Does it matter who's behind the curtain?
The Foundation for a Better Life sponsors those slick TV spots promoting ethical values like kindness, sportsmanship, charity, and sacrifice. I have long wondered where they came from, and belatedly visited the organization’s website, Values.com, where I spent quite a while clicking through their extensive links to descriptions of core ethical values and inspiring stories. Not bad. The only deficiency I could see with the site was the lack of any explanation regarding how the Foundation was funded, who ran it and who was responsible for it. The site describes itself thusly:
“The Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, started in 2000. Our sole objective is to promote positive values, using print and broadcast media.
We want the stories we share about the positive actions and values of others to serve as inspiration for someone to do one thing a little better, and then pass on that inspiration. A few individuals living values-based lives will collectively make the world a better place.
The Foundation does not have a political or religious agenda. Our values are selected with the hope that most individuals would find these values universal, encouraging, and inspiring. The Foundation acknowledges that each person has a unique lens through which he or she views the world. Naturally there are religious, nonreligious, political, and cultural views that give meaning to our lives. Our objective is to provide a wide spectrum of values without any intended agenda or slant and provide an uplifting message around each one.”
And this appears to be exactly what the Foundation does.
The individual who funds the media spots and the foundation is Phil Anschutz, a reclusive, politically active billionaire who holds, among his other right-ish positions, that the teaching of evolution in the schools is wrong and that gay rights should be limited. He is the owner of the conservative publication The Weekly Standard, and also launched the Washington Examiner, a proudly right-leaning newspaper with local websites around the nation. But unless you believe that ethical values are inherently conservative (and, sadly, some people do), there is nothing political about Values.com or the TV spots. They are pro ethical conduct.
Yet because this is an Anschutz project, many believe that the site is some kind of a trick, with a catch. For example, this article described the pro-ethics ads as “propaganda.” My rule of thumb: if someone regards a suggestion that it is good to be kind as propaganda, I don’t trust them. Whenever the staff of the foundation is asked about its benefactor, it replies that he wants the project to be about the message, not the messenger.
I think that’s fair, and I think it explains why Anschutz keeps his name off the site. He is controversial and divisive enough that his reputation could trigger a cognitive dissonance reaction in many viewers, reducing the credibility of an important and beneficent message. We should regard the ads and the website as a gift to the culture. Nobody has to agree with Anschutz’s politics or business practices in order to benefit from the inspiration they provide.
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Related comment: I was originally moved to investigate the website after seeing this ad, about sportsmanship. The sentiment is fine, but the context is wrong. In basketball, as in baseball, football and other sports, no player is required by the rules or sportsmanship to correct a ref’s call that goes in his or her team’s favor. In basketball especially, where only a fraction of fouls are called at all, this would lead to confusion and chaos. Unlike tennis and golf, it is not considered sportsmanship to reverse a referee’s call by confessing and penalizing your own team. It is considered stupid.
Ethics Alarms 
So, JM, is this the lesson to be taken from basketball?
“It ain’t illegal if you don’t get caught.”
There is a vast gulf separating the rules of a voluntary game and the laws of a nation.
No. But there are cultures in sports. Basketball especially has inbred flaws. What the ref calls is the “truth.” The game allows “faux fouls,” as in soccer. It’s not cheating in nobody in the sport’s own universe treats it as cheating. Lots of other articles on this issue on the site—a favorite topic of mine.
It’s not cheating in nobody in the sport’s own universe treats it as cheating.
Well done! I would like to submit that under this theory there have been no crimes against women in Afganistan or Egypt.
Nope. Foul. We are talking rules and culture is GAMES. In a board game called “Diplomacy,” lying is permitted, and breaking promises is standard. If all parties agree to the rules and culture of the game with full disclosure (every basketball player knows you don’t call fouls on yourself), there is no wrong or unethical conduct involved. The women in Afghanistan haven’t consented to an unethical culture, and they are victims of it.
I won’t even bother to explain the difference between rules infractions and crimes, because you know it as well as I do.
I may have stretched the comparison, but you are flat out misrepresenting basketball.
The rules of basketball prohibit certain actions (knocking the ball out of bounds, holding, hitting a player’s arms, etc…) while the rules of diplomacy allow lying. You are comparing following the rules of Diplomacy with breaking the rules of basketball… because the culture says that breaking the rules of basketball is just fine.
