open forums

‘Live From Ethics Alarms, It’s FRIDAY OPEN FORUM!’

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

On a rainy June 1st in1975, President Gerald Ford slipped while walking down the Air Force One boarding stairs after landing in Salzburg. The caught-on-camera incident became a PR problem for an already controversial and unelected President seeking a full term the old fashioned way. The writers for newly-minted late night satirical skit comedy show on NBC, Saturday Night Live, know comedy gold when they saw it, turned Ford’s alleged clumsiness into a signature gag, with break-out show star Chevy Chase playing Ford and including elaborate pratfalls in many of the SNL “cold opens.”

Exactly 43 years after Ford’s fall, Joe Biden, who makes Ford look like one of the Flying Wallendas by comparison, took a Chevy Chase-like face plant on stage at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado yesterday. This poses an immediate integrity test for SNL, or would, if the show had not completely abandoned integrity when it decided to leave Barack Obama essentially unscathed for eight years. If I were producing SNL, I’d bring back Chevy and have him introduced as Biden in the cold open…and that would be enough (and it would be all that would be realistically possible, as Chase ruined his back by all those falls as Ford.

What are the odds? I’m not curious enough to watch the show, as I have not since it became a full-time Democratic Party attack machine, but Joe’s tumble had me thinking about it.

But I digress. There is plenty in the ethics jungle to talk about, so get to it.

Last May 2023 Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I had one last chance to use the cheery song from “Camelot” again, so I took it. The 2023 revival of that show opened to near unanimous pans from critics in April (ironically); the book had been over-hauled by “The West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin, and arrived with black knights of the Round Table among other panders to the woke Broadway crowd. It also arrived without Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, which was the real killer: the original “Camelot” had iconic stars, lovely stars, spectacle, and a really bad book (unlike the classic book it was based on, “The Once and Future King” by T.H. White. It also had a wistful title song that was turned into the valedictory of the Kennedy Presidency, ending with “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot!“

In Sorkin’s version, Guenevere refers to the song as “dumb” and, later, as “that stupid song about the weather.” Nice.

Cheer me up with fascinating ethics observations, please:

Open Forum, Searching For Something Better

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

What a depressing week.

I think the cap might have been right before bedtime last night, when I finally checked out what strange tangents Ann Althouse had been on lately. For some reason she had tracked down an article at Metafilter about Nate Silver’s being separated from his creation, 538, and a reader comment that said he had been guilty of “bothsideism.”

Nate is far from an Ethics Alarms favorite, as when he is not analyzing sports he uses the alleged neutrality of his statistical models to mask an obvious left-leaning bias. However, the flat assertion that he didn’t slant his analysis enough for the Leftist totalitarians out there is genuinely frightening. It also echoes the ethics rot emanating from this recent post. I’ve encountered the term “bothsideism” periodically and mentally noted its absurdity, but now I realize that a frightening proportion of the public, academics and especially journalists really do believe that thoughtfully considering multiple points of view and perspective is wrong.

As they sing in “Sweet Charity”: There’s gotta be something better than this.

Please try to find it.

Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

It sure seems like lots of ethics stuff is swirling around today, and I have no idea where I’ll be going with it at this point.

I’m counting on you to help sort it all out…

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The participation of two Trump-obsessed newcomers, one now banned and the other self-suspended, swelled last week’s Forum to one of the most active ever. This has been an equally momentous week in the ethics universe if not more so: I’ll be interested to see if we can get both quality and quantity this time around.

On your mark….get set…

GO!

Open Forum, But An Abyss Is Not Exactly The Kind Of Opening I’m Looking For…

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

Let’s keep the specific discussions about the Clarence Thomas ethics scandal under the appropriate post today. However, if anyone wants to talk about that larger ethical issues raised by reaction to it here, please do so, because I’d love someone to explain why it isn’t powerful evidence that I’ve been wasting my time. That’s how I feel right now, frankly. And Ethics Alarms takes up too much time in my life if it’s not going to enhance the cause of ethics.

This is not a blog about politics. There is no way to avoid politics, and the area is obviously a rich one for ethics analysis. However, the thesis at Ethics Alarms is that that society rots if ethical considerations are discarded for practical and strategic ones. Meanwhile, the trend in not only politics but journalism, scholarship, law and education, yes, even ethics has been exactly in that direction since I started this project in 2009. I don’t expect this blog to have major impact by itself: I’m not THAT deluded. I have seen, in my weird and eccentric life path, however, examples where my obsessions have had impact beyond my little corner of reality. (See Item #1 here, for example.)

Naively, I assumed that regular members of the commentariat here would agree with what I view as an automatic verdict: Thomas has besmirched the integrity of the Court, called his own judgment and trustworthiness into question, and must resign, consequences be damned. Instead, I am reading substantial support for Thomas, which amounts to a position that judicial ethics don’t matter. In fact, I cannot imagine a profession in which they matter more.

Well, I’ve written too much already here: this is your space and your agenda.

But I am morose. Just thought you should know…

Open Forum! Fight The Tide!

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Before I turn EA over to the commentariat, I have to say that the erudite and thoughtful people who honor me by checking in here also give me hope that reason, precise communication and intellectual cross-pollination will survive, and productive civilization with it, despite all evidence to the contrary.

There is a lot of that: I just leafed through the first “People” Magazine I have seen in many years (it was sent to my wife as a promotion), and it is profoundly depressing. The pop culture magazine used to have genuine articles; now it is almost completely taken over by snippets of a hundred words or less accompanied by photos of the B, C, and D level celebrities who have split-up or had babies without being married or worn “stunning” clothes at a Hollywood event. Obviously the publication is now pitched to the texting and social media-addicted masses who have the attention span of kittens and the reading tastes of fifth grade drop-outs.

And I thought USA Today had deteriorated! “People” makes the old movie fan mags like “Photoplay” look like “Remembrance of Things Past” by comparison.

There is evidence that U.S. IQ scores are dropping.

I believe it.

And now please cheer me up by fighting the tide with trenchant observations on the state of ethics in the world.

I’ll be under my bed, perseverating…

Open Forum: Spring Cleaning Edition!

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

It may be that Spring is officially ten days off, but here in Alexandria, Virginia, Dogwoods are blooming, the Bradford Pears have exploded with brilliant blossoms, the cherry trees have popped, and I’m worrying about the Red Sox (who are undefeated after eleven Spring Training games, meaning that they must be really bad). Damn climate change!

I thought it was a rather turbulent week ethics-wise, and I know that, as usual, a lot was missed here. It was another one of those weeks that I found myself full of self-loathing for not figuring out how to make ethics more profitable without making it unethical—ye olde “ethical vs non-ethical considerations dilemma.

That’s enough blather from me, though: You’re on!