Do you wonder why fewer and fewer Americans trust their government? The reason is simple: the government is stuffed with idiotic bureaucrats who presume to tell us how to live our lives when they repeatedly demonstrate that they are fools pretending to have expertise and wisdom when all they really have is power to abuse.
Here is one throbbing example: FEMA’s directions on how to survive a nuclear attack. Of primary importance to the Biden Administration: while avoiding death by radiation, don’t forget to take pandemic precautions (last section)…
The legend was quick to take hold. The account was that as the Russian military pounded targets across Ukraine with bombs and missiles, a small team of Ukrainian border guards on rocky, desolate Zmiinyi Island, “Snake Island” to its friends, received a warning that the Alamo defenders would have recognized: Surrender or die. “I am a Russian warship,” the invaders said, according to a recording. “Lay down your arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary deaths. Otherwise, you will be bombed.”
Travis answered the equivalent message with a cannon shot. The defenders of Snake Island’s answer was more reminiscent of the famous reply of the 101st Airborne Division’s acting commander Anthony McAuliffe during the Battle of the Bulge. Defending Bastogne, McAuliffe gave a one-word reply to a German surrender ultimatum: “Nuts!” The Ukrainians’ version: “Russian warship, go fuck yourself.”
[Quick digression here: As I have mentioned before on EA, my WWII vet father, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and got a Silver Star for his efforts, insisted that nobody in the Infantry believed for a second that “Nuts” was the actual reply. He said the consensus of those who knew McAuliffe as well as the way soldiers talked in the field were certain that he had really answered exactly like the Ukrainians. Meanwhile, how absurd is it for today’s media to celebrate the courage and defiance of the Snake Island defenders’ response, yet feel compelled to censor it by printing “f—“? ]
Digression over. The story reported in the news media was that the Russians opened fire, killing all 13 border guards. They became instant martyrs and their fate became inspiration for the brave Ukrainian refusal to accept Russian domination. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky later announced the deaths and said that the island’s defenders will be bestowed with the title “Hero of Ukraine,” the highest honor the Ukrainian leader can award.
Among of the most emotionally resonant and thrilling moments in movies are when a large group spontaneously expresses unity of mind, loyalty, sentiment, or just the joy of living by lifting up their voices in song, as one. A healthy society should engender such moments and nourish the shared values and emotions that create them.
What today could prompt a large group to sing together today? The National Anthem once provided such moments, but the NFL has aided race-separatists by forcing the so-called “Black National Anthem” to compete with the “Star-Spangled Banner,” making it, despicably, a “white national anthem.” Today’s preeminent musical form, hip-hop, doesn’t lend itself to mass singalongs.
Here are six memorable examples from the Hollywood archives of movies celebrating the human instinct to burst into shared intense feeling, expressed in song. Incredibly, I found none of these classics in various on-line lists of “greatest movie crowd singing scenes.” The people who put together those lists don’t get it (and also don’t know classic films.) No, the “Wayne’s World’ lip-syncing of “Bohemian Rhapsody” doesn’t qualify, great as it is. It’s not a crowd scene, and Queen is doing all the singing anyway.
The Ethics Alarms top six, in random order:
1. From “The Sound of Music”:“Edelweiss”
This is the only entry from a musical, but the context is entirely dramatic, and the scene could have easily been in a straight drama. The Nazis have taken over Austria. Captain Von Trapp (Christoper Plummer), ordered to take his place in the Nazi navy, mourns the end of the Austria he knew, and knows that his fellow Austrians watching his family perform in a music festival as the uniformed Nazis loom over them, share his sentiments. He sings a simple Austrian folk tune, manages to give the audience an opportunity to express their sadness and defiance.
2. From “San Francisco”: “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”
This isn’t even the best crowd singing moment in the great 1936 Clark Gable/Spencer Tracy/Jeanette McDonald movie that climaxes with the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. At the end of the film, Gable, a cynical rogue whose romance with opera singer McDonald has foundered on his rejection of religion, has searched for her in the ravaged city. He finds her alive and helping survivors, and is so moved that he thanks God for the first time in his life. Then the news comes that the fire is out, and the people of San Francisco resolve to rebuild their city bigger and better than ever, as Jeanette leads them in song…
That’s Ukrainian model Tetiana Gaidar above, nicely symbolizing what old guy Vladimir Putin didn’t get about launching an unethical war in 2022.
Because of social media, 24-7 cable news and the web, world public opinion can–can—quickly coalesce around basic ethical values and arrive at a crushing consensus. Putin is being personally cancelled, and if his nation’s people decide they don’t want to be cancelled too, he might be in bigger trouble that he could have imagined in his worst nightmares. Ethics Alarms already mentioned how Putin forgot the Alamo, always a bad thing to do. He apparently also had forgotten that one of the big cracks in the Iron Curtain was inflicted when Ronald Reagan termed the Soviet Union an “Evil Empire.”
