celebrities

Time For My Cultural Literacy Check…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I believe, and have believed for as long as I can remember—Shut up, I remember more than most people—that everyone in our society has an ethical obligation to know as much as possible about the society and culture we live in. This takes time and effort, as well as humility. For the young, it means showing an interest in what had transpired before they were born, if it had a significant effect on history and culture.

I have related here my interaction with a professional woman, ten years my junior, who revealed that she didn’t know who Jackie Robinson was. I told her that was inexcusable, and sent her to some sources. A lawyer I worked with at one point, even younger, couldn’t come within 70 years of the dates of the Civil War, despite graduating with honors from Cornell and being an associate at Skadden Arps.

The case was made powerfully in the Eighties by J.D. Hirsch in his best-seller “Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know,” and he updated his book several times. His main declaration was that without a shared cultural knowledge, communication and understanding between generations becomes impossible, and society’s connective tissue is eventually degraded and destroyed. Analogies and metaphors no longer work; patterns are no longer detected; “presentism” becomes epidemic. Jackie Robinson was on Hirsch’s list; so were John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Sen. Joe McCarthy, Marilyn Monroe, James Watson, Will Rogers, Elvis Presley and Fred Astaire.

Older generations have obligations too. As a child who watched more television than anyone I know (or knew), I became convinced that TV was an essential cultural literacy tool. My parents, one a lawyer and Harvard College grad and the other a career Harvard administrator, had many friends who boasted of either never watching TV or only deigning to watch PBS. Even when I was ten, I regarded them as arrogant and foolish, which they were. They didn’t see the Sixties coming, or comprehend the culture that was its catalyst when it fell on then like a rock squishing Wile E. Coyote.

I acknowledge that keeping up with current culture, while in some respects easier than it used to be due to technology, is overwhelming, and to some extent even impossible. We have many parallel cultures trying to coexist today, and some are antithetical to each other. At very least, I believe, all of us have to try to keep abreast of popular culture, which includes important societal developments that drive that relentless engine.

Last week EA expressed disgust that Sen. Jim Clyburn had revealed that he only recently became aware of ChatGPT. He’s 80: it’s no excuse. It would be almost as inexcusable if Clyburn announced that he didn’t know who Taylor Swift is. President Trump was recently dragged in social media for apparently conflating a kids’ TV host from the Fifties with Eighties star Paul Reubens, aka. Peewee Herman. At least Trump is aware of Peewee’s existence; that fulfills his cultural literacy obligation.

Five years ago, I wrote a discouraged post about how my cultural literacy commitment was failing, Confession Of A Life Competence Failure. I am obviously over-due for an audit, so I went to the same source for a pop quiz: WeSmirch, a web aggregator of celebrity news. In 2021, I regarded my performance as a failure, writing in part,

“It was horrifying. I never heard of most of these people. Those I have heard of seem completely irrelevant to me. Almost all of the important people in these stories seem to be morons, famous for being famous, illiterate, notable mostly for being rich. The so-called “news,” breathlessly shouted from various headlines, seemed less than inconsequential. And yet this is what a rising generation cares about. Here is a typical headline from this morning: “Vanessa Morgan’s son is called River.” Who is Vanessa Morgan? Who cares what her son is named? It turns out that she is an actress on “Riverdale,” a TV show based on the comic book whose appeal I never understood (but I read the damn thing so I knew what my friends were reading). My score was 15 celebrity names recognized, with 17 complete mysteries. My conclusion: “When all the celebrities are strangers, I will have reached the dreaded stage of my uncle, who got the Beatles mixed up with the Rolling Stones, and the codgers today who talk about the internet like it’s some new-fangled fad. And at that point, I will be useless.”

Let’s see what my score is today. The “celebrities”…

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Ethics Quiz: The Professional Bimbo’s Late Hit

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Courtney Stodden, a reality show star for about 15 years and with her career sagging, decided this week to accuse “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander of abusive and exploitive behavior towards a “child” based on a sketch they performed together in 2012. The two were in a Funny or Die sketch where Alexander played a self-help guru and relationship coach. Stodden wore an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny small-as-it-could-be bikini as Alexander cracked jokes about her feminine assets.

