Celebrating the 110th Anniversary of the Strange But Ethical “Christmas Truce”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

One of the weirdest events in world history took place on Christmas 1914, at the very beginning of the five year, pointless and stunningly destructive carnage of The Great War, what President Woodrow Wilson, right as usual, called “The War to End All Wars.”

World War I, as it was later called after the world war it caused succeeded it,  led to the deaths of more than 25 million people, and if anything was accomplished by this carnage, I have yet to read about it.

The much sentimentalized event was a spontaneous Christmas truce, as soldiers on opposing sides on 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 even played soccer against each other, as “The Christmas Truce” statue memorializes above.

The brass on both sides—this was a British and German phenomenon only—took steps to ensure that this would never happen again, and it never did.

It all began on Christmas Eve, when at 8:30 p.m. an officer of the Royal Irish Rifles reported to headquarters that “The Germans have illuminated their trenches, are singing songs and wishing us a Happy Xmas. Compliments are being exchanged but am nevertheless taking all military precautions.” The two sides progressed to serenading each other with Christmas carols, with the German combatants crooning  “Silent Night,” and the British adversaries responding with “The First Noel.“ The war diary of the Scots Guards reported that a private  “met a German Patrol and was given a glass of whisky and some cigars, and a message was sent back saying that if we didn’t fire at them, they would not fire at us.”

The same deal was struck spontaneously at other locales across the battlefield. Another British soldier reported that as Christmas Eve wound down into Christmas morning,  “all down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war: ‘English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!’” He wrote in a letter home that he heard,

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Tales of “White Christmas”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I didn’t expect a white Christmas in Northern Virginia this morning, and there wasn’t one. It’s a good thing too: a snow-covered vista would have probably made me cry, and that’s been happening too often this holiday season. (My mother, who made up Christmas traditions and legends as an avocation, once told my sister and me that it was bad luck for the whole year to come if you cried on Christmas.) The song “White Christmas” is supposed to make you cry, however, or at least get a bit misty.

I co-wrote two Christmas revues for my late, lamented (by me, anyway) professional theater company in Arlington, Virginia, The American Century Theater. The most popular of the two was called “If Only In My Dreams,” taken from the lyrics of another wistful Christmas song, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” by lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent and introduced by Bing Crosby in 1943. The show was constructed around the letters written by GIs overseas during World War II to their families or  girlfriends as Christmas loomed, alternating those stories with narration and the popular Christmas songs of the period.

The most famous and important of these songs was, of course, “White Christmas.” Bing Crosby’s version was the best selling single record of all time for half a century. When Irving Berlin handed the song over to the musician who transcribed his melodies (Irv could not read music and composed by ear, just like another brilliant and prolific tune-smith, Paul McCartney), he  famously announced that he had written, not just the best song he had ever written, but the best song that anyone had ever written.  Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Month: Ken Wells

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“So imagine, instead of embracing the Great Satan narrative, we covered Trump—warts and all—as an extraordinary American political phenomenon perhaps not seen since the populist presidency of Andrew Jackson. Do not mistake this as a call to absolve Trump of any actual wrongdoing or to go soft on the reporting. Instead it is a plea to instill some sense of balance and fairness in the coverage. Surely, I’m not alone in believing this approach would have given readers and listeners a far more nuanced and valuable view of the American mood and Trump’s appeal and staying power—and perhaps helped to stanch the public’s corrosive loss of trust in our craft.  And at any rate, if the lopsided coverage of Trump was, in fact, a strategy to destroy him, well, it’s proved a huge flop. Trump won. Much of the media was or should be embarrassed.”

—–Retired Wall Street Journal editor Ken Wells in A Retro Proposal to Restore The Public’s Trust in Media,” his guest column in “Ethics and Journalism.”

