Month: February 2013

Ethics Quiz: Have We Achieved The Ultimate No-Tolerance Insanity At Last?

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

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Wow, were kids sick back then, or what!

Wow, were kids sick back then, or what!

Could it be? Is it possible? Has school administrator incompetence, fearfulness, power abuse and cruelty finally reached its apotheosis?

In Loveland, Colorado, 7-year-old Mary Blair Elementary School student Alex Watkins was suspended by the Thompson School District for going through the motions of throwing an imaginary hand grenade at an equally imaginary box that contained “something evil,” with the admirable purpose of saving the world, doing so on what is anachronistically called a “school playground.” The imaginary grenade caused the imaginary box to be vaporized in an imaginary explosion.

The Horror.

The imaginary minds of one or more teachers who witnessed this carnage ignited in fear and anger. Of course, an overly-broad, incompetently drafted, utterly stupid no-tolerance rule was involved: Mary Blair Elementary School bans imaginary fighting and imaginary weaponry. The only bright side of this disgraceful abuse of an innocent child and blatant attempt at thought-control is that it might finally provide the absolute end point on the spectrum of school administration no-tolerance incompetence. Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz question for today is..

Is it? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce Meets Ethics Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLA7dQ-uxR0&feature=player_embedded

The Dunce: Penelope Soto, arrested for illegal possession of a controlled substance (Xanax), and for riding a bicycle recklessly while stoned. Facing arraignment before Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Jorge Rodriguez-Chomat to determine bail, she laughed at his questions, gave him a mocking farewell, and finally threw an F-bomb his way.

The Hero: the Judge, who tolerated Soto’s disrespectful, dismissive and seemingly stoned behavior up to a point, but when she turned her back on him to leave with a flippant “Adios!”, he doubled her bail amount from $5,000 to $10,000.*  Her next reaction was a muttered “Fuck you” and a provocatively raised index finger. For that, he found her in criminal contempt.  His sentence: 30 days in jail.

Disrespect for the Court is disrespect for the law, and disrespect for the law is disrespect for the country. I don’t know how people like Ms. Soto reach adulthood without learning this lesson, but bravo to Judge Rodriguez-Chomat for not hesitating to teach it forcefully and well.

The full video of their fateful meeting is above, and worth watching. I recommend showing it to your children, if you have them.

UPDATE: She returned to court with her lawyer, sober and stright this time, and managed a sincere-sounding apology to the judge. He let her out of jail, as he should have. Point made.

*Note: the practical effect of this is to cost Ms. Soto and extra $500, essentially a fine for being rude to the judge. A prisoner typically has to give a bail bondsman 10% of the bail amount to get out of jail until trial. If she doesn’t want to pay that, she can put up the whole amount, which she will get back once she appears for trial.

Carla McKinney, Proud “Naked Teacher,” A.K.A. Ethics Dunce

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments
This isn't Carla. But it's not far off, either...

This isn’t Carla. But it’s not far off, either…

The ever popular “Naked Teacher Principle” category is almost completely filled with school instructors who either placed their naughty bits online before teaching became their calling, had others do so without their knowledge or permission, or took some measures to ensure their embrace of questionable modesty and conduct would not come to the attention of their students. Not 23-year-old math teacher Carla McKinney, though! The Overland High School (in Aurora, Colorado) role model is a wild child and proud of it. Her Twitter page contained half-naked photos, and her tweets were filled with sexual innuendo, approving comments about drug use ( “Naked. Wet. Stoned”),  and even a boast that she had pot with her on school grounds.

“Watching a drug bust go down in the parking lot. It’s funny cuz I have weed in my car in the staff parking lot,” she tweeted happily. Another tweet reported that McKinney was high while grading her students’ class work. Yes, she is an idiot, and one who lacks the common sense, responsibility and character to train terriers, much less children.

The school has placed her on administrative leave, and if she isn’t fired, the administrators there fit my description of McKinney.

Again invoking and paraphrasing the immortal words of Faber College’s Dean Wormer, I say, “Naked, wet and stoned is no way to go through life, Carla.” But if that’s your choice, you have to do it as something other than a teacher.

_________________________

Facts: Daily Caller

Accountability For Tawana Brawley

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Al Sharpton and Tawana, ruining lives. Nice hair, Al.

Al Sharpton and Tawana, ruining lives. Nice hair, Al.

