Maybe John Nolte of Breitbart had the best of intentions, but his essay “We Should Accept Jane Fonda’s Apology About Vietnam” is an ethics mess.

To begin with, the title is deliberately misleading: his real point has nothing to do with Jane Fonda. He begins with Jane to set up an analogy that doesn’t even work. “After 35 years of apologies, isn’t it time to forgive and move on? Should someone who has repeatedly apologized over four decades still be called on the carpet and asked to continue to explain herself?,” Nolte asks, referring to Fonda’s self-created infamy when she went to North Vietnam and praised Ho Chi Minh while condemning American GIs who were fighting and dying in combat with his army. Who is Nolte talking about? Most American under the age of 60 don’t know anything about Fonda’s war protest activities. “Move on” to what? Fonda hasn’t suffered any horrible fate because of her betrayal. Nobody “canceled” her. OK, the woman is nearly 90 and regrets some of her past decisions. What old lady doesn’t? I believe she’s sorry; her anti-American rhetoric probably cost her some work-out video income. It sure didn’t cost her any roles or party invites in Hollywood. She’s also probably sorry that she did the Atlanta Braves “tomahawk chop” when she was Ted Turner’s trophy wife, too. So what? If a 75-year-old Vietnam vet chooses not to forgive Jane Fonda for aiding and providing comfort to the enemy who was trying to kill him in the jungles of Vietnam, who is Nolte to say he has to?

I confess, I am pre-conditioned not to take anything published on Breitbart as persuasive; it has been on the Ethics Alarms banned list for many years and will remains so. Nolte also loses credibility with me when he gushes that Jane “is one of the greatest actresses who has ever lived.” He needs to apologize for that, and the apology needs to be addressed to Meryl Streep, Jessica Lange, Glenn Close, Vanessa Redgrave, Greer Garson [I left Garson out when this was first posted: unforgivable.], Maggie Smith, Viola Davis, Cicely Tyson, Ellen Burstyn, Geraldine Page, Nicole Kidman, Glenda Jackson, Audrey Hepburn, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Norma Shearer, Greer Garson, Ingrid Bergman, Judi Dench, Judith Anderson and Ann Bancroft, among others. Fonda has been a capable actress in a narrow range for a long time. She was better than her brother and not as good as her father. But one of the greatest of all time?

Stay in your lane, John.

But I digress. Fonda was disingenuously used by Nolte to tee up a terrible analogy. He writes,

All of America’s manufactured racial problems come down to a group of leftists (of all colors) who refuse to forgive and move on when it comes to slavery and Jim Crow. It’s not enough that hundreds of thousands of white Americans died to settle the matter of slavery. It’s not enough that after 5,000 generations where slavery was accepted as normal, it was Western Civilization that put an end to it. It’s not enough that two Constitutional amendments were passed to end American discrimination or that a black president was elected and re-elected, or that no American living today has ever owned or been a slave.

Why is it not enough?

Because with these race hustlers, fascists, and crybabies, it can never be enough. By not accepting America’s countless apologies and countless attempts to atone, they keep us divided, at each other’s throats, angry, and unable to heal.

You see, that’s the whole thing: If you don’t want a relationship to heal, you refuse to accept the apology and move on. That’s the secret to destroying a friendship or a marriage… No matter how sorry and contrite the offender is, you can destroy the relationship by constantly throwing whatever this person did in their face. And that’s what the left is doing to America and to millions of Americans…

Continue reading →

A banner day for the Marshalls: I just put our Christmas tree out to the curb, the latest ever. I was still green, unlike the one above, but so dry that when the EMTs visited our house on other matters, one of them said, eyebrow raised, “You don’t still light that, do you?” There were extenuating circumstances for the delay. I’ll just leave it at that...

1. This is what qualifies as cogent analysis in the world of entertainment…I heard a stand-up comic named Greg Proops (you may remember him as a regular on “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” get laughs and applause by saying, “When I hear they’ve banned guns along with banning abortion, I’ll believe that there’s some equity in this country!” Asking a high school class to deconstruct that statement and explain its logical, legal and ethical flaws would make a good exercise—if only most high school teachers wouldn’t react by saying, “Sounds good to me!”

