Year: 2012

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.)

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

“Corrupt, mentally ill and absent is no way to go through Congress, son.”

Here are a few questions about Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., of the Illinois Second Congressional District:

1. Why is Jesse Jackson, Jr. still on the ballot as the Democrat running for Congress in Illinois’ 2nd District, when he himself admits that he is laboring under a disability that has prevented him from doing his job, and doctors tell him that the road to recover will be a “long one”?

2. Why didn’t Jackson resign his seat, which he has been unable to fill except in name for six months due to his illness?

3. Why are the mostly Democratic voters in his district preparing to return him to office, at a time when the United States, even more than usual, needs all of its members of Congress alert, trustworthy, stable and present, when Jackson is incapable of being any of those things? Continue reading →

Trust and “The Paradoxical Commandments” of Dr. Keith

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In case you were wondering what was on that third tablet that Moses dropped…

I’m preparing a long business ethics program for a large corporation with some ethics issues (which is to say, for a large corporation), and while reviewing my files on business leadership re-discovered some material that I hadn’t looked at for a long while. One of them was “Anyway,” a poem that was also turned into an inspirational book by its author, Dr. Kent M. Keith.  He first wrote it for student leaders in 1968 while an undergraduate at Harvard.

One wonders if what he called “The Paradoxical Commandments” would have occurred to anyone but a student, before he could become jaded, cynical, disillusioned, or stuffed with so many scholarly  details, controversies and nuances regarding ethics that such an idealistic view was tainted forever.  (I should note that Dr. Keith has obviously become none of those things, perhaps because he was able to remain true to his own youthful advice.)

The poem is really about trust, the essence of ethics. There is no question that those who trust—in people, in institutions, in justice, in fairness—will inevitably be betrayed and disappointed, sometimes tragically.  Yet to stop trusting in those things, which so much human experience and simple logic dictates is the safest, most sensible course, is to damn one’s life and the society we live in to perpetual mediocrity, fear, and darkness. Democracy is based on trust of an idea: that human beings can be trusted to live their own lives, and that under the inspiration and catalyst of freedom, will create, persevere, love and build a healthy and happy society. There is plenty of evidence that suggests that trusting this idea is risky and foolish, yet trust is its only hope for fruition. So we must trust anyway.

I’ve never posted Dr. Keith’s poem on Ethics Alarms before. I should have. Here it is: Continue reading →

The Unethical Indignation of Mandy Caruso, a.k.a. “Black Cat”

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

Mandy, who is incensed that anyone would think that she wants them to think about her boobs.

Let me stipulate that nothing a woman may do, say or wear excuses rudeness, crudeness, disrespectful comments, sexual harassment, sexual assault or abuse, including, of course, rape. This is unequivocal.

Now let me say that the vociferous complaints by Mandy Caruso on her blog regarding the comments she received at Comic Con as a direct result of her dressing like the Marvel Comics super-heroine Black Cat smack of hypocrisy and a “gotcha!” mentality that is strikingly unfair.

Mandy costumed herself as Black Cat at the famous convention for comic book fans, gamers and fantasy buffs, and she has the physical assets to do it. As you can see in the illustration linked above, TBC is a spectacularly endowed, athletic woman who appears in a black mask and skin-tight, curve-hugging leather suit. She makes D.C.’s Catwoman look like a boy. Characters like Black Cat are drawn specifically to appeal to the sexual fantasies of comic book fans, who are overwhelmingly  teenage boys or single men with the sensibilities of teenage boys. The most extreme of these attend events like Comic Con. Continue reading →

Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Update: Yup! It’s Still Rolling

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

(I hadn’t posted a train wreck photo for a while. It was time.)

The ethics principle that the apparently endless ethics train wreck launched when George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin (Zimmerman’s trial is set for June) most clearly delineates is this: criminal trials, including their arguments and evidence, should take place in court, not in public.

From the very beginning, public opinion, and by extension jury biases, have been manipulated by statements to the media by an endless parade of parties and onlookers who should have kept their mouths shut. The array of unethical commentators  include Martin’s family and lawyer, Zimmerman’s lawyers, past and present, the prosecutor, police personnel, potential witnesses, journalists, pundits, elected officials, idiot celebrities, and the President of the United States.

And you’ll be happy to know that it’s still happening. Continue reading →

Ethics Oxymoron: The Psychic Friends Network’s Honest Scam

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

You don’t see this every day: an inherently dishonest business based on exploiting  consumer gullibility and ignorance making its deception clear in publicly released materials.