I implied that the culture of Afganistan says that subjugating women is just fine. While you may argue that the women already there have no choice, any woman that goes to Afganistan knows the culture and, by your logic, is consenting to anything that happens to her.
Ugh.
You are comparing following the rules of Diplomacy with breaking the rules of basketball… because the culture says that breaking the rules of basketball is just fine.
That’s not what he said….
What he said was….
In basketball, as in baseball, football and other sports, no player is required by the rules or sportsmanship to correct a ref’s call that goes in his or her team’s favor.
It’s not about whether you can break rules or not. The rules will be broken with and without intent. What it is about is whether you have a duty to argue with a referee to get him to overturn a call.
And you don’t.
The culture that permits the abuse of women is unethical whether one “consents” to or not. A culture that assents to players not having a duty to over-call a ref is ethical, because the game won’t work—literally won’t work—without it.
Read the post here about Derek Jeter’s feigned “hit by a pitch” last baseball season. August or September 2010. Again, I see no legitimate analogy with Afghanistan.
Playground games work fine with self enforcement. Ultimate frisbee is also nearly completely self-enforced. Afghan’s might make the case that their country won’t work without subjugating women. The west previously made that case as well.
How many more bad reasons do you have to approve of bad behavior?
Playground games have a different set of cultural norms than the pros or college….that’s a non sequitur.
This is one of your worst tangents ever.Saying that self-enforcement of rules doesn’t work in refereed team sports like soccer, baseball and hoops is no rationalization…it is demonstrably and obviously true.
Are you really that unfamiliar with pro sports? There is, I believe literally, not a single basketball player, coach or official of either sex who would disagree with me on this.
Saying that self-enforcement of rules doesn’t work in refereed team sports like soccer, baseball and hoops is no rationalization…it is demonstrably and obviously true. When was this demonstrated? Team sports that currently have referees can’t work without referees, because they work fine on playgrounds without referees, and that’s a different culture because they don’t have referees.
Your argument is flawed. Not to mention that horrendous last paragraph. My take: In 1200 A.D., there was not a single person alive in Europe of any game playing variety that would disagree with the idea that a woman’s place is raising children.
The rules also talk about sportsmanship. Basketball specifically. Instead of confusion and chaos, self enforcement might lead to *gasp* actually following the rules.
There is no rule in basketball requiring self-reporting. There are in other sports, like golf. The video in question does not involve any rules infraction—it involves a mistaken call.
In the law, if a judge allows hearsay evidence into the trial, the lawyer who introduced the evidence has no ethical or legal obligation to correct the judge, even if he knows it is hearsay AND WOULDN’T HAVE ALLOWED IT HIMSELF. This violates neither the ethics rules nor the law, nor court procedures. Some have argued that it should be a violation, They have been laughed away. It is exactly like basketball. Once the ref rules, it is not unethical to accept it whatever the facts were.
There is no rule in basketball requiring self-reporting. There are in other sports, like golf. The video in question does not involve any rules infraction—it involves a mistaken call.
A mistaken call is a rules infraction.
It’s also basic ethics. If you knocked the ball out, and your team keeps it, you are taking an unfair advantage. Sportsmanship includes playing fairly. Take soccer. There’s no rule that says that when a player is injured, you have to kick the ball out of bounds, but it’s common practice. It’s ethical. Basketball players will run up and down the court repeatedly until the team with the injured player takes a time out or there’s a natural stoppage. That’s not ethical.
In the law, if a judge allows hearsay evidence into the trial, the lawyer who introduced the evidence has no ethical or legal obligation to correct the judge, even if he knows it is hearsay AND WOULDN’T HAVE ALLOWED IT HIMSELF. This violates neither the ethics rules nor the law, nor court procedures. Some have argued that it should be a violation, They have been laughed away. It is exactly like basketball. Once the ref rules, it is not unethical to accept it whatever the facts were.
Are you saying you defend the process of subjourning justice, or are you making another “everybody does it, so it’s okay” argument? The only thing you’ve convinced me of is that most lawyers (or at least the loud ones) are unethical.
