Month: August 2013

Sorry: I Would Fire Don/Dawn Ennis

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments
Old Don, Dawn, New Don

Old Don, Dawn, New Don

Let me begin by saying that I have no idea what is going on, was going on or will be going on with ABC producer Don Ennis. Unless he has the worst sense of humor in the world, whatever it is isn’t good, or anything I would wish on someone else. I am, to a point, sympathetic. However, if I were his employer, I would tell Ennis today that he will have to work out his unusual identity issues somewhere else, and I believe that would be the right thing to do. It may not, however, be the legal thing to do, which is one of approximately 268 reasons I’m glad that I am not Mr. Ennis’s employer.

Not that it wouldn’t be exciting. If you hadn’t heard, last May Don Ennis, a well-respected ABC News editor and previously unambiguously male, entered his newsroom wearing a cute black dress and an auburn wig and announced to a stunned staff, colleagues and superiors that he was transgender. The ABC News national assignment editor said he was forever more to be known as Dawn Stacey Ennis. “Please understand,” he said in a statement, “this is not a game of dress-up, or make-believe. It is my affirmation of who I now am and what I must do to be happy, in response to a soul-crushing secret that my wife and I have been dealing with for more than seven years, mostly in secret. A father of three, “Dawn” announced that the newly-confirmed she was separating from her wife of seventeen years.

His colleagues were supportive, as was everyone else in the media, which is why you probably hadn’t heard the story. They left flowers on Dawn’s desk; ABC News President Ben Sherwood wrote her a note of support. I would have done likewise. This is a real problem, and exactly the kind of personal, medical crisis that the workplace ought to accommodate, while providing emotional support for the difficult and courageous transition. Thus Ennis continued to work at ABC sporting hormone-induced breasts, make-up, lipstick, skirts and heels. This undoubtedly caused a period of adjustment and awkwardness, but I would expect mature professionals to handle it gracefully.

Today, we learned, along with ABC, that Ennis has had a change of heart, and almost everything else. In a jaw-dropping e-mail to family and co-workers  titled “Not Reportable, Very Confirmed,” Ennis explained that he was Don Ennis again. “That will be my name again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.” Continue reading →

Ethics Corrupter: Yankee Third Baseman Alex Rodriquez; Ethics Dunce: Yankee Manager Joe Girardi; Disgraced: The New York Yankees

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Corrupted!

Corrupted!

Today, Major League Baseball announced that it was suspending Alex Rodriquez, the New York Yankees aging superstar, for the remainder of the 2013 season and the 2014 season for  using banned performance enhancing drugs, and impeding baseball’s investigation of his cheating. This was the climax (but not the end) of a long, drawn out, messy process and investigation involving a sleazy Miami drug lab, called Biogenesis, now closed down, which had records indicating that many professional baseball players had obtained banned substances.

Former National League MVP Ryan Braun (who I keep calling “Steve”) has already been banned for the rest of the year by the evidence obtained from Biogenesis records. The process has been marred by serial leaks from MLB  (unfair to the players involved, including Rodriquez) and ugly maneuvering between Rodriguez, who has been recovering from a serious hip issue, and the Yankees, who owe him approximately a gazillion dollars (thanks to an idiotic career contract signed in 2007 after he had already admitted to using steroids once), would like nothing more than for him to vanish in a puff of smoke and sulfur.

To explain the baroque ins and outs of baseball’s steroid wars, its player union relations, and the various intersecting agreements, special clauses and other things that have an impact on Rodriquez’s suspension would take too long here and would even bore the baseball fans. What you need to know now is this: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg

/ Jack Marshall / 92 Comments

 

"No emoticons were upset in the writing of this post."

“No emoticons were upset in the writing of this post.”

In Slate, renowned photographer Jill Greenberg returns to the topic that gained her unwanted notoriety in May: her exhibition of photographs of children crying their little eyes out. Greenberg revealed at the time that she captured the powerful photographs by giving the very young children lollipops or something else they liked or wanted and then having family members ask the kids to return the item. Strangely,  as Drew Curtis’Fark, one of my favorite web  sources for stories is wont to say, some people had a problem with this.

Greenberg revisits the issue because she has a book of the weepy photographs coming out. Seldom does one read a more casual, “What is the matter with people?”, utterly clueless display of invalid rationalizations for unethical conduct as Greenberg belches out. Unfortunately, another tendency illustrated by the article is far more common: a news sources examination of an ethics issue without any apparent sensitivity or understanding of the ethics issues involved.