At one point in the web video episode, Alexander rubbed an iPhone over her chest. “I was 17 years old in this photo,” Stodden wrote on Instagram. “The older I get, the more impossible this is to understand. During this comedy sketch, Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone across my breasts while saying there was ‘no signal’ in my head but ‘plenty of signal’ in my chest.” Jason was 53 at the time and co- writer of the sketch.

“Later in the sketch,” Stodden continued, “he joked that when I turned 18 he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me. IMDb credits him as one of the writers of the episode. As an adult, that fact has become harder—not easier—for me to understand. I was a minor. I didn’t have the legal power to decide whether I wanted to participate. The contracts were signed by adults. The paycheck went to Doug [her husband]. The production moved forward. I was the only child in the room. I felt so alone. Looking back now, I don’t see comedy. I see a 17-year-old girl whose body became part of an adult joke. People still say, ‘You chose to be there.’ Legally, I couldn’t make those decisions for myself. That’s the point. I can’t change what happened to me but I can ask myself: How did so many adults look at a minor and decide this was acceptable? That’s exactly why I speak out today. Children deserve laws that protect them. They shouldn’t have to become adults before realizing the law should have protected them all along.”

Alexander, not wishing to be cancelled over an offense from 14-year-old skit that nobody remembers, groveled an apology. “Looking back at the comedy sketch in which Ms. Stodden and I participated in 2012, I completely agree that it was inappropriate and I truly regret it,” he said. “But more importantly, I am deeply sorry for any harm or distress it has caused Ms. Stodden. I offer her my sincerest apologies.”

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, “The rest of the story!”

As an introduction, here is Courtney at what I guess she would call “her peak”:

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Confronting My Biases #28: Shannon Elizabeth

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I know this particular bias is probably indefensible. I know how I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t. A little help here?

Remember Shannon Elizabeth? I’d place her in the same category as Andrea Dromm, Michelle Johnson and Pam Austin, three earlier sexy, attractive starlets who had brief moments of B-level film success before they were pushed into obscurity by younger Hollywood “It” girls. It’s a cruel business, and especially cruel for young women whose main assets are their assets and not the potential to play Medea.

Shannon Elizabeth gained 10 minutes of stardom playing the sex kitten in the raunchy hit “American Pie”: that was her peak. “America Pie II” is where that photo above comes from, and professionally it was all downhill after that…a few forgettable flops, a TV series that was cancelled in its first season, nothing since 2006. Her Wikipedia page describes her as an “activist,” a professional poker player, and an actress. Her major recent accomplishment seems to be being named “one of the leading celebrity poker players”20 years ago.

I find all this ineffably sad, but that’s not the topic today. It is this: at the age of 52, Shannon just filed for divorce and announced that she was opening an Only Fans account, where horny middle-aged men can pay to see her ta-tas, and presumably other things.

“I’ve spent my entire career working in Hollywood, where other people controlled the narrative and the outcome of my career. This new chapter is about changing that, showing off a more sexy side no one has seen, and being closer to my fans,” Elizabeth told PEOPLE . “I’m choosing OnlyFans because it allows me to connect directly with my audience, create on my own terms, and just be free. I really do think this is the future.”

Fans can subscribe to her page starting today. Let me translate what her statement says to me.

“I have never developed any special skills and have the intellectual life of a salmon. My career was based entirely on my looks, my marriage went to hell, and I couldn’t write a book or host a podcast on a bet. Yeah, I’ve got some money saved up, but I’m addicted to being looked at. I’ve slid all the way down the usual greased poll of fading B-level celebrity: reality shows, Dancing with the Stars, so now it’s come to this. I know forty and fifty year-old men will pay to see me naked because they liked ‘American Pie.’ At least that’s something.”

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Kanye West Issues a Level #1 Apology…Or Maybe Not

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

That’s the full page ad that “Ye,” aka. Kanye West, paid to have placed in, of all papers, the Wall Street Journal. I wonder what percentage of WSJ readers even know who the hell he is? Never mind; he did it. Here’s what the ad says (I hesitate to put down “he wrote’):

“Twenty-five years ago, I was in a car accident that broke my jaw and caused injury to the frontal lobe of my brain. At the time, the focus was on the visible damage – the fracture, the swelling, and the immediate physical trauma. The deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed….”

