Year: 2011

The Chivalry Curse, the President, and the Dazzling Smile

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The Chair of the Democratic National Committee

The Republicans seldom look more silly—and politics seldom looks more cynical— than when the GOP complains that the media or liberal interest groups are ignoring conduct by a progressive politician that they would vociferously criticize if a conservative politician behaved similarly, even though the Republicans themselves see nothing wrong with the conduct, and would scream that the criticism was unfair if it was focused on a conservative. This is yet another of the funhouse mirror versions of the Golden Rule in action, being employed for a dubious “Gotcha!”: “Do Unto Others As You Would Do Unto Me, Even Though If You Did That Unto Me, I Would Condemn You For It.”

It is the game Republican women’s groups and  conservative pundits are playing now, because the National Organization for Women hasn’t rapped the knuckles of President Obama for calling Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D.-Fla.), the Democratic National Committee Chair, “cute.”

Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America (a conservative women’s organization), called out NOW on its double standard, and said,“Of all people who ought to be offended at President Obama’s statement it should be an ardent feminist like Wasserman-Schultz. Isn’t objectifying women by their looks a mortal sin among feminists?” Charlotte Hayes, a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, the conservative twin of NOW, argued, “If a conservative had said this, [NOW] might have gone quite crazy. The Democrats might have gone quite crazy and tried to have his head on a platter. I guess Democrats could get really mad because you say a woman has a charming smile.”

But, she added, “I’m not one of those people who gets mad if you said I have a charming smile. I would be flattered.”

For its part, NOW has said that it has more pressing matters than criticizing a major ally’s politically incorrect gaffe, much as it couldn’t be bothered to criticize Bill Maher for calling Sarah Palin a “dumb twat” or MSNBC’s Ed Schultz for describing conservative pundit and single mother Laura Ingraham as a “right wing slut.” The President and the woman with the cute smile, meanwhile, are ignoring the whole thing.
Here is the irony, and the problem: they are all wrong. Continue reading →

White House Mendacity on Libya

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The White House says this isn't "hostilities." Right.

I detest it when Presidents and their administration play self-evident language games to assert intellectually dishonest positions, whether it is Bill Clinton’s minions claiming blow-jobs aren’t “sex with that woman,” or Dick Cheney arguing that torturing prisoners by water-boarding technically isn’t torture.  Such deceit and mendacity by the representative of the Chief Executive or the President himself vastly increases public cynicism about our government and diminishes our democracy’s most precious and endangered asset, trust.

The Obama administration, despite its leader’s stirring words in the 2008 campaign, has already shown itself capable of outrageous misrepresentations, as when it reported “jobs saved” by the stimulus package using fictional Congressional districts and counting single jobs as multiple jobs “saved.” So we shouldn’t be surprise, only nauseated, when it tells Congress, as it did this week, that U.S. participation in the Libyan uprising doesn’t fall under War Powers Resolution. Continue reading →

Unethical and Unfair Advertising With No Laws or Rules Against It…So That Makes It OK, Right?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Justice Holmes warned about people like this.

From Wisconsin we have a perfect example of how new technology creates opportunities for the unethical to find new ways to exploit it, uninhibited by either basic fairness or formal ethics rules that were written before the technology was available.

The Wisconsin law firm Cannon & Dunphy purchased the names of the two named partners of their biggest competitor in personal injury law, the firm Habush, Habush & Rottier, for a sponsored link, meaning that  every search for “Habush” or “Rottier” produces an ad for Cannon & Dunphy at the top of all the search results.  incensed that their names were being used to promote their competitor, Robert L. Habush and Daniel A. Rottier sued, alleging a breach of privacy and a misuse of their publicity rights. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Charles Kahn Jr. rejected the suit, holding that purchasing a competitor’s name as an advertising key word on the Internet is reasonable commercial use. Continue reading →

Crystal’s Evil Plot: Competition for Fick?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

 

More attractive than Leroy Fick, but just as rotten inside...

