Month: April 2015

Once Again, We Are Reminded That Beauty Is Only Skin Deep. Do ESPN Viewers Care? Should They?

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
Let me tell you, it's quite a shock when Britt's head spins around and that forked tongue starts flecking...

Let me tell you, it’s quite a shock when Britt’s head spins around and that forked tongue starts flecking…

Anyone who spends much time watching TV knows that “lookism” is the way of the world in the broadcast news business. From Nora O’Donnell on ABC to Robin Meade on HLN to Erin Andrews and the bevy of Fox blondes, it is obvious that if you are female, talent as a reporter won’t get you as far as some beauty contest creds. Plain, even conventionally pretty women are  at a great competitive disadvantage in this field.

One of the more blatant beneficiaries of this bias, ESPN’s Brit McHenry, has just been outed on the web as an ugly human being in a flashy disguise. Her car was towed, and a camera caught the reporter taking out her frustration on the poor clerk who was tasked with collecting her fee.

“I’m in the news, sweetheart, I will fucking sue this place,” McHenry says as the video opens.“Yep, that’s all you care about, is just taking people’s money,” she continues. “With no education, no skillset, just wanted to clarify that. … Do you feel good about your job? So I could be a college dropout and do the same thing? Why, cause I have a brain and you don’t?…Maybe if I was missing some teeth they would hire me, huh? ‘Cause they look so stunning … ‘Cause I’m on television and you’re in a fucking trailer, honey.”

“Lose some weight, baby girl,” she taunted as she left.

Yecchh. Continue reading →

Already, Clinton’s Compulsive, Clumsy Lies Are Flowing: Are Her Supporters Really Going To Pretend Ethics Don’t Matter To The Bitter End?

/ Jack Marshall / 97 Comments
If you don't know why a photo of Richard Nixon is appropriate in a post about Hillary Clinton, you need help...

If you don’t know why a photo of Richard Nixon is appropriate in a post about Hillary Clinton, you need help…

Hillary lies. That’s what she does. She can’t help herself; she does it by reflex, even when there is no reason to. Even when one includes Richard M. Nixon, whose reputation as a liar was think well before he became President, Hillary Clinton’s record is remarkable. She lies about little things (Claiming to be a Yankee fan), big things (conservatives made up the Monica story); she lies without caring who the lies hurt (the White House travel office debacle), and lies to make herself look heroic (her Brian Williams-like tale about being under fire). She lies to try to duck responsibility for her own actions (saying that her use of a  private e-mail server was compliant with government rules), and she lies when it is obvious that what she is saying is ridiculous (she and Bill left the White House in penury.) Unlike her charismatic husband, she’s not even good at lying, and apparently practice doesn’t help, in her case.

Yet she keeps doing it. She is not being well served by her supporters, who have given Clinton no reason to reform, improve, or respect the them or the public they are part of.  The message Clinton has received is that it doesn’t matter what she does or says. She’s a woman, and she’s a Democrat, and that’s all that matters. Have any voters adopted such an indefensible, irresponsible and civicly disgraceful approach to self-government? Well, yes, come to think or it: the 95% of black citizens who supported Barack Obama for a second term based on race and little more. That’s not mitigation.

Barely out of the gate, Hillary is at it again. Speaking in Iowa Wednesday, she told an audience that all her grandparents had immigrated to the United States, a story that public census data and other records related to her maternal and paternal grandparents show is fabrication. Continue reading →

Maybe The Best Reason To Remember April 15…Number 42

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

jackie-robinson

A lot has happened on April 15.

Leonardo De Vinci was born…Abraham Lincoln died…Apollo 13 had the accident that almost destroyed it, but that triggered one of the great triumphs of the space program…Lee surrendered, ending the Civil War…The Beatles disbanded…I didn’t get my taxes in on time….

I would argue however, and will, that as culturally important as any of these events was that sixty-eight years ago, in 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play major league baseball in the modern era. This represented a cultural change that allowed the United States to take a giant step forward toward healing the self-inflicted and almost fatal wound of slavery, and it took a man of surpassing courage and character to do it. (Two men, really: the other was Dodgers GM Branch Rickey.)

Today all MLB players will wear Robinson’s number 42 to honor him. If you haven’t seen the movie “42,“ or if your children haven’t seen it, this is a good day to get a sense of what Jackie went through as he broke the color line.  You can check out Robinson’s baseball stats here,  and learn about the civil rights work he did after his playing career, in the too-short life that was left to him here. He’s in the Ethics Alarms Heroes Hall of Honor, of course, and his entry there has more about his life as well as some good links.

The main thing is, remember him.