Here are Greenberg’s rationalizations, or at least the ones she gave to Slate. I’m sure she has many more.

  • The Trivial Trap, or “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” “I have two children of my own. Crying is not evidence of pain or any real suffering. It’s really just the way children communicate.” Ah. Not real suffering. Then it’s all right, then. The bottom line is that Greenberg is intentionally upsetting the children, who, it can be fairly said, are less anxious and happier when they are not crying. Children who are teased, frightened or otherwise made uncomfortable can also be said not to be in pain or “real” suffering. It’s still cruel, and an abuse of power, to treat them this way. Come to think of it, Greenberg could make the same argument about some of the models in child pornography. Would she, I wonder?
  • “Everybody does it” and the “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse. “Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural.” And, I suppose, making a Bangladesh child cry by taking food from her to make her cry is just as exploitative  and more natural than giving her food to make her smile, because, after all, she’s usually starving anyway.
  • The Saint’s Excuse or “It’s for a good cause” a.k.a “The ends justify the means.” Slate:  “The still image continues to have a ton of strength. An image taken out of context from one fraction of a second to the next can tell a story, and if photographers are looking to tell a certain story, they can curate those slices of time to their advantage. What’s weird about the images is they seemingly can be applied to all these random disparate causes. My husband was saying they’re like emoticons.” True, Jill, but those little smiley faces don’t have to be tortured to get them to frown or cry, because, unlike babies, they aren’t real human beings.

The bottom line is that Greenberg made money and got a lot of ink by making children unhappy, so she can’t see why anyone would argue that the conduct wasn’t justified, and based on the article, neither does Slate or its writer, Jordan G. Teicher. The photographer’s methods are, of course, obviously and indisputably unethical:

  • She exploited the children for her own agendas and benefit.
  • She abused her superior power over the children to get the reaction she wants.
  • She induced anxiety in another, causing needless harm.
  • She created a product, the photo, which memorializes a form of child abuse.
  • She recruited the children’s parents into assisting in the exploitation for the artist’s purposes, rather that doing their job as parents, thus inducing a breach of loyalty and a betrayal of parental duty.
  • She created and profited from a materialization of an unethical abuse of a child, which is identical to what child pornography does.
  • She encouraged others to create similar photographs, which will be created, in some cases, with even less humane methods.

Of course her methods were unethical. She deserves every bit of criticism and hate mail that she has received. But the sophisticates, like Slate and others, just shrug off the concern as foolishness, much ado about nothing. So she made kids cry! They cry all the time! What matters is that she got some great pictures!

Many of society’s problems arise from the fact that our media can’t recognize, and thus encourages, unethical behavior, even obvious examples like making little children cry for fame and fortune.

__________________________

Pointer: Alexander Cheezem

Sources: Bored Panda, Slate, Fully M

 

On The NFL Player’s Slur, The MSNBC Journalist’s Lie, Words, Conduct, Reason And Proportion

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments
If Riley Cooper were black, of course, then he would be "cool."

If Riley Cooper were black, of course, then he would be “cool.”

There are words, there are thoughts, and there is conduct. Thoughts are not unethical.  Conduct can be unethical. Words can be considered conduct when they are intended to have, or do have, material and measurable direct effects. Verbal abuse is conduct. Using a rude, vulgar or hateful word may not be verbal abuse.

Although the NFL and his team, the Philadelphia Eagles have every right, and some good reasons, to punish, suspend or even terminate Riley Cooper because a video reveals the Eagles player as saying, “I will jump that fence and fight every nigger here!” at a Kenny Chesney concert, I don’t see any conduct there, just words. He did not direct the racial slur at any individual, and there is no evidence that it was intended to harm or intimidate any African-Americans. He did not intend for the outburst to be publicized of communicated to anyone but the friends he said it to. On a pure  just punishment for harm intended or achieved basis, it is ridiculous for Cooper to be facing the loss of millions and his athletic career because he uttered a single racial slur that was captured on a video. It cannot be defended logically or as a reasonable position. Using one racial slur in that setting doesn’t prove that Cooper is a racist. It doesn’t prove hate. Even if it did, hate is not illegal or even unethical until the hater acts on it in an unethical way. And a word is just a word. We don’t, or shouldn’t, fear mere words in a rational American society. We shouldn’t have taboos, or people who “cannnot be named,” like in the Harry Potter books. The ease and certitude with which otherwise intelligent people capable of making judgments involving proportion and common sense blithely go along with the batty idea that uttering a word, only uttering it and nothing more, should result in devastating consequences, is frightening. It is a per se unethical position, because it is unfair, and incompetent, because it is essentially crazy.

