Thanksgiving Weekend Ethics Leftovers, 11/30/24: The Dumbest Couple Ever, and More

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

This is the day before my birthday, once a relatively welcome event, now taboo, as December 1 was the day I found my wonderful father dead in his favorite chair after he died in his sleep at the age of 89. I can’t shake the sense that my father’s exit from the world was of more import than my entering it, though I know he would disagree. My sister has convinced me to let her tale me to see “Wicked” tomorrow evening, which will be the first movie I have seen in a theater since 2019. I consider this excursion ethics research and an obligation of cultural literacy. Is the film “woke”? Is it another Hollywood propaganda effort but one that is subtle enough not to alienate audiences, like Disney’s recent output? Are conservative critics just seeing the movie through jaundiced eyes? Are there any songs in the show that are genuinely memorable, unlike the songs in virtually every other Broadway hit musical since “Les Miz”?

As was pointed out by commenter John Paul here, the film version of “Wicked” has an unethical title, as it is in fact only the first act of the musical despite clocking in at over 150 minutes, almost as long as the stage show. There will be a “Wicked” Part 2 for sure: if the film had tanked, it would have been quietly cancelled, like the the planned second installment of “The Golden Compass” and the promised sequel to “Silverado.”

Now ponder this deranged NYT comment on a Times story about the film:

Yikes. Yeah, a musical spin-off of “The Wizard of Oz” would have overcome the epic incompetence of the Harris campaign if only it had been released earlier. That may be the wackiest excuse for Trump’s win yet.

Meanwhile…

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From the Harris Campaign, a Post Mortem That Will Stand As a “Bias Makes You Stupid!” Monument For the Ages…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

A social media commentator called Caesar listened to a long, long podcast exploring the Harris loss with her chief advisors and the architects—if you can call them that without choking—of her campaign, then summarized what he heard here. His summary is too long to summarize on Ethics Alarms, and based on the little I could stand listening to of the podcast, it seems accurate.

The major ethical use of the jaw-dropping results is as a perfect example of the Ethics Alarms motto, “Bias makes you stupid,” in its full, destructive, mind-blowing glory. There is denial and delusion here in abundance, beginning with Caesars first two summaries of what he heard in the post mortem:

  1. The campaign was perfect, and
  2. Harris was perfect.

They also tell you how warped the perception of these presumably intelligent people was and is.

Another unavoidable takeaway from the summary is that Democrats and progressives should be terrified about the prospects for their party if this stunning blindness is typical of their compatriots. They literally don’t understand, not merely why they lost, but also the nation, American society, our culture, our history, Donald Trump, how to process unwelcome data, the essential skills of self-examination and learning from mistakes, and more.

The summary also supports a conclusion I came to shortly after Kamala Harris was installed as Biden’s replacement as the Democrat’s Presidential nominee. The party will never be able to nominate a male, especially a white male, again until a woman finally is elected President. Like General Burnside’s doomed troops at the battle of Fredericksburg, it will keep charging up the hill with inadequate forcesas if there is realistic chance of victory though each failed charge makes the odds worse.

Before We Get To The Serious Stuff, A Holiday Ethics Movie Trivia Challenge!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

I re-watched “White Christmas” last night in preparation for this year’s posting of my annual guide to the film, which will show up here some time in the next few weeks. I noticed quite a few details that I missed in previous viewings, including the material for a terrific (and tough!) trivia question that I have never seen posed before. Ready?

What 1930s film star appeared in both “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “White Christmas”?

