My Facebook friends really like it!
This is the level of intellect at which foes of enforcing immigration laws are functioning. The director of the Smithsonian American History Museum gives land acknowledgements, meaning that she must think that map is profound.
The producers of hit Broadway musical “Hadestown” have fired veteran musical theater star Geno Segers from the cast. Though the the production did not announce a reason for the decision, everyone in the industry knows what lost him the job.
Segers had taken to social media to posted his views on transgender athletes playing in women’s sports. “I don’t see transgender people becoming oppressed or being oppressed … life is unfair” he posted, along with, “I’m not against anyone living out their lives the way they want, but I am against their rights superseding the rights of other people. That’s a little bit foul.” He also mocked the posting of preferred pronouns: “If you asked me what my preferred pronouns are and it’s not obvious to you that I’m a he/him, that I’m good with he/him — Surely you don’t need any help. I’m not wearing a dress.”
The social media Furies descended on the actor with a vengeance, accusing him of being transphobic, homophobic, yada yada. You know the script.
Prof. Turley believes that the performer’s human rights have been unfairly and hypocritically “curtailed,” writing in part,
“Other actors have expressed support for transgender players without any response other than praise in the latest example of the rising McCarthyism on the left.This is only the latest termination over the political views of artists in New York. As the song states in Hadestown, “It’s an old song. It’s a sad song. But we’re gonna sing it anyway.” We have previously discussed how private companies can fire employees for public conduct or statements that bring controversy to their business or products. However, even though the First Amendment does not govern such controversies, there remains a free speech issue. Free speech goes beyond the confines of the First Amendment and private companies can engage in censorship that curtails this human right. The question often comes down to consistency in companies enforcing content-based standards. I did not like some of the comments of Segers, but there is little question that equally strong comments against “cisgender” athletes or for transgender athletes would not result in such termination…Whether it is actors, athletes, or academics, there is a demonstrably different level of tolerance for controversial views on gender. Take Segers’ statements, swap the nouns or pronouns, and ask yourself if there would have been a cancel campaign, let alone a termination. It is not the fact of the controversy but the lack of consistency that is so problematic in these areas.”
Yes, but. This is Broadway, and a Broadway musical. Broadway’s audience pool is shrinking and its ticket prices exclude all but the relatively wealthy. Musicals are especially dependent on the the affluent LGTBQ demographic: I would wager that the percentage of gay Americans who have heard of “Hadestown” is double or more the percentage of non-LGTBQ members of the public. Having a prominent cast member in a Broadway musical making public comments that are likely to offend its core audience is unacceptable, and the producers were only protecting their show, their investment, and the rest of the company by sending Segers packing.
The last time I wrote about this Minnesota ethics train wreck more than a year ago, I began with “Yecchh! Pooey!” I would now like to add, “Ick! Barf!” I hate this story.
The latest revolting development is that a Minnesota jury convicted Shiloh Hendrix of a single charge of misdemeanor disorderly conduct last week for repeatedly calling a black man who confronted and filmed her at a Rochester playground “nigger.” Hendrix also directed the slur at an 8-year-old black boy who had been going through her purse.
Because Hendrix’s speech was the conduct underlying the disorderly conduct charge according toMinnesota law, we have a controversy over whether using “nigger” as this awful woman did falls within the narrow “fighting words” exception to speech protected under the First Amendment.
The six-person jury returned its verdict after four days of testimony in Olmsted County District Court, finding Hendrix, 37, guilty on the count involving using “nigger” in her exchanges with videographer Sharmake Omar. She was not found guilty on the count involving the child. The full sentence: a stayed 90-day jail sentence, supervised probation, 200 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine.
We are told Hendrix did not speak before sentencing. Good.
This is depressing.
A really, really smart friend whom I respect a great deal just posted on Facebook that the President, on one of his sophomoric name-calling jags, had mocked Sen. Ossoff (whom I just posted about today, coincidentally) as “Pinky Herman.” My friend wrote that Trump was obviously mixing up Peewee Herman with Pinky Lee, a vaudeville kids TV star in the Fifties. “More proof of dementia,” my friend wrote.
I never thought of it before, but it seems to me that Pinky Lee might well have inspired Paul Rubens’ decades later kids’ show character. Pinky and Peewee are pretty similar names. Confusing the two is hardly evidence of dementia, unless the one making the mistake is Donald Trump.
