Year: 2011

The Folly and Threat of the Pew 13%

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

From the just-released Pew survey about American attitudes and practices regarding their mobile phones:

“Cell phones can help prevent unwanted personal interactions – 13% of cell owners pretended to be using their phone in order to avoid interacting with the people around them.”

For information and education of those 13% of cell phone owners, here is what I know about you because you engage in this practice:

  • You are rude.
  • You are disrespectful.
  • You are cowardly.
  • You are ignorant
  • You are a liar.

I am sure these same people will happily enter their opinions on blogs about what is and isn’t right about America, despite having avoided all but the most sanitized interaction with it—using pseudonyms to hide their identities, of course. They don’t want interaction, the mutual exchange of  opinions, or to have to deal with anyone who might shatter their ossified, unshakable view of the world with a different perspective. Continue reading →

The Warren Jeffs Sex Tapes and the Media’s Ethical Incoherence

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Warren Jeffs and his happy, happy wives---caught on tape!

Warren Jeffs, the Texas polygamist recently convicted of raping his child-wives, was sent to his richly-deserved prison sentence with the help of some horrific tape recordings of Jeffs proselytizing his young victims on their God-directed duty to satisfy his sexual needs, and more tapes that recorded his grunts and pants as he had sexual intercourse with them.

The Salt Lake Tribune requested and received copies of the tapes as well as other evidence in the trial. Then, according to an explanation in the paper, it editors had extensive discussions internally regarding the journalistic ethics of making the tapes generally available online. The paper’s decision:

“We opted to post only clips because we did not believe it would be ethical to make recordings of sexual assault, in action or imminent, easily available on the Web. Young girls can be heard in the tapes, and the jury’s decision was clear: These girls are a predator’s victims. In our role as journalists covering difficult stories, we vow to do our jobs while minimizing harm. In choosing not to provide these materials, we acted to minimize harm.

“What you will hear if you listen to the clips is Jeffs explaining and justifying his abuse of young girls in the name of religion. His “teaching” is helpful in understanding the case and the jury’s decision.”

This is hypocrisy of the highest order, and an abuse of a news organization’s function. Continue reading →

Do Nicer People Earn Less Money? Of Course They Do. And That’s the Way it Should be.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Leo Durocher figured out that "nice guys finish last" 60 years ago, and he never went to college. Now three academics, after extensive research, have "discovered" the same thing. Ah, scholarship!

A study by Cornell professor Beth A. Livingston,  Timothy A. Judge of the University of Notre Dame and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario study used survey data to examine “agreeableness” and found that disagreeable men made 18%, or $9,772 annually, more in salary than those who are more accommodating. The salary disparity was  less among women, with disagreeable females making 5% or $1,828, more than those who are easier to get along with. Does this shock you? It shouldn’t.

As is depressingly often the case, the academics who come up with such crack-brain studies—I read this one, and will want that wasted hour back when I’m on my death-bed so I can watch one last re-run of “Magnum, P.I.”—have so little experience with the working world and the reality of non-academic cultures that they don’t even comprehend their own research and draw absurd conclusions from it.

“The problem is, many managers often don’t realize they reward disagreeableness,” Livingston told the Wall Street Journal. “You can say this is what you value as a company, but your compensation system may not really reflect that, especially if you leave compensation decisions to individual managers.”

Oh brother. Continue reading →

Ethics Bulletin: Payback Is Not Always Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

"Sure, honey, take all the photos you want. And if your girlfriend wants to see the birth of our daughter, she's welcome too!"

Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax, as I have noted before, has an almost pitch-perfect ethical sense, and negotiates difficult relationship dilemmas with consistent skill and wisdom. She is too nice sometimes, however, and her recent advice to an expectant mother is a striking example.

The woman wrote Hax about how to handle the request of her AWOL husband, who left her mid-pregnancy to move in with his mistress, to witness the birth of his daughter. He also wants his family to be present. The mother-to-be said that she fully intends to allow her child to have a good relationship with her father, but she does not want either her weasel husband or his family, which hid his affair from her, around when the baby comes. “I don’t want any of them there,” Expectant Mom writes. “Many of them knew about the girlfriend but kept it from me, and I don’t want my husband to have the satisfaction of comforting me when I’m in pain. Do I have the right to tell them this, in some collected, nonconfrontational way?” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: If This Is Wrong, Why Does It Make Us Cheer?

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Robert Harding, post Holly. The Duke would have been proud of her. Should we be?

In Des Moines, a man who told police later that he “likes young girls” tried to lure one into his clutches, and ended up with a black eye and a several bruises. Robert C. Harding attempted to coax Holly Pullen’s 13-year-old daughter into an alley outside the Pullen home.The teen got her mother to go into the alley instead, and when Holly Pullen asked what he wanted, Harding said he wanted to marry and have sex with her daughter. Then he offered to buy her. Holly promptly beat the the snot out of him. (Harding was later tracked down by Pullen’s husband and others, and turned in to the police.)

This was violent, vigilante justice. It was also technically assault and battery. Your Ethics Quiz question is this:

Given all of these reasons why Holly’s conduct was unethical, why do we viscerally approve of it? Continue reading →

Case Closed on Obama’s Leadership Skills

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Anyone who watched the Beltway public issues panel show “Around Washington” knows that there is no more loyal defender of Barack Obama than Colbert King. King is a Democrat and a card-carrying progressive, and also a Pulitzer Prize winner and career-long Ethics Hero, as he has doggedly and revealingly documented the corruption in all corners of the Washington. D.C. government. Colbert King, in short, is a truth-teller, and while his ideological leanings have often caused him to defend Obama when it would be more responsible not to, he has integrity. This weekend, in his weekly column for the Washington Post,  he joined a chorus of conservative critics by expressing dismay that the President would choose this time to take a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard:

“Is there anyone in the White House with nerve enough to tell Barack Obama that Martha’s Vineyard is the last place on earth that the president of the United States should find himself next week? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t begrudge the chief executive a little time off from the Oval Office. But to be leaving town to spend 10 days luxuriating in an affluent, New England summer town when millions of Americans can’t find work? To fly off to the Vineyard when the public is losing faith in Washington’s ability to fix the nation’s economic problems, and with people anxious about their futures? What is he thinking?”