The “retro proposal”? Journalists have become “blinded by their inability—or worse, unwillingness—to see past their biases. This is not journalism. It’s propagandism.” Therefore, he says, “I invite journalists to re-embrace our agnostic roots. We need to return to being the adults in the room, unabashedly reaffirm our role as the honest broker. No political party, business interest, government entity or activist group owns the truth. Everybody has a motive and an agenda, sources and leakers especially. Truth-tellers can sometimes lie and liars can sometimes tell the truth. Our job is to sort through the noise and bickering, the claims and counter-claims, the data and the chaff, to parse issues honestly without regard to whom it may offend or please or what the dominant narrative insists upon.”

I think Wells means what used to be called ethical, responsible journalism. Gee, what a concept!

Read it all, but here are a few more excerpts from an excellent essay:

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The 2024 Ethics Companion To “Miracle On 34th Street” [Updated, Expanded and with a New Introduction]

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

2024 Introduction

When I look back on what I wrote to introduce the greatest of all Christmas movies last year, I almost have to laugh, if I could laugh.

“What makes ‘Miracle on 34th Street” the most appropriate classic Christmas film for 2023 is its theme: the importance of conquering cynicism and  pessimism, and always keeping one’s mind and heart open to hope…. I know my year has been especially miserable on multiple fronts. Nonetheless, I remain, at heart, about 12 years old. The same things make me laugh; my level of optimism remains high; I believe in this nation’s miraculous ability to somehow get out of the fixes it gets itself into; I’m still a romantic, and, yes, I think with a little luck and one more starting pitcher, the Boston Red Sox can make it to the World Series next year. I am being constantly confronted with old friends, some much younger than me, who have suddenly decided to be old: they think old, they act old, and they seem to have given up the future as irrelevant. The Santa Claus myth represents faith in the possible, or rather the impossible. Yes, its easier when you are a child, but it is worth the fight to never lose the part of you that still believes in magic and miracles.”

What a joke on me. My wife died unexpectedly in February. Hidden financial horrors were uncovered that she had been hiding from me. My son decided he was trans; a lot of those friends who were acting old ended up acting dead, and rather convincingly. I lost my last connection to my mother’s family when Aunt Bea died at 96; my mentor and Most Unforgettable Person, Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, died as well; one of my closest lawyer clients died too. Another loss that I felt: Luis Taint, the Boston Red Sox pitcher who was at the center of some of my most cherished baseball memories, died this year. A big theatrical project I had been working on for six months was abruptly cancelled (the theater was condemned as structurally unsound). Worst of all, the Red Sox had a star-crossed, frustrating season: if there’s anything worse than watching baseball alone, it’s watching your team lose alone.

Indeed, I do, as Auntie Mame sang, “need a little Christmas,”  but it is very little indeed this year. Luckily for me, there’s a song for that: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” from “Meet Me in St. Louis.”

So the Christmas movies are about it for me this holiday season. I’ve seen “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “White Christmas,” my favorite version of “A Christmas Carol,” “The Santa Clause,” and even “Holiday Inn.” (No, “Die Hard” and “Die Hard 2” are not “Christmas Movies.) “Elf” doesn’t make the cut; I suppose that I’ll see “A Christmas Story” eventually, though I am sick of it, and Grace’s complaints about Melinda Dillon’s hair haunt me. I will revisit “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2.” I’m saving “Miracle on 34th Street” for tonight, Christmas Eve.

I confess, I believed n Santa Claus until I was 12. I didn’t want to give the fantasy up: I loved magic, and my parents always tried to make the season magical. (More of that later.) Grace and I tried to do the same with Grant, now “Samantha,” but he was a non-believer by the third grade. Is there anything more joyful to see than the look on a child’s face as he or she sees what Santa has delivered? Will anything feel that wonderful again?

“Miracle on 34th Street” is an ethics movie in part because its artists committed to telling a magical story and charming audiences by working as an ensemble selflessly and  efficiently. The director,  George Seaton also  wrote the screenplay, and it won him an Oscar. He cast his movie brilliantly, and making the correct but bold decision to stick with a matter-of-fact, realistic, unadorned style that keeps the story grounded in reality while it spins off into fantasy.