Having said that, I can understand why, since so many people are irrational about words, why the NFL or the Philadelphia Eagles, as a business decision, may decide that they don’t want Cooper associated with them any more. That is a rational choice, and may even be the best choice. That is not the same as saying that he deserves that result. If the bulk of NFL fans are fanatically politically correct, then the NFL and its teams cannot afford to ignore that. Sorry Riley. Continue reading →

The Unethical Ploy Of The Blameless, Powerless Agent

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

It happened again.

Do you ever feel like Jerry when they didn't have his rental car?

Do you ever feel like Jerry when they didn’t have his rental car?

I am always friendly, respectful, kind and generous to people behind desks, windows and counters, unless they engage in a particular kind of conduct that is guaranteed to cause me to be confrontational and critical, and that almost always leaves me feeling simultaneously guilty and infuriated. This is when an agent of a service provider announces, almost always with a smile, that the organization/company/government agency will not be able to do what it has assured me, often for a price, that it would do, or is not able to do it at an acceptable level of quality, or perhaps in the promised time frame. The agent helpfully tells me that I am stuck with the  inferior product or service I bargained for and relied upon, and that yes, it shouldn’t be this way, but it is, so there.

Then, when I express some dissatisfaction with that result, explanation, and most important of all, the absence of any guaranty that I will be compensated or that the organization, while acknowledging its failure, has given any thought to compensating those like me or executing some response in time for my problem to be, if not solved, mitigated, the agent pathetically points out that he or she is just a humble and powerless messenger and that it is cruel of me to persist in expressing my dissatisfaction to him or her, since the agent is neither responsible for the problem nor has any power to fix it.

This is where I lose it.

And it happened again.

My wife and I paid close to $1500 ( in fees only, transportation and lodging not included) for the privilege of attending a national conference of a professional association to which we belong. When we arrived at the site hotel to register and pick up our credentials, badges, tickets and materials, shortly before the opening reception, we were told by a cheery, smiling woman that our name and convention materials were not there. “But we paid for them, and pre-registered,” my wife said. “I got a confirmation. We were told in an e-mail response that the materials for events and programs we designated would be waiting for us here.”

“Ah, then you must have registered on-line after Wednesday,” she told, us smiling. “Unfortunately, we were already here by then, and there was no way for us to make out your package! And you don’t have one of our formal, printed, professional badges that make you look like the member you are, but I’m happy to give you a crappy sharpie so you can scratch out a couple and look like you snuck in instead of paying 1500 buck for the privilege. Isn’t that good enough?” (She didn’t quite say it that way, but that was the gist of it.)

“Well, no, actually, it’s not,” I said.  “Your confirmation said that everything would be ready for us here. It isn’t ready.”

“That was just an automatic response, sir.”

THERE it is! “Don’t blame the owners and programmers of the computer, sir—it’s Skynet’s fault!”  Do not tell me that. Ever. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Prof. William Jacobson

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

“The incessant attempt to turn race-neutral phrases into racial testing grounds is part of a larger political war in which race agitators seek to turn everything into a discussion of race all the time in every sphere of life…Equating the race-neutral phrase “brown bag” used in the context of bringing lunch to work with some esoteric past-practice of inter-black skin tone testing is so ludicrous that it may have revealed a chink in the armor of the language police, which can be exploited by the vast majority of Americans of all races and colors who just want to get on with the conversation.”

—–Prof. William Jacobson, deriding yet another outbreak of mind-numbingly ridiculous political correctness word-censorship, an edict against using the term “brown bag” in Seattle, and the unwelcome return of one of the all-time silliest imaginary offenses, a CNBC reporter being criticized for using the phrase “chink in the armor.”

My family thanks you, Prof. Jacobson. This could have been me. And might yet...

