political correctness

The Incompetent James Wagner, President Of Emory College

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Trump 2016

The incident was simple and easily handled for any college president with a modicum of common sense, respect for free speech, and a comprehension of the needs of basic higher education. Unfortunately for Emory college, its students and stake-holders, James Wagner is not such a college president. He is, instead, a craven incompetent. Harsh? You decide.

At Emory, someone wrote the frightening words “Trump 2016” with chalk on a stair railing. Given that this is an election year and Donald Trump is running for President, such a scribble should be regarded as unremarkable. Oh, if it happened on a campus where I was enrolled, I might think, “Gee, apparently they accept idiots into this institution, and my degree may not be worth spit,” but that would be the extent of my dismay.

Ah, but it’s 2016, and thanks to the pusillanimous campus leadership at the University of Missouri, Duke, Occidental, Princeton, Yale and so many other places, college students nationwide have gotten it into their delicate heads that there is a basic human right to be shielded from any writing, words, slogans, pictures, historical references or sidelong glances that might upset their preconceived views of life in any way. Thus a group of Emory students who gasped with horror at “Trump 2016,” which is not only political speech but, unfortunately, mainstream political speech, went to Wagner and demanded action.

What Wagner should have said, following in the footsteps of the few college presidents who have shown themselves worthy of their jobs, is some version of what Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Dr. Everett Piper, wrote on his school’s website in response to similar student complaints on his campus: Continue reading →

The Indefensible “Nigger” Double Standard

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Andrea Quenette, a University of Kansas communications professor, has been on paid leave for four months after a group of her students filed a complaint that she had used the racial epithet nigger in  response to a question in class. She was asked about  her views on the best way to talk about race with  students, and replied that as a white woman, she found it  difficult to relate to minority groups’ challenges because she has not experienced racial discrimination herself.  She added that unlike other campuses where there had been over racist incidents, she “had not seen “nigger” spray painted on walls at KU.”

For saying this, she was subjected to campus-wide humiliation, an interruption in her teaching career and an investigation, of what I cannot imagine. She was talking about the word, she is a communications professor, words are her business, and it is impossible to talk about the word “nigger” seriously without using it (and no, codes like “N-word”  are either the exact same as using the word itself, or politically correct conventions that show just how silly word-o-phobia really is. Take your pick.) Finding offense with her using “nigger” in this context is simply a “gotcha” by race-baiting students. and as nonsensical as the gag in “The Life Of Brian” where the priest who condemns a Hebrew citizen by committing the blasphemy of speaking the name of God, “Jehovah,” is stoned by the crowd because he speaks the forbidden name in order to utter the condemnation. Nevertheless. Professor Quenette, while keeping her clearly worthless job, was sentenced to mandatory cultural competency training, a.k.a. political correctness indoctrination, and to have a second faculty member work with her to ensure that her curriculum include more diversity.

If she had enough sense, courage and integrity to be qualified to teach at the college level, she would have told the school to take its job, its curriculum, its rejection of academic freedom, its craven capitulation to race-bullying and its disgusting treatment of faculty members and shove them all. But no, she’s a good, submissive  social justice zombie who just made a mistake, and it’s time for her to grovel.

Spurred by this miserable marker of how low higher education has sunk, my indispensable issue scout Fred puckishly sent me this, a Washington Post opinion piece from a year ago. The column, by  African American free-lancer Michael Arceneaux, was sparked by an incident I also commented upon a year ago, when Kentucky guard Andrew Harrison muttered “Fuck that nigga”  behind his hand into a live microphone while answering a post-Final Four game news conference question about Wisconsin player Frank Kaminsky, whose heroics had led to Kentucky’s 71-64 victory.  My position on Harrison, then as now, was this: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethic Quiz: ‘Springtime For Hitler’ Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Producers-2

This most recent  ethics thread commentary from Rick Jones (a.k.a. “Curmie,” who chronicles education fiascos, among other matters, during the year on his own blog) involves the recent kerfuffle over a high school production of “The Producers” having its Nazi decorations stripped away. I confess that I specifically requested Rick’s take on this one, knowing him to be a theater colleague as well as a teacher, and he did not disappoint….except that he uses the British spelling of “theatre.”