“Miracle on 34th Street” is about the importance of believing in good things, hopeful things, even impossible things. The movie reminds us that wonderful things can happen even when they seem impossible, and that life is better when we believe that every day of our lives. I’m trying.

One thing this film does well is to concentrate on the secular holiday without any allusions to the religious holy day, but not being obnoxious about it. “It’s a Wonderful Life” straddles the line very cleverly: it begins in heaven, after all. All the “A Christmas Carol” films include Bob Cratchit telling his wife that Tiny Tim mused about how his disability reminded people of Jesus’s miracles at Christmastime, and that’s Dickens’ only reference to Jesus in his story. On the offensive side is the Rankin-Bass animated “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—I can’t believe they still show that thing—when the “stormy Christmas Eve” causes Santa to decide to “cancel Christmas.” I’d say that’s above Santa’s pay grade, wouldn’t you agree? It also suggests that Christmas is only about gifts and children. (Do parents today explain that the singing snowman who narrates the story is based on (and looks like) the real person who also sings the most memorable songs? They should. Burl Ives had a fascinating life and a varied career, and those kids will probably be hearing him sing “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” for the rest of theirs.

Last year I discussed the many remakes and the fact that they all fail to equal the original. I wonder why this, of all the Christmas classics, has inspired so many remakes. Nobody would dare remake “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I think it’s because the story connects with children as well as adults, and there is a sense that a black and white movie very obviously set in the 1940s seems too distant. 

Interestingly, all of the perennial Christmas movies have been made into stage musicals of varying success—“White Christmas,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “A Christmas Story,” “Elf”—- but “Miracle on 34th Street” flopped so badly when Meredith Willson [“The Music Man”] adapted it as “Here’s Love” on Broadway that nobody has tried again. The show included the song, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” which Willson wrote long before the show was assembled, and it was still the best song in the weak score. At one point John Payne took over the part of Fred Gailey, reprising his role in the film. But as with all the movie remakes, the show missed Edmund Gwynn, the best Kris Kringle of them all.
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Reflections On The Ethical Holiday

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

 

“Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.”

—G.K. Chesterton.

“It’s Christmas Eve. It’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we smile a little easier, we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year we are the people that we always hoped we would be.”

—Frank Cross (Bill Murray) in “Scrooged”

CHARLIE BROWN: I guess you were right, Linus. I shouldn’t have picked this little tree. Everything I do turns into a disaster. I guess I really don’t know what Christmas is all about. Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?

LINUS: Sure, Charlie Brown. I can tell you what Christmas is all about.  Lights, please?

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them. And they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a savior, which is Christ the Lord.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, goodwill toward men.’”

That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

—Charles M. Schulz

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”

—Laura Ingalls Wilder

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.

What if Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

—Dr. Seuss, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”

“Want to keep Christ in Christmas? Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, forgive the guilty, welcome the unwanted, care for the ill, love your enemies, and do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

— Steve Maraboli, in “Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience”

“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?”

— Bob Hope

“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

—Fred, Scrooge’s Nephew, in Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” Continue reading →

“Nyad,” the Unethical Ethics Movie

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I had been torn over whether to see “Nyad,” the acclaimed 2023 biopic about distance swimmer Diane Nyad’s quest to complete the first “unassisted swim” from Cuba to Florida. On the pro- side was that the two stars, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster are among my favorite actresses in Hollywood. On the anti- side is my long-time problems with Nyad herself, so I thought the movie might drive me crazy. I also suspected that the critical raves were based more on the progressive movie reviewer mob’s determination to extol a movie about a lesbian couple than the actual quality of the film.

It is an ethics movie, however, so last night I finally viewed it on Netflix. As I expected, both Bening and Foster are excellent, but Bening more than Foster: Jodie plays Nyad’s galpal pretty much like she’s Jodie Foster. Hardly a stretch. Bening, in contrast, is doing one of those against-type portrayals requiring a dramatic physical transformation that is always irresistible to critics and Oscar voters, like Robert DeNiro playing Jake Lamotta, or Chalize Theron playing serial killer Aileen Woronos.

