Popular Culture

Danger! Shameless Opportunists At Work!

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
Lance Armstrong wouldn't understand this movie at all.

Lance Armstrong wouldn’t understand this movie at all.

Less than two weeks after Ethics Alarms wrote about the ethics-free deliberations in the Lance Armstrong camp about whether or not to finally tell the truth and “apologize,” Armstrong prostrated himself in a 90 minute confession to Oprah Winfrey, who has branded herself as America’s confessor, capable of washing away sin and shame with a hug, a tear, and a stern word.

It makes me want to vomit, frankly.

I saw this coming, of course, as did you. One thing we could count on with Lance (and Bill, and Pete, whose odious club Armstrong joins with the Oprah tactic) was that he would do whatever was necessary to benefit him. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with a genuine confession and a real apology in Armstrong’s 180 degree reversal with Oprah, or in the necessary preparations for it he engaged in, like apologizing to the cycling community and the Livestrong staff. When Armstrong thought he could continue to fool some of the people all the time by lying, posturing, and viciously attacking—sometimes with lawsuits—those who he knew were telling the truth about his cheating, he continued to lie. Now that the jig is up and he has no other options, he’s going to come clean and weep softly with the Big O. Sociopaths are usually very good actors. Some of them have won Academy Awards. Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Best of Ethics 2012

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

nonpartisan

One of the reasons there are always more negative stories than positive ones on Ethics Alarms is that ethical conduct is still much more common than unethical conduct, and thus has to be more spectacular to be worthy of comment. At least, that’s my rationalization this year….

Here are the 2011 Ethics Alarms Awards for the Best in Ethics:

Most Important Ethical Act of the Year:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s public display of appreciation to President Obama for the rapid Federal response to Super Storm Sandy. Naturally, Christie was subsequently called a turncoat and blamed for Mitt Romney’s loss.

Outstanding Ethical Leadership

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts’ decision to confound conventional wisdom and to vote to uphold the constitutionality of  the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, reaffirmed the ideological independence of the Court while giving due deference to the will of Congress. Roberts was derided by Republicans and conservatives, while liberals and Democrats patted themselves on the back, presuming that they had intimidated him into rejecting the so-called conservative wing of the Court by their (irresponsible, dishonest and unethical) accusations that the Court put politics ahead of law and justice. Roberts, in truth, just interpreted the law, which is what his duty required.

Heroes of the Year

Seniors at Lexington (Ky) Catholic High School. When a gay couple was told by school administrators that they were not welcome at their senior prom, a significant number of their classmates moved the prom to the parking lot, where a good time was had by all. Courage, respect, fairness and kindness. These seniors are ready for the real world, which needs them more than they need it. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Are Musicals Reviewed By Ignoramuses?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

WordPress, for only the second time in three years, was kind enough to include my recent post about Stephen Sondheim’s footnote lament that musicals were the only art form largely reviewed by incompetents. This has brought a lot of new visitors to Ethics Alarms, and I hope they are interested in ethics as well as musicals. One such new reader is a Prof. Ratigan, who apparently does some reviewing himself. Here is his Comment of the Day, on the Jan 3, 2013 post (Here’s something weird—last year’s Jan.3 post was also about Sondheim!) Are Musicals Reviewed By Ignoramuses?…

Two points. The first is the literacy issue. I think it’s interesting that it would appear that a good reviewer is either a novice or a master where everything in between is amateur. I’ve been reviewing movies for the past year (on a blog) and I’ve definitely felt that in my own stuff. The more movies I watched and connections I could draw, the more it became apparent how much I really needed to do to become proficient. I needed to read a lot more literature, read a lot more scripts, and watch a lot more movies. Otherwise, I would start to create a context but have a nagging feeling that the director/writer/actor (who are often scholars of film) might/probably know more than me and were doing something else. It seems that these musical reviewers aren’t expected to take the next step from reviewer to analyst. Continue reading →

The Fourth Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2012 (Part 2)

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

reid

The 2012 Ethics Alarms Awards for the Worst in Ethics continues (you can catch up with Part I here , and the Best is here), and yes, it gets worse…

Worst Friend and Relative

Lori Stilley, who faked cancer to get sympathy, favors, parties and money from those who cared about her.

Most Unethical Advice

Emily Yoffe, Slate’s “Dear Prudence,” wins for a year of bad advice in kinky situations, the bottom of the barrel being when she advised a daughter who observed her mother illegally filling out her invalid grandparents’ 2012 absentee ballots to reflect the mother’s electoral preferences to do nothing about this combination of elder abuse and voter fraud.