Here is Rick’s Comment of the Day on the Ethics Quiz: “Springtime for Hitler” Ethics.

Oh, Jack… You couldn’t just let me have a spring break without feeling compelled to reply to one of your posts, could you?

And… as I suspect you may have been expecting if not hoping, I agree with your arguments but disagree with your conclusion.

First, let me confess to ignorance of the stage version of The Producers. I know the film, of course, but being neither a big musical theatre guy nor made of money, I’ve never actually seen the play. Assuming it to be substantially similar to the film, therefore, is for me (but not for those more informed) a risky proposition.

It is not clear whether the school’s administration formally signed off on the choice of play, but de facto they did: the rights and royalties for a musical will cost—depending on a variety of factors such as venue size, number of performances, and ticket prices—hundreds or (more likely) thousands of dollars, and no high school theatre director can just write a check on a school account for that amount of money. Expenditures of that size need approval.

So here’s where I agree with your point that cultural illiteracy was very much at play from the beginning of this saga. I’m not suggesting that every high school administrator should have seen the movie or the play, but certainly the “Springtime for Hitler” shtick has long since passed into the public consciousness. I was too young (in junior high, perhaps?) to have seen the film on its first run, but I knew about the campy production number long before I actually saw the film when I was in high school or college. Similarly, I know that “I will take what is mine with fire and blood” is a ”Game of Thrones” reference without ever having picked up one of the books or tuned in to the television show. A competent administrator would at the very least have known what s/he was signing off on. Or… you know… asked: that’s an option, apparently.

Continue reading →

Ethic Quiz: “Springtime For Hitler” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

And speaking of Donald Trump…

In South Orangetown, New York, the school superintendent stepped in and cut the swastikas from Tappan Zee High School’s student production of “The Producers” less than a week before the production. Of course, the Mel Brooks musical satire based on his film “The Producers” employs swastikas on Nazi flags and armbands during its famous campy “Springtime For Hitler” number and at other points in the show. Before someone posted a picture of the swastikas on the stage on a Facebook page, this aspect of “The Producers” had somehow escaped the attention of school administrators.

Some parents were shocked, and complained. After checking out the stage, the superintendent cut the costume details and set dressing.“There is no context in a public high school where a swastika is appropriate,” South Orangetown Superintendent Bob Pritchard told CBS. Pritchard consulted with local rabbis before making his decision.

Rabbis, of course, would be a natural audience for “The Producers.” (Reports that the rabbis suggested a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” instead have not been confirmed.)

Your spring-is-in-the-air Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is this example of school censorship of the performing arts fair, responsible and ethical?

Continue reading →

Yet More Casting Ethics: Let’s Slap This Bad Idea Down For Good, Shall We?

/ Jack Marshall / 78 Comments
What? They cast a Hispanic actor as Khan instead of a genetically engineered Mongolian actor?

What? “Star Trek” cast a Hispanic actor as Khan instead of a genetically engineered Mongolian actor?

One way really terrible ideas take hold and do damage to the culture is for rational people to ignore them while zealots, ideologues and wackos keep repeating them over and over until they no longer sound as wrong as they are. Allowing illegal immigration to continue undiscouraged was one of those ideas, manifestly ridiculous and destructive. Now look where we are.

Ethic Alarms has had several posts on another really bad idea lately that is being pushed on the culture by political correctness and affirmative action activists: the loopy assertion that ethnic roles in movies and TV should only be cast with actors whose ethnic origins match those of the characters, and that if a director casts someone else, racism and bigotry are at play. Not too long ago, such an assertion would be regarded as too silly to discuss, but we have been through an intense period—the period known as “The Obama Era”— where tribal spoils, grievance-mongering and group identification have been accorded higher priority than, for example, talent, competence, experience or proven success. Through the fog of such distortions, the idea of rigid ethnic casting doesn’t seem so crazy, though it is crazy indeed.

