Anyone?
I don’t like being shouted at by cartoon characters. Even if they had a valid point, my response to this kind of assaultive advocacy is, has ever been, and always will be…
Bite me.
U.S. Society
“Sunday Evening Ethics With Ethics Alarms,” 2/5/2023: But Wait, There’s More…
I want to start next week out with as little inventory as possible, so I’m going to go to the potpourri format a second time today. This morning’s installment is here.
1. My current quest is to locate as many popular songs and records from the 1950s (and early Sixties, which were the Fifties in spirit, pre-British Invasion.) that are effectively “cancelled” today for being politically correct. As I note in a comment earlier today, I am trying to persuade Pat Boone to do this as a “theme” for his weekly Sirius show on the Golden Fifties Channel. He’s a terrific host, by the way—great voice still, smooth, fascinating comments on the songs. Pat also likes playing his own hits, understandable enough, and one of them was the infamous “Speedy Gonzalez,” which traffics in more Mexican stereotypes than you would think could be packed into a song. ( I wrote about the Chuck Jones cartoon character here; Mel Blanc even does “Speedy” on Pat’s record.) That song above from “The Most Happy Fella” is another. Boy, it’s creepy, with lyrics like,
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by
Standing on the corner underneath the springtime sky
Brother, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking
Or for the “Woo!” look in your eye
You’re only standing on the corner watching all the girls
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls
Go by!
I first paid attention to the song in the 70’s, and they bothered me then. How cute: a bunch of guys ogling women and thinking about illegal things to do with them or to them. As you might discern, I see no reason to censor these songs. The Fifties was the most lively, varied, experimental and interesting time in U.S. pop music, with Broadway, jazz, rhythm and blues, country, Doo Wop, and orchestral all vital, the iconic rockers like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Elvis on the way up, and the old-style crooners like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Frankie Layne and Tony Bennett still knocking out hits. Hundreds of that era’s songs are still worth listening to, including “Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah” by Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, a Phil Spector-produced American rhythm and blues trio from Los Angeles. You know, I’m sure, that Disney has purged that Academy Award-winning song because it came from the allegedly racist “Song of the South” animated film. Among the platters I’ll suggest to Pat are “Please Mr. Custer,” “Ally Oop,” “Johnny Get Angry,” “I Told the Witch Doctor,” and Tex Ritter’s “Deck of Cards” song, which is openly Christian, so might “offend” someone. Please pass suggestions along, as well as the best way to contact Pat, who claims to have an email address. Twitter works, but I haven’t returned to that platform yet. I can’t tell if Pat himself ever checks his Facebook page. Continue reading
“Sunday Morning Ethics With Ethics Alarms,” 2/5/2023: Embarrassing…
Great thanks to my friend and Ethics Alarms reader Jeff Westlake for reminding me of the prescient and relevant episode from one of my all-time favorite (and shamelessly silly) sitcoms, “F-Troop.” That was “Crazy Cat” prodding the Hekawi chief; he took the place of medicine man “Roaring Chicken” Edward Everett Horton in the show’s final season (in color!) when the great old character actor became too ill in his eighties.
More spy balloon humor: one Twitter wag said that shooting down the Chinese balloon was the first thing the Biden administration had done to successfully combat inflation.
1 Regarding today’s headline: Not all that long ago, I used to watch as much of all the Sunday talking head programs on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and CNN (skipping Fox News and MSNBC because they were so one-note and shrill). Now I can’t watch any of them. All five shifted to full-partisan bias in 2016, and it just intensified since then. Even the evidence that Donna Brazile had used her role as a CNN “contributor” to let Hillary Clinton get advance notice of questions in a town meeting didn’t stop her from being featured as a pundit. George Stephanopoulos screaming Clinton conflict of interest continued to be ignored by ABC, and he stopped even trying to hide it. Chuck Todd turned “Meet the Press” into an hour-long infomercial for Democrats, and “Reliable Sources” under Brian Stelter became a literal fraud, an unethical media ethics show. I miss those shows, just like I miss journalism that at least tried to be informative, fair and ethical. Wouldn’t you think just one would have concluded that it would be wise to contrast with the others by actually being objective, rather than being indistinguishable?
2. Now that I’m reminded of our Native Americans so soon after this super-woke idiot complained about the Washington Redskins, the presence of the Kansas City Chiefs in the upcoming Super Bowl has once again triggered the Indian team names and mascots Nazis, notably in Kansas City itself. KCUR, the PBS affiliate in KC, published a story on its website last week titled, “As Kansas City Chiefs head to the Super Bowl, their violent traditions alienate even some local fans.” Violent traditions? What violent traditions? Do Chief fans traditionally try to massacre the fans of their opponents? No, the “violence” referred to is the “tomahawk” chop gesture the fans sometimes perform in the stands, like the home fans of baseball’s Atlanta Braves. You know, violence to the air. Or something. The petty, silly and obnoxious feature quotes Rhonda DeValdo, an activist and professor from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas: Continue reading
Plumbing The Depths Of The Great Stupid: I Usually Don’t Continue Reading Articles That Start With First Sentences Like This One, Missing Out On Hilarious Race-Obsessed Delusions…
Before we delve into the substance of the article at issue, let me express my gratitude to author David Kaufman for giving me another opportunity to post a brilliant cartoon by one of my heroes, New Yorker satirist/philosopher/humorist Charles Addams. If you read here often, you have seen his work highlighted periodically because it is so often appropriate. In this case, that cartoon above, which made me laugh out loud when I first saw it as a high school student, immediately leapt to mind when I read that Kaufman believes the little white figures in the “walk/don’t walk” traffic lights represent white people.