Leroy Fick, the lottery winner/millionaire who still shamelessly collects food stamps because a flawed law lets him, was laps ahead in the race for the Creep of the Year  (non-criminal division), when out of the pack came Crystal Harris in a sprint. Fick is still ahead, if only because Harris was foiled in her despicable plans, but even having the idea she is reported to have concocted puts her on Fick’s heels.

Hugh Hefner has stuffed his Playboy Mansion with ambitious, busty bimbos for decades, and now that he is in his 80’s and providing for 25-year-old sex-kittens while lounging around in  pajamas, the whole thing is vaguely distasteful. Hef decided to go beyond his traditional harem bit by actually marrying one of the bimbos, Crystal Harris, who Hefner simultaneously would feature au natural (well, sort of) in a Playboy foldout. The marriage, alas, wasn’t to be, as Crystal had what Hef called (via Twitter), a “change of heart” shortly before the planned wedding day. Eh, big deal. Everything Hefner has done in his personal life has been 50% or more promotion for his business anyway, and one can hardly blame a young woman from deciding that whatever financial benefits Hefner offered were inadequate for what she was agreeing to—whatever it was. (Ick.)

At least, that was what I thought until reports started surfacing that Crystal had a diabolical plan. Continue reading →

Return to a Sore Subject

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Does anybody care?"

[NOTE: An unusually busy travel schedule combined with terrible hotel WiFi and a week that was already stuffed with juicy and provocative ethics stories resulted in my not fulfilling my duties very well the last three days, for which I apologize sincerely. I’m going to make every effort to catch up this weekend.]

Rep. Weiner resigned at last, noting that his district and its constituents deserved to have a fully functioning representative in Congress, and that he could no longer fulfill that role. True enough, though one has to ask (or at least I do): if the people of Queens and Brooklyn deserve better representation than a hard-working, if dishonest, obsessed and twisted, pariah can offer, what about the people of the 8th District of Arizona, who have a representative who can’t funtion in her post at all?

I was going to wait until the six-month mark in Gaby Giffords’ rehabilitation to raise this matter again, since that will mark a full 25% of the Congresswoman’s term that she has been unable to serve, but the combination of Weiner’s resignation and the news of Giffords being released from the hospital created too much dissonance for me to ignore. I fully expect that I will be writing some version of this post 18 months hence, after Rep. Giffords’ entire Congressional term has passed without her voting on a bill or answering a constituent’s letter. To quote the singing John Adams in “1776,”: “Is anybody there? Does anybody care?”

Reports from various medical personnel enthused that Giffords has made remarkable progress, and “seems” to understand “most’ of what is being said to her, though she still has trouble articulating responses. That is great progress for someone who has some of her brain blown away by a gunshot at close range, but it sure doesn’t sound like someone who is going to be making a persuasive argument on the House floor any time soon, or ever. So are we serious about this running the country stuff, or aren’t we? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: James W.Hudson

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Who ARE those guys?

“Tell the world about your guy in the rocking chair who was once gung ho, climbing mountains and dodging a ruthless enemy bent on his torture and destruction. Climb on his knee yourself, if you must, but get his story.”

—-James W. Hudson, as quoted by the Washington Post in his obituary today. Hudson, 93, was an OSS operative during World War II who was dropped behind German lines to set up an intelligence network and disrupt supply networks.

James Hudson was one of those guys for sure. Continue reading →

As Weiner Finally Goes, Some Lessons That We Already Should Know

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I’m sitting in the Washington, D.C. offices of  NPR, waiting to go live at 11 AM. with some ethics commentary about the imminent resignation of Rep. Weiner. He is finally doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, just as his Democratic colleagues are defenestrating him for the wrong reasons. Once yesterday’s old photos surfaced showing Weiner in women’s underwear, his fate was sealed…although it was really sealed already. His forced resignation was inevitable, and the fact that the Congressman was unable to see it so that he could preserve some shred of honor by doing his duty as soon as his disgraceful conduct became public shows how wretched his judgment is.