I regard it my duty as someone who has both professional expertise in ethics and casting to slap down this rotten and indefensible  idea every time it raises its repulsive head. I recommend that you do the same.

Yesterday, Ana Valdez, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Latino Donor Col­lab­o­ra­tive, wrote to the Washington Post to endorse film critic Ann Hornaday’s column complaining about white actors playing Middle Eastern roles (I managed to hold down my bile with that one), and  added…

She failed to ac­knowl­edge per­haps the big­gest white­wash­ing: the con­tin­ual cast­ing of white ac­tors to play Lati­nos. This has been go­ing on for decades, from Eli Wal­lach play­ing Calvera in “The Mag­nif­i­cent Seven” to Mark Ruf­falo play­ing Michael Rezen­des, a Bos­ton Globe re­porter, in “Spot­light.” Jen­nifer Con­nelly won an Os­car for her por­trayal of Ali­cia Lardé Nash in “A Beau­ti­ful Mind,” and Ben Af­fleck played Tony Men­dez in the Os­car-win­ning “Argo.” All of these char­ac­ters are Latino. Ethan Hawke, Meryl Streep, Cather­ine Zeta-Jones, Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close all have played Lati­nos in mo­tion pic­tures…. It does look like Hol­ly­wood is try­ing not to hire Lati­nos.

No, it doesn’t look like that at all. Continue reading →

More Casting Ethics: In Search Of Acting Afghans

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

whiskeytangofoxtrot

The problem is that our educational system belches out new graduates who have been indoctrinated into rigid and often absurd ideas about right and wrong, They quickly fill the culture with those ideas and their freedom-stultifying emanations. The ideas act like viruses: if you don’t diagnose them and wipe them out, our very minds are at risk.

Here is an example, by mere coincidence, concerning casting ethics, the same topic as the recent post about how some African-Americans seem to want to discriminate on the basis of skin shade, at least when it comes to casting movies. (Who knew?) I was reading Entertainment Weekly on an airplane, as I only read Entertainment Weekly on airplanes, and this whole issue (The “Batman v. Superman” issue) struck me as being written by 22 year-olds. In a review of Tina Fey’s latest bomb (“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”—“WTF,” or What the Fuck, get it?), reviewer Leah Greenblatt wrote this…

“And its more than a little disappointing that the two major Afghan supporting roles are filled by obviously non-Afghan actors….”

Leah doesn’t bother to explain why it’s a little disappointing; she just assumes it’s obvious, as in, “What? They didn’t hire real Afghans to play Afghans? I’m outraged!” Meanwhile, a young impressionable reader who assumed that a film reviewer has some expertise in such things, would absorb this heretofore unknown standard of decency and take it as cant. Contagion! This is how the political correctness virus eats our brains. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Marc Randazza at Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

click3

“But, if academia actually meant anything, she would never have been hired in the first place. She should be sent back to weep over heteronormative cis-gendered oppression in Teletubbies, and leave teaching to adults. Are there any available? Can they get past the search committee?”

–—Popehat’s Marc Randazza, reviewing the academic credentials of fired Mizzou communications professor Melissa Click, who famously grabbed a videographer’s camera while trying to block a reporter from covering a public protest at the University of Missouri, uttering the immortal words, “Hey, who wants to help me get this reporter out of here. I need some muscle over here!” The video and graphics like the one above launched a thousand memes.

Now that First Amendment firebrand Randazza has joined the equally sharp, funny and merciless Ken White, Popehat is a festival of joys for those who savor enlightenment and passion with a dash of acid. Marc is in top form in his second take-down of Click, who drew his fire for her response to being fired: Continue reading →

The Zoe Saldana-Nina Simone Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 77 Comments

I have been following this story for some time with a mixture of amusement and horror; satisfaction too, I suppose, as it is nice to see that black grievance-mongers are equally irrational when the imagined offender is black rather than white. There is integrity in this, after the irrationality of it all.

