Perfect! Exactly what the diversity obsession deserves: a nice petard-hoisting. I wonder: would any menu of perceived black ethnic cuisine be seen as appropriate, or would it all be “racist”? Where’s the line between stereotypes and historical fact? Would serving potatoes on St. Patrick’s Day be offensive? If I was a dinner guest (I never am, but theoretically) should I be offended if I was served mousaka, with the host saying, “Since you’re Greek, we made this just for you?”
(If it was good mousaka, I’d be thrilled. Most mousaka is terrible. I think I’d prefer being served fried chicken, waffles and watermelon. And since I’m not black, I wouldn’t be obligated to be offended.)
David A. Johnson, the school’s principal, grovelled in a letter to parents that the luncheon fare was “inexcusably insensitive and reflected a lack of understanding of our district’s vision to address racial bias. We are extremely disappointed by this regrettable situation and apologize to the entire Nyack community for the cultural insensitivity displayed by our food service provider,” Johnson wrote. Continue reading →
I have a confession to make. I know that the ethical and moral deterioration of the Disney corporation is a major ethics catastrophe with dire consequences for our society and culture, and Ethics Alarms should have been covering it more thoroughly. It hasn’t, and that’s because this topic is particularly painful for me.
I owe so much to Disney’s creations and philosophy. I learned a lot of ethics from the shows and movies growing up, and many of my most enduring and important interests and hobbies were inspired by Walt’s vision. My fascination with dinosaurs began with the terrifying T-Rex sequence in “The Rite of Spring” segment of “Fantasia,” for example. My reverence for the Alamo was inspired by Disney’s “Davy Crockett” series. The first dramatic production of any kind that genuinely move me was “Bambi.” I never got to visit a Disney theme park until college, but finally going to Disneyland after dreaming about it as a kid was one of the epiphanal experiences of my entire life:it was perhaps the only time something I had looked forward to was even better than I expected it to be. Disney’s perfectionism—at the parks, which were immaculate and overlooked no detail to immerse visitors in the fantasy, and in the TV shows and movies—influenced my own view of professionalism and my approach to directing for the stage. His courage and certitude in pursuing risky creative projects that everyone was telling him were doomed to fail—a full length animated film?—bolstered my own resolve when I have had project ideas that seemed nuts to everyone but me.
(And some were nuts, as it turned out. But the times I was right more than made up for those.)
I could go on, but I won’t. The point is that attacking Disney for me is like savaging a childhood hero, or even a parent. But the country, its culture and mental health is being harmed by the current distortion of Walt’s creation’s destructive alliance with the radical Left. It deserves to be attacked, and it’s time I got down to it.
This Comment of the Day (actually two comments, in sequence) by jmv0405 on the depressing post yesterday on a Disney Critical Race Theory video, makes up for some of that lost time by getting the discussion jump-started. It is also a perceptive and illuminating perspective that I wouldn’t have seen without the comment’s guidance.Continue reading →
That’s Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mt) the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and his wife above, in the Senator’s new profile picture. Twitter froze his account in punishment, because its “Media Policy” was supposedly violated. See?
You know, if Republicans don’t want to end up with a party base with an average age beyond even that of the Supreme Court, they have to stop channeling the ludicrous ministers of the 1950’s who declared rock and roll the Devil’s music and held bonfires of Elvis Presley records. To be blunt, it’s hysterical and stupid, and the young tend to have contempt for old fogeys who call their entertainment satanic….as well they should.
But the Right just can’t help itself. Even after the Elvis freak-out guaranteed that successive generation of teenagers would still be laughing at old black-and-white films of nerdy, balding, middle-aged white guys in horn-rims pronouncing The King’s hips a danger to America’s soul, its learning curve is flatter than flat. For there was Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other conservatives today making asses of themselves and anyone who occasionally takes their party seriously by expressing horror at last night’s Grammys whacked-out highlight, Sam Smith and Kim Petras‘ performance of “Unholy” featuring fire, demon-imitating dangers, blood-red lighting, and Smith in a set of horns just like Mr. Scratch. Continue reading →
Bear with me on this, please. Ann Althouse, who either has 72 hour days or is a witch, found the following comment in the latest Washington Post “Miss Manners” advice column and passed it on to her blog’s readers. I would have never seen it otherwise: I didn’t read Miss Manners (aka Judith Martin, who must be 90) even when I subscribed to the Post, and this column has over 1300 comments. I couldn’t find the comment Ann posted even using key word searches. (Side issue: I complain about traffic on EA, but the law of diminishing returns applies to blog commentary. The comments here vastly enhance the posts, but when comments get into triple figures, who has the time of inclination to read them? Well, I guess the answer is “Ann Althouse.” However Ann manages it, I’m glad she does.
The comment was in response to a sad letter to MM complaining about how single diners are treated by restaurants. The woman wrote, Continue reading →
I don’t like being shouted at by cartoon characters. Even if they had a valid point, my response to this kind of assaultive advocacy is, has ever been, and always will be…
Who couldn’t see this coming—years ago? A decade ago?
Long before the leak of Justice Alito’s draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts instead of secure servers designed to protect sensitive information. Security lapses by the justices apparently were routine, making the embarrassing and public-trust-wounding leak all but inevitable while also rendering an effective investigation difficult as well.
Supreme Court employees used printers that didn’t produce logs. They were able to print sensitive documents off-site without tracking. So-called “burn bags” containing materials that needed to be shredded were left open and unattended in hallways. Employees could remove documents, including draft opinions, from the SCOTUS building Continue reading →
Let’s get one thing settled right off the metaphorical bat: the Cardinal Local School District is run by a bunch of incompetents and ethics dunces. However one thinks this fiasco could and should have been handled, they made the worst possible mess of it possible.
