U.S. Society

Comment of the Day: “Rob Reiner’s Legacy, Part I: The Artist”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

This elegant Comment of the Day by CEES VAN BARNEVELDT is short by COTD standards, but I had to honor it. Yes, the comment echoes a theme that has been covered on Ethics Alarms many times, because I am an artist myself as well as a critic and connoisseur of art, and because I feel passionately that art of all kinds has an independent life from that of the artist. It is a Cognitive Dissonance Scale challenge, to be sure, when an artist’s horrible words, views, conduct or character are underwater on one’s personal CD scale and that artist’s creative output is high in positive territory. But one has to try, and try hard, to separate the two. So much of my favorite music was written by flawed, cold, even sick people. So much of the literature I love, and that has formed a great deal of my perspective on life, was authored by terrible human beings, except for that spark of brilliance. I believe with all my heart in Thomas Jefferson’s vision of America, democracy and liberty, but find his personal conduct and hypocrisy nauseating. And don’t get me started on the performing arts: to take the most prominent example, I have spent a large chunk of my life celebrating, admiring, interpreting and promoting the talents and artistic output of Danny Kaye, who was, as I discovered late in the process, a misanthropic sociopath. That did not change however, the joy he brought to millions, his delightful performances in “The Court Jester,” “Hans Christian Anderson” or “White Christmas,” or the glory of Danny’s dazzling renditions of “Tchaikovsky” or “Anatole of Paris.”

Here is CEES’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Rob Reiner’s Legacy, Part I: The Artist,” which begins with a quote from Chris Marschner’s comment:

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Unethical Quote of the Month, Unethical Tweet, Incompetent Elected Official: President Donald J. Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Also res ipsa loquitur.

There is no excuse for this and those tempted to defend it should staple their lips shut and super-glue their fingers together.

Quick points that should be obvious:

  • Trump has a political death wish exemplified by his determination to make his most irrational foes look like they have a good point about his character.
  • The man literally doesn’t know how a President of the United States should act, or if he does, doesn’t care, which is worse.
  • His administration’s many missions are too important for him to jeopardize them with petty, ugly, breaches of decency and dignity like this, just to satisfy a personal grudge against a man who just had his throat cut by his son.
  • What an asshole. 

Signature Significance: A Member of Congress Who Describes the Murder of a National Guard Member as “An Unfortunate Accident” Is, By Definition, a “Scumbag,” as Well as an Ethics Villain, an Incompetent Elected Official, and a Disgrace to His District, His Party, His Nation and His Species

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wow. The depth of uselessness of our members of Congress apparently knows no bounds. Who the hell is “Benny Thompson” and what cabal of morons elected someone like that to the House of Representatives? Normally I would have looked for a freestanding video of that moment, but in this case the X poster’s ad hominem attack is fair and just.

This self-indicting fool has been in Congress since 1993 representaing Mississippi’s 2nd congressional district. Wikipedia says he was an “educator” after getting degrees from two “historically black” institutions, meaning, in most cases, that the degree means even less than most college degrees. Then, after undoubtedly making hundreds of young minds dumber teaching the kind of critical thinking that leads a man to call cold-blooded murder an accident, Bennie went into politics.

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Mid-Christmas Season Unopened Ethics Packages

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I’m avoiding most Christmas music this time around, though I will still post about a few favorites that warm my heart. And I will dutifully watch the same Christmas season movie classics that I always did with my late wife, whose love of Christmas combined with our awful last version of the holiday and her shocking sudden death are three ghosts too many to bear, even after almost two years. I just posted, with wan response so far, the updated Ethics Companion to “White Christmas,” which includes one of our five commenters Michael West’s entertaining analysis of the military sequence that begins the film. [You are welcome to update or re-think any of that, MW, and I’ll add it right in.]

I’ve been appreciating Bing, Danny, Rosemary and Vera-Ellen more with each viewing recently, perhaps because I’ve been taking them for granted. As narrator Frank Sinatra says in “That’s Entertainment,” the great MGM retrospective about the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals, “You can sit around and hope, but you will never see the likes of this ever again.”