It wasn’t properly diagnosed until 2023. That medical oversight caused serious damage to my mental health and led to my bipolar type-1 diagnosis. Bipolar disorder comes with its own defense system. Denial. When you’re manic, you don’t think you’re sick. You think everyone else is overreacting. You feel like you’re seeing the world more clearly than ever, when in reality you’re losing your grip entirely.

Once people label you as crazy, you feel as if you cannot contribute anything meaningful to the world. It’s easy for people to joke and laugh it off when in fact this is a very serious debilitating disease you live from….

The scariest thing about this disorder is how persuasive it is when it tells you: You don’t need help. It makes you blind, but convinced you have insight. You feel powerful, certain, and unstoppable. 

I lost touch with reality. Things got worse the longer I ignored the problem. I said and did things I deeply regret. Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst. You endured fear, confusion, humiliation, and the exhaustion of trying to love someone who was, at times, unrecognizable. Looking back, I became detached from my true self. 

In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find: the swastika, and even sold t-shirts bearing it. One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type 1 are the disconnected moments – many of which I still cannot recall that lead to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body experience. I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people. 

To the black community – which held me down through all of the highs and lows and some of my darkest times. The black community is, unquestionably, the foundation of who I am. I am so sorry to have let you down. I love us. 

In early 2025, I fell into a four-month long manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life. As the situation became increasingly unsustainable, there were times I didn’t want to be here anymore. 

Having bipolar disorder is not a state of constant mental illness. When you go into the manic episode, you are ill at that point. When you are not in an episode, you are completely “normal.” And that’s when the wreckage from the illness hits the hardest. Hitting rock bottom a few months ago, my wife encouraged me to finally get help. 

I have found comfort in Reddit forums of all places. Different people speak of being in manic or depressive episodes of a similar nature. I read their stories and realized that I was not alone. It’s not just me who run [sic] their entire life once a year despite taking meds every day and being told by the so-called best doctors in the world that I am not bipolar, but merely experiencing “symptoms of autism.” 

My words as a leader in my community have real global impact and influence. In my mania, I lost complete sight of that. 

As I find my new baseline and new center through an effective regime of medication, therapy, exercise and clean living, I have newfound, much-needed clarity. I am pouring my energy into positive, meaningful art: music, clothing, design, and other new ideas to help the world. 

I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness. I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”

It’s time to check the old, Ethics Alarms Apology Scale to see where this whatever it is fits.

According to the scale, this is the hierarchy of apologies, their function and their motivation, from most admirable to the least credible:

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Unethical Quote of the Day: Some Jerk on Twitter/”X”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“He’s more than what you’ll ever be.”

—Ian Mendoza, whoever the hell he is, an “X” commenter whose profile says “It’s okay to be anti-Israel don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise”

Out of the mouths of morons occasionally come enlightening idiocy!

Ian was delivering what he thought was a crushing retort to critics of the latest Trump Deranged rant from actor Mark Ruffalo, this one at the Golden Globes. Ruffalo’s name now comes up #1 on Google if you search for “Anti-Trump actor,” just ahead of Robert DeNiro. Like DeNiro, Ruffalo is an excellent actor; also like DeNiro (and a surprising number of seemingly intelligent actors), he is a political, historical, critical thought-deprived ignoramus. The actor was prominently wearing the anti-I.C.E. “Good” pin at the awards show, which I consider signature significance. His latest rant was so fatuous it isn’t worth my time to fisk it, but I was impressed with Ian’s comment.

It perfectly encapsulates the logical fallacy that makes so many Americans pay attention to the outbursts of Dunning-Kruger suffering celebrities. Ruffalo, like AOC, was a bartender for almost a decade, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But he apparently got the idea that he was some kind of public policy guru by winning arguments with drunks. Other than mixology, his only other occupational pursuit of any duration has been acting, which he began in earnest in high school and then immediately entered the professional ranks upon graduation. Wikipedia tells us Ruffalo attended “progressive schools,” so he is a cautionary tale in the perils of ideological indoctrination.