Wrong about a foul being a rules infraction. Wrong about it being “against the rules” for a ref to make a wrong call. Wrong and misinformed to think that a lawyer has an obligation to correct a ruling to his client’s detriment. Ethics in various professions have good reasons for varying. These are not “everybody does it” arguments, but cultural consensus developed over time. And in a meta/long term sense, when everybody not only does it but concludes that it’s right, the culture has made an ethical course change. Sometimes it is proven wrong–that is, unethical.
Wrong about a foul being a rules infraction.
I assume you mean a missed call, and I supported my position. You have just avowed things.
Wrong about it being “against the rules” for a ref to make a wrong call.
There are referee handbooks. It’s wrong both in regulation, and if the benefitors know, ethically.
Wrong and misinformed to think that a lawyer has an obligation to correct a ruling to his client’s detriment.
No legal obligation: true. The “official” ethical position is to let it go: true. The reasoning behind the official position is not ethics, but utility.
Ethics in various professions have good reasons for varying.
Official ethical positions vary. Ethics don’t.
These are not “everybody does it” arguments, but cultural consensus developed over time. And in a meta/long term sense, when everybody not only does it but concludes that it’s right, the culture has made an ethical course change. Sometimes it is proven wrong–that is, unethical.
Translation: This is not an everybody does it argument because everybody does it and agrees on it, even though history has shown people to be wrong.
You’re losing.
You’re deluded. Ethics is not that simplistic, and you are asserting positions about two areas you clearly know little about. That’s called embarrassing yourself, not winning. Move on.
Translation: “Your positions differ from mine, but you have reasoned arguments and evidence and tore my reasoning apart, so I’m going to claim you’re deluded instead of actually responding.”
Claiming I’m ignorant is not a defense of your position.
I am not a lawyer, but I don’t think I’m an idiot. What was wrong with what I said about the court behavior? The part where I agreed with you about what the law and ethics rules say, or the part where I claimed specific ethics rules are really based on expediency instead of ethics? Isn’t this well known? In the specific example, an incompetent representation appeal is pretty automatic, even if it would likely lose. The general deference to trial judges is also expedient. There’s a great reason for it and truckloads of caselaw supporting it. That doesn’t make it any more ethical, just legal.
As for sports, I think I’m pretty well informed on baseball (1800s – 2001 or so), basketball (1980s – present), and football (1990ish – present), as well as Ultimate (1990s – present), and a more than rudimentary history of the latter 3. That said, nothing I’m saying requires much knowledge. That sportsmanship is independent of culture is a pretty basic idea, akin to ethics being independent of ethical rules and valid arguments being independent of accepted arguments.
Again…the rules are followed…not self-reporting is not a violation of sportsmanship, because sportsmanship is not objective…it varies from sport to sport. (Tackling an opponent is bad sportsmanship in golf). That last sentence you find so horrible was a nice way of saying that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Playground games are for fun; when they are for championships, careers and money, that makes a material difference in what sportsmanship is.
Your argument is naive.
But annoying! I’ll grant you that much!
Again…the rules are followed…not self-reporting is not a violation of sportsmanship, because sportsmanship is not objective…it varies from sport to sport.
The specific culture and expected norms differ. Sportsmanship doesn’t. You are inappropriately equating them, which explains some of your weird arguments.
(Tackling an opponent is bad sportsmanship in golf).
Tackling a football player when it’s not allowed is also bad sportsmanship in football. Your example further shows my point.
That last sentence you find so horrible was a nice way of saying that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Playground games are for fun; when they are for championships, careers and money, that makes a material difference in what sportsmanship is.
Playground are clearly never for anything that anyone cares about. Noone has ever been shot over a playground game. Not once.
Sportsmanship is sportsmanship. You are claiming that otherwise inethical behavior can be appropriate… but only when you’re getting money and prestige out of it.
Your whole line of argument just proves, sadly, that nobody who actually knows anything about sports reads this website, because it is laughable. Standards of sportsmanship don’t vary among sports? Ridiculous. Really-not worth arguing about; the position is fantasy. If you believe that, then there is no basis for discussion.
Standards of sportsmanship don’t vary among sports? Ridiculous.