Ol’ Blue Eyes was talking about an epic dance duel between Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, but he just as easily could have been talking about The “White Christmas” Four. Or for me, I’m afraid, a sadness-free Christmas.

But enough of that:

1. Yup, she’s a con-artist, a law-breaker and a liar: now what? The Washington Free Beacon mounts an airtight case that Minnesota “Somalia First” Rep. Omar indeed married her brother and has lied about it for years. Why don’t Democrats care about this as much as the conservative press? I thought Democrats were the party of “no one is above the law”? The rubber-stamp response to all legitimate questions about this weird story always rebounds to Omar’s original claim that the issue was just “Trump-style misogyny, racism, anti-immigration rhetoric and Islamophobic division.”

2. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a GOP embarrassment in the House, has been making a farewell tour apparently aimed at annoying as many Republicans as possible: for example, she cozied up recently to the far left fanatic group “Code Pink.” She seems less interested in principles than in setting herself up to be Liz Cheney,The Sequel, though GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert suggests that her soon to be ex-colleague is flying the metaphorical coop to avoid new regulations stopping House members from trading stocks. MTG executed over 450 stock trades since joining the House and bought $3.89 million in stocks in 2024 alone. She has a better success rate than most hedge funds.

A “Victory Girls” pundit ruefully writes, “I keep thinking about the people who defended her when it wasn’t fashionable. They absorbed the ridicule and trusted that beneath the mess there was something solid. Greene repaid that trust by posing with Code Pink and then turning around to sabotage her own party on the way out.” Funny, I keep thinking how Greene proved that her supporters, when she was an obvious self-promoting Dunning-Kruger victim who had no business being in Congress, were dupes, fools, and marks. It wasn’t hard to see how unqualified and unfit she was, if bias hadn’t made them stupid.

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The 2025 Complete “White Christmas” Ethics Companion, With a New Introduction

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

2025 Introduction

In the 2022 introduction I wondered whether the 1954 Christmas movie musical “White Christmas” was on the way out of the Christmas movie canon as anti-white racism took root during “The Great Stupid.”  I wrote, “If there comes a time when an innocent musical fable about kindness toward an old hero down on his luck no longer resonates because of the skin-shades of the characters, the values and priorities of American arts and society will have reached a dangerous level of confusion.”

I have been rather blue of late, and a dear friend (and old love) ordered me to watch “White Christmas,” her favorite movie, as a tonic. She was right, as usual: it helped. She had expressed annoyance with earlier versions of the Ethics Companion, arguing that a lot of my complaints were (and are) petty for a feel-good Christmas movie. I think she was right about that, too.

I think I enjoyed the movie more this year than in past viewings because I watched it with a house guest who had never seen “White Christmas” before, and hadn’t experienced the brilliance of the four stars, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen often enough to take them for granted. “Wow, what a voice!” he said of Bing. “Nobody dances like that any more!” he said after watching Vera-Ellen tap her way through “Mandy.”An ex-Marine, he got choked up when the old General gets the surprise of his life with many of his old comrades showing up at Christmas Eve to fill his struggling Vermont Inn.

Last year I noted that Bing Crosby had complained that the movie could and should have been better than it was. I agreed with him in my comments last year; now I’m not so sure. How, exactly, could it have been better? The cast was perfect; the sentimental ending works today as much as ever: my house guest was quietly tearful at the end.

One of the most ethical features of “White Christmas” was behind the scenes, an ethical act that allowed it to be made, undertaken by one of the most unlikely people imaginable, Danny Kaye.  Kaye was a major factor in launching my interest in performing, musicals, and comedy, but my research into the real man, when I was in the process of collaborating on a musical about his relationship with his wife and muse, songwriter Sylvia Fine, revealed that the real Danny Kaye was a miserable, paranoid, selfish, mean and insecure sociopath when he wasn’t playing “Danny Kaye,” which could be on stage or off it. In this case, however—and nobody knows why—the abused Jewish kid went to unusual lengths to save a Christmas movie.

