U.S. Society

Is “Sondheim’s Final Musical” What It Claims To Be?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Two years after Stephen Sondheim’s death, “Here We Are” will premiere Off-Broadway in a 526-seat theater. Previously titled “Square One,” the show is based on Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.” The producers are advertising it as “the final musical by composer Stephen Sondheim;” it will open this week and run until January.

Sondheim, however, never finished the musical. In fact, when he announced that he had given up on writing it, Ethics Alarms saluted him, praising the Broadway icon for “doing the responsible thing, quitting….Virtually no composers and very few artists generally do anything but decline after the age of 60, though many try to keep churning out wan imitations of their best work as long as someone will pay them.” Sondheim’s last reasonably successful Broadway musical was “Passion,” in 1994, when the composer was 64. Before “Here We Are,” he labored for a decade over a musical that hit the stage in multiple versions with several titles. None of them were successful. Asked days before his death if he foresaw when his final musical would be finished, Sondheim curtly replied: “No.”

Yet now, mirabile dictu, his collaborators are announcing that the musical is complete. Interesting: Sondheim had said he finished all the songs in the first act, but had been stuck on writing songs for Act II. No problem! The show’s producing team now says that two months before Sondheim’s death, he had agreed to let the show go forward following a well-received reading of the material that existed at that point. That reading, however, contained no music. I’ve directed and organized many readings of new works, and the amount of rewriting, cutting and re-conceiving a show that takes place after that starting point is always massive–and often a show never makes it to production.

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A District Court Judge Rules That Racial And Gender Discrimination Is “Free Speech”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

What a concept! Thanks, Judge Thrash!

The American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), sued Fearless Fund, whose mission is to “bridge the gap in venture capital funding for women of color,” in the Northern District of Georgia over its grant program open only to black women. In rejecting the claim and the request for an injunction, Senior Judge Judge Thomas W. Thrash, Jr. wrote in part,

The Defendants, in my opinion, have a message that they are trying to communicate that black women business people have suffered discrimination and lack of equal access to capital to begin, expand, and promote businesses. And the Defendants, with their grants, are trying to send a message that they recognize that and want to support black female business people with their charitable donations. Under the controlling Eleventh Circuit authority of Coral Ridge Ministries media, donating money qualifies as expressive conduct and is entitled to First Amendment protection. That was not a 1981 case, but I have no reason to believe that the Eleventh Circuit would have decided the case any differently under Section 1981.

And the Plaintiff disagrees with that message. They want the Defendants to communicate a different message. Well, that’s not the way it works. The First Amendment protects the Defendants’ right to decide what message they want to promote, and that’s what the First Amendment is all about. So for those reasons, I’m going to deny the Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction and deny the Plaintiff’s motion for an injunction pending appeal.

Judge Thrash’s subsequent formal Order Denying Prelminary Injunction repeated the same reasoning.

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Addendum To The Senate Dress Code Fiasco: Althouse’s Ethically-Muddled Analysis

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Well, I’ve been nice to Ann lately, but as she does sometimes, she botched her analysis of this story badly, and attention should be paid. I’ll have Ann’s words in italics, and my comments without them…

Ann wrote, beginning with the NPR quote, “The Senate’s move to relax its unofficial dress code has led to a surprising development: an official dress code,”

“It’s not the way it always goes, but it shows the risk of seeking a new rule. You may end up with a reinforcement of the old rule. More precisely, it shows the risk of ending the enforcement of an informal practice. It led to the formalization of the old practice into an official rule.”

Why is that a “risk”? The risk of ending the enforcement of an old rule is that the consequences the old rule was designed to prevent occur. There were reasons for the old rule, and as Herman Kahn once told me, people have a tendency to take traditions and standards for granted after a while, forget why they existed, and have to learn, often painfully, all over again. That’s what happened here. As the Ethics Alarms motto goes, “When ethics fails, the law steps in.” Fetterman was unethical, and Schumer, rather than being a responsible leader and telling him to shape up, eliminated the ethical standard he was breaching instead.

