Month: August 2012

Ethics Heroes: Doug Wilder and Artur Davis

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

 

Like everyone else, Doug Wilder knows what ““they’re going to put y’all back in chains” meant. Unlike most Democrats, he has the integrity to admit it.

Democratic flacks and media mouthpieces for the Obama campaign have thoroughly disgraced themselves and insulted the intelligence of the American public by twisting words and logic to argue that Joe Biden’s “put y’all back in chains” rhetoric was something other than the divisive race-baiting it was. Eventually, in such episodes of lock-step partisan dissembling, there are a noble and courageous few who refuse to go along, and black leaders Artur Davis, a co-chair of President Obama’s 2008 campaign, and Doug Wilder, the first African-American governor (of Virginia, where Biden made his comments) have stepped to the fore. Continue reading →

The Difference Between Legal Ethics and Ethics: A Son Takes Sides

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“You’re doing WHAT???????”

Nevada lawyer Mark Liapis decided to represent a man sued for divorce by his longtime spouse. The spouse petitioned the court to have him barred from the case, and the court agreed: Mark was, after all, representing his father against his own mother.

Ick. Continue reading →

A Frightened Little Girl, and a Frightening Culture Of Incompetence At United Airlines

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Ernestine works for United now! Heck, maybe she RUNS United now….

Bob Sutton’s blog post is titled “United Airlines Lost My Friend’s 10 Year Old Daughter And Didn’t Care”  and I believe every bit of it. I also believe this was not an isolated occurrence, because my own experience with United indicates that the airline doesn’t care, or at least allows its employees to adopt that attitude.

First, I’ll  summarize Sutton’s horror story (and then on to mine): Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “How To Raise An Irresponsible and Dangerous Child”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“I know my precious angel crashed her car, but it’s her own fault: she left the keys in it!”

Michael, who is the reigning champ in the Comment of the Day Division, scores another with this comment, a rebuttal of ampersand’s plea that a mother’s efforts to deflect blame from her joy-riding teenager, now in a coma after causing a high speed police chase and an accident that closed down a major highway, shouldn’t be held against her. “The mother’s statement was stupid,” ampersand wrote, “but… if there’s any time when we should refrain from attacking people for saying stupid, regrettable things, it’s right after their 14 year old son has been in a terrible, tragic car accident. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to give this woman the benefit of the doubt, and suppose that how she acts on the worst day of her life might not be a representative sample of how she generally acts.”  I’m generally in favor of the benefit of the doubt, although I personally doubt whether any responsible parent would try to blame joy-riding on the owner of the car her son stole, or would try to minimize the offense by suggesting that “maybe he wanted to go farther than he felt like walking.”  I cannot imagine any tragedy that would have made my parents say something that absurd.  Still, I acknowledged that the context of the mother’s comments should be taken into consideration. Michael was tougher, and makes a powerful case that he should be. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post How To Raise An Irresponsible and Dangerous Child.

“I think ampersand is exactly wrong. So much that is wrong and wasteful is done because of this kind of sentiment. She should be confronted about this, because the alternative is to go along with it. She said it, it was published. It must be refuted. Not refuting it, publicly, leads to this being considered a valid opinion. Considering this a valid opinion means possibly arresting and convicting the owner’s boyfriend. It also means that it is OK to “borrow” someone’s car (however you have to) if you are tired of walking.

“Some examples of what happens when you go along with it because you don’t want to confront someone who has suffered the loss or injury of their child: Continue reading →

Joe Biden’s Ethics Catch-22

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

OK, we get it: he’s an idiot. But why is he Vice-President?

Speaking to a large crowd in Virginia estimated to be about 40% African-American, Vice-President Joe Biden proclaimed that “Romney wants to, he said in the first 100 days, he’s gonna let the big banks again write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

Telling an audience of blacks that the other Presidential candidate and his party plans to put them back in chains is unequivocally dirty campaigning, race-baiting, divisive, and uncivil, the precise kind of campaigning that Barack Obama swore that he would deliver us from in 2008. Now the Obama campaign, as well as his Administration, has embraced divisiveness as a primary strategy, and outrageous scaremongering with a racial bite is also consistent with the current principle-free attack mode by the Democrats, which has included accusing Mitt Romney of being a felon, a tax-evader and a murderer.

