This is the first ethics grab-bag in seven days, a record. I missed several historical dates with ethical import, none more notable than the 1914 Christmas Truce, which Ethics Alarms has discussed several times. It is remembered, for the most part, with dewy-eyed nostalgia: British and German soldiers on opposing sides at the Western Front, defying orders from superiors, pretended the war didn’t exist and left their trenches, put their weapons and animus aside, sang carols, shared food, buried their dead, and perhaps, depending on which source you choose to believe, even played soccer against each other. Awww. Somehow I couldn’t remember if I had ever fallen for this malarkey, so when I was considering writing a “Bah, humbug!” Christmas Truce post on December 25th, I began by checking the Ethics Alarms archives. The last time Ethics Alarms took up the topic was in 2020, and the post concluded in part,

I was moved to write about this event after reading one article that said that it demonstrated “the importance of choosing to see past our momentary hatreds.” How does it demonstrate that? The “truce” saved no lives; it didn’t shorten the war, lead to more mercy and compassion, orpromote understanding. The victors in the First World War still enacted such punitive measures against the Germans that it seeded World War II.

Soldiers who operate under the delusion that warfare is a noble pursuit tempered with honor and mutual respect are deluding themselves. The idea is to kill people, and to end the war as quickly as possible. The “Christmas Truce” was incompetent and naive.

1. “Where have you gone, Ross Perot? Our nation turns its stupid eyes to you…” Congress got together to pass a wildly irresponsible 1.7 trillion dollar spending package, so it is now officially clear that neither party is paying any attention to the National Debt. What the hell. they’ll all be dead before it triggers a financial catastrophe, so why should they care? The public will keep voting for them, because the schools don’t teach basic mathematics skills, and nobody understands economics including economists. America’s debt has now reached 31.3 trillion dollars. Boston Globe business and finance reporter Jim Puzzanghera pointed out last week that this level of debt represents a “rapidly growing death spiral” for our nation. Actually, the level of debt thirty years ago threatened the same death spiral—that was when Ross Perot ran for President with a campaign infomercial in which he explained with simple charts why federal spending was out of control and eventually the U.S. would regret it. A lot of Americans got the message, too–but they’re all dead or senile now.

The federal government has to pay interest on the debt; it will pay nearly $400 billion in interest in 2022, and that figure is currently projected to climb to about $1.2 trillion over the next decade. The GDP now is virtually the same as our national debt. The interest on the debt will equal more than 3% of the nation’s entire economic production over the next decade. The CBO projects that figure will eventually surpass 7%, and the CBO’s record lately suggests that the real figure will be higher. The Bipartisan Policy Center think tank told Puzzanghera that a debt like that is like termites in your home’s porch: “They’re working away at it, you don’t see them, but one day you step out on that porch and you go through it.”

Except that our elected leaders do see them. They just don’t care.

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This one is complicated.

A classmate wrote an anniversary report that was exactly as I would have predicted. I know him well; we roomed together for three years. It was virtually a parody of what people think Harvard grads sound and think like in the autumn of their years. And it bothered me.

My old roomie wrote about how the pandemic had adversely affected his life. He and his wife were used to going to fine restaurants, the Met, the ballet, the Philharmonic and Broadways shows. In retirement, he was still on several corporate boards. Things got so bad when New York City was shut down that his family had to flee their Park Avenue penthouse apartment for their other apartment in Newport, Rhode Island. The compensating aspect of this hardship was that he was able to take his large sailboat out frequently, as sailing has always been his passion.

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Christmas Eve Ethics Gift Wrapping

Ever heard that one before? It’s the late Art Carney, best known for his reliably brilliant portrayal of sewer worker Ed Norton as Jackie Gleason’s foil on “The Honeymooners” pioneering Christmas rap. Carney also won an Oscar, like a lot of comics managing a successful late career pivot from clowning to drama, and had another Christmas credit on his CV. Art starred in “The Night of the Meek,” a memorable “Twilight Zone” episode in 1960 that aired on December 23. Carney played a drunk and depressed department store Santa who, through wishes, fate and the regular “Twilight Zone” magic, becomes the real Santa Claus in the show’s climax. Rod Serling, who wrote the episode, ended it thusly,

A word to the wise to all the children of the twentieth century, whether their concern be pediatrics or geriatrics, whether they crawl on hands and knees and wear diapers or walk with a cane and comb their beards. There’s a wondrous magic to Christmas and there’s a special power reserved for little people. In short, there’s nothing mightier than the meek.

Some politically correct idiot at CBS deleted Rod’s Merry Christmas wish from the episode in the 1980s. Can you believe that? “And a Merry Christmas to each and all” is not heard in reruns, VHS releases and the five-DVD set “The Twilight Zone: The Definitive Edition.”

1. Here’s as good as an apology as you can make when you are videoed trying to kill someone.  New England Patriots great Willie McGinest, a three-time Super Bowl winner, issued an abject mea culpa on  social media after an ugly incident in which he attacked someone in a restaurant this month in California turned up streaming  on the web. The onetime star linebacker was seen on video obtained by TMZ Sports  punching a man in the face and then attacking him with a bottle. McGinest was arrested for investigation of assault with a deadly weapon, then was released on bond. He wrote on Instagram:

This apology would rate a #1 on the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale, as it hits all the marks. It also convinces me that the scale needs to be revised, something that has been suggested by several commenters over the years. There has to be a special category for professionally-crafted public apologies designed to avoid the natural consequences of outrageous conduct. Can one adequately and credibly apologize for attacking someone in a restaurant? Should they be trusted again? Attacking someone with bottle in a public place is signature significance, is it not? Someone with adequate ethics alarms doesn’t do that even once.

