Month: November 2009

Reporters, Spouses, Conflicts, and Dissonance

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Washington Post’s ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, recently wrote a column discussing the seeming conflict of interest created for a Post reporter because of who she married.

Juliet Eilperin covers climate change for the paper. Her husband, Andrew Light, is an expert on the same topic, and coordinates international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. Alexander says that while Eilperin often gets quotes from her husband’s organization, he is never involved, and that the Eilperin-Lights maintain a strict separation of their careers. None of which answers the question: can she be an objective reporter on her Post beat, which happens to be in the same field where her husband makes his living?

The Post ethics rules, Alexander duly points out, say the Post is “pledged to avoid conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest, wherever and whenever possible.” Obviously, there is an appearance of a conflict of interest here. Perhaps Eilperin would be vigorously critical of a policy pronouncement coordinated by her husband, or maybe she would consciously or unconsciously allow her affection and commitment to her husband color her reporting. We don’t know, and she may not even know. One might think that we would know she was unbiased if she filed stories that put her husband, his views or his employers in a bad light, but even that isn’t certain. It might mean she was over-compensating for bias. It might mean that her views on climate change policy had soured because Andrew was in the dog house, or that she had come to resent his work for the Center, because it took time away from the family. Either way, the fact that Eilperin’s husband is linked to the climate change issue and particular views on that issue must exercise a powerful influence over her judgment.

The principle in force at work here is cognitive dissonance, often referred to in the media but seldom correctly. A psychologist named Leon Festinger devised a scale—-vertical, with zero in the center, extending upwards from +1 to +100, and downwards from -1 to -100. The Cognitive Dissonance Scale is used to measured how positive and negative attitudes toward people and things subconsciously influenced attitudes toward other people and things that they had connections to and associations with, through the involuntary reduction of cognitive dissonance. For example, you dislike an author and his books. You love a particular political cause. You discover that the author is a vocal supporter of that cause. This creates cognitive dissonance that your mind must resolve; you cannot continue to hold such a low opinion of the author and such a high opinion of his cause. You will change the values to bring them more into line with each other; you will reduce the dissonance.

If you love the cause more than you detest the author (using Festinger’s scale, imagine that the author is a  minus 6, and the cause is a plus 16), the cognitive dissonance will be resolved by your gradually feeling more positively toward the author, and conceivably, less positively toward the cause, so they eventually they meet or almost meet around plus 10. Suddenly, you have more interest in the author’s books. Your attitude has been adjusted. You may also be more open-minded when listening to adversaries of the cause you once blindly supported, because its value is lower, even though you didn’t consciously change your opinion. Cognitive dissonance and the process whereby it silently adjusts and manipulates attitudes explains much of advertising, political affiliations, biases, and how powerful, popular leaders, celebrities and institutions  influence public culture for good or ill. It also explains why close relationships can create conflicts of interest.

There are many movies about lawyers in which, for dramatic or comic effect, a trial pits an attorney-husband against his attorney-wife (“Adam’s Rib”) or an attorney-parent against an attorney-son or daughter (“Class Action”). But in real life, these adversary situations usually require informed consent by the clients, because they raise suspicions. Would a husband really go all out to make the woman he was married to look like a fool in court? In the movies, there is usually a manufactured competition between the related lawyers, but the appearance of conflict still remains. Depending on the situation, one attorney-spouse’s relationship to the other could create such a likely conflict that even client consent wouldn’t justify continuing the adversary representation. Suppose, for example, that the attorney-wife knew that her husband’s job at the firm depended on him winning. She has a stake in him winning the case now. How can she give all her loyalty to her client, who is paying  her to defeat her husband?

