Ethics Alarms continues its efforts to educate the public and the media regarding what constitutes unacceptable public discourse.
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Year: 2011
Dr. Phil’s Child-Abusing Mom
I stopped watching Dr. Phil when I discovered that he was a fraud. There have been some substantial benefits of this pledge on my part; for example, I didn’t see the recent episode about problem children, which showed videotape of a mother from Anchorage, Alaska torturing her child.
Incredibly, Jessica Beagly, mother of six, oversaw the videotaping of her squirting hot sauce into the mouth of her adopted Russian son and forcing him into a cold shower. She made the tape so Dr. Phil could give her some advice on a segment that aired in November called “Mommy Confessions.” The studio audience was brought to tears by the tape, and Dr. Phil, no fool he, described the punishment as “over the top.”
Consequences (so far): Continue reading
Strange External Factors That Can Make Us More Ethical
“Cracked” would be on my list of one of the most unlikely websites to have an item relevant to this one, but here it is: a fascinating list of studies indicating that many external factors tip human beings toward ethical conduct, or away from it.
I gather from the list that looking at the CBS logo on a TV I can see through a broken window while being happily filthy standing in a grove of freakishly large lemon trees during a violent lightning storm will pretty much make me a saint.
You can read about the studies here.
Frivolous Charge of the Month (Runner-Up): Redskins Owner and Ethics Dunce, Dan Snyder
Most NFL fans know that Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder is the most hapless, inept, and narcissistic team owner in the league, spending millions upon millions of dollars on the once successful franchise while meddling in team affairs and ending up with a squad that seems to get worse every season. Few knew how petty and mean he was, however, until he was angered by an alternative media publication that published a reporter’s withering, exhaustive article last year, entitled “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder”, cataloging the full range of Snyder’s non-feasance, misfeasance, malfeasance, and plain old bone-headedness over his career. Snyder’s lawsuit, filed this week in New York, claims that the article contained “numerous outrageous, false and defamatory statements of and concerning” Snyder. “Simply put,” it says, “no reasonable person would accept the publication of these types of false, malicious, and/or defamatory statements about them or their spouses. Nor would any reasonable person tolerate an anti-Semitic caricature of himself or herself prominently displayed on the front pages of a newspaper containing false and malicious allegations.”
The lawsuit is ridiculous on many levels, but mostly because it is a classic frivolous action. Continue reading
Eroding Public Trust: Obama and General Electric’s “Appearance of Impropriety”
The fact that an official act appears to be sensible and fair does not necessarily mean that it is ethical.
Consider the EPA’s waiver of the new global warming regulations for a stalled power plant project in California. Officials reviewed EPA policies and decided it was appropriate to “grandfather” projects such as the Avenal Power Center, a proposed 600-megawatt power plant in the San Joaquin Valley, and thus exempt them from new federal limits on greenhouse gases and conventional air pollution. The Avenal Energy project, explains Environment and Energy News, is a combined-cycle generating plant consisting of two natural gas-fired General Electric 7FA Gas Turbines with Heat Recovery Steam Generators (HRSG) and one General Electric Steam Turbine.
Translation: It is a huge G.E. contract.
Hmmmm. Continue reading
Frivolous Complaint of the Month: Ronald Barbour
I considered several possible titles for this: Unethical Abuse of a Government Employee’s Time of the Month, False Accusation of the Month, and the like. I considered calling it Most Unfair Attack on the Missoula Community Theater of the Week, but I’m not even sure that is true. I even considered, Document That Almost Makes Me Regret That I Ever Opposed Unfair Attacks on the Tea Party, but that is a bit off topic.
This published letter by “Ronbo” Barbour completely fooled me; I really thought it was satire, which reveals a truth: the less one understands satire, the more likely one is to unwittingly emulate it without ever getting the joke.
I will say this: W.S. Gilbert would love this.
And now I present the actual letter sent to the Secret Service by Mr. Barbour, a Montana Tea Party official, relating to Sarah Palin’s inclusion in the classic comic song, “I’ve Got A Little List” [ Scroll to the end of the post for two versions of the song, the original and a Monty Python adaptation ] in the Missoula Community Theatre’s production of the 125 year-old operetta, “The Mikado.” I wouldn’t make this up; this is an ethics blog… Continue reading
Planned Parenthood Gets The ACORN Treatment
Taking its inspiration from James O’Keefe’s infamous ACORN stunt, and anti-abortion group called Live Action videotaped actors as they asked Planned Parenthood staff at a New Jersey clinic for advice while disguised as a pimp and one of his prostitutes. Sure enough, just like in the incident that helped destroy ACORN, the eager-to-please Planned Parenthood staff member cooperated, advising the couple how to get abortions and other services for the “pimp’s” prostitutes, some of them described as illegal immigrants and girls as young as 14.
The episode raises several ethical issues: Continue reading
No-Tolerance in Spotsylvania:Preventing the Next Columbine Spit-Ball Massacre
The parade of bizarre and cruel “no-tolerance” decisions continues unabated, proving that the learning curve for far too many school boards and school officials is far flatter than those of their most academically inept students. Neither national embarrassment nor the prospect of cruel and unjust treatment of normal, unthreatening students will sway these unethical martinets from their chosen, cowardly, self-righteous paths, as they inflict permanent scar on the educational experience of innocent young people to prevent a future disaster unrelated to anything the children did.
The no-tolerance disgrace this week: the Washington Post reported that Virginia’s Spotsylvania High School expelled student Andrew Mikel II for the modern day equivalent of blowing spit-balls at other students. Continue reading
Dear ESPN: I Know She’s Hot, But Fire Erin Andrews
…or at least suspend her. Show us that a male-dominated sports network can have a modicum of journalistic ethics, and won’t behave like a drooling traffic cop giving a buxom babe a pass for running a red light because she bats her eyes and flashes some cleavage.
You did the right thing in early January, when one of your broadcasters abused a female colleague in a sexist manner; some would say—certainly the fired Ron Franklin—that you reacted a little precipitously, but you are clearly taking a strong stand against gender bias in the workplace, and that’s commendable. Still, don’t you know that what your pin-up, “Dancing With the Stars” reporter Andrews did was far worse? Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: The Ever So Tolerant Wisconsin Bar
Hot on the heels of the story about the New Jersey lawyer who managed to avoid interruption to his legal career after admitting forgery, we have more disturbing evidence that a profession that insists on self-regulation may have a rather different concept than the public about what constitutes “fitness to practice law.”
The professional ethics rules in every state declare that substantial dishonesty and especially failure to obey the law call into question a lawyer’s trustworthiness and are grounds for suspension of disbarment. Many states automatically disbar any lawyer convicted of a felony. But in Wisconsin, a local newspaper investigative report reveals, there are 135 attorneys continuing to practice law despite convictions for battery, theft, fraud and repeat drunken driving. Some even had active licenses even as they served time behind bars, giving a new meaning to the term, “jail house lawyers.” Another 70 of Wisconsin’s attorneys-in-good-standing managed to avoid discipline by getting charges reduced or entering into deferred prosecution agreements. Continue reading
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