Year: 2012

Test: Which Teacher Do You Trust Least?

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

Your challenge: Rank from “Most Untrustworthy” to “Least Untrustworthy”  the following unethical teachers, all the subjects of news stories over the past 30 days:

The candidates:

A. Jack Conkling, a high school social studies teacher in Buhler, Kansas, who began a rant this on his Facebook page like this:

“All this talk in the news about gay marriage recently has finally driven me to write. Gay marriage is wrong because homosexuality is wrong. The Bible clearly states it is sin. Now I do not claim it to be a sin any worse than other sins. It ranks in God’s eyes the same as murder, lying, stealing, or cheating…”

Yes, he had students among his Facebook friends, who made sure everyone in the school was aware of Conkling’s views. Continue reading →

Silver Lining To A Homicide

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Ah, those school memories!

In South Dakota,  73-year-old Carl Ericsson rang an old high school classmate’s doorbell in January and shot him dead.

Why? Norman Johnson had forced his killer to wear a jock strap on his head in a high school locker room when they were both boys almost 60 years ago. Ericsson hadn’t seen or talk to Johnson in decades, but the humiliation apparently festered. A successful family man now in retirement, Ericsson had battled emotional illness in recent years, and suddenly decided to settle the score of an old grudge.

This was a senseless death and a tragedy that scars two families. Still, I think the tale of how a victim of bullying suddenly got horrible revenge on his tormenter six decades later is s story that should be told early and often in the schools.

It may make some would-be bullies think twice before that atomic wedgie, the embarrassing photo, or the mean Facebook post.

And Mitt?

Watch out.

[NOTE: when this article was first posted, the end portion of the ABC story I linked to above and below was inadvertently copied into it after my last line. That was unintentional. Since I am both a lousy speller, a lousy typist and a computer maladroit, I sometimes copy a portion of the story I am basing a post upon into the body of the post, for easy reference, and occasionally to cut and paste names like “Ericsson” that I just know I’m going to misspell at least once. When I do that, I usually remember to delete it. And when I don’t usually Tim Levier catches it before now. My apologies to ABC, the AP, and you.]

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Pointer: Fark

Facts and Graphic: ABC

Never Mind Bush Heads on Pikes, Is THIS Responsible Journalism?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

From MSNBC:

(The answer is “No.”)

If this is the level of respect and civility we can expect from partisans during the campaign, we are all in trouble.Any responsible news organization would fire Martin Bashir. As we all know, MSNBC, proud employers of Al Sharpton and Ed Schultz, is not such an organization.

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Pointer: Twitchy

Source: YouTube

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Ethics Quiz: Alcoholics Anonymous and Judicial Abuse of Power

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Uh, wrong meeting, Barney…

A friend who is a member of Alcoholics Anonymous flagged an interesting ethical dilemma involving the huge, loosely-affiliated alcoholism recovery and support group.

Judges often order mandatory attendance at AA meetings as conditions for leniency in alcohol-related crimes, like DUI, spousal abuse, and others. The problem is that AA is system of commitment and trust, and someone who only comes to meetings under threat of jail time have neither. It is the AA attendee’s acceptance of the reality that they are helpless against alcohol and willingness to commit fully to the program with others like than that allows AA to be as successful as it is, and the assurance of anonymity the group provides makes its existence possible. “Court-ordered attendees slink in here, roll their eyes, do their time and leave,” he told me. “How do we know that they aren’t regaling their friends with hilarious tales about what does on at meetings? What right does a judge have to make AA host someone who doesn’t really meet the group’s criteria?”

Good question, and it’s the Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it ethical for judges to force a non-profit, non-government, voluntary organization to assist the justice system at the risk of their own integrity and their members’ confidentiality?

This time I’m going to let everyone weigh in before I show my cards.

Here is a link that discusses some of the related issues.

Ethics Dunce: Gina Chon

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“The question I continue to have is when will the conversation return to issues?  Because when they do, I know Brett will become the next ambassador to Iraq.”

Just JKF’s type. Also a Communist spy, but hey, nobody’s perfect!

Thus did loyal wife Gina Chon rationalize away Republican objections to the appointment of her husband, Brett McGurk, to be Ambassador to Iraq. Her point, apparently, is that the fact that he carried on an illicit and secret affair with a reporter—her—while on a previous State Department assignment to Iraq and exchanged e-mails “joking” (?) about exchanging intelligence for sex should be an issue in his conformation.

Let’s see, now. One of the gazillion women President Kennedy may have had an affair with while he was in the White House was Ellen Rometsch, an East German spy. (JFK consistently ranks #1 in polls of which Presidents Americans think were the best. Discuss) Imagine that this came to light, that somehow JFK avoided impeachment for it (he would not have), and avoided Oswald’s magic bullet in Dallas. How would Jackie have sounded, if she argued to the press that since Jack didn’t blab state secrets during his pillow talk, his indiscretion jeopardizing U.S. national security was a non-issue?

Like a loyal wife, like a loyal Democrat, and like an idiot.

Like Chon. Continue reading →

Dear Pundits: Stop Telling Your Audience Something Is “Unprecedented” When You Are Ignorant of What The Precedents Are!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Phooey. James Taranto beat me to this one.