She can’t. And though ombudsman Andrews ties himself in knots to argue that Eilperin is in a different position, she isn’t. She has a stake in her husband’s success, which is on only one side of the climate debate.  She also has a stake in keeping his love, respect and trust. Can we trust her to be completely unbiased? Presumably, if he isn’t in her dog house, Andrew Light is very high on Juliet Eilperin’s dissonance scale. If she is to be properly objective as a reporter, his positions and those of his employer should be right at the middle of the scale—zero, neutral. But that will create dissonance. That position will eventually, inevitably carry a positive value, because she associates it with her husband.

Her marriage creates, therefore, at least an appearance of bias, and probably actual bias. There is nobody to consent to the conflict, because the equivalent of the lawyer’s client for a reporter isn’t the paper she works for, but the public itself. Short of the Post holding a public referendum, the public can’t  consent or refuse to consent. Nor should they have to. Surely Eilperin can report on another topic. Surely the Post has other qualified reporters who aren’t married to warriors in the climate change wars.

Alexander closes his article by giving Eilperin the benefit of the doubt: “It’s a close call, but I think she should stay on the beat. With her work now getting special scrutiny, it will become clear if the conflict is real.” Wait a minute…what about that “appearance” phrase in the Post’s own Code? Real or apparent conflicts are prohibited; the whole point is not to wait to see “if the conflict is real,” meaning, I suppose, that Eilperin starts obviously slanting her climate change reporting. Some observers think she’s doing this already, and that’s the point. Because of who she married, we can’t trust that she will successfully battle cognitive dissonance and give objective analysis.

If the Post cares about its integrity and avoiding the appearance of conflicts of interest, they need a new climate change reporter, and Juliet Eilperin needs a new beat.

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The Difference Between Law and Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

[This essay was originally published on The Ethics Scoreboard in 2004, and has been one of the most read and discussed of all the posts there. Ethics Alarms will  periodically republished pieces from that site, sometimes updated and re-edited, sometimes not. This one is unchanged.]

In the instructive category of “Lawsuits that demonstrate the distinction between law and ethics,” we have the Massachusetts case of Conley v. Romeri.

Ms. Conley met Mr. Romeri when they were both in their 40s and divorced. As romance beckoned, Ms. Conley told her swain that she was childless, and wanted to begin a family before her biological clock struck midnight. The defendant, who had sired four children already, told her “not to worry.” He had seen a fortune-teller who had predicted that he would increase his number of children from four to six.

That held Ms. Conley for seven months. Then he told her that he had been vasectomized years ago.

Ms. Conley sued the bastard, claiming that her now ex-boyfriend had fraudulently misled her into believing he could father little Conleys in order to prolong the relationship, and that his actions had thrown her into emotional distress and depression.

Let us pause here and say that Mr. Romeri is a cur. Knowing that Ms. Conley was desperate for children and running out of time, he nonetheless deceived her for his own purposes, costing her perhaps her only chance to have the family she desired. For the fans of Bill Clinton out there, he was also clearly adept at Clintonesque deceit: he said “don’t worry” about having children, not that he was capable of creating them; he said a fortune- teller has assured him that he would have more kids, but never said her prediction was plausible. Mr. Romeri, like millions of deceitful people before him, probably doesn’t think he really lied. But of course he did.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court, however, found that while Mr. Romeri may have behaved abominably, it was not the place of the law to punish him.

Such claims, the judges said, “arise from conduct so intensely private that the courts should not be asked to resolve them….It does not lie within the power of any judicial system to remedy all human wrongs. Many wrongs which in themselves are flagrant–ingratitude, avarice, broken faith, brutal words and heartless disregard–are beyond any effective remedy.”

Our hearts go out to Ms. Conley. But the law will never succeed in making people be honest, caring, and fair. Only we can do that, by creating a society in which boys grow to manhood knowing that behavior like Mr. Romeri’s is wrong, and at the same time, a society where women take responsibility for their own welfare, without seeking government remedies for every challenge.

