“A Christmas Carol”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

-A-Christmas-Carol2

The entire text of “A Christmas Carol” is and has been for a long time listed under Inspirations on the Ethics Alarms homepage. If you haven’t read it (preferably out loud, to your family) recently, I urge you to do so. It is wonderful, and still, after all the movies and TV specials and songs and rival Christmas-themed stories, the best of the genre. It is also delightful literature, and, because I am an incurable romantic, a sap, and a Christmas addict, the story and Dickens’ telling of it gets to me every time.

I just realized that the last time I directed a production that wasn’t my own, it was a staged reading of “A Christmas Carol.” I miss directing greatly—no one has been clamoring for my comeback—so it that was my last hurrah, I can live with that. “A Christmas Carol” is, after all, one of the greatest ethics tales of all.

The first version of the film adaptations of “A Christmas Carol” I saw when I was knee-high to Robert Reich was the version starring Alistair Sim. Many aficionados of “A Christmas Carol” movies think it is still the best, and I won’t argue with them. Because the movie is in black and white and has been superseded by so many other versions, it is hard to find it on TV now except for the streaming services. Even the much inferior version starring Reginald Owen (with the entire Lockhart family, including young pre-“Lassie,” pre-“Lost in Space” June, as the Cratchits) is shown more than the classic Sim film. In these cynical times, the version of “A Christmas Carol” most likely to be available, sort of, is Bill Murray’s “Scooged.” It’s not the worst version—the musical starring Albert Finney wins that booby prize (“Thank you very much! Thank you very much!” Yecchh.)—but cynicism and dark humor really don’t belong in this story

My personal choice for the best adaptation goes to the 1984 George C. Scott version, if you don’t count “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” and you probably shouldn’t, though I love it. The 1984 film has David Warner as Bob; Edward Woodward is the best (and tallest) Ghost of Christmas Present ever; and I think this is the scariest version of Marley.

Here it is…

Last Minute Christmas Eve Ethics Shopping, 12/24/2023

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Dean Martin’s renditions of popular Christmas songs like the one above, along with “Let It Snow,” “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (among others) just make me smile. Dean wasn’t the right singer for the carols, but I’m convinced his recordings and his memory will endure because of the innate sense of fun and irreverence he brought to the lighter ballads. Who fills that niche today? I can’t think of anyone.

Since I mentioned Frank Loesser’s controversial contribution to the popular holiday canon, “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” allow me to digress. It seems like the withering away of #MeToo as a result of the revealed hypocrisy of the movement social justice warrior advocates has restored this unfairly maligned song (which won an Academy Award!) to respectability. If so good, and I hope John Legend’s certifiably awful politically correct version (with lines like “It’s your body and your choice!”) is mocked mercilessly forever more. Yesterday, I heard one of the gay male hosts on the Sirius Broadway channel (all the men on that channel appear to be trying to sound as gay as possible) talking about the song, and saying that the context of the lyrics are everything. Then he said that the version he was going to play (from “Glee’) was a perfect example of how the song, in the right context, could be sweet and inoffensive. It was sung by two gay men, not that thee’s anything wrong with that, but as far as I could determine, it was no different in “context” from any version in which a male is desperately trying to talk a woman into a winter sleepover.

1. Speaking of LRTBQ+ matters, this would seem to be a superfluous headline: “Study shows sex could be a better predictor of sports performance than gender identity.” Gee, ya think? I wonder if feminists will ever have the integrity to support Ethics Heroes like Riley Gaines, the collegiate swimmer who has become a vocal advocate for keeping trans-males out of women’s sports. I didn’t get around to highlighting her testimony in Congress, in which another incompetent member, Democratic Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee, accused Gaines of engaging in “transphobic bigotry.” Gaines, who is gutsy and outspoken, returned fire by calling Lee a misogynist, goading Lee into making an ass of herself when she stopped the testimony to demand that Gaines’ insult be stricken from the record. (Statements that are unwelcome to Democrats and progressives are “hate speech,” you see.)

