Month: December 2015

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Co-chair of the Colorado Springs American Civil Liberties Union Loring Wirbel

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, ‘This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day.’ They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force, as Laurie would say.”

—Loring Wirbel, Co-Chair of the Colorado Springs American Civil Liberties Union, in a Facebook post.

As the post was circulated and criticism of Wirbel grew, he told the local paper that he was just joshin’.

Well, yes, I’d assume he wasn’t really going to start shooting Trump supporters. On the other hand, the ACLU is supposed to stand for freedom of expression, and an organization executive appearing to advocate violence to stifle unpopular political views is more than a little irresponsible. So is casually joking about shooting people in Colorado Springs.

What? Too soon?

“It was intended totally as a joke,” Wirbel said. “They are taking that stuff out of context. It’s smear politics.” No, actually it’s called “embarrassing your organization and calling its credibility into question.” He resigned today.

Good.

One does have to wonder, however, how thick the progressive bias and hatred for conservatives is in the ACLU’s culture, how it affects the organization’s judgment, and whether an organization led by people like Wirbel is really the best guardian of the First Amendment.

UPDATE: More on Wirbel, including some mind-blowing quotes, and the ACLU’s statement, here.

Pop Ethics: The Drifters And Musical Self-Plagiarism

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Does the song “Sand in My Shoes” sound familiar? It should: it’s an embarrassing 1964 rip-off by the Drifters of the Drifters, written and recorded immediately after their previous song, 1963’s “Under the Boardwalk,” was a big hit. Here, notice the resemblance?

Of course you do; that was the idea. Continue reading →

On “Media Watchdogs,” NPR, Ted Cruz, And Unethical Editing

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

NPR-cruz

Newsbusters is a “media watchdog” site that doesn’t pretend to be non-partisan: it goes after the liberal mainstream media for bias. I am tempted to conclude that agenda-driven watchdogs are more credible than so-called objective watch-dogs, like CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” which are almost as biased but pretend not to be.

Newsbusters does good work sometimes, then comes up with something like Matthew Balan’s sneering attack on the news media’s praise of “Spotlight” ( CBS Celebrates ‘Very Powerful,’ ‘Fantastic’ Liberal Reporter Movie) which didn’t contain a word about why the media shouldn’t be praising it. (I don’t think Balan saw the movie.) It’s an embarrassing piece, Newsbusters at its biased worst. The writer keeps telling us that actor Mark Ruffalo. who plays one of the reporters in the film,  is “left wing,” as if that is relevant to the role he played in the film (it isn’t). Apparently Balan thinks that a remarkably accurate movie about good investigative reporting and a scandal involving harm to hundreds of thousands of children shouldn’t be made because it doesn’t make organized religion look good, and does make a liberal newspaper look good.

He’s nuts. Are religious conservatives that deranged, that a straightforward, true account of the news media doing its job (for a change) and the historic and world-shaking scandal it uncovered confirms their suspicions of a progressive Hollywood conspiracy? The movie isn’t political in any way! It was praised by CBS and other critics because it’s a terrific movie that has only one agenda, which is to tell an important story compellingly. Sorry that it gives the Catholic Church the treatment it deserves, Newsbusters.

On the left is Media Matters, David Brock’s site that makes Newsbusters look like the epitome of non-partisan analysis. It’s not even a watchdog, and barely pretends to be any more: it is a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Is there a good, objective, non-partisan media watchdog site that isn’t trying to prop up parties and candidates? The closest is probably Poynter.org, (Wait, why isn’t this in the Ethics Alarms links? Better fix THAT…), out of the Poynter Institute, which has the broader agenda of teaching and promoting good and ethical journalism. The site doesn’t—can’t—cover all the misconduct in the media. It does a good job when it does, though: here’s a current post on the media’s race-baiting Justice Scalia, which I covered yesterday. It concludes…

“The New York Times duly noted that one Scalia remark “drew muted gasps in the courtroom.” (The New York Times) But “far from being racist, that proposition is an acknowledgment of racial inequality — and it’s central to the argument for racial preferences. Those preferences wouldn’t be necessary if applicants from all racial and ethnic groups possessed exactly the same paper credentials.”(The Los Angeles Times) Unfortunately, the digital age brings a few too many reporters sitting at desks and doing facile, Twitter-friendly rewrites of stuff they know little about.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

Back to Newsbusters: When it is good, it can be very good, as it was yesterday exposing an outrageous distortion of a Ted Cruz interview on NPR. I knew that interviewers edit interview answers for broadcast. I did not know that any major news organization would think it was ethical to distort the emphasis, thrust and meaning of a Presidential candidate’s words this blatantly. (But then Cruz is a conservative.) NPR duly posted the unedited interview transcript online, which is not good enough: how many listeners are going to check what they heard driving to work to discover what was really said? How many suspect that what they heard was sliced and diced like gazpacho? Not many, and NPR knows it.

