Broadway Musical Revival Ethics: “Damn Yankees”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

As a professional stage director of some success and the artistic director of a D.C. area professional theater dedicated to producing important American stage works that had fallen out of favor, this is a topic that I have both thought about a great deal and also dealt with directly. My primary rule in such matters is “if it works, the show is successful, and the audiences are entertained, then the alteration of a classic show is artistically and ethically defensible.” There are, as always, exceptions. I think the current production of the classic musical “Damn Yankees” at Washington, D.C.’s Arena Stage may be one of them.

The show is a 1955 musical comedy (that’s the excellent 1958 film version above), with a book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop, based on Wallop’s 1954 novel “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.” The real stars of the show were rising young musical comedy writers Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, twenty-somethings who were boldly invading the domain of Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Irving Berlin and Cole Porter with a whole new style of the genre, full of energy and satire. “Damn Yankees” was their second smash collaboration (“Pajama Game” was the first), and the pair looked poised to bring a long string of hit musicals to the Broadway stage. Then, while “Damn Yankees” was still running on the way to 1,019 performances, Ross, just 29-years-old, died. Because the pair wrote both lyrics and music together, Adler never had another success on Broadway after his creative partnership was shattered.

“Damn Yankees” is set during the 1950s in Washington, D.C., when the Yankees had dominated baseball and the World Series since the 1920s and the Washington Senators had been perennial losers for almost as long. The joke was “Washington, D.C.: first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” The novel and the musical took the amusing proposition that only a deal with the Devil could elevate the hapless Senators over the Yankees and get them into the Series….and that’s what happens.

The new production at The Arena couldn’t leave a classic alone, apparently feeling that today’s audiences can’t enjoy looking through a window at a time and a culture long past. D.C.’s baseball team is no longer the Senators (the city lost two of those) and the current team, the Nationals, play in the National League, well removed from the Yankees. The new adapted plot takes place in 1999-2000, the last time the Yankees had a brief dynasty and won two straight World Series. But the team was no longer the presumptive champion year after year, so the whole premise is forced. (The Boston Red Sox have won more World Series than the Yankees in the 21st Century). In 1955, the Yankees were indeed in the Series, facing the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 2025, they were eliminated in the play-offs. Worse still, the desperate losing franchise in the show is no longer the Senators, but the Baltimore Orioles, who, although they have been going through a rough patch lately, have never been perennial cellar dwellers, and they didn’t finish last in 1999 and 2000 either.

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“Social Media Is An Idiot Detection Service,” Episode #789K

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Today’s episode, from “X”:

Sharmine Narwani, we are told, is a well-known journalist and political analyst specializing in West Asian geopolitical issues. She believes that Islam was around six centuries before Muhammad was born. She wants to spread her ignorance far and wide.

The tweet has 25,000 “loves.” I regard it as a pre-holiday “Coming Attractions” feature, warning us of the fatuous Jesus=Illegal immigrants analogies we will be getting from our woke friends (and a lot of pulpits) all too soon.

(Pointer to Glenn Reynolds, who accurately notes, “Actually, of course, it was a Jewish kingdom when Jesus was born. And it didn’t become Arab or Muslim until the Mohammedan invasion of the 7th century. Today’s inhabitants of “Palestine” are settler-colonialists. Israel is fighting a war of indigenous resistance to colonization.”

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Another week, another wave of hypocritical, “Yikes, Trump is President!” freakouts. In addition to the weekend’s “No Kings” children’s theater, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley (Guess which party!) grabbed the Senate floor on Tuesday to “ring the alarm” on President Donald Trump’s “tightening authoritarian grip on the country.” Then he blabbed on for 23 hours, the second-longest speech in Senate history, and said absolutely nothing new, original, that didn’t ape old, old Axis talking points, or the wasn’t pure projection.

Let’s see: Merkley accused the Trump administration of undermining checks and balances, attacking free speech (funny, coming from a Democrat), attacking the press (they aren’t attacked enough), “politicizing the Justice Department,” (VERY funny coming from a Democrat) and using the military to suppress dissent, which only makes sense if you define defying federal law and attacking law enforcement officers as “dissent.” He made the familiar, apparently opinion research-tested claim that this President isn’t “normal” (having studied all of these guys rather extensively, I have no idea what a normal President is or would be. Every one is absolutely unique.)

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For The Trump-Derangement Archives: Unethical Quote of the Week That Made Me Not Bother To Pay Any More Attention

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I Particularly Like the Line Where You Said Trumpism Is Seeking ‘To Amputate the Higher Elements of the Human Spirit — Learning, Compassion, Science, and the Pursuit of Justice, and Supplant Those Virtues With Greed, Retribution, Ego and Appetite.'”

