The Republicans haven’t even taken over the House of Representatives yet, and they are already emulating Islamic extremists—and I’m not exaggerating. Continue reading
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Oscar, Jean Luc-Godard, and the Ethics of Honoring Talented Creeps
The Academy of Motion Picture Sciences will be giving an honorary Oscar to French director Jean-Luc Godard, and nobody who knows anything about film can object to the award on the basis of merit. Godard is one of the most influential film makers who ever yelled “Cut!;” there are dozens of film classes about his work in schools all over the country. He makes great movies, and has for decades. He deserves the honor.
Or does he? Mr. Godard, it seems, has also been resolutely anti-Jewish, at least in his sentiments, for almost as long as he has been making classic films. Some in the industry and without are questioning whether Hollywood should be honoring a likely Anti-Semite.
Excuse me…did I miss something? When did the rest of the Oscars get junked, leaving only the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award? Continue reading
Newsweek’s Biased Cover Ethics
I am looking at the current cover of Newsweek. I am frightened.
According to the magazine, change is coming, and the cover photo makes it clear that it can’t be good. Some monster named “John Boehner” seems to be involved, and he is a vampire, or cannibal, or something worse. A serial killer, maybe, like Jason in “Friday the 13th.” One whole side of his face is dripping with what looks to be blood. There is blood around his mouth, and a scary, demonic eye looks out from a mask of blood on his right side. He is clearly from Hell.
Or a Republican. Continue reading
Art Ethics: We Are Not Bowls of Fruit
During his legendary questioning by Clarence Darrow in the Scopes trial, Williams Jennings Bryan famously answered one of Darrow’s queries by saying, “I don’t think about things I don’t think about.” (Darrow’s rejoinder: “Do you think about the things you do think about?”) One of the ethical issues I hadn’t thought about was whether an artist drawing a subject in public without his or her consent is being unethical. Thanks to a post by an inquiring artist on an art blog who heard the faint ringing of an ethics alarm in his head, I’m thinking about it now, and it is trickier than you might think.
Once the artist starts rolling, he has a lot of ethics questions: Continue reading
Provocative Ethics Reading for a Sunday
If your endangered Sunday newspaper is as shrunken from cost-cutting as mine, you may need some extra reading material as you wait breathless for the results of the House vote on health care reform. Here are some provocative ethics pieces from around the web:
- Final Verdict on ACORN: As a nice wrap-up of the flurry of ACORN material here, New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt finally gets to the meat of the matter: Continue reading
Why Professional Reviewers Are Unethical, and Why We’ll Be Better Off Without Them
When Variety recently announced that it was firing its in-house film and drama critics, there was much tut-tutting and garment-rending over the impending demise of professional reviewing in magazines, newspapers and TV stations. The villain, the renders cry, lies, as in The Case of the Slowly Dying Newspapers, with the web, which allows any pajama-clad viewer of bootleg videos to write film reviews, and any blogger who cares about theater to write a review of a play. “I think it’s unfortunate that qualified reviewers are being replaced,” said one movie industry pundit, “but that’s what’s happening.”
I say, “Good. It’s about time.” (And also: “QUALIFIED?”) If there has ever been an excessively influential non-professional profession that caused as much damage as reviewing, I’m not sure I want to know about it. The end of full-time film and drama critics as we know them can only prove to be a boon for artists and audiences alike. Continue reading
More Humor Ethics: the “Offensive Joke”
Ethicist Jeffrey Seglin answers ten everyday ethics questions over at the Real Simple website, and pretty much knocks them out of the park…except this one:
“If someone tells an offensive joke, is it my responsibility to speak up about it?” Continue reading
Christmas Card Ethics
My family just received a Christmas card from the family of a long-time friend, and my wife commented on how good his wife looked in the photo. I mentioned this to my friend, and he laughed. “That’s what I was going for when I photoshopped out the crow’s-feet and wrinkles. She does look good–just not that good.”
My gut feeling is that this is misrepresentation, and unethical. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 