Year: 2011

When Unethical Meets Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Cuation! Moron at Work.

Pilots flying multi-million dollar aircraft to Navy Air Station Oceana say that beams coming from laser pointers are blinding them as they make their approach. The Navy says there has been a sharp increase in the number of laser sightings within the last 18 months. “You’re getting ready to land–you’re getting ready to go through a number of steps configuring the airplane to touchdown. In the two-seaters, there aren’t any sticks in the back. So if you lose the ability to fly it in proximity to the ground, it gets pretty dangerous,” says Webb. In short, the laser pointers are risking military planes and lives. Continue reading →

Hank Williams, Jr.: Victim of a Political Correctness Mugging

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Wait---Hank Williams Jr. thinks Obama is like Jennifer Aniston?

On the Fox News morning couch-fest, country singer Hank Williams, Jr. had this exchange with the hosts:

HANK WILLIAMS: Remember the golf game?

    STEVE DOOCY: Boehner?

    HANK WILLIAMS: That was one of the biggest political mistakes ever.

    CO-HOSTS: Why?

    HANK WILLIAMS: That turned a lot of people off. You know, watching, you know, it just didn’t go over.

    GRETCHEN CARLSON: You mean when John Boehner played golf with President Obama?

    HANK WILLIAMS: Oh, yeah! Yeah. And Biden and Kasich, yeah. Uh-huh.

    GRETCHEN CARLSON: What did you not like about it? It seems to be a really pivotal moment for you.

    HANK WILLIAMS: Come on. Come on. It would be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu, OK?

It wasn’t OK, apparently. Headlines sprouted up like weeds claiming that Williams had “compared Obama to Hitler,” or “said Obama was like Hitler.” So because ESPN figured much of its audience would think that Hank Williams compared the President to Adolf Hitler, since the media was reporting his words that way, ESPN, that paragon of courage, fired Williams as the voice of Monday Night Football. No longer will his song introduce the festivities. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “America’s Untouchables, Continued…”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Commenter Shelly Stow has the Comment of the Day, with some useful calculations inspired by the post “America’s Untouchables, Continued…”:

“Every time I read about the creation of “child-safe” zones, I just shake my head. According to the latest statistics from the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Division of the DOJ about who child molesters are, for victims age 6 and below, 58.7% are family members, 39.7% family acquaintances, and 1.8% strangers (and not all of the stranger group are registered offenders; in fact, few are); for victims age 7-11: 50.5% family; 46.7% acquaintances; 2.7% strangers; and for victims age 12-17: 21.7% family; 72.9% acquaintances; 5.7% strangers–keeping in mind that only a tiny percentage of the stranger groups are registered offenders.

“Based on this, the only “zone” that would keep children out of the reach of potential molesters and therefore safe from sexual abuse is a zone that would exclude their parents, siblings, grandparents, entire extended family, baby sitters, neighbors, teachers, playmates’ parents, siblings…..everyone in their lives.”

Ethics Dunce: Parasole Resteraunts in Minneapolis

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Back to the good old days!

Ah, nostalgia! It’s nice to see that some corporations have the respect for history and tradition to emulate, even in these difficult times, the robber baron mentality of America’s past.

The  Minneapolis company Parasole Restaurants, which operates a chain of popular eateries with names like Chino Latino, Good Earth, Il Gatto, Manny’s Steakhouse, Uptown Cafeteria and Sky Bar, accessed its inner capitalist pig and decided that the best way to offset an increase in the cost of doing business was….to steal a portion of its waiters’ tips.

Servers at Parasole restaurants received word last week that they’ll have to give up 2% of their credit card tips to their employer. The Parasol suits explained the move as being necessary due to the combination of rising credit card use by customers and higher fees from banks. Continue reading →

The Washington Post, Rick Perry, and “Niggerhead”: A Confirmation Bias Conundrum

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I'm bending over backwards trying to be fair about this...

The Washington Post splashed a strange front page story across its paper face on Sunday. I have no idea what to make of it, because I am trying as hard as I can to be objective, and the story repels objectivity like my cousin repels women. It is shot through with confirmation bias: what you think of it is hard to separate from what you already believe.

It appears that Rick Perry, early in his career (when he was a Democrat), used to host events at a hunting camp where there was a large boulder that had the word “Niggerhead” painted on it. Ranchers called the camp by that name—-once a common one for rock formations and creeks in Texas and other parts of the country—long before Perry and his father, Ray, began hunting there in the early 1980s. Perry’s father leased the property in 1983, and according to Perry, the first thing he did was to paint over the word on the rock.  Perry says that when he first saw the rock, it was already painted over. But the Post found seven individuals who say they remember seeing the name on the rock during the time when Perry’s father’s name was on the lease. Apparently the old name is still visible through the paint. Eventually, Perry’s family paid to have the boulder flipped over so it couldn’t be read. Meanwhile, the Post says,  “Longtime hunters, cowboys and ranchers said this particular place was known by that name as long as they could remember, and still is.”

