As the tragic news of Robin William’s suicide spread across the media, Fox News made an utter ass of itself by using a fake “Mrs. Doubtfire” video featuring someone dressed like the Williams character to back Greta Van Susteren’s phone interview of Larry King about the comic’s career. The footage was labeled as coming from 20th Century Fox, and then the network moved on to clips from “Mork and Mindy.”
It was a just a mistake, but I think it was a mistake of significance:
1. The “Mrs. Doubtfire” spoof video was found by some lazy and inept lower level Fox staff member, but obviously passed review by a director, an editor, and others. Nobody who had any idea who Robin Williams was or the slightest familiarity with his work could have been involved in this. It tells us that Fox News is sloppy and unprofessional, and should cause legitimate concerns about their news gathering process, fact-checking, and trustworthiness. (I know, I know…) Continue reading →
“(The link goes to The New York Times, not to some Obama-bashing site.)”
—Law professor/bloggress Ann Althouse, sending readersto an article about the Obama administration has apparently squandered 11 billion dollars on a mismanaged, ill-conceived, never realistic effort to launch high speed rail in the U.S.
Now you guys, we can only trust on POSITIVE Obama stories….
Quite apart from the story itself, which reveals just another example of the stunning ineptitude and waste in this most incompetent of all possible presidencies, Althouse’s statement raises several important ethical issues. Admittedly, there are websites that literally won’t publish anything positive about Barack Obama’s efforts, but to be fair, any media outlet that is objective and doing its job will become, by necessity, an “Obama-bashing site,” because the President’s record, results, conduct and leadership skills have been routinely dreadful. The fact that most sites that qualify for that description are already biased against progressives and Democrats shows how hopelessly polarized, and lacking in journalistic integrity the mainstream media is. Continue reading →
Poor Julie. Luckily for her, she didn’t exist. Washington, D.C. does.
The Washington Post just discovered that D.C. Councilman Marion Barry is unethical, and boy, is it steamed!
Well, that’s not quite fair. The Post editors authored an editorial about Barry’s latest example of his complete rejection of ethical principles other than his guiding star, which is “If it’s good for Marion Barry, it’s good for everyone else.” Barry recently published a self-congratulatory, delusional autobiography (I nearly wrote about it, but I was afraid doing so would make me nauseous), “Mayor for Life,” and right in the acknowledgments, he announces that one of his council aides, LaToya Foster, spent “nights, weekends, and many long hours of assistance” working on book at taxpayer expense. Using D.C. government employees as his personal staff was standard operating procedure for Barry during his various pre- and post-crack terms as mayor, so there is little chance that he played it straight this time. No chance, really. A Washington City Paper investigation of calendar entries and emails showed that Foster’s work on Barry’s book “stretched far beyond her off-hours and into the D.C. Council workday, an arrangement that appears to violate D.C. Council ethics rules.”
The Post should stop editorializing about Barry’s ethics and instead focus attention where it might do some good: the D.C. voters and citizens he has thoroughly exploited and corrupted. Barry is a prime example of what I have dubbed The Julie Principle, evoking the famous lyrics of Julie’s lament in “Show Boat,” “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…” If Oscar Hammerstein was writing those lyrics today about Barry, the song, sung by voters of D.C.’s Ward 8, would go,
In May, National Public Radio carried an essay arguing that the old American folk tune “Turkey in the Straw,” long the melody of choice for ice cream trucks, was really “horribly racist.” Of course, a tune can’t be racist unless it is intended to communicate a racist message, which is impossible if nobody who hears the music discerns racial animus. NPR took care of that in a hurry. As soon as that new bit of imaginary racism surfaced, I knew that this grand old tune, a standard for square dances, country fiddlers, blue-grass bands and of course, the Good Humor truck, was on the way to oblivion. I wrote..