2. Regarding the previous post: my Harvard alumna sister opined that beleaguered president Gay will be able to hold on for enough time that Harvard can credibly claim her withdrawal for “personal reasons” isn’t the result of pressure from the Evil Right. I agreed with her at the time, but now I’m not so sure. The mockery of the school is wide ranging, sharp and effective…

..and the ridicule of Gay herself is apparently irresistible, as with this parody letter of resignation by the plagiarizing scholar:

[Source: Power Line]

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Harvard’s Claudine Gay Scandal Just Keeps Getting Better, Though I Guess We Shouldn’t Be Surprised That An Unethical University Uses Unethical Lawyers

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It’s really a shame that I have to post this today, when the Ethics Alarms traffic consists largely of metaphorical tumbleweeds blowing down the empty dusty streets. However, we know most of the news media is trying to bury the series of revelations that prove that the leader of higher education rot hired an unqualified president because she was black, female, and a DEI agent, and that because she is black and female, Harvard is employing lies, excuses and rationalizations to avoid dumping her when a white male president who had been revealed as a plagiarist in scholarship and a blathering fool before Congress would have been fired in a flash.

I know this blog is a small, tinny voice in the vast wilderness, but it’s something.

Above you see excerpts from a 15 page letter sent to the New York Post threatening to sue on Harvard’s behalf if the paper continued to report the discovery by conservative reporter Christopher Rufo and others that Gay had plagiarized the works of other scholars by using their words and ideas as her own without attribution in dozens of instances, including her Harvard dissertation. The Post points out that Harvard, through its attorneys at Clare Locke, stated that there was no plagiarism and that the allegations were false before Harvard had bothered to investigate the claims. This also means that Gay approved of the letter, which she knew was itself “demonstrably false”:

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Why Hasn’t Everybody Already Learned About Bass Reeves?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Nothing says Christmas like a late 19th century black Deputy Federal Marshal in the Indian Territory. As I watched the Paramount+ video series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.” I was struck by what an inspiring and unifying this remarkable man’s story would be for school children, and wondered not only why it isn’t taught today, but why it wasn’t taught while I was in school. Not only hadn’t I heard of Reeves before last night, I assumed the film was just another race- or gender-flipped Western, like “Django Unchained or The Hateful Eight.” It’s an amazing story, and a true one.

Bass Reeves (1838–1910) was born as a slave in Arkansas, then lived in Lamar and Grayson counties, Texas, where he belonged to Col. George R. Reeves, who later become the Speaker of the House in the Texas legislature. Reeves escaped north into the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), where he had dealings with the Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole tribes, learning enough of their languages to be useful to him later. He fought with the Union Indian Home Guard Regiments during the Civil War, then settled in Arkansas as a farmer. To make extra money, Reeves served as a guide, scout and tracker for the deputy U.S. marshals who worked in the Indian Territory (like Rooster Cogburn in “True Grit”!) out of “Hanging Judge” Parker’s federal court at Fort Smith. Judge Parker commissioned Reeves as the first black deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River.

He worked for thirty-two years as a deputy marshal in the Indian Territory, arresting an estimated 3,000 lawbreakers and shooting 14 of them dead in self defense. (It helped considerably that he was 6’2,” remarkably strong, and a dead shot with pistol or rifle.) Reeves was never wounded himself, though his hat was shot off a few times (they show this in the series). Reeves demonstrated his integrity when he brought his own son in for murder once a warrant was issued.

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If You Are Troubled By The Ferguson Effect, Wait Until The Aurora Effect Kicks In

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The surge in homicides following the Michael Brown fiasco in Ferguson, Missouri sparked a debate about whether the demonizing of police by the news media, lawyers seeking quick liability pay-outs every time a perp was killed in a confrontation with police, and progressive politicians demonstrations, and the anti-police hostility they engendered triggered the murder spike. City Journal contributing editor Heather Mac Donald, among others, identified a “Ferguson Effect,” in which police were pushed into passive law enforcement for fear of criminal prosecutions primed by political factors and the kind of life- and career-wrecking publicity that savaged Officer Darren Wilson, who was found by a grand jury to be blameless in Brown’s shooting. Since that 2014 ethics train wreck, the Ferguson Effect has metastasized thanks to the George Floyd freakout, the Black Lives Matters riots, and the conviction and imprisonment of the group officers involved. It is indisputable that proactive law enforcement is dangerous now both in the streets and in the aftereffects when events turn ugly.If police are going to be sitting ducks for moral luck prosecutions, it requires a martyr or a fool to take the kinds of risks today’s social and legal climate engenders.

Next up on the metaphorical social justice shooting gallery: paramedics.

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The 2023 Ethics Companion To “Miracle On 34th Street” [Updated and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

2023 Introduction

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. This has been a truly awful year, not one of the worst in our history but to a lot of Americans it seems that way (because they “don’t know much about history,” like Sam Cooke), but bad enough that we should be glad to see it go. 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. Kris Kringle really isn’t Santa Clause: he’s nuts, basically. But somehow that tiny wisp of a hope that he might be the real Santa is alive at the end of the movie. It’s really quite wonderful. It’s also important.