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A Kaufman For The Royals! [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

These people are the most trivial, juvenile, time-wasting people in the long, stupid history of celebrities. Brits everywhere should hide their heads under paper bags for allowing them to encroach on our consciousness when there are sock draws desperately needing order and curling championships to watch.

Today we are told the shocking “news” that Kate Middleton celebrated her birthday a few days ago on January 9 and apparently Prince Harry and Meghan Markle didn’t wish her a happy birthday! One source “somewhat dramatically tells Rob Shuter’s ShuterScoop, ‘Not a peep. It’s deliberate. They’re making it clear they’re done. It’s a line in the sand.'”

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A Confederacy of Dunces at the Golden Globes

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The sock drawer isn’t small enough not to keep me from watching the annual Golden Globes broadcast, the parade of awards from people I don’t know or respect to performers I’ve barely heard of for shows I haven’t seen. Nonetheless, Hollywood (and others) managed to disgrace itself once again, reminding us that the artists who make our mass entertainment have the critical thinking skills of paper clips.

Once again the “Hollywood progs” (the name used by critics too genteel to call them “Hollywood assholes”) promoted the misguided latest woke cause. Last year it was the anti-Israel position insisting that nation should stop fighting Hamas and let the terrorists re-stock for the next massacre. This year, stars were wearing the fatuous anti-ICE pin, “Be Good.” Yeah, let’s all demand open borders, interfere with law enforcement, use our cars to block I.C.E operations, resist arrest, nearly run down and officer and get shot! Oh-oh, Sidney Wang is demanding a word…

Yeah, we know, Inspector.

We also know now that the late neighborhood open-borders fan was not good, as she was a contributor to Black Lives Matter, signature significance for someone who supports anti-white racism, lies (Michael Brown was murdered, you know!), riots, anti-law enforcement violence, dishonest news and scammers.

But never mind! The ACLU, among other principle-free organizations including communist groups, funded the creation and distribution of that tiny salute to idiocy. Talk about minds: the ACLU has genuinely lost theirs, along with any claim to respectability and credibility. The organization used to stand for free speech. Now it is deliberately using its reputation and resources to mislead the public into thinking Good was engaging in it by blocking law enforcement and defying the law.

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Ethics Observations On The Dionne Quintuplets’ Resentment

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The last of the famous Dionne Quintuplets died last week. Annette Dionne, who seems to have been the strongest of the five identical sisters from the very beginning, was 91. The New York Times has an obituary that is also an excellent feature on their unusual lives (Gift link!)—this is the kind of thing the Times still does well. There isn’t a single slap at President Trump anywhere, at least that I noticed.

The article begins by noting that Annette, like all of her sisters, “resented being exploited as part of a global sensation.” I get it: the five girls were celebrities from the second they were born, and their fame was such that they never really escaped it: thus the last surviving quint being deemed worthy of a Times obituary more than 60 years after her birth. But resenting something that any objective analysis would find unavoidable is not just pointless, it’s unfair. In this case, the resentment was unfair to the quints’ parents and the public.

In 1934, the birth of surviving quintuplets in Ontario, Canada was considered, justifiably, a medical miracle. All five of them together weighed only 13 pounds, 6 ounces. Yes, in a way they were freaks and treated as such, extraordinarily cute little freaks. Medical miracles give people hope; they suggest that the world is getting smarter, safer, more beneficent. This miracle happened in the pit of the Great Depression, when celebrities like Babe Ruth and Shirley Temple became icons because they made Americans forget their troubles.

To the girls’ parents, Oliva and Elzire Dionne, the arrival of five babies to a family living in poverty was a looming catastrophe. The parents and five children already lived in a run-down farmhouse lit by kerosene and serviced by an outhouse. The new babies were nursed on water and corn syrup until the family started receiving breast milk donations. The fact that the public was so interested in the quintuplets was a blessing that saved the family from disaster.

