Year: 2012

Most Cynical and Hypocritical Statement of the 2012 Campaign: Bill Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

 “Who wants a president who will knowingly, repeatedly tell you something he knows is not true?”

—-Bill Clinton, speaking at an Obama rally in Pennsylvania.

Unbelievable shamelessness, even for Clinton.

Yeccch.

Gee, I don’t know why I picked this particular photo. I just like it, I guess. I wonder what Bill was saying?

I don’t know who disgusts me more, the impeached ex-president who has the gall to utter this after repeatedly lying about Monica Lewinsky, or the values-challenged fools that would listen to him insult their intelligence like that and not walk away laughing.

Democrats disgrace themselves by allowing this man to represent them, and that applies to the President as well.

Why Nate Silver Is Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 156 Comments

Funny, Nate, I don’t see “leadership” anywhere in here…

I have wrestled with whether to write this post for about a month now. I am not in the election predicting business, which is a fool’s game, and this is tangential to ethics at best. On the other hand, leadership and American culture are among the subjects frequently explored here. Nate Silver’s analysis of the Presidential election on his New York Times blog has been at once fascinating and aggravating for me, though it has been a godsend to my nervous friends on the ideological left. Silver has insisted that his statistical analysis of the polls fortells an Obama victory with increasing certainty. Last I looked, his model was showing the election to be all but in the bag for the President, with, Silver calculates, an 86% chance that Romney goes down to defeat.

I don’t question Silver’s figures or formula. He’s a statistics whiz. His mistake is trying to use the tools he has used to great success on the poker table and in the world of sabermetrics to analyze the election of a President of the United States, without acknowledging or understanding the core of the process, or the culture and context in which it occurs. In many elections, most perhaps, his model would work perfectly. This time, it is going to fail. Silver won’t see his failure coming because as brilliant as he is in his chosen field, his demonstrated expertise is in economics and statistics. He really believes, apparently, that American history doesn’t matter, that what Americans think about when they choose a President is irrelevant, and that numbers purify the discussion and remove all the bias and static. He couldn’t be more wrong. Continue reading →

Hyundai: Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

As we try to build an ethical culture, it doesn’t help to have amoral corporations employing ethics-challenged advertising flacks to send America toxic messages about honesty and trust. Hyundai, in its campaign for the 2013 Santa Fe, represents family members keeping secrets from each other and parents enlisting their children as accomplices in lies as funny, normal and cute. “Don’t tell mom,” a father orders, in the midst of a movie that will give his young children nightmares, and other misadventures (including one incident of father-led vandalism.). “Don’t tell Dad,” says Mom, after taking her son parasailing. I’m presuming she’ll have to tell him when her son breaks his neck on their next flight. Continue reading →

An Easy Ethics Call: The Flasher In The Girl’s Locker Room (UPDATED)

/ Jack Marshall / 100 Comments

Proudly defending the right to freak out little girls.

How society should treat individuals with one gender’s genitalia but who identify with the opposite gender is a question that involves much more than ethical considerations. At this point, I haven’t been able to devote sufficient thought and research to the problem to propose an answer. The current controversy of Colleen Francis, however, inspires no such hesitancy on my part, because the correct solution to that problem is purely a matter of ethics. I’ll stipulate, for the time being, that it is right, legal and proper for Colleen, a transgendered student at Olympia College in Evergreen, Washington, to use the women’s locker rooms there, despite the fact that the 45-year-old still has a complete set of male genitalia, since she identifies as a woman, and as far as the school is concerned, a woman she is. Sold. I buy it.

However, Colleen apparently likes to display her alien genitalia with abandon in the ladies locker room, despite the fact that she often is surrounded by members of a high school swim club and a children’s swimming academy, many of whom are high school age or younger, and some of whom are as young as six.

Unethical. Inconsiderate. Offensive.

Disrespectful. Irresponsible.

Wrong. Continue reading →

Mark Cuban and the Ethical Tit For Tat.

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

No thank-you.

“Tit for tat” is unethical always—almost. Few ethics rules are absolute, and this isn’t one of them Sometimes tit for tat, that is, doing something unethical to someone who has done the same unethical act to you or someone else, can be justifiable, if it causes no real harm, and does some good as well. Spreading the rumor that Harry Reid is a pederast because he falsely suggested that Mitt Romney was a tax evader doesn’t qualify.  But Mark Cuban offering to donate $1 million to charity if Donald Trump shaves what is allegedly the hair on his head?

Perfect. Continue reading →

Unfairness in the Name of Fairness: Virginia’s Unethical Golf Rules

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Liberty Anderson. Too bad they wouldn’t let her try to win fairly.

Lyberty Anderson, a junior at Manchester High School in Midlothian, Virginia, and undeniably female,  won the Virginia state boys Division AAA golf championship with an eagle on the final hole to capture the 36-hole tournament by one stroke. Lyberty is a terrific golfer, having demonstrated her precocious golf talents by winning women’s tournaments before she was in high school. Nonetheless, the boy’s tournament was outrageously slanted in her favor, and against her male competitors, tainting her victory.

