Views and comments have fallen off a cliff, along with anyone answering my phone calls and emails regarding the ethics biz. Dilemma: I have two rather important posts on the runway, but if I put them up now, will they be lost to much of the readership, who clearly are doing things rather than checking Ethics Alarms. Should I hold them?

I’m sick of thinking about, never mind writing about, Trump Derangement and the continued disgusting, unprofessional, unethical conduct of what we laughingly call our journalism. So this post is just going to consist of brief snippets with ethical resonance, at least to me, along with some housekeeping notes. Substantive posts will doubtless follow once I get my head straightened out. I’m going to number these brief notes so you can reference them in your comments, assuming there are any comments….

1. Right off, I want to thank those of you who have sent me cards and even gifts to express your appreciation of the blog and my work here. It means a great deal to me.

2. It is ridiculous, but predictable, that the New York Times and “60 Minutes” suddenly think what Marjorie Taylor Greene has to say is worth paying attention to, now that she has decided to turn against President Trump. Any Republicans who didn’t immediately reject this foolish, credentialed Dunning-Kruger victim from the beginning should be wearing a paper bags over theit heads.

3. Speaking of Greene, I have seldom seen so many “news ” stories and so much commentary about celebrities whose opinions, or even whose very existence, should mean so little to everybody. Who cares that “Chappell Roan walks back tribute to Brigitte Bardot over late star’s ‘insane’ beliefs,” for example? Who the hell is Chappell Roan? For that matter, why does anyone care about what Bridget Bardot thought or said about anything once she stopped acting in movies?

4. I do care a little bit that George Clooney has moved his family to France and accepted French citizenship. This guy exerts influence over the Democratic Party and was involved in the move to oust President Biden as the 2024 Democratic nominee, and he thinks France is a better nation than his own. To me, that signals that his views on American policy and politics have no credibility.

5. Glenn Greenwald—you know, the guy who took my money to subscribe to his substack and then stopped writing it for months without offering a refund?—mockingly posted this excepts from an Ezra Klein slobber over Barack Obama’s oratory…

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On the topic of Christmas movies: I missed several this year, despite leaving it to Hollywood to make up virtually my whole celebration. I saw “It’s a Wonderful Life” (really a Thanksgiving movie), “White Christmas,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” “The Bishop’s Wife,” and “Home Alone 2.” Also “The Santa Clause,” and lesser modern efforts like “Four Christmases.”I did not see “The Homecoming” (but will, tonight), and also missed the original “Christmas in Connecticut,” all of the Dickens “Christmas Carols,” “Elf,” which I object to because Ed Asner is a terrible Santa Clause, and “Die Hard,” because it is not a Christmas movie just because it takes place during an office Christmas party. I’d concede that “Die Hard 2” is more of a Christmas movie because the whole plot revolves around holiday air travel gone horribly wrong. (“Sleepless in Seattle,” the Dead Wife movie that I foolishly continue to watch, is a Christmas movie because the plot is set in motion by a child’s Christmas wish.)

I also watched three Christmas horror movies: the excellent original “Black Christmas,” the surprisingly good “You Better Watch Out,” and the violent black comedy “Santa’s Slay,” in which Kris Kringle morphs into a super-powered serial killer, putting a real cramp in the Christmas spirit.

But Amazon Prime Video was responsible for an almost equal Christmas horror: the streaming service has been offering a butchered version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” that is 22 minutes shorter than the original 130-minute film because it cuts out the whole sequence when George sees how awful everything turns out in a world where he’s never been born. He goes to the bridge to kill himself, Clarence the angel intervenes, then George goes back into town to find that his friends and neighbors have chipped in to solve his crisis. That’s like showing a version of “Titanic” without the part where the ship sinks, or “Old Yeller” where the dog doesn’t get rabies.

The excuse has to do with some copyright disputes, but Amazon Prime carries both the full and abridged versions—I know because I watched the full version to write this year’s Ethics Companion. The platform does not clearly explain the difference, however, leaving unsuspecting viewers to click the wrong one.

Meanwhile…

1. A “Don’t Confuse Me With Facts, My Mind’s Made Up” classic! Here MS Now (formerly MSNBC) host Paola Ramos resolutely and condescendingly tells two unusually nerdy guests that there is no scientific evidence of any genetic differences between the black and white races.

Might be the greatest clip I’ve ever seen. pic.twitter.com/vrChbmmhyT

— Anthony (@Catholicizm1) December 23, 2025

The duo is understandably aghast and frustrated as this progressive shill frames their factual statements as vestiges of white supremacy, and that’s that. In addition to being unethical because it’s terrible journalism and science to be spewing into the public discourse, I suspect that the former MSNBC chose those two stereotypical geeks to make them easy targets.

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I didn’t know until this morning that Chevy Chase was left out of Saturday Night Live’s anniversary reunion show this year, SNL50: The Anniversary Special, Chevy Chase. I don’t know because I stopped watching the show many years ago when it stopped being a cultural satire program without a political agenda and converted to an all-woke, all-progressive, anti-Republican Axis member like all the other late Night Shows. In SNL’s prime, however, when Don Pardo was still the announcer, I never missed an episode.

In CNN Films’ upcoming documentary, “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” the original “Saturday Night Live” “Weekend Update” host reveals how hurt he was that he was left out of the program. “Well, it was kind of upsetting actually,” Chase says. “This is probably the first time I’m saying it. But I expected that I would’ve been on the stage too with all the other actors. When Garrett [Morris] and Laraine [Newman] went on the stage there, I was curious as to why I didn’t. No one asked me to. Why was I left aside?” “Why was Bill Murray [hosting “Weekend Update” on the show] and why was I not? I don’t have an answer for that.”

Oh, I bet Chevy does. He was disliked by much of the cast and regarded as a toxic asshole. But that shouldn’t have mattered, and it was petty and wrong for the producers to snub him.

By purest coincidence, I wrote and co-directed my own 50th anniversary reunion show this year. We invited everyone who had ever been involved in the organization’s productions, and if they were willing, I worked them into the performances, no mean feat if I do say so myself. Did I personally like everyone we invited? No, of course not, nor did several prominent performers care much for me. That didn’t matter, and shouldn’t have mattered. The production was a salute to the group itself and its continued success and longevity. Every single key figure in its history available should have been on that stage or participating in the project.

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