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Ethics Dunce: Ex-Pitching Star And Big Mouth Curt Schilling

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

It’s been more than a month since the last baseball-related post. I fear it’s because the whole topic has left a bad taste in my mouth since the Red Sox essentially choked away what should have been a fun season right about the time I wrote the last one, which was childish of me. But I can’t ignore this ugly ethics story.

Curt Schilling, the former Orioles/Houston/Phillies/Diamondbacks and Red Sox starting pitcher justly credited as being the hero of Boston’s “Curse of the Bambino”-banishing World Series championship in 2004, revealed on a podcast last week that former Red Sox team mate Tim Wakefield is being treated for “brain cancer” and that Wakefield’s wife is being treated for cancer as well. This led to an outpouring of support for Wakefield, the knuckleball specialist who is as beloved by Red Sox Nation for his community work as much as for his always entertaining pitching as the last of the great knuckleballers. However, the Wakefields hadn’t authorized anyone to reveal their medical issues. The Red Sox felt compelled to issue a statement:

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The ‘Great Stupid’ Woke Mug That’s Even Worse Than The ‘Great Stupid’ Woke Lawn Signs

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

This embarrassing thing has over 5,000 “likes” on Facebook, including many from friends of mine who I will henceforth have a hard time looking in the eye.

The mug, which is available free of charge “for a limited time only,” annoys me more than the “In this house we believe” signs with their fatuous virtue-signaling, generalizations (“Love is Love”) and rationalizations (“No Human Being Is Illegal”). because the game it plays is more sinister and confusing to the intellectually handicapped. It is a political propaganda device that deliberately uses false equivalencies in order to ridicule and denigrate legitimate dissent from current progressive cant.

The smug mug’s three statements of the obvious (“The Earth is not flat,” “Chemtrails aren’t a thing” and “We’ve been to the moon”) contradict fringe wacko conspiracy theories that don’t require debunking, since only a tiny and insignificant percentage of the public believes in them or ever has, and almost all of that group breathe through their mouths. However, mixed in among those topics as if they are in the same category are reductive generalizations about two public policy issues involving serious and valid controversies. That’s dirty pool, and worse, the statements aspire to end debates that they don’t even fairly reference.

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End Of September Ethics Songs, Part 2

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

As in Part I, here are some September ethics tales in danger of ending up on the metaphorical cutting room floor. (I’m a Jimmy Durante fan, and the Kurt Weill classic has been recorded by many singers, from Perry Como to Willie Nelson, but this is the version of “September Song” that is most famous…)

1. So naturally, some Democrats want her to run for President. According to the Daily Mail, Michelle Obama was paid $741,000 to give a one hour speech in Germany. Issues & Insights points out that “by the time she was six minutes into her speech, she’d made more money than 50% of households in the United States make in a year.” Needless to say, there is nothing Michelle Obama has to say that is that valuable. I&I asks, “What is the difference between what Sen. Bob Menendez is charged with, what President Joe Biden is being investigated for, and the speech Michelle Obama gave in Germany on Monday?” It’s answer: “Only the dollar amounts.” It adds, “The one and only reason she commanded that price is because of the current buzz that she might run for president next year, given that Biden seems unlikely to last until November 2024, let alone January 2029. The organizers of the event were buying political influence, not insights.” I think that’s a likely explanation: recall how the lucrative donations to the shady Clinton Foundation dried up as soon as it became clear that Hillary would not become President. And yet the same people, from the same party that shrugs off the crypto-bribery enriching the Clintons, Bidens and Obamas as innocent fees for services rendered, kept up the complaint that Donald Trump having foreign officials stay at one of his hotels was an impeachable offense under the dead-letter Emoluments Clause in the Constitution.

2. When “trailblazers” choke: Leilani Armenta became the first women to appear in a “Historic Black Colleges and Universities” football game. A soccer player, she was recruited to handle the kick-off (and maybe a field goal or extra point or two!) for Jackson State. ESPN promoted it as something they “loved to see“—and she began the game with a 20 yard bloop that any non-kicker on the field could have surpassed. Diversity! Equity! Inclusion! No, she was not permitted to try an extra point of field goal after that. Apparently ESPN loves to see someone given a chance to strike a blow for gender equality fall flat on her face. Megan Rapinoe was unavailable for comment.