On January 25, 2023, the school board for the district (in Middlefield, Ohio) killed a student production of the 2005 Tony-winning Broadway musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” citing as a justification their assessment that it was “vulgar.”The show is, as that date would suggest, 18 years old now, and has been performed all over the world as well as at many high schools. Its artistic pedigree is impeccable: the lyrics and music is by William Finn (“Falsettos”) and the original production was directed by Stephen Sondheim collaborator James Lapine. The show is excellent theatrical training for students as it involves improvisation.
Presumably the “vulgar” accusation arises from “Chip’s Lament,” a controversial song in which one of the young characters blames his failure in the competition on an embarrassing erection. Here are the lyrics:
Fritos! M&M’s? Oreos. All for one dollar! It is tradition that the person eliminated from the competition, is fair game for derision, especially the Alpha-Male, who will sell goodies at the bake sale. Anyone for brownies? Anyone for chocolate chips? Anyone for anything that isn’t dated? How could I have been eliminated? You wanna know how? You wanna know how? You wanna know WHY? My unfortunate erection Is destroying my perfection It is my recollection that everything I once did I did perfectly. LAST YEAR’S CHAMP, DEFEATED! Because of Marigold Coneybear Because there’s something and not a thing between us I don’t blame my brain but I do blame my penis. My unfortunate protuberance, seems to have its own exuberance. Anyone for M&M’s? Delicious and appropriate! Anyone for Chewy Goobers? Inexpensive… Anyone for buying the SHIT that I’m selling because my stiffie has ruined my spelling. ERECTION! ERECTION! MY UNFORTUNATE ERECTION! WHY? Is ruining my life Is ruining my world Is ruining my Ruining Ruining Ruining My Life MY LIFE Adulthood brings its own peculiar rejection Which is why I’m selling this PTA Confection It will ruin your complexion All because of my unfortunate Erection Oh God!
Following accusations in the wake of its decision, the Cardinal School District denied that the move was made because the musical includes two gay parents. Jesus also makes a comic appearance in the show. (He also appears rather prominently in “Jesus Christ Superstar,” which is frequently performed in high schools.) If that had anything to do with the show’s demise, this school district is a danger to intelligent life on earth.
I want to start next week out with as little inventory as possible, so I’m going to go to the potpourri format a second time today. This morning’s installment is here.
1. My current quest is to locate as many popular songs and records from the 1950s (and early Sixties, which were the Fifties in spirit, pre-British Invasion.) that are effectively “cancelled” today for being politically correct. As I note in a comment earlier today, I am trying to persuade Pat Boone to do this as a “theme” for his weekly Sirius show on the Golden Fifties Channel. He’s a terrific host, by the way—great voice still, smooth, fascinating comments on the songs. Pat also likes playing his own hits, understandable enough, and one of them was the infamous “Speedy Gonzalez,” which traffics in more Mexican stereotypes than you would think could be packed into a song. ( I wrote about the Chuck Jones cartoon character here; Mel Blanc even does “Speedy” on Pat’s record.) That song above from “The Most Happy Fella” is another. Boy, it’s creepy, with lyrics like,
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by Standing on the corner underneath the springtime sky Brother, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking Or for the “Woo!” look in your eye You’re only standing on the corner watching all the girls Watching all the girls, watching all the girls Go by!
I first paid attention to the song in the 70’s, and they bothered me then. How cute: a bunch of guys ogling women and thinking about illegal things to do with them or to them. As you might discern, I see no reason to censor these songs. The Fifties was the most lively, varied, experimental and interesting time in U.S. pop music, with Broadway, jazz, rhythm and blues, country, Doo Wop, and orchestral all vital, the iconic rockers like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Elvis on the way up, and the old-style crooners like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Frankie Layne and Tony Bennett still knocking out hits. Hundreds of that era’s songs are still worth listening to, including “Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah” by Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans, a Phil Spector-produced American rhythm and blues trio from Los Angeles. You know, I’m sure, that Disney has purged that Academy Award-winning song because it came from the allegedly racist “Song of the South” animated film. Among the platters I’ll suggest to Pat are “Please Mr. Custer,” “Ally Oop,” “Johnny Get Angry,” “I Told the Witch Doctor,” and Tex Ritter’s “Deck of Cards” song, which is openly Christian, so might “offend” someone. Please pass suggestions along, as well as the best way to contact Pat, who claims to have an email address. Twitter works, but I haven’t returned to that platform yet. I can’t tell if Pat himself ever checks his Facebook page. Continue reading →
This is a fact: most of today’s journalists really think like this, being arrogant, self-inflated, ignorant and incompetent hacks who believe “journalism” means advancing the “greater good” through their craft, the “greater good as defined, of course, by them..
During a National Press Club panel last month supposedly on the journalistic challenges of covering extremism—meaning “How do we make sure as many Democrats are elected as possible, since that is the party 98% of us support?”, Wesley Lowery, the former Washington Post reporter who won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism for his coverage of the Ferguson race riots, told his fawning audience,
“We have one political party that traffics in the same talking points as white supremacists, be it on immigration, be it on Muslims, be it on any number of issues, where the mainstream political rhetoric could be written by avowed racists…I’ll be honest, I don’t think very much about the mantle of neutrality. It’s either raining outside or it’s not raining outside. I’m not particularly interested in sounding neutral about which it is….[The Republican Party] is a mix of nativism, of anti-urbanism, of anti-cosmopolitanism, a fear of immigrants. It’s the exact same things that drove the Klan movement of the 1920s. But to say that in public—the way that Newsbusters is going to headline the write-up of this panel is going to be that I compared Donald Trump to the Klan. Right? Now this is a literal true factual description. How can we understand our moment if we are not allowed to make any comparison or add any context?”
Ethics Alarms 