What Congress calls “Ethical”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Of all the ethically brain-dead comments I have heard from politicians over the years, Steny Hoyer (D-MD ) the House Majority Leader, might take the trophy. In the wake of an unintentional leak of House Ethics Committee records showing that nearly 30 Democrats were under investigation, Hoyer made the stunning statement that this shows the Democrats are living up to their promise to run the “most ethical” Congress in history.

If I can stop sputtering long enough to type, let me clarify for the Congressman. The most ethical Congress is not the one with the most ethics investigations. It is the one with the fewest members whose conduct warrant investigation for wrongdoing. If Hoyer’s reasoning wa accurate, then the safest U.S. city would be the one with the most murder investigations. The most honorable West Point class would be the one undergoing the most cheating inquiries. The most environmentally responsible corporation would be the one that was being investigated for the most alleged dumping infractions. In short, what the heck is Hoyer talking about? Is he that stupid, or does he think we are?

This Congress just had a former member, William Jeffferson, convicted of taking bribes after $90,000 was found in his freezer.  This Congress has a Ways and Means Chairman, Rep. Charles Rangel, who admittedly has failed to report large amounts of money to the IRS (note that Ways and Means writes tax legislation), and that is just the latest of his ethics problems. This Congress is looking at a massive lobbying scandal of Abramoff proportions, with clients of the lobbying firm The PMA Group, staffed with former employees of defense appropriators,  winning defense-bill earmarks for its clients to the tune of nearly $300 million, thanks to dubious relationships with seven of the 16 members of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee—including the five most senior Democrats on the panel and the top Republican.

There’s more of that unsavory stuff being looked at by the Ethics Committee, but  lot of serious ethical misconduct isn’t  thought of that way, because it doesn’t involve obvious corruption. This Congress became the only one in history to have a member, Joe Wilson (R-SC) insult (“You lie!”) the President of the United States in the middle of a speech. This Congress had another member, Allan Grayson, call a female advisor to the Fed Chief a “whore.” This Congress has a Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who has called the CIA liars and impugned the integrity of American citizens who have demonstrated against her policies or questioned her health care bill.

Can one of the most uncivil, disrespectful, undignified and partisan Congresses in history also be the “most ethical”? Only to someone who doesn’t know what ethical is…such as, I fear, Steny Hoyer.

Is it ethical  for legislators to vote for revolutionary, expensive legislation that they haven’t read, an outrageous dereliction of responsibility and diligence that is not only rampant in this Congress, but shameless.? Is it ethical for legislators to stuff bills with budget-busting earmarks, and resist the efforts of members who attempt to make the process transparent and rare?

Cynics among you might argue that Hoyer could still be right, that this could be “the most ethical Congress” and still be a cesspool, given the competition. But to qualify as most ethical (as opposed to “least unethical”), there has to be some evidence of ethical conduct, and having ongoing investigations of a welter of unethical conduct by members isn’t it.

What would be evidence of an ethical Congress? Honesty and transparency with earmarks. Competency and responsiblity, meaning the production of bills that aren’t 2000 pages long (like the current House health care legislation), and no member voting for a bill he or she hasn’t read and understood. Accountability, requiring a member like Rep. Rangel to resign his Chairmanship before any ruling by the Ethics Committee, since the facts of his tax misconduct are very clear, and they alone disqualify him from his powerful Ways and Means post.

A truly ethical Congress wouldn’t have anything for the Ethics Committee to investigate.

No, Hoyer isn’t stupid. He is just permanently addled by too much exposure to Washington’s warped definition of ethical, which is defined in the Capitol as what you can get away with without being disgraced or punished. Until Congress develops higher standards than that, boasting about the “most ethical Congress” makes as much sense as arguing about who owns the most articulate cow.

 

Bizarro World Ethics in Denver and San Francisco

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Compassion and kindness don’t always lead to ethical decisions. Sometimes they cause decisions that are irresponsible, unfair, and misguided, not to mention dim-witted. An example presented itself last night, as voters overwhelmingly defeated a Denver City Council initiative that would require police to impound cars driven by unlicensed drivers. The key reason for the measure’s defeat, apparently, other than the fact that all the unlicensed drivers and their families voted against it, was widespread acceptance of the criticism that the measure would disproportionately affect illegal immigrants.