In checking what Cruz really said and what the broadcast of his interview with NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep made him out to say, Newsbusters reporter Tim Graham found text that showed the Cruz’s answers were shortened by mid-paragraph cuts, blunting his points and also censoring his most critical comments about the Obama Administration and its current policies. Here is the section of the interview containing the most edits. Graham has bolded the cuts; what is not bolded is what the NPR audience heard. I’ll break in here and there, in italics.

Continue reading →

Thoughts On Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez, An Especially Dangerous Ethics Dunce

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
Quick, Tatiana! Michele Bachmann is on "The View" in 3 minutes!

Quick, Tatiana! Michele Bachmann is on “The View” in 3 minutes!

The “dangerous” part is illustrated by the section of the Washington Post headline that reads “Mich. woman who shot at shoplifters gets 18 months probation….”  Then there’s the part that briefly made me think that the Post was becoming a hoax site: “…vows to ‘never help anybody again.”

A Michigan judge sentenced concealed carry permit holder Tatiana Duva-Rodriguez to 18 months of probation and took away the permit, as punishment for her shooting several  rounds at a shoplifter’s fleeing auto outside a Home Depot on October. 6. Disillusioned that the law took a dim view of her playing amateur “Starsky and Hutch,” she wailed, “I tried to help. And I learned my lesson that I will never help anybody again.”

Thoughts:

1. What an idiot. There is more stupidity packed into that statement than you will find in a room full of Ben Carson fans. She “tried” by shooting a gun at shoplifters? What she tried to do is irrelevant. Good intentions matched to moronic conduct mitigates nothing. Now, because she was properly punished ( I would say leniently punished) for irresponsible vigilante use of her weapon and what would have been excess force even if she had been Starsky, she’s going to punish humanity by never helping anyone ever again, so there!  Continue reading →

More Hoax Site Web Pollution

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Not funny, jerks.

Not funny, jerks.

Conservative sites are mocking the New York Times for linking to a hoax site story about California instituting a ban on the future sale and ownership of all .45 ACP ammo. The link was included in an editorial calling for states to be more aggressive in banning types of weapons, magazines  and ammunition. “Ammunition” linked to the fake story on a site called “The National Report.” That particular story is neither particularly satiric, not is it funny; it’s just a lie. But I’m sure the staff is really proud of themselves, fooling the Times (though as Glenn Reynolds pointed out on Instapundit, the Times itself is looking more and more like a hoax  itself).

Admittedly, having never used The National Report before, whoever found the link should have vetted it. If they just scrolled down a bit from the story the Times used, they would have seen such obvious fake headlines as “Good Cop Will Speak Up Once He’s Witnessed His 15th Unlawful Killing,” “Koko the Gorilla Just Endorsed Donald Trump for President,” and “Starbucks Reveals Plans To Open New Chain Of Gun-friendly Cafés.” Or maybe they believed those too.

I’m not going to mock the Times: these hoax sites are all unethical unless they make their satirical status clear to all readers, on the home page, up front, unmistakably. The ethical objective is humor; the objective of fooling readers and hopefully legitimate news sources is neither funny, nor ethical.

Conservative sites that cheer such deceptions because they have ill will toward the liberal media victims are simply encouraging and enabling the unethical conduct.

Race-Baiting Scalia (For Doing His Job)

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments
Ignore them, Nino.

Ignore them, Nino.

As is often the case with topics here, I heard about the uproar over Justice Antonin Scalia’s controversial question during oral argument on the latest challenge to affirmative action accidentally, when a Facebook friend re-posted a furious message from his friend calling Scalia a moron and a racist. Even reading a second hand account of what somebody read that Scalia said (the transcript hadn’t been released, but never mind: that was enough for my friend’s African-American friend to call a Supreme Court Justice a racist and for my friend, who is a liberal-minded professor, to endorse it), I could tell that the attack was unfair and worse, outright race-baiting.

What Scalia was alleged to have asked a lawyer was whether affirmative action actually hurt blacks by putting them in “more advanced” institutions, that they “don’t belong” in elite schools. I knew, no matter what Justice Scalia really said, that he was talking about some blacks, not all blacks. That’s obvious: if an African American student can be admitted to an elite school without the “thumb on the scale” of affirmative action, obviously he or she is qualified and belongs there. But more importantly, I knew from personal experience that being admitted to a top school when the student’s credentials wouldn’t normally warrant it could be disastrous.