Oh, I’m sure Willie is sorry: that video can cost him a great deal…much more than he paid his PR firm to draft it. [Pointer: Arthur in Maine] Continue reading →

(I know that’s not a very holiday-cheery graphic, but it’s how this Jack feels—like Jack Nicholson playing Frozen Jack Torrance in “The Shining”—after walking Spuds this chilly morning…)

A few notes before we start in earnest…

• Relatively few lawyers in the D.C. area (that I have talked with on the topic)seem to think Rudy Giuliani either should be disbarred or will be for, in the over-heated words of the D.C. Bar’s ethics prosecutor, “weaponizing his bar license.” Those who do see doom for Rudy seem to be in the  group of  hyper-partisan lawyers (bias makes you stupid!) who want to make it impossible for Donald Trump to get effective legal representation, which allies the attack on old Rudy with the recent referral to the Justice Department for prosecution of the former President from a transparently partisan “Get Trump!” investigation in the House.
• Ed Larson, the Pulitzer-winning historian who collaborated with me on “The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow” (a great Christmas gift!) has just written a new book, “American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation.” It promises to be excellent, and a scholarly as well as fascinating tonic for “1619 Project” nonsense.
• An unscientific survey: based on lawn decorations in Alexandria, Virginia, secular Christmas has now completely obliterated the religious holiday, and we have returned to the holiday’s pagan origins. I’ve been counting: inflatables of Will Farrell in “Elf” (8 to 1) and Chevy Chase being electrocuted in “Christmas Vacation” (4-1)  outnumber any references to Jesus’s birth…indeed, a single, lonely creche is the only hint of that event among over a hundred homes in my neighborhood. Snowmen dominate the lawn genre completely here. Back in my Arlington, Massachusetts days, it was common to see multiple manger scenes on every street and road.

1. Diversity follies…The Washington Post completely beclowned itself by allowing academic race-hustler Erika Edwards to author an op-ed titled “Why doesn’t Argentina have more Black players in the World Cup?” Apart from the obvious and correct answer, “Because the players the team has are the best players, and you don’t choose athletic team squads via affirmative action,” there is also the fact that the percentage of African-Argentinians in the country is 0.37%. Never mind: the Post allowed Edwards to imply the country was racially biased against blacks anyway. Said critic Ignacio Manuel García Medina,

Why is Argentina’s national team any more racist for not having any black players than Japan’s national team for having only Asians? Why is not Cameroon’s team racist for not having any whites, Latinos or Asians? The answer seems obvious: because The Washington Post is only interested in bombarding us with the white supremacist narrative that the left loves and exploits so much.The Washington Post‘s ridiculous article would prove that those who boast most about respect and tolerance for other cultures are actually the ones who look down on others. The readers of The Washington Post deserve much more than articles that pretend to be well-documented but think that soccer teams and countries should be like a Netflix movie.

Yup!

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I type this with scratches on my wrists. Let’s see: my Christmas tree lighting saga began yesterday when I discovered that almost half of the thousand plus lights  I tested and put away a year ago went dead for no apparent reason. A wild hunt to five stores revealed a run on multi-colored lights all over Alexandria, and the terrible news that the Old Town Alexandria landmark “The Christmas Attic” had closed its doors, so my hope of purchasing some unique colored lights as I have in the past was foiled, perhaps forever. Today, having eventually found some barely acceptable replacements for the dead strings, I discovered that my lovely 9 ft. Fasier fir was one of those perverse trees with dense branches growing sideways, Then the first string I hung, in the middle of the tree, stopped working after several more had covered it, and the hunt for the loose connection, ultimately successful, scarred my arms for life. I’m writing this post to calm down; I have several hours of pain and frustration ahead of me.

Mel Torme left all of that out of his song….

In the midst of all this, a Trump Deranged commenter whom I had passed through moderation called me a “Maga propaganda” channeling “hack” because I use the term Wuhan virus” to describe the destructive pathogen that originated in the Wuhan province in China. I have explained in detail why Ethics Alarms does this: the short justification is that I am nobody’s political correctness monkey, facts aren’t racist, and the Left’s campaign to eliminate Wuhan virus from the lexicon was in great part a feature of the ongoing effort to cast President Trump as a racist based on nothing at all.

I also, I hope you notice, refuse to capitalize the b in “black” (and the w in “white”) just because a white-guilt-predator activist committee somewhere decided that was a hoop good little antiracists had to jump through. This is exactly the same principle behind my refusal to let anyone dictate that I use their pronouns if I doubt their accuracy and the individual has done nothing to justify my trust and  good will.

1. Pete Gray, the one-armed outfielder, and Jim Abbott, the one handed pitcher, applaud (figuratively)…  Hansel Emmanuel,  a 6-foot-6 freshman guard on the  Northwestern State basketball team, dribbled between two defenders to deliver “a thunderous dunk” in a 91-73 win over Louisiana-Monroe. It was his first basket of the season. Emmanuel has only one arm. See?

Emmanuel,  19,  lost his left arm just below his shoulder in a childhood accident. He ended the game scoring five points with two rebounds in eight minutes. After the game, Emmanuel said, “I know my family was proud. I had to keep working. You can’t give up.” Continue reading →