Lea Tuohy is suing her ex-husband, a wealthy Detroit strip club entrepreneur named Alan Markovitz, to force him to remove his idea of “karma.” This would be his 12-foot bronze statue of a hand with its middle finger extended, which he bought specifically so it could be positioned on his backyard balcony to face the neighboring mansion where Tuohy lives with the man who (according to Markovitz) broke up their marriage.
Markovitz seems to have deftly avoided the specifics of Michigan’s public nuisance law, which law professor Jonathan Turley discusses here. The artwork is carefully positioned so that nobody else in the neighborhood has to see it, just his hated next door neighbors, when they look out their window. It is quiet art, not obtrusive noise, or even a giant sign that says “Fuck you, Lea, and the guy you moved in with!” But in all honesty, there really is no question that this is the message he intends to convey, and is conveying, in a clever, under-stated, expensive and fanatical way. This, in itself, makes the message–which could also be translated as “I really, really hate you people!”—even more intense. Imagine buying a lakefront mansion and a $7000 bronze middle-digit just to make someone else miserable. Now that’s a grudge.*
It is also an unethical act. Whatever it was that Markovitz believed happened, and however legal (and funny!) his creative retribution may be, this can’t be defended ethically. His is socially toxic behavior. Kant’s method of evaluating it ethically works best: imagine a society where this was the accepted norm; where everyone kept old grudges alive and made vengeance, albeit legally permissible acts of it, a top priority in their lives. Nobody would forgive, nobody would move on. Important ethical values like proportion, kindness, nobility, grace, civility, manners, acceptance, empathy and fairness would all be subordinate to revenge, anger and hate. A society where everyone acted like Alan Markovitz would be a fair approximation of Hell.
Or Washington, D.C.
* It’s also a little bit scary, and amounts to a daily threat. However, removing a staute that says “I hate you so much that I’m willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to remind you how much” doesn’t change the fact that the man living next to Lea has proven that he’s angry and irrational. Personally, I would move if I were Lea. She might stay, however, out of spite…
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Pointer and Graphic: Res Ipsa Loquitur
Facts: Telegraph
Ethics Alarms 
This makes total sense to me now — AM stands for Alan Markovitz!
I’m sure this behavior is unethical, but I can’t stop laughing long enough to think about it clearly, so I’ll have to take your word for it.
Whatever legal actions Lea might take (or try to take) to have the offensive “statue” taken down, she should sell and move — far away from her clearly obsessed and vindictive ex-husband. Free speech aside, a sign or a metaphorical statue such as this one would (to me) clearly constitute a threat of some other, more pro-active kind of retaliation at some point, (And if she hates him as much as he hates her, if she moved she’d have made him waste the money on the house next door and the $7,000 statue; if he followed her elsewhere and does a similar thing, she might rightly want protection from this man. I’d be afraid of, not annoyed with, this guy, (I surely hope he hasn’t re-married, and that if he has, his new wife has a clear idea of whom she’s dealing with…)
If Markowitz didn’t have his multi-millions, perhaps he would have resorted to some other kind of insult/threat. (Perhaps even one that resulted — as it has for middle-class ex-wives — in a restraining order against him.) Finally, and this is less important than other clear ethical issues, his actions only enhance the general perception that the really, really rich are often really, really vindictive, and really, really unethical people. Because most people won’t care that he made his millions owning strip clubs, I offer thanks to Mr. Markowitz, for besmirching the reputation of rich people to another, lower degree. Most multi-milionaires didn’t make their money from the provision of salacious enjoyment of others; and though many are not exactly above reproach, for every Markowtize or mobster, if you look you can find ten more people who made a lot of money with good o great ideas and better management, some of which transformed and improved our way of life unalterably for the better.
I suppose I’m lucky nobody I’ve ever met is wealthy enough to pull a stunt like this. 🙂
Funny! But Unethical: Yes I agree it is unethical but funny? No.
But it should remain legal – If someone is a total jerk then I don’t want to know him or her, and that is a big advantage of living in a society with free speech. You learn more quickly who is a total jerk and thus whom to avoid, whereas without free speech the jerks of this world are more likely to censor themselves and hide their true character for longer.
Re: “Funny! But Unethical: The “Fuck You!” Spite Statue”
“His is socially toxic behavior. Kant’s method of evaluating it ethically works best: imagine a society where this was the accepted norm; where everyone kept old grudges alive and made vengeance, albeit legally permissible acts of it, a top priority in their lives. Nobody would forgive, nobody would move on.”
A couple of comments, and these comments directly address what I was intending to state in the Affluenza post (sorry, the sheer number of recent posts there is personally overwhelming, I can’t read the comments section at the moment).
1) Genuinely good intentioned ethics demand a balance between the personal, relational, and social. This means that sometimes the overwhelming interest of society must take a back seat to the interest of the individual. In too many legal decisions I believe the so-called societal interest is allowed more power than is right (thanks to the psychological predilections of those who tend to become judges and supreme court justices).
2) I too agree that his is an ethically wrong act to take.
3) Physical violence, when mutually agreed upon as a recourse between the actors, is an ethical act. If our society allowed these mutually agreed upon acts it is my belief (unproven) that a good deal of grudges would end. Getting it out physically, whether win or lose, could mean the difference between respecting the other and moving on or festering in anger and/or depression for years. Given this, it is ethically wrong for the law to interfere between the combatants or, assuming no prior agreed upon rules were violated during the combat, censor or harm in any way the combatants after the act.
3.1) At any rate, a society which allows such challenges and combats is one in which perceived ethical (but not legal) wrongdoers would be forced to face the consequences to others of their actions, and thus either admit wrongdoing and apologize, put their body where their actions actions are, justify their actions, or publicly risk shaming themselves by declining the combat.
Unethical? I think not. I can imagine a society where bad people get exactly what they deserve, and that is a society that has less bad people doing bad things. Forgiveness is what the guilty always ask for when they want to get away with their wrongs, imo.
Chona Ekstrand
Donald Kass
Keith de la Rosa
Thomas Drummond
Autumn Holmes
Renee Korn
No forgiveness. Just my undying pledge that they will suffer for the deliberate and unwarranted harm they caused my family. May they each suffer 1000-fold for their crimes, and may I have a backseat to enjoy it. That to me is not only ethical, but my sworn duty as a sane, intelligent person.
Got it. You’re incapable of understanding what basic ethical principles are, and are guided by hatred and revenge. Why don’t you just hand over your membership in the human race while you’re at it? You might as well be a coyote. And you’re dangerous.