—-Ancient and execrable Washington Post pundit E.J. Dionne (EA dossier here)) in the course of a metaphorical mutual masturbation session with NYT Stockholm Syndrome conservative David Brooks (EA dossier here), plus former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” Robert Siegel, “Trump Has a Religion. What Do Democrats Have? Mamdani might be working in Democrats’ favor. But what about ‘No Kings’?”

Althouse flagged this, and I just couldn’t stomach reading it. Siegel’s bias is presumed from his long tenure at NPR, where, some readers will recall, I was blackballed for daring to defend Donald Trump on the air.

Ugh. The President pressuring universities to teach rather than indoctrinate and gutting the wasteful Cabinet department that had presided over catastrophic decline in pubic schools is “amputating” education. Enforcing the laws is “amputating” compassion. Refusing to waste trillions in response to politically-inspired climate change hype is “amputating” science. The arrogance and smug certitude of these close-minded assholes…double ugh. I’ll listen to and read my Trump Deranged friends  when they say these things because at least they aren’t paid for it and are just bloviating emotion-based opinions. But these guys…

Who can keep reading their junk and its ubiquitous equivalents? (OK, I skimmed a bit and learned that they all think the stupid “No Kings” protests were wonderful.) More to the point, how dim and confused do you have to be to take this discussion as anything but sour grapes from a sad, elite sector of our culture that wildly overplayed its hand, got its bluff called, and was exposed as the sinister charlatans they always were?

Althouse just threw this raw meat to her readers without making any statement herself: I’m sure she knew what would follow. You should check out the red-pilled comments, which almost entirely drip with contempt.  

You can read the exchange here (gift link) if you like. Me. I’ve got a sock drawer to organize.

A Brief Tale of “The King’s Pass”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

This is a personal anecdote that I should relate before it is lost in the fog of memory.

Earlier this month I attended a major law school class reunion despite boycotting the previous one (as I discussed on EA) following Georgetown Law Center’s disgraceful handling of the Ilya Shapiro controversy. I showed up at the big, fancy dress, all-classes gala in D.C.’s impressive National Building Museum, and when I checked in, was sent to a special “problem” desk because my name wasn’t on The List.

There I was told that I had been registered for the evening’s festivities and dinner by “someone”—not me—but that the fee hadn’t been paid. I offered to pay it (I was told it was $225) but they were not equipped to take a credit card. “Why would they have pre-registered you?” I was asked.

Well, I explained, I am something of a celebrity in my class, having founded the school’s musical theater company as a student, and that group is still active and also celebrated a reunion just last month. And I was the law school’s first Director of Capitol Giving. “Ah!” the guy behind the desk said. “So you’re a VIP!” He whispered something to his colleague, who whispered something back, then he said, “You will sit at Table #2!”

“Really?” I replied. “What about the $225?” “Oh, you can take care of that later,” I was told. “You know, I’m an ethicist, and this kind of thing is called “The King’s Pass” on my list of rationalizations,” I said. “It’s when someone isn’t held to the same rules and standards that everyone else is because of his perceived value and importance. It’s very common, but an unethical practice.”

“That’s interesting!” he said, as he handed me my freshly printed badge with my class’s ribbon. And printed in block letters above my name was “The King’s Pass.”

I was never charged for the event.

How could I participate in the “No Kings” demonstrations after that?

Breaking Ethics News: There’s a Major NBA Gambling Scandal! (Gee, What a Surprise…)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

(Of course, the obligatory…)

Here is the latest report, from the New York Times (gift link!).

Right now I don’t care about the details, which are just emerging. The point is that this was 100% inevitable as soon as the professional sports leagues got into metaphorical bed with the online gambling companies. Ethics Alarms has warned about this many times (here, for example). I couldn’t justify using the “I’m smart!” clip from “Godfather 2” (my usual “I told you so!” introduction) this time, though, because even Fredo would have seen this coming…especially in pro basketball.

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“White Lotus” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

[Warning! Lots of spoilers ahead: if you haven’t see all three seasons of HBO’s hit series “The White Lotus” and want to be shocked, surprised, amused or nauseated, you may want to skip this post.]

I just finished watching the third season of HBO’s “The White Lotus” after reviewing the first two. The show is virtually a cult at this point, a black “dramedy” in which each season follows the multiple story lines involving wealthy guests during their stays at a different resort hotel in the fictional international “White Lotus” chain. (Think Four Seasons.) Season One took place at a luxury hotel in Maui; Season Two was in Sicily, and the 2025 season (a fourth is in production) featured a White Lotus in Thailand.

