Year: 2013

Ethics Dunces: The Hugo Chavez Fan Club (Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY), Oliver Stone and Joe Kennedy III

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"We love you Hugo, we really do-oo! There isn't anyone, we love like you-oo! When you're not with us, we're blue! Oh, Hugo, we love you!"---From the new musical, "Bye-Bye Chavez," written by Oliver Stone, starring Sean Penn!

“We love you Hugo, we really do-oo! There isn’t anyone, we love like you-oo! When you’re not with us, we’re blue! Oh, Hugo, we love you!”—From the new musical, “Bye-Bye Chavez,” written by Oliver Stone, starring Sean Penn!

What do we learn from those who mourn the passing of Venezuelan autocrat Hugo Chavez and praise his leadership? Chavez leaves his nation with a corrupted judiciary, an intimidated and manipulated press, a soaring violent crime rate, massive debt, crumbling infrastructure, galloping inflation, government-sanctioned anti-Semitism, and the prospect of political instability for the foreseeable future. When we hear an American praise Chavez, we learn that he or she neither trusts or values the institutions of democracy, like a free press and independent judiciary. We learn that such an individual believes that indeed the ends justify the means; that lies, repression, manipulation of news and public opinion, cultism, divisiveness and class warfare are all forgivable and even laudable in pursuit of “social justice,” roughly defined in the manner of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro, murderers all. Continue reading →

Justin Bieber’s Tardiness: Calling Card Of The Unprofessional Jerk

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
Professional on the right, arrogant jerk on the left. Also, anyone next to Cary Grant looks like a troll...

Professional on the left, arrogant jerk on the right. Bonus: Anyone next to Cary Grant looks like a troll…

There is still some confusion how late pop sensation Justin Bieber was for a recent London concert. It may have been as much as two hours, and it may have been only 40 minutes. The ethical verdict on the conduct is the same, however: rude, disrespectful, irresponsible, unfair and arrogant…and inexcusable.

The tardiness is especially inexcusable because the singer didn’t even offer a plausible excuse or one that might prompt some sympathy. He was not kidnapped by terrorists, abducted by aliens, or cornered by a rampaging T-Rex from Isla Sorna. He wasn’t late because he single-handedly rescued a runaway school bus full of kids, or defused a ticking bomb in the London Tube. Justin Bieber was late because he’s an unprofessional jerk who knew that his fans would wait for him until he got there, and so he chose to to get drunk, or get laid, or sleep in, or play Words With Friends with Alec Baldwin, or whatever other selfish conduct suited him rather than meet his obligations as a performer. This is the Star Syndrome in its most obvious and obnoxious form. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week, Sequester Ethics Train Wreck Division: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Officials

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

—- U.S. Agriculture officials, responding to Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown after he asked “if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact.” Brown quoted the response in an internal e-mail obtained by the Washington Times.

Why isn't the news media screaming?

Why isn’t the news media screaming?

Assuming that Brown’s account is accurate, the e-mail appears to show, in the interpretation most favorable to the Obama Administration, that at least one federal department believes that its job is to ensure that the across-the-board sequester cuts do as much tangible harm as possible, even where it is possible to mitigate that harm through effective management. The interpretation least favorable would conclude that President Obama has issued internal orders to the effect that any effort to lessen the cataclysmic results he and his Cabinet members predicted prior to the sequester deadline is forbidden, since it would undermine the political strategy of creating public anger against Republicans.

I don’t know where the truth lies. I can say that here in Washington, D.C., both Democrats and Republicans, without the benefit of the e-mail, seem to have adopted the worst case interpretation, which is shocking. Even more shocking is that the sick culture here is largely shrugging this off as “hardball politics” on behalf of the President and his Democratic allies. I cannot fathom this, just as I cannot fathom why all news media, left and right, are not screaming like the Donald Sutherland pod duplicate at the end of the remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” if they also believe this is true. Continue reading →

In Connecticut, A Surrogate Mother Triggers An Epic Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
Crystal Kelley and...somebody's baby

Crystal Kelley and…somebody’s baby

There is no field of ethics more murky or subject to conflicting interpretations than bioethics, and few issues in bioethics are as confusing as those involving surrogate mothers who decide that they should have some say regarding the fate of the child that grows in their bodies. CNN has reported on the most perplexing such scenario I’ve every encountered, so perplexing that I can’t unravel the ethical rights and wrongs of it.  I wonder if anyone can with confidence. I’ll just summarize the main features and some of the issues raised; you will need to read the whole, stunning story to fully appreciate this train wreck’s sweep and carnage.