The production of “Miracle on 34th Street” itself epitomizes the ethical values of competence and integrity. Watch any of the attempts to remake the film over the years; some aren’t bad, but none equal the original, or even justify a remake that places the story in contemporary times.There have been four remakes starring, as Kris Kringle, Thomas Mitchell, Ed Wynn, Sebastian Cabot, and Richard Attenborough. That’s a distinguished crew to be sure. Mitchell was one of the greatest character actors in Hollywood history. Wynn was nominated for an Academy Award (for “The Diary of Ann Frank”) and Attenborough won one, Best Supporting Actor Award in 1967 for “The Sand Pebbles.” Cabot wasn’t quite in their class, but he was a solid pro, and looked more like Santa Clause than Mitchell,  Wynn, or Attenborough.

None of them, however, were as convincing as Edmund Gwenn. He made many movies—all without a white beard— and had a distinguished career in films and on stage, but even audience members who knew his work had a hard time reminding themselves that he wasn’t Kris Kringle while they watched the movie. I still have a hard time.

 The film is one more example of the special, unappreciated talent of Maureen O’Hara, who never was quite regarded as a top rank a movie star, as lovely and strong an on-screen presence as she was. Her ability to anchor great movies while never dominating them is the epitome of the “collaborative art” they always blather about during the Oscars, but which is seldom truly honored.  O’Hara was the female lead in four genuine classics: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “The Quiet Man,” “How Green Was My Valley,” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” She also starred in the original “The Parent Trap” for Disney.

“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. John Payne, as the idealistic lawyer in love with Maureen, is never flashy, just completely convincing. One reason may have been that, as he told an interviewer once, the role of Fred Gaily perfectly matched his own ideals and beliefs.  This is the magic of performing talent: they make audiences suspend disbelief because they seem to believe in the story and characters too. The director,  George Seaton (who also directed “Airport,” which is NOT an ethics movie), also wrote the script that 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. There are none of the corny features or inexplicable gaffes in this film that make other holiday-themed classics inherently unbelievable, like the cheesy battlefield sets in “White Christmas” or the heavenly dialogues in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Miracle on 34th Street” is, as I said at the start, about the importance of believing in good things, hopeful things, even impossible things. Today many of my friends, colleagues and associates are depressed and fearful of the future—their future, the future of the nation, even the future of the planet. (The planet will be fine…the rest? As Samuel L. Jackson says in “Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butts.”) “Miracle on 34th Street” 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. Of course, some days are easier than others.

Never mind. As the Fairy Godmother in the musical version of “Cinderella” sings, “Impossible things are happening every day.” Continue reading →

For Your Christmas Weekend Reading Pleasure…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Well, few are visiting EA today. I guess it is a holiday of sorts, so I won’t take it personally. As a thank-you to those who do drop by, here is a post I encountered on the new substack, “Ramparts.” “War and Christmas:Christmas and the enduring spirit of Freedom” focuses on two important and inspiring Christmases in our nation’s history, both occurring while the nation was at war.

The second has special significance for me. My father, Jack Anderson Marshall, Sr., fought on thatChristmas day in 1944, having just been released from the Army hospital after having half his foot blown off earlier in the year, before D-Day. After my parents moved from Arlington, Mass. to Arlington, Virginia, I would accompany my father every year around this time on his pilgrimage to the Battle of the Bulge veterans memorial at Arlington National Cemetery, just a short walk from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The year he died on my birthday in 2009, Dad had skipped the reunion of BOTB veterans for the first time. The dwindling numbers made him too sad, he said.

Stop Making Me Defend Eric Adams!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

PIX11’s Dan Mannarino interviewed New York City Mayor Eric Adams this week and at the end asked a Barbara Walters-ish question. “Mr. Mayor, we’ve come to the end of what was a very eventful 2023. So, when you look at the totality of the year, if you had to describe it in one word, what would that word be? And tell me why.”

Adams answered, “’New York.’ This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center, to a person who’s celebrating a new business being open. This is a very, very complicated city. And that’s why it’s the greatest city on the globe.”

Republicans, conservatives, the social media mobs and even some on the Left “pounced.” “Eric Adams gives the worst answer any politician has ever given to a softball question,” MSNBC contributor (and you know what THAT means) Tim Miller tweeted. echoing the reactions of many Adams critics. (Adams is also being mocked this week for joking that he will occasionally “look at myself, and I give myself the finger.”)

