Popular Culture

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 →

The “Homeland” Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

In “Homeland,” Showtime’s excellent Emmy-winning drama starring Claire Danes, a G.I. named Nick Brody imprisoned for years returns to the states a hero, and, secretly, a converted Muslim and terrorist. By Season Two, which premiered last night, Brody has risen to be a member of Congress, where he is working from the inside to benefit the interests of his captors. He has kept his conversion to Islam secret from everyone but his teenage daughter Dana, who accidentally caught him praying to Mecca in the basement in the first season.

Now Brody’s name is being floated as a possible running mate for the current Vice President, who is a presumptive presidential nominee. The Veep tells Congressman Brody that if there are skeletons in his closet that his researchers wouldn’t have found—I’m pretty sure being a secret terrorist would qualify—Brody needs to air them. Brody says there aren’t any. We know better.

Meanwhile, at Sidwell Friends, the tony Quaker private school in D.C. that all the pols send their kids to, Dana is fuming because she has to listen to the  Vice-President’s obnoxious son  go on about how “Muslims aren’t like us” and “don’t respect human life.” Dana, having been admonished for insulting him, blurts out, “Well, my father’s a Muslim!” in class.  Dana’s subsequent position is that she was joking to make a point. At home, however, her outburst causes a domestic crisis, as her mother feels that Brody has been lying to her, which he has.

I’ll leave Rep. Brody out of this ethical dilemma, as he is suffering from an Islamic strain of the Stockholm Syndrome, but what about the family? From their perspective, which is that they don’t suspect for a second that Brody is a traitor, what is their ethical obligation should he announce that the Vice President is going to choose him as a running mate, and that he expects them to keep his secret?

His argument, of course, is that his religion shouldn’t and doesn’t matter. It is true that the “public would want to know,” and also that the public would probably not feel very comfy electing a Muslim these days to be a heartbeat away  from the Presidency, fair or not. The family knows he is a good man (they think) and like the idea of being Second Family; there is no reason to sink his career and their aspirations to celebrity by allowing irrational bigotry to take hold. Is there?

That’s not the whole truth, however. Brody has lied to the Vice President and to his constituents, and they do have a right to know that. In my view, both wife and daughter have an ethical duty as citizens to tell husband and father that if he accepts the nomination, they will be forced to expose him. They should also tell him that he needs to resign from Congress, or, if he’s willing, tell the public about his deception and ask for their forgiveness. I think, in short, that this is a John Edwards situation.

Is that what you would do, in their place?

And my favorite hypothetical of them all, that I refuse to believe wasn’t lurking in the minds of the writers:

Michelle discovers Barack praying to Mecca in the basement.

Tomorrow.

What would be her ethical duty?

Most Unethical TV Series Episode of the Year: “C.S.I.” (Premiere)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In next week’s episode, D.B. dreams that he owns a bar in Boston….

I like “C.S.I.”, especially since Ted Danson took over the show as family man D.B. Russell. I won’t be watching the show for long, however, if it continues to cheat its audience as it did tonight, in the much heralded premiere to the new season.

The plot involved the kidnapping of Russell’s granddaughter in an extortion plot engineered by an imprisoned Vegas mobster. In fact, there wasn’t much to the story: they tracked down the little girl, and she was alive. The show was padded out by an obnoxious and unprecedented gimmick for “C.S.I”, showing scenes of great tragedy, violence or drama that turned out to be nothing but dark forebodings in Ted Danson’s stressed-out head. We see him viewing the body of his daughter in the coroner’s lab; she has a bullet hole in her temple. Surprise! It’s not really happening! Ted is just dreading it, because he’s so worried. D.B. gets a gun, goes in to a holding cell to talk to the mobster, loses his cool and shoots him dead. Oops! That didn’t happen either! D.B. is just thinking about how much he’d like to do that, you see. After the child is found unharmed, after real events that would have taken up about a 30 minute episode, D.B./Danson comes home to find his beloved wife leaving him! Oh, no, not that! D.B. loves his…Dang! They got me again!  That was just another day dream! Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: Papa Roach

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ethics Alarms’ 2011 Commenter of the Year tgt, who found this story and passed it on, asks,

“How is a horrible stoner rock band more ethical than everyone in politics?”

It’s a great, if sorrowful, question.