But as usual, everyone on Facebook laughs, likes, and acts as if this stupid smear is a profound diagnosis. Fifteen years ago, I confused Aaron Burr and Raymond Burr while teaching a seminar and didn’t even realize it. Another time I said “Helen Keller” when I meant to say “Anne Frank.” I have mixed up my Jacksons on occasion: Jesse, Reggie, Andy, Michael and Stonewall. I assuredly do not have dementia. I think claiming that Trump does based on mixing up two fey comic kids show stars with similar names is more evidence of mental decline than anything either Trump or I have done.
I really detest this stuff. It is so petty, disrespectful, ungenerous and obnoxious. And, you know, Trump might have deliberately merged Pinky and Pee-wee, which would have been clever. Nah, it couldn’t have been that…
I remember Pinky well. I even remember the words to his song:
Yoo hoo, it’s me!
My name is Pinky Lee.
I skip and run bring lots of fun
To every he and she!
It’s plain to see
That you can tell it’s me!
With my checkered hat
And my checkered coat,
The funny giggle in my throat
And my silly dance
Like a billy goat!
The ethics in the now viral incident at the start of a Chicago Cubs baseball game are clear as a mountain stream. A Gen Z slug was ignoring the National Anthem, a Vietnam vet sitting behind him took offense and demanded that he stand, and when the kid resisted, gave him a sharp slap “upside the head.” Then the young fan finally stood up.
The online debate is contrived. Of course…
Further observations…
1. To his credit, the slapper says that he regrets the slap.
2. He also says he and the kid shared a beer at the game. That speaks well of the young man. It is also very typical of the kind of human comradery I have witnessed at baseball games many times over the years. Everyone there has a bond with everyone else—they are baseball fans and usually fans of the same team.
3. Lots of the critics of the veteran remind us that the slap was battery. No, it wasn’t assault: assault is when the victim is placed in fearful anticipation of unwelcome contact; battery is the contact itself. Since the slappee was hit from behind and didn’t see it coming, there was no assault, just battery.
4. Though technically a tort and a crime, the chances of either getting substantive legal redress is about zero. De minimis non curat lex.
5. If the slapper was the kid’s father, mother, or sibling, we never would have heard about the episode
5. Questions: would the veteran have handled the situation the same way if the kid had been black? Female? A Muslim? My guess: no, no, and no.
6. If the kid was with a group of peers, would he have stood? Would the vet have confronted him if he were with friends?
7. Would a black fan have behaved the same as the white kid? Maybe. If not, however, the incident would be characterized as a racial clash by the media.
It takes a special kind of schmuck to call your YouTube channel “Real Studio Tales” and to fill it with tales that aren’t real. I don’t know who this particular schmuck is: based on his voice, he’s a British schmuck, who delivers the alleged Hollywood “Studio Tales” in a dead fish, enervated tone like a bored BBC announcer who is about to perish of ennui. I stumbled upon one of the channel’s videos late last night. The title sucked me in as YouTube’s algorithm enticed me with “At 100, Mel Brooks Names the Five Actors He Hates”; I had just watched the excellent documentary about Mel released last year.
I didn’t even watch the whole thing. I fast-forwarded through it to find out who the five were. Frank Langella….that was no surprise: Langella’s good, but has had several clashes with directors and producers in his long career. Gene Wilder…I knew Wilder and Brooks had something of a falling out after “Young Frankenstein.” Chevy Chase…everybody hates Chevy Chase. Jerry Lewis….compared to Jerry, Chevy is beloved in Hollywood. But…Harvey Korman? I was surprised at that one, so I watched that segment.
Dead Mackerel Limey explained that though Mel thought Harvey was brilliant, his insistence on improvisation after years doing a sketch comedy on “The Carol Burnett Show” aggravated Brooks as a director. Korman kept that style within workable range in his first role with Brooks directing, as the evil Hedley Lamar in “Blazing Saddles,” but according to “Studio Tales” Korman made Brook’s directing chores unbearable in their next collaboration, 1977’s “High Anxiety,” Mel’s Hitchcock film parody. There was tension on the set as Korman seemed to want to debate every line and every scene. Eventually, we are told, the two didn’t speak except when the cameras were rolling, and Mel, though always extolling Harvey in later interviews and deeply respecting his talent, never used Harvey Korman in a Mel Brooks project again.
The ethics problem? He did. Three times.
Has any conservative law professor—there aren’t many, but I can think of a few—ever argued that scholars, lawyers and legal commentators who advocate positions disfavored on the professor’s side of the ideological divide should be punished and “forced to recant” their stated opinion? If there has been any example of that, I must have missed it. Fordham University School of Law professor John Pfaff, however, did exactly that after the Supreme Court, in Trump v. Barbara, held that the 14th Amendment protects birthright citizenship.