Did anyone, at the New Yorker, among its readers, among the millions of people who have seen that creepy but very funny drawing in the best-selling collections of Addams’ mordant humor think for a second that it had anything to do with race? No, because it didn’t, doesn’t, and until quite recently, before The Great Stupid spread hate, fear, darkness and toxic cretinism over the land, nobody would be so woke-mad and brainwashed to see racism in everything that they would come to such a bonkers conclusion. Continue reading
The Race-Baiting, Divisive, Unprofessional, Unethical “Squad”
What an embarrassment….to the Democrats, to Congress, to the nation, to women especially….and this display ought to embarrass anyone who voted for these three blights on the Republic.
At least Rep. Omar, in the process of lying and playing victim to challenge her expulsion from the House Foreign Relations Committee, nearly stayed within the (unfortunately) acceptable range of elected official conduct—cynical grandstanding, claiming that she didn’t do what she did, you know, the usual.Though I must say, her sudden affection for Israel as she faced the just desserts of her repeated adoption of anti-Jewish stereotypes and rhetoric was breathtakingly hypocritical even for Congress. Risibly, Omar joined more than 30 House Democrats voting “yes” on a new resolution “recognizing Israel as America’s legitimate and democratic ally and condemning antisemitism.” Huh! lhan Omar has had many opportunities during her time in Congress to support America’s greatest ally in the Middle East, and did the opposite. Who knew Omar was such a fan of Israel after all?
I’m sure it was just a coincidence that what NBC News hackily calls her “evolution” happened as she was facing the consequences of her open anti-Semitic bigotry. Continue reading
Today’s Depressing Note…
The local Fox affiliate had a story this morning about a woman who found a bag full of money, thousands of dollars.
“You won’t believe what happened next!,” the newsreader teased!
What? Was she killed by mobsters? Was it a magic bag, and she turned into a cockroach? What? What was so unbelievable?
She handed the money over to the police instead of keeping it, as, apparently, the reporters would have done and assumed “normal” viewers would do as well.
(Oh–the police located the newlyweds who had dropped their bag of money….the morons.)
Friday Open Forum: Let’s Go For Two In A Row!
Last week’s open forum was a real gullywasher!
Let’s do it again.
Starting….
NOW!
Law Prof. Ethics Rule: Don’t Say Anything To A Student That You Wouldn’t Say Over An Open Mic…
Oops! Law professor Daniel Capra, an adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, responded to a student complaint that he spoke too quickly in his lectures and international students were having trouble keeping up with a foreign language. Capra dismissed the compliant and and dismissed the students’ problems following hm as “assumption of risk.” Then, after the student walked away, he said, “Fuck!”
His class was being recorded, and a nearby microphone was live. Of course, the episode is being given maximal attention, life today being what it is. Above the Law gleefully weighed in, so did Law.com. Aditi Thakur, president of Columbia Law’s student senate, released a statement announcing that the student senate is “deeply alarmed” by Capra’s conduct. Gillian Lester, the dean of Columbia Law, said that she has told Capra that his “language, and the disrespectful attitude it conveyed, were unacceptable.” She also told students that she wanted to “express my own sorrow about this incident.” Sorrow!
Capra is also a professor at the Fordham University School of Law, so Matthew Diller, the dean there, had to pile on, saying, “His conduct was not consistent with his reputation as a teacher and scholar over many years or the spirit of inclusiveness and care for others that is at the heart of a Fordham education.”
A Quick Note…
I’ve been in a deposition since 10 AM; it’s 3:31 as I write this. I stated, as part of my ethics report, that a public accusation of racism in the current political and social environment, particularly in the District Of Columbia, created a serious threat to the business and business owner so accused.
I was asked what authority as an ethicist I had to state such an opinion.
I replied that it wasn’t an opinion, it is a fact, and that my role as an ethics expert did not limit me from using knowledge that every sentient person in U.S. society would have in the course of formulating my ethical analysis.
Ethics Quote Of The Week: Victor Davis Hanson
“[W]hen everything becomes racist, then nothing in particular can be racist.”
—Revered conservative scholar and pundit Victor Davis Hanson in his column prompted by the absurd progressive calms that the beating death of young Tyre Nichols by five black police officers was caused by “white supremacy” and “systemic racism.”
Hanson’s piece “Race Everywhere” neatly supports my observation in the previous post that it is time to retire February ‘s designation as “Black History Month” (though “Hot Breakfast Month” can stay). His thesis:
In sum, class, not race, remains the best litmus test of being underprivileged in America. It is no longer synonymous with race. No wonder the identity politics industry now strains to attach prefixes such as “systemic” or “implicit” to “racism,” or “micro” to “aggression,” purportedly to ferret out bias that otherwise is not apparent. Pause to reflect that America is the only successful multiracial constitutional republic in history.To survive in an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile world abroad, the unique idea of the United States requires concord. But national cohesion is only possible through citizens subordinating their tribal interests to a common culture. Only then do they cease being automatons of warring tribes and collectives.
Hanson includes many examples of the fact-immune push to elevate the black race above all others in the U.S. while deliberately reversing our national and societal progress away from segregation and racial hostility, as well as why the movement is neither rational nor responsible. Three that I was aware of include,
Ethics Alarms 