They were indeed exploited. The parents for a time surrendered custody of the girls and they were cared for by a government-appointed guardian, the doctor who had delivered them. The were housed and cared for by the doctor and a staff at “Quintland,” where they were displayed several times a day on a balcony as 6,000 spectators watched them through one-way glass.

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Snopes Rules That Irrelevant Cher Did Not Deliver a Crushing Retort To Karoline Leavitt For Calling Her Irrelevant

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Slow day at Snopes, mayhap?

Such worthies as “The View’s” fake republican Ana Navarro spread a story about how Trump paid liar Karoline Leavitt referred to ancient ex-pop star, ex-actress Cher as “irrelevant” only to be slapped down by Sonny Bono’s muse thusly:

Well, snap! Take that, fascist bitch!

The story went viral on social media, with other celebrities celebrating Cher’s comeback, at least of a verbal nature. But it didn’t happen. Snopes—not that the site is trustworthy either—determined the fake quotes from both Leavitt and Cher originated in an AI-authored article appearing on a website indicating that its owners resided in Vietnam.

So desperate are the Trump Deranged for moral victories that they must stoop to cheering on fake triumphs by antediluvian woke warriors nobody under the age of 45 is likely to remember. For Cher is irrelevant, and has been for more than two decadee. Leavitt wouldn’t bother to call her irrelevant because she is irrelevant, just as the fake exchange would be irrelevant even if it occurred. This means that Snopes declaring the tale false is also irrelevant.

As is this post, come to think of it…

Apparently a washed-up star can be considered relevant if she is believed to be sufficiently opposed to the President and his supporters. Once again, as with Nicki Minaj, I must ask, “Who cares what Cher thinks about Karoline Leavitt?”

I view this episode worthy of an Ethics Alarms Kaufmann. “A Kaufman” is applied to matters of controversy so inconsequential as to be unworthy of attention or indignation. George S. Kaufman,  celebrated wit and playwright, was on a TV panel show when singer Eddie Fisher ( father of Carrie) asked advice from the panel because desirable women were refusing to date him because of his youth. Kaufman replied,

“Mr. Fisher, on Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the development and construction of the Mount Palomar telescope.  The Mount Palomar telescope is an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope. Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to see my interest in your problem.”

For Eddie Fishers problem, substitute what Cher might say after Karoline Leavitt called her irrelevant. Even in her prime, Cher’s political views should have carried no more weight than the average Starbuck’s barista. Now, they are not even worthy of a Snopes factcheck.

Stupid Cognitive Dissonance Tricks: Who Cares What Nicki Minaj Thinks? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Nicki Minaj, the most successful female rapper in music history (a distinction in my book that ranks right up there with Eddie Gaedel being the only midget to play Major League Baseball), made a surprise appearance at the Turning Point USA AmericaFest convention, walking out hand-in-hand with CEO Erika Kirk, to close the conservative organization’s annual event in Phoenix, Arizona yesterday. The conservative media and blogosphere was ecstatic. (The Axis media was shocked and horrified.)

Minaj is a woman, black, and not native-born: she’s supposed to hate Trump, MAGA, conservatives, Republican, the whole basket of deplorables. But there she was, gushing on stage, “I have the utmost respect and admiration for our President. I don’t know if he even knows this, but he’s given so many people hope,” adding that Trump was “handsome,” “dashing” and a good “role model.”

So what? The news media presuming that Nicki Minaj’s opinion on anything should matter one iota to anyone is endorsing the fatuous delusion of the Harris campaign, which paid out millions to get endorsement from celebrities who have no policy credibility whatsoever. Nevertheless, the Right is celebrating Minaj’s endorsement for the same reason Democrats became Liz Cheney fans: these are Cognitive Dissonance Scale games, the most cynical kind imaginable. Minaj figures to have a fan base made up of demographics that tend to favor Democrats, but cognitive dissonance theory dictates that if someone high in their estimation embraces the MAGA cult, Trump, Turning Point and the rest will be forcefully pulled up the scale, maybe even into positive territory!

(Of course, the scale also dictates that Minaj’s popularity will take a major hit as well.)

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