On Trump’s Fight Fight Fight Perfume

No doubt about it, one of the “norms” that President-Elect Donald Trump is shredding, stomping on and setting on fire is the tradition of Presidents not using their office, visibility, popularity and influence to sell products, with their names as brands. I’m not sure doing this had even occurred to previous White House residents; it certainly never occurred to the Founders…or me, to be honest.

Naturally, because it’s Trump, the usual Axis snipers are horrified. A particularly stinky response issued from New York Times Trump-hating columnist Frank Bruni‘s poison keyboard, titled “Take a Whiff of Eau de Trump. It Reeks.” [Gift link! Ho Ho Ho!]This is what the Axis propaganda machine is left with: playground-level insults for the elected President before he can even take the oath. Honeymoon? Respect? Good faith? Patriotism? Unity? Bi-Partisanship? Nah! What are they?

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Ethics Quiz: The “Inappropriate Dance” [Updated and Expanded]

Maybe this one should be titled, “Tell Me What I’m Missing.”

Buhach Colony High School (California) principal Robert Nunes was placed on administrative this week after a video of an obviously planned and choreographed bit of foolery with the basketball team’s mascot “went viral.” It was a pep rally. Mascots (which I hate, but that’s another issue) frequently do these kind of routines, and bringing authority figures into the gag is standard fare, giving the human butts of the giant costumed things a chance to appear more human, show they are good sports, yada yada. I’ve seen baseball managers get in to faux fistfights with these escapees from a Disneyland parade. The crowd generally loves it, the morons. Big deal.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is is fair to suspend a high school principal for that routine above?

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Ethics Quiz: Elected Officials Acting In An Undignified Manner

I had to post an ethics quiz on this, especially after beginning the day writing, “I’d say anyone celebrating Star Wars Day today (“May the Fourth be with you!”) on this May 4 needs to get out more. In addition to being a day that promises further depressing developments on college campuses as the decades of progressive, anti-American, and Marxist indoctrination have their predictable (and probably intentional) consequences—though somehow the ivory tower revolutionaries in charge of those campuses were oddly unprepared for them!—this date has an ominous history.”

And there he is, J.B. Pritzker, the Governor of Illinois, posing with his wife on social media to celebrate “Star Wars” in a pose apparently evoking a yet-to-be released “Star Wars” sequel in which Luke and Leia are victims of the Empire’s diabolical fat ray.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it responsible for high-ranking elected officials to present themselves to the public looking and acting ridiculous?

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Ethics Hero: Brittany Hensel

I wrote about the Hensel twins—that’s Abigail, the bride, above on the left, and Brittany, the maid-of-honor (I’m assuming) on the right—back in 2012 after the conjoined twins agreed to star in a reality show. The post was titled, “Are Freak Shows Unethical? Because They Are Back.” In the post I confessed my sadness that the twins, whose amazing story I had followed since they were todlers, had cashed in and allowed themselves to be exploited:

I first learned about Abigail and Brittany Hensel many years ago in a Life magazine feature about the remarkable  conjoined twins, who to all observers appear to be a two-headed girl. That article talked about how accepting and protective their community was of Abigail and Brittany’s privacy and dignity, and how, except for the fact that they shared a single body, the twins were happy and well-adjusted. Later, when they were teens, there was a documentary about the girls on one of the network news magazines. Again, they seemed smart, lively and and normal by any standard, not just for a “two-headed girl.” They spoke enthusiastically about wanting to have careers and families, and sounded like any other teenager. I found the story both hopeful, inspiring and depressing, especially when Abigail said that she wanted to be a commercial airline pilot and Brittany said that she wanted to be a lawyer. How, exactly, were they going to pull that off?

Now the twins are young women—or a young two-headed woman?—and have apparently made the decision to become professional human oddities. They will be starring this month in a new reality show about their daily life and special problems. We can rationalize the show as an inspiring weekly demonstration of the strength and determination the twins must muster to overcome their disability and to try to lead normal lives, but let’s be honest: this is a modern freak show, no more, no less. As engaging and courageous as Abigail and Brittany are, the primary appeal of the show to the vast majority of viewers will be the fascination of watching a real, live, two-headed girl go through life….Yes, I wish I could have read that they had graduated from law school and started a law firm, or married two wonderful, normal guys who love them and are able to deal with the fact that it is biologically impossible to have sexual relations with only one twin at a time, since they have just one set of genitals between them. It was not going to happen, though, and as the reality of their options dawned on the girls in adulthood, they came to a rational decision: cash in. People are going to gawk at them anyway, they might as well get rich from it if they can….