Actually, the same argument could be made about the law against driving without a license. Arresting those guilty of beating their spouses bloody will disproportionately affect men. Seems discriminatory, doesn’t it? Crimes of violence are overwhelmingly committed by those who are poor and uneducated; it is discriminatory to enforce those laws, right, Denver? Arresting drunk drivers is unduly burdensome on alcoholics and their families, too, and alcoholism is a disease. How barbaric!

The logic of Denver voters is ethically backwards, a Bizarro World version of fairness where core public interests—safety, law enforcement, citizenship— are seen as less important than  empathy for the non-citizens who break laws.

548 people died in Colorado traffic accidents in 2008. Drivers without valid licenses were involved in crashes that killed 130 of them. That’s 24 percent; not surprisingly, unlicensed drivers are also lousy drivers. They are also uninsured drivers. And they don’t worry so much about things like drinking while driving, because nobody is going to take away licenses they don’t have. Impounding the vehicles of drivers without licenses is an obvious, effective and sensible method of getting unlicensed drivers off the road, and will stop some people from dying. It is true that illegal immigrants are more likely to be on the road without licenses, because illegal immigrants can’t get licenses. That is completely their own responsibility, however. They were not forced to break the immigration laws, and nobody is making them drive illegally, either. Impounding vehicles doesn’t discriminate against illegal aliens; it discriminates against law-breakers, which is exactly what  laws are supposed to do.

Empathy and compassion are important ethical values. We should be compassionate to everyone, even criminals. Clarence Darrow, the great criminal defense lawyer, believed that being a criminal, no matter how vile, was always the result of accidents of birth and bad luck: wrong genes, wrong parents, no chance at education, wrong friends, wrong neighborhood, and a lack of good options. His perspective is worth remembering, but even Darrow didn’t argue that we should allow law-breakers to go on breaking the law. Yes: “There but for the Grace of God go I.” If I had been born poor in Mexico instead of Boston, I might be an illegal alien in Denver today. I might even have decided that I have to drive without a license, because it was the only way I could work. And if I did that, and was stopped on the road, I absolutely would deserve to have my car impounded. Whatever the solution to the illegal immigration problem is, forbidding enforcement of the laws illegal immigrants tend to break on the basis that it would pose a special hardship on them is not it. It is, instead, a prescription for anarchy, bad policy, harm to innocent citizens, and public anger.

Denver isn’t the only city getting its ethical priorities confused. Urged by its incorrigible, ethically-muddled mayor, Gavin Newsome, San Francisco police are easing up on  a policy that requires officers to impound the vehicles of drivers caught without  licenses, and based on the same logic as Denver’s compassionate voters. Taking away their cars will be really burdensome on illegal immigrants…

…who are in the state and city illegally in the first place…

…who have no right to drive or use the roads…

…but whose welfare should take precedence over the safety of legal citizens, in the Bizarro World ethical calculations of San Francisco officials and Denver voters, because punishing criminals unfairly discriminates against…criminals.
Ethics has to have a firm foundation in common sense and logic, or it becomes emotion and slogan-driven nonsense.

Unethical Blog Post of the Day

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Darren Rovell writes a sports business blog for CNBC, and maybe he was under a deadline, but it’s no excuse. In his blog today, Rovell writes an essay entitled, “Marathon’s Headline Win Is Empty.” His theme: everyone was excited that, for once, an American runner won the New York Marathon. But Rovell throws cold water on that bit of misguided national pride…

“Unfortunately, it’s not as good as it sounds. Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998, but the fact that he’s not American-born takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies.”