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Friday Open Forum! Yum!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This week’s forum will be sandwiched between Parts 1&2 of a September clean-up. So many delicious ethics stories and issues have floated or crawled by recently—and the volume seems to be increasing—that I’m desperately trying to reduce the backload. And the hits just keep on coming: I woke up to an alert that Senator Feinstein had died, an ethics story in itself. Evoking memories of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most selfish and irresponsible conduct as President, Feinstein was willing to wither and die in office rather than give up her power and position when it was clear that the Reaper was knocking.

Last night, ethics actually kept me awake: the last post was typed out around 5 am. I’m hoping the contributions to the Forum will let me take an early nap.

The Judge’s Fraud Ruling Against Donald Trump [Opinion Link Added]

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Justice Arthur F. Engoron of the New York Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Donald Trump repeatedly inflating the value of his assets, thus constitution fraud on banks and insurers. Thus New York Attorney General Letitia James will no longer have to prove fraud in her lawsuit against Trump. She is seeking a penalty of $250 million in a trial scheduled to begin next week. Justice Engoron ruled that the annual financial statements submitted to banks and insurance companies by Trump agents “clearly contain fraudulent valuations that defendants used in business.”

He also fined Trump’s lawyers $7,500 each for persisting in making arguments that he had previously rejected, and warned them that the arguments in question bordered on being frivolous. The former president, the judge wrote, ignored reality when it suited his business goals. “In defendants’ world,” he wrote, “rent-regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air.” Trump’s defense was that the banks made large profits in their dealings with the Trump Organization and could not be called victims, and that valuing property is subjective. This is the classic and often successful defense offered in many tax fraud cases.

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Depressed Ethics Observations On A Jury Nullification Verdict In NY

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Clarence Darrow would have loved the resolution of the Jennifer Nelson case in Suffolk County, New York yesterday. The U.S.’s most famous and iconic defense attorney achieved many of his most important victories by slyly arguing for jury nullification, which is now grounds for a mistrial and ethics sanctions in all states but one (New Hampshire) See Note below. Of course, Darrow never used that term, but when he told juries to “send a message” with their not-guilty verdict, that’s what he was talking about.

Jennifer Nelson, 36, a Long Island mother, faced up to 25 years in prison for driving her car—twice— into a 15-year-old boy, the leader of a pack of bullies that had plagued her teen son last October after she concluded that he had taken his Adidas Ye slides . The jury deliberated less than four hours to declare her innocent of an intentional attack, instead finding her guilty of leaving the scene of an accident when there were serious injuries. Her attorneys say they will seek a sentence of just probation, and if they get the right judge, that may be all the punishment Nelson gets….for attempted murder.

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Ethical Quote/Unethical Quote: Two Follow-Ups From Recent Posts

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

New York Times columnist David Brooks and powerful Democratic Senator Robert Menendez both thoroughly embarrassed themselves over the weekend. Brooks subsequently took the ethical approach and admitted that he had behaved badly. Menendez took the opposite approach, and topped his previous unethical response to a scandal with a response that was even worse.

Brooks had complained via Twitter that his $78 airport dinner highlighted the everyday struggles American families face amid ongoing inflation. omitting the fact that most of his charge was for whiskey. The tweet drew widespread mockery and this Ethics Alarms rebuke. Brooks didn’t hold back in his condemnation of his own actions, and said on PBS, “The problem with the tweet — which I wrote so stupidly — was that it made it seem like I was oblivious to something that is blindingly obvious: that an upper-middle-class journalist having a bourbon at an airport is a lot different than a family living paycheck to paycheck. I was insensitive. I screwed up. I should not have written that tweet. I probably should not write any tweets … I made a mistake. It was stupid.”

Got it. It was stupid. Now explain your columns over the last few years…

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