Year: 2013

“This Is Getting To Be A Really Bad Habit”

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
Don't blame the Senators; after all, they got themselves in a bind.

Don’t blame the Senators; after all, they got themselves in a bind.

Thus  did The Blaze’s Becket Adams comment with exquisite understatement on the simultaneously unsurprising and horrifying fact that the 154 page bill just passed to avoid the worst aspects of the so-called fiscal cliff was almost certainly never read by any U.S. Senator before he or she voted for or against it. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of eight Senators who refused to vote for the bill, told reporters that they were given a total of “6 minutes to read this bill before we had to vote on it; not one single senator who voted for it had read it and that is unacceptable.”  Lee added what should be obvious to all, that when senators can’t read bills, “there are always bad things in it.”

Yes, I’d say that this is a fair conclusion, and indeed, we are learning of bad things in this bill, like pork.

The previous Ethics Alarms  post was about the criminal implications of using a firearm without due care. Passing national legislation affecting millions of lives and affecting the disposition of billions of dollars demands far more responsibility and care than using a gun, and the long and short-term damage caused by careless, ill-considered legislation far exceeds what any lone gunman can accomplish. This is so incompetent, so reckless, so arrogant and irresponsible, that no comparison, no condemnations, nothing can do it justice. Projectile vomiting comes close. Continue reading →

Why The Gun Debate Is Irresponsible, Part 6,798: We’re Not Discussing Gun Laws That Address THIS Kind of Conduct

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments

Facebook gun

There are some strangely missing laws that would prevent many gun deaths, by making the irresponsible handling of guns illegal. They wouldn’t be opposed by the anti-gun lobby, I hope, because they have nothing to do with restricting gun ownership and possession. They are simple, obvious, and consistent with jurisprudence in other areas of the law. Yet nobody is talking about these measures, because the debate has already been pitched at a hysterical level characterized by over-reach, exaggeration, demonization and polarizing rhetoric. When a policy controversy reaches this decibel level, nobody listens, and nobody can think. Everyone adding to the volume—grand-standing politicians, screaming talking heads, phobics on one side (“ARRRRH!!! GUUUUNS!!!) and paranoids (“They want to take our guns and make us their slaves!!”) is responsible for keeping rationality at bay, and contributing to future tragedies like this one:

From The Mail Online…

“A 19-year-old woman accidentally shot dead her brother while posing with a gun for Facebook photos on New Year’s Eve. Manuel Ortiz died instantly after being shot in the head at about 6am on Monday morning….Police said 22-year-old Ortiz and his sister Savannah Ramirez arrived back at the home they shared on New Year’s Eve after spending the night drinking. They were with two other people when someone in the group pulled out the handgun to take photos with it.

“As the 19-year-old posed and played around with the weapon it went off striking Ortiz in the head… He was pronounced dead at the scene.

“It is not known if the group knew the handgun was loaded….

“Police say she has been questioned and released pending further investigation in the case….Phoenix Police Sgt Steve Martos said the victim’s sister would likely be charged with manslaughter if tests conclude she had alcohol in her system.”

What’s wrong with this story? Continue reading →

Some Ethics Observations On A Ridiculous Sean Hannity Segment

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Last night, Fox New host and conservative radio talk show star Sean Hannity moderated what purported to be a debate on the topic of —guess what?— gun control on his cable TV show. The  guests were “civil rights attorney” Leo Terrell (I’ll explain the scare quotes in a second) and conservative lawyer Jay Sekulow. The two adversaries—and Hannity, who was hardly neutral—discussed The Journal News’ recent decision (Covered and criticized on Ethics Alarms) to publish the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in two New York Counties. The ensuing dialogue, if you can call it that, was painful to watch (but you’ll have to watch it to know what I’m referring to.)

Some observations on the miserable ethics of a nauseating episode: Continue reading →

Are Musicals Reviewed By Ignoramuses?

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments
STEPHEN SONDHEIM

OK, but Stephen: compared to you, everyone is an ignoramus!

Stephen Sondheim completed his personal memoirs about his career in American musicals more than a year ago, but they are so thoughtful, detailed and dense that I keep discovering new treasures, provocative observations by a first-rate mind. Yesterday, I found one that was buried in a footnote, in the middle of a technical tangent that most readers, like me in my first tour through the books, probably skimmed.

