Lots of time to fume and muse about the ethical implications of a frustrating day and an aggravating week while taking an interminable plane trip to Houston: Continue reading
Month: March 2011
Unethical Quote of the Week: Detroit News Business Editor Sue Carney
"The new model is so ugly that...What's that? They give us HOW much ad money? Uh..hey, what a GREAT looking car!
“We made several changes to the online version of Scott’s review because we were uncomfortable with some of the language in the original. It should have been addressed during the editing process but wasn’t. … the changes did not fundamentally change the thrust of Scott’s piece … a car dealer raised a complaint and we took a look at the review, as we would do whenever a reader raises a flag. The changes were made to address the journalism of the piece, not the angst of a car dealer.”
—Sue Carney, business editor of The Detroit News, lying her head off to rationalize a disgraceful instance of a newspaper changing its content—a car review— to serve the interest of an advertiser.
How often does an ethical news publication publish an article then go back after it has run and change the text, over the objection of the reporter who wrote it, not correcting an error but softening an opinion? Answer: never, by definition. Continue reading
CBS: Ethics Corrupter
Rehire Charlie Sheen?! What could CBS be thinking?
Barry Bonds goes on trial for perjury today. He is one of our society’s prime corrupters. Bonds cheated, lied, broke the law and helped drag major league baseball’s integrity into the depths, all with the objectives of breaking records by players better and more honest than he, and becoming rich and famous. He accomplished all of these things, with no appreciable negative consequences; as of now, his career and life carry the lesson that cheating works, and anyone who lets things like rules, laws, or ethics stand in the way of success is a fool. Perhaps the trial will change that. I can dream.
Now CBS has stepped up to be a prime corporate ethics corrupter. Reportedly, it is negotiating with Charlie Sheen to get him back on the air, either in his now defunct show “Two and a Half Men,” or in something else. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Tampa Bay Rays Manager Joe Maddon
Joe Maddon, fulfilling his duty to confront racist jerks
During a Sunday Spring Training game at Charlotte Sports Park in Florida, Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon heard a fan berating Rays centerfielder B.J. Upton with a racial insult. Maddon summoned stadium security and had the fan thrown out of the park.
This may have happened before, but I can’t recall a similar incident. Racist catcalls and epithets are rarer at baseball games than they once were; they are far from gone. Baseball players have to endure a certain amount of abuse, true, but not this kind. Heaping racist insults on an athlete from the safety of the stands is cowardly as well as uncivil, and the First Amendment doesn’t extend to “fighting words” in a private venue. Every manager, coach, usher and spectator should follow Madden’s lead.
The fan, by the way, denies Maddon’s account. Since baseball managers are not in the habit of ejecting fans for nothing, I find the denial less than credible.
And the Frontrunner for the 2011 “Eliot Spitzer Award for Outrageous Hypocrisy” is….
Looks like this year's "Spitzie" is already in the bag!
Clark County (Las Vegas) Deputy District Attorney David Schubert!
From the Las Vegas Sun:
“Metro Police said chief Clark County Deputy District Attorney David Schubert was arrested in connection with drug charges Saturday night. Police spokesman Jay Rivera said Schubert was charged with possession of cocaine and booked into the Clark County Detention Center…
Police planned to release more information about Schubert’s arrest on Monday, Rivera said.
“Schubert recently prosecuted the high-profile drug cases involving Paris Hilton and pop singer Bruno Mars.”
Now THAT’s hypocrisy!
To Wisconsin Unions, a Depressed Woman’s Suicide Is Just Another PR Weapon
"Oh, no. Poor ..hey, wait a minute! We just might be able to use this!"
“The ends justify the means,” for better or worse, has always been the modus operandi of the American union movement. Back at the beginning of the 20th Century, this often translated into violence, as union leaders used bombs and murder to counter equally vile tactics—or worse—by their industry foes. Union violence is more common today in the threatening than in the actual execution, but the public unions battling Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin have made it increasingly clear that ethics, fairness and truth are not going to stand in the way of their objectives, particularly the objective of winning the battle for public support.