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, writing in the Sixties about what made huge corporations successful, argued that they created nation-like loyalties by behaving as good corporate citizens, and that there was a crucial benefit in this that went beyond mere profit. The best people, he claimed, would not work for companies perceived as unethical, so becoming an organization that the best and the brightest would be proud to be part of was a matter of long-term survival.
Galbraith, was we have seen, was overly optimistic, but his general point is still important, particularly at the extremes. Too late, Putin is trying to save his reputation by trying the absurd cognitive dissonance trick of associating the Ukraine government with Nazis. It’s not working, because it is so obviously a self-serving lie.
1. If only baseball writers read Ethics Alarms...(or knew what ethics was, for that matter). More than five years after Ethics Alarms explained why Red Sox icon David Ortiz created an unavoidable slippery slope likely to carry Barry Bonds and the other steroid cheat superstars into baseball’s Hall of Fame, esteemed baseball writer Bob Nightengale figured it out, and just announced his brilliant analysis in USA Today. Ortiz was recently voted into the Hall, as EA noted here in the follow-up to the original article. [Much thanks to Jutgory for alerting me to Nightengale’s piece]
See? I’m smart! Not dumb everybody says… I’m smart and I want respect!
2. If the Republicans are going to publicly shun Liz Cheney for joining the political witch trials the Democrats are holding on the January 6 riots, they have no excuse not to take even more decisive action against the GOP Congress members Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, and AZ State Senator Wendy Rogers, for openly supporting Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who has been correctly labeled a “white supremacist” by the Justice Department, and his organization, the America First Political Action Conference. Republican Gosar and Greene both attended the group’s conference this weekend, and both addressed the all-white throng, which engaged in such fun activities as applauding for Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and chanting “Putin, Putin!”Continue reading →
1. Remember, we pay for this garbage...An article on NPR‘s “Life Kit” offered helpful suggestions about ways suffering Americans might deal with the crippling stress and anxiety of sitting safely at home in the United States as Ukrainians are fighting for their lives and freedom. Like…
“Do something that feels good for your body and helps you get out of your head….”
[Play] games with family,”
[F]inally re-create Grandpa’s famous lasagna, or learn how to make a prettier pie…”
Joy Behar wrapped up the award for most narcissistic and selfish response to the Ukraine crisis, but NPR is a tax-supported organization, and has decided that enabling American weenie-ism and creating a culture dominated by hyper-vulnerable, self-absorbed navel-gazers is its mission.
1. An animated TV show’s demonstration of support for an invaded nation is, of course, as useless as Michelle Obama’s infamous frowny face “Bring back our girls” photo, and is naked virtue signaling. Still, the hostility to the show for the gesture displayed by ultra-conservative Citizen’s Free Press readers is remarkable.There can be no ethical basis for not supporting Ukraine, or any country Russia invades, or any peaceful nation any country invades. Representative reaction: “Russia = Evil, Because: Trump. Thus, Ukraine isn’t an UNBELIEVABLY CORRUPT FAILED STATE… Ukraine is Saints. Might want to be somewhat skeptical and cynical when Biden, the MSM, and Hollywood is all trying to brainwash everyone into being pro-Ukraine, huh?” Wow. I didn’t know Tucker Carlson had this much influence.
It is a all a necessary reminder that the far right is just as unhinged as the far Left, just less totalitarian (for now).
There are other stories making the rounds…One has it that Trump — noting that Putin seized land from Georgia when George W. Bush was president and seized the Crimean peninsula when Barack Obama was president — warned Putin against a land grab on his watch.
“If you move against Ukraine while I’m president,” Trump is said to have told the Russian leader, “I will hit Moscow.” Putin reportedly scoffed, “No way,” leading Trump to say, “All those beautiful golden turrets will be blown up.”
[Also] Trump reportedly told Xi that any military move against Taiwan would be met with an attack on Beijing. Xi, like Putin, is said to have been stunned…
This unsubstantiated rumor is being reported in many conservative websites as fact. This is deceptive in the extreme. Goodwin says up front that the stories may be false, and he is a columnist, not a reporter. Yet other publications say that “‘The New York Post’ reported that…” using as evidence Trump’s statement to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that Putin didn’t invade Ukraine during his administration for “a very good reason, and I’ll explain that to you someday.”
I think the story could easily be true, but it’s still a rumor, and should not be reported as fact or as a credible report. Continue reading →
Dana and I are reacting to a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll. I know, polls. Also Harvard. Nonetheless, I don’t understand this at all...
Hey look, I understand party loyalty, though I’ve never experienced the urge myself. I even understand the desperation of human beings who lack the fortitude to face their terrible mistakes, and who stick their fingers in their years, close their eyes and shout “NANANANA!” to avoid facing their accountability. But can 80% of Democrats really look themselves in the mirror after declaring President Biden’s first year a success? What would a failure look like to such people?