I worked in the administration of Georgetown Law Center in the late seventies and early eighties, as the school was trying to increase its percentage of black students. I was involved in the process sometimes, and was stunned by its unfortunate revelations: for example, some of the black students we accepted from elite colleges lacked basic reading, writing and critical thinking skills. I remember one Yale grad in particular who could not write a comprehensible sentence.

Georgetown Law set up a special class for these minority students (and a couple of  white “legacy” admits who were sons of wealthy alums, one of which I had specifically told his father could not possibly graduate, based on his college grades and test scores.) Then the school was sued by one of the affirmative action students, who claimed that making him take the remedial class was demeaning and racist. Of course he would have been better off in a less demanding law school. Affirmative action did none of these students any favors. In my opinion then and now, their welfare, confidence and self-esteem was  sacrificed so Georgetown could look progressive, and to the dubious objective of diversity for diversity’s sake.

It wasn’t just my Facebook friend’s friend that was bashing Scalia as a racist. It was much of the news media. “Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at ‘Slower’ Colleges” reported Mother Jones. “Scalia: Maybe black students belong at ‘less-advanced’ schools” reported The Hill. MSNBC’s slur was Justice Antonin Scalia floats ‘lesser schools’ for black students.  A New York Times editorial—the paper has, it appears, lost its mind– said that Scalia raised an “offensive premise which has not gotten such a full airing at the Supreme Court since the 1950s.” The New York’s Daily News  headlined“SUPREME DOPE” over a photo of Nino. Continue reading →

Heroes, Villains And Fools In The Latest “Donald Trump Candidacy Ethics Train Wreck” Disaster

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Circus Train wreck

In a single post I can’t possibly cover all of the heroes, villains and fools who have emerged in the aftermath of the explosion of Trump’s latest hand-grenade tossed into the Presidential campaign. I have to start somewhere, though.

At the outset, I want to officially designate Trump’s campaign as an ethics train wreck, neatly paired with the Hillary Clinton Campaign Ethics Train Wreck (more from that later.) Do you sense that the number of Ethics Train Wrecks are proliferating? You are correct, and it is both a direct result and an indirect result of the Obama Administration Ethics Train Wreck. When leadership is feckless, weak, dishonest, unethical and ineffective, a society’s ethical standards start to unravel.

Now on to the initial designations regarding Trump’s declaration that Muslims should be banned from entering the country.

Hero, Villain, AND Fool: Donald Trump. Trump is a hero in his own mind; in ethics terms, the status is accidental, an example of doing a good and courageous thing for all the wrong reasons. In his typical, bully-in-a china-shop  way, Trump has forced the national debate to focus on nasty realities rather than operate from President Obama’s fantasy world, where radical Islamic terrorists somehow are not Islamic, and Hillary Clinton’s delusion/lie that terrorism has “nothing to do with Muslims, whatsoever” even after two Muslims, because they were Muslims, killed 14 citizens in a terrorist attack. Muslims who have been radicalized or who have ties to terror groups are a real and existential problem that requires a coherent policy addressed at the problem. Chanted nostrums like “This isn’t who we are” don’t get the job done. A frank debate is mandatory, and sometimes only a boor, a maniac or a boob with less than acute intellectual skills will have the guts to force such a debate. Clarence Darrow regarded nut-case John Brown as such a hero, arguing that some problems require someone whose disregard for conventional societal standards to “cut the Gordian Knot.” By Darrow’s definition, then, Trump is a hero. Continue reading →

Update On “The Worst Aunt Ever” Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
Auntie Maim and Nephew Maimer...

Auntie Maim and Nephew Maimer…

Remember the Ethics Alarms post about the favorite aunt who sued her 12-year old nephew for damages based on her injury when he jumped into her arms at his birthday party when he was 8? Remember the indignant plaintiffs lawyer who couldn’t get his mind around the fact that normal people don’t (ande shouldn’t) always see right and wrong like lawyers do, or that “it’s done all the time” (that is, The Golden Rationalization, #1 on the Rationalizations list, “Everybody does it”) and “there are worse lawsuits” ( or the worst of all rationalizations, #22, “Comparative Virtue” or “Its not the worst thing”) are not sufficient ethical defenses of a woman who voluntarily traumatizes a child who trusts her and who just lost his mother?

The Weekly Standard looks at the episode from some different angles, and writer Charlotte Allen does an excellent job providing a balanced analysis of the case (which I am now using in my ethics seminars to explain to lawyers how legal ethics alone is often not enough to make lawyers ethical). I am awash with