I deliberately did not post this yesterday because I object to holidays based on bad puns, but I’ve been holding it for a while, ever since the demise of one of the quirkiest and most original ethics websites, Law and the Multiverse, still on the links list because its essays are timeless.
Popular Culture
Are Americans Too Trivial and Easily Distracted to Run a Competent Democracy? The 100 Men vs. a Gorilla Controversy…
When I heard that social media was in lather over the idiotic question of whether a hundred men could defeat a single silverback gorilla in hand-to-hand combat, I immediately thought of the scene above from the film “Stand by Me.” But those characters in the movie (based on Stephen King’s novella “The Body” and directed by Rob Reiner before Trump-Derangement ate his brain) were twelve. There are so many fascinating and important questions that not only are fun to ponder but that also are beneficial for society to debate that the social phenomenon of millions being obsessed with an idiotic hypothetical of no value whatsoever threatens to plunge me into a pit of despond.
Why should I devote my time and energies to trying to inspire my fellow human beings to become more skilled at ethical reasoning when this crap is what more of them find stimulating? “Fiddling while Rome burns” is dumb; arguing about impossible hypotheticals as ridiculous as whether Superman could beat Mighty Mouse in a fight—which in my view is a better question to argue over than the gorilla vs. 100 men nonsense—makes fictional Emperor Nero seem positively enterprising.
Calling this a “thought-experiment” is insulting to thought experiments, but it apparently first was raised on TikTok several years ago. Never mind that gorillas are generally reticent and would never engage in such a match: a Twitter/X post on the topic a week ago re-ignited the debate. As you can see, the author is a moron; @DreamChasnMike wrote, “i think 100 niggas could beat 1 gorilla everybody just gotta be dedicated to the shit.” Call me an elitist if you must, but as a matter of principle I would avoid reflexively pondering anything deemed worthy of discussion by someone like Mike. The fact that so many otherwise rational people are rushing to do so now is worthy of analysis, however.
Is it because so many, like me, have decided that the Trump-Deranged are officially mentally ill, and can only be engaged in infantile discussions? Is it because, as I have speculated here before more than once, the efforts of our rotten, political indoctrinating education system and our dishonest, biased, incompetent journalism have combined to lower the media IQ in the U.S. to around 83?
Regarding “Conclave”
As the Cardinals meet in Rome to find a new Pope for real, it is a propitious time to consider “Conclave,” the “thriller” (as Wikipedia calls it, a stretch) about a fictional conclave after the death of a fictional Pope. I had several friends recommend the film to me, and I finally watched it this week.
I’ll complete this ethics overview without spoilers since the film is relatively new, but wow, what a disappointment. Strong cast, excellent performances, brilliant production design and cinematography, but still, “Conclave” has to be one of the most wildly over-praised films I’ve seen since “Don’t Look Up!,” “The Crying Game” or “Ghost.” This overt Hollywood woke propaganda piece received eight nominations at the 97th Academy Awards, a number once reserved for all-time classics like “Ben-Hur,” “West Side Story” or “Lawrence of Arabia.” Its Best Picture nomination shows how far movie-making standards have fallen and that it won Best Adapted Screenplay is outrageous, since the screenplay was the worst aspect of the movie, predictable, over-wrought and unbelievable.
My late wife was superb at sleuthing out “surprise” endings of movies by the half-way mark or earlier; this time I felt like I was channeling her spirit because I guessed the movie’s ending (and woke propaganda mission) the second the key character showed up. I also thought, “Oh no, really? They are stooping to this?” Indeed they were.
“Conclave” is, ultimately, trivial and soap opera-ish, no better and less entertaining than the loony movie version of Dan Brown’s follow-up to “The Da Vinci Code,” “Angels and Demons.” Along the way to an anti-climax, we get more of the “white man bad/black man victim,” pro-LGTBQ+ proselytizing that Tinseltown has been addicted to for years.
I’ll give “Conclave” this: it was better than “Snow White” and a lot shorter than “Wicked.”
Mis-Remembering the Mutiny on the Bounty, a “Print the Legend” Classic
Today, April 28, is the anniversary of the famous mutiny on board the H.M.S. Bounty, when Fletcher Christian, the ship’s “master’s mate,” seized control of the ship and set its captain, William Bligh, adrift in the Pacific with a small group of sailors who refused to join Christian’s rebellion. The story of the mutiny and its aftermath has become a romantic cautionary tale that inspired three major Hollywood treatments, each with star-studded casts. If you ask the average American what happened on The Bounty, he or she will probably reply that a cruel captain who abused his crew was challenged by an honorable and courageous officer who took over the ship from a monster, and met with tragedy himself. Virtually no accounts of the event support that version of events, but that is the legend, and it persists to this day.