A.V. Club has a feature (which could be called “Start a Feud”) in which it asks a rock performer what song he or she hates, and why.  Jenn Wasner, one half of the Baltimore indie-folk duo Wye Oak (“a blend of Southern culture and Northern sensibilities…”) submitted to this invitation to get in trouble, and fingered the song in the video above, “Scars,” by Papa Roach.

Criticizing the work of other artists in the same field is unprofessional at best, gratuitously unkind and disrespectful. Papa Roach’s members would have been within their rights to fire back something less than complimentary in defense, at very least the observation that ethical musicians don’t take gratuitous shots at one another. What the band did however, was this: it sent Wasner flowers. Wasner was convinced it was some kind of diabolical trap, and tweeted as much. The band tweeted back: Continue reading →

A Boy Named Sue, A Woman Named Edward

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I think I know where he works…

I have no idea what to make of this: I feel like I fell into a “Seinfeld” episode. Remember the “high talker”?

I received an e-mail yesterday from the executive of a large company inquiring about an ethics training. The first name of the executive was Edward, but when I called the listed number, a very high, very female voice answered the phone. I asked to speak to the executive, and received a perky, “I’m Edward! Thanks for calling me back.”

Come on. Edward? What woman goes by Edward? I was about to make a comment like, “That’s an unusual name—how did you come by it?” when I had an image of “Seinfeld’s” high talker, a short, fat, bald guy, becoming irate when callers mistook him for his girlfriend over the phone. This was a potential client, and I didn’t want to annoy her—or him. On the other hand, surely she, assuming it is a she, knows that her masculine  name causes confusion. I searched through her e-mail messages for any hint of her—if she was a her—gender, and found nothing. Wouldn’t it be reasonable and fair to at least confirm that yes, she was a woman, or yes, he was a male counter-tenor, or yes, he was indeed a castrati, or at least do something to clear up what he…or she, dammit… had to know was confusing to anyone meeting her over the phone? Continue reading →

Unethical Feature: “Top 10 People Who Don’t Deserve To Be Millionaires”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

And leave Bubbles alone.

I know: it’s a feature, it’s a gag, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. I don’t care: the underlying attitude behind The Daily Caller’s recent slideshow, “Top 10 People Who Don’t Deserve To Be Millionaires” is too common these days to be emulated, even in half or whole jest. The belief that citizens of the U.S. “don’t deserve” to have the money they do is at the root of toxic politics, bad economic policy, class resentment and self-excused jealousy, and it shouldn’t be encouraged. If there is a genuine and persuasive argument to be made that people don’t deserve the money they earn, then make it, and you have to do better than “you didn’t build that!”

Taylor Bigler, the Caller’s entertainment editor who compiled the list, doesn’t. She just appeals to jealousy, as if nobody really really does resent people who have made more money than they have so its fine to pretend they do. “Now, some people are millionaires because they are ambitious and kept their noses to the grindstone,” she says. “Those people certainly deserve their hard-earned success. But honestly, there are many other people who are millionaires that simply don’t deserve to be.” Like? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Case of the Mildly Profane Valedictorian”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Thank you, Lorraine. Just…thank you.

Short, concise, to the point and irrefutable, the Comment of the Day by new commenter Lorraine M. (a lawyer, and a good one–she’s an old friend) settles the looming mystery in the “heck-hell” controversy over an Oklahoma student’s Valedictorian address at graduation, by going to the source: a passage in one of the “Twilight” films that Kaitlin quoted. A battle has been raging in the thread on the original post over whether I was right to hold that she owed the school an apology for using mild profanity in front of the assembled parents at the Prague High graduation ceremony, and it was beginning to look like I was going to have to watch “Twilight” to settle the matter. Saving me from that horrible fate alone warrants this being the Comment of the Day, on the post The Case of the Mildly Profane Valedictorian.

“In the Twilight movie, the graduate making the speech uses the word “hell.” Kaitlin Nootbaar’s written version of her speech substituted “heck.” Her conscious decision in this regard strongly suggests that Kaitlin knew that “hell” was inappropriate in the context of her graduation speech or, at the very least, likely would be considered inappropriate by school authorities. Any claim otherwise at this point is highly suspect. An apology is warranted.”

Yes, it is.