It constantly amazes me that after over 200 years proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that an American whose parents came over on the Mayflower is no more American than one who became a citizen yesterday, some people still fail to respect the wonder of this nation, a community of immigrants and the  descendants of immigrants, bound together by ideals and aspirations, not national origin.  Keflezighi has been a U.S. for eleven years, but he’s still not American enough for Rovell.

If anything, the fact that Keflezighi is a naturalized citizen—like Einstein, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, like Charles Steinmetz and Cary Grant, like Samuel Gompers and Madeleine Albright, like Bob Hope and Ayn Rand—gives us more reason to be proud of America, and that our system works, making us stronger, smarter, and faster because we can attract the best and boldest from around the globe.

It’s just a business sports blog,  and I suspect Rovell will soon be getting beaten up in media venues with a lot more visibility than this one. And I suspect, or hope,  that he didn’t think through what he wrote very carefully, and will soon be issuing a “I didn’t mean to offend anyone” apology. Still,  the attitude that his words convey, even if he didn’t intend it, is at the heart of the racism, bigotry, and xenophobia that still warps our political discourse and divides our communities.  The core ethical value being neglected here is respect: respect for fellow citizens, respect for the immigrants who have the determination to become Americans, and respect for what being an American means.

Meb Keflezighi is as American as I am, or Darren Rovell. It was sure great to have an American finally win the New York Marathon.

[Hat tip to James Taranto]

Cocoa Krispies and the Curse of the Transparent Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I have always been bothered by public lies that nobody could possibly believe. It is widely believed that such lies are harmless, since nobody could possibly be deceived by them. They are harmful, however, because their use suggests that lying doesn’t matter— it’s trivial, something everybody does, and nobody should expect truthfulness when a lie will serve.  The culture is already far too accepting of transparent lies. Politics is the most prominent example. Because the public expects candidates for high office to lie about their intent, they are amazingly forgiving when campaign lies become apparent. And because we  knowingly vote for well-meaning liars (or so we think), some  really dangerous, corrupt liars not only get elected, but can survive public exposure as liars. After all, say their supporters, enablers and henchmen, it is only a matter of degree.

Transparent lies, therefore, numb us to the hard stuff. They make us cynical, and the make us tolerant of liars. Then there is the possibility that the spokesperson who utters an obvious whopper really does think we’ll believe it. That’s an insult, profoundly disrespectful, and we should resent it.

The Ethics Scoreboard had a  feature called “The David Manning Trivial Liar of the Month” to highlight the public lies nobody could possibly believe. It was named for Sony’s “defense” when it was revealed that the movie critic, “David Manning,”  who they advertised as raving about lousy Sony films like “The Animal” (Starring Rob Schneider as a guy who accidentally has animal DNA grafted…oh, never mind.) was a fake invented by their marketing division. Sony said, in essence, that it was no big deal because everyone knows those critical raves in movie ads are mostly lies anyway. I didn’t carry the feature over to Ethics Alarms, because the kind of transparent, shameless, “I’m going to say this anyway even though it will have America rolling its eyes” lie the feature was designed to condemn didn’t come around every month. Naturally, the minute  Ethics Alarms debuts, here comes the Kellogg people with a classic.

Suddenly, boxes of Kellogg’s breakfast cereals like Cocoa Krispies have a huge yellow label across the front proclaiming “Now Helps Your Child’s IMMUNITY.”   Next to the banner is an announcement that the cereal is soaked with antioxidants, upping the daily vitamin requirement provided by a serving from 10% to 25%.  This has attracted the attention of the FDA , consumer advocates, and nutritionists, who say that the claim that a bowl of Cocoa Krispies that have been sprayed with extra vitamins can improve any child’s immunity to disease is either “dubious” or “ridiculous,” depending on whether you want to be nice about it.  USA Today quoted Marion Nestle, nutrition professor at New York University, as fuming, “The idea that eating Cocoa Krispies will keep a kid from getting swine flu, or from catching a cold, doesn’t make sense. Yes, these nutrients are involved in immunity, but I can’t think of a nutrient that isn’t involved in the immune system.”