What are we supposed to take away from all this? Continue reading →

America’s Untouchables, Continued: Persecution in Huachuca City, Arizona

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Wait! I've got a great solution! Why not a YELLOW STAR for registered sex offenders?

Huachuca City, Arizona has approved an ordinance banning registered sex offenders from all public facilities, including schools, parks, libraries, pools, gymnasiums and sports facilities. As discussed in an earlier post, the willingness of municipalities to continue to oppress and stigmatize law-abiding citizens who the justice system has deemed fit to re-enter society is ignorant, cruel, and unconscionable. And it is getting worse.

Mayor Byron Robertson is mouthing the same rationalization that others in his position have: it’s all for the children. “As a town and as a community, we have to protect our children. As a council, we have to make the right calls. Our police chief indicated that we were having a serious problem with some pedophiles that were being a nuisance and we took steps to overcome that.” The “steps” involve forcing innocent American citizens to move out of town, because “some” individuals, who are not necessarily registered sex offenders, are posing problems.This isn’t good for the children, because it isn’t good for children to grow up in a community that engages in cruel and invidious discrimination based on presumed criminal tendencies. Continue reading →

An Ethics Muffin Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Tim Matheson in “Animal House,” as “Justice Department Inspector General”

In the end, it was Ethics Bob who saw the light first. Responding to last month’s Ethics Alarms post about the Justice Department’s inspector general flagging extravagant costs for conferences, Bob Stone, a business ethics expert and blogger who comes from a long career with the Defense Department, wrote this:

“As a sometimes victim of smear-by-IG, I’d recommend turning down the outrage. Just as there never was a $400 hammer, there probably wasn’t a $16 muffin. I’ve been involved with a lot of government conferences—I’ve sponsored a few—and my experience is that the people are as diligent with expenses an informed taxpayers would like them to be. IG’s records are built on how many outrages they turn up, and they often manufacture them.”

Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: David Letterman

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

No Free Speech weenie he. Yale, take note.

I stopped watching David Letterman years ago, when I learned that he was an unapologetic serial sexual harasser.  I don’t like to patronize the work of professionals, however talented, who should have been fired and would have, if their employers had any integrity. As a result, I missed Letterman’s ascent into ethics hero territory. It pains me to admit this, since I neither like nor generally respect him, but that is where David Letterman belongs.

On the June 5, 2011 edition of “The Late Show with David Letterman,” the host smilingly pulled his finger across his throat to note the U.S. military’s reported killing of Ilyas Kashmiri, an Islamist terrorist who was one of the organizers of a deadly attack in India that killed and wounded hundreds of innocent civilians. On a roll, Letterman made a joke about Osama bin Laden’s death as well.A group of radical Islamists took offense, and in a posting on the Islamist web forum Shumukh al-Islam, called for Letterman’s murder, urging the eventual assassin to cut out Letterman’s tongue.

Continue reading →

The Dubious Ethics of Andy Rooney

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

A few words about the trustworthiness of Andy Rooney...and CBS News

“60 Minutes” curmudgeon Andy Rooney makes his cranky farewell this week, and the CBS newsmagazine can be expected to make a big deal over his retirement; after all, Rooney is the network’s last remaining link to the halcyon days of Edward R. Murrow. In his blog, journalist Paul McNamara recalls an encounter with Rooney 20 years ago that provides some insight into the regard a broadcast icon has for the truth, and perhaps the culture of news reporting at CBS.

McNamara, you see, was working at a newspaper that ran a syndicated Rooney column, and one day he discovered that one of the columns Rooney filed included his eye-witness report of something that occurred after he wrote the piece… Rooney had intentionally fabricated a scene he never saw. It was a minor misrepresentation in the context of the column, but a misrepresentation nonetheless. Continue reading →

The Media Pundits’ Bigoted Preemptive Attack on Chris Christie

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

THIS seems to be a logical method for choosing a President.

Democrats and progressives are apparently terrified that a Republican will enter the presidential race who isn’t a religious zealot, a libertarian ideologue, a political tyro, a Mormon or a Texan, but a charismatic governor of a big northeastern state who is pragmatic, credible and successful. That would be Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, who may be about to throw his hat in the ring. So the word has gone out to the media, or the media is just sufficient trained to protect Democratic presidents without further instruction, that it needs to define Christie before the American public has a chance to form its own opinion, and the definition it has arrived at is fat.

You know, fat. As in Rush Limbaugh fat, fat like the political cartoonist Herblock always drew lobbyists and “Big Business.” Diamond Jim Brady fat; fat like Sydney Greenstreet, the villain in all those Humphrey Bogart movies. Fat means bad; fat means lazy; fat means unhealthy, and ugly. Fat people consume more than their share, and are disproportionately responsible for global warming and soaring health care costs, don’t you know. They  have no self-control; they don’t have self-respect. We dread being stuck next to one of these porkers in an airplane. You can’t trust fat people. That’s really all you need to know about Chris Christie. This is America—we worship beautiful people. Fit people. Thin people….like, say, President Obama. Do we want to be led by someone who is fat? Of course not! Continue reading →