January is always slow around these parts thanks to holiday hangovers, but January 2024 was especially quiet. I have no idea why; it was certainly full of ethics news, and I know (by looking at my backed-up inventory) that I didn’t cover everything I should have.
This is the last chance to salvage the month’s honor and send us into February with some momentum.
So belly up to the bar….
Another snow storm in Virginia, and thus I have another opportunity to make up for my meager use of seasonal songs in December as I tried to avoid reminding myself of what a lousy time my family was going through. I don’t really like Babs’s version of “Jingle Bells” —-I don’t really like Streisand (or her voice, as astounding as it was…or her style, of the song, for that matter), but you can’t say her rendition isn’t unique.
One housekeeping note: Sarah B. was kind enough to send me a friendly email asking me to stop posting Fani Willis’s name as “Wallis.”Among the myriad things I resent Willis for is that her last name is one of the letter combinations that I instinctively type wrong every damn time, along with “their,” “Michael,” and a few others. I will now do a search for “Wallis” any time a post concerns her, as will my next one, if all goes as planned. I just corrected 12 more “Wallis” typos in the December post about this creep, and the single “Wallis” in the last post yesterday, which I thought I had checked but missed the headline.
I’m sorry.
[WordPress’s AI bot told me to tag this one : “book review”….]
“Family, friends, colleagues, students and postdocs, alumni, distinguished guests” [ Gay, C., Harvard Inaugural Address, 2023] and Ethics Alarms readers: “My hope is that” [Gay,C. ‘It’s not my fault!’ op-ed, New York Times, 1/4/23] this open forum will reflect “your own commitment….to the common cause of” [Gay, C., Harvard Inaugural Address, 2023] ethics consideration and exploration, and that “any temptation to use” [ Ormsby, J.; Translator’s Introduction to “Don Quixote” (Project Gutenberg, 1997.] anyone else’s ideas or wording will ” be resisted” [Ibid.] today. Our goal here, after all, is to”question the world as it is and imagine and make a better one” [Gay, C., Harvard Inaugural Address, op.cit.] as we inspire “a new birth of” [Lincoln, A; “Gettysburg Address,” 1863] ethics awareness in our culture.
Presumably you know what to do by now…
About the song: apparently Harry Belafonte never performed this classic for TV; if he did, no one’s put it on YouTube. Every year, I admire his rendition of “Mary’s Boy Child” more. The singer introduced the song into the popular Christmas canon in 1956, after hearing it sung by a choir. It has been covered many, many times by singers ranging from Andy Williams to Charlotte Church, but is one of the very few Christmas songs without an interpretation by Bing Crosby.
Last week’s forum was the deadest ever, so I’m hoping that injecting some holiday cheer into this one will spark more dialogue. After all, if the wind, a lamb, a shepherd boy, a mighty king and people everywhere can have a productive conversation, Ethics Alarms readers should be able to bring some Goodness and Light too.
As some inspiration, I’m reposting below the Ethics Alarms entry about the origins of my favorite of the modern—“modern” as in “post World War II”—Christmas songs, first sung by my favorite Christmas minstrel.
*** Continue reading
Play ball! (The Major League Baseball GM meetings begin this week, meaning that free agent players will be getting contracts that will instantly make them financially secure for life even if they never play an inning. Is this a great country or what?)
I’m sorry! The Thanksgiving/ 43rd wedding anniversary disruption of yesterday threw off my Friday-dar, and I only just now realized that I owe readers an open forum. Judging from the activity on Ethics Alarms the past two days, it’s going to be a sparsely attended event, but you all have surprised me before.
To get you revved up to post on important or intriguing, ethics matters, here is an actual comment I just kicked out of moderation:
Hey everyone! Just stumbled upon an incredibly interesting blog about the potassium content in bananas! If you’ve ever wondered “how much potassium in a banana,” this article breaks it down in a simple and informative way. Check it out and enhance your knowledge on the benefits of this potassium-packed fruit!
You should see all of the sincere letters I get from people who will pay to have articles printed in Ethics Alarms on topics having no conceivable connection to the topic of the blog who have obviously never read a single post.
Never mind. Go crazy. Or rather, “Go bananas.”
Yesterday was the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi attack on the Jewish community that launched the Holocaust. I found mention of the event rather muted compared to past years; maybe it was my imagination. However, it seems to me that the news media would have been doing its job to make a special point of reminding the public of “The Night of Broken Glass” (which would more accurately be called, “The Night of Brutalized Jews). May be then more Americans would understand why that catchy chant that begins “From the river to the sea” is just a bit more chilling to Jews than “Hey hey, ho ho, LBJ has got to go…”
But that’s just what I’m thinking about. What are YOU thinking about in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of ethics?
I’m almost afraid to see what you come up with today…
Ethics Alarms 