“You know the next step, though, because it is so familiar. Some race-huckster…will seize on NPR’s piece, and organize a Good Humor boycott, and the weak and principle-free corporate executives will fold immediately, issue an apology, and change the tune played by the trucks…”
Shortly after the appearance of the NPR piece and its progeny, Audi began running a TV ad that involved an ice cream truck playing…”Turkey in the Straw.” Someone, I don’t know who, maybe my predicted race-huckster, maybe some internal political correctness watch-dog, maybe an NPR fan, intervened, and now, “Turkey in the Straw” is gone, replaced by the melody of “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Mission accomplished, Race Grievance Hit Squad, NPR, Cultural Censors! American musical culture heritage is diminished, and a piece of music that entertained Americans of all races for centuries is on the way to extinction. You must be so proud.
I’m curious: what’s next on your hit list, “Huckleberry Finn”?
“Osama bin Laden — he’s a very smart guy, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about him, and I nearly got him once. I nearly got him. And I could have gotten, I could have killed him, but I would have to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children. And then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.”
“Dear Courts: We intend this mess to be a big, perfect, beautiful palace. Please let us know when its finished. Your Friend, Congress.”
In a recent post, I explained how the incompetent drafting and reckless manner in which the Affordable Care Act was passed has corrupted every branch of the government as well as damaged our system and the public’s faith in it. Affordable Care Act supporters continue to desperately try to excuse, fix, and rationalize this disgracefully bad law. Next up is an integrity test for the judiciary, as the legal argument against the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit’s decision in Halbig v. Burwell becomes untenable.
If the two judges on the three judge panel were correct, and it appears they were, then a drafting miscalculation in the ACA has rendered the health care overhaul unworkable, meaning that it can’t be fixed, constitutionally at least, by Executive Orders, waivers, delays or lies, like so much else connected to the legislation. It will have to be addressed the old-fashioned—as in “according to the Constitution”—way, or not fixed at all. Continue reading →
I know I have written a lot about the Ray Rice domestic abuse case and its aftermath, most recently this morning, regarding CNN’s Carol Costello’s warped argument for suspending ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith. (The Rice-related posts are here, here, here and here, with an earlier Comment of the Day here.) I keep coming back to it because it involves many ethics issues: sports and violence, the “Star Syndrome,” and the special treatment of cultural celebrities, race, domestic abuse, women’s enabling of domestic abusers, political correctness, scapegoating, corporate cowardice, incompetent journalism, and more. Chris Marschner’s recent comment on one of those posts is better than anything I’ve written on the topic, I think. As is often demonstrated here, the readers make Ethics Alarms work.
One connection I didn’t make until I read Chris’s comment is the relevance of the Gaza crisis and the public’s reaction to it to some of the ethical principles involved. There is no question that Hamas provoked a violent attack by Israel, knowing that women and children would be harmed, and that Israel would be condemned by many as a consequence. Israel is much more powerful than Palestinian forces, and provoking it to defend itself when the inevitable results will be harm to the powerless is irresponsible. Yet we hear the same absolutist reactions to the Gaza casualties that are at the root of the anger focused on Smith’s comments. The victims of violence are never responsible in any way, and suggesting otherwise is immoral.
It’s a very flawed analogy in other respects. The civilians are not the ones provoking Israel, for example, though Hamas represents them–their harm is harm to Gaza, and therefor Hamas. Most of all, Israel is not an abuser, though I could quote many commentators who regard it as one, and who might see the comparison with Ray Rice as apt.
Smug, dishonest, unprofessional, illogical, unfair, biased, unethical: “THIS is CNN.”
I just have to stop watching CNN is the morning, because it places everyone in my house at risk for head shrapnel.
