Hillbuzz is the right wing website leading the charge to get Bristol Palin, who can’t dance a lick, voted as the best celebrity dancer on TV’s “Dancing With The Stars” because, illogically enough, the site’s operators like her mother. Makes sense to me! Actually, it only makes sense in that I am familiar with how self-absorbed political fanatics on the Right and Left think, which is often inherently unethical. In this case, Hillbuzz thinks it’s reasonable to louse up the fun of a dancing competition and turn it into an expression of Tea Party power. Continue reading
TV
Donald Trump and the Cheater
Just when I had given up on “The Apprentice,” Donald Trump and his show had a genuine ethical controversy. Last week, the 9th of the 10th season, Trump called all the contestants together and revealed that one of them, Anand Vasudev had cheated during the challenge of Week 6, which involved promoting and selling pedicab rides in Manhattan. The 31 year-old financial adviser had secretly texted friends and acquaintances saying, “Come to Trump Towers tomorrow … act like you don’t know me … bring 50 bucks so you can buy a pedi-cab ride and help my team to win …. I’m (project manager).” Continue reading
Katy Perry’s Cleavage and Sesame Street Ethics
“Sesame Street’s” producers yanked pop songstress Katy Perry’s upcoming appearance on the iconic PBS children’s show after parents complained about her low-cut dress. They had seen a preview of her duet with Elmo on YouTube, and were scandalized.
The complaint, to put it mildly had no merit. Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Week: Alessandra Stanley
“The rule that newer shows need a break should be bent in one case: Conan O’Brien’s ill-fated stint as the host of “The Tonight Show” wasn’t the best of the year, by a long shot. His nomination for outstanding variety, music or comedy series is a little like President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize — political, premature and meant mostly as an affront to his predecessor.”
—New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley, properly tweaking the Emmys for nominating “The Conan O’Brien Show” for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality, which was spotty at best. Continue reading
Ethical Standards, Not Laws or Regulations, Must Enforce Broadcast Civility
A federal appeals court just struck down controversial the Federal Communications Commission policy on indecency, ruling that regulations barring the use of “fleeting expletives” on radio and TV were too vague and could inhibit free speech….even if that free speech was smutty.
Good. Continue reading
Vuvuzela Ethics
Applied to an international soccer match, the argument that players, fans and broadcasters should be broad-minded and tolerant of the peculiar conduct of various national groups is a good one—up to a point. The point is reached when a custom begins ruining the game for everyone else. The vuvuzelas–those small plastic horns that produce an ear-splitting atonal drone like a horde of cicadas— go well beyond that point at the World Cup, and in any other sports setting are the equivalent of racist taunts, 400 pound naked men, on-field trespassers and giant fart machines. Continue reading
“Glee” Ethics
Now that I know I’m not the only one to be a bit troubled by the gleefully unethical practices of the absurdly talented high school students in the performance choir chronicled in the Fox TV series “Glee,” I will conquer my fear of rampaging “Gleeks” and say so.
In addition to the annoyance of the teens being played by 30-year-olds, their absurdly accomplished performing skills, and most of all, the speed with which they arrange, choreograph and master complex musicals numbers that a no professional performing group could equal in less than a week of twelve-hour days, there is this: the students regularly violate the copyright laws by using music, lyrics and exact copies of video choreography in their numbers.
Yes, the producers of “Glee” are really paying the artists involved; that’s not the point. The problem is that the show’s conceit contributes to an attitude among younger Americans (and a lot of old ones, like “The Ethicist,” Randy Cohen) that stealing intellectual property from artists is OK, everybody does it, and it is standard procedure. This encourages an unethical and illegal practice by glamorizing it, and also misinforms viewers who may not know that what the “Glee” kids do could involve big fines and serious legal problems in the real world. Continue reading
CBS: Nostalgia Spoilsport
For many years, I’ve been trying to track down a recording of the theme song from the wonderful 1963-64 TV anthology “The Great Adventure.” A critically praised, largely forgotten dramatic series that portrayed stories from American history, “The Great Adventure” began with a spirited march written by composer Richard Rodgers, of Rodgers and Hart and Rodgers and Hammerstein fame.
Now I can play the show’s intro on my computer any time I feel like being inspired, thanks to a wonderful web resource, televisiontunes.com. The site has collected over 15,000 songs and instrumental pieces from the entire expanse of television history, and it is a magic doorway to instant nostalgia, not to mention some fun and excellent music, like the Rodgers composition, that is difficult to find anywhere else. Want to hear, for example, “Interjections!”, the cleverest and catchiest of all ABC’s “Schoolhouse Rock” creations? It’s there…or rather, here.
But if you want to listen to the “Twilight Zone” theme, or the iconic intro to “Perry Mason,” or, most tragically of all, the opening strains of “Hawaii Five-O,” perhaps the best TV theme ever, you are out of luck. You are out of luck because CBS, alone among the networks, has had its lawyers start pulling off the best-known themes from the CBS shows, as is CBS’s right as the owners of them. Continue reading
The Fan, the Taser, and Respect for the Law
A teenaged fan ran out on the field in the middle of a Philadelphia Phillies game a couple of days ago. This happens many times, too many times, during the baseball season, and it is always followed by a merry chase, sometimes with fans laughing or cheering, featuring over-weight security staff or police trying to capture the fool, and occasionally a featuring a surprise, like a player intervening and decking the guy. There was a surprise this time, all right: when the fan wouldn’t stop after the pursuing officer told him to, he was shot with a taser. And some fans cheered at that, too.
A tsunami of criticism is now crashing over the security officer, condemning the tasering of 17-year-old Steve Consalvi, sometimes in terms more appropriate to discussing Abu Ghraib. If I were Consalvi’s father, I would counsel him to immediately issue a statement taking full responsibility for the incident and absolving the officer. The teen’s conduct was irresponsible and illegal, and for it to result in any adverse employment action against the security officer who tasered him would only compound the offense. This is especially true because the critics of the officer are dead wrong. They are in the grip of a dangerous, illogical but increasingly popular idea in our culture that submitting to legitimate police authority is one of those things that we can do or not do without consequences or stigma. The fan on the field is one of the mildest examples of disrespect for the law, but it is a perfectly good place to start getting our ethics unmuddled. Continue reading
Cowardice Trumps Duty: The Oprah Bio Freeze-Out
Sometimes professionals reveal the flaws in their ethical armor in their handling of the little things.
Celebrity shark Kitty Kelley, who has wounded other celebrities with dirty-linen airing, unauthorized biographies (supposedly her hatchet job on Frank Sinatra caused Ol’ Blue Eyes to consider having her whacked), has sunk her teeth into Oprah Winfrey. The usual, well-worn method that get such bio-trash sold is a media tour, and Kelley is a veteran of it, having used interviews and talk-show experiences to make best-sellers out of her bios of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Reagan, the British Royal Family, and the Bushes. But these were just icons, super-stars, idols, royalty and world leaders; now that Kelley is taking on the Big O, all bets are off. It has been reported in multiple sources that the usual facilitators of Kelley’s book plugging efforts have been turning Kelley’s publicist down. They don’t want to cross Oprah. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 