Friday Open Forum: Trying to Remember

Ugh. I woke up this morning, immediately got into a substantive discussion, and found myself unable to think of not one but two names I believe are important to remember. The most important of the two was Kurt Gödel, whose “Incompleteness Theorems” led me to the Ethics Incompleteness Theorem, which is an important concept I haven’t discussed lately but is in the Ethics Alarms concepts and special terms list above.

The other name that I had to dig into my neurons to locate was Jill Corey, whom I had vowed to remember because it is so unfair that she has been almost totally forgotten. I wrote about her in 2023, here, on the occasion of Corey’s death.

Try to remember what you have been thinking about in the world of ethics over the last week and share it with us, will you?

(Incidentally, almost nobody except musical theater geeks remember that before he starred in “Law and Order,” Jerry Orbach was the star of “The Fantasticks,” the longest running musical ever. That’s him singing in the video above, when he was in his twenties, in the original Off-Broadway production.

Some Funny Things Happened on the Way to the Ethics Alarms Friday Forum…

Last week’s open forum was wild, man, and I hope today’s can be as lively.

Based on the early returns, there’s a lot to bloviate about in the ethics world. The amateur golf champ playing in the Masters was caught pissing into a creek on n the 13th hole at Augusta National golf course. Pennsylvania judge Sonya McKnight was just convicted of shooting her sleeping boyfriend in the head. (Seems awfully judgmental…). Almost all Democrats in the House voted against the bill requiring voter ID in Federal elections. Yes, their determination to prove the cognitive dissonance scale wrong continues apace! A black Congressman tried to discuss issues with a Trump-Deranged white female and was called a “race traitor”…

…and we learned that after VP JD Vance’s March visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, issued a gratuitous email to the base’s personnel stating that he did not speak for her of the base. What an idiot. (She was fired.) Finally, we have this stupid incident, in which Frontier Airlines let a woman fly to Puerto Rico with her “emotional support parrot” but wouldn’t let the bird on the return flight. (Gift link.)

Be careful. It’s stupid out there…

Friday Open Forum!

I begin today more distressed than ever about the situation in today’s “fourth estate,” as there are a welter of “bombshell” stories the conservative media and blogosphere are freaking out over while the Axis media are ignoring them entirely…and vice-versa. I have no way to figure out “what’s happening.”

If you can, please: speak up.

I should mention that the clip above from “Poltergeist,” one of the most frequently used in the Ethics Alarms Hollywood Clip Archive, is a small measure of immortality that I can confer to the memory of Dominique Dunne, the actress who played “Dana.” She was murdered by her boyfriend in 1982, the same year the movie was released. Dominique Dunne was 22.

Friday Open Forum! (Help!)

I was a couple posts short yesterday: sorry. A lot was happening, but then a lot is always happening since the election: if I spent every waking hour at Ethics Alarms, I couldn’t keep up with all the events, stories and quotes that deserve posts. I checked out early yesterday because it was, after all, the beginning of the 2025 Major League Baseball season, which has disproportionately and illogically dominated my time and passion for at least six months of the year since I was 12. In return the game has taught me much about life, right and wrong, faith, loyalty, courage, chaos and the universe, so I am convinced the obsession has been worth all the lost hours, pain and distraction. (The Red Sox won in stirring fashion in Texas, 5-2.)

I find myself depending on the forum more than ever (and I still am looking for guest posts). There were at least two mind-blowing ethics items in the news yesterday, well, early this morning and yesterday. Elon Musk tweeted,

“On Sunday night, I will give a talk in Wisconsin. Entrance is limited to those who have voted in the Supreme Court election. I will also personally hand over two checks for a million dollars each in appreciation for you taking the time to vote. This is super important.”

Oh…what? What is that?

Then there was this, an Executive Order directing “the Vice President, who is a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.”