Now comes the news that one of the twins, Abigail Hensel, got married and has been married for more than two years. Yikes. What’s that like? The HBO series “Tales from the Crypt” had a very funny episode about this situation, but the real life complications are mind-blowing, particular, as I noted in the earlier post, the twins share a single set of sex organs. They have to cooperate to live: one twin controls the left side of what appears to be their single body, the other controls the right side.

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Ethics Dunces: The U.S. Congress. Again

Actor Mark Ruffalo (he plays the Hulk in The Avengers  movies, but it wasn’t because of that role) was invited to testify before Congress last year on public policy involving  public health, chemistry, toxicology, and epidemiology. He has no expertise in these areas at all. The reason was that he starred in “Dark Waters,” which I wrote about here.

Ruffalo is a 9/11 truther, believing  that the U.S. government helped destroy the World Trade Center. That would be enough for me to ding him as an authority on anything, but he has embraced other conspiracy theories as well, like this one.

Never mind: he was presented to the public as an authority on pollution whose opinions on environmental matters have weight. The don’t, and they shouldn’t.

This is a repeat offense. Members of Congress are addicted to the unprofessional and insulting stunt of inviting actors and performers to testify as substantive witnesses on topics that they acted about in movies. As a professional director, I can state with absolute certainty that if an actor is really an expert in something their character was supposed to experience or know something about, 1) that actor is very unusual, and 2) there will still be thousands of real authorities who know a lot more.

Nevertheless, Congress keeps doing this, apparently believing that the public is so naive and gullible that they really believe that because a performer credibly pretends to know what a script-writer prepares to make them sound like the know, they really are experts. Sadly, a lot of the public does believe that. (More sadly, a lot of actors do too) Continue reading

No, There’s Nothing Unethical About Performing Holograms Of Dead Singers…

…as long as they don’t materially misrepresent the performer or the performance. They may be icky, but they aren’t unethical. This is in ethical contrast with the Ethics Alarms position on zombie performers in films, as examined here several times, most recently upon the unveiling of zombie James Dean.

The issue has arisen because a holograph of Whitney Houston, mercifully in a form before her physical and vocal decline due to drug abuse, is touring the country. Here’s a review of one of the performances; Zombie Whitney will make her debut in the US soon. Big plus: she doesn’t have to worry about the Wuhan virus, just holograms of the Wuhan virus. Fans have been less than ecstatic, as much because of the quality of the image as the ickiness of the concept. Here’s part of one review: Continue reading

Yes, It’s Another “Ick Or Ethics?” Quiz: Sarah Palin’s Surprise

Believe it or not, that’s Sarah next to the bear….

To be absolutely transparent, my mind’s made up on this one: I think it’s unethical. However, I admit to be a hard-liner on this issue, which is “The duty of leaders not to debase their positions or former positions for personal gain or ego gratification.”

Let me introduce this  horrific cultural episode by saying that I regard the TV show involved, “The Masked Singer,” among the Top Ten Stupidest Shows in the history of network television, and I’ve seen a LOT of network television, far more than is good for me. Its existence is an insult to the public, its taste and intelligence, and the United States of America. Maybe the species too. Adam and Eve.

Now here is the video clip. Consider yourself warned: it cannot be unseen or unheard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnzKzHKUKoo

Yes, Sarah Palin dressed up in a rainbow teddy bear suit and rapped “Baby Got Back” on national television.

The lyrics from Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Noel Cowardesque 1992 hit:

Oh, my, God Becky, look at her butt
It is so big, she looks like
One of those rap guys’ girlfriends.
But, ya know, who understands those rap guys?
They only talk to her, because,
She looks like a total prostitute, ‘kay?
I mean, her butt, is just so big
I can’t believe it’s just so round, it’s like out there
I mean gross, look
She’s just so, black
I like big butts and I can not lie
You other brothers can’t deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, want to pull up tough
‘Cause you notice that butt was stuffed
Deep in the jeans she’s wearing
I’m hooked and I can’t stop staring
Oh baby, I want to get wit’cha
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me
But with that butt you got makes (me so horny)…

Nice. Classy!

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Was Palin’s appearance on “The Masked Singer” icky, funny, or unethical?

