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.
Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.”

Continue reading →

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:

Continue reading →

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:

Continue reading →

Wait…So Everyone’s Been Lying To Me All These Years About What Angels Look Like?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Above you will see three interpretations of what angels—you know, those benign, heavenly creatures we hear on high and observe, “Hark! They sing!,” the celestial guardians like the funny little old man who shows Jimmy Stewart that he’s really led a wonderful life, the kind of immortal being that appeared to Mary to tell her she was going to bear the Son of God, you know, those things?—really look like. The version on the left is from the Mike Flanagan horror series “Midnight Mass.” It’s a scary angel, but not as scary as the ones that show up in Robert and Michelle King’s scary TV series “Evil,” which look like this…

Yikes.

The version of Gabriel in the center is pretty much how I had been taught and told and shown how angels look for most of my life, and I assumed that was how they are represented in the Bible. Now, this is at least partially my own fault for not knowing the Bible better than I do, but when artists, churches, Sunday school teachers, movies, tree ornaments, Christmas cards and children’s books all show angels as friendly-looking Scandinavians with big, white, fluffy wings, I think I can be excused for assuming that there is at least as much authority for those representations as there is for anything else in the Bible—-an assertion to which Carnac the Magnificent (oh, look it up, ye of pop culture deficit!) would say to me, “You are wrong, Ethics Breath!”

Continue reading →

Two More Pieces of Evidence Supporting a Mandatory Retirement Age and Term Limits in Congress

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I. Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.), 79, was being wheeled into the House by a staffer when Politico photographer Francis Chung took his picture. Punchbowl News reports that the Congressman screamed, “Who gave you the right to take my picture, asshole?” Nice! The First Amendment gives him the right. Scott was in full public view, and has no expectation of privacy. He doesn’t know that? Why is anyone in Congress who doesn’t understand Bill of Rights 101? Scott has served as the U.S. representative of Georgia’s 13th congressional district since 2003. How can he not know this after 20 years in Congress? Did he once know it and somehow forgot? That seems plausible. Scott has chaired the House Agriculture Committee since January 2021, but colleagues in the House have expressed, all anonymously, of course, concerns about his fading mental abilities. They say he often reads from a script and has “trouble” discussing finer points of policy. Scott also frequently leaves Agriculture Committee meetings and does not return, even though he’s the chairman.

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “What, If Anything, Is The Ethical Response To This Trump Derangement Victim’s Letter To ‘The Ethicist’?”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Sarah B.’s perceptive and eloquent Comment of the Day about the inquirer to the NYT’s “The Ethicist” advice column who asked whether the threat of various catastrophes ahead (as she saw them) concluded with a sentence that reminded me of this famous speech from the film “Parenthood.” I’ve been looking for an opportunity to post it. Thanks Sarah B.

And thanks for this Comment of the Day on the post, What, If Anything, Is The Ethical Response To This Trump Derangement Victim’s Letter To “The Ethicist”?…

***

It is very easy to mock and deride someone who is silly enough to believe the mainstream media and all the horror stories the left has subscribed to.  I like feeling superior for not believing in this version of fantasy land.  I felt superior when I was not one of the wackos who declared themselves part of the Navi in Avatar, and I’m feeling the same general happiness when recognizing that I’m not so far gone as to believe this current set of beliefs.  Indeed, it is tempting to feel even more so, because so many of my contemporaries follow this insane set of beliefs. 

However, I think we need to dig deeper than the mocking laughter this letter so easily inspires.  What is this woman really saying?  First, she is discussing a desire to have children.  This is a desire that fewer and fewer women are subscribing to, usually to their and to societies eventual sadness.  Therefore, this desire should be encouraged.  Second, she is fearing that we are entering a time of tribulation.  Before addressing this in any depth, we should consider what she is probably meaning with these two concerns.  The first worry is likely that she feels that bringing a child into this world in a time of trouble means that her child may suffer.  The second worry is that in bring a child into this world in a time of trouble would cause this woman to suffer. 

The concern of bringing a child into a world in a less than perfect time causing the child to suffer is not a valid one for several reasons.  First, the USA, under Trump or not, is better than many if not most places in the world.  In addition, the world in 2024 is a better place than nearly all of human history.  Less people suffer, and they suffer less than in the past.  The human misery index is very low.  Children are a joy to the human race, and the hope for the future.  Man has always had children, even in tougher times than any we can illogically expect to come about today.  The idea that the child MIGHT suffer in the perfect storm is still less likely than the child having a normal life and enjoying every moment his parents lovingly gifted him.  Besides, in the best of times, a child will get illnesses and injuries.  That is part of growing up.  To quote Calvin, quoting his dad, “being miserable builds character.”  As some say, if it were not for the heat or the hammer, the steel could not be honed.  Adversity is what helps us become the best version of ourselves.

The concern of a parent suffering because they brought a child into a troubled world is ridiculous, because parents will always suffer for their children.  Labor is no picnic.  Sleepless nights when breastfeeding are a form of suffering.  Staying up with a sick kid, or sitting by a kid’s bedside when they are in the hospital for a tonsillectomy, appendectomy, or croup is not exactly enjoyable.  Holding them still so a doctor can give them stitches is incredibly painful, even before they kick you.  I certainly feel greater pain than my children when they are sick and in misery and I wish I could take their suffering from them, even if it is a good suffering.  Heck, it really does hurt me more than my child when I have to discipline them.  And again, in the perfect utopia of a Democratic paradise, a child will still cause their parents suffering.  Children will be born with special needs.  Children will slip past an exhausted or distracted parent and fall into a pool or run into traffic.  Accidents will happen, no matter what we do.  Also, children will grow up and make poor decisions that cause parents all kinds of heartbreak.  (I could mention that many democratic policies make some of those decisions more likely, but that would be of little use talking with this woman.)  In short, being a parent is accepting suffering in the course of bring joy to ourselves and others.

My final thoughts on this involve a song by Garth Brooks.  “Our lives are better left to chance.  I could have missed the pain, but I’d have had to miss the dance.”  Today, too many people have become convinced that no dance is worth the pain we may have to suffer, especially if we only imagine what the pain may be.  I choose the dance.