Month: April 2012

Naked Teacher Principle Sighting in Ohio

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

News from Independence, Ohio:

“A part-time Catholic elementary school teacher was fired for posting nude photos of herself on the Internet.

The Cleveland Catholic Diocese said today the teacher was employed at St. Michael’s Elementary School.

Officials declined to release the teacher’s name, age or length of time she was employed with the diocese. They also declined to explain where the photos were posted or how they learned about them.

“In accordance with the Diocesan Education Department’s policies in such matters, St. Michael’s school officials took immediate action to terminate the part-time instructor,” a news release said. “The well-being of the students is paramount in these cases and assistance has been offered to students and their parents.”

More teachers need to read Ethics Alarms  ( especially the Naked Teacher Principle)…at least until the profession develops a useful code of ethics.

By the way, how are you coming with that, teachers?

Ethics Dunce: Laurie Penny

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Laurie Penny, in an alternate universe America where we don't bother about trivial things, like saving pompous, ungrateful British journalists.

Laurie Penny was the woman saved from being flattened by a New York cab this week by none other than Ryan Gosling, the dashing actor and and celebrity heart-throb who has already been honored here for his willingness to come to the rescue of others in peril. He pulled her back as the British journalist was about to step off the curb in Manhattan without looking, right in the path of a speeding vehicle.

The celebrity and gossip media went bonkers over this, as you might imagine. After all, a typical headline for this crude segment of the media is that Tia Tequila got a new tattoo or that a Kardashian broke a nail. Let’s see…what’s today’s buzz? Ex-child star Amanda Bynes was bailed out if jail following her DUI arrest, and Heidi Klum filed for divorce. But the attention being paid to Gosling’s good deed just annoys Penny, and, she says, is proof that America is trivial and misguided. In a piece authored for the gossip site Gawker, entitled, “Ryan Gosling Saved Me From a Speeding Car But There’s War In the Middle East So Everyone Calm Down,” Penny exposes herself as the kind of person Gosling might live to regret rescuing. Continue reading →

Mirlande Wilson Is My Favorite Ethics Dunce of All Time!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

When we last left Mirlande Wilson, she was claiming, improbably, that although she had bought Mega Millions lottery tickets for her workplace pool at McDonald’s, the ticket she bought giving her over $250 million in jackpot winnings was hers alone.

This made her an Ethics Alarms Ethics Dunce. Now she says she has lost the ticket. This opens so many possibilities, all with their own ethical implications:

  • She is lying, and never had the ticket, meaning that she is willing to make her co-workers think she cheated them to try to pull off an audacious scam. Dishonest and shameless.
  • She did lose the ticket, but it was the pool ticket, and she is lying about that part of it. In this case, she was spectacularly irresponsible to lose a ticket worth millions to the persons who collectively bought it. And a liar. Dishonest, careless, greedy, irresponsible and untrustworthy.
  • She did buy the ticket with her own money, and did lose it, and is just telling the truth, hoping to get a little sympathy. In that case, she deserves some. But buying a ticket for a mega-jackpot and losing it is still prima facie evidence that you shouldn’t live alone, or be left in the presence of pointy objects. Honest, careless and pathetic.
  • She bought the ticket with the pool’s money, and knows that she won’t find it and can’t get the cash. She’s saying that the lost ticket was hers alone, hoping that her fellow workers won’t feel as terrible as she does, since it would be pretty terrible to gor back to a fast food job when you know you should be joining country clubs. She’s trying to spare them. Yes, that must be it. Noble, kind, and self-sacrificing.
  • She bought the ticket with the pool’s money, and knows that she won’t find it and can’t get the cash. She’s saying that the lost ticket was hers alone, hoping that her fellow workers won’t try to kill her. Irresponsible, careless, dishonest, but understandable.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

2012 Election Coverage Preview: “Objective” Interviewing Technique, Mainstream Media Style

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

CNN’s Carol Costello: Democrat, Obama defender, Journalist? No.

I watched deposed biased and unprofessional CNN morning show host Carol Costello, subbing for current CNN biased and unprofessional host Soledad O’Brien, interview bumbling GOP Chair Reince Priebus yesterday in disbelief. It was the most blatant example of a network news interviewer shameless stepping into the role of a partisan defender of the President that I had since the stunning 2oo9 spectacle  of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen angrily debating Tea Party rally participants on the virtues of the President’s policies and pronouncing the anti-Obama demonstration as “anti-CNN.”