My family thanks you, Prof. Jacobson. This could have been me. And might yet…

I (and my loving family, which really, really likes me) need to thank Professor Jacobson, the author of the blog Legal Insurrection, for writing his post about this topic—one I truly hate—-before I learned myself about the “brown bag” memo and especially the unwelcome sequel to the Jeremy Lin “chink in the armor” controversy. For one thing, after a long and infuriating day of traffic jams and car trouble, had I read the reports of these embarrassments to the human species in straight news accounts, some aneurism deep in my brain might well have popped, killing me on the spot. For another, he invested such obvious contempt and exasperation in his excellent post that I don’t have to risk death by working myself into a head-exploding rant-producing fury to do this continuing outrage justice. Jacobson pretty much knocks this hanging curveball right out of the park.

Among other things, he links to his discussions of previous examples of perfectly good, innocent and useful words, idioms and phrases that have been attacked by political correctness fanatics (which, unfortunately, includes a disturbingly large percentage of U.S. Democrats), including such “offensive” terms as black list, “Baa Baa Black Sheep,” rejigger, Providence Plantations, Black Friday, gobbledygook, illegal immigrant, undocumented immigrant, and master bedroom. Inexplicably, the professor left out the grandaddy  of them all and my personal favorite, “niggardly,”  the perfectly good word meaning “stingy” the use of which  once got a supervisor in the D.C. government fired, and which spawned Ethics Alarms’ indispensable Niggardly Principles, 1 and 2. He also chose to omit the long list of various words and phrases MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has declared as racist, including urban, “monkeying around,” welfare, food stamps, and even Chicago, but these are cynical “gotcha’s,” devised to show that every opponent of President Obama is secretly motivated by racial hate. Continue reading →

The Best Of The Ethical Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

woman_falling_from_a_balcony

In a recent post, I criticized blogger Ann Althouse for an ethics commentary misfire, along with the error of not allowing readers to comment on it, and thus point out where her analysis went wrong. I would not want to leave the impression that this was typical of Althouse in any way, or discourage any reader here from sampling her generally fascinating and well-written observations. Luckily, today she delivered a post which I would put among her best, a measured and deft take-down of Slate’s often silly feminist blogger L.V. Anderson, for a classic diatribe dripping with manufactured accusations of gender bias in a news story where none exists.

This is the real Ann Althouse, and you should read the entry, here.

___________________

Sources: Althouse, Slate

Graphic: Oceansbridge

Helpful Civility Hint For Newspaper Editors: Don’t Tell The President of The U.S. To “Shove It”

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
Classic song, catch phrase, unethical headline.

Classic song, catch phrase, unethical headline.

In a classic example of the stark difference in world views between the so-called “conservative media” and the mainstream (a.k.a. Left-biased) news media, the firing of a Chattanooga newspaper editor for an editorial headline telling President Obama to  “shove it”is either being held up as proof that the President’s allies are censoring the news and trying to drive objective journalists out of their jobs, or being ignored as a local story with no larger implications.

The story has larger implications, and they are these: Continue reading →

“Progressive” Values On The Campus: Rape, Tolerated; Free Speech, Not So Much

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
Now does it make sense to you, Juanita?

Juanita Broadrick: Now does it make sense to you, Juanita?

If one wants to puzzle through how Democrats can simultaneously trumpet a “War on Women” while generating standard bearers like San Diego mayor Bob Filner (now up to 9 identified sexual harassment victims, and counting; the latest appears to be Marilyn Monroe), Anthony Weiner, and of course, ex-President Bill Clinton (recall Juanita Broadrick?) , one need only to examine the schizophrenic values being nurtured in our great liberal arts universities, with the encouragement of the values–challenged Obama administration.

In May, universities received an ominous letter from Departments of Justice and Education announcing new guidelines regarding “sexual harassment” on college campuses. The new standards prohibit “any unwelcome conduct of sexual nature” and  include “verbal” conduct, meaning free speech is now officially suspect…and no longer free. (But if you have been following the news lately, you know that in Barack Obama’s America, free speech is just a trading chip for “higher priorities.”)

The new standards apply to every college receiving federal funding. According to Greg Lukianoff, president of FIRE, the government mandates  would allow a student to be charged with harassment if he asks another student out on a date and the target of his attentions deems that request “offensive.” Telling a sex joke could support a sexual harassment charge, as would using the word “fuck” in the presence of a female who resented it. FIRE points out that many presentations, debates, and expressions on campuses can now be censored as sexual harassment, citing campus performances of “The Vagina Monologues,” debates about sexual morality, and pro-con discussions on gay marriage as potential offenses.  Lukianoff, protesting that DOJ and DOE have now established speech codes that violate the First Amendment and completely ignore decades of legal precedent,says he is appalled at the attack on “free speech on campus from our own government.”