No Wonder Today’s Great Britain Is Choking With Woke Insanity, Censorship and Weeny-ism…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Hollywood version of the Broadway cult musical “Wicked” appears to be a holiday box office smash. I suppose I’m going to have to see it, though “Wizard of Oz” worship alienated me long ago and how they can justify making a two hour, 45 minute film of just Act I of a three hour musical mystifies me. However, there is something to be learned from the nanny state’s British Board of Film Classifications (BBFC) felt that it had to put out these ridiculous trigger warnings for what is essentially a family movie:

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Comment of the Day: “Unethical Tweet Of The Week: President-Elect Donald Trump (Sigh!)”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Regarding consequences…

Here is the Comment of the Day, an illustrative reminiscence from Michael R. in response to the post, “Unethical Tweet Of The Week: President-Elect Donald Trump (Sigh!).” It requires no further introduction…

***

Well, for 4 years, the federal government, the media, academia, and Hollywood have called me a far right extremist (and a lot worse). Federal agencies have training that lists Christians, white heterosexuals, etc. as domestic terrorist threats. These are the rules now. As long as the left thinks that they can treat their political opponents as threats to democracy, as bigots, and as domestic terrorists without ever being treated similarly by their political opponents, nothing will change.

It is being reported that 30 tech company founders have recently been de-banked. This comes after thousand or tens of thousands of other conservatives have been de-banked for their personal beliefs or political affiliation. If you are a conservative, you can’t become a teacher (the teacher ed programs have viewpoint interviews), you can’t get government internships (you need to volunteer for leftist organizations as part of the pre-reqs), and you will have a hard time going to law school. Med School will soon be an impossibility with the current leftist ideology being pushed. As long as there are no consequences for the left, there will never be support to stop such viewpoint discrimination.

When I was in college, I found out that one of my classmates had been sleeping in the lobby of the dorm for several weeks. Her roommate had moved her boyfriend into the dorm room and they wouldn’t let her in. When she went to the RA and the dorm director, they told her that “You two are both adults, you just need to discuss it and work it out”. She was frustrated because the roommate would not compromise on this. I laughed and said “Why should she? She has everything she wants and there are no downsides for her. What are YOU going to do about it?” So, I asked a freshman football player to go to her dorm room, pretend to be her boyfriend and ‘discuss’ the matter with the roommate and boyfriend. Well, he brought along the entire offensive line. Once he announced that he was her boyfriend, the roommate’s boyfriend fled. The roommate left school the next week. Nothing will change unless there are consequences.

Black Friday Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Sorry, this is up late for many reasons, but primarily because 1) I am blotto and exhausted after an emotional week, as well as dreading the next stage of Holiday Horrors, 2) I forgot it was Friday. I really did. Pathetic.

Let’s see what kind of new ethics topic you can come up with. If you’re really in a black mood, you might want to watch the tongue-in-cheek “Halloween”-inspired horror film “Thanksgiving,” in which a mysterious slasher disguised as a pilgrim creatively knocks off the people he (or she?) holds responsible for a Black Friday riot at a local retail store that resulted in the trampling deaths of several shoppers. Do I need to tell you what the maniac’s ultimate murder in a movie with that title is?

Comment of the Day: “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks” [Item #1]

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Gregg Wiggins, an old friend and frequent theater production colleague, issued this Comment of the Day in explanation of the reasons for my complaint yesterday about NBC’s crack staff repeatedly mispronouncing the name of the Radio City Musical Hall Rockettes during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast yesterday…. three different ways!

Not very related to Gregg’s post but related to the parade: The New York Tines reported yesterday that the parade became “the most-watched entertainment show in the United States only over the past three years.” Theories for the reasons this has happened vary. One is that the event is still completely apolitical (unlike almost every other form of entertainment programming); another is that the public increasingly longs for a simpler time, remembering that their families watched the parade when they were children and the holidays seemed magical. Yet another holds that a lot of people can’t afford to go to see shows in New York City any more, and the parade’s (lip-synced) street performances of current Broadway fare is the closest they will ever get. I think the development may be an encouraging example of how the culture can still be unified and brought together by shared traditions and experiences. The closest thing to a consensus that the New York Times found is that everyone agrees about the parade remaining essentially the same decade after decade, unlike almost everything else.

Except that the network broadcasters no longer know how to pronounce “Rockettes.”