I agree. What I said is that sportsmanship doesn’t vary. The standards of sportsmanship are culture, which does vary.
Mr Marshall –
WHY are you wasting so much time with “That G Troll” ?
Just curious . . .
You mean tgt? He’s long gone!
You may not have a duty to “the game, your team, … – but the rules of ethical behavior require one to admit his transgressions even if they were undetected. Perhaps sports where players report their own faults (golf, tennis, etc) are a cut above. No one claims to learn “life lessons” from sports where cheating is encouraged, only from sports where the PLAYER is urged to self-report such behavior. Would you rather win or sleep well?
but the rules of ethical behavior require one to admit his transgressions even if they were undetected.
Too broad by miles. Cheating—yes, a team mate that doesn’t take measures to address it is aiding and abetting. When conduct that is clearly unethical in one sport has been fully acculturated into the tactics, customs and gamesmanship of a sport, then it is no longer unethical I wrote a long paper about the variants in baseball for the Hardball Times. Baseball does not require an outfielder to, for example, tell an umpire that the he didn’t make a clean catch as the umpire may have ruled, just as a pitcher who knows the umpire called strike three on a ball that wasn’t really a strike is not required, or ever has, announced that the pitch was a ball. This just isn’t unethical; it’s the way the game is played. There are gray areas, certainly. But the fact that tennis players will call a ball out of bounds when the linesman missed the call doesn’t mean they are more ethical than baseball players who will try to fool the umpire. Each sport has a culture, and for the most part, what is cheating and what isn’t is clear.
I think what you are exploring here, and what that ad represents, is what would and should happen in an ideal, ethical ‘utopia’ that could possibly exist within this particular physical realm.
But I have to think that this ‘values’ site might be some sort of a reiteration of the way those in power ( the billionaire who owns it ) set themselves with a set of rules that they are supposed to follow, but who holds us all to a much higher standard than themselves.
Case in point the way money works – loans vs interest… Only those with vast amounts of money sitting accumulating interest receive the benefit from all that ‘money’ sitting in bank accounts – those with very little who need a ‘loan’ and acquire debt pay a much higher % of their net wealthand almost criminal amount in interest for their loan.
Inflation comes from the same negative Structure of Thought™. Those with the money don’t feel the higher costs of living, while those who barely get by really feel the pinch of the rising prices of all goods and services, and this is by design – a reflection of the bailout socialism for the rich, while the poor are told by mostly right wing radio pundits and publications, ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!’ in the highest form of Hypocrisy.
It makes me think of the great line from the movie Working Girl with Melanie Griffin. Her line in there that applies is ‘You can bend the rules plenty once you get to the top, but not while you’re trying to get there. And if you’re someone like me, you can’t get there without bending the rules.’
So the Men/Elite behind the curtain DO matter, because they are there, bending the rules for themselves, meanwhile asking all of us to Fall on our Swords and be Good Little Sheep. I think that is what is behind the Values website.
One last thought – a tangent if it even applies – but I think of Pope John Paul the First – not the second, the First – who ‘died’ 33 days into his reign. If you do even the smallest amount of digging about his untimely death, you’ll see that he was a good if not great man, who was given an immense amount of power, who made his intentions known that things were going to be different with him – he was going to use the immense amount of wealth the church had for actual good. That got him killed. So the ‘men’ behind the curtain – they matter. I pray for their infinite essence – it is my wish that they start to evolve into a more positive direction than they are now.
was i just too far off base for this discussion? It seems to me that you are letting the values.com organization frame the arguments you are having, while I was trying to get to the jist of why they would try to push the agenda about Values in the first place – guilt? Deception? Propaganda?
I’ll take door #3.
No, you weren’t—I’ve just been too busy to give your post the thought it warrants. Now that I’m trapped in a resort, waiting for my program, I’ll have a chance. Apologies.
HA ha ha ha – because of Davdi John Krohn, I get to bust your balls for never responding to my replies 4 years later… but you respond to tgt’s constant badgering with your own brand of bickering about 20 times.
I think giving my post almost 4 years of thought is plenty – but this has been a constant criticism of mine with many of my comments I leave with you here at your fine blog. I think you enjoy butting horns much much more than expanding the horizons of the argument, any argument. However, it is much harder to take the high road and have constructive arguments, but the Thought Structure® up here is much more scenic then the bombastic, narrow low roads you seem to enjoy, at the expense of many, more ethereal, and ignored (completely) comments.
