Monthly Archives: September 2010
The Right Lesson From The Rutgers Sex Video Suicide
The right lesson to take from the humiliation and death of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi isn’t that students shouldn’t hide cameras and videotape sexual relations without permission. Continue reading
Chris Plante and the Cupcakes: Why You Can’t Trust Talk Show Hosts
I don’t know who the public is supposed to trust to give them both all sides of news stories and undistorted facts, it sure isn’t Chris Plante and his fellow talk show hosts. Continue reading
Ethics Heroes: “The American Muslim’s” American and Canadian Muslims
On the website The American Muslim, a statement has been posted that condemns the threatening and violent acts by Muslim extremists. Signed by approximately 200 Muslims so far, many of them distinguished leaders and intellectuals in the Muslim community, it is welcome, helpful, and courageous. Continue reading
“The Good Wife” Ethics, Season #2: Alicia, Kalinda, and Pretexting
In “Taking Control,” Kalinda (the beautiful, brilliant and innovative investigator, played by Archie Punjabi, who is employed by Alicia’s law firm) tracks down a witness by a phone ruse, lying to a series of restaurant owners by pretending to be the witness and persuading them to read her the witness’s address. While anyone who was a fan of “The Rockford Files” or any other TV show about private investigators wouldn’t blink at this conduct, someone in the employ of a lawyer and under a lawyer’s supervision is prohibited from engaging in this kind of deception. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: “Dancing With The Stars” Judge Bruno Tonioli
When judges, teachers and professors put tact and kindness over frank evaluations of skill, they penalize the most talented and hardest working in favor of the least able. That’s unfair. Tonioli shouldn’t be criticized for telling the truth, and choosing high standards and quality over sensitivity. Continue reading
Filed under Arts & Entertainment, Education, Ethics Dunces, Popular Culture, Professions, U.S. Society
Three Strikes—Wait—Four? Five? on Christine O’Donnell
The Tea Party would gain a measure of respect, at least from me, if they had the courage and principle to declare that a young woman who can’t balance a checkbook and lies repeatedly about her education is not a good candidate to fix what ails Washington, or fix anything at all, except maybe a horse race. Continue reading
Filed under Citizenship, Education, Ethics Dunces, Finance, Government & Politics, Leadership
Mayhill Fowler and The Ethics of Quitting
The internet creates unfortunate opportunities for the fired, rejected, under-appreciated and disgruntled to do all sorts of harm to their previous employers and themselves. Former Huffington Post blogger Mayhill Fowler has considerately given us an abject lesson in how not to leave a job, though at some personal sacrifice. Continue reading
Despite Evidence, Obama’s D.O.J., Democrats and News Media Stonewall Black Panther Case
The bizarre conduct of the Obama-Holder Department of Justice in refusing to to fully prosecute a 2008 instance of blatant voter intimidation at the polls by members of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia has been denied by D.O.J. (despite a video that proves the Voting Rights Act violation ), ignored or buried by most major news sources (despite Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander chiding his own paper for failing the public with inadequate coverage of the story) and attacked as manufactured by Republicans by partisan Obama defenders (despite the fact that, well, it just isn’t.) It is both disturbing and depressing that this conduct persists, long after the event itself, months after one Justice Department Civil Rights attorney quit to expose the episode publicly, and while the non-partisan U.S. Commission Civil Rights holds hearings on the case. Continue reading
9-11 Conspiracy Claims: The Hate Crime We Cannot Stop, But Must Not Tolerate
The assertion that the U.S. government killed its own citizens on 9-11 is a mass offense to America’s institutions, achievements, public, ideals, and public servants, past and present, motivated by hate and stoked by bigotry. Continue reading
