Dean Martin

Friday Open Forum: It’s a Marshmallow World!

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ironically, the very song that triggered my blue Christmas reflexes as described in last night’s post (I heard it on Sirius-XM’s Christmas Traditions channel, where 99.6% of the artists featured are dead and most of them are dearly missed) became relevant this morning, as we Northern Virginians woke up to a snow-covered landscape and big, fluffy flakes falling. (Climate change, you know!) The song was written in 1949 by Carl Sigman (lyrics) and Peter DeRose (music), and Bing Crosby—of course!—introduced it. Bing’s recording was a hit, but over time it is Dino’s version that has become iconic, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a frivolous song about enjoying snow, and Martin’s inimitable slurry, cheery rendition is perfect for the mood. Another Christmas song in the canon is all Dean’s: he aced “Let it Snow!” as well.

So many of the modern seasonal songs have truly terrible lyrics (and some traditional carols too), but “Marshmallow World” has a lyric for the bridge I regard as excellent, and also ethically inspiring:

Oh, the world is your snowball, see how it grows
That’s how it goes whenever it snows
The world is your snowball just for a song
Get up and roll it along!

Today let the open forum be your snowball, and see how it grows…

Final ‘Week Before Christmas’ Ethics Shopping, 12/16/2019: Joy, Obama, And JPMorgan

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Inspiring Christmas lyrics of the week:

Oh, the world is your snowball, see how it grows
That’s how it goes, whenever it snows
The world is your snowball just for a song
Get out and roll it along

1. That this kind of thing could happen at a major bank in 2019 is inexplicable and disgusting. Jimmy Kennedy, a nine-year NFL veteran,  earned $13 million during his nine-year career and had been told that he would be accepted as a “private client” at JPMorgan Chase, an elite designation with perks like travel discounts, exclusive event invitations and better deals on loans. When he went to  his local JPMorgan branch in Arizona to determine why he had not been accepted into the cataegory, he was told by his representative, who is black, “You’re bigger than the average person, period. And you’re also an African-American. We’re in Arizona. I don’t have to tell you about what the demographics are in Arizona. They don’t see people like you a lot.”

Kennedy recorded the conversation, and after pulling most of his money out of JPMorgan,  complained to the bank as well as an industry watchdog agency. The bank sent him a letter saying, “You stated that Mr. Belton informed you that our firm was prejudiced against you and intimidated by you because of your race. We found no evidence to substantiate your allegations.”

He also sent the recording to the New York Times, which wrote about Kennedy’s experience. A few days later, Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, sent a memo telling employees that such behavior “does not reflect who we are as a company and how we serve our clients and communities every day.”

That’s the Pazuzu Excuse: “It wasn’t me!” Sorry, chief, but if you have employees treating African Americans like Kennedy was treated, that is who you are as a company, and as CEO, you’re responsible. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Jerry Lewis

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Great comedians are usually, as Sid Caesar once memorably told Larry King, “miserable sons of bitches,” and few fit that description better than Jerry Lewis. As a result, he also stands as a classic example of how not-so-nice people can still do wonderful, heroic deeds. In Lewis’s case, the deed is the  Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon. Lewis has announced that because of his failing health and advanced age (he is 86), the 2011 version will be his final telethon, and the show itself is being drastically scaled back from over 20 hours in its heyday to about 6 hours. The decline of his Labor Day telethon tradition is as good a time as ever to give Lewis—arrogant, loutish, egomaniacal, tough old bastard that he is—his due. Jerry Lewis is an Ethics Hero. There’s just no way getting around it.

For decades I thought that Jerry Lewis’s involvement with MDA was a stunt cooked up by his publicist during his decline in popularity, to ensure that he would have public visibility after studios stopped offering him movie roles. That was wrong: Lewis started doing telethons for muscular dystrophy in 1952, when his stardom was just blooming and he was still teamed with Dean Martin. his fundraising for medical research began as a series of local broadcasts and went national in 1966. By then Lewis’s career was indeed on the wane (his last hit movie had been “The Nutty Professor” in 1963), but the telethon had already been a constant in his life for 14 years. Jerry wasn’t doing it for himself. He really was doing it for “the kids.” Continue reading →