Sing it, Sam. Join in at any point, Juilan: “Don’t know much about history…”

When I read that a reporter had interrupted President Obama today as he was announcing his illegal immigration amnesty program for young illegals, and saw that an MSNBC guest had made the fatuous suggestion that a white President would never be treated so disrespectfully, I immediately thought, “What? Have these people never heard of Dan Rather’s heckling of Nixon?”

Taranto wondered the same thing, and printed this, from David Schoenbrun’s 1989 book,”On and Off the Air: An Informal History of CBS News,”  in his blog:

“When Dan Rather, the White House correspondent, arose to question [President Nixon], boos and cheers rang through the hall. The boos came from Nixon acolytes spread through the room, the cheers from fellow correspondents expressing their support for Dan. As the noise erupted, Nixon, on the stage, looked down at Rather and asked with heavy sarcasm, ‘Are you running for something?’ Dan, always impulsive, snapped right back, ‘No, sir, are you?’ More boos, more cheers! Not the most dignified scene at a presidential news conference. Dan was in trouble. It is one thing, perfectly legitimate, to challenge a president with tough questions. It is something quite different for a reporter to engage in a sassing contest with the nation’s chief executive, no matter how obnoxious and wrong the president may be.”

Since Democratic strategist Julian Epstein is ignorant of history, however, and also committed to the desperate and insulting Democratic strategy of ascribing any criticism of this most foundering of Presidents to nascent racism, he embarrassed himself with this silly rant: Continue reading →

“The Ice Child” and Staging Theft Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Copy or inspiration?

Well-reviewed, received and attended, the Washington D.C. production of “The Ice Child,” an original horror play by members of the three-year-old ensemble Factory 449, has stirred controversy because of its staging and production design, which is not only strikingly similar to a New York production of another horror play, “Americana Kamikaze,” but the company candidly admits that its visual concept was inspired by the 2009 work. Factory 449 also maintains that the plays are different, and that their appropriation of the design elements of the Temporary Distortion production of “Americana Kamikaze” is within the realm of acceptable, and ethical, theater practice. In a statement responding to charges of theft of creative output, the company wrote: Continue reading →

Is Watching A President’s Speech A Civic Duty?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It certainly was regarded as one once. Back in the ancient days when there were just three TV networks and no cable, Americans didn’t even complain that all three would be broadcasting Presidential addresses at once, causing them to miss “Sugarfoot,” “McHale’s Navy,” or “The Gale Storm Show.” Ratings for Presidential speeches have been steadily declining, however, since the advent of cable and satellite TV, and the perpetual campaign mode of recent Presidencies has played a role as well.

I am a American Presidency enthusiast, as if you couldn’t tell, and I feel guilty about skipping President Obama’s address on the economy last night, as I feel guilty every time I re-arrange my sock drawer when POTUS speaks to the nation. That’s been my habit for a long, long time. Yes, I never miss inaugural addresses, and I always watch the State of the Union speech, though that commitment is on life support. The rest? If there is a genuine and immediate crisis, an announcement of war or something similarly earth-shattering, I’ll be in the TV audience. Addresses like last night’s, however—-vaguely political speeches calculated to bolster support, spin bad news or bash the opposition—-those I just can’t tolerate, and haven’t for decades. Continue reading →

More School Bullying…As In Schools Bullying Students

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

What the hell kept you?

From an ACLU complaint recently filed in the Northern District of Indiana:

“The plaintiffs in this case are all 14-year-old girls, proceeding by their initials, who were previously enrolled as eighth graders at Griffith Middle School, which is operated by Griffith Public Schools. In late January, they engaged in a lengthy conversation on http:// http://www.facebook.com-through the comments section of one of their personal pages after school from their personal computers. This conversation spanned numerous subjects, from the pain of cutting oneself while shaving to the girls’ friendship, before turning to a discussion of which of their classmates they would kill if they had the chance. At all times, the conversation was purely in jest and could not have been interpreted seriously, as is evidenced by the girls’ repeated use of “emoticons,” by their use of abbreviations indicative of humor, and by the nature and tone of the conversation. The girls were simply engaged in teenage banter.Nonetheless, on January 26, 2012, all three (3) girls were suspended from school for ten (10) days as a result of this conversation, and they were ultimately expelled for the remainder of their eighth grade year. This disciplinary action occurred because they had supposedly violated a provision of the student handbook prohibiting bullying, harassment, and intimidation, even though no statement in the conversation-nor the conversation as a whole–constituted a “true threat.” Additionally, the conversation did not cause any disruption to the educational environment or to school activities, nor was it foreseeable that it would.”

Glory be and Halleluiah! Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: The Producers of HBO’s “Game of Thrones”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush. In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.”

—– David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the producers of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” explaining how a replica of former President George W. Bush’s head came to be placed on a pike in one episode. HBO had previously apologized for the display as “in very bad taste.”

Stay classy, Hollywood.

I detest public lies that the liars know nobody in their right mind will believe, as they are insulting, dishonest (obviously) and degrade the culture by sending the message that lying is just a game., and being a liar is nothing to be ashamed of. I also detest fake forced apologies, in which  individuals have been ordered by some authority to issue mea culpas or else, and the result is  apologies so insincere that they border on parody.

This statement by the producers of “Game of Thrones,” then, is especially objectionable, because it meets both criteria. Continue reading →