Month: January 2012

The Third Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2011 (Part 2)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The 2011 Ethics Alarms Awards for the worst in ethics continues (you can catch up with Part I here) with the large and depressing…

 Shameless Bad Character Division

Jerk (defined as an individual who habitually places his personal benefit and ego gratification above the welfare of everyone and everything else) of the Year: Donald Trump

The Dennis Rodman Award, (Awarded to a professional athlete for a career and lifetime of  behaving like a jerk): Jose Canseco. Jose’s done it all, from being baseball’s Typhoid Mary of steroids, to getting arrested for various assaults, to writing a series of tell-all books designed to rat out the very players he corrupted, not as a service to his sport, but as revenge for it rejecting him. In 2011, he hit a new low, accepting money to appear in a celebrity boxing match (the 21st Century version of becoming a circus geek to pay the bills) and sending his less-talented, equally dim-witted, identical twin brother Ozzie to perform instead, hoping to fool the fools who hired him. This, of course, was fraud. It takes quite a jerk to take this award from Manny Ramirez, who became eligible in 2011, but Jose was up to the task.

Asshole (defined as an individual who intentionally and maliciously causes pain and harm to others because he can) of the Year: Rev. Terry Jones, the publicity-seeking leader of a tiny rural church, who caused riots and deaths abroad and ramped up political tensions between America and Muslim nations by threatening to burn, and finally burning, the Koran as a demonstration of contempt for Muslims and the Islamic faith. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Rep. Ron Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Warren G. Harding, the patron saint of "Nobody's perfect!" presidencies.

“I don’t think anybody in the world has been perfect on management, everybody that’s ever worked for them. So, yes…  it’s a flaw. But I think it’s a human flaw… I admit that I’m an imperfect person and didn’t monitor that as well.”

––GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, responding to ABC’s Jake Tapper’s question about whether his accountability for racially inflammatory statements made in his name in newsletters published by him 20 years ago raise legitimate doubts about his management abilities.

Anyone who’s read this blog much knows what I think of the “nobody’s perfect” excuse for misconduct. To be precise in this case:

1. Nobody said you weren’t human, Ron. Humanity is a rather low bar for a presidential candidate, don’t you think?

2. There is a lot of territory between “perfect” and “letting people write racist and homophobic content under your name in a for-profit newsletter.” For example, the rest of the Republican field is as far from perfect as one could imagine, yet none of them have done that.

3. People who fail to fulfill core management functions when they oversee a project are imperfect, flawed and human, and also called “inattentive and incompetent leaders.” Imperfect, flawed and human individuals can be good and effective Presidents of the United States. Inattentive and incompetent leaders, however, cannot.

The Third Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2011 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Yes, it was Joe Paterno's year, all right.

Welcome to the Third  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards, recognizing the Best and Worst of ethics in 2011!

This is the first installment of the Worst; Part 2 is here. And the Best is here. 

2011 prompted more than 1000 posts, and even then I barely scratched the surface of all the ethical dilemmas and unethical conduct swirling around us. If you have other choices for the various distinctions here and in the subsequent Awards posts, please make them known.

Here are my selections:

Unethical Community of the Year:  Huachuca City, Arizona. Leading the way among American communities that believe, in their hysteria, that former sex offenders who have served their sentences are nonetheless fair game for persecution and the denial of basic rights as citizens and human beings, Huachuca County passed an ordinance that bans registered sex offenders from the use of all public facilities, including parks, school and libraries.  Runner-up: Obion County, Tennessee. Last year, Ethics Alarms gave the county runner-up status as “Unethical Community of the Year” for sending its volunteer fire department to watch a man’s house burn down because he had failed to pay a $75.00 fee. In 2011, it did it again. I swear: if Obion County hasn’t come up with a better system and this happens again in 2012, Obion County will get the title no matter what some other unethical community does.

Most Warped Ethical Values: The Penn State students who protested the firing of football coach Joe Paterno, because, you know, he was such a great football coach that a little thing like allowing a predatory child molester to run amuck on campus shouldn’t be blown all out of proportion. Runner-up: Ron Paul supporters.

Unethical Website of the Year: Lovely-Faces, the anti-Facebook stunt pulled by Paolo Cirio, a media artist, and Alessandro Ludovico, media critic and editor-in- chief of Neural magazine, to show how inadequate Facebook’s privacy controls were. To do it, they stole 250,000 Facebook member profiles and organized them into a new dating site—without the members’ permission. The site embodied “the worst of ethical thinking: taking the identities of others for their own purposes (a Golden Rule breach), using other human beings to advance their own agenda (a Kantian no-no) and asserting that their ends justify abusing 250,000 Facebook users, which is irresponsible utilitarianism.” Continue reading →

Happy 2012! Your New Year’s Ethics Quiz: “Firing Super-Clerk”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Last week, convenience store clerk Eric Henderson was confronted by two female robbers in Pensacola, Florida who demanded that he hand over the cash in his Circle K register.  Henderson  grabbed the gun pointed at him by one of the women, slammed her to the ground, and then chased the two into the street where they fled in a getaway car.

Henderson was promptly fired by Circle K  for violating a company policy that forbids heroics by employees in the middle of attempted robberies. Now Henderson has gone to the media, which is pointing out that he had been unemployed for two years (Occupy Circle K! But how long he had been out of work should have no bearing on the decision whether to to fire him) and that according to Henderson, the unarmed robber was urging her armed companion to shoot him. (Aside: Some of the news accounts also included this hilarious line: “The 30-year-old grabbed the gun pointed at him by one of the alleged robbers…“ Alleged robbers? Can we all agree that when there is an actual  gun to be grabbed, the term “alleged” is idiotic? What else is someone who points a gun at a convenience store clerk? A practical joker? Some one who wants to trade a Glock for Twinkies?)

Your New Year’s Day Ethics Quiz: Was Circle K right to fire Eric? Continue reading →