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Ethics Warm-Up, 11/19/29: Rushing Around Hotel Rooms Edition

Started this post in a DoubleTree this morning, finishing it (I hope) this afternoon in a Hyatt.

1. Nauseating. The ACLU awarded Christine Blasey Ford the Roger Baldwin Courage Award.

There is no excuse for this, and it shows how deeply the once pointedly non-partisan Bill of Rights defense organization has allied itself with the political Left. The attack she fostered on Brett Kavanaugh violated the principle of due process and her unsubstantiated accusation of a dimly recalled sexual assault when the Justice was a teenager is the kind of abuse of justice that the ACLU once opposed. Writes an outraged Nina Bookout on Victory Girls,

What exactly did she do that could be defined as courageous?

  • Was it her allegations of rape that were never verified?
  • Was it her throwing high school friends under the bus?
  • Was it changing her stories in mid-stream, and then changing them again while testifying?
  • How about the fact that she needed Mark Judge to verify the date she was attacked because she can’t remember?
  • How about her beach conversations, the polygraph, and the weirdness about the second door?

If that’s today’s definition of courage by the ACLU, then we have yet another word with its meaning distorted in order to fit a desired narrative.

What Christine Blasey Ford did, with the tacit approval of the Left and encouragement from the likes of Diane Feinstein, is the very opposite of courage. It is spiteful cowardice.

Obviously, I think, Blasey-Fordis being lionized by the ACLU for applying the ends justifies the means approach by being willing to expose herself to deserved ridicule in order to smear a Trump SCOTUS nominee deemed to place the right to abortion at risk.

In this she is reaping the same benefits that came Anita Hill’s way when she ambushed Clarence Thomas with distant accounts of alleged sexual harassment.

2. Speaking of undeserving “heroes,” pundits are saying that it does not seem as if the NFL “trusts” Colin Kaepernick. Well, of course they don’t. The way he has packaged himself as a martyr for “social justice,” there is literally no chance that if signed as a back-up quarterback, he would devote his full attention and energy to playing football.

What I find amazing is the news media’s constant description of his kneeling stunt as “raising public awareness to police violence against African Americans.” How does a football player kneeling during the National Anthem call attention to anything other than a football player kneeling during the National Anthem? It doesn’t. My attention is drawn to police violence against African Americans when I learn about a genuine example of it, like the shooting of Walter Scott in the back as he fled an arrest. When inarticulate publicity-seeking  race-baiters like Kaepernick say their actions are meant to raise public awareness of police violence against African Americans and they cite Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, and other complex episodes, then they only call attention to their ignorance and unethical desire to demonize whites and police. Continue reading

And Now It’s Zombie James Dean…

From The Hollywood Reporter:

James Dean, who died in a 1955 car crash at the age of 24, is making an unexpected return to the big screen. The cultural icon, known for Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, has been posthumously cast in the Vietnam era action-drama Finding Jack.

Directed by Anton Ernst and Tati Golykh, the project comes from the filmmakers’ own recently launched production house Magic City Films, which obtained the rights to use Dean’s image from his family. Canadian VFX banner Imagine Engine will be working alongside South African VFX company MOI Worldwide to re-create what the filmmakers describe as “a realistic version of James Dean.”

We all saw this coming, didn’t we? Since this is about involuntarily resuscitating dead actors so greedy family members can put them to work doing whatever a director screenwriter wants them to do, I feel no need to write a new post, especially since my position hasn’t changed one bit from the other instances in which I looked at this issue. So here it is again, lightly edited… Continue reading

You Are No Doubt Reading About How Yesterday’s Election Gave Democrats Control Over The Virginia Legislature. Here Is A Notable Component Of That Accomplishment.

Be proud, Democrats!

Former Virginia lawmaker Joe  Morrissey  won the state Senate seat for the 16th District in the Old Dominion last night, defeating Independent Waylin Ross.  Morrissey got more than 60% of the votes, showing an enthusiastic  electorate. He will now represent parts of Richmond, Chesterfield County, Petersburg, Hopewell, Prince George County, and Dinwiddie County.

Who is Joe Morrissey? Let me refresh your memory using this post, from 2014. The first half of it was about revolting Republican House member Blake Farenthold—the guy wearing the duck pajamas—

who was, thankfully, finally forced out of office in the wake of #MeToo.  The second half was about Joe: Continue reading