The Psychic Friends Network, which is allowed to advertise its fake psychic and fortune-telling services by appending a small sentence declaring that it is “for entertainment only,” has been to bankruptcy and back since those halcyon days when it was being pitched on TV by pop star Dionne Warwick. Now it is looking for investors, and  forecasting $64 million of net income for fiscal 2015. Hey–a forecast from a self-acclaimed network of psychics is money in the bank, right?

Uh, no. Says the PFN, being careful, candid, and admitting their business is 100% hooey:

Let’s get this straight: The Psychic Friends Network, which induces consumers to pay its “network” employees to tell them what is going to happen in the future, states in its public materials that it has no way of telling what is going to happen in the future. Does this make it an honest scam? Can there be such a thing as an honest scam? Is it ethical to invest in an enterprise that openly admits that its premise is a lie? I don’t think so. Will many people invest in such a business?

I don’t know.

The funny thing is, neither does the Psychic Friends Network.

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Sources: Bloomberg

 

Ethics Hero: Reebok

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Of course it’s for publicity.

The woman is 6’2″. OK, she’s only 5’1″, but still: that’s one big shoe..

Sure it’s marketing. Certainly it contributes to Reebok’s prestige and good will, and will help sell its shoes.

Never mind. There are many ways that the athletic sportswear company could have promoted itself without helping someone who desperately needed it. Instead, it made three free custom pairs of size 24, 10E sneakers for Igor Vovkovinskiy, the tallest man in the U.S. He was suffering, and now he can walk without pain.

The 7’8″ Rochester, Minnesota man had undergone 16 foot surgeries in six years because he could not find shoes that fit his giant feet.  Reebok heard about his plight and decided to help him. The special shoes took months to manufacture, and each pair would have cost about $15,000 if Igor had to pay for them. In fact, he was taking contributions to help him afford pain-free footwear. Now, he says, he can finally walk again

Capitalism doesn’t have to be ruthless and cold. It just needs to be creative, and pay attention. It is possible to maximize profit and still do good for people along the way, sometimes with the very same act.

Good for Reebok, and good for Igor Vovkovinskiy. Capitalism at its best.

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Facts : New York Daily News

Graphic: Star Tribune

Of Unfairness, Petards, and the Golden Rule

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Here is the problem.

When you become desperate, and spring to manipulate gaffes, misstatements, over-heard comments and poor choices of words into unfair and disproportionate campaign attacks, you set the ground rules for your opponents as well. Unless you really have a bombshell—I’d say Romney’s 47% comment was a bombshell—the tactic is a poor risk, as well as being unethical. No candidate, nor any of his or her supporters, should try to make political points from off-the- cuff remarks, unless they reach Todd Akin-like levels of offensiveness and stupidity. They should apply the Golden Rule, for their own protection, as well as the principle’s ethical virtues.Indeed, Presidential candidates should pledge—to each other and to the public—to run campaigns about substance, not slips of the tongue.

I would have thought the Democrats would have learned this; I would think any politician would have learned this. But they are worried, and falling in the polls, so when Mitt Romney awkwardly talked about his “binders full of women” in the second debate, liberal pundits and Democrats decided to make this the latest way to ridicule Mitt, taking its place aside “I like to fire people,” and “corporations are people,” but sillier than either, though no more unfair. The attacks on those statements were unethical; this attack was outrageous. More important, it re-emphasized that in this dirty campaign, intentionally warped and unforgiving interpretations of statements that the candidates wish they had said better are acceptable weapons of choice, as unfair and misleading as that choice is.

So, as a result, when their candidate makes a far, far worse gaffe, as Obama did by telling “the Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart that “If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal,” they can expect no mercy from the media, their conservative adversaries, or anyone else, including me. Is the statement as bad as it sounds? No. Does it show that Obama doesn’t care about the death of his ambassador and three other Americans? No. Will it be perceived that way anyway? Yes, absolutely, and because it will, the Republicans will run with it hard, and no Democrat who harped on Romney’s more trivial foot-stuffing exercises can credibly complain.

So they are going to have to live with the mother of one of those slain in Benghazi, telling the press,

“It’s insensitive to say my son is not very optimal – he is also very dead. I’ve not been “optimal” since he died and the past few weeks have been pure hell.”