I. Crystal Kelley, a single mother who had endured two miscarriages, wanted to help another couple conceive, but mostly wanted the $22,000 fee since she was out of a job. She contracted with a couple seeking their fourth child, and was implanted with two previously frozen embryos. One survived. Ethics issue: Did Kelley tell the parents about her miscarriages?

2. Five months into her pregnancy, tests showed the baby Kelley was carrying had serious medical problems, though the child had a chance at survival. The couple said that they wanted Kelley’s pregnancy terminated because they didn’t want the baby to suffer. Ethics issues: Is that a valid reason to take an unborn child’s life? Was it the real reason? Was the real reason that they were unwilling to pay for and endure all the necessary medical treatmenst, or that they wanted nothing less than a “perfect” baby? Does it matter what the real reason was? Continue reading →

“House of Cards” Ethics: Zoe’s Unethical Tweet And The Right To Talk To Just One Person

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

house_of_cards

At the risk of stirring up the incorrigible defenders of the vigilante Applebee’s waitress, I must again point out that using social media to make a private indiscretion a public disgrace is terrible, grossly unethical conduct that threatens our freedom, trust,privacy and quality of life. The fact that the practice is gaining acceptance as something to be feared and expected is a frightening cultural development, and we are all obligated to do what we can to condemn it and eradicate it before it becomes a toxic social norm.

The Netflix political drama “House of Cards” provided a perfect example of what is wrong with this despicable trend in its fourth episode.  Zoe Barnes, the ambitious, unethical reporter in league with Kevin Spacey’s deliciously diabolical House Majority Whip, has brought her newspaper’s editor to the point of apoplexy in a confrontation in his office.  Already considering leaving for greener pastures, the reporter goads her sputtering boss into calling her a misogynistic epithet that she senses is just on the tip of his tongue. “Go ahead,” she taunts. “Say it.”

“You’re a cunt,” he finally replies. Zoe whips out her smart phone and tweets this exchange to her thousands of followers. “Call me whatever you want, “she sneers, “but remember, these days, when you’re talking to one person, you’re talking to a thousand.”

Wrong—not unless the person you’re talking to is unethical, vindictive, has rejected the social conventions of private conversation and is consigning the Golden Rule to the cultural trash heap. Continue reading →

Just What Every President Doesn’t Need…A Traitor

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
"My observations while serving in the President's trust are held in strictest confidence, and...HOW much? Sure, I'll write a book!"

“My observations while serving in the President’s trust are held in strictest confidence, and…HOW much? Damn! Sure, I’ll write a book!”

President Obama is hardly the first President to be blind-sided by a “tell-all” exposé authored by someone who had an obligation to keep his mouth shut and his keyboard quiet. The unethical practice of a President’s former advisors, cabinet members, secret security agents, servants and others who held his trust cashing in and publishing often bitter, agenda-driven books detailing juicy and uncomplimentary details of what went on behind closed doors began gaining steam during the Reagan years (something else to detest David Stockman for) and has accelerated in every administration since.

The latest sniper shot from a grassy knoll is the work of Vali Nasr, a professor and former senior State Department adviser who worked with Richard Holbrooke, previously Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. In his new book, which, of course, had to be published while Obama was still in office to have a chance of making the former advisor the money he craves, Nasr relates details of what he regards as the incompetent White House foreign policy decision-making apparatus, in which vital calls that should have been left to experts were run through Obama’s political team, whose judgment was based on polls and narrow, short-term political considerations. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Devon Gluck

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"Hmmmm...keep this money that isn't mine, or return it to the owner? What a knotty ethical puzzle!"

“Hmmmm…keep this money that isn’t mine, or return it to the owner? What a knotty ethical puzzle!”

Devon Gluck, a senior finance major at the University of Delaware, was the surprised recipient of $1800 spit at him by a malfunctioning ATM machine. Obviously the money wasn’t his, or meant for him. Obviously it belonged to the bank, and another depositor. Obviously, the ethical thing to do was to return the money, just as you would return a wallet full of money dropped by someone walking right in front of you. Doing otherwise is theft.

Nonetheless, it took 20-year-old Devon four days and consultation with his father to come to a conclusion that any properly raised 8-year-old should have reached in about 30 seconds. After thinking about all the things he could do with the cash that wasn’t his, he finally returned it to the bank.