Tawana Brawley was 15 when she was championed by the Rev. Al Sharpton after she falsely claimed that she had been kidnapped, raped, and smeared with fecal matter by a group of white men. Now Brawley, 40, going by the name of Tawana Gutierrez, and employed at a Richmond nursing home, has received a wage-garnishment order to collect the $431,492 judgment against her in a 1997 defamation case brought by one of those men, Steven Pagones, who at the time of her 1987 accusation was a state prosecutor in New York.

Good!

Sharpton, who also was hit with a large damages verdict in the case, has already paid up. His outrageous race-baiting at the time was worth it to him, since it set set the race huckster on the road to celebrity that culminated in his being anointed as a respectable MSNBC host and commentator. Respectable for MSNBC, that is. Brawley still has public support,  as the tender-hearted raise all sorts of arguments why she shouldn’t have to pay Pagones such a large amount. She is poor, they say. He should forgive her. She was only 15. She was disturbed. Now she is a single working mother, and we are really punishing her child. It was all Sharpton’s fault. And so on. Continue reading →

Donald Trump’s Loathsome Lawsuit

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Maher-Trump-Oran

Normally the result of a tiff between Donald Trump and Bill Maher would interest me about as much as I would be invested in the  winner of a battle between Godzilla and Megalon.  Trump’s lawsuit against Maher in retaliation for an obvious joke, however, is unethical and indefensible no matter how much I enjoy seeing Maher, who could only avoid being the most obnoxious human being in world containing the likes of Trump, suffer.

Maher joked to Jay Leno last month that he would pay $5 million to Trump’s charity of choice if Trump could prove that his birth wasn’t the result his mother having sex with orangutan. I missed it, Jay having joined David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel in my talk-show host Hall of Ethics Shame, but the line did make me laugh, I confess. Maher’s faux challenge was an obvious riff on the offensive offer Trump made to President Barack Obama during the presidential campaign, in which Trump raised the birther canard again and offered $5 million to the President’s charity of choice if  Obama released his college records and definitive proof that he was really born in the U.S.A.

Nonetheless, Trump decided to behave as if it were a real offer. He had his lawyers send the verification to Maher (Trump’s father, the brains of the family, was a legendary real estate innovator and mogul), and now Trump is suing for the $5 million on the pretense that the comic welched on a legitimate and enforceable unilateral contract. “I don’t know whether this case will be won or lost, but I felt a major obligation to bring it on behalf of the charities,” Trump said. Continue reading →

If Self-Plagiarism in Editorial Cartoons Is Bad, How About NY Times Editorials?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Times recycledA couple of weeks ago, Ethics Alarms gave political cartoonist Ted Rall an Ethics Hero designation for calling out his own profession for the practice of lifting the work of other cartoonists, as well recycling their previous cartoons as new. I hadn’t been aware of the problem, but apparently Rall wasn’t the first in his field to condemn it. Now James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal blog “Best of the Web” has found evidence of self-plagiarism in actual editorials…those of the New York Times! Taranto, who has been on a real roll lately, reveals of the Times editors…

“In a Jan. 8 editorial in praise of Hagel’s nomination, they wrote:

“On national security policy, there is much to like about Mr. Hagel, one of a fading breed of sensible moderate Republicans.”

“In a  Feb. 1 editorial after the hearings, they had a slightly different take:

“There is much to like about the approach to national security policy taken by this decorated Vietnam veteran and former senator who is among a fading breed of sensible, moderate Republicans.”

“The Jan. 8 editorial also included this trenchant observation:

“The opponents are worried that Mr. Hagel will not be sufficiently in lock step with the current Israeli government and cannot be counted on to go to war against Iran over its nuclear program if it comes to that.”

“And here’s what they said after the hearing:

“Mr. Hagel’s opponents fret that he will not be sufficiently in lock step with the current Israeli government and cannot be counted on to go to war over Iran’s nuclear program if it comes to that.” Continue reading →

Beyoncé Ethics II: Has-Been Shaming at the Super Bowl?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Destinys ChildBeyoncé didn’t lip-sync her Super Bowl appearance, but according to Slate writer Julia Turner, she was ungracious, unkind and disrespectful to her former Destiny’s Child partners, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, who joined her in the half-time show for what was billed as a reunion. She writes:

“Beyoncé’s lack of magnaminity reached its peak as their medley came to its climax. Instead of launching into a full rendition of “Say My Name” or some other Destiny’s Child classic, she said “Kelly and Michelle, can y’all help me sing this one?” Kelly responded, “Sho’ nuff, baby,” and the trio launched into “Single Ladies,” Beyoncé’s solo hit—about how great it is to be solo. This was, as Dave Weigel tweeted, “Like Beatles reuniting and singing ‘Mull of Kintyre,’ ” Paul McCartney’s Wings classic. Beyoncé, don’t shame Kelly and Michelle by dragging them back into the national spotlight and then making them sing the very song that shows what a culturally relevant force you still are, and what afterthoughts they have become! Be generous. Share the spotlight. You have so much.”

Fair? Continue reading →

Sending in the Kids To Swim With “Jaws”: Roger Goodell, Mayor of Amity

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Jaws-boy

One of the most disturbing moments in “Jaws,” at least for me, is the scene where the mayor of Amity island, whom we know is  in possession of strong evidence that a Great White shark is cruising the waters of his town’s beaches looking for snacks, persuades an elderly couple to take their grandchildren into the surf to show everyone else on the beach that the water is safe. The scene leapt immediately to mind yesterday morning, when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, in a Super Bowl Sunday interview on “Face the Nation,” emphatically told CBS’s Bob Shieffer that unlike President Obama, he would unhesitatingly allow his son to play football. I’m sure he would, too. After all, Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) sent his own kids into the Amity surf.

Like his role model, Mayor Vaughn, Goodell has a terrible problem, as well as a conflict of interest. He is paid to do what is in the best interests of the National Football League, and admitting that the game the league plays and the way it play it kills or mains a significant number of its players would be seen by his employers as a breach of duty. So despite mounting evidence that every single NFL player is putting his brain, health, and life at grave risk by allowing the relentless head trauma that is an unavoidable part of the game, Goodell feels he must claim otherwise, which, assuming he is basically a good man (I was never sure about Larry Vaughn), means he must convince himself that what he says is true. This led Goodell to make a series of statements yesterday that will haunt him some day as much as Mayor Vaughn’s infamous interview quote on the day the little Kintner boy (above) became chum: “I’m pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers. But, as you see, it’s a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time. Amity, as you know, means friendship.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=klzZxOat3mc

It has come to this: a journalist doing his job properly and meeting his professional duties now qualifies as exemplary conduct.

To hear the White House tell it,Fox News is nothing but a shill for conservative positions and anti-Obama criticism. This has always been an exaggeration, but especially so with regard to the Fox starting line-up of news anchors—Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith, Greta Van Susteran, Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly, who are generally fair and professional. Wallace is the best of the lot, and showed why in an interview with Wayne LaPierre, the National Rifle Association’s  CEO who has been the group’s public face during the post-Sandy Hook gun control debate.

Wallace raised the ill-conceived NRA  advertisement that criticized President Obama as a hypocrite for not supporting the NRA’s proposal to have armed guards in schools, while sending his own daughters to a private school that has exactly that.

“They also face a threat that most children do not face,” Wallace said, making the obvious distinction between the  daughters of the President and the average student. “Tell that to the people in Newtown,” was LaPierre’s facile response.

“You really think that the president’s children are the same kind of target as every other school child in America?” Wallace said, eyebrow arching right off his forehead. “That’s ridiculous and you know it, sir.” Continue reading →

When “No Tolerance” Meets Anti-Gun Hysteria: How Silly Can School Administrators Get?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I have this sinking feeling that we have not yet seen the worst.

Phil? Is that you?

Phil? Is that you?

In Woody Allen’s oddball satiric masterpiece “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?”, the hero, a dim-bulb Japanese version of James Bond named “Phil Moskowitz,” is being briefed on his quary, a Chinese super-villain named Wing Fat. Pointing to a map, the secret agent’s boss tel’s him, “This is the home of Wing Fat!” “You mean he lives in that little piece of paper?”the agent exclaims.

I always wondered what happened to Phil, considering his, ah, handicap. I should have guessed. He became a school administrator in Tan Valley, Arizona,.

Daniel McClaine, Jr., a freshman at Poston Butte High School there, made a web photo of an AK 47 against an American flag backdrop  as the desktop background on his school-issued computer and was suspended as a result.

NO, Phil, the piece of paper isn’t the real gun! Won’t you ever learn? Continue reading →