I have been patiently waiting for a full video of the interview but cannot find one; the full effect of Costello’s partisan contempt can only be fully appreciated by observing her smug smirks and sarcastic tone. In the absence of the video, however, the best I can show you is the transcript, and I’m sure some of you—those who can’t detect left-leaning media bias because it just seems like the honest  truth to you–will say Costello was just doing her job. All I can say to that is: you are dead wrong.

We all know that the vast, vast majority of journalists are liberals, progressives and registered Democrats, disproportionately to the political mix in the country at large. The professional, ethical journalists, and there are still some, can be tough and fair interviewers without their performance a) being guided by the desire to “win” for their side, b) making it obvious with every question where their own sentiments lie, and c)  showing obvious disrespect for their guests.  “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert met that standard routinely (current host David Gregory does not). Doing so takes restraint, skill, respect for the role of journalists and ethics. Costello showed none of these, and in an earlier era, where journalistic integrity had not become a casualty of ratings and competition, I have no doubt that a disgraceful performance like Costello’s would have led to a suspension or a one-way ticket to the local news in Palookaville.  Now it is very close to the norm. and as the mainstream media circle the wagons to protect the candidate it helped elect in 2008, we should expect more of the same, and worse, in the coming months.

And if you think this is fair, responsible, or healthy for democracy, you are dead wrong about that, too.

Here is yesterday’s transcript, which aired on April 5 on CNN’s Newsroom at 9:05 a.m. EDT, with some annotations by me. Continue reading →

Burger King, Mary J. Blige and the Political Correctness Double-Bind

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

"No, let's give the fried chicken commercial to Donny Osmond. I don't think Mormons even like fried chicken..."

My theater company did a production of the Depression Era comedy “Stage Door,” about a group of young actresses  who stay in a boarding house. There are two roles for “domestics” in the play; the female of the two has quite a few lines. The director felt that it would be perpetuating a stereotype to cast African-Americans in these roles, though that is what the characters were supposed to be, so she cast white actors in both parts. The bottom line is that African-American actors were not cast because of their race, in parts written for actors of their race. No offensive stereotype..and no jobs.

This seems counter-productive and foolish to me. Another example: I was once told by the EEOC specialist at a New York law firm that he never took female associates on travel to meet with clients, because he didn’t want to be vulnerable to sexual harassment claims. “So you’re discriminating against women in your firm to avoid harassing them?” I asked. “Well, I suppose you could say that,” he replied.

Which brings us to Mary J. Blige. The singer was hired by Burger King to sing in a fried chicken commercial, and the result has been attacked as racist stereotyping by several black publications and critics. Burger King has pulled the commercial, muttering some cover-story, along with Blige, about the ad being released “prematurely.” How that would change the fact that she is singing “Crispy chicken, fresh lettuce, three cheeses with dressing!” I don’t really grasp. Anyway, Burger King has officially apologized, which, I suppose, means that just as you can’t use the term “chink in the armor” in discussing anything to do with Jeremy Lin, you can’t hire a black singer to promote fried chicken….even if a black singer wants to promote fried chicken and needs a job. Continue reading →

The Pink Slime Debacle: Is Anyone To Blame?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

YUM!!!!

The maker of so-called “pink slime” filed for bankruptcy last week as the direct result of a public furor and public relations disaster related to “finely textured beef.” As a result, upwards of 650 people are losing their jobs, perhaps many more. Ground beef and other beef-based food will be more expensive, and quite possibly less healthy. Who, if anyone, is at fault?

The “pink slime” controversy was launched by cable TV chef Jamie Oliver, a healthy eating advocate who urged his viewers to reject ground beef that included the commonly-used filler. It is all meat, you know. In fact, it is virtually fat-free beef that begins as slaughterhouse trimmings, is then heated and spun in a centrifuge to separate tiny particles of meat from fat, and subjected to a puff of ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria. Then it was mixed with ground beef. The process sounded unappetizing, and the nickname, coined in an e-mail by a USDA official, made it seem especially disgusting. The internet and social media got a hold of it, and the next thing you know, there were petitions and outrage. And the net result…jobs lost, beef made more expensive, no improvement in taste or health…a complete loss.

Good job everybody!

And almost everybody’s to blame too.

