I have a two-hour Zoom ethics seminar to teach this morning as lawyers who have waited until the last minute to get their ethics CLE credits in will be counting on me to rescue them.
Please help me out by leaving some ethics treats here at the open forum.
Meanwhile, if you have access to Disney+ and haven’t seen the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” segment of the Master’s “Ichabod and Mr. Toad” since you were a tot (or ever), I recommend it highly. The first segment (an adaptation of “The Wind in the Willows”) is also excellent but not Halloween-themed.
The first post today already has me dreading what is to come, and, believe it or not, the next one is even more stupid than that one.
Help me out here by adding some challenging, enlightening, erudite discussions on the finer points of ethics while I stand over here wondering what the world is coming to, and trying to avoid the most likely answer…
Trust me, I am going to post on the head-exploding reaction of House Democrats to the necessary and just censure of Al Green two days ago. That post is coming: I’ve just been in a quandary over which movie or TV clip from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive to use. It’s amazing how many apply to the behavior of the once honorable party of Jackson, FDR and Carter (but not Clinton or Biden) as their behavior becomes less professional and more loony seemingly by the hour. The options are daunting. I could justify using, in addition to Dana’s scream of confusion above from “Poltergeist,”
The clip from “A Man for All Seasons” (“….but for Al Green?”)
The “Animal House” “futile and stupid gesture” speech.
“You know: Morons.”
Sidney Wang on the “stupid theory.”
“Madness! Madness!” (Bridge Over the River Kwai”)
“He chose…poorly.”
“The Naked Gun’s” “Nothing to see here!”
“Snap out of it!” and Cher’s classic slap.
George’s “Was that wrong?” (This is a strong contender…)
The “Plan 9 From Outer Space” clip (“Your stupid minds!”)
“This business will get out of control!”
Marty McFly’s “He’s an asshole!”
The “one big pile of shit” from “Jurassic Park”
That’s more than a third of the total, and I omitted a few that were on the cusp. Well, you’ll see which clip wins the prize very soon.
Meanwhile, please write about something else relating to our mission here, and save your comments for the Democratic Party’s latest disgrace for that post.
Everything is a chore right now: I’m sore all over and can hardly walk after falling down a flight of stairs in the dark at my sister’s house while looking for her dog to take to my house after she (my sister, not the dog) ended up in a hospital emergency room unexpectedly two nights ago.
So the more lively and provocative you are here, the happier I’ll be. And I’m still looking for guest posts: one is on the runway now.
Today is the anniversary of the Beatles arriving in New York to begin what was to be an epic ten-day tour of the U.S. in 1964, sending Beatlemania to new heights. There are few things that make me laugh out loud in pure joy these days—MSNBC freakouts cause rueful laughter if not my Nelson Muntz imitation—but one of them is when the Beatles Channel on Sirius/XM plays recordings of the Fab Four’s concerts from those days, with the teenage girls screaming their lungs out. It’s just so innocent, happy, wonderful….and weird. And we will never, never see the like again.
But “Help!” (Grace told me that she and her best friend went to the movie ten times) is up there for a different reason. I need it. It makes me feel a little better to read so many other bloggers, commentators, social media whizzes and pundits complaining that the opening Trump Presidency whirlwind has them overwhelmed and frustrated, but it doesn’t, you know, help. These are important issues that require ethical perspectives (since almost nobody else is supplying them), and I literally cannot afford to spend all my time on this for all the reasons regular readers here are used to me complaining about.
And this is an especially crucial month, not because I have a lot of paying work—-this is always a dead period for ProEthics—but because I have set this month aside to take care of many crucial administrative, business and personal tasks that I have accumulated while trying to keep a two-person operation functioning by myself and trying to ignore the Call of the Woodchipper. Yesterday I spent so much time researching, thinking about and writing about the topics here that I got nothing productive done on anything else.
Thorough, thoughtful, articulate discussions of current ethics event on the open forums do help, but what I really need right now is focused guest columns on the daily Trump vs. Axis War. EA has one excellent regular columnist now, the ineffable Curmie, but the political arena is not his favored field, and thank goodness for that. This month I need guest columns on the accelerating government/cultural/societal upheaval, and I need them quickly. I also want to be able to write about non-political matters without having to whiff on an ethics issue of importance thrown at me from the world of politics.
I will still have to edit these guest posts (lightly) and I can’t guarantee that every one will be published; if I decide that a submission isn’t what I need, I will ask that it go up on the next Forum. And you can consider it an audition for a regular gig, if an unpaid one.
My email, again, is jamproethics@verizon.net. Send your submissions to that address, and to all you frustrated banned commenters out there: Yes, you can have a guest column published too! You just have to make sure it doesn’t begin by calling me an asshole.
End of plea. Now, as Hedley Lamarr so memorably said, “Go do that voodoo that you do so weeeeeell!
Is everything going to Hell, as my sister concludes at the conclusion of every conversation we have that wanders into world events and national politics?
Stay on topic, now; it’s ethics, not politics. I just had to reject a proffered comment that was just a screed against Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who, I agree, appears to be the dumbest member of the Senate but who could probably clobber in Scrabble a dozen or more House members. Read the EA comment policies, Newcomers!
This is as good a place to note my disgust as any. In an example of life imitating the Babylon Bee, a bipartisan group of House members decided that in these “challenging times” they have nothing better to do than to troll Gov. Kristi Noem, she of the itchy trigger finger, while sucking up to PETA.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) announced in a post on Twitter, alias “X,” “In light of recent events, we’re launching the Congressional Dog Lovers Caucus today! This group dedicated to man’s best friend aims to foster bipartisan cooperation and will help put paws over politics.” His post featured photos of Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Susan Wild (D-Pa.), alongside Moskowitz, each with a dog.
Mace issued a press release blathering,“While Congress might disagree on everything, we can all agree that dogs are beloved companions, bringing us all so much joy. We started this caucus to champion legislation that protects the rights and well-being of dogs, ensuring they receive the care, respect, and recognition they deserve…In a time of polarization and partisanship, I’m proud to join my colleagues from both sides of the aisle and commit to working on behalf of our pets, who give us so much joy and comfort every day.”
The dogs might as well take over the state houses too. The Hill reports that Kristi’s spin on her animal-shooting rampage is now that the dog she shot was a veritable Cujo.
But that’s enough from me: this is your chance to howl…
I have to squeeze in some EA Catch-up today despite an unusual number of paid ethics work projects. I hope the forum takes up any slack.
Yesterday’s posts were truncated mid-day by my first excursion to a baseball game (Red Sox vs. Nats) since 2021, when I found having to eat a hot dog while wearing a stupid mask made the game unbearable. But there have been some alarming developments since then too…
A funny thing happened on the way to this forum…about eight sudden deadlines raised their ugly heads, I had two genuine home crises to deal with, and the Ethics Alarms runways are packed with backed -up ethics issues. The week also featured “The Attack of the Banned Commenters,” WordPress glitches, and more. Meanwhile, last week’s forum is still bumping along, and I haven’t had time to read any of it.
Today is devoted trying to organize the rationalization list into a book outline (finally!), catching up here, there, and everywhere, and sending good thoughts to the Red Sox, who are in San Francisco where all sorts of bad things could happen to them before they even take the field tonight.
What do you want to talk about—respectfully, civilly, perceptively?
Ethics Alarms 