How can one have an intelligent discussion or debate with someone who considers the record of the Biden Administration and thinks, “This is GREAT!”? How can democracy function with such a large number of participants living in an alternate reality? 80% of Democrats, according to that poll, have accepted that “FAILURE IS SUCCESS,” a fitting addition to Big Brother’s
I just don’t understand it.
Surely Trump Derangement can’t cripple a mind this completely, can it? To make a previously rational American think that success is defined by not having someone he or she detests in the White House, even though by most objective measures that hated leader was far more effective and and got better results that his successor? Really?
Could this be climate change mania, where success is defined entirely by having anti-climate change policies that are symbolic only, and that cannot possibly move the next century’s world temperature a fraction of a degree down, while none of the real and dangerous consequences of such virtue-signaling foolishness—like making the U.S. dependent on Russian oil—matter to the malady’s sufferers?
Ethical citizenship requires staying informed, objective, responsible and sane.
It involves one of my mother’s favorite Hollywood villains, Jack Palance. Younger readers probably remember him only in his long, lucrative late-career self-parody period (Watch “Shane”: what’s the matter with you?), which got him one of those weird Best Actor Oscars for just doing what he had done naturally for decades, but hammier, in “City Slickers.” (He was also aided by lines like “I crap bigger than you.” (To Billy Crystal.)
The actor was born in Pennsylvania as Volodymyr Palahniuk, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. In 2004, after Palance’s final film and just two years before his death, a Hollywood celebration of “Russian Nights” in Los Angeles ended with an awards ceremony. “Russian Nights” was a week-long film festival that celebrated “Russian contributions to the world of art,” and was sponsored in part by the Russian Ministry of Culture. Russian president Vladimir Putin endorsed the propaganda event. Scheduled to receive “narodny artyst” awards ( translated as “the Russian People’s Choice Award”) were Dustin Hoffman and Jack Palance. Hoffman, like Palance boasted of Ukrainian heritage.
The legal ethics Zoom seminar today went well, thanks…except that there were multiple technical breakdowns. And where I would normally have dozens of back-and-forth interactions with attendees is a live seminar, I had exactly one in three hours in this one. Remote training, to be blunt, sucks, just like remote court proceedings suck and remote public school sucks. More genteel characterizations are not sufficiently accurate or derogatory.
1. Why anyone pays attention to Tucker Carlson when he says things this foolish, I have no clue. Carlson, in his rants this week, questioned why American leaders were vilifying Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, adding, “Not a single Republican leader has stood up to point out how insane all of this is and how completely divorced it is from anything that American voters actually care about…It might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious: What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? But Joe Biden likes Ukraine, so Putin bad, war good.”
Well gee, Tucker, I think Americans care about stopping international outlaws, not letting bullies prevail, opposing invasions of peaceful nations, and citizens of other countries being killed by ruthless dictators. That’s for a start. Why wouldn’t any normal American (Tucker is clearly not normal) hate Putin (let’s say distrust, disrespect, and detest)? He’s a liar, a murderer, a despot and a dictator. What is it that Carlson finds appealing? Putin is bad, and would be bad if he had Russia invading any sovereign nation.
2. As the ABA’s recent unhinged woke edicts show, lawyers are going nuts…but I didn’t expect this: a rash of naked lawyer sightings. First, the Butler (Ohio) County Bar Association recommended an indefinite suspension of an attorney for a series of public indecency incidents that included driving while nude. Just a couple of weeks later this month, police arrested 49-year-old lawyer Kelly Elizabeth Elkins of Treasure Island, Florida, after an incident that began when the manager of the Beach Lounge refused to serve Elkins any more liquor because she was already “drunk as a skunk.” She then walked into the restroom and emerged “completely naked.” She then refused to leave.
This is considered unprofessional conduct suggesting that she may not be fit to practice law, though not necessarily. Lawyers drink more than any other professionals, and all bar associations have special programs that help such practitioners instead of disciplining them.
“You know, you just, you plan a trip, you wanna go there. I’ve wanted to go to Italy for four years and I haven’t been able to make it because of the pandemic, and now this, you know?”
—“The View” co-host Joy Behar, explaining why she was upset about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The full exchange:
Co-host Sonny Hostin: “Estimates are 50,000 Ukrainians will be dead or wounded and this is going to start a refugee crisis in Europe,” said. “We’re talking about 5 million people that are going to be displaced. It’s heartbreaking to hear what is going to happen.”
Behar: “Yeah, I’m scared of what’s gonna happen in Western Europe, too. You know, you just, you plan a trip, you wanna go there. I’ve wanted to go to Italy for four years and I haven’t been able to make it because of the pandemic, and now this, you know? It’s like, who’s gonna, what’s gonna happen there?”
No, I’m not kidding, and this is not a hoax. Check yourself if you don’t believe me. Continue reading 
