Month: May 2011

Now THAT’s Hypocrisy: The Prosecutor and the Teenager

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As part of Ethics Alarms’ continuing effort to clear up the rampant confusion among the American public and media regarding what constitutes hypocrisy, I offer this illustrative tale.

Former Rock Island County, Illinois State’s Attorney Jeff Terronez has already pleaded guilty to providing alcohol to a minor.  As part of his plea deal, which allowed him to avoid more serious charges, he resigned his position as State’s Attorney, forfeited his pension and agreed to never seek public office again. Now it appears that the circumstances of his misconduct may result in a mistrial in the case in which  Terronez first encountered his 15-year-old victim.

You see, the young woman to whom Terronez provided alcohol was the victim and complaining witness in a previous case Terronez prosecuted, in which high school teacher Jason Van Houtte was accused of inappropriate contact with a 15 years old female student. Terronez saw to it that Van Houtte was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison. Meanwhile, he met with Van Houtte’s comely prey and plied her with liquor socially…at least.

That’s right: the prosecutor began an “inappropriate relationship” with the under-aged complaining witness in a case he was simultaneously prosecuting involving a teacher’s “inappropriate relationship” with the same girl!

Now that’s hypocrisy.

Comment of the Day: “The Ethicists, Backing Judge Walker and Gay Marriage, At An Unacceptable Price”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The motion to vacate Judge Walker’s ruling on Proposition 8 has been filed, you can read it here. Since the original post, I have detected some cracks in the formerly near-united front of legal ethicists and journalists deriding Walker’s critics. Some of them are finally, grudgingly, admitting that the Judge might not have handled his potential conflict so well after all, and that the motion is not a frivolous, anti-gay outrage as they originally labelled it.  The most rickety of the rationalizations put forth on Walker’s behalf, advanced by some his most respected defenders, is that he had no obligation to reveal his own sexual orientation by disclosing his domestic arrangement because of its intimate and private nature. Yet the judge voluntarily disclosed it after his decision was in the books, raising a rebuttable presumption that his original silence was to avoid suggestions of conflict, not out of a desire for privacy.

First time commenter Jada adds her Comment of the Day to the discussion: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Adam Dachis

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

“All posts that belong to the Dark Side are going to feature some ideas that might be a little evil or at least require some flexible ethics. Some things will be downright horrible, and you should not do them, but are either for your information or simply for the point of interest (and will be noted as such). Your judgment and actions are your own, so think before you do anything you read here and only use your dark side for good.”

—Adam Dachis, ethics corrupter, in the “Dark Side Disclaimer” that accompanies his column on the website Lifehacker, called “Secrets from the Dark Side.”

His current “Secrets from the Dark Side” column is entitled “How to Lie, Cheat, and Steal Your Way to a Perfect Flight,” which is an accurate description of its contents. Some of Dachis’s “tips” (scams? cheats?) are interesting, some are humorous, and all (well, maybe with one exception) are unethical. Dachis, for his part, doesn’t have the guts to advocate outright the conduct that he is explicitly promoting, nor does he condemn it. As his ethically incoherent ( “Only use your dark side for good”) disclaimer demonstrates, he thinks ethics is a game of some sort, and that being a “little evil” is cute, or trivial, or something.

A true ethics corrupter, Dachis wants to avoid personal accountability for the unethical acts of his readers spurred entirely by his post, while at the same time getting credit for his cleverness. This is the Richard Nixon approach to ethical corruption, planting seeds and disclaiming responsibility for the crop, telling followers, “We could do that, but it would be wrong.” Wink, wink.

Yechhh.

Geronimo Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

"GERONI-"--no, I'm sorry. Let's see...uh..."

Somewhere, I sometimes suspect, there is a mega-computer that scans all news, media, films, TV, video games and pop music offerings, alerting various minority groups to fresh new opportunities to manufacture complaints based on victim-posturing and absurd political correctness. The thought has passed through my brain once again, as I see reports such as the one that appeared in the Washington Post this morning, describing how Native American advocates are offended that the codename for the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden was “Geronimo,” named after the iconic Apache warrior.

A codename, as the term implies, is a word or name intended to stand for something other than its actual meaning and historical significance. Ergo, the Manhattan Project was not a plan to drop New York City on Japan. Many codenames have had absolutely no relationship to their military meanings; what is important is that they not be too hard to remember or too easy for enemies to figure out. The mission to get bin Laden could have been named “Meat Loaf,” “Lindsay” or “Charlie Sheen,” all of whom would have been honored and amused, presumably. The military picked “Geronimo.” Continue reading →

The Conclusion to “Texas Cheerleading Ethics: Cheer Your Rapist” (And You’re Not Going To Like It)

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

"Give me an R! A! P! I! S! T!---RAPIST!!!"