The main danger is the smug, biased, ethically-jumbled Carol Costello, CNN’s late morning anchor after the New York governor’s telegenic brother has finished indoctrinating us into his view of the world. Today, Costello was taking a victory lap, implying that she helped get Stephen A. Smith suspended by ESPN for daring to suggest that women bear some responsibility for avoiding placing themselves within range of an abuser’s fists. (Interestingly, Costello had no similar directives for ABC, which quietly allowed Whoopie Goldberg to make the same (valid) point on “The View” with no adverse actions whatsoever. See, a woman is allowed to state some uncomfortable truths, but the same truth in the mouth of a man is offensive. Learn the rules, for heaven’s sake!) Then Costello played a clip of her earlier argument why ESPN was wrong not to suspend Smith. She said …
“It’s nice that Smith apologized, but I wonder if the network will do what it ought to do and suspend Smith. Look, in 2012, the management of ESPN expressed outrage when two employees used the phrase “a chink in the armor” when referencing Jeremy Linn, the Asian Basketball player. One employee was suspended for 30 days and the other was fired. So why is ESPN giving Smith a pass?”
“That will teach you to remember to fudge the truth, Smith. Remember, you’re a journalist!”
Item:ESPN suspends Stephen A. Smith. Why? In response to the uproar over the NFL’s suspension of domestic abuser Ray Rice only two games for punching a woman’s lights out—the love of his life!—Smith uttered the blasphemy that some victims of domestic abuse share responsibility for their plight. Of course, he is 100% correct, and this something that many women must hear, learn, and act upon, or perhaps die. The proof: the precise case that prompted Smith’s comments! Janay Palmer, Rice’s punching bag, refused to file a complaint against him, and married the bastard a couple of months after he hauled her unconscious body out of a hotel elevator like a sack of potatoes, caught on camera.
If (I would say “when”) she gets clocked again, is she partially responsible? Absolutely. I also think she’s responsible in part for the injuries of every abused woman who follows her high-profile, irresponsible, violence-provoking (I use that unfortunately inexact word as Smith used it) example.
Smith’s suspension—for a week, almost as long as Rice— to mollify the feminist apologists for their violence enabling sisters, is craven and wrong.
In a brain-endangering op-ed for the Seattle Times, Sharon Pian Chan expresses the opinion that the operetta is a “racial caricature,” and thus “every snap of the fan was a slap in the face.” The nature of the complaint has old origins: the original show in 1885 nearly caused an international incident, as Japan registered an official complaint to Great Britain claiming a grievous insult to its people. W.S. Gilbert, who was skilled at such things (a few years later he stifled French indignation over a song in “Ruddigore” that pretended to make fun of the French while actually ridiculing British bravado), explained that “The Mikado” in no way ridicules anything about Japan or its people, but is entirely a witty and original satire on everything British. This was true then, and is true now. Then, however, people, including the Victorian era Japanese, were able to see distinctions, and were not seeking victim status and leave to play public censor under the authority conferred by political correctness. Today, people like Ms. Chan are not so easily calmed.
Thus is art harmed, entertainment stifled, laughter stilled and music forgotten. A good argument could be made that “The Mikado” is the greatest musical comedy entertainment ever written.* It certainly caused the biggest international sensation (the closest rival is another Gilbert and Sullivan classic, “H.M.S. Pinafore”): it is estimated that by the end of 1885, at least 150 companies in Europe and the U.S. were producing the satire. As recently as the 1960s, it was credibly claimed that a “Mikado” was going on somewhere in the world every minute of the day.
The show is fun in every respect: comedy, music, lyrics, satire, characters. It is also fun to act in and produce, for children as well as adults. Unfortunately, several factors have led to the gradual scarcity of productions in recent years, from the cyclical (Gilbert and Sullivan go out of style, but always come back) to the ridiculous ( it seems like every production has to cope with some absurd controversy, like the 2011 Montana production that was accused of threatening Sarah Palin’s life). Political correctness aversion has been the biggest factor in making the very best G&S show rare while productions of Broadway musical junk flourish, however. Since the characters are supposedly “Japanese,” shouldn’t all the singers be Asian? Isn’t Asian make-up offensive like blackface? Oh, hell, let’s just do “The Pirates of Penzance.”
Ethics Alarms 