Month: March 2012

The Beautiful Lie!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Irony! Stupidity! Symmetry!  Elegance! Chutzpah! Redundancy!

Ahhhhh! Breathtaking!

Yes, this amazing lie, by the California State University System, has it all. This is the Sistine Chapel of lies, the Mona Lisa of mendacity, a true masterpiece of the liar’s art.

Consider…this is “Sunshine Week,” the annual campaign to raise awareness about the essential nature of open, honest and transparent government. So to celebrate,  CSU’s  public affairs office falsely announced on Monday that it had won the 2012 Sunshine Award for most transparent government website in the nation. It had not. It isn’t even eligible to win such an award.

Sunshine Review, the national nonprofit organization that sponsors the annual awards, has confirmed that this would be impossible, since they “do not grade state universities or colleges at this time, so it would be impossible for Cal State to have won an award.” Sure enough, the system is not included on the list of winners available online.

Why would the university system of the Sunshine State lie about receiving the Sunshine Award from the Sunshine Review, and do it on Sunshine Week, no less?  Clearly, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to good to pass up. It may be unethical, but in the annals of lying, it’s beautiful!

[Thanks to James Taranto for the tip.]

Unethical Quote of the Week: “Brad”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“How much did all these hacks get paid to do this? What a waste of money. Are they bothering somebody? Leave them alone. They obviously want to be together, and who are we to say that they shouldn’t? How much did this judge and all the hacks get paid to issue this decision? Somewhere, somehow this waste has to stop.”

—“Brad,” a commenter on NECN.com’s story about Lisa Lavole, a former teacher who was out of jail on parole after three years for the offense of having sex with her 15-year old student and running away with him. She was taken back into custody when the same student, now 18, was discovered hiding in her closet. One of the conditions of her parole was that she had to stay away from her former victim.

Lisa Lavole, doing her Norman Bates imitation

While perusing the comments to news stories often gives me more insight into the state of our culture’s ethics than reading the stories themselves, there is always the downside that many comments make me want to chuck ethics as a futile and pointless career choice and begin honest work as a bookie or a pimp. “Brad’s” comment is a case in point.

It would be difficult to pack more flawed ethical reasoning and rationalizations into a mere 60 words. The woman was hired to teach, and instead used her authority, age and power to entice a child into a sexual relationship, and then take him away from his parents and his home. By the most charitable interpretation she is a sexual predator and a rapist, as well as the betrayer of the community’s trust. Of course part of her punishment involves keeping her away from her victim, whose mind and emotions she had damaged and warped. To Brad, however, it is a “waste of money” to enforce legitimate laws, protect children from predatory adults, and make certain that at very least adults who prey on the children in their charge don’t benefit from it. She turned a child into a sex object and lover, and Brad thinks it’s a waste of time and money for society to make certain that she can’t keep reaping the benefits of her crime after her prison sentence. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Rushworth Kidder (1944-2012)

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Not everyone named Rush is an uncivil blow-hard. This Rush, Rushworth Kidder, was a dedicated ethicist, teacher, author and philanthropist who was one of the pioneers in the field of professional ethics. His trademark phrase was “moral courage,” but it was more than a motto: Rush thought about it, taught it, and lived it.

He founded his Institute for Global Ethics in 1990, just as the idea was beginning to take hold that organizational ethics was something that needed to be formalized and made part of the culture in companies and professional communities, and unlike many who were to enter the field as it grew, Kidder never sold out. He wasn’t in the field of ethics to make a buck. He believed. Continue reading →

The Ethics Verdict on the Homeless Hotspot Project

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

BBH Labs, the innovation unit of the international marketing agency BBH, hired members of the Austin, Texas homeless population to walk around carrying mobile Wi-Fi devices, offering high-speed Internet access in exchange for donations. Thirteen volunteers from a homeless shelter were hooked up to the devices, given business cards and put in shirts with messages that designated them as human connections. “I’m Rudolph, a 4G Hotspot” read the label on the homeless man on the New York Post’s front page with the lead, “HOT BUMS!”

The Walking Hotspots—now there’s a new horror series for AMC when they run out of zombies— were told to go to the most densely packed areas of the South by Southwest high-tech festival in Austin, Texas, where the technology trend-devouring conventioners often overwhelm the cellular networks with their smart phones. Attendees were told they could go up to a Homeless Hotspot and log on to his 4G network using the number on his T-shirt. A two-dollar contribution to the homeless man was the suggested payment for 15 minutes of service. BBH Labs paid  the wired-up homeless $20 a day, and they were also able to keep whatever customers donated.

What BBH called its “charitable  experiment” ended yesterday with the conference, and with all participants seemingly thrilled. The “Homeless Hotspot” gimmick got nationwide publicity, thirteen homeless men made some money, and conference participants got great connectivity…so why were so many people upset? Continue reading →

“The Good Wife” Ethics Addendum: Why Misrepresenting the Legal Profession’s Standards Does Real Harm

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Sure, it was a comedy, but how many people believe that Jim Carrey's compulsively lying lawyer was not that far from the truth?

