Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/9/2023: Trying To Whistle A Happy Ethics Tune, And Failing Miserably…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Today, February 9, has several important ethics and cultural markers. It was the date in 1964 that Ed Sullivan presented the Beatles to American television, and nothing was ever the same. How wonderful it was to have a single national meeting place every Sunday night where popular culture could be shared and passed on to multiple generations! That’s impossible today. I watch tapes of that episode of Ed’s show laughing and crying at the same time. The screaming! The crazed joy on the faces of those girls! It was nuts, and it was somehow marvelous—such innocence, such magic, stupid though it was. We will never, never see anything like that again.

Another marker was in 1971, when the Hall of Fame put Satchel Paige on the ballot, leading to his eventual admission after being voted in by sportswriters. He was unquestionably a great pitcher, but he didn’t make it to the majors until he was far past his prime, indeed 42 years old, making him the oldest rookie in MLB history—and he was still excellent, serving in relief for the World Champion 1948 Cleveland Indians. Baseball’s color line, of course, had kept Paige locked in the Negro Leagues, along with many other players who could have been stars in the big leagues, until Jackie Robinson integrated the sport in 1947. Other Negro League greats followed Paige into the Hall despite never playing in the majors. It is often forgotten now, but it was Ted Williams, in his Hall of Fame acceptance speech, who started the movement to recognize the Negro Leagues players by making the point that their omission continued a great injustice.

1. The rest of the story...Curmie alerted me that Cardinal Local Schools  reversed its administrators’ unethical decision to cancel the high school musical, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” because of aspects of the show that those same administrators should have been aware of when the show was was chosen for production. Music Theater International, which owns the licensing rights, and the show’s authors agreed to 23 requested revisions including a different song to take the place of the controversial “erection” number. Curmie writes, tongue firmly in cheek, “I’m sure the national humiliation they endured was completely irrelevant to this change of course.”

I like to think, in its small way, Ethics Alarms helped; the big assist goes to the original production’s cast members who spoke out.

I personally hold the position that if a school is going to have to make 23 substantive changes in a show to find it acceptable for its performers and audience, the school should find a different musical. Samuel Beckett would agree with me. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Former Head Of Twitter’s Office of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

CENSORSHIP IS SPEECH

“Unrestricted free speech, paradoxically, results in less speech, not more.”

—-Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter’s Office of Trust and Safety, testifying before the the House Oversight Committee.

Imagine: Twitter had someone who thinks like that running its content review operation.

Free speech may result in less speech in a setting where participants are required to defend their positions and opinions, and cannot claim the comforting protection of an ideological echo chamber. Roth was unable to distinguish between manner of speech, which requires moderation, and censoring speech for content, which is what Twitter did to please and placate its progressive users.

First, Roth said that “Twitter found that users were unhappy with the company’s approach to content moderation and that this … dissatisfaction drove people away from the service. This has consequences for what we mean by free speech on social media.” Then he said, “Again and again, we saw the speech of a small number of abusive users drive away countless others.”

Which was it, abusive speech, or content? As we have learned from watching student-driven censorship on college campuses, speech that counters leftist cant and challenges progressive positions is “unsafe” and thus abusive. A free society must have free speech, and that means that members of that society need to learn to communicate and accept that the marketplace of ideas is challenging, intense, and even frightening.

Roth literally said that Twitter believed you have to destroy free speech in order to save it—and he didn’t even realize how Orwellian that is.

On Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s Procrustean Attempt To Make Abortion A Constitutional Right

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

That’s Procrustes portrayed above, in both of his favored acts of mayhem. I checked: I’ve used the term “Procrustean” several times here, but never was kind enough to explain the term’s origins, which is what makes it cool.

Procrustes was the nastiest of the bad guys the mythological Greek hero Theseus encountered on his way to killing the Minotaur in Crete. Procrustes would invite a weary traveler to take refuge for the night, offering him sustenance and a bed—but the bed was a deadly trap. Procrustes guaranteed every guest would fit the bed neatly, but that was because it converted into a rack, stretching anyone who was too short. If a guest was too tall, Procrustes just hacked off enough inches from the feet up to ensure that the bed would fit him, too. Theseus killed the psycho, but the word procrustean eventually entered legal lexicon to describe an argument that illogically squeezed facts or omitted them to make a theory fit the law.

I thought of old Procrustes immediately when I read that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in the District Court for the District of Columbia suggested after a hearing that the Thirteenth Amendment might have created a right to abortions. Wait, you well might ask, “How could an amendment created specifically to make slavery illegal, passed right after the Civil War, be construed to enshrine abortion as a right?” The short answer is, “It can’t and doesn’t.” The stupid, intellectually dishonest answer, however, is the one that the previously responsible female judge has decided to promote.