In rough order of culpability:

  1. The meat industry, for using unnatural, treated meat as filler and hiding it with the deceitful label “100% beef.” Consumers should have known what was being added and how it was produced, and it should have been on the labels.
  2. The clever USDA official. His cute name was a food slur, and in these days of viral tweets, YouTube videos and emails, coming up with a disgusting name for a safe food was reckless and irresponsible.
  3. The news media and websites, for not adequately defusing the controversy by explaining exactly what the substance was, indulging the anti-meat agenda of certain writers and reporters.
  4. Consumers, for being naive, emotional, irrational, and too easily stampeded. Most processed food can be made to seem disgusting,  especially anything to do with meat. So is a lot of food preparation. The public won’t take the time to distinguish between genuinely unhealthy foods and those that just involve processing that isn’t suitable for the squeamish, so they go overboard on the random targets of attention-seeking, half-cocked activists, and often the government and regulators follow the hysteria. This is the tragedy of DDT; this is Alar; this is cyclamates. Industries are destroyed that don’t deserve to be; lives are ruined, and the public health isn’t improved.

Was Jaime Oliver’s conduct wrong? I don’t think so. He’s a natural foods advocate; he has philosophical objections to processed food, and he  performed a public service by letting the public know something about its food that it should have been told about sooner. The story of “pink slime” could and should have been explained truthfully by someone who approved of it; it’s not Oliver’s fault that the job fell to an opponent.

How Extreme Ideology Makes You An Insufferable, Mean-Spirited Jerk: Case Study…William Ayers

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Thank you for your service, and of course you can board the airplane before I do. By the way, Bill Ayers says you don't work.

Barack Obama’s friend Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, the now retired terrorists, found their way to Occupy Wall Street yesterday, which figures, and these murderous Sixties socialists were welcomed as heroes by the OWS crowd, which figures even more.

In the course of their joint rant about how doomed and terrible the United States is, Ayers, who apparently resented not being in the first group to board a recent commercial flight by virtue of his first class ticket, posed this question:

“We’ve got a militarized society and its become so common sense that, getting on the airplane coming out here, the first thing they said was let all the, uhh, let all the ya know, uniformed military get on first and thank you for your service.  And I said as I always do: let’s let the teachers and nurses get on first and thank them for their service.  I mean, why is it that everything military has got to be good and everything that has to do with actual work, real work, not jobs, real work for people, that stuff gets discouraged and marginalized?” Continue reading →

Lawrence O’Donnell and the Missing Religious Bigotry Ethics Alarm at MSNBC

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Really?

Religious bigotry? Hey, whatever works!

Is this really how it is going to be? Are the media protectors of President Obama really going to stoop to anti-Mormon bigotry to attack Mitt Romney?  First New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow writes disparagingly about the Mormon “magic underpants” with nary a peep of  protest or discipline from his bosses at the New York Times, and now MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell spews out this last night as Romney’s three primary wins were being tallied:

“Mormonism was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it. Which Mitt Romney says he believes.” Continue reading →

Spam of the Week (Because I Really, Really Hate These People)

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I have personally read and deleted slightly under 16o,000 spam comments since this blog launched in October, 2009. Spammers are ethically on par with vandals and the creators of computer viruses, and my contempt and disgust for them knows no bounds.

Here, from a commenter named “Limousine Hire” is the spam of the week, the best of the garbage I have to read to make sure your legitimate comments, which make Ethics Alarms what it is, aren’t thrown out with the bathwater:

“I liked up to you will receive performed right here. The comic strip is tasteful, your authored material stylish. nonetheless, you command get got an edginess over that you want be handing over the following. sick without a doubt come more previously once more as precisely the similar just about a lot steadily inside case you defend this increase.”

Now who can argue with THAT?

Ethics Quote of the Week: Prof. Paul Horwitz

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I can think of a number of posts about the ACA from legal scholars last week that were clearly and openly offered as advocacy and did a fine job of it. And I can think of others that were clearly not offered as advocacy at all, and said useful and interesting things about the oral arguments…But I do believe that some posts last week traded on the authority of their authors, made overconfident or disingenuous claims about the state of current law and the strength or weakness of opposing arguments, and did so for strategic reasons. I see those reasons as more inculpatory than exculpatory. I don’t see the minimal requirements for scholarly integrity that I offered as changing because of the medium, or because of the importance and currency of the case.”

Hey, Professor! We assume you're smarter than we are: don't play games with our trust!

—-University of Alabama Law Professor Paul Horwitz, writing about the confounding number of liberal law professors and scholars who wrote internet posts professing that the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate was obvious and undeniable, and that the provision’s Supreme Court approval was assured. As Ethics Alarms did regarding other commentators, Prof. Horwitz suggests that some of the commentary was designed as spin, or to use his term, to “shape the narrative.” He argues that in cases where the scholar was deliberately over-stating the case for constitutionality, this constituted a breach of integrity and honesty. Hie professor-speak for this is “inculpatory.” He means that it was unethical.

Which, of course, it was. Continue reading →