefore is the acceptable variety, had designated the nonprofit Moms for Liberty as a hate organization in its annual Year in Hate & Extremism report for 2022, claiming that it advocates an “anti-student inclusion agenda.”

The Indianapolis Star pointed to the use of a Hitler quote as confirmation of the SPLC’s diagnosis, so the Moms for Liberty tried to explain, adding to its online version of the newsletter, “The quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert. If the government has control over our children today they control our country’s future. We The People must be vigilant and protect children from an overreaching government.” When that didn’t calm the controversy, chapter chair Paige Miller posted an apology to Facebook.“We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history. We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and we express our deepest apology,” she groveled.

The damage, of course, had been done.

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