The immunity claim isn’t  Kellogg’s obvious lie, however, as hard as that may be to believe. This is, also quoted in the USA Today story:

“It was not created to capitalize on the current H1N1 flu situation,” spokeswoman Susanne Norwitz says. “Kellogg developed this product in response to consumers expressing a need for more positive nutrition.”

Right. It is just a coincidence that in the middle of a swine flu epidemic, with dire predictions of world plague and the Dustin Hoffman movie “Outbreak” playing on every cable system, with parents sending their kids to the doctor as soon as they sneeze, scared silly by news reports of perfectly healthy children catching the H1N1 flu and dropping dead in days, Cocoa Crispies suddenly takes up a third of its box with claims that the cereal boosts immunity.

To be fair, it is obvious that Norwitz was trying to be deceitful, which is usually the antithesis of an obvious lie, since deceit depends on using the truth to deceive. She said the product wasn’t “developed” to exploit the H1N1 scare—no, no, it was “developed” because consumers wanted more nutrition. But nobody asked her why the product was developed. They asked her why Kellogg’s was making the dubious  immunity claim, and her answer that Kellogg’s wasn’t intentionally capitalizing on H1N1 fears, and that assertion, despite her attempt to qualify it, insults our intelligence.

What should she have said? She should have said this: “We know parents are concerned,with the current flu outbreak and all the publicity it is receiving, about their children’s heath and their vulnerability to the virus. Since we had recently increased the antioxidants added to our cereals, it seemed to be responsible to make sure parents knew about it, so we provided the banner. Antioxidents do contribute to immunity against disease. Did we think this would sell more cereal? Sure. We’re in the cereal business.”

But no. She and her employers didn’t have the integrity, honesty, brains, or respect for us to say that. They chose instead to play word games, and ended up with a foolish misrepresentation that even the most gullible couldn’t believe.

Tax Refund Deception

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From Wall Street Journal blogger-extraordinaire James Taranto:

“Tax refunds are evil, because they fool people into thinking they’re “getting” something from the government, when in fact all they’re receiving is their own money, months late. If the private sector tried this–say, your insurance or power company “borrowed” money by tacking $20 on to your monthly bill and refunded it, without interest, the following year–it would be a pretty clear case of fraud.”

Beyond the obvious hyperbole of “evil”—on this blog we would say “unethical”—is there any good argument against Taranto’s analysis?

Corked Bats and “No Harm, No Foul”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From lawyer/baseball blogger Craig Calcattera we learn that Baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount may have used a corked bat. Corking, in which cork is surreptitiously inserted into a hole drilled down the length of a baseball bat, is banned by the rules of baseball: it supposedly allows the bat to be swung faster and propel a ball farther and harder because of the properties of the cork. Get caught with a corked bat, and a major league player gets thrown out of the game, suspended and fined. Worse, he acquires the reputation of being a cheater. Those who are certain that former Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa used steroids are bolstered in their belief by the fact that he was once caught using a corked bat.

Yet there are strong indications that the superiority of corked bats is imaginary. When TV’s excellent “Mythbusters” tested the matter, their tests rendered that myth as “busted.” So Robin Yount’s  3,142  major league hits were not aided in any way by the cork in his bat. Should we care that he used one, if he indeed did?

Yes. We should care that he was cheating. Using a corked bat violates the rules, and the fact that this cheating is not as effective as a player  thinks it is, or effective at all, is absolutely irrelevant to an assessment of his character, integrity and sportsmanship. When the Delta House students in the comedy “Animal House” steal what they think are the final exam answers and use them on the test, they are still cheating, even though it turns out that their cheat-sheet had the wrong answers.  A runner who cheats but loses the race anyway is still a cheater; so is a corked bat-user who never manages to hit the ball.