There are scant ethical or admirable people in any of the three seasons, and that assessment spans a lot of characters. Yet the show’s dialogue, plotting and acting style are not pitched at a satirical level so these flaws are amusing; me, I found it depressing. We meet a wide range of people with a wide range of problems and challenges, but I didn’t leave any of the seasons feeling like I had met a single character who was both memorable and likable. Dead ethics alarms and warped values are the rule at the White Lotus hotels. At least there were moral and ethical lessons built into “Fantasy Island.”

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Hypocrisy Watch…

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

And people wonder why Trump beat the Democrats in 2016. Bernie is, to his credit, open and unrepentant about his hypocrisy, but it is kind of amazing that he still gets away with statements like this. He’s multimillionaire communist who rants about income distribution, and not only has a private jet but who mocks the little people who have to wait in lines for commercial air flights, and he fear-mongers about cliamte change while spewing more carbon into the atmosphere than any random 1000 Americans.

He can get away with this because he correctly assesses the IQ (low) and ethics alarms ( busted) of the average progressive.

And then there is Hillary Clinton. Saying, in effect, “Hold my beer!” the sad, bitter and irrelevant almost-first female POTUS (I feel sorry for Hillary, I really do) went for hypocrisy gold with this post on “X”:

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Ethics Meltdown at American Family Field: Who’s The Ethics Miscreant? A Test…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Shannon Kobylarczyk (above, from the phone video that became her undoing) was attending one of the National League Championship Series games between the Dodgers and the Brewers at American Family Field when her interaction with another fan altered the course of her life.

Ricardo Fosado, an out-of-town visitor from L.A. who favored the Dodgers, engaged in a little friendly needling with Sharon, a passionate Brewers partisan, when the Los Angeles team took the lead. (The Dodgers eventually won the 7-game series, sending them to the World Series, which begins this week.) “Why is everybody quiet?” he asked.

Kobylarczyk was in no mood for gloating. She shouted at Fosado: “Real men drink beer, pussy!” and threatened to call I.C.E. on the apparently Hispanic spectator. She then told the man in front of her that he should sic immigration enforcement on Fosado. Now he was annoyed. “Call ICE! Call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran, baby girl. War veteran, two wars. ICE is not gonna do nothing to me. Good luck!” he said.

Why do we know all this? Because someone in the crowd who should have been watching the game and minding his or her own business was recording the whole confrontation.

Kobylarczyk escalated: she went to stadium security and reported Fosado for disrupting her baseball experience, or something. They ushered him out of the stadium citing “public intoxication.”

The team is the Milwaukee Brewers, mind you.

But wait! There’s more! The asshole who videoed the episode put it on social media, where it went “viral.” This resulted in Kobylarczyk being labeled a racist, so her company, a Milwaukee-based recruitment and staffing outfit called the Manpower Group, fired her ( she was the associate general counsel) and issued a standard virtue-signaling announcement to take credit for standing up for “a culture grounded in respect, integrity, and accountability.” Then Kobylarczyk was forced to quit the board of directors at Make-A-Wish Wisconsin, which also issued a statement condemning her. Naturally the Brewers also had to get into the act, so they released this statement:

“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark.” 

Then the team banned both Fosado and Kobylarczyk from the ballpark forever. Yeesh! Talk about a mini-Ethics Train Wreck!

The candidates for Worst Ethics Dunce is this mess are:

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Pop Quiz: Which Answer From This Pathetic Couple Is Worse?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I just rejoined “X” so I could pick off a post here and there, but I won’t be tricked into paying for a “blue check” again. That telling scene above just came to my attention. I was about to file it for a future “warm-up,” but decided to get it out of the way now.

At one of the stupid “No Kings” rallies Saturday, these two were asked if they supported the deportation of illegal immigrants. The guy, obviously the beta in the relationship, stutters, “Yes,” only to be admonished by his audibly sighing female companion. She then answers the same question with a “no” and explains, “It’s not illegal.”

Oh. Fascinating thought process there! Then the bearded guy, having been persuaded, almost, by her 1) dirty look and 2) her brilliant legal analysis, changes his answer to “I’m not sure.”

Which answer is worse, once we eliminate the ethical answer, which was “yes”? My vote goes to the weenie’s “I’m not sure”— stupid, cowardly, obviously insincere and still enabling law-breaking. That guy and his ilk are the ones who let the Left get away with its habitual “It isn’t what it is” strategy.

I hope the interviewer didn’t end that relationship. Those two deserve each other.