Back in November, Ethics Alarms reported the awful story of the Silsbee, Texas High school cheerleader, identified only as “H.S.”,who was kicked off her cheerleading squad for violating “the Cheerleader Code of Ethics” after she refused to cheer at a game for the player who, it was later determined, had sexually assaulted her. She stood silent in mute protest, and when her parents sued the school, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that H.S.’s silent protest was not protected speech under the First Amendment, meaning that she could be disciplined for violating the cheerleading conduct code.

Now the Supreme Court has turned down the case, refusing to review it, meaning not only that H.S. loses, but also that her parents have to pay court costs and legal defenses to the tune of $45,000.

This is a perfect example of the distinction between the law, justice, and ethics. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Steelers Running Back Rashard Mendenhall

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Translation: "I am an Ethics Dunce."

Twitter is a wonderful invention; it used to require a blog to efficiently alert the world to one’s intellectual, logical and ethical deficiencies.  Now NFL star Rashard Mendenhall is using 140 characters to accomplish the same task, and doing a bang-up job of it, I must say.

Mendenhall has his employers, the Pittsburgh Steelers—not to mention his agent—scrambling to do damage control after the athlete emitted a series of provocative tweets in response to the death of Osama bin Laden. My personal favorite:

“What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…” Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: World Journalists

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Chris Hondros (left) and colleagues

I know Ethics Alarms is critical of the media and journalists for breaches of objectivity and fair reporting. Nevertheless, there are few professions more inherently heroic than journalism, especially when it requires on-the-scene reportage under dangerous conditions. This was demonstrated, once again, by the recent death of Chris Hondros, a distinguished photo-journalist who was killed last week in Libya.

May 3 is World Journalist Day, and an excellent time to honor the tough and dedicated professionals who bring us important and hard-to acquire news, often risking their lives in the process. To that end, there is no better on-line destination than the website of New York-based non-profit Committee to Protect Journalists, dedicated to making it possible for journalists to do their jobs without fear of reprisals.  There you can learn about the perils faced by media personnel all over the globe, and read about the journalists killed since January 2010 while trying to let us know what is going on in the world.

Parental Responsibility, Child Exploitation, and Billboard Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Here’s a rule of thumb: Don’t give the rights to reproduce your child’s photograph to a photographer or ad agency unless you are prepared to accept however it is used, and certain that your child will not be harmed or embarrassed as a result.

Is that so hard?

Tricia Fraser has sued Life Always and Majella Cares Heroic Media, an anti-abortion group, claiming it used her daughter’s picture in “a racist, controversial advertising campaign” that is “defamatory, unauthorized, and offensive,” posting the 4-year-old girl’s photo on a giant billboard by the Holland Tunnel and another in Florida.

Nice try. But there is nothing racist about the campaign, and nothing defamatory about using her daughter’s photo in it.  Continue reading →

Fake Quote Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"Osama? The SOB had it coming."---Gandhi

Among the wise commentators who tut-tutted the unseemly rejoicing among Americans upon learning of the death of Osama bin Laden was the Rev. Martin Luther King, who sagely remarked, “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” Rev. King’s words were immediately picked up and quoted yesterday in hundreds of blogs and news commentary, grateful for the silver-tongued orator and civil rights warrior’s ability to find just the right way to sum up what was troubling—to some— about the post-bin Laden festivities.

Wait...how could he do that? Rev. King is as dead as Osama! Well, he could do that because somebody decided to give his or her own sentiments the added influence, credibility and moral authority of an American hero, put their words in Rev. King’s mouth, and tweeted them to the world. [UPDATE: Now we know that’s not  exactly what happened—this time. An American teacher in Japan introduced a genuine King quote with her own sentiments, and her careless Facebook friends lost the quotation marks. Thanks to Barry Deutsch for the sleuthing.] Continue reading →

No, It Still Doesn’t Justify Torture

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

No.

The news of how Osama bin Laden was finally tracked down and killed has caused a predictable outbreak of consequentialism. It appears that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided some of the key intelligence that led to the successful operation in Pakistan while he was undergoing “enhanced interrogation” in CIA prisons in Rumania and Poland. “See?” Dick Cheney’s fans are saying today. “Rendition and torture work. We wouldn’t have killed Bin Laden without them. So what do you think of those tactics now?” The opponents of torture who foolishly argued against it based on pragmatic considerations—“Torture doesn’t work!”—rather than ethical ones–-“It is absolutely wrong!“—set themselves up for this.  Now what should they say? Continue reading →