Lyberty won, but she didn’t play the same course as her male opponents. She was allowed to tee her drives up on the shorter women’s tee, meaning that while the boys had to play a 6,653-yard course, hers was more than 1,000 yards shorter, almost 20%.  As Washington Post sportswriter Fred Bowen pointed out, Lyberty can’t be blamed for this: she played by the rules, and played as well as anyone could ask. She now says if she competes in the boys tournament again next year, she’ll tee of from the same spot as her competitors. That shows she understands fairness. Continue reading →

Full Disclosure and Apology: The Horror

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Me, apparently.

It appears that I owe readers here an apology, and my psychiatrist a visit. Yesterday I ran across a website that analyzes one’s prose and informs writers whose style among those in the pantheon of famous novelists their literary efforts most resemble. I gave the site two selections from Ethics Alarms to assess.

The verdict? The novelist my writing evokes is none other than H.P. Lovecraft, but with fewer typos.

Lovecraft was an iconic horror writer, wrote like nobody else who ever lived, or so I thought, and was almost certainly insane. If you haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing H.P., here is a typical passage…

“The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes are digged where earth’s pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl.”

Regarding this disturbing discovery, I want to say…

  • I’m so sorry.
  • Why didn’t anyone tell me?
  • You can check out your own prose here, at I Write Like. Be sure you let me know what you find out. I’m hoping that it thinks everybody writes like Lovecraft.
  • “Evil the mind that is held by no head” is the new motto of Ethics Alarms.

Ethics Quiz: Unethical Quote of the Month, or Just A Joke?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“If you’re thinking about voting for Mitt Romney, I would like to make this one plea: black people know who you are and they will come after you.

—– HBO’s alleged comedian and one million dollar Obama contributor Bill Maher, on his current events commentary show, “Real Time.”

Funny!

Oh, I know, I know: it’s a joke. Maher even followed it up by saying, “I’m kidding!”  Maybe you even think it’s funny…there are arguably funny racist, sexist and anti-gay jokes too. This one hits all the keys: suggesting that Romney is anti-black, attempting to intimidate voters, and stereotyping Africa-Americans as violent and dangerous. (And, of course, the comment is divisive, but on that score, Maher is only taking his cue from the Obama campaign, which has reminded everyone that Romney “isn’t one of us.”)

No conservative could make this “joke.” A races-reversed version of the joke would cause an eruption of anger from the Left. Since humor is utilitarian (if it’s funny enough, anything goes), is this joke sufficiently hilarious to justify it? Maher also thinks it’s a joke to call Republican women “twats” and “cunts.” He’s a funny guy.

Here is your Ethics Quiz:

Should Maher’s comment be excused as being within acceptable bounds for a political comic, or is it unethical nonetheless?

__________________________________

Pointer: Newsbusters

Graphic: Libertarian Punk

Ethics Dunce: The Single Mother Tip-Stiffer

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

According to a poster on Reddit, a woman allegedly left the message above on her receipt after eating a pricey meal at a restaurant. “Single mom, sorry,” she wrote, in the space left for a tip. “Thank you—it was great!” The furious waiter’s colleague scanned and posted  the receipt, with appropriate invective that has been matched and exceeded by others on the site.

As usual, there are denials that the story is genuine, and claims that some single mother-hating trouble-maker created this miserable ethics smoking gun. “I think this bill is a fraud because I’ve met very few single mothers who expected to get special treatment for their status. They’re just hoping no one holds their situation against them,” wrote one skeptic. This is the “No True Scotsman” fallacy in Technicolor. The fact, if it is a fact, that few single mothers expect special treatment doesn’t prove that this one didn’t or doesn’t. Continue reading →

Christina Hendricks Reductio Ad Absurdum

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Should SHE be insulted at “full-figured’?

Many commenters on my post regarding Christina Hendricks’ abrupt termination of an Australian interview have argued vociferously that the actress  was justified, suggesting that my criticism of her is sexist and unfair. I have pointed out that her objections to being referred to as “full-figured” were in flagrant disregard of the interviewer’s obvious meaning (she is famously voluptuous). I have noted that Ms. Hendricks’ curves are, in professional terms, her “bread and butter”—her trademark, her most salesworthy asset, her primary advantage over her competitors, the basis of her notoriety, the focus of her wardrobe, and the main reason she is a popular subject of photographers, an international celebrity and wealthy.  To no avail. My argument that such a woman should not be indignant when the most obvious reason she is in a position to be interviewed at all comes up in a question in a publicity interview, whether the question is gracefully phrased or not, falls on deaf ears.

So I now invite these treasured Ethics Alarms gender warriors to engage in this simple thought experiment. Would they extend their defense to Christina if she were one of these remarkable women?

Presumably so.

If not, I’d be fascinated to learn the reasoning.