Whoopie.

Devon Gluck is going into the finance field, where he will be, sadly, right at home with his hair-trigger ethical instincts. Our families, our schools, our leaders and  and our culture are plainly failing to install even rudimentary ethics alarms in rising generations.

You’re not getting your hands on any of my money, Devon, if I can help it. I recommend that everyone else exercise similar caution. See if your Dad can explain to you why.

_________________________________

Facts: Delaware online

Graphic: Debt No Problem

 

Coming To A Ballot Box Near You: “The Naked Senator Principle”?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

 

Go Ashley!

Go Ashley!

Ashley Judd, the accomplished Hollywood actress-feminist (and the non-singing sister in the singing Judd family), is seriously contemplating a run for the Kentucky Senate as a Democrat against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. There is a potential problem, however, implies the conservative “Daily Caller.” Judd will become the first serious contender for high national office who has appeared on screen numerous times in various degrees of nudity. The blog’s entertainment editor has done her research with no less an authority than MrSkin.com, and reports that Judd went topless for 1996′s “Normal Life” and went topless and bottomless in 1999′s “Double Jeopardy.” Meanwhile, in both 1996′s “Norma Jean and Marilyn” and 1999′s “Eye of the Beholder,” Judd went full frontal while also baring her comely tush. Ashley had a lesbian sex scene in 2002′s Oscar-nominated “Frida,” and “Mr. Skin”  categorized nine other scenes as “sexy,” and if you can’t trust him on such matters, whom can you trust?

We have learned that former porn stars can’t be middle school teachers or beauty queens, that art teachers can’t be seen painting pictures with their butts (even with paper bags over their heads) and that “the Naked Teacher Principle” decrees that those we entrust with the the shaping of young minds cannot be trusted to do the job if their naughty bits are just a mouse click away. Doesn’t it follow that there is a “Naked Senator Principle”? Surely internet nudity that was previously available at the Multiplex is a disqualification for Congress. Isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? Continue reading →

Not Jackie Robinson, Not Even Shannon Faukner: Lauren Silberman Flunks The Traiblazer Test

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
"Okay, now I kick this funny-shaped brown thingee where, again?"

“Okay, now I kick this funny-shaped brown thingee where, again?”

Call it the trailblazer’s duty. If your objective is to be a trailblazer and break through the obstacle of prejudice in an elite field, your efforts, even if not successful, had better not make the obstacle greater. The epitome of trailblazing excellence is Jackie Robinson, shattering major league baseball’s apartheid  by simultaneously becoming the game’s first black player in decades, and also one of its greatest players of all time. The bottom of the barrel in the trailblazing pantheon is probably Shannon Faulkner, who waged a high-profile legal battle to become the first female cadet at the Citadel, only to enter the school physically and mentally unprepared for the challenge, resulting in an embarrassing failure and rapid withdrawal.

Lauren Silberman, the first female to try out for the National Football League made Faulkner look good. Continue reading →

Is “Double-Dipping” Unethical? How?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
"Throw one scoop away, you greedy, unethical bastard!"

“Throw one scoop away, you greedy, unethical bastard!”

Over at Trust Across America, Barbara Kimmel has painted a scarlet “U” on the interim superintendent of the Mahwah School District, who has a $167,000 contract as well as an $131,000 annual pension. She finds the woman’s justification for her extravagant enrichment at taxpayer expense through the practice of “double-dipping,” unethical, and is rankled by the woman’s justification, when she says, “I think it’s the way the system is set up. Greater people than me made that decision, I took advantage of it. ”  This is the epitome of unethical reasoning, Kimmel writes:

“As the Commander in Chief of a school district you are responsible for the “culture of the corporation.” Just remember what you said the next time a student shows up in your office and uses the excuse that “everyone else was doing it,” or when one of your faculty members chooses to use all their days off, leaving a classroom full of kids with no teacher.  After all, it’s the way the system is set up. And the NJ taxpayers- apparently they don’t factor in to your ethical barometer at all. You just “took advantage of it (them).”

The executive director of Trust Across America also finds this to be the perfect example of conduct that is legal but not ethical. Is it? I’m dubious, and I’m not comfortable condemning the interim superintendent’s conduct or even her words, though she could have stated her situation a bit less smugly.

Exactly what is unethical here? Is it… Continue reading →