Nina Simone’s tribute website calls her a “classically trained pianist who evolved into a chart-topping chanteuse and committed civil rights activist.” As a white kid growing up in the Sixties, I missed Simone almost entirely: she wasn’t a regular guest on TV variety shows.  In college, I encountered aficionados who referred to her as brilliant, and I tried to appreciate her song stylings. She was one of those singers that  I could understand why she was famous and exceptional without wanting to listen to her for pleasure. At the time I regarded Simone as a cult singer, but that was unfair; she was obviously more important than that. I was also unaware of her considerable significance in the civil rights

Three years ago, Zoe Saldana was cast as Nina Simone in “Nina”, a major Hollywood film about the singer’s life, replacing singer Mary J. Blige, who was originally cast but dropped out. Immediately, the choice of Saldana, a rising black actress of Dominican and Puerto Rican parents best known for her work as Uhura on the “Star Trek” reboots, “Avatar,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy”, was attacked. She wasn’t a singer, isn’t a “true” African-American and doesn’t resemble Simone sufficiently, the critics said.

All of these accusations are ridiculous on their face. Most biopics about famous singers, though not all, star actors rather than vocalists: all singing is dubbed in after the film anyway. When, in the history of drama, has there been a rule that the performer’s ethnicity had to match the role he or she was playing? I wrote about the foolishness of this issue most recently here. What matters isn’t that Yul Brenner wasn’t really a Thai, what matters is that he was fantastic at playing the King of Siam. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

First-Amendment-on-scroll1

“The text of the First Amendment is enshrined in our Constitution, but there are certain cultural values that undergird the amendment that are critical for its protections to have actual meaning. If that culture starts to wither away, then so too will the freedom that it supports.”

—FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai  to the Washington Examiner, in an interview where he expressed concern that respect for First Amendment principles were diminishing, particularly on college campuses.

Isn’t it fascinating that so many of those who are concerned about the freedom of speech being diminished by political correctness have responded by supporting a Presidential candidate who regularly abuses the right of free speech, and whose response to protesters at his own speeches is to abuse them?

But I digress.

Today’s example of what Pai is talking about comes from California State University Los Angeles (CSULA), where president William Covino, responding to expressions of dismay from the same kinds of students who needed counseling at Rutgers, cancelled a scheduled speech by conservative pundit and Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro, and in a particularly Orwellian touch, did so citing the need for the “free exchange of ideas.” Continue reading →

“His WORDS Are Too Horrible to Bear!” Why Is Rutgers Pampering Student Delusions About Free Speech?

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
"He DISAGREES WITH ME!! ARRGH!! It's too painful to BEAR!!!"

“He DISAGREES WITH ME!! ARRGH!! It’s too painful to BEAR!!!”

It is unethical to make students or their parents pay obscene amounts of money to be rendered incompetent and dysfunctional for the life challenges that face them. Based on this bizarre incident at Rutgers—tuition about $25,000 per year, per student—that is exactly what that esteemed institution is doing. How many others are doing the same?

Journalist Milo Yiannopoulos—that’s being generous: I’d call him a professional troll, or a white, gay Ann Coulter—kicked off his “Dangerous Faggot” tour at Rutgers. He’s an in-your-face, liberal shibboleth-shattering, intentionally provocative rabble-rouser of the hard right, famously banned by Twitter, which now appears to be sucking up to Social Justice Warriors. Milo, who is one of the ugly, culture-scarring mutants created by the radiation emanating from the hyper-partisan environment encouraged by the Obama Administration,  expounded on  gender wage gap myths, feminism, the “rape culture” and Black Lives Matters in as offensive a manner as he could, and he is talented at being offensive. Some 50 students in the audience who were there to bury Milo, not to praise him,  stood up and smeared fake blood on their faces to signal their opposition. Ten protesters left, forty stayed.

Then they had a collective breakdown, or something. The Daily Targum, Rutgers newspaper, reported that following Yiannopoulos’ appearance, students and faculty gathered in the Paul Robeson Cultural Center to discuss their trauma at his words and the reaction to it from students in the audience. “We are here to show support,” was the mantra repeated by nearly every person in the crowd as they introduced themselves, as if voluntarily listening to a hard-right, politically incorrect conservative provocateur was the equivalent of experiencing sexual assault or the death of a child. Continue reading →