Why? It’s a better story, at least a clearer and more morally uplifting story than the truth, that’s why. Real life is messy and our heroes and villains tend to be more complicated than our emotions can handle, and this is especially true of the Bounty story. You see above the most famous moment from the great John Ford film, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” when the old newspaper editor refuses to report the shocking discovery that the heroic deed leading to the successful political career of a famous statesman and U.S. Senator never occurred. Ethics Alarms has discussed the “Print the legend” phenomenon so many times that it has its own tag. None of the examples that I have examined deserve that tag more than the mutiny on the Bounty.
“What’s Going On Here?” Is This Incident Just A Single Teenage Idiot In Love Or Does It Have Larger Cultural Significance?
The time is January 2024. A few minutes after a Carnival Sunrise cruise ship left the port of Miami, Florida for Jamaica, Carnival Cruise Lines received an anonymous email saying: “Hey, I think someone might have a bomb on your sunrise cruise ship.” This triggered security protocols that involved both the US and Jamaican Coast Guard. More than 1,000 rooms on the ship had to be searched, and were. After a delay of many hours, the ship was ruled safe to sail and continued the cruise.
An investigation eventually traced the email to 19-year-old Joshua Darrell Lowe II of Bailey, Michigan. He confessed to making the false bomb threat, explaining that he was trying to prevent his girlfriend and her family from going on the cruise without him. Though Lowe could have been sentenced to five years in prison, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney this month sentenced him to only eight months behind bars. The judge was apparently impressed by the teen’s letter to the Judge taking full responsibility for his actions, expressing remorse, and apologizing profusely.
There is no question that such an act is unethical as well as potentially dangerous. I am interested in whether our political and popular culture sends messages to the young, impressionable and stupid that this kind of extreme conduct in the name of love or other passionate feelings is admirable.
The Trevor Bauer Story Proves That Baseball Really Is “The National Pastime” (Or At Least Tries To Be)
The last we looked in on the ugly and strange tale of ace MLB pitcher Trevor Bauer was in 2023, in two epic posts, “The Amazing Trevor Bauer Ethics Train Wreck: It Has Everything: #MeToo, Kinky Sex, Ethics Zugzwang, Predatory Women, ‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent,’ “The Asshole’s Handicap,” Legal Ethics And Baseball! [Part I: The Story]”and “The Amazing Trevor Bauer Ethics Train Wreck, Part 2: Villains, Victims, Heroes And Confusion.” Here’s the short version: In 2021, Bauer was an ace pitcher with a rich contract with the Dodgers until a former sex partner of his tried to shake him down for cash by threatening to claim sexual assault and domestic abuse. Baseball is tough on domestic abusers, and it suspended Bauer while it investigated her (calculated) accusation. Bauer refused to capitulate to the woman, and insisted—still insists—that the rough sex was consensual. Law enforcement concluded that he was likely the victim here, but the Dodgers no longer wanted him as damaged goods, and no other team has hired him. Bauer hasn’t pitched in the U.S. since his suspension was lifted.
Weekend Ethics Spring Bouquet
I recently noticed that one of my Facebook friends of long-standing whom I respect greatly is now officially bonkers, thank to the Trump Derangement pandemic. I find this more than sad: it’s terrifying that a lifetime of critical thinking and rational, balanced analysis can be unmoored simply by having too many friends and associates who are ignorant hysterics and not realizing that the news media you frequent every day is mind poison.
Lawyers and ethicists are being hit especially hard; the fact that almost all of my theater associates are freaking out is less of a shock, for most of them have always been this way. My legal ethics specialist listserv is in the process of melting down over a few well-reasoned objections to the most of the opinions being offered residing more in the realm of progressive politics than legal ethics. But Trump is a threat to the rule of law! There wasn’t any concern whatsoever expressed on this same platform when Donald Trump was being targeted by Democratic prosecutors so that their party could continue to hold power. If Merrick Garland or Joe Biden were even mentioned there in four years, I must have missed it. I was amused to see one of the loyal “non-partisan,””objective” ethicists defend the group’s obsession with Trump by quoting the “Man for All Seasons” speech about giving the Devil the benefit of the law (Guess who the Devil is!) as another resorted to the hoary “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out..” quote from Martin Niemöller. Trump’s not the Devil, he’s Hitler! My friend, a retired partner in big D.C. law firm, is just about as impossible to argue with now as this idiot. Watching him devolve is like seeing a zombie movie…
Meanwhile,
Thoughts and Musings While Re-Watching “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World”
There were three distinct stages in my consideration of the sui generis Cinerama feature from 1963, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World.” The movie’s gimmick was that it collected more comedians and comic actors in a single Hollywood production than has ever been featured before, which meant, naturally, that it had to be the funniest movie ever….or so we were told.