Many years ago, I had a conversation with a close friend—smart, accomplished, engaged, educated, about 26 years old at the time. She had no idea who Jackie Robinson was. Nobody, then, now or ever, should reach adulthood in the United States without knowing and understanding what Robinson did, and our nation’s debt to him. There is an ethical  duty to remember, and to respect.

Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

Thank you.

 

Iowa’s Kirkwood Community College Imprisons Its Students In Deference To Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 72 Comments
"This is a great community college, you know?"

“This is a great community college, you know?”

I’m willing to entertain the notion that the exigencies of the situation may have justified Boston’s police ordering citizens to stay in their homes during the dragnet for the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013, Barely. Still, the explosion of extra-legal, unconstitutional abuses of power by national and state governments during the Presidency of Barack Obama is profoundly troubling, and even more so is the complacency of the public and media when it occurs.

Yes indeed, I see this particularly frightening fish-rot as being initiated from the head in the White House, who has embraced the governing theory that if consensus and compromise on desired measures, laws and policies can’t be achieved under the Constitution’s formula, do it anyway. This isn’t strength, you know. It is weakness, the desperate resort of an unskilled executive with contempt for democracy. Under this administration, we have seen a President and a Justice department refuse to fulfill their duties and defend a duly passed and signed law that they just didn’t like (DOMA). Wrong. We have seen a President unilaterally amend his own sloppy health care law because he knows that if he tried to fix it legally, the Congress would gut it. Wrong. We have seen Obama repeal immigration restrictions by executive order, and declare that the Senate was in recess in order to avoid the bother of getting legally mandated  confirmation of his appointments—that one, at least, was struck down by the Supreme Court.

The cumulative effect of all of this is gradually increasing public tolerance for official breaches of the rule of law, at all levels of government, and by private entities too. I believe that that this threatens the democratic culture, and I do not understand why progressives are not as outraged by this development as moderates and conservatives. Do they really think that having allowed Constitutional protections to erode so their precious agenda can be advanced, those protections will be suddenly vigorous again when their adversaries have the upper hand? What utter, utter fools:

The sickening effect of this complacency was on display at Kirkwood Community College in Monticello, Iowa, where Hillary Clinton spoke yesterday. Students told reporters that the Secret Service locked them in their classrooms as the Democratic presidential candidate arrived. Continue reading →

In Maryland, Tempting Moral Luck And The Barn Door Phenomenon In A Free Range Kids Ethics Conflict

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Lyon Sisters

Just months after suburban Maryland parents Danielle and Alexander Meitiv were cited by Montgomery County’s Child Protective Services for “unsubstantiated neglect” for allowing their children Rafi, 10, and Dvora, 6, to walk home from a park close to home, the defiant parents let their kids to do it again. Again, someone called 911 (anonymously), and again the children were picked up by police.

This time, the police took the Meitiv children to Child Protective Services headquarters and for some reason didn’t tell the parents, who, naturally enough, freaked out. Five and a half hours later the agitated children and frantic parents  were reunited. You can read about the initial incident from the mother’s perspective here; and obviously Lenore Skanazy is in full battle array on her “Free Range Kids Blog.” Columnists everywhere are rushing to their keyboards to write columns like this one, by the Washington Post’s Petula Devorak, titled “Why Are We Criminalizing Childhood Independence?”

The ethics of this issue are more complicated than simplistic “We used to walk around freely all the time when we were kids and it was more dangerous then than now” reminiscences are equipped to explore.

Analyzing this ethics conflict (“when two or more ethical principles are in opposition”)  screams out for the useful starting point for ethics analysis:

What’s going on here?

Before I answer, let’s get a couple of ethics verdicts out of the way: Continue reading →

Ethical Quote Of The Month: Sgt. Shane Ortega

/ Jack Marshall / 84 Comments

Trans Military Service Member

“You have to exercise patience with people, but people are not going to understand the subject overnight.”

—-Sgt. Shane Ortega, helicopter crew chief in the Army’s 25th Infantry Division, speaking to the Washington Post about his legal battle with the U.S. military, which continues to classify him as a woman despite his transition to a man.

The reason we say that “hard cases make bad law” is that the toughest cases fall between the cracks in rules and regulations, and they all have cracks. The law seeks consistent precedents, so anomalous fact patterns threaten the integrity and efficiency of otherwise effective laws and rules that work well in the vast majority of situations. Yet those hard cases usually indicate flaws in policies, rules and laws, and sometimes point to the need for change.

Often, an organization, especially a bureaucratic one like the military, will deal with such disruptive cases by simply looking past the actual facts, and treating them “by the book.” Ortega represents a particularly glaring instance of this phenomenon, which in his case not only harms his career, but also makes the military appear rigid to the point of absurdity.