When the amendment states, Continue reading →

I Excuse Rob Reiner For Saying Something This Stupid Because He’s An Actor. For A Pundit Inflicted On The Public By The New York Times To Say It Is Journalistic Malpractice

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Once again, Michelle Goldberg pulls into the lead for “Worst and Most Biased New York Times Columnist.” This is impressive, because so many Times columnists are unethical blights on national soul. Paul Krugman, Gail Collins, Charles M. Blow, Maureen Dowd, Jamelle Bouie…it’s an awful group; I could teach a “Bias Makes You Stupid” ethics course using only their columns as materials. I doubt that even these pundits would be foolish enough to claim Biden is a “great President.” Here I am, still comparing records to determine if he’ll be regarded as the worst President ever, and she claims that.

I try to rate Presidents by their own standards, and by his own stated standards, Biden has been a failure. He said he needed to bring a divided country together, and by fully placing himself in thrall to the most radical segments of the Left, he has made the partisan and ideological divide worse, and dangerously so. Like Obama, his policies and rhetoric have exacerbated racial tensions. Long a supporter of the military, he has overseen a brutal weakening of the Armed Forces, by making woke indoctrination a priority over national defense. A supposed women’s rights advocate, Biden has allowed trans-mania to undermine women’s sports. While giving lip service to Constitutional Rights, his administration has used its power and influence to illegally urge private entities to censor speech. He has allowed the National Debt to explode; he has presided over such extreme inflation that wage increases cannot keep up. The horde of illegal immigrants pouring over the border has never been more overwhelming, yet he allows his Vice President and Cabinet members to claim that “the border is secure.” He has openly endorsed racial discrimination in his appointments. After joining in the Democratic chorus that Trump “undermined democratic institutions,” Biden has used the “bully pulpit” institution to focus hate on political opponents. His Justice Department allowed illegal harassment of Supreme Court members. The FBI has been revealed as partisan and corrupt. Under his Transportation Secretary there have been more crises in the system than at any time since 9/11. His fecklessness in international relations allowed Putin to feel secure in invading Ukraine. Biden has harmed the nation with purely symbolic and otherwise useless climate change measures, like cancelling the XL Pipeline. Crime rates are soaring; and worst of all, he has indulged his party’s increasing thirst for constraining personal liberties, free expression and dissent.

I could go on, but it is exhausting and depressing.

And Michelle Goldberg says Biden is a great President, because… Continue reading →

Rueful Ethics Observations On The 2023 State Of The Union Address

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The text of the speech as released is here; it does not, of course, contain the usual Biden word-slurring, stumbles and botches.

In case you want to save time, I’ll give you a short summary: last night’s State of the Union Speech was as unethical and despicable as any I can recall. I would have to go back and review some others, notably some of Bill Clinton’s to be certain, and you know, sock drawer. It doesn’t really matter whether it was “the most” unethical; it was unethical enough to be disgraceful, and to leave the nation no better, and quite possibly worse, than before President Biden delivered it.

The photo above, which I have posted at least three times before and intend to keep posting until Biden is out of office or drooling in a home somewhere, is not from last night’s speech, but from his democratic norm-shattering “Soul of the Nation” speech, or as I call it, his ‘anyone who opposes me and my party is an evil  fascist and an enemy of the state’ speech. It is relevant because no President who makes a speech like that can credibly or ethically come back less than five months later and say, as he did last night, Continue reading →

State Of The Union Ethics: The SOTU Is Dead, And Nancy Pelosi Killed it.

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

I want to be very clear about this.

“Does the State of the Union speech matter anymore? Here’s what an expert says,” asks a headline at Yahoo News. The “expert” is Jeff Shesol, a historian, former-deputy chief speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, and a partner at West Wing Writers. Naturally Yahoo, whose bias is open and unrestrained, made sure it chose a partisan Democrat for its expert. Heaven forbid that it would seek an objective opinion, which would have to lay the destruction of the State of the Union as anything more than a needless reminder of how dysfunctional the federal government has become squarely at the previous Speaker’s feet.

The one bit of condign justice, to again borrow George Will’s favorite term, is that Nancy managed to destroy what was once a useful Presidential tool for building public consensus and, most important of all, bolstering trust in our Republic so thoroughly that her own party’s President can’t make use of it—and he needs the help desperately.

Good job, Nancy. Continue reading →

Black History Month Ethics, As The Great Stupid Devours Itself

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

The lunch menu offered on February 1 at Nyack Middle School in Rockland County, New York consisted of fried chicken and waffles, with watermelon on the first day of Black History Month.

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 →

Comment Of The Day: “‘What’s Going On Here?’ Why Does Disney Think It Is Appropriate To Produce And Circulate Abrasive, Divisive, Confrontational Interest Group Propaganda And Indoctrination Like This?”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

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 →

Note To Elon Musk And Twitter: If You Want To Be Trusted, You Can’t Have Arbitrary Standards That Censor Stuff Like This…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

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?

Continue reading →

Stop Making Me Defend The Grammys! (And It Would Be Refreshing If Republicans Stopped Embarrassing Themselves, Too)

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

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 →