Again: WHAT? What is “improper” ideology? What is “divisive” ideology? (What isn’t divisive ideology?) How does one measure “working” to do something? Has any previous executive order ever ordered a Vice-President to do something? I haven’t been to the National Zoo for a long time: is something sinister going on there?

(Thank you, Dana…)

Help me out here…

Friday Open Forum!

There should be a lot to write about today that I have missed so far.

Meanwhile, the Hackman demise mystery is more confused now than when I posted on it yesterday. The theories are getting really wild now: last night I heard an “expert” speculate that Hackman and his wife had simultaneous heart attacks.

I think we can officially conclude that the Hackmans did not kill their dog as part of a grand, planned exit, because two of the couple’s dogs are alive and well. Well, good. The post was primarily about the unethical practice of euthanizing healthy dogs “out of love.” (No one has yet suggested that the dogs conspired to rub out their masters, but the way the speculation is going, that theory may surface yet.

I always feel terrible when any well-loved and respected public figure has a final act that is embarrassing, lurid, pathetic or ugly. Often this means that the mess is remembered for than what went before, which was what mattered.

Do write something memorable for me today.

Friday Open Forum!

As I turn the topic choice over to you, I’m going to choose now to mention the astonishing gaslighting going on yesterday at Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing and on CNN and MSNBC as they did their best to echo the nonsensical fantasy version of the FBI being painted by such hucksters as Senator Amy Klobuchar. Patel has been a harsh critic of the FBI, as anyone who has paid any attention in the past decade or so is forced to be. The organization is political, frequently incompetent, and untrustworthy. Yet over and over yesterday I heard that it was completely non-partisan, had no agenda but to serve justice, and is staffed by heroes. Even though Patel’s opening statement documented many examples that contradict this idealized image (which is promoted in the entertainment media to an absurd, indeed boring extent), the same message kept coming: the FBI is wonderful. How dare anyone criticize it?

Given the ugly history of the agency, this “It isn’t what it is” defense is especially weird.

There. Whew! As Jimmy Durante used to say, “I’m glad I got that out. On my last X-ray, it showed up as a safety pin!”

Post Inauguration Open Forum

I think I’ll dedicate this edition of the Friday Forum to Nelson Muntz

  • Item: In at least one case already, Trump’s much maligned tariffs reboot has had the desired response. Stellantis (STLA) is making a number of US moves in response to the  Trump administration’s focus on building products in America through the raising of tariffs on Canada and Mexico The company owns Ram, Jeep, Dodge, and other brands.  In a letter to employees, Stellantis North America COO Antonio Filosa confirmed a number of specific actions it will take to “entail a multibillion-dollar investment in our people, great products, and innovative technology, all here in the US.” Stellantis said it would build a new midsize pickup truck at the recently shuttered Belvidere, Ill., assembly plant. Trump’s tariff threat has been the fallback argument of my Trump Deranged sister when she couldn’t come up with any rational reason to support Kamala Harris.
  • Item: Speaking of irrational, this essay in the New York Times (which I missed somehow) might kill poor Nelson as it could make him laugh himself to death. Literally challenging “Family Ties,” to which I I alluded in this post yesterday, woke or Trump Deranged parents describe their “Where did we go wrong?” lament as they discovered that their offspring voted against their “values” in “When Your Son Goes MAGA.” [Gift Link!] One of the horrified parents is a Democrat in Portland, Oregon who, the Times says, “voted enthusiastically for Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election.” I can see why someone might hold her nose and vote for Harris, but voting for her “enthusiastically” is inexcusable. She says she argued  about abortion, guns and immigration with her MAGA cap-wearing son, and tells him “facts don’t matter to you.”  Ponder THAT for a second or two….

Despite this intro, I’ll be thrilled if commenters can find some non-political ethics issues to discuss,

Pre-Inauguration Friday Morning Open Forum…With a Personal Note

Well, today has started like so many other mornings lately: by me being kicked out of bed by my dog. (We’re going to have to talk about this.) Then, like so many Fridays, I find myself thinking about how the entire weekend is going to be devoted to work and depressing chores, causing me to feel like I owe myself a tiny break today, but I won’t really take one, just slack off enough to make me feel lazy and irresponsible.