Shameless Bad Character Division Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Stanford Law Prof. Pamela Karlan, Pulling A McLuhan

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

One of the funniest moments in Woody Allen’s Academy Award-winning comedy “Annie Hall” is the classic scene in which Woody squelches a pompous know-it-all standing in line behind him at a movie theater. The man is holding forth on film criticism and finally begins pontificating on the theories of Marshall McCluhan, a Sixties media scholar most famous for the quote, “The media is the message.”  Woody acts out everyone’s fantasy who has had to listen to strangers blather on about topics they aren’t qualified to discuss by magically producing the real McCluhan to confront the man. “You know nothing of my work!,” McLuhan tells the shocked pedant.

Today Stanford law professor pulled a McCluhan on none other than George Will, who, she pointed out in a letter to the Washington Post, recently used her law review article to bolster his position by substantially misrepresenting—or misunderstanding–what it actually said:

“Mr. Will’s column distorted my Harvard Law Review article in details both large and small. Yes, the Framers of our Constitution intended to limit the federal government’s power to protect liberty. But they also crafted the new Constitution to empower the government to deal with critical problems. For much of our history, the Supreme Court recognized congressional resourcefulness as a source of our nation’s strength. By looking only to James Madison and 1787, Mr. Will ignored the post-Civil War 14th Amendment, which explicitly authorizes Congress to enforce guarantees of liberty and equality.

“As for my discussion of the court’s Citizens United ruling, I did not attack “spending by outside groups,” as Mr. Will wrote. Rather, I pointed out only that there has been a significant increase in such spending (much of it in forms that leave voters in the dark as to who bankrolled the messages they hear) and that reasonable people can disagree about whether this is good for democracy.

“Finally, for someone who prides himself on his linguistic precision, Mr. Will’s attack is particularly tone-deaf. “Disdain” means “scorn” or “contempt.” Nothing in my article expresses scorn or contempt for the court or for judicial review. I — like many other Americans, including some of their colleagues and many of their predecessors — simply disagree strongly with the approach some justices have taken and the conclusions they have reached in some recent cases.”

Take that, George! Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Videogame Burners of Southington, Conn.

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

book burning

On January 12, they are burning “violent videogames” in Southington, a Connecticut town not far from Newtown, scene of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Is there a more irresponsible, historically ignorant, un-American, First Amendment-offending, foolish, ignorant and ugly act than burning speech and art because you object to their content? They burned rock and roll records  in the Bible Belt during the 1950s—that was stupid, disgusting and frightening. Hitler, you may recall, burned books; the USSR too. In 2013, consigning electronic media like videogames to the flames is indistinguishable from burning books. I would expect American citizens of normal intelligence to immediately realize that.

I guess I would be wrong.

The local group organizing the bonfire has put out some rationalization for it. I could not care less what sad reasoning and warped values motivate their book-burning. It is a symbolic insult to freedom of thought.

No question: book burnings are legal and protected speech. It is also conduct redolant of mob rule, ignorance, intolerance, fear, hate, and Ray Bradbury novels. Some activities have earned permanent revulsion, legal or not, in American culture because they are the traditional tools not of democracies, but of totalitarian governments,  the enemies of democracy and free thought. Book burning is one of them.

And burning videogames is exactly the same thing.

Update: The news accounts eventually make it clear that the group will collect the various forms of violent entertainment in a dumpster, which will also include movies and recordings, and that the actual incineration will be performed by city workers, as part of their rubbish disposal duties. Is this better? Worse, because now the town government is participating? I don’t think it is useful or enlightening to play parsing games. I see this event as indistinguishable from a book-burning, and while The Guardian’s description of it as such could be called misleading (or inflammatory?), I salute them for correctly diagnosing what this is in its essence.

Are Musicals Reviewed By Ignoramuses?

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments
STEPHEN SONDHEIM

OK, but Stephen: compared to you, everyone is an ignoramus!

Stephen Sondheim completed his personal memoirs about his career in American musicals more than a year ago, but they are so thoughtful, detailed and dense that I keep discovering new treasures, provocative observations by a first-rate mind. Yesterday, I found one that was buried in a footnote, in the middle of a technical tangent that most readers, like me in my first tour through the books, probably skimmed.

Sondheim pointedly did not use his erudite analysis and reflections in his two retrospectives (“Finishing the Hat” and “Look! I Made a Hat!”) to settle scores with critics, a group that obviously annoyed and to some extent handicapped him over the course of his long career. In this brief footnote, however, the composer/lyricist delivers a withering verdict:

“The sad truth is that musicals are the only public art form reviewed mostly by ignoramuses.”

