Popular Culture

Elmo and the One Recant Rule

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

When we last left the sad saga of Kevin Clash, the Muppets puppeteer whose voice and hands give cute little Elmo his panache, the 23-year-old man who had accused Clash of having underage sex with him had recanted, agreeing with Clash’s defense that their relationship was consummated later, when both were consenting adults. I opined that this would do little to rescue Clash’s career, as the most innocent Muppet on Sesame Street could not survive being operated by a man who was now associated with gay sex, consensual of not. This likely result seemed unfair to Clash, but is nonetheless a responsible decision on the part of Clash’s employers, the Children’s Television Workshop, whose duty is to their mission and core audience, not to one unmasked Muppet.

Clash’s prospects have not improved. It was revealed last week that the recant was bought and paid for by Clash, who handed Sheldon Stephens $125,000 to deny his previous accusation and never to raise it again. Needless to say, a recant induced by monetary compensation is not a reliable one, and leaves as many questions open as the original claim, if not more. In a settlement, the accuser is paid to drop any legal action, but doesn’t agree to retract the original claim. What Clash did is called “buying testimony,” or ” a pay-off.” Continue reading →

The Despicable Non-Crime of Briana Augustenborg

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Alexander Jordan, 2002-2012

In US v. Alvarez, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 9th Circuit’s ruling that the Stolen Valor Act, which made it illegal to claim military honors that one has not in fact received, was unconstitutional. There is, the courts say, a Constitutional, First Amendment right to lie. Fraud—using lies for monetary profit, is already a crime, the courts argue, and so is slander. Making up stories about yourself and others may be unwise, annoying, even hurtful. Still, it is protected speech; so sayeth a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, and it is now the law of the land.

This was a bad ruling, and I was surprised at it. Briana Augustenborg shows why.

One day this year she shared a story with a co-worker about a little 10-year-old boy she knew who was terminally ill with leukemia. The boy, Alex, was a big fan, she said, of Eagle Valley (Colorado) High School’s  football team. The colleague, a woman named Holly Sandoval, had a son that played on the team, and she offered to share the story with her son and get the team to sign a football for Alex. Continue reading →

“The Girl” and the Hitchcockian Horrors of Sexual Harassment

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“Mr. Hitchcock requests your company in his hotel room over dinner.”.

HBO’s original film “The Girl” has premiered, and has garnered mixed reviews from critics, in part because they recoil from the film’s disturbing portrait of iconic director Alfred Hitchcock, played here by the great Toby Jones, who is almost as uncanny evoking Hitch as he was reincarnating Truman Capote in “Infamous.”  It tells the well-documented story of how Hitchcock chose newcomer Tippi Hedren as his latest blonde obsession (placing her in line behind Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Ingrid Bergman, Janet Leigh and others) and then relentlessly pursued a sexual relationship with the actress during the filming of “The Birds” and “Marnie.” Hedren, not surprisingly, found him about as alluring a potential sex partner as Hermione would regard Dobby the house elf. Less so, probably. Unlike so many actresses subjected to that kind of extortion as their final obstacle to stardom, however, Hedren refused to submit.

The movie is the most powerful and harrowing, portrayal of sexual harassment I have ever seen, and whatever its fate as a dramatic work, “The Girl” has a future, if anyone’s paying attention, in workplace training sessions. Continue reading →

The Unethical Indignation of Mandy Caruso, a.k.a. “Black Cat”

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

Mandy, who is incensed that anyone would think that she wants them to think about her boobs.

Let me stipulate that nothing a woman may do, say or wear excuses rudeness, crudeness, disrespectful comments, sexual harassment, sexual assault or abuse, including, of course, rape. This is unequivocal.

Now let me say that the vociferous complaints by Mandy Caruso on her blog regarding the comments she received at Comic Con as a direct result of her dressing like the Marvel Comics super-heroine Black Cat smack of hypocrisy and a “gotcha!” mentality that is strikingly unfair.

Mandy costumed herself as Black Cat at the famous convention for comic book fans, gamers and fantasy buffs, and she has the physical assets to do it. As you can see in the illustration linked above, TBC is a spectacularly endowed, athletic woman who appears in a black mask and skin-tight, curve-hugging leather suit. She makes D.C.’s Catwoman look like a boy. Characters like Black Cat are drawn specifically to appeal to the sexual fantasies of comic book fans, who are overwhelmingly  teenage boys or single men with the sensibilities of teenage boys. The most extreme of these attend events like Comic Con. Continue reading →

A Trivial Attack Ad That Reveals Untrustworthiness

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

All is lost now…

The Obama campaign’s new creation is a 30-second spot that opens with shots of Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay and other business villains. “Criminals. Gluttons of greed,” intones the ad’s solemn narrator. “And the evil genius who towered over them? One man has the guts to speak his name.”  Then the ad cuts to Mitt Romney, pulling two words out of his debate comments (the words that came before them were, “I love..”), saying “Big Bird….Big Bird…Big Bird”

B.B. then appears in a montage of Sesame Street clips, as the narrator says,  “Yellow. A menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about. It’s Sesame Street. Mitt Romney, taking on our enemies no matter where they nest.”

It’s an epically stupid ad, if for no other reason that it recruits a non-profit organization’s symbol into a partisan political attack ad, without that organization’s permission. The Children’s Television Workshop has officially  “requested” that the Obama campaign remove it. The ad is far worse than that, however: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Christina Aguilera

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In Jessica Simpson’s Weight Watcher’s TV ad, the former “Daisy Duke” appears only as a giant head, as if the spot was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and Jessica was a last minute stand-in for Marlon Brando.