Yet the media line on the Biden speech is that “Republicans” have screamed foul. A Vice-President of the United States, running for re-election with an African-American President, telling black Americans that the opposition plans to put them back in chains? Why are just Republicans screaming foul? Why isn’t every decent Democrat, progressive, reporter, pundit and member of the public screaming foul? Is this really what they all consider appropriate, honest, respectful and civil campaigning for the highest offices in the land, by one of the occupants of those offices? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Was CNN’s Soledad O’Brien Unethical to Crib From A Liberal Blog, or Just Unlucky To Get Caught?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Conservative media sources are calling CNN’s Soledad O’Brien biased and unobjective (Soledad O’Brien? Biased? Nawwwww!) because a CNN cameraman inadvertently caught her cribbing from the leftward blog “Talking Points Memo” for ammunition as she questioned  Virginia House of Delegates Republican member Barbara Comstock regarding new-GOP Veep nominee Paul Ryan’s budget proposals. The blog post she was reading from was called “The Myth of Paul Ryan The Bipartisan Leader.” At one point, O’Brien claimed to be reading a release from Senator Wyden’s (D-OR) office, but  she was actually reading an excerpt from the blog that included a quote from Wyden. Newsbusters, the conservative counterpart to the Left’s Media Matters, regards this is a real gotcha!, concrete proof of  the unethical coordination between the mainstream media, progressive attack blogs, and the Democratic party.

Your Ethics Quiz for today: Was O’Brien’s use of the Talking Points piece to debate Comstock unethical journalism? Continue reading →

Amazing Tales of the Ethically Challenged!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Today’s saga: this jaw-dropping query from Emily Yoffe’s “Dear Prudence” advice column in Slate:

“My husband and his first wife named their son Adam. Their Adam is 25 and lives across the country from us. Now we are having a son, and Adam is my late father’s name and grandfather’s name. I always wanted to name my son after my dad. My husband says I can’t do that because of his firstborn son, and he can’t have two sons named Adam. But mostly, because it would upset his ex-wife. I don’t think I should have to forgo naming my son after my dad because of this. We rarely see his older son, so I don’t see what the problem is. My husband got to pick the name for our daughter and it meant a lot to him. This means a lot to me. His son said it would be all right with him, but his ex is livid at the idea.”

Emily, in her response, states the obvious, which can be loosely translated as “What the hell is the matter with you?”, though I would be happier if she stated it in more ethical terms. The heck with the ex-wife, what about the older son? What about her son? Who wants to have the same name as a sibling, half- or not? Have the words “Golden Rule” never entered this silly, self-absorbed woman’s consciousness?

Come to think of it, “What the hell is the matter with you?” says it all.

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Facts: Slate

Graphic: Amazon

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.

How To Raise An Irresponsible and Dangerous Child

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

After a 14-year old Pennsylvania lad stole Jeep Grand Cherokee and led police on a high-speed chase that ended with him clipping another vehicle and causing a crash that closed the highway and left the boy in a coma, his mother told reporters that her son wasn’t the only one to blame for the accident.

“I’m not downplaying my son’s role in taking something that didn’t belong to him, but I am saying they actually left their keys in the car and the vehicle could have been taken by anybody,” she said. The mother, who has not been identified in press accounts because, I guess, her son is a minor and some people think that teenagers who steal cars, defy police and endanger lives should have their identities shielded (not me!), also found fault with the Jeep’s owners boyfriend, who followed the vehicle after the kid started driving it away: Continue reading →

Class Act: The New York Yankees

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Johnny Pesky, 1919-2012

It’s not quite Ethics Hero territory, and if you know me or drop in to Ethics Alarms with any regularity, you know that as a lifetime Boston Red Sox fan (suffering through a miserable, injury-riddled season) I would rather perform gallbladder surgery on myself than say anything good about the New York Yankees.

I have to put away my partisan biases, however, at least momentarily, to applaud the generous and completely unexpected gesture by the team at tonight’s game, as the New York Yankees held a moment of silence in honor of Johnny Pesky, the Red Sox icon who died today at the age of 92. Continue reading →

Ethical Self-Promotion Department

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I was a guest over the weekend on The John McDonald Show on Newsradio WGAN 560 (Maine), thanks to the invitation of Arthur King, who was hosting the program. It went well, I thought, and the podcast can be found here.