Here’s Gregg Wiggins on the post, “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks”…

***

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Museum Ethics: The Draft-Dodging Playboy and the Wright Bros. Plane

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The old TV show “Naked City” used to intone at the end of every episode, “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.” There are far more than eight million ethics stories in our country’s rich and surprising history. This is one of those, and I pass it along to you.

The Franklin Institute, a museum in Philadelphia inspired by the work of Ben Franklin and dedicated to the study of science, exhibits a plane built in 1911 by the Wright brothers. It was, they say, a gift from Grover C. Bergdoll, a strange man with a strange history who was once an infamous national figure but who is now forgotten.

He was a wealthy playboy who was heir to  a Philadelphia beer brewing fortune. He dodged the Great War draft in 1917, failing to report for military service. He was already known for his irresponsible conduct, taking flying lessons from Orville Wright and buying a plane from the Wright brothers that he used to buzz buildings among other stunts. He had  multiple accidents and traffic violations in automobile as a teenager, and served two months in jail after a head-on crash in 1913. Since he was rich and well known, the government decided to an example of him to discourage draft-dodgers, It  distributing wanted posters with his face and name, and when the soldier who supposedly was drafted to take Bergdoll’s place died in combat,  the New York had a front page headline, “Died Hero in Battle in Bergdoll’s Place.”

The story gets stranger. Bergdoll was finally captured in 1920 after an ongoing manhunt, and sentenced to prison for five years. He escaped after less than a year. He convinced authorities to temporarily release him from prison to  help them find a “pot of gold” that he claimed to have buried. Bergdahl escaped while his two U.S. Army escorts became distracted (they were playing pool at his family mansion), fleeing in his chauffeur-driven car to Canada, from which he travelled to Germany. He married there, but often returned secretly to the United States. Reported sightings of Grover were headlines news.

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Unethical Tweet Of The Week: President-Elect Donald Trump (Sigh!)

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I didn’t see this until I had already put up the previous post about “Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks.” If I had, it would have been included. Above all else, the tweet is stupid.

I know, I know…this may be Julie Principle territory. Still, the conduct of the President of the United States is always of special significance, so I am loathe to declare before the second roller-coaster Trump term begins that he will be given an Ethics Alarms pass for the inevitable social media outbursts to come. What is so discouraging, not to mention unethical, about Trump’s Thanksgiving Day tweet is that it shows, again unfortunately, that our soon-to-be 47th President has a flat learning curve, at least in the area of public statements.

There is no reason for Trump to issue a back-handed  “Happy Thanksgiving” message, and so many reason not to. He certainly knows that somehow managing to at least alleviate the toxic partisan divisions in America is not only an important task he must face and treat seriously, but also essential to the success of his administration. Trump Derangement is also approaching national health emergency status. What ethical objective can a tweet like that possibly accomplish? The answer is, I hope all can agree, none. Well, none except making Trump feel good. How juvenile and self-indulgent, in addition to selfish. The tweet is essentially gloating, a “Nyah, nyah, nyah!” to his foes. All it does is make them angrier, more hateful, more irrational, and more convinced that all Trump wants to do is inflict revenge on “Radical Left Lunatics.” The substantive goals he has claimed to be seeking will require his full attention; there is no time for such pettiness.

Yet there is it. No self-control, no hint of appropriate priorities, no sense of “I could tweet this, but it would be wrong.” No nation will be respected whose elected leader behaves that way.

 

Stupid Thanksgiving Tricks [Repaired]

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“It’s The Great Stupid, Charlie Brown!”

1. I saw that meme on Facebook today. Is that the kind of misinformation social media platforms are supposed to censor, or is there value in learning that one’s Facebook friend is a moron?

2. On today’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast on NBC, three separate hosts mispronounced “Rockettes.” One called them the “Rockets,” another said “Rockeets,” and a third said “ROCK-ettes, with the accent on the first syllable. The Radio City Music Hall iconic kick-line dancers have been part of the parade for decades, and NBC has had broadcast rights for the event all year. Yet their “journalists” couldn’t bother to check to see what the perennial act is called? (Or learn to read?)

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