Ethics                                                                                                                                #233

By Hank Silverberg 

In 1974, a stripper named Fanny Foxe had to be rescued from the tidal basin near the U.S. Capitol. She had jumped in to avoid being caught with powerful Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas. Police had pulled him over close by for driving without headlights. The ensuing scandal cost Mills his chairmanship, and he quietly retired from Congress at the end of his term. 

(U.S. Capitol with tidal basin)

Senator Gary Hart was a frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1987 when a story broke about his affairs with Donna Rice. Hart was married. He denied the affair and challenged the media to follow him around. That produced photos of him with Rice on a boat called Monkey Business. Hart dropped out of the presidential race and his career was basically over. 

In 2017, Senator Al Frankin was forced to resign because he had inappropriately touched a woman while on board a plane during a USO tour. He says he now regrets the decision to resign. 

In past decades politicians who got caught doing something wrong, paid a price. 

In 2008, former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich went to prison on corruption charges that included bribery and extortion. 

Then along came Donald Trump, which seemed to change everything. (Ironically, Blagojevich's 14-year sentence was commuted by Trump in 2020.)

The Associated Press has found that between 2017 and 2021, while Trump was President, at least 120 state lawmakers in 41 states faced public allegations of sexual misconduct or harassment. But often they have simply run for the office again and there was no effort to remove them. (One was actually convicted of rape.)

What's my point? This year, two Tennessee lawmakers were expelled from the state legislature for participating in a protest in favor of gun control following a mass shooting in Nashville. They did nothing but raise their voices. 

And the Montana legislature took away Representative Zooey Zephyr' right to speak on the House floor. Zephyr, who is transgender, had had the audacity to rebuke her colleagues for voting to ban gender-affirming care for children. She did nothing but say the lawmakers would have "blood on their hands." 

Now add in details about Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas taking expensive gifts from a major Republican donor that were not reported on his financial statements. Some of his colleagues have also run into similar issues. Political and sex scandals are really nothing new in politics.

But it should make you angry that some of the same people who appear to have no ethics or even a sense of decency, are trying to tell women what to do with their bodies, parents what do about their children's health, and tell you who you are allowed to love. And those lawmakers often cite decency or family values as their rationale.  

Those of us who have lived a simple, ethical life where lies are wrong, graft is illegal, and politics is the art of compromise, should be offended. We should also remember the ethical makeup of those we vote for. 

________________________________________

Disorder in The Supreme Court:

Gifts they received:

Justice Thomas: $150,000 to pay his nephew's college tuition, mother's house paid for, free rides on a private plane and luxury yachts, free vacations (all from GOP donors). And his wife Gini was connected to the Jan 6th insurrectionists. 

Chief Justice Roberts: wife gets paid $10.3 million as a recruiter for large law firms who have business with the High Court. 

Justice Kavanaugh:

$92,000 country club balance paid off, $200,000 credit card paid off, $1,200,000 mortgage paid off. (By whom?) 

Justice Comey Barrett: $2 million book deal after her confirmation but kept secret for a year. 

Justice Gorsuch: disclosed a half-million- dollar real estate deal but failed to reveal it was with a law firm which has since presented 22 cases before the Court. 

In contrast: 

Justice Sotomayor: nothing

Justice Klagan: nothing

Justice Brown-Jackson: nothing

Notice the pattern? ______________________________________________________

Pasta Gate Solved

New Jersey often gets a bad rap as a place where people dump everything from chemical waste to dead bodies. So, when a local city council candidate discovered 500 pounds of pasta dumped in a wooded section of Old Bridge Township, a media frenzy began. They had to get to the bottom of this dastardly crime. 

(Courtesy of Nina Jochnowitz) 

The facts emerged quickly. There were no meatballs, no sauce dumped, and it turned out the pasta of various types, was raw and had not been cooked. It was mushy and soggy only because of the heavy rain last weekend. 

Local activists renewed their 23- year-old complaint about the town not having any garbage pickup services as news of the great pasta dump spread fast on the internet. Before you could say "spaghetti for dinner," Pasta-Gate was lighting up smart phones and computer screens across the world. The dump was illegal. Pasta runoff was dangerous. The culprit must be found! 

But the "Whodunit" ended as quickly as it began when a military veteran confessed that he was the villain. It seems he was cleaning out his mother's home in preparation for moving her and had to get rid of the stockpile of old food she had always kept in the cupboard.  