“White Christmas” had been conceived as a remake of “Holiday Inn” with the same stars as that black-and-white musical, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. Fred couldn’t do the project, so his part was re-written for Donald O’Connor, who became ill so close to shooting that there was no time to retool the whole script and have the film ready for its target holiday release. In desperation, the producers asked Kaye if he would play Bing’s sidekick even though it meant 1) playing a support, which Kaye had never done in a movie since becoming a star 2) playing a role that didn’t’ highlight his special talents (for those, watch “The Court Jester”), and 3) subordinating himself to Bing Crosby, who was indeed the bigger star and box office draw, and 4) most daring of all, exposing his own limitations by doing dance numbers created for Donald O’Connor. Kaye was not a trained dancer, just a gifted mimic and athlete who could do almost anything he tried to do well. Danny demanded $200,000 and 10% of the gross to rescue the project, but he still was doing so at considerable personal risk…and he didn’t need the money, because Sylvia was a financial whiz.

Everyone around Danny Kaye was shocked that he agreed to all of this. Not only did he agree, he also amazed everyone by not playing the under-appreciated star on set, by doing O’Connor’s choreography as well as he did, and by knowing how not to steal focus from the star, something he infamously refused to do on Broadway when he was in “Lady in the Dark” with Gertrude Lawrence.

“White Christmas” was the top grossing film of 1954 and the most financially successful movie musical up to that time. Kaye’s uncharacteristic unselfishness and characteristic versatility made that level of success possible. The secret of why Danny was on his best behavior was another one of his pathologies from an abused childhood: he was always in awe of the superstars like Bing Crosby, and felt inferior to them. (He wasn’t.)

Yes the movie works ; you just have to turn off your brain to fully enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed. It has many high points, musical and comedic, for most viewer they justify the flaws, and we will never see the likes of Crosby, Kaye and Clooney again (and Vera-Ellen was no slouch). I miss all of them, which adds an extra bit of wistfulness to my annual viewing.

And whatever faults “White Christmas” may have, it’s whiteness isn’t one of them.

This is another sad Christmas for me.  Once again there will be no Christmas tree that takes me five hours to decorate, no festive banquet at a table surrounded by family and friends, no stockings or presents…just a big empty house with a needy dog and a lot of scary problems to solve and ticking time bombs to defuse. The sappy Christmas movie that ends with two happy couples, an old man being reassured that his life had meaning and Bing singing “White Christmas” is, as it was last year, just what the psych ward prescribed. I’m trying to count my blessings. What choice do I have? I have no sheep.

1. The First Scene

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In Which I Call Ann Althouse’s Expressed Hatred Of “The Little Drummer Boy” & Raise My Hatred of the Bing Crosby-David Bowie Duet

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I was pleased to see today that bloggress Ann Althouse devoted a post to how awful “The Little Drummer Boy” is. She wrote, quoting from a post from an earlier Christmas season,

“[I]f you ever feel like giving me a gift, and you think all you’ve got to give is that drum number you’re threatening to perform, realize you are making a mistake. There’s also the gift of silence. I’d prefer that. I know baby Jesus reputedly appreciated the gift of drumming — according to that nasty song — but consider the possibility that Jesus was just being nice. I know, politeness is a quality alien to infants, but — come on! — it was Jesus! Put the damned drum away.”

I know I have written on EA in the past about how I rank Christmases by how many times I have to listen to the Harry Simeone Choir recording of that song. Ann also quotes Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri’s column condemning “The Little Drummer Boy, in which Petri wrote in part,

“I cannot stand it. Nothing will fix it, even the application of David Bowie to it. Every year I say, ‘I hate this song,’ and every year people say, ‘Have you heard David Bowie’s version?’ Yes. Yes, I have. It is still an abomination.”

EVEN the application of David Bowie to it? That is, beyond question, the worst rendition of the song in existence, and I would rather pluck out my eyes and puncture my ear drums rather than experience that monstrosity by Bowie with Bing Crosby’s complicity ever again. Here’s what I wrote about the “creepiest totalitarian lyrics to a Christmas song that was already bad” in 2022:

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Ethics Quiz: The Kamala Harris Bust

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I did a Danny Thomas spit-take when I read that Kamala Harris, in an interview with the New York Times, proudly proclaimed herself “a historic figure.” Harris noted the tradition of creating a marble bust for every U.S. Vice President after they leave office, saying: “There will be a marble bust of me in Congress. I am a historic figure like any vice president of the United States ever was.”