A new low may have been reached with the effort to blame Walker for the suicide of Jeri-Lyn Betts, a 57-year-old teacher suffering from chronic depression, who apparently committed suicide last week. Continue reading
Misogyny Ethics: Bill Maher Calls Sarah Palin a “Dumb Twat” as Progressives Cheer and Feminists Fall Silent
As long as we are on the topic of shunning and consequences (see previous post):
Is HBO comic/political commentator/arrogant jerk Bill Maher stooping to outright misogyny in his gratuitous ridicule of Sarah Palin going to have any consequences at all?
On his cable show “Real Time” this week, Maher’s usual name-calling took a sharp turn into the despicable with this:
MAHER: Oh, and did you hear this? [Laughs] Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan……and she’s demanding that we invade “Tsunami.” I mean, she says, “These Tsunamians will not get away with this.” Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you…
[Audience hilarity and applause]
MAHER: Oh, you’re right, yeah I let the cat out the bag on that one, huh folks?”
…………………………………………………………
That last line was a “pussy joke,” for those of you too genteel to appreciate Bill Maher’s “wit.” Continue reading
Lesson of the Asian-Bashing UCLA Video: Shunning and Intolerance Work. Good.
Alexandra Wallace...cultural critic, YouTube star, pariah, GONE
Alexandra Wallace, the UCLA student who created an obnoxious and offensive video stereotyping her Asian colleagues as gibberish-spouting boors, announced that she was leaving the school as a result of “being ostracized” by “an entire community.” Yes, I’d say that was the idea, and it is how cultures enforce its values. And it works.
Wallace picked the day of the Japanese tsunami to post her anti-Asian rant on YouTube, where it promptly went viral. It also made her an instant pariah on her campus, where over a third of all students are of Asian heritage, and the rest of them, unlike Alexandra, have at least a vague concept of mutual respect and decorum.
You can read a complete transcript of the three-minute diatribe here, but this shortened version gives a sense of what infuriated Asians, UCLA, and just about everyone else: Continue reading
Obama’s Social Security Cover-Up, as the Media Snoozes
USA Today ran a sensible editorial a couple of weeks ago calling for the Obama administration to stop cravenly caving to groups like the AARP, Congressional Democrats, and increasingly, liberal/progressive commentators who claim that Social Security isn’t really a budgetary problem. The fiction: since Social Security has received more from taxpayers than it has had to pay out since 1983, the Social Security Trust Fund has built up a whopping $2.5 trillion, guaranteeing enough to meet the program’s obligations ( despite yearly deficits, now that the population is senior-heavy) until the money is scheduled to run out in 2037. The truth: the trust is empty. Congress had raided it regularly for non-Social Security spending, so now the yearly Social security deficits (37 billion dollars last year, a projected 45 to 57 billion in 2011, and a half trillion total in the decade underway) are putting a direct burden on the already reeling Federal budget.
Good for USA Today: this is responsible, public-spirited journalism. the public has heard so many lies from politicians and elected officials about Social Security that it is thoroughly misinformed and confused, and an informative, unbiased editorial from the nation’s most read newspaper is exactly what is needed. But the Obama administration couldn’t handle the truth, so it trotted out White House Budget Director Jacob Lew, who denied that there was a problem, writing in response… Continue reading
Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Florida Legislator Kathleen Passidomo
Yup, the Temple girl was asking for it...
While pushing for a bill mandating a dress code for schools, Florida’s GOP legislator Kathleen Passidomo decided to bolster her argument by linking it the horrendous Texas case in which an eleven-year-old girl was raped by 18 men. She said:
“There was an article about an 11-year-old girl who was gang-raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed up like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students.”
This woman is too dim-witted to make sandwiches. much less laws.
I don’t care if the 11-year old girl’s parents dressed her like Christina Aguilara on a particularly slutty day. I don’t care if she looked like Jon Benet Ramsey on estrogen supplements. I don’t care if she looked 15, 17, 22, 31, or 64; I don’t care if she was buck naked and singing “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No.” None of that would create any reason, excuse, motivation or justification for even one man to rape her, much less 18.
Blaming rape on how women dress is an insult to men and a denigration of the rights of women. Blaming a rape on how a little girl dresses, however, is a clear sign of dangerous warped and flawed logic, values, compassion and comprehension.
Ethics Alarms 