2. This is sad, but…

….except that anyone who agrees to self-mutilation without investigating and carefully considering these matters get limited sympathy from me. Yes, my father taught me to be extremely resistant to fads and peer pressure: its why I managed never to take a single recreational drug while attending college in the Sixties, and was learning Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs when all of my friends were buying Beatles records. My son is the same way (I wonder why?) This particular fad is a lot more destructive and permanent, however, than sucking on joints. Shouldn’t that be obvious, even to teens?

Continue reading →

Asked to justify taking her granddaughter Naomi Biden on a taxpayer funded trip to Africa, First Lady Jill Biden thought the Golden Rationalization, “Everybody Does It,” #1 on the list, was justification enough.

“It’s so great for me to be able to bring a member of the family. I think it’s a tradition, or, actually that we’ve seen other families from first families, bring members of their family to just see the rest of the world and just experience the world,” Jill gushed during a stop in Namibia.

It’s so great for Naomi Biden, I guess, who is 29, an adult, and should be expected to pay her own way or stay home. There is no such “tradition.” Presidents have brought their wives and children along on such trips, and First Ladies have brought their kids; I suppose that is a reasonable perk of the job. But bringing along adult grandchildren and charging the government for the it is no “tradition.” This reminds me of Sir Joseph Porter, the “Ruler of the Queen’s Navee” in “H.M.S. Pinafore,” whose sisters, cousins and aunts follow him wherever he goes.

Continue reading →

If the babbling of the Georgia grand jury forewoman hasn’t depressed you enough about the state of our criminal justice system, by all means watch HBO’s 2021 series “The Murders at Starved Rock.” It is streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and Apple.

In 1961, 22-year-old Chester Weger was charged with the murders of three women in Starved Rock State Park near LaSalle, Illinois. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, almost entirely on the basis of his detailed confession, which he later recanted. Decades later, David Raccuglia, the son of the fledgling prosecutor who persuaded a jury to convict Weger and now a documentary-maker, decided to re-examine the case after it was officially re-opened. Raccuglia reveals that he was terrified for years of Weger, convinced that the convicted murderer would somehow escape and seek vengeance against the family of the man who sent him to prison. In the intervening decades, LaSalle had fractured over the case, with many in the town convinced that Weger was innocent, and many others equally adamant that he was a monster and was righteously convicted. David’s efforts at examining the evidence met with a great deal of hostility, some of it from his father, whom Raccuglia interviewed extensively.

Continue reading →

Yesterday was a mess, as I was running back and forth to the hospital, trying to keep Spuds calm (he didn’t understand why I kept leaving the house and why Grace was missing), and because when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, detecting ethics dilemmas and issues at every turn. Here are some that stick out…

I was asked to buy two of the Juul vaping delivery sticks, which are sold at 7-11, and which cost about 10 bucks. The vaping system has been a godsend for my wife, who smoked two packs a day for most of her adult life: her lungs, the doctor says, are completely clear, pink and healthy. Nonetheless, the government is trying to send her back to cigarettes, which it refuses to ban ( it certainly could), and threatening to eliminate Juul. When I tried to purchase the sticks, I was informed that 7-11 is prevented by law from selling more than one to a single customer. The law is simply harassment and an abuse of government power. I could come back 20 minutes later and with a different clerk, buy a second one easily.

***

The emergency room admitting staff consisted of two grossly obese women wearing baggy sweatshirts and slacks. One was chewing gum. Both mumbled and were barely audible. What a confidence- and trust-building introduction to a hospital! How can any business allow employees to present such an unprofessional image to the public? Quizzing my sister, a health care expert (she wrote some of Obamacare), about what’s going on here, I was informed that health care facilities, including doctors’ offices, are experiencing such a staffing emergency that they have to accept sub-par employees. No, they really don’t. Health care facilities can’t allow unprofessional staff, and they need to pay enough to ensure that employees meet acceptable standards.

***

Continue reading →