Then I visited my email, and told a website optimizer who claimed EA had “no web presence at all” to bite me. I wish it had more “presence” just as I wish I could figure out a way to make some money for the work I do here about four hours a day without minimizing readership, but I can’t, and that’s that. I didn’t start Ethics Alarms for profit, and I won’t run it that way.

Finally, as I stare at another blank “Add New Post” page, I find myself getting all warm, fuzzy, teary and grateful over the outpouring of appreciation and kindness I have received over the past horrible year from so many of you out there. I wish I were organized enough to write individual notes, but I’m not…that kind of thing was among Grace’s jobs, because I’m too scattered and easily distracted to do it competently.

This was especially true during the holidays. I got cards with messages that made me cry, gift cards, and checks: one of you even stopped by the house to deliver a gift (and give me some much needed human company and live face-to-face conversation.) I received almost as many seasonal greeting from the readers here as I did from people around the country I have actually met—hmmmmm, maybe that should tell me something.

It all meant a great deal to me, and does, and will. Thank you for reading, thank you for caring, and thank you for giving me something to look forward to during each and every day, especially during a year during which most days began with me hoping that everything was just a bad dream, and that I would find Grace in the shower, like Bobby Ewing at the end of that infamous fake season on “Dallas.”

Well enough mushy stuff: get to work. You have some brilliant comments to write, and I have to go argue with a pit bull….

Late Friday Forum!

Here’s a pet peeve: when I forget what day it is. Since I work every day of the week and most evenings and no longer have anyone living with me in this huge house, I frequently lose track. Today was an example.

Steven Mintz, “the Ethics Sage,” has a post on his blog listing his “pet peeves.” Boy, he isn’t annoyed by nearly as many things as I am, and all most none of them are particularly momentous. Here’s his list:

10. Leaving the toilet seat up [a shout out to women].

9. Turning without signaling. [what’s the turn signal for?].

8. Walking up a flight of stairs while using one’s cell phones; being oblivious to others [this can cause them to run into us].

7. Talking during movies or using one’s cell phones. [even though there is a message from the theater not to do so].

6. Looking at one’s cell phone while someone is talking [inconsiderate].

5. Cutting people off while driving [stupid; you can cause a serious accident],

4.  Failing to share the arm rest on an airplane [thoughtless]. Taking one’s shoes (and socks!) off in an airplane [yuck].

3. Taking one’s shoe’s (and socks!) off in an airplane.

2. Being interrupted by another person while talking [rude! rude! behavior].

1. Using the catchphrase “with all due respect” [a subtle disrespect].

He writes in part, “I’ve been thinking a lot about them lately because I have experienced that increasingly people are inconsiderate; they don’t seem to be cognizant that even the little things can annoy others. I decided to write a blog on this subject because of my commitment to ethical behavior in our personal as well as professional lives. Being considerate of others is an ethical value because it shows caring and concern for the well-being of others. It moves us away from the constant pursuit of self-interest regardless of how it affects others.”

I can top that list with ease, including his #1: My least favorite catch phrase is a tie between “Everything happens for a reason” and “There are no coincidences.”

Another pet peeve is not getting many contribution to the open forums, but I can hardly complain when I open one 8 hours late.

Happy First Open Forum of 2025!

Terrorism? A zombie in the White House? More chaos from Republicans in Congress? A Presidential honor for…Liz Cheney? Stupid headlines like “Harris Heads To D.C. To Swear in Senators Who Won’t Evven Say Her Name Right” and Why Murdering a CEO Won’t Fix Healthcare Costs…“?

And why is someone pissing on 2025 already? There are a lot of events and issues you can debate here so I can write about other things…