Yet, as his Ethical Quote of the Month indicates, he understands. Change is painful, and it takes time. Continue reading →

Our Child-Abusing Schools: Prosecution For A Prank

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments
"You changed your grade on the school computer, kid--that's the death penalty!"

“You changed your grade on the school computer, kid–that’s the death penalty!”

In Holiday, Florida, Paul R. Smith Middle School eighth-grader Domanik Green was suspended for breaking into the school computer system to  change the background on his teacher’s computer to feature a photo of two men kissing. Then school administrators decided that the punishment wasn’t enough. They had him charged with the felony of computer hacking, and the fourteen year old will be tried as an adult.

The only explanation I can come up with for stories like this is that the school administrators don’t like kids. This wasn’t some sophisticated hack, like the stuff Matthew Broderick did in “War Games.” He knew the teacher’s password (his last name), and just changed the background. Changing a teacher’s background on his computer is the 21st century equivalent of putting an uncomplimentary caricature of the teacher on the blackboard. Charging a teen with a felony for that is excessive and cruel.  Putting in his own claim to a share of the Fascist Disciplinarian of 2015 award was Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco, who blathered, “Even though some might say this is just a teenage prank, who knows what this teenager might have done.”

Better shoot him, Chris, just to be safe. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Rationalization #30 (“It’s a bad law/stupid rule”) Chronicles: Vijay Chokalingam’s Affirmative Action Fraud”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
On the bright side, Dr. Nick improves the diversity of the medical profession...

On the bright side, Dr. Nick improves the diversity of the medical profession…

Joed68 comes through with his second Comment of the Day, this one in reaction to the post here on Mindy Kaling’s brother and his proud confession that he gamed an affirmative action program to gain admission to medical school years ago.

Allowing skin color to enable a less deserving applicant to vault over a more deserving one in college is one thing—still ethically dubious, but defensible in the abstract—and letting low-lights into elite training for professions with life and death responsibilities is another. The only explanations I can mount for those who indignantly defend affirmative action in the latter (such as CNN’s Jeff Young, quoted in the post) is that they are in thrall of the ends justifies the means mentality currently infecting much of Progressive World, or they don’t know how difficult it is to become a doctor. The first malady is beyond remedy; joed68’s submission addresses the second.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post “Rationalization #30 (“It’s a bad law/stupid rule”) Chronicles: Vijay Chokalingam’s Affirmative Action Fraud”:

Continue reading →

Typo Ethics: Early Accountability Check For Candidate Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

“From her mother’s own childhood – in which she was abandoned by her parents – to her work going door-to-door for the Children’s Defense Fund to her battling to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, she’s fought children and families all her career.”

 

That doesn't mean they don't matter, however...

That doesn’t mean they don’t matter, however…

That was the startling news in Hillary Clinton’s long-awaited presidential candidacy announcement: that Hillary has fought families and children all her career. As an ethicist, I find the candor laudable, but I am surprised that Mrs. Clinton is making such a strong bid for the anti-family and child-hating voting bloc.

OK, it’s a typo. The Clinton campaign website fixed it, and her spokespeople reassured the news media “that the former secretary of state has not been secretly fighting children all these years.”

I almost passed on this story, being seldom able to post a typo-free 800 words myself despite reading the damn things repeatedly, but that would have been cowardly. This is not necessarily trivial. This bears some watching. I know that the large Hillary Zombie Squad, which appears to care only about the former First Lady’s chromosomes and nothing else, won’t give a second’s thought to this if her destruction of e-mail evidence and willful skirting of her own agency’s transparency and security policies don’t trouble them, but it is not insignificant. Continue reading →

Now THAT Was Moral Luck…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
"What the HELL do those idiots think they are doing with that poor kid???"

“What the HELL do those idiots think they are doing with that poor kid???”

Moral luck is the daily phenomenon where the exact same irresponsible  act by an individual can be regarded as cause for condemnation or even criminal penalties, or be shrugged off as a forgivable error in judgment and inconsequential based on turns of fate that the individual has no control over at all. You will see few better examples than this ridiculous story out of Cleveland. Parents visiting the Cleveland zoo dangled their 2-year-old son over the railing of the zoo’s cheetah exhibit,  then dropped the child, apparently accidentally, into the enclosure.The cheetahs wisely decided that the offspring of idiots might not be safe to eat, and made no effort to harm him. The boy’s father rescued the boy by jumping into the exhibit area and taking his son to safety. The boy was injured slightly, but it is likely that the incident will be  treated as an accident, with no consequences for the parents. If, however, the cheetahs had attacked and killed the toddler, the parents would have been prosecuted, and condemned across social media as contenders for worst parents of the year.

It was all up to the cheetahs.

That’s moral luck.