My sister traditionally ends our phone conversation by suddenly blurting out—lately the impetus has been the prospect of a Presidential contest between Biden and Trump—“Everything’s going to Hell!” and hanging up. I am constitutionally disinclined to be that pessimistic (unlike some who comment here of late), but boy, I sure could use some good news beyond the ACLU deigning to protest a judge muzzling a major political candidate that her pals disapprove of.

Here’s my latest Ethics Alarms worry: increasingly, my story sources are demanding paywall fees. Most of the formerly free bloggers have moved to substack and subscription newsletters. The New York Post, CBS, NBC and others hit me with a block asking for ad-blockers to be disabled, then don’t remove the block until I’ve disabled the ad-blocker and refreshed three times or more. CNN has joined the group that make it difficult to copy text. Now The Blaze is going full subscription. I pay for the digital versions of the Washington Post and New York Times, but as we all know by now (I hope), they can’t be trusted.

I can only be Scarlet O’Hara for so long, but I guess I’ll worry about that tomorrow…

Enough bitching from me: Over to you, Clarence…

And it’s about time, too. The last OF was unusually spare, and this has been a lively, if ugly seven days since.

Elucidate and illuminate!

[Notes on that clip: 1. The “Howdy Doody Time” theme was sung to the melody of “Ta-ra-ra-Boom-dee-ay,” one of many traditional American songs that kids used to be taught and now never are. I was going to write a musical revue containing songs like that (“There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here!” among others) for my old theater company, but for various reasons it never happened. They are all infinitely superior to “Imagine.” 2. You’ve heard that voice singing the creepy Rice Crispies march. before. Who is it, and what famous song did he sing?]

An administrative note: I know WordPress’s pointless and gratuitous “improvement” of its comment registering system is confusing. But it does work: I spent an hour last week with a “Happiness Engineer” who tested it out with me. I’m sorry for the frustration and inconvenience: from my end, new glitches from WP innovations are a daily feature of writing the blog, so believe me, I feel your pain.

Coming attractions: the rest of the disturbing and perplexing Trevor Bauer saga; the significance of Biden’s second German Shepherd banishing; the education apocalypse, and D.C.’s Black Lives Matter-lovin’ mayor suddenly deciding that police are necessary after all. Lots of other issues rattling around, but as long as you don’t scoop me (or Curmie, who has a guest post coming) on those three, write about any ethics matter you choose.

Ready…on your mark…get set…GO!

This week’s forum will be sandwiched between Parts 1&2 of a September clean-up. So many delicious ethics stories and issues have floated or crawled by recently—and the volume seems to be increasing—that I’m desperately trying to reduce the backload. And the hits just keep on coming: I woke up to an alert that Senator Feinstein had died, an ethics story in itself. Evoking memories of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s most selfish and irresponsible conduct as President, Feinstein was willing to wither and die in office rather than give up her power and position when it was clear that the Reaper was knocking.

Last night, ethics actually kept me awake: the last post was typed out around 5 am. I’m hoping the contributions to the Forum will let me take an early nap.

Searching for ethics….

…they’re around here somewhere…

I want to thank everyone who pitched in to make the emergency Open Forum earlier this week as lively and interesting as it was. Now don’t rest on your laurels, though: as usual, there’s a lot out there in the ethics trees and underbrush to chew on…

What ever happened to the Doublemint Twins? I worry that they ended up like this…

As is usual on holiday weekends around here, the tumbleweeds will be blowing through the cyber-streets no matter what fascinating ethical conundrums I can find. Nevertheless, perhaps the few, those happy few, can make up in quality here what EA will almost certainly lack in quantity.

We shall see, will we not?

You’re up!

It’s time!