The township's public works department has now cleaned it all up. 

 Pasta Dump: Old Bridge Mystery Solved – NBC New York

It would be nice if all scandals could be sanitized that fast. 

Vast Wasteland

I note this week the passing of former FCC Chairman Newton Minnow. He died on Saturday at age 97. Minnow was in charge of the agency at a time when the fascination with TV as a luxury was over, and the great expansion and profits in the broadcasting industry had begun. It was the 1960's. 

In May of 1961, speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention, he talked about the potential of television, praising shows such as "The Twilight Zone."    

"When television is good, nothing - not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers - nothing is better," Minnow said. "But when television is bad, nothing is worse."

He went on to criticize game shows, comedies with "unbelievable" families and the "screaming, cajoling and offending" commercials. 

He said viewers should set aside a day to do nothing but watch television in order to get a good idea what they are getting-or not getting. 

"I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland," he said. Minnow edited out "vast wasteland of junk," that was in his notes. 

(The Minnow would be lost!) 

 The description of TV as a "vast wasteland" did not go unnoticed by those who made shows for TV. One of the worst shows to go on the air not long after that speech was the soon to be popular "Gilligan's Island." The writer and producer of the show, Sherwood Schwartz, named the shipwrecked boat the "S.S. Minnow" in the FCC Chairman's honor. 

Minnow's comments came at a time when most people could only get three channels, and much of the programming really was junk. The white bread world of "Leave It to Beaver" was nothing like most American families, and he made note of it.    

But Minnow's oft-quoted observations may have helped change TV for the good. The late 60's and the 1970's brought a vast improvement in quality in shows like "60 Minutes," which previewed in 1968, and "All in The Family," which went on the air in 1971. The 70's was when quality television was born. 

On the 50th anniversary of the speech in 2011, Minnow noted that television had improved mostly because of the increased options like more public television and the plethora of cable channels. 

There are those though, who would still describe many of those cable channels on your system now as an expansion of the vast wasteland with little quality. And in many cases, they are right. 

Quality television is there but finding it through the vast wasteland of mediocre and often ridiculous cable TV shows may negate the progress. 

I note that "Gilligan's Island" still airs in syndication on hundreds of channels around the world. 

Former FCC Chair Newton Minow, who called 1960s TV 'vast wasteland', dies at 97 (msn.com)

Unworthy News

Here's a new feature of my blog starting this week. I will list and add a comment or two on the most overcovered or unnewsworthy stories of the week. I would love to hear from my readers with suggestions. 

This week:

The Coronation of King Charles III. 

Okay, a new King-of- England is not crowned that often, so that makes it mildly interesting to Americans. But an entire Saturday morning on American television? I don't think so. That's way too much coverage here in the USA. Saturday morning cartoons would be more interesting. We fought a long war (1775-1783) to get rid of a British monarch. I suspect most Americans don't care about the new one, and the ratings for such coverage probably wasn't that high.

If Americans don't care, the British public definitely should care. The price tag, paid for by the British taxpayer is approximately 100 million pounds (about $126,304,000). One must wonder what good that money might have been used for--a jobs program in the slums of London, Manchester or Birmingham perhaps? Or maybe badly needed development projects in some of those African countries the British "Empire" heavily exploited in the 19th century and early 20th century. But anyway, God save the King-- from the tabloids. 

Dumbest Quote of The Week

The mass shooting at a mall in Allen Texas, near Dallas on Saturday brought out the usual "our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families" comments from a number of politicians. That included one from Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who has repeatedly voted against any restrictions on gun purchases or ownership in the United States. (Cruz has received $176,274 in campaign contributions from the NRA.) His comments on the shooting are almost identical to what he said after the Uvalde school shooting earlier this year.  

And that brought some sharp criticism from gun control advocates who have repeatedly called for restrictions and have criticized Cruz for his insensitivity.  

But the dumbest quote comes from Republican Congressman Keith Self, whose district includes Allen. Responding to the people who criticize the "thoughts and prayers" response, he said on CNN:  

“Those are people that don’t believe in an almighty God who is absolutely in control of our lives.  I'm a Christian-- I believe that he is.”

Well, Congressman, do you really think God wanted all those people to be murdered? Murder is an act of man, not an act of God. And the pandemic of guns makes it much easier to murder on a mass scale. We must do something now! God may hear the message, but only Congress can act on it. 

 (Your comments and suggestions for this blog are welcome, see comment section below)  

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