I can answer that, and in fact I have. Continue reading →

Would Dennis Rodman Qualify for the Baseball Hall of Fame?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Dennis Rodman, out of uniform

Of course not. Dennis Rodman didn’t play baseball. He was a pro basketball player, and as of yesterday, an inductee into the NBA Hall of Fame for his exploits on a basketball court. There is no question that he is eminently qualified for admission to the NBA Hall of Fame, because the NBA Hall of Fame doesn’t care if players are thugs, drunks, scofflaws, deadbeat dads and couldn’t define sportsmanship with a dictionary as long as they can shoot, score, pass, dribble and block shots.

The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, however, requires that its members demonstrate “integrity, sportsmanship, (and) character,” in addition to outstanding achievements and a remarkable career record.  Because of the steroid era that has rendered a whole generation of players suspect for cheating, an expanding number of baseball greats face being excluded from the Hall because cheating by using substances that are illegal and banned in the sport while implicitly deceiving the public about the use is, by any rational definition, a material breach of integrity and sportsmanship.  The natural reaction by many sportswriters, as in other fields when reasonable standards are routinely violated, is to attack the standards. Why should a sport care about matters like integrity and character? Isn’t it the performance that counts, and winning? Continue reading →

Corey Feldman’s Frightening, Important, Unethical Revelations

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Corey Feldman in his prime

Corey Feldman could be the poster boy for troubled ex-child stars. The quirky, funny kid who had major roles in “Stand By Me,” “The Goonies,” and “The Lost Boys” was exploited by his parents, damaged by the industry, and left with an addiction to attention and fame. Feldman, like many other child stars, was never able to transition into adult parts, and now he is 40, still with the hunger for attention and validation that characterizes the breed. He has tried reality shows and low-budget films, and now he is trying to get himself back in the news by making sensational accusations.

In an interview on ABC’s Nightline, Feldman dropped a genuine bombshell, saying…

“I can tell you that the No. 1 problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. That’s the biggest problem for children in this industry. … It’s the big secret.” Continue reading →

The Disgrace of the Health Care Reform Debacle, Brought Into Focus

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Nice image. Unfortunately, the open book is "Catch 22"

“Some prominent academics have argued that the individual mandate is a clearly constitutional exercise of the federal government’s taxing power. Some of these same academics have argued that opponents of the individual mandate’s constitutionality are well outside the legal mainstream. Yet as of today, there has not been a single federal court — indeed, perhaps not even a single federal judge — who has accepted the taxing power argument. Not a one. And yet a half-dozen federal judges have found the mandate to be unconstitutional. So which arguments are outside of the mainstream again?”

Thus did Jonathan Adler, Case Western law professor and Director of the Center for Business Law and Regulation, chide the arrogant supporters of the health care reform act who dismissed as wackos and radicals critics who were alarmed at its intrusions onto personal freedom. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection of the individual mandate, the provision requiring all adult citizens to buy private health insurance, is the most striking proof yet of the arrogant, unethical, dishonest, corrupt and incompetent manner in which the Democratic majority passed its version of health care reform. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero and Artistic Champion: Stephen Sondheim, Defending “Porgy and Bess”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Steve has your back, George.

I read with horror last week that the Gershwin estate, lured by the temptation of an increased revenue stream from the works of their more talented forebears, have agreed to allow director Diane Paulus and the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks to mess with ( that is, “improve”) “Porgy and Bess,” the classic 1935 opera that is one of the towering works in the history of American musical theater. This is, of course, vandalism in the name of ego and commerce, and a full-fledged assault on the masterpiece of not one but four great artists: the Gershwins, George and Ira, and the Heywards, Dorothy and DuBose, who wrote the novel and the play the opera was based on.  It is also stunning disrespect and abuse of power, with the living director and adapter wielding the power of celebrity and influence, and the dead artists retaining no power at all (being dead), having unwisely entrusted the protection of their legacies to greedy and tasteless relatives all too willing to sell out their kin for thirty pieces of silver.  Now, as the New York Times reported, the creators of the New Improved Porgy and Bess are readying new scenes, jazzed up dialogue, back-stories for the characters and an upbeat ending.    

This, as you might imagine, struck to the core of my work as an ethicist and in my position as the co-founder and artistic director of a  professional theater devoted to classic 20th Century stage works. I began to prepare a post on the rape of “Porgy and Bess,” but was distracted by other matters, and didn’t get the piece finished.

That was lucky. I should have remembered that Stephen Sondheim, the only musical theater artist alive who can claim the right to be mentioned in the same breath as George Gershwin, had extolled “Porgy and Bess” as the very greatest American musical in his autobiographical work, “Finishing the Hat.”  Needless to say, Sondheim is an authority on these matters, and also an artist who can appreciate what Paulus and Parks are doing to his colleague, peer and fellow geniuses, the Gershwins. On top of that, he has the wit and rhetorical skills to defend the rights of artists and dissect the rationalizations of vandals like few others.

And he did. John Glass of Drama Urge kindly alerted me that Sondheim has written a letter to the New York Times explaining…not arguing, because there is no argument…why the new “Porgy and Bess” is wrong.  Here it is; you just can’t do it better than this: Continue reading →