Month: April 2013

Comment of the Day: “Annoying and Ill-Timed Tangential Issue Dept.: There’s Nothing Especially Virtuous About Running A Marathon”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Here is a helpful Comment of the Day from Rich Page, providing important perspective to the issue of marathoning and marathoners. I am especially grateful for comments like these, which add leavening to posts that can be a little more jarring than I intend, even though I know exactly how they will be taken when I post them. 

I didn’t want to get too deep into all the many reasons people run, so what was intended as an observation about many marathon and running enthusiasts could have been taken as a knock on running for fun, for example. Fun is important; fun is natural; fun is grand. I think fun is a wonderful reason to do anything. I do a lot of things just for fun, and always have—luckily, I find my various jobs fun, all of them. 

Rich’s post balances mine perfectly, and makes it whole and better. As to the timing—I agree, I wish I could have “hung it on a different hook,” and perhaps I should have waited for another one, since I have been waiting a while as it is.Perhaps my rule should be that if I can’t conceive of any graphic or photo that won’t risk being offensive to a lot of readers, that’s a strong indication that I should postpone the topic to another day.

This is the Comment of the Day on “Annoying and Ill-Timed Tangential Issue Dept.: There’s Nothing Especially Virtuous About Running A Marathon”: Continue reading →

Annoying and Ill-Timed Tangential Issue Dept.: There’s Nothing Especially Virtuous About Running A Marathon

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I sincerely apologize for the timing of this topic, which has actually been percolating in my brain for a while. I first considered it after finding myself annoyed by a commercial running on television of late, comparing various artists who completed major works after their 55th birthdays with a similarly aged woman who recently ran a marathon. Then, yesterday, in the wake of the terrorist attack on my home town, I read multiple Facebook posts from otherwise intelligent people expressing profound sadness for all the marathoners who trained so hard for Boston and were not able to finish. That did it.

I believe we can stipulate, can we not,  that any marathoner who returned home whole after watching fellow competitors having their arms and legs blown off  and complained that the race was terminated before he could finish would immediately be eligible for the Jerk Hall of Fame. If horror, grief and empathy for the victims, concern for the nation, and gratitude for the pure luck of being spared doesn’t wash such selfish thoughts right out of a runner’s mind, then that person needs to keep on running until he has left civilization. Meanwhile, the increasingly accepted cultural attitude that running a marathon or an iron man competition is especially admirable shows something is out of whack in our value system.

I didn’t feel like confronting my Facebook friends yesterday, but please tell me how being prevented from running in a race one has trained for is any more of a tragedy than a thousand other minor disappointments we all face every day, and far less worthy of sympathy than thousands of others. A while back I was blocked from giving a seminar in Tennessee that I had prepared for, because of a storm that grounded all usable flights. That cost my company $5,000. It meant that a lot of Tennessee lawyers had to hustle to find other ways to get their ethics credit, and the ways they found were going to be a lot more boring than I am. Those are real consequences, tangible and significant. What is the result of not being able to finish the Boston Marathon? Who is significantly harmed? Nobody. The marathoner is disappointed and inconvenienced, that’s all. There are other races. He or she is in shape, They did the best they could. The Marathon will be held next year. The terrorist attack is a tragedy. The fact that racers couldn’t cross the finish line is trivial. It just doesn’t matter very much, or shouldn’t.

I’m not condemning runners, any more than I condemn people who spend their spare cash on jewelry, summer houses and vacations instead of saving the whales: it’s their lives and and their priorities, not mine, and they can do what they choose. At the same time, the aura of virtue surrounding extreme runners and the popular myth that running a marathon is more ennobling than commonplace altruistic and practical uses of an individual’s time is bizarre. That commercial I mentioned speaks of being productive in latter years. Running a marathon doesn’t produce anything more than playing a videogame does. Picasso, whose late career artwork is mentioned in the spot, created something beautiful that will be enjoyed for centuries: now that’s productive, and also worthy of admiration and praise. Whose life is enriched by the completion of a marathon, other than the runner’s? It isn’t a communal act, a generous act, a productive, charitable, creative or selfless act. It is a completely self-absorbed and self-focused act, requiring many hours that could just as easily be used communally, generously, productively, charitably, creatively and selflessly. Again, it’s the runner’s life, and if he or she wants to use their brief time on earth to complete manufactured and artificial challenges that accomplish nothing tangible and leave the world no better than it was before, that’s an individual choice; running a marathon doesn’t harm anyone, either, unless it interferes with being a good and attentive father, spouse, and friend. Extolling this kind of activity, however, just distorts societal values, and bestows heroic status on the wrong people, for the wrong things.