“the horror…the horror…”

It is clear that Jess is not willing to show America her post-pregnancy body, even though she is telling the public to buy what she’s using to slim it. She is ashamed, in other words, and if a beautiful young woman like her believes that not being able to fit into Daisy’s cut-offs makes her hideous, just imagine how that makes the average woman feel.

Then there is Christina Aguilera. The former waifish “pop tart” who sang “Genie in a Bottle” is now an established pop music diva, and posed for photographers as she announced the American Music Awards Nominations in a throbbingly purple form-fitting dress that didn’t hide a single pound or curve, and showed that she has an abundance of both.

“We’re gonna need a bigger bottle…”

Christina’s not ashamed, nor should she be, and her willingness to look happy and confident regardless of her expanding figure is a boon to a culture that has been working overtime to make women of all ages feel unattractive unless they look like super-models. Continue reading →

The Times Square Kiss, and Feminist Blogs’ Fanatic Crime Against Joy

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

The blog posts at issue make me angry. Usually it is silly to be angry about mere opinions, I know. However, the opinion registered by “Lori” on the blog Feministing, taking her cue from another feminist blogger, is a symptom, a symptom of the scourge of pernicious, political-correctness zealots, who refuse to recognize the important distinctions between malice and human beings being human, and seek to wipe out that distinction by distortion, sophistry, historical revisionism and bullying.

The bloggers’ target is an iconic photograph from the heart of American history: LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s shot of an American sailor kissing a nurse on August 14, 1945, in a moment of jubilation on Victory over Japan Day in the heart of New York City. Ah, but all is not as innocent and blissful as it would appear. Some historians think they have finally confirmed the identities of the mysterious couple (the photographer never identified his subjects) as Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental nurse at the time, and George Mendonsa, a sailor. [Despite the assertions of the bloggers and the historians, we can never know for sure. There were apparently many similar pairings that day, and several couples have credibly claimed to be those kissing through the decades.] Greta was recently interviewed, and noted that that she was just grabbed by a sailor she didn’t know and kissed. “That man was very strong. I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me,” Greta told interviewers.

Ah HA! declare the feminist bloggers. Don’t you see, you addled, male-culture dominated, female-subjugating fools? This wasn’t a pure expression of joy in the long-awaited  end of a world conflict that had killed millions and laid waste to much of the planet! Oh, no! The famous photo was something dark and sinister: Continue reading →

Orc Attack! The Unethical GOP Campaign Smear With the Built-In Punishment

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“Citizens of Maine, I give you your next state Senator! Her campaign slogan: “Better an Orc than an idiot!”

In Maine, Republicans have attacked a state Senate candidate with an unfair and stunningly silly accusation devised by fools for consumption by the gullible, ignorant and confused. Fortunately, such an attack comes with its own punishment, for it constitutes a smoking gun that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Maine Republican Party is not only run by dolts, but dolts who never made it into the 21st Century.

Imagine: in a campaign mailing this week, Maine Republicans accused Democratic state Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz of making “crude, vicious and violent comments” and living in a fantasy world because she plays the fantasy role-playing game World of Warcraft, and comments in online forums dedicated to the popular online pastime.”We need a senator who lives in our world, not Colleen’s world,” the mailing says. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: CNN Morning Anchor Carol Costello

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“There was criticism when Jim Lehrer was initially named to be a moderator. People said: ‘oh, another white guy; he’s too old to be doing this; we live in a new world — we don’t need an old-fashioned journalist doing these things any longer.’”

—-CNN Morning host Carol Costello, communing with PBS head Paula Kerger over Mitt Romney’s (obviously correct) assertion that public support for PBS has got to go, and joining in the despicable Democratic spin that President Obama’s less-than-stellar performance in the first debate was moderator Jim Lehrer’s fault.

Worst of the worst? I mean, if you don’t count MSNBC?

Carol Costello, Soledad O’Brien; Soledad O’Brien Carol Costello. Who is the most biased, smug, unethical news host not on MSNBC? Just when I think O’Brien has locked up the prize, Costello comes roaring back with something like this.

She ought to be fired. It’s as simple as that. Her statement is racist and ageist in the worst sense or the words; her implication is an unforgivable insult to a veteran newsman infinitely her superior, and her the content of her statement is proof of a deficient mind. Fire her. The AARP should demand it; the Republican should demand it; the Democrats should demand it, and CNN should see it as essential to maintaining whatever shred of credibility and integrity it has left. Continue reading →

Now THIS IS An Unethical Car Dealership

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Hey, Jerry! I hear Priority Chevrolet is looking for a sales manager! You’d fit right in!

Maybe the staff and management of Chesapeake, Virginia’s Priority Chevrolet aren’t quite in the vile category of Jerry, William Macy’s car salesman in “Fargo,” but even for a profession seldom mentioned in the same sentence with “ethical,” its alleged conduct in a recent transaction is appalling.

According to a lawsuit, Priority sales manager Wib Davenport sold a 2012 Chevrolet Traverse to Danny Sawyer for about $5,600 less than it was worth. There is a dispute over how this happened, but a contract for the inadvertently discounted sale was presented to the Priority customer and signed, and Sawyer quickly returned with a cashier’s check to cover what he owed the dealership after the various discounts and the trade-in.

After driving off in his new SUV, Sawyer went on vacation. He returned to voicemail full of messages from Davenport, who also authored a letter explaining that the dealership had made a mistake on the contract and had sold the car for the wrong price. He asked Sawyer to return to the dealership and sign a new contract. Right. Continue reading →