And they are going to have to put up with this:

‘

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Website of the Month: Third Tier Reality”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Okay, so you weren’t born on third base like this guy. It doesn’t mean you can’t score.

40 yr. old Gen-Xer delivers a worthy Comment of the Day, leveled at my criticism of the Angry Unemployed Law Grad blog, “Third Tier Reality.”  I think it provides valid perspective, though I also think the post’s characterization of how this issue has been handled on Ethics Alarms is somewhat unfair. (You can read my response under the original article.)

Here is the Comment of the Day, on the post, “Unethical Website of the Month: Third Tier Reality”:

“My point is that the situation Nando is railing about is more complex than the scenario of a bunch of disgruntled youth, unwilling to “work hard”, whining for a hand-out. Nando may pour it on thick with name calling and scatological imagery; fair enough. However, to dismiss the underlying message is overly simplistic, dismissive of people’s good-faith effort and ignores the real economic hardship that many face. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Drew Curtis’ Fark

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

“Seduced by your teacher at 16 thereby robbing of your childhood, oh yeah that’s surely worth 10 million…”

—Drew Curtis’ Fark, satirical news aggregation site, commenting on a mother’s 10 million dollar lawsuit against Brooklyn and the teacher who had repeated sex with the mother’s 16-year-old son, whom she was supposed to be tutoring.

Erin Sayer—teacher, child molester, sex fantasy. “How to GO kid! I’d hit that, for sure!”

Let me begin by saying that Fark is one of my favorite sites. It is consistently irreverent and funny, and its news links have inspired some of the most interesting exchanges on Ethics Alarms. Let me also say that I understand that the point of the site is to make snarky, often irreverent, sometimes obscene and intentionally outrageous tongue-in-cheek comments about news stories  trivial, major and odd, and that for the most part, it accomplishes its mission with wit and good humor.

This comment, however, is wrong, unethical, because whatever value it has as humor is outweighed by the harmful attitude it reinforces. Whether it is the  sentimental, , “Summer of 42” myth of the beautiful right-of passage of a teen-aged boy with the help of a loving, lovely, adult woman, or the macho “All right–I sure would have loved to have had a roll in the sack with MY hot high school teacher!” reaction of the locker room crowd, the idea that an adult teacher seducing and having sexual relations with a minor student is anything but sexual assault, rape, and a dastardly breach of trust, position and power does affirmative and continuing harm. The currency and resiliency  of this enabling attitude (read the comments to any online news story about a female teacher prosecuted for having sex with a student) emboldens sexual predators in the schools, reinforces an indefensible double standard ( a male teacher who has sex with a female student is an unequivocal villain, but a boy being raped by a female teacher is a lucky stiff) ) and worst of all, makes student victims more vulnerable.

The cultural assumption that a boy who is seduced by a teacher has been given some kind of gift is in the same category as the claim that women who are raped secretly “want it.” It is important that this theme be rejected, which means that websites like Fark shouldn’t reinforce it even in jest, because the jest does reinforce it.  Hitting communities, schools and teachers with tough jury verdicts is an essential part of eliminating this far too common crime in our schools. Ten million dollars in damages properly states how wrong and intolerable the conduct is, and like all forms of rape, it is nothing to laugh at.

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Facts: Fark

Source, Graphic: Daily Mail

(Again, thanks to Jeff Field for catching a typo!)

Ethics Dunce: Obama-Biden Campaign Co-Chair Eva Longoria

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Stay classy, Democrats.

The co-chair of President Obama’s campaign, showing her qualifications.

“Desperate Housewives” actress Eva Longoria, who for some reason is the co-chair of the Obama campaign, took to her Twitter account and its 4 million, 262 thousand followers to re-tweet this dignified and reasonable message:

“I have no idea why any woman/minority can vote for Romney. You have to be stupid to vote for such a racist/misogynistic twat”

She took down the tweet, perhaps after someone with a brain at DNC headquarters explained why this was an inappropriate message for a co-chair of the President’s campaign to endorse.  Then, after appearing to blame Twitter for it sneaking someone else’s tweet into her feed, apologized, saying via Twitter,

“I use Twitter as a platform for all Americans and their opinions. Sorry if people were offended by retweet. Obviously not my words or my personal view. I respect all Americans #FreedomOfSpeech…”And for the record I have never personally called any conservative women stupid. I think u are all beautiful and strong and smart! I appreciate those conservative women who have sent me some great articles! I respect u, stay involved!”

Oh, really!

Some observations: Continue reading →