Appalled, yes, but certainly not surprised. The grip of political correctness is grasping for the throat of Free Speech in the Obama years, as the news media sits complacent and inert. FIRE is among those with the courage and determination to fight this blatant abuse of government power, but that does not diminish the seriousness of a Federal government that pays its election IOU’s to women’s rights groups by sacrificing free speech on campus.

But it’s worse even than that, for the modus operandi of this federal government, adopting the proclivities of its leader, is to speak loudly and carry a wet noodle. Just as the President is fond of making demands, ultimatums and condemnations, drawing lines and telling us to “make no mistake” about where he stands, and then following up with no tangible or meaningful action whatsoever, thus does his government fail to protect women’s bodies while trying to control what they hear. The 2011 federal Title IX investigation into Yale’s mind-blowing tolerance of rape on campus (it is referred to there as “non-consensual sex”) concluded  with a voluntary resolution that allowed Old Eli to avoid any disciplinary action for creating a “hostile sexual environment,” and this time we don’t mean allowing dirty limericks. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: My “Disrespectful” Comment

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

alas_header3

There has been an epic thread, over a week long now, I think, on Ampersand’s blog about the Zimmerman trial. It has been very illuminating and valuable for me, because the vast majority of the discussion consists of articulate knee-jerk liberals desperately searching for some way to hold on to the myth that Trayvon Martin was the victim of racial profiling, and that George Zimmerman, a closet racist cold-blooded killer, got away with murder. It is fascinating, if depressing. So many seemingly smart people who just “know” that Zimmerman was really guilty, and that Martin was gunned down because he was wearing a hoodie and carrying Skittles.

One of the outnumbered rational commenters there, a chap calling himself Conrad, responded to a persistent Zimmerman-hater who kept saying that it was “50-50” who started the fatal fight, and that it should disturb anyone that there is, therefore, a 50-50 chance that Zimmerman got away with murder. Conrad pointed out that the evidence, in fact, strongly suggested that Zimmerman did not provoke the physical encounter, and, sure enough, none of the  factual arguments to the contrary were deemed persuasive. I had intervened several times in the discussion (since it was launched in the blog post by Ampersand saying that my assertion that there were no legitimate grounds on which to challenge the jury’s verdict as anything but compelled by the evidence was biased), and this was the final straw.

I wrote, to Conrad:

“Fascinating, isn’t it? So many compassionate, fair, intelligent people tying their brains into knots because they have staked everything on a badly cast George Zimmerman being the epitome of a murderous, conservative, vigilante racist. Oops! He’s not white! Oops! His prom date was black! Oops! He voted for Obama! Oops! He never used a racial slur! Oops! He was jumped by the victim! Oops! He really was injured! Oops! The evidence and all the witnesses support his account! Never mind…you just KNOW he did it.

“This is the real lesson of this endless mess–how confirmation bias makes good people into bigots and persecutors.

“There is another piece of evidence: when police, while interrogating Zimmerman, told him that the entire altercation was caught on a security camera—a lie, to check his reaction–his instant response, according to witnesses, was “Thank God!” Clever guy, that George. Quick thinking!

“But this has never been about evidence. It was about making Obama’s base fear for their lives just in time for the 2012 elections, and increasing racial divisiveness for cynical political gain. At least I hope that was what it was about, because if there wasn’t some tangible reason for it, it is the stupidest self-inflicted wound on society that I can remember.”

I was shortly thereafter shocked to receive Ampersand’s stern reprimand for this comment.

“Jack, please reread the moderation goals for this blog. In particular, this bit: “Debates are conducted in a manner that shows respect even for folks we disagree with.” If you don’t find it possible to disagree with people while treating them with respect, then I’ll ask you to stop leaving comments here. Where would make me unhappy, so I hope it doesn’t come to that. –Amp”

He generously left my entire post up with a strike-through, making it unreadable as well as  hanging a scarlet letter on the content. Nice. Apparently it was all too disrespectful. (In fact, I would judge many of the approved comments in the thread far more directly insulting to specific commenters than mine, which impugned the whole anti-Zimmerman chorus.)

Your Ethics Quiz as we head into the first August weekend:

Was it too disrespectful? Continue reading →