“No harm, no foul”  is just another rationalization to make it easier for some to let unethical conduct go unrecognized and unpunished. The foul is the harm, or part of it. In cheating situations, there are two issues: was there cheating, and what were the consequences of it. The cheater is responsible for the results of his cheating, but often has less than complete control over them.  An ineffective cheater is still just as unethical as an effective one.

Many have trouble grasping this. Even some professions have trouble grasping this: for example, the ethics rules governing lawyers generally only prohibit completed violations.  An attorney trying to introduce falsified evidence in trial doesn’t count as cheating, in the construction of the Rules, if the attempt fails.  A lawyer who tries to deceive his or her client with a slyly misleading statement may not be violating the ethics rules if the client isn’t misled. Admittedly, this weakness in the legal ethics rules has a lot to do with the logistics of enforcement, but it is still an embodiment of “no harm, no foul.” The unsuccessful attempt to break the rules would probably support a complaint that the lawyer exhibited conduct calling  his character into question, but I can’t locate a case of  a lawyer whose bar  disciplined him solely for unsuccessfully attempting to break a rule.

When, if ever, baseball decides to permit corked bats, then using them will be perfectly fine, if probably pointless. For now, however, the anti-corking rule still serves a useful purpose. It helps identify who the cheaters are. In cheating, as in more honorable pursuits, there is no honor in being inept.

The Acceptable Slur

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Reason Magazine’s website has an article today by Steve Chapman describing New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s tactic of ridiculing his opponent Chris Christie’s weight (among other barbs, Corzine has used an ad showing Christie looking unusually large with a voice-over about him “throwing his weight around.” Har Har.) as politically maladroit. He’s right, but Chapman neglects to discuss the ethical issue involved. Attacking someone for his or her physical attributes is unethical: rude, mean-spirited, unkind and uncivil, a pure violation of the Golden Rule. Suggesting that a person’s worth can be discerned from his or her physical attributes is, quite simply, bigotry. Corzine, a proud liberal, would never dream of attacking an opponent for his race, or a physical disability like a missing leg. But calling an opponent fat in a manner designed to appeal to the bigotry of others is acceptable to him, indeed, acceptable to many. Why is that?

This is an oddly popular form of bigotry for liberals, journalists (I know I’m approaching redundancy here) and media commentators. The most popular target of fat attacks is conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Despite the fact that  Limbaugh has been in one of his svelte periods for some time, many newspapers and websites continue to accompany stories about his latest rants with an especially unflattering photo showing him roughly 100 pounds heavier.  John Kerry and other Limbaugh critics routinely include physical insults as they respond to his critiques. (They also frequently reference his problems with prescription pill addiction, an AMA-decreed medical malady. Their excuse for this is that Limbaugh has been unsympathetic to drug abusers in the past, an example of the unethical rationalization known here as the Tit for Tat excuse)  The junior U.S. senator from Minnesota got his job in part by making liberals giggle with his book entitled  “Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat, Idiot.”   But Limbaugh is just one target of many. The late, liberal Washington Post cartoonist Herb Block always drew the characters he didn’t like—Republicans, conservatives, bankers, “corporate interests,” “industrialists”—as human beach balls, to contrast with his poor, downtrodden, attractively thin liberal archetypes. Conservatives are guilty of fat-baiting too, of course; when they weren’t  using Mary Jo Kopechne to ridicule the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, they called him a tub of lard. Conservatives often have a more difficult time getting away with it, because liberals will rise in indignation to condemn such a tactic on the Right, especially if the target is a woman, as when conservative radio talk show Laura Ingraham was pilloried for referring to John McCain’s daughter Meaghan as “plus-sized.” Liberals appear to understand that using physical characteristics to deride and diminish someone is unethical, but believe there is an exception when the fat person in question is “bad,” as in “disagrees with them.”