You Ask, I Answer: The Kmart Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Reader and friend Tim LeVier asks what I think of the following K-Mart ad, knowing, I think, what I’ll say:

He knows, because I’ve said it all before, more than once. The post about Ben and Jerry’s “Schweddy Balls” Ice Cream is essentially on point; just make the appropriate substitutions. Some excerpts:

  • “Ben and Jerry’s new Schweddy Balls ice cream (‘sweaty BALLS,” get it?? HAR!)  is just one more step in coarsening the culture, and an unnecessary one.”
  • “…the only point to naming the ice cream after [the Saturday Night Live joke] is to sneak something crude into plain view. Wow. What an accomplishment.”
  • “The ice cream name is no more or less tasteless, rude and juvenile than naming a New York bar “Buck Foston,” or a TV show called “$#*! My Father Says.” The slobs and foul-mouthed jerks among us won’t rest until everyone talks like sailors and ugliness is everywhere, and they will do it while being applauded by self-styled “liberals” who are really just old-fashioned boors.”
  • “It’s not a big deal any more; the boors are getting their way, because not enough people are willing to endure the guaranteed “Oh, lighten up!” and “Get off your high horse!” sneers that will follow any objections.”

There are those witless and unmannerly among us who will not be satisfied until “fuck” is uttered with abandon in every classroom, lecture hall and public forum, Bill Maher and his ilk calling female politicians twats and cunts is commonplace, and every man, woman, child, debutante and priest is swearing like a sailor. That such discourse is ugly to the ear, destructive to civil interaction and corrosive to wit and language doesn’t trouble these people, probably because they are incapable of better, and want to pull everyone down to their cretinous gutter level. This appears to be Kmart’s target market, and I wish them luck.

Personally, I would rather dumpster dive than patronize a company that chooses to profit from promoting vulgarity.

Tiger Woods Cheated! Who’s Surprised?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Marital fidelity was a previous rule Tiger thought was stupid. Nike must be so proud.

Marital fidelity was a previous rule Tiger thought was stupid. Nike must be so proud.

The fact that Tiger Woods finished fourth in the Masters was a stroke of moral luck that will allow, in all probability, the memory of his lack of sportsmanship and the PGA’s lack of integrity to cause a bit less harm to professional golf, at least until the next time Tiger tries to cut ethical corners. He is, after all, a shameless cheater with a deeply flawed character. It was just a matter of time before he managed, as the sport’s biggest name, to corrupt it. Now, he has.

During the tournament, Woods improved his lie after a stray shot by taking an illegal drop, and did so in such a blatant and obvious manner that TV viewers noticed it. Based on his experience and the rules of golf, Tiger should have known that what he was doing was a violation; based on his later statement to ESPN, in which he admitted that he placed his ball “2 yards”  behind where it belonged to give himself a better shot at the green, he did know. USGA rule 26-1 says a golfer must “play a ball as nearly as possible at the spot” from which he or she originally hit it. As Christine Brennan correctly explained in USA Today, previous golfers who have committed far less serious infractions have withdrawn from competition to preserve golf’s status as the last major sport that expects competitors to police their own conduct. Golf has an honor code. There is nothing honorable about Tiger Woods. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: David Drumm

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Gosnell is on trial for 7 counts of first-degree murder regarding the deaths of seven babies, and one count of third-degree murder for the death of a female patient. Many conservatives pundits think there should be greater media coverage. Be careful what you wish for.”

–—David Drumm, guest blogger on Jonathan Turley’s “Res Ipsa Loquitur,” arguing that scrutiny of the facts behind the Gosnell late-term abortion murder trial will show that pro-life protestors at Planned Parenthood clinics forced some women to enter Dr. Gosnell’s “house of horrors,” so conservatives should be eager to suppress the ugly story, just as the main stream media has done to avoid sparking an emotional national debate over the realities of abortion.

I'll put up a more flattering photo, Professor Turley, when you stop letting unethical people write on your blog.

I’ll put up a more flattering photo, Professor Turley, when you stop letting unethical people write on your blog.

A statement like Drumm’s above is signature significance. I don’t need to read another word to know that this is a commentator driven by politics and tactics rather than principle. Why is someone like this guest blogging on Jonathan Turley’s website? Turley is a legal scholar, an ethics expert, and everything Drumm is clearly not. He does not take knee-jerk ideological positions; his commentary is not partisan, and he is a civil libertarian. Civil libertarians do not endorse media manipulation of the news in the pursuit of partisan agendas, which is exactly what Drumm does here. Continue reading →

Wikipedia Ethics And The Gosnell Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Ah, sunlight! When all the machinations are revealed, it's a lot harder to be unethical.

Ah, sunlight! When all the machinations are revealed, it’s a lot harder to get away with  being unethical.

Apparently Wikipedia almost joined the media outlets operating a cover-up of the Gosnell baby-killing trial. For a while a debate raged on the site, with an editor advocating that the article about the abortion doctor at the center of the horrific allegations and testimony be deleted entirely, because Gosnell’s trial is only a “local multiple-murder story in Pennsylvania.”  Yes, and the Newtown murders are just a multiple-murder story in Connecticut. Outright hoaxes stay on the site for years, puff piece entries on virtual non-entities and insignificant organizations clog it, but a case with major policy implications bearing on a contentious national, bioethics  and human rights issue of long-standing isn’t worthy of a page? The editor in this case, whoever he is, is too biased and incompetent to hold the position. Had his argument prevailed, Wikipedia’s credibility and perceived trustworthiness would have been severely diminished, for an encyclopedia cannot have an ideological agenda, and the desire to marginalize the Gosnell story is smoking-gun proof of one.