The 56% of his constituents who, according to polls, thought that he should remain in his job demonstrated their complete lack of understanding of the requirements of leadership and ethics. They weren’t the only ones. It has been fascinating, though depressing, to read the comment threads on various websites and blogs covering the Weiner story, because they are so similar in their rationalizations. The categories, and reasons why they are so misguided, are:

  • “Lots of the people criticizing Weiner engage in dubious inline conduct themselves; they are hypocrites.” No, they are non-leaders. When you accept the responsibility of leadership, you accept the duties of  integrity, honesty, and honorable conduct. Rep. Weiner gave up the right to behave as sleazy as the guy we never heard of next door when he ran for office. Continue reading →

All-Star Election Cheaters: The Boston Red Sox and the San Francisco Giants

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game team voting by the fans is hardly a model of fair democracy. Most fans vote for their favorites rather than the best qualified players, and are not very informed even about their favorites. They also are guided more by loyalty than analysis, choosing local heroes over more accomplished players from another team. In other words, it’s basically the same as political elections.

Well, there are other factors that make the All-Star Game voting less than admirable. You can vote up to 25 times from each e-mail address, giving an edge to computer geeks. The teams in the biggest cities and with the best attendance have an advantage over the rest, because there are more of their fans voting. And players on teams like the Phillies, Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees that are on national TV a lot, along with last season’s World Series adversaries, the Texas Ranger and the San Francisco Giants, have more name recognition nationwide, giving their players another unfair edge.

Still, it is an election, the votes count, and the various franchises should be trying to uphold whatever minuscule smidgen of integrity the current system has. The Boston Red Sox and the San Francisco Giants, however, don’t think they have enough advantages in the  All-Star voting already, and have found a loophole in the rules that allows them to cheat. Continue reading →

Unraveling the Ethical Dilemma of the Unappreciated Treasure

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“I’m passing this on to you, son. You know how how much I loved old Nibbles.”

As I have mentioned here before, I give ethics advice to inquirers on AllExperts.com, when the rare individual can actually find “ethics” among the categories—it’s buried somewhere under “philosophy,” which is doubtlessly why so many of my questions are from students who want me to write their homework essays for them. (I decline, but a lot of experts on the site don’t. A topic for another time…)

Today I received a question on one of those difficult family problems that any of us could face. The writer’s elderly father, with some ceremony, gave his only son one of the father’s most cherished possessions, something that had sentimental value to the father that far exceeded its monetary value, which was considerable. “I recently moved into an apartment,” the writer explained, “and after rent and bills, I only have about $200 a month to live on.” He said he could barely afford food, and had an urgent need for clothes, shoes, and other essentials, so he sold the heirloom for a pretty penny.

Now his father is heartbroken, and his mother is furious, demanding that he get the heirloom back, or else she won’t speak to him again. He wrote that he was depressed, and doesn’t know what to do. Continue reading →

Andy Murray, Tennis Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

That's nice, Andy: rub his nose in it.

Once upon a time, like, oh, a few years ago, tennis was a sport in which the ancient values of mutual respect between adversaries, honesty, fairness, and sportsmanship were paramount.  The periodic talented boors  like Connors, Nastase and McEnroe were aberrations, and their conduct was derided, colorful though it might be.

I am pretty sure that Scottish tennis star Andy Murray has put an end to this, unless the international tennis body or a public uproar puts an end instead to his bringing the tennis equivilent of NFL taunting and NBA showboating onto the court. Murray is a trick shot specialist, and at the London Queens Club tournament leading up to Wimbledon, he created a viral YouTube moment  when he hit a winner against opponent Wilfried Tsonga by swinging his racket under his leg. It was spectacular, flashy and fun. It was also rude, disrespectful and obnoxious.

Guess which the public cares about. Continue reading →