Here is the sad truth. Many people, liberals and conservatives, are bigoted against fat people, and even those who are repulsed by bigotry based on race, religion or physical malady manage to rationalize regarding excessive weight as a sign of bad character, greed, gluttony, laziness, or, in the most recent trend, having too large a carbon footprint. Good, responsible people jog and exercise, like Jon Corzine. True, Corzine is a millionaire, and studies show that the higher correlation is not between wealth and fat, but rather poverty and fat, but never mind.  Though the culture now strongly reinforces the message that it is wrong for a white man to feel superior to a black man, it has yet assimilate the concept that a thin, fit, attractive American isn’t inherently preferable to a fat one, no matter what else the corpulent individual has to offer.

It’s time; indeed, it is past time. I think there is even  a case to be made that a fat individual may be overweight for ethical reasons. You can spend a couple hours a day jogging and pumping iron—14 hours a week, 56 hours a month, 672 hours a year—or you can spend the same time on pursuits that benefit people other than yourself, like your family, the poor, or society. Extra weight may be a form of sacrifice, a badge of honor.  What justification does Al Franken or Laura Ingraham, or a Hollywood actor who gets paid to be fit, have to question that choice or feel superior? If Oprah Winfrey wants to call herself fat, fine, but who can criticize how she uses her time? She cares about other things more than the scale and the mirror. Good for her.

But that’s just an argument that fat bigotry is unjustified. The primary point is that it is wrong, as wrong as any other form of bigotry. I don’t think Jon Corzine should necessarily lose the governorship because of it, because American culture, so far, has told him that fat bigotry is still tolerated. Still, if Corzine did lose, and lost in part because of his bigoted campaign, it would send an important  message—the message is that the “acceptable slur”  isn’t acceptable any more, no matter who the target is.

If Only There Had Been More Like Her…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Frank Navran, a friend, colleague and perceptive ethicist with a talent for teaching ethics with vivid stories, tells this one, a true case of integrity applied the right way, by the critical person, in a timely fashion:

While attending an ethics conference in New York in October of 2008, I decided to stay with friends in New Jersey. That meant riding the train into the City for my conference. On the second day of the conference, I happened to sit next to a young woman who was neither reading nor napping so I engage her in conversation. It started with a simple “Do you ride the train every day?”

She said that yes. she does ride the train every day, and had been doing so for seven years since she and her family chose to move to New Jersey “for the kids”. I asked what kind of work she did, and she replied that she  was the CFO of a mid-sized insurance company.  Now, recalling that this was the fall of 2008, insurance companies were in the news. And so I asked her how things were at her company. Her reply was, “Better than most”.

Now I was curious. “What does “Better than most” mean?”, I asked.

She went on to explain. “About three years ago I left AIG, where I knew my prospects for advancement were limited, and accepted an offer to become the CFO for my current company.  As a newly-hired CFO, one of the first things I did was to meet with my staff. When meeting with the gentleman who managed our investment portfolio I asked for a description of our holdings. He proceeded to sing the praises of our investment strategy which included a significant percentage dedicated to what he referred to as “securitized debt”.

She said she was not familiar with these instruments and asked how they worked. His reply was that they were AAA rated and were returning huge investments. Unsatisfied, she probed for details, and when he was unable to provide them, suggested that the “do his homework” and meet with her again in two days.

Two days later, when asked to explain securitized debt, he restated that they were AAA rated and very profitable but added that no one seemed to really understand just how they worked.

Her reply, she told me, was simple She gave him three months to divest the company of anything that he couldn’t adequately explain to her simply because she was not going to go before her Board and justify their investment strategy without understanding the nature of and workings of the instruments in which they were invested.

“In other words, she had integrity,” Frank concludes. “What a radical concept.”

Indeed. What the CFO did was not, of course, radical. It was honest, responsible and prudent. We can only imagine how different things would be today if there had been more executives like her when the financial sector was operating with mirrors,  winks, and sleight of hand.

<Sigh!>