Conan O’Brien went on CBS’s “60 Minutes” this week, and managed to carefully trash NBC and Jay Leno without crossing the boundaries laid out in his agreement with NBC, which prohibited him from “disparaging” the network that treated him so abysmally and paid him 30 million dollars in the bargain. I sympathize with Conan. A “60 Minutes” softball interview (CBS is a competitor of NBC, remember, so it likes Conan, an NBC casualty and victim; “60 Minutes” only does tough interviews with people they don’t like) is good for Conan’s image, helps him publicize his national comedy tour and his new deal with TBS, and best of all, allows him to stick it to the people who did him dirt. This would be hard for anyone to resist, and obviously Conaa couldn’t. Still, it would have been better if he had. Continue reading
Month: May 2010
More Ethics Confusion at The Washington Post
Washington D.C. theater scene blogger and critic John Glass has caught the Washington Post with its ethical pants down. He alertly notes that a line in a recent Post story about the appointment of a new Artistic Director for the prestigious Studio Theater reveals that interviews for the position took place in Washington Post offices. Studio is an active Post advertiser that, like all D.C. area theaters, is significantly dependent on the paper’s theater reviews for its audiences. In this regard it is also in competition with other theaters for the Post critics’ approval. Doesn’t this situation require objectivity and an arm’s length relationship between the newspaper and the theater? Why is the Washington Post actively involved in a professional theater’s choice of artistic leadership? Continue reading
“The Good Wife” Ethics Follies
“The Good Wife,” CBS’s legal drama starring Julianna Margulies, began as an unusually nuanced show of its type that presented intriguing ethical dilemmas without crossing into David Kelley’s over-the-top Legal Theater of the Absurd. Little by little, however, the show’s willingness to ignore core legal ethics principles is becoming more pronounced. “Boom,” which aired last week, continues a trend that is ominous, considering “The Good Wife” is still in its first season. After all, the lawyers in Kelley’s “The Practice” didn’t start finding severed heads and getting charged with murder until a couple of seasons in.
If you missed “Boom,” or if you didn’t but had misplaced your A.B.A. Model Rules of Professional Conduct, here are the legal ethics howlers committed by the “Good Wife’s” attorneys: Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Florida House Rep. Janet Long
Once again, an elected official is advocating the Bizarro World ethics principle that those with the greatest conflict of interest in a matter are the only ones who have standing to decide it. Conflicts of interest create bias and interfere with objectivity. They are to be avoided whenever possible. How then does someone like Florida House of Representatives Member Janet Long, a Democrat from Pinellas County, while debating the controversial Florida law requiring women seeking an abortion to first have an ultrasound procedure, justify demanding that male legislators “stand down if you don’t have ovaries”? Continue reading
The Weintraub Delusion
Jerry Weintraub, the epically successful producer of movies and manager of legendary performers, notably Elvis Presley, has written an entertaining autobiography entitled, “When I Stop Talking You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories From a Persuasive Man.” Maybe the stories are useful, but clearly not in the way Weintraub thinks they are.
As Weintraub was promoting his book on NPR this morning, he told several stories, all amusing. One involved a period when he was managing the late singer John Denver. Continue reading
Misrepresentation, Manipulation and Lies About Arizona, E-Mails and More, Brought to Us By Those We Trust
Within a span of about three minutes two days ago, I heard Tony Kornheiser on his sports radio show and Joy Behar on her whatever-the-heck-it-is cable show describe the new illegal immigration statute in Arizona in almost exactly the same words: “So the police can go up to anybody for any reason at all, ask them to prove their citizenship, and arrest them if they can’t.” Now, the law specifies “reasonable suspicion,” so whatever the Arizona law permits, Tony and Joy’s version is clearly not it. Nonetheless, this is what a large proportion of the public believes, because this is what they are being told by reporters, bloggers and elected officials…and, disgracefully, the President of the United States, who once pledged to use his gifts and power to unite rather than divide us. Speaking about the Arizona law, Obama said.. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 