It’s a stunt and not a completely successful one: the real Nyad was and is a beefy mesomorphic athlete, and Bening, despite filling out her usual long and lean frame a bit, doesn’t look like either a swimmer or an athlete. She is ultimately convincing, however, nonetheless. She also plays Nyad as a self-obsessed, narcissistic jerk, which she is.

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Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

There have been three Crocketts elected to Congress in U.S. history (one of theme was Davy), and to say that the current Crockett, Jasmine, is the worst pf the trio and a blight on both the House of Representatives and the House of Crockett is an understatement.

In fairness to Matt Gaetz, I need to catch Ethics Alarms up on one of the most revolting members of Congress on the other side of the aisle, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tx), a proud Dunning-Kruger victim, one of those people with a law degree who is under the delusion that critical thinking skills come with a J.D. I don’t know how she got admitted to law school and I don’t know how she graduated, but few members of Congress have said so many offensive and stupid things in so short a period time: she only was elected in 2022.

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The Matt Gaetz Ethics Committee Report

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The House Ethics Committee report on former Rep. Matt Gaetz was released today and concluded that there was “substantial evidence” that the recently resigned Florida Congressman paid many women, including at least one minor, to have sex with him, in addition to his likely violating House Rules and other standards of conduct “prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.” The 37-page Committee Report is here. Read it and weep, as the saying goes.

Gaetz is clearly what is technically called “a sleazeball,” but we knew that, didn’t we? I found it particularly notable that he wasn’t even defended by his own party, which is what we usually see in the “dissents” in such ethics reports. Gaetz’s defenders on the committee only objected to the report being released despite its subject’s leaving the House, which is not the typical course but is not unprecedented either. The report’s dissenters even goes to the trouble of admitting that they have no objections to the report’s conclusions.

The report was published in full by the House Ethics Committee on Monday morning after the panel secretly voted earlier this month to release it. Gaetz, was investigated for four years by the committee over various allegations.

Of course Gaetz has denied doing anything illegal, while admitting that he was just a wild and crazy guy in his younger days. Lying is small change for someone who has engaged in the conduct described in the report. It does appear that the statutory rape episode was the result of him not knowing how old his sex partner was, which is understandable since he appears to have run through sex partners like they were Tic-Tacs. The committee’s report found that Gaetz had also engaged in more typical ethics violations like accepting gifts in “excess of permissible amounts,” including a trip to the Bahamas in 2018. Even then he “engaged in sexual activity” with at least four women on the trip, giving them money as “gifts.”

The report also alleges that there was “sufficient evidence of Representative Gaetz’s intent to derail the investigation.”

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Post Script To “Regarding Biden’s Mass Mercy For Convicted Murderers”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In the previous post I wrote,

“I am sure someone will do research into who the order has spared, and we will see other multiple murderers, people who killed without remorse and with extreme cruelty, vicious psychopaths who killed for the fun of it, or who murdered children, or who slaughtered their victims after rape or torture. These don’t warrant executions, Biden says on behalf of the Wonderful Woke who refuse to acknowledge that there is a point where an individual has forfeited the benefits of civilization, but the single factor of “hate” elevates murder from really, really bad to intolerable.”

No sooner had I posted than Not The Bee posted exactly what I expected; it popped up in my email, in fact. Among those the President’s mass commutation today saves from the fate they all richly deserve:

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Regarding Biden’s Mass Mercy For Convicted Murderers

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

As was anticipated after reports that were issued over the weekend, “President Joe Biden announced” today that he has commuted the sentences of 37 convicted murderers, thus taking them off federal death row. They will now serve out life sentences in prison, being housed, fed, given medical attention and more at taxpayer expense. This was done deliberately to foil the announced intention of President-elect Donald Trump to carry out the verdicts of juries and the courts.

“Biden’s statement”—this is in quotation marks because he didn’t write it, probably doesn’t understand it and quite possibly never read it or approved it—reads,

“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss. But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Ethics observations:

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