Refreshing as it is to see a Democrat getting the Donald Trump treatment for an off-hand remark that critics deliberately interpret as negatively impossible, Adams doesn’t deserve the brickbats for the 9/11 gaffe. It’s obvious what he meant, isn’t it? Searching for contrasting extremes that illustrate what an exciting and unpredictable place his city is, his mind jumped to the most shocking of all Big Apple events, putting him in instant peril. It reminded me of a scene in “Bang the Drum Slowly,” when the baseball team’s manager (played by one of my favorite character actors, Vincent Gardenia) is trying to give an inspirational speech to his players, who have just learned that their back-up catcher (Robert DeNiro) is dying. He’s determined not to mention that metaphorical elephant in the locker room, but the first words out of the manager’s mouth are “When I die..” Gardenia’s eyes roll in disgust with himself as soon as he hears what he said—the perfect expression of someone thinking, “I can’t believe that I did that!” But it’s like trying not to think of a hippopotamus.

Anyone who speaks often in public and spontaneously is going to have these moments. I speak unscripted for a living, and I think I’m good at it, but now and then the words I hear coming out of my mouth are horrifying. Talk show hosts, reporters, politicians, stand-up comics, teachers—this is an occupational hazard. Most of the social media-dwellers attacking Adams have never given a pubic speech or an unscripted public statement in their lives.

What Adams was trying to say was that his single word description of 2023 from his perspective was “New York” (that’s two words, by the way) because you never know what’s going to happen, and have to be ready for anything. Sure, he would have been safer breaking into a verse of the theme from “New York, New York,” but he didn’t, and once he committed to the “good vs bad” approach, he was stuck. (If he had chosen the Jets losing their starting quarterback on the first play of the season instead of 9/11, he would have been attacked by Jets fans.)

Mayor Adams has had a rocky year to be sure, but as failing Democratic big city mayors go, he’s been lapped in incompetence by the mayors of D.C., Chicago and Boston, among others. He deserves a break.

Ethics Quiz: The Christmas Flash Mob

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A group of about 60 Christmas carolers the the local Cure Church staged a good cheer invasion at a Kansas City, Kansas, Walmart last Sunday. Shoppers and employees stopped to listen and some sang along. Naturally the scene was caught on video, and, predictably, the video “went viral” on social media.

Also predictably, Scrooges were out in force on social media. Reddit patrons were especially hostile. “Not the Bee” was depressed at the reaction, sniffing, “This is Christmas we’re talking about! We used to understand that things were a little more magical and glorious this time of year.”

Well, yes, I am certainly sympathetic, but it was still a disruption in a private business without prior consent, and if anything flies in the face of “diversity” cant, it’s a public demonstration of a particular religion’s beliefs to a captive audience. After all, the group wasn’t singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” One person’s Christmas magic is another’s inappropriate proselytizing.

Your Ethics Alarms Christmastime Ethics Quiz is…

Was the Christmas caroling flash mob ethical?

Musings on Jesse Otero, the Human Broken Window

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Jesse Leonardo Otero, 44, has been arrested 90 times for shoplifting in the Bay area of California, most recently this month. He is a drug addict, homeless, and supports himself by shoplifting and selling stolen property, often stealing from the same stores over and over again. He doesn’t discriminate, though, targeting small businesses, big-box stores, or whatever seems convenient at the time. He isn’t just lifting candy bars: when Jesse steals, it’s usually hundreds of dollars of merchandise at a time. Local police and store managers know him by name. The manager of Five Little Monkeys toy store in Albany, California, for example, says she has reported Otero to police more than 20 times. Jesse ranged far and wide in his shopping trips, and is an expert on the BART transit system, which he uses to hit stores at every stop.

Nobody has kept count of the number of days Jesse has spend in jail for his exploits, but it isn’t very many. The usual routine is that police give Otero a citation and release him. Sometimes, as with this month’s arrest, he is arrested and jailed for a short time, then let out of jail free, just like in Monopoly. All of this ridiculous pattern is due to California voters, in their wisdom, passing a law in 2014 that weakened penalties for everything Jesse does, like illicit drug use, vagrancy, petty theft, and shoplifting. Prosecutors now can’t file a felony shoplifting charge unless the items taken top $950 in value.

Multiply Jesse by several hundred (or thousands?) and you can understand why so many stores in California are experiencing ruinous shoplifting. Social justice warriors, advocates of “restorative justice” and those who regard the fact that a disproportionate number of those in prison are black as proof of systemic racism dispute the validity of the “Broken Windows” theory, but California’s experience is one more bit of significant evidence that the theory is sound.

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