I first saw IAMMMMW at Boston’s Cinerama Theater when I was 12. It was the first of the new, improved, seamless Cinerama features, which meant it was inferior to the original format, which wrapped around the audience. There were few effects in the movie that took advantage of the giant screen, either. But like all boys under 20 or so, I thought IAMMMMW was very amusing and a lot of fun. Girls didn’t get it, for the most part, and that has never changed. It’s physical comedy and slapstick throughout, and often cruel slapstick. This is a real male-female divide that appears to be timeless.
I was also, even back then, an omnivore of popular culture. Seeing so many familiar comedy icons of the era (and the previous one) in one movie was a thrill; of course, that was one of the main goals of the film. Sid Caeser, Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Jonathan Winters, Phil Silvers, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney and more, with well-conceived cameos by the likes of Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis and Don Knotts—in the waning period of Hollywood all-star cast spectaculars, the idea of doing one with comedians was irresistible.
I saw the movie a second time in my thirties, and was shocked how different my reaction to it was. To be fair, I recalled many of the sequences that would have been funnier as a surprise, but the film seemed over-long, abrasive and, most surprisingly, sad. The subplot in which Spencer Tracy plays an aging police captain who becomes disillusioned with his professional and family life to the extent that he tries to steal the money that has set off an insane race among the assorted loonies is more tragedy than comedy, and, oddly, Tracy didn’t play any of his role for laughs. Grace, my wife, hated the movie in 1963 and hated it just as much when I made her watch it again with me.
The Last “Snow White” Post (I Promise)
Why is the Cognitive Dissonance Scale the graphic I chose for the final word on Disney’s “live-action” remake of Walt’s biggest and most important hit, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”? (For some perspective, realize that we have the same relationship on the timeline to that film that it had to the Presidency of Millard Fillmore.) It is clear that this cultural ethics train wreck, which EA has been dutifully covering (here, here, here, here here, and here), is now stuck inextricably in cognitive dissonance territory. For most viewers, what they think about the movie will be influenced far more by their biases and what they associate with the movie than the movie itself.
That’s how the scale works, as I keep explaining ad nauseam. If Disney is generally a plus-5 on a ticket-buyer’s scale (once upon a time, Disney would have been a plus-10 or higher on everyone’s scale) and the movie in a vacuum would be at “Meh”-level Zero, Disney would pull the film into positive territory. If Disney is in negative territory already for a different viewer, the film begins with an anchor chained to its metaphorical ankles.
Thus it is hardly surprising to see this as the early returns on the film (which doesn’t officially open in theaters until tomorrow):
Now that’s polarization!
What’s going on here? Well, a lot…
They Make Such a Nice Couple! Ethics Dunce: Texas A&M University; Ethics Hero: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)
Texas A&M students started holding “Draggieland” (“drag” mixed with “Aggieland,” get it?) at the campus theater complex in 2020. Five years later, however, the tradition was slapped down as the school’s Board of Regents voted to ban all drag events on the 11 Texas A&M campuses.The board’s resolution reads in part,
“The board finds that it is inconsistent with the system’s mission and core values of its universities, including the value of respect for others, to allow special event venues of the universities to be used for drag shows [which are] offensive [and] likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.”
I’d guess a pre-law student with a closed head injury could correctly explain what’s wrong with that silliness, but luckily the student body at Texas A&M will have a better champion than that, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, aka FIRE. FIRE moved in to fill the breach when the ACLU decided to be woke rather than defend free speech and expression regardless of which side of the partisan divide was attacking them, and this low-hanging fruitcake edict prompted the organization to file a federal lawsuit. It backs the Queer Empowerment Council, a coalition of student organizations at Texas A&M University-College Station and the organizers of the fifth annual “Draggieland” event that was scheduled to be held on campus on March 27, and aims at blocking the policy as a clear violation of the First Amendment. Which it is. FIRE asked a court in the Southern District of Texas to halt Texas A&M officials from enforcing the ban.
Ethics Alarms 