At the end of the note, he repeats the indictment, this time changing the description to “illiterates.” Sondheim is accusing theater critics of engaging in professional conduct they are incompetent to perform, rendering expert opinions that are not really expert, and as a result, misinforming the public and undermining the efforts of serious artists, like him.  If he is right, not only are the critics unprofessional and unethical, the media organs that hire and publish them are unethical as well. Continue reading →

Hollywood’s Ridiculous Hypocrisy on Guns

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
"Say hello to my little friend! And while we're on the topic of guns, don't you think it's time to be sensible about gun control?"

“Say hello to my little friend! And while we’re on the topic of guns, don’t you think it’s time to be sensible about gun control?”

In a move stunningly unconscious to outrageous hypocrisy, the group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” have posted a video on on its website and Youtube (of course), featuring an impressive array of solemn Hollywood celebrities chiding Americans for not doing something about guns “yesterday” and to “demand a plan” to end gun violence. The problem? Many of these same celebrities owe their presence on the video to Hollywood’s obsession with gun violence, without which they would be just anonymous pretty faces. They owe their mansions and private planes to that gun violence too, which they have happily, willfully and lucratively acted out in scores of violent films and television shows. How can they presume, given how they make their living, to lecture anyone on the topic of guns?

I have some theories. Many of them are dumb as bricks. Most of them are automatic co-signers of the manifesto for any cause branded as liberal, the Hollywood religion,and don’t bother to think about whether it is consistent with their life choices or not. Probably all of them, working every day in one of the most ethics-free, cut-throat, dishonest and hypocritical sub-cultures that has ever existed in the United States are completely numb to the concept of hypocrisy, as apparently are the mayors, who work in the culture of politics, which is only somewhat better. Continue reading →

Ethics Bob Asks: “Did Torture Lead Us To Bin Laden”? My Answer: “So What If It Did? It Was Still Wrong.”

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
It's all for the best.

It’s all for the best.

The last time my friend “Ethics Bob” Stone blogged about ethics, it was way back in August, and he was writing about some guy named “Romney.” Now he’s back on the job, thank goodness, with a comeback post titled “Zero Dark Thirty: Did torture lead us to Osama bin Laden?”. And he’s ticking me off.

“Zero Dark Thirty” is Hollywood’s treatment of the search, apprehension and execution of Osama Bin Laden. The film suggest that methods of torture were employed by the CIA to uncover crucial intelligence that led to the terrorist mastermind’s demise. Torture opponents, including some U.S. Senators, are alarmed by this, and disputing the film’s account. (Imagine that: a movie that misrepresents history!) Meanwhile, conservatives, neocons, Bush administration bitter-enders, talk radio hosts and admirers of Dr. Fu Manchu and James Bond villains are citing the film as confirmation that they were right all along: torture is a wonderful thing.

I am puzzled that Bob got in the middle of this debate as an ethicist. “It worked!” and “It came out all right in the end!” are not valid ethical arguments or justifications. The first is an embrace of a pure “the ends justify the means” rationale, a favorite tool of Auric Goldfinger and Dr. No. The other is consequentialism. When ethicists and principled opponents of torture allow the issue to be adjudicated on this basis, they are surrendering their principles at the outset. “Torture doesn’t work” is a pragmatic argument, not an ethical one. If the societal consensus regarding torture is going to be determined by how much we can benefit by returning to the rack and wheel, then ethical considerations have already been jettisoned. Continue reading →

The SyFy Channel, Settting A New Low In Political Correctness Censorship

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is so incomprehensibly stupid that I hardly know how to react to it.

The SyFy Channel, as is its wont, was running a movie this morning that has nothing to do with science fiction, John Landis’s  odd horror/comedy “An American Werewolf in London,” from 1981. When the two doomed hikers visit a gloomy pub in the English countryside, one of the locals tells a joke:

“Here now, let me finish!  So halfway over the ocean the  engines run low on petrol so  they have to lighten the plane.  So they heave out all the baggage, but it’s still too heavy.  So they chuck out the seats, but it’s still too heavy!  Finally this Froggy steps up and shouts “Viva la France” and leaps out.  Then an Englishman steps up and shouts `God  save the Queen!’ and leaps out.  But the plane is still  too heavy.  So the Yank  delegate from Texas steps up,  shouts, `Remember the Alamo!’ and chucks out the Mexican!”

I’ve always liked that joke myself, but whether you like it or not, SyFy decided that your delicate ears shouldn’t be sullied by the punchline. In the edited version the channel showed, the last sentence could only be heard this way:

“So the Yank  delegate from Texas steps up,  shouts, `Remember the Alamo!’ and [ ?].” Continue reading →