This has sparked mass mockery in the conservative news media and social media.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is this mockery fair?

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SCOTUS Finally Figures Out That It’s Unethical To Ignore the Constitution

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Well, the majority of the Supreme Court, anyway.

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court hosted arguments in Trump v. Slaughter, which challenges the constitutionality of the “independent agencies” Congress has voted into existence over many decades. Their leaderss are not under the control of the President of the United States, though they are considered part of the Executive Branch. Go figure.

President Trump fired FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, not for cause, as authorized by the FTC statute, but because her service was “inconsistent with this Administration’s priorities.” Slaughter refused to leave office, setting up a constitutional showdown.

The New York Times concluded from the argument, “Justices Seem Ready to Give Trump More Power to Fire Independent Government Officials.” The momentum shifted when Justice Gorsuch (above, left) said, “I’ll put my cards on the table. Maybe… there is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government.”

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On Pearl Harbor and American Moral Luck

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Guest post by Steve-O-in NJ

[This excellent commentary by Steve-O was waiting in moderation when I woke up this morning, and I immediately decided to move it directly into a guest post–JM]

The Japanese knew themselves, or at least those with any sense knew, that after the attack they had about 6 months to win an overwhelming victory and force the United States to the peace table before the American production machine ramped up to full capacity and overwhelmed them. Their fatal mistake at Pearl Harbor was not to order the planned third strike which would have targeted repair facilities, fuel facilities, and so forth. As already pointed out by many it was only by great good luck that the carrier fleet was not present.

The damage to the battle fleet was extensive, but not total destruction. USS Pennsylvania was in dry dock and was hit by only a single bomb that caused moderate damage. Tennessee and Maryland occupied inside berths and so could not be hit by torpedoes; they received only moderate damage from two bomb hits each. Both were back in service before the end of 1942. USS Nevada took one torpedo hit, but was also back in service before long, although she rather quickly found herself moved to the Atlantic where she covered the Normandy landings. California and West Virginia were the real miracle repairs, both having sunk onto the mud and West Virginia having been hit by seven torpedoes. Oklahoma, which capsized, and Arizona, where a magazine exploded, were the only US battleship losses in World War II. Arizona accounts for almost half the American casualties at Pearl Harbor, including Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd, the highest ranking officer killed.

The following days were the darkest for the Allies, as the Japanese also sank two British battleships, forced the surrender of Hong Kong, and took Singapore and the Philippines. The Americans were fighting back with outdated equipment, a consequence of FDR’s understandable focus on domestic issues since his election in 1932. You don’t hear much about that, and only sometimes do you hear about how near a disaster Midway was, with almost the complete failure of torpedo bomber attacks.

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Comments of the Day: “A New York Times “Expert” Thinks It’s Wrong To Make Informed Judgments About Who Is Fit To Be An American…”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I’m featuring two Comments of the Day on the same post, the discussion of whether legal immigration to the U.S. should be more carefully limited by the culture and characteristics of the nation of origin, as the Trump immigration policies seem to be heading. The discussion among the commentariate has been excellent; indeed it was difficult narrowing the COTD field down to just two.

First up is the Comment of the Day by CEES VAN BARNEVELDT on the post, “A New York Times “Expert” Thinks It’s Wrong To Make Informed Judgments About Who Is Fit To Be An American…”

***

The primary criteria for allowing immigration should be…

  • a) whether an immigrant would be able to become a good US citizen
  • b) whether the immigrant fills an economic and cultural need for the USA

Take for example Sergey Brin. He was born in 1973 in the Soviet Union, and immigrated with his parents to the USA in 1979, during the Cold War. He is one of the two founders of Google. I would say this his immigration is a success story on both criteria. The Soviet Union at the time was the main adversary (some say enemy) of the United States at the time.

This means that we need to be careful with solely looking at country of origin as a criteria for immigration eligibility. We may want to exclude immigration from certain countries, however allow immigration on humanitarian grounds for those who flee the country due to persecution (e.g. Christians from Iran, Jews from Nazi Germany), and seek asylum.

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