Yesterday was November 22. According to the vast majority of the news and entertainment media, it was no different from any other day, apparently. In all likelihood, the same was true of most Americans. “Oh, yeah…November 22! Better buy that turkey!”
November 22 is not like any other day in America, however. It is the date in 1963 that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 46 years old and the 35th President of the United States of America, was assassinated on the streets of Dallas. Continue reading
Courtland Milloy is a Washington Post Metro columnist, which means that his job is to decry racial outrages even where there are none. This time around, he has been offended by “Precious,” the nearly universally acclaimed movie about an abused black teenager, and attacks it with gusto. [Typically I would link to the piece here. I’m not, and you will soon find out why.] Continue reading
From Bucks Count Pennsylvania comes a cautionary tale with an important lesson for drama queens, hypochondriacs, and people who just have a tendency toward hyperbole:
Exaggerating is the same as lying. Continue reading
Remember “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” the late, unlamented TLC cable hit that managed to destroy the Gosselin family, turn a mother of eight young children into a single mom, and raise troubling questions about child labor and the exploitation of kids by the entertainment industry? Apparently the only thing the Learning Channel remembers about it is all the money the channel made from the show, because it has recruited yet another family to exploit and destroy. Continue reading
What does it say about the futility of federal regulators when the Federal Trade Commission thinks the best way to combat misleading commercials for “free credit reports” is to use taxpayer funds to produce and run a parody of those ads? That’s right: the government is running TV commercials designed to look like the commercials that try to confuse consumers into using a costly credit service rather than the government’s free service. Continue reading
It is Sunday, and much of America is ready to settle in front of millions of wide-screen, high-definition television sets to watch Sunday’s favorite entertainment: NFL football. The last thing football fans want to think about today is ethics, and today, perhaps, they shouldn’t have to. Although we are not there yet, the time is fast approaching when not only football fans, but the companies that buy commercials, the merchandisers that sell NFL-licensed jerseys and posters, the TV networks, and the nation itself may have to consider a difficult ethics question: is supporting pro-football unethical? Continue reading
“”Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be Kanye,” they sang. “Let them pick guitars and drive them old trucks, ’cause cowboys have manners,they don’t interrupt..”
Country Music Award show hosts Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood, in a parody of the song, “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” giving a much-deserved shot to rapper Kanye West for disrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV awards. Swift also was a big winner at the CMA’s, but West was nowhere to be seen.
Audiences at Britney Spears’ “Circus” concert are complaining that the singer is lip-syncing all of her songs, and not dancing energetically or well enough to justify it.
Good!
In today’s Sunday New York Times, the City Room column is devoted to the increasingly common topic of public grooming, specifically flossing one’s teeth in public. Lion Calandra recounts an exchange with a young woman doing her dental hygeine on the subway, who finished by throwing her used floss to the subway car floor.
“Maybe you should do that at home,” Calandra suggested. “Maybe you should mind your own business,” the woman sneered. Continue reading
The Disney Corporation has decided to do something about Mickey Mouse’s image. It’s too nice, you see. In the edgy 21st century, where Hannah Montana does a pole dance, female tennis champs threaten to kill line judges for making a correct call, and Glenn Beck can become a hot commodity by calling the President of the United States a racist, Mickey Mouse is bland and boring. For more than fifty years, Mickey’s status as the symbol of Walt Disney’s empire (Walt did Mickey’s first voice) meant that he was polite, dignified, and always, always, child-appropriate. His typical role was as the MC, his job with the original Mickey Mouse Club, where Mickey often appeared in black tie and tails. With his characteristic nervous laugh, he never did anything wrong, mean, or even annoying. The funny bits were reserved for Donald Duck, Goofy, and Chip and Dale. Mickey slowly evolved into more of a corporate symbol than a cartoon character, but when he went on screen, he was always a good mouse. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 