Sondheim pointedly did not use his erudite analysis and reflections in his two retrospectives (“Finishing the Hat” and “Look! I Made a Hat!”) to settle scores with critics, a group that obviously annoyed and to some extent handicapped him over the course of his long career. In this brief footnote, however, the composer/lyricist delivers a withering verdict:

“The sad truth is that musicals are the only public art form reviewed mostly by ignoramuses.”

At the end of the note, he repeats the indictment, this time changing the description to “illiterates.” Sondheim is accusing theater critics of engaging in professional conduct they are incompetent to perform, rendering expert opinions that are not really expert, and as a result, misinforming the public and undermining the efforts of serious artists, like him.  If he is right, not only are the critics unprofessional and unethical, the media organs that hire and publish them are unethical as well. Continue reading →

The Montgomery County Finger-Gun Massacre of 2013: Who Didn’t See THIS Coming?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

And speaking of the Curmies…

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if finger's that can be be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can't be right...

If finger guns are made illegal, only those with fingers will have guns. No, wait..if fingers that can be made into guns are illegal, only criminals will have fingers. No, that can’t be right…Stop me when we made our kids dumb enough…

Take post-Sandy Hook hysteria, add school no-tolerance idiocy, mix well in one of the most knee-jerk liberal communities in the nation, and what do you get?

A six-year-old in Maryland’s Montgomery County suspended from school for making a finger and thumb gun gesture, of course.

The NBC story concentrates on  “whether the boy understands the implications of the gesture.” What implications of the gesture? That he is about to shoot bullets out of his finger? That he intends to kill someone with all the firepower an unarmed 6-year-old can muster? That he is making a mimed reference to a Connecticut school massacre he probably doesn’t know a thing about? Why should it matter what his “intent is? It’s a hand gesture! It isn’t vulgar or threatening except to silly phobics in the school system.

This is, in order of importance,

  1. Child abuse. This young boy is being treated like a wrongdoer because the adults around him are acting like babies. Will they suspend him for making really scary faces next? Biting his pizza slice into threatening shapes?
  2. Proof of incompetence on the part of the school administrators. Why incompetence? They are stupid, that’s why. Only certifiably stupid people would think it is fair, sensible or reasonable to punish a First-grader for making a gesture kids have been making on playgrounds for hundreds of years, without a single casualty.
  3. Why many people lose respect for anti-gun zealots early in life. They forfeit all respect by acting like ninnies.

The dismaying aspect of this is ridiculous episode is that it has happened before in other schools, and clearly the message wasn’t sent clearly enough to the previous offenders–that is, the fools who victimized innocent children for miming, drawing or otherwise suggesting guns—that this kind of conduct is a career-ender. It should be; it has to be. Such irrational fearfulness, bad judgment, panic, disregard for the sensibilities of the young, lack of proportion and brain dysfunction forfeits all right to trust, and such fools must not be allowed to have power over young bodies and minds.

UPDATE: The school rescinded the suspension.

Unethical Quote of the Week: House Speaker John Boehner

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“Go fuck yourself!”

—House Speaker John Boehner to a surprised Senator Harry Reid last week at the White House, apparently in response to Reid’s comments to reporters that Boehner was “a dictator.”

If Boehner is going to talk like that, we might as well have Ron Burgundy as Speaker. At least he's funny.

If Boehner is going to talk like that, we might as well have Ron Burgundy as Speaker. At least he’s funny.

Stay classy, Mr. Speaker.

Admittedly, there are few individuals on Capitol Hill more deserving of such a rebuke than Sen. Reid, but Speaker Boehner is obligated not to be the agent delivering it. Such personal incivility is inexcusable no matter how insulted Boehner felt, and no matter how high tensions were running during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Americans should expect their elected officials to conduct themselves with the dignity, honor and civility their positions demand. When they stoop to vulgarity and pure invective, they not only disgrace themselves, but also shame their high offices, the institutions in which they serve, and the nation. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“And, by the way, I’ve gotten some pushback in email and on the web  saying that it was “shameful” and “appalling” for me to tie Clinton’s health problems to a possible intent to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Let me tell you that a core motivation to my blogging — and I’ve been going at this for 9 years now — is to stand tough against people who try to cut off debate with this kind of shaming. So I’m glad that this performance of outrage was directed at me. I know it when I see it, and it fires me up. You want silence? You want backing down? You want me not to dare say a thing like that? That’s how you want to control political debate in the United States? Thanks for reminding me once again how deeply I hate that and for giving me an (easy) opportunity to model courage for the more timid people out there who are cowed by the fear of shaming.”

—- Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse

I know I’ve been citing Prof. Althouse a lot lately, but she’s been on quite a roll. Her quote is self-explanatory. Brava!

UPDATE: Right after I posted this, I read Kathleen Parker’s Washington Post column headlined “The Character Assassination of Hillary Clinton.” In it, Parker essentially makes exactly the objection that Althouse says she hates. Continue reading →

Ethics Mess In Kansas: The Lesbians and the Sperm Donor

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
The parents in happier days

The parents in happier days

Auto mechanic William Marotta must rue the day he responded to a Craigslist ad placed by Angela Bauer and her life partner Jennifer Schreiner. They were seeking a sperm donor, for the obvious reasons, and he had sperm to donate. The trio then signed a contract in which all agreed that Marotta would have no rights to any child his sperm spawned, nor future responsibilities regarding the child’s care. Schreiner was artificially inseminated and conceived, making her the child’s mother, as Bauer stepped into the role of the child’s father. Exit Marotta forever, with thanks.

Or so he thought. Continue reading →

Cast Your Vote For The 2012 Curmie Award, Honoring The Worst In Education!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Teacher, blogger, deep thinker and Ethics Alarms combatant Rick Jones launched his annual Curmie Award last year, bestowed on the person or institution who most embarrasses the profession of education, on his superb blog, Curmudeon Central. Most of Rick’s Curmie nominees would have to be called ethics miscreants, and indeed several of them were featured on Ethics Alarms, so I asked Rick if I could present his nomination to the Ethics Alarms community and invite you to vote on this year’s winner. Here are Rick’s finalists, with his commentary and links to his posts about them. (Note: the link is the same with many of them, as several of the ultimate nominees were first exposed in the same, epic post. And you think I write long blog entries…) Rick writes of his criteria:

“I have tried to weigh a variety of factors: the egregiousness of the offense on its face, the extent to which it might be portentous of further bad things to come, any sense of particular injustice (punishment of the innocent or even of the heroic, for example), the degree to which the Curmie-worthy outrage might have been a spur-of-the-moment outburst rather than a deliberate act, any mitigating circumstances, whether the problem seems to have been appropriately addressed, whether the case looks a lot like a different nominee, etc.”

Now here are his nominees (in Rick’s words): Continue reading →

Hollywood’s Ridiculous Hypocrisy on Guns

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
"Say hello to my little friend! And while we're on the topic of guns, don't you think it's time to be sensible about gun control?"

“Say hello to my little friend! And while we’re on the topic of guns, don’t you think it’s time to be sensible about gun control?”

In a move stunningly unconscious to outrageous hypocrisy, the group “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” have posted a video on on its website and Youtube (of course), featuring an impressive array of solemn Hollywood celebrities chiding Americans for not doing something about guns “yesterday” and to “demand a plan” to end gun violence. The problem? Many of these same celebrities owe their presence on the video to Hollywood’s obsession with gun violence, without which they would be just anonymous pretty faces. They owe their mansions and private planes to that gun violence too, which they have happily, willfully and lucratively acted out in scores of violent films and television shows. How can they presume, given how they make their living, to lecture anyone on the topic of guns?

I have some theories. Many of them are dumb as bricks. Most of them are automatic co-signers of the manifesto for any cause branded as liberal, the Hollywood religion,and don’t bother to think about whether it is consistent with their life choices or not. Probably all of them, working every day in one of the most ethics-free, cut-throat, dishonest and hypocritical sub-cultures that has ever existed in the United States are completely numb to the concept of hypocrisy, as apparently are the mayors, who work in the culture of politics, which is only somewhat better. Continue reading →