After the decision, Professor Pfaff went on BlueSky—I regard posting on that platform prima facie evidence that the poster doesn’t believe in pluralism and freedom of speech— to announce his contempt for and desire to discipline any law professor who disagreed with his obviously unchallengeable analysis of the issue, writing,
“There MUST be repercussions for the lawprofs who advanced such untenable arguments. Their behavior is — and I mean this literally, not dehumanizingly — parasitic. They exploit norms of collegiality and presumptions of integrity to advance trash. Which undermines the work of ALL of us.”
Those “untenable arguments” and “trash” were supported by four Supreme Court Justices in the minority, but never mind. The fascists of the Left believe that it is in the best interests of society to enforce “goodthink” and punish “wrongthink;” to prevent dissent and open civic discourse from threatening its power.
Pfaff was responding to similar sentiments posted by Georgia State University Professor Anthony Michael Kreis, and he’s an Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development. In his BlueSky posting, Kreis wrote that he considered it loathsome that any Justices disagreed with what he, like Pfaff, considers the only position on birthright citizenship that it is honorable and legitimate to hold:
Yes, it’s true, I regard professional soccer and professional women’s basketball as less than diverting, but this sport, Australia’s Run Nation Championship (RNC), not only requires morons to watch and play it, the sport is likely to turn competitors into morons if they aren’t already.
Part Sumo wrestling, part Easter egg cracking, part “Jackass” and part bumper-cars, the “sport” involves muscular contestants running into each other at full speed to see who falls down. This idiotic competition was spawned by ‘run it straight,’ a social media trend that had random people running into each other for online views. The videos of stupid teens colliding and often suffering injuries have gotten millions of views online. The Run Nation Championship is trying to make the sport mainstream.
RNC has different weight classes. Most participants, called runners, have a background in combat sports, rugby, or American football. Run Nation co-founder and CEO Tremaine Fernandez says he’s trying to make the new sport as safe as possible…you know, like the electric chainsaw juggling contests do. Fernandez admits that the collisions still risk concussions and serious injuries, but his organization has doctors on the sidelines, so it’s all good.
Sports neurologist Rowena Mobbs, among others, has been calling for the sport to be banned.“Certainly every time they run up and clash in that way, there’s likely to be at least a microscopic brain injury,” Dr. Mobbs said. “They are high-risk and harmful activities, and almost having these protocols and practitioners there whilst good overall, I would ask, is it sort of giving an air of reassurance, an illusion or an impression that these activities are safe?”
You mean that children and teens and drunks and cretins will think, “Hey, this looks like fun!” and people will get maimed and killed? Of course they will! I guarantee this new pastime, which essentially takes the complex strategy, scoring and rules elements out of football and hockey to focus on what its fans really like—the violence—will become a sensation in the U.S., fueled by social media, on-line gambling, and low IQs.
Ban it? Hey, this is America. We have a right to the pursuit of happiness, and if running full tilt into consenting people makes some dim bulbs happy, then let them do it. A few thoughts:
1. The female runners should make just as much as the male runners. It’s only fair…
2. The biggest societal benefit of the sport will be its Darwinian selection features.
3. As with NFL football, anyone who watches this sport is complicit in the injuries it will cause.
Let’s see:
A wag from Argentina responded on X, “Because we are a country, not a Disney movie.”
Yeah, that too.
Piper Rockelle is human civilization rot. The child star turned slut-for-bucks epitomizes how the social media age has curdled childhood, taste and ethics. It’s an ugly story, and one that I was blissfully unaware of until recently.
Piper, 18, has been performing for money since she started winning kiddie beauty pageants—a dubious “ick or ethics” activity itself—from about the age of three. Her mother began uploading clips of her prancing around to YouTube when Piper was 8. The mother, a stage mother from Hell (and hopefully destined to end up there) moved her budding meal-ticket to LA when the girl was 10, “homeschooling” her (it is anyone’s guess how much of the schooling involved actual education) while selling her daughter’s images online. Next, Mom began recruiting “the Squad”, a group of other preteen children to exploit with Piper as the leader. First they were filmed doing darling little girl things until they were transitioned to tween “crush content”: scripted reality show-style drama with episodes about infatuation, coming of age, teenage angst, first kisses and dating.
Piper Rockelle became the most famous online “kidfluencer.” Her tween and teen content was popular and lucrative on YouTube, and Piper built a fan base of millions of bored low-lifes and budding pedophiles on TikTok and Instagram. Then, in 2022, eleven members of the Squad sued Rockelle’s mother Tiffany Smith, and her boyfriend and business partner, Hunter Hill, alleging abuse and exploitation. TheirYouTube channel was demonetised, costing Piper and her mom hundreds of thousands in lost dollars every month.
Ethics Alarms 