Luckily, Wikipedia got it right in the end, and the article survived. What saved Wiki was transparency. The argument about the Gosnell article was open and public, and ethics always benefits when transparency reigns. You would think that would be one of the news media’s mottos…but not, apparently, when it means letting the public know how it is that certain stories get buried, marginalized and ignored.

(The mainstream media, not surprisingly, didn’t cover the Wikipedia debate, either.)

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Sources: Daily Caller1, Daily Caller2, Newsbusters

 

 

Hiding Sandy Hook: The Gosnell Trial, Double Standards, Abortion, And Journalistic Malpractice

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

Have you heard about the Gosnell trial?

The reserved press section at the Gosnell trial, because baby-killing is no longer news in America.

The reserved press section at the Gosnell trial, because, apparently, baby-killing is no longer news in America.

Neither had I until recently, and there’s a reason for that: the news media doesn’t want you to hear about it. Not just the news media, however; elected public officials, advocacy organizations, bloggers and social media-users apparently don’t want you to know about the trial either, because it graphically and sickeningly exposes the ugly and brutal side of abortion, which owes its continuing legal status  and public support to the avoidance of inconvenient truths.

Imagine, if you will, a Sandy Hook massacre that the national media and politicians decided to ignore as a “local story,” because they knew it would spark a national debate over gun control. Imagine Piers Morgan, CNN, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, Fox News and the rest scrupulously concentrating on other news stories so what they believed would pose a possible threat to Second Amendment rights would “blow over” without leaving any mark on public opinion. Imagine all of these and more concluding that the incident would be hyped and shamelessly exploited by anti-gun advocates, perhaps leading to a tipping point in societal attitudes toward gun violence, so in order to prevent this possibility, the story, and the deaths of the children, were deliberately marginalized and kept out of the public eye. Would that trouble you? Anger you? Frighten you? Would it cause you to worry that our democracy is becoming a sham, with fact and truth being manipulated so that our Constitutional rights of self-government were a sham and an illusion?

I am angry, troubled and frightened, because this is exactly what is occurring regarding the Gosnell trial. The only difference is that it is abortion, rather than guns, that unethical journalists and unethical public officials are protecting by employing a blatant double standard. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: “Name That Unethical Conduct!”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

For this weekend’s Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz, something a little different, as we all play, “Name That Unethical Conduct!”

I’m going to show you a photo (it comes with thanks to Popehat, where Ken’s clever colleague Patrick posted it), and you list everything  that is ethically wrong with the conduct captured by the photographer.

One key piece of information: though it is blacked out, the license plate for the vehicle shows that it belongs to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Here’s the photo:

Safety-Is-My-Goal

Ready…

Set…

GO!

Sen. Chris Murphy: Would-be Censor, Position-Abuser, and Mega-Ethics Dunce …But That’s All Right, Because He Wants To Save All Those Children From Being Slaughtered By Semi-Automatic Weapons

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments
All in all, I'd prefer Daffy...and he hates guns too.

All in all, I’d prefer Daffy…and he hates guns too.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: as a long-time supporter of more effective gun controls, the sickeningly dishonest and unethical campaign for them in the wake of Newtown has placed me in a camp I never thought I’d be. Such tactics should never be allowed to succeed, because they debase democracy.

Yesterday, I noted that CNN has abandoned reporting for issue advocacy, a bright-line breach of journalistic ethics. Now Connecticut’s Senator Chris Murphy (D) has attempted to use his position and influence to abridge free speech, unfairly restrict the advocacy of an issue opponent  and encourage media censorship of a political viewpoint.

Eugene Volokh published Murphy’s letter to Fox, the text of which tells me he has no more business sitting in the Senate than Kim Jong-un or Daffy Duck. The letter, addressed to Rupert Murdoch, reads… Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX)

/ Jack Marshall / 54 Comments

“This morning the Senate will vote on the motion to proceed to the firearms bill (S.649). It is expected that the Toomey-Manchin provision announced yesterday will replace the current language regarding background checks. Yet, as of this morning, not a single senator has been provided the legislative language of this provision. Because the background-check measure is the centerpiece of this legislation it is critical that we know what is in the bill before we vote on it. The American people expect more and deserve better. Unfortunately, the effort to push through legislation that no one had read highlights one of the primary reasons we announced our intention to force a 60 vote threshold. We believe the abuse of the process is how the rights of Americans are systematically eroded and we will continue to do everything in our power to prevent it.”

—-Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), in a jointly released statement regarding the pending vote on the motion to proceed to new gun control legislation.

This is where Harry Reid wants laws to be made.

This is where Harry Reid wants laws to be made.

The Senators are exactly, inarguably correct. Under Harry Reid, pushing legislation through the Senate without permitting either proponents or opponents to perform their jobs and read the bill so that understand what they are voting for or against his become standard procedure, exemplified by the massive, unreadable and mostly unread affordable care act. This is sham democracy at work, a perversion of process, incompetent, dishonest and corrupt to the core, and supporting such a despicable (and dangerous) tactic because you think you like the particular bill involved (but, of course, you haven’t read it either) is as stupid as it is irresponsible. Continue reading →