A comment from reader Penn on my post about “The Good Wife’s” recent misrepresentation of legal ethics standards got me thinking, and what it got me thinking was that I was too easy on the show.

Penn asked why I waste my time watching programs that raise my blood pressure, and there are two answers. The first is what I wrote back: it’s not a bad show; in the past it has been a very good one, even from the legal ethics perspective. I have used several scenarios from episodes in seminars.

The second answer, which I didn’t mention in my response to Penn, is the more important one, however. Good show or not, millions of Americans get their information about the legal profession from the portrayal of lawyers and law on TV and in movies. From these fictional sources, they think they know that most lawyers are liars, that they allow their clients to lie, that they put witnesses on the stand who they know will lie under oath. The public thinks that lawyers abuse the law, don’t earn their fees, don’t give a damn about their clients (unless they are sleeping with them), switch sides routinely and confuse juries to release serial killers on more victims. Continue reading →

More Airport Encounters: Saying Thanks To An Accidental Mentor

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Better late than never.

I previously wrote about the dilemma of whether to impose on celebrities who you encounter as they engage in the necessities of life (though I did not mention the time I was using a Kennedy Center urinal next to Colonel Sanders). I generally have ambivalence about the situation, but when I saw former Senator Alan Simpson standing at my gate as I disembarked at La Guardia, there was no question in my mind. I crossed over to him immediately, shook his hand, and said thank you.

I owe him, you see. Continue reading →

“Goody Goody” to the Least Sympathetic Betrayal Victim of the Year, Former Senator Arlen Specter

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

First, this musical introduction, courtesy of the brilliant and tragic Frankie Lymon:

Ironically, over the weekend I wrote, in a reply to a comment, about how badly I felt when I finally met Arlen Specter and he was very complimentary to me, after I had described his 2009 defection from the Republican Party in very uncomplimentary terms. Now comes the news that the former Pennsylvania Senator’s new book includes a lament that neither President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nor other key Democrats delivered on the promises that caused him to betray his party and those who had voted for him.

Arlen, Arlen, Arlen. Continue reading →

Is Cosmetic Surgery For Dogs Eth…Oh, For Heaven’s Sake! I Can’t Believe I Have To Ask!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

NPR’s gag current events quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” got gasps from its panelists, its audience and me this week when it discussed the supposedly growing trend of “canine plastic surgery”, including “face lifts for dogs.” WWDTM was, as is often the case, being a bit misleading in the interests of time and humor: the case that prompted the discussion was the story of a British couple who had spent thousands of dollars on wrinkle-reduction for their bloodhound, but it was not, as she show led us to believe, an effort to create a canine Joan Rivers. The dog had a rare medical condition in which it developed excessive skin folds that covered its eyes. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but sometimes it’s not as funny.

While researching the bloodhound story, however, I learned about “Neuticles”—

—fake testicles implanted in neutered dogs in order to…well, what, really? Continue reading →

“The Good Wife,” Flunking Legal Ethics 101

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

CBS’s “The Good Wife” remains ensconced in my Hall of Fame for TV lawyer dramas, but last night the series committed the kind of “what the hell?” blatant legal ethics gaffe that causes many lawyers to avoid such shows.

The situation is one that may be dramatic but hardly unusual: the client who lies on the witness stand. Unlike a lot of the ethical conundrums that are concocted in the fevered brains of TV scriptwriters (“Your client leaves a human head in your office—what do you do?”—“The Practice”), this is one that is thoroughly explored in law school and one which every competent litigator has to be prepared to face, because 1) it happens and 2) the legal ethics rules about how a lawyer is supposed to handle it have bounced all over the place, like William Shatner. Continue reading →

White House “Ethics”: Obamacare Justifies The Means

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Supreme Court protests: pointless when anyone else organizes them, unethical when the White House organizes them.

I was stunned by the news reports of the White House organizing pro-Obamacare demonstrations outside the Supreme Court, and then found myself stunned that I was stunned.

It should have been obvious to all, which includes me, that President Obama and Democratic supporters of Obamacare were so determined to pass this mess that it stopped mattering to them long ago what democratic and constitutional principles were nicked, warped, distorted and violated in the process. This should be obvious regardless of whether one likes the final product (as if anyone knows what that really is, even today—principle nicked: transparent government).

The final bill was passed with a series of legislative maneuvers that had never been mustered all in the support of one controversial bill (principle warped: process and representative democracy); it was built on an expansion of Congressional power the is either unconstitutional or a frightening slippery slope (principle distorted: individual freedom); the individual mandate was (and is) simultaneously sold to the public as not being a tax while argued to the courts as one (principle violated: honesty and integrity), the Congressional Budget Office’s verdict was obtained using accounting tricks and deceitful projections (principle nicked: fairness); and misrepresentation was the norm on both sides of the debate (principles violated: respect for the public; candor, transparency and honesty). Now that the President is already campaigning for re-election and the health care law remains his signature accomplishment—if you consider it that and not a fiasco—the White House has made it clear that, while it may not be fair to say it will stop at nothing to save it, what it won’t stop at to protect the measure is a damning indictment of its integrity.

From the New York Times, one of the few non-conservative media sources to cover the story: Continue reading →