Hope you’re well!
Actually I gave it about 10 minutes of thought, and decided there was nothing to add to it. I could have said that you were just going over the same ground that Brecht was in “Threepenny Opera,” making the argument that morals are luxuries the poor can’t afford. It’s a standard progressive trope: Clarence Darrow felt the same way about laws. I admit, it’s a great rationalization for cheating, but it’s based on the theory that everybody has a right to the same level of success regardless of ability, industry, virtue, talent and courage. I view this as just raging against reality. We all know you’re paranoid, so this is a reasonable interpretation in the ugly world you see: a rich guy advertises virtues because it will keep him rich, not to build a better culture. I don’t know what tragedy led you to such a dark view of life where there are conspiracies behind every bush and tree…it can’t be pleasant, and I’m sorry.
You’re a smart guy, and I often find your take unique and perceptive. But I can’t really engage with you, so I don’t. It’s like a conversation between a human being and a mineral-based, ammonia-breathing squid-rat from the planet Plotz. (You can be the human if you like). I can’t debate with someone who sees purple where I see green. It’s futile, frustrating and pointless. So I tend to let your comments stand. TGT I understand. He’s just doctrinaire and an absolutist: I get that. But essentially we’re coming from the same place.
What you call “narrow low roads” is where the nitty gritty of ethics in real life is played.
I thought those commercials were being funded by a government agency. Changes my opinion about them completely.
I’m with you on the basketball one. It made no sense. No coach would applaud him. The referee is there so the players do not have to police themselves. There was a call by a referee last year or the year before that should have been reversed but wouldn’t be because the referee stuck by what he believed at the time even though he was proven wrong, thus robbing a pitcher of a perfect game. If this was football, the call would have been challenged and reversed immediately.
Also, Utopias can never exist. Human nature will never allow it. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Tgt: I’m not intending to be demeaning, but you are just missing the boat. Legal ethics, which require loyalty to the client above all, evolved because of the necessity of protecting the weak from the law. This means that lawyers are bound to push the envelope for their clients, and to make a competent judge and adversary stop them when they cross evidentiary lines. If they are not stopped, they are ethically bound to accept the gift, otherwise there is a conflict of interest, with the lawyer acting against his client, leaving the client essentially alone. In all competitions, gamesmanship predates tough rules. The players/competitors look for loopholes, and the rule makers close the ones they think are bad for the game. In team sports, self-reporting is destructive to team chemistry, angers the fans, slows the game, and challenges the authority of the officials. The principle you are arguing for would require a second baseman executing a “phantom double play” to over-rule the umpire and call the runner safe; a pass reciever who’s feet were out of bound but who got a touchdown call to refuse the points…to the detriment of his “client,’ the team. NO player on either side expects this, so it is not considered sportsmanship, it is considered disloyal. The fans hate it; a player doing it would be shunned and released for trying to forge a new ethical standard without consent of those who trust him. He’d probably be released.
This is why the individual sports don’t allow gamesmanship of this kind. Ethics have to have long-term and short-term good results…self-reporting in team has neither. The rules and traditions of the games allow it, and the fans and teams would never tolerate any other way.
In those settings, it is not unethical, and not following the norm is.
I don’t see anywhere in your discussion of the law that you disagree with me. You are relying on the behavior of other people to put a check on certain types of inethical behavior, because behaving ethically might cause trust issues. Sounds a whole lot like expediency over ethics to me.
In team sports, self-reporting is destructive to team chemistry,
How? Because players only respect their team mates when they aren’t honest?
angers the fans,
The one’s that would prefer to cheat? That’s rationalization.
slows the game,
How? (*Whistle*. *Arm signal* “That ball was out on me, ref.” *Whistle* *Arm signal*. *Throw in*). If anything, it might cut down on time spent arguing.
and challenges the authority of the officials.
The wronged party arguing is a challenge. The benefiting party noting it was missed is not a challenge. If anything, it builds trust between players and referees.
You then talk about requirements, reequating ethical behavior with rule following. As you noted recently, if it’s required, it’s not ethics anymore. I haven’t meant to imply requiring ethical behavior.
That’s followed by an excuse of unethical behavior again because unethical behavior is the norm.
The rules and traditions of the games allow it, and the fans and teams would never tolerate any other way.
You could say the same thing about slave ownership. That wasn’t ethical either.
Speaking specifically about the Values.com ad….
We (the audience) get to see specifically in slow-motion, that the ball hit Alex’s (white team) finger-tip and went out of bounds without touching any of the red team’s hands.
But that was in slow-motion, and there was a red-team hand there, that very easily could have touched the ball as well.
Alex doesn’t know why the ref called the ball out on the red team, but there are two situations. 1) the ball was last touched by the passer or 2) the ball was last tipped by the red receiver.
Alex, upon going up to the ref, is admirable for telling the ref that he tipped the ball. However, what Alex isn’t bringing to the ref is whether the red-team tipped the ball after he tipped the ball. The action was fast paced and Alex certainly can’t be sure, in this instance, that he was the last to touch the ball.
He’s now put the ref in the position to remember 30-60 seconds ago if he made the call that he did because he thought red tipped it last and whether white tipped it as well. Now the ref has to ask red if he tipped the ball and of course he’ll say “No.” But the ref won’t know if he’s saying “No.” honestly or deceptively.
If you were the ref, and you made the call, what would you do? Here are the facts you should use to make your decision:
1) You made the call “Out on Red” because you thought both players tipped the ball, but because the Red hand was outside of the White hand, you decided that Red made the last tip.
2) White has just told you that he tipped the ball and thinks Red should take possession.
3) You know White couldn’t know whether Red tipped it after his tip.
What do you do?
Wow…just read that whole thing. tgt should have been banned after about 5 replies.
OMG I cannot believe the degree to which some of you have surgically deconstructed this ad and its intentions. You people have WAY too much time on your hands! But I think the values.com website could’ve made this more realistic by using a playground game as an example, rather than a refereed game
Can we get back to the website?
WHAT??????
Hello
I think the author of the sports comment missed the whole point…
if I understand it correctly the values that we’re trying to improve means we must set a higher standard then we have in the past yes I understand you may let your team down…but really aren’t you actually gaining respect and honor…I believe there is the objective..will it be nice to not have to second guess motives you do it because it’s the right thing to do…
then choices become easy..
any questions 🙂
Do any of the Anshutzs noted here have anything to do with the firearms company?
Not to totally bring this back up, but I found the discussion of the basketball commercial interesting, if not completely misguided by TGT.
There was much discussion about whether the player should report to the referee that the ball was out on him. I would agree that maybe a player should. What absolutely should not happen is that the referee lets a player influence his call, even if he blew the call. (assuming instant replay is not available) The ref’s role is to judge the game, and that person is the final authority on it. If the ref establishes that he can be influenced, players will attempt to influence that ref the rest of the game, and the ref loses control of the game. (and potentially future games)
I personally think in this instance, the player should be commended, and the referee should be fired or otherwise reprimanded.
I always thought values.com want to promote promiscuity in one ad where they displayed ‘parenting’. You see the father and mother trying to celebrate their daughter’s birthday while she goes out with different guys over the years. In the end the daughter comes home pregnant.
There is another one about dropping a cell phone into the kitchen sink. They showed what others have told me are brother and sister. Being intimate with each other. Some type of incest relationship it appeared. Being a mormon foundation, it appeared that values.com was trying to subversively encourage their incestuous lifestyle.
Pretty disturbing and I am wondering why their ads are not banned.
I literally just saw that ad about parenting. It is what made me search for information about the foundation and I came across this website. Your comment is funny (I hope it was tongue-in-cheek) like a lot of these comments. You guys are way over thinking these ads. The time for the T.V. slots are donated by the media as this is a non-profit and donations can come in the form of air time. (see Values.com/who-we-are). I doubt that you give that much scrutiny to commercial ads that make no literal sense, but gets our attention and effectively conveys a message to their intended audience in that precious few seconds between other similar ads. The ad is showing a time span of about 25 years in five seconds. As a parent with a baby daughter I am moved to think about what the parent in the ad is thinking about- How my daughter will eventually grow older, start dating, get married, and start her own family.
These ads mosty run on free children’s programming stations. I mainly see them on Quobo. My one year old daughter loves them, but I think the music is what orginally got her attention. (The musicians also donate the music and they come from all different genres and backgrounds.) So the suggestion that there is something sexual or subversive about them is , well, I have to assume you were joking. Of course the networks review them and they are held to FCC standards for family oriented programming audiences, so you would be implying that everyone involved is implicit in some sort of Mormon conspiracy. By the way the foundation explicitly states they have no religious affiliation. Anschutz himself is an Evangelical Presbyterian.
I am not partcularly religious and I am not a conservative and I definitely do not share Anschutz’s political beliefs but I love Values.com and their messages, because they get my kids’ attention and convey simple sentiments that I highly value.
In response to the TGT tangent, these are universal values shared by all major religions and most societies including Muslim societies. The problem is that people simply ignore the values of the religions that they claim to represent (Christians are guilty of this too). The male establishment of Afghanistan choses to ignore core Muslim values in favor of political and social power. That is why the basketball analogy doesn’t hold up. Accepting and submitting to a refs call is part of the core values of sportsmanship, as is doing what is best for the team not your own ego. Oppressing women (or any vulnerable group) is not a core value of any Muslim society, no matter who is in power.
Nevertheless I don’t think the ads are meant to be literal absolutes any more than any other T.V ad. You should just get the message that they feed you in the final frame of the ad: Pass the value of parenting on to your children so they can pass it on to their children and everyone will have a better life.
“I doubt that you give that much scrutiny to commercial ads that make no literal sense”
You need to do your research. This is an especially funny statement, given that the site is being inundated with comments on its criticism of a recent Direct TV ad.
Thanks. Did my research. The comments about the Direct T.V. ad are not about whether or not your T.V. service provider can help you go back in time and undo stuff. In other words the scrutiny is not on whether the ad makes literal sense. That debate is about whether an abortion/infanticide analogy was appropriate given that the whole thing is fantasy (something that is not possible). You can’t have that debate unless there is a consensus that what we saw in the ad was not to be taken literally because it is simply not possibe. Now if the debate was about whether or not Direct T.V. should be investigated or “banned” for involvement in missing child cases, then I would withdraw my comment.
There are a lot of sports where you are not required to be honest. In baseball its considered ok for a batter to pretend to be hit by a pitch or a fielder to pretend to make a catch. That doesn’t make it ethically right. Win honestly, not any way you can.
The First commercial I heard was “IF Edison gave up , we’d still be in the dark” I doubt this whole concept has anything to do with ETHICS. especially if you look at electricity from the point of Big Oil. where Anshutz made his fortune, or Tesla, when it comes to Alternating current. (and from all I have read about Tesla, he wanted Electricity made available to the public for free. ( or each generating his own power) Either a bad choice for an example, or just plain Elitist arrogance feeding the Sheep misinformation to keep us in line. Now be a good lad and help Grandma pay her electric bill whilst we sit on these patents for another 20 years. nothing to see here… how about some random acts of kindness from Big Oil?
Diligence and perseverance are ethical values, and fortitude is an ethics activating value. Of course there’s an ethics lesson in Edison’s successes. And nothing unethical about inventors getting rich off of their inventions.
Give contact on your page.
There IS contact on the page. Look to your LEFT.
And, by the way, say PLEASE.
Why is a conservative’s views divisive and a liberal’s views not considered the same?
I happen to balance out both sides in some subjects.
I can freely share some of my own thinking with liberals unless I disagree on some points.
I am able to voice those same balaced beliefs with conservatives and and am not called unkind names.
Why is there such a divisive line?
This is what is dangerous.
The Foundation for a Better Life is just trying to spread a message which is very needed in our world today. The message that honesty and fairness are important. After reading all the comments, I must also ad that honesty and fairness transcend the letter of the law, or in this case basketball rules.
These values ads would’ve/could’ve been disseminated in Pinochet’s Chile, the Suharto era of Indonesia, etc. “Be a nice person” seems innocuous enough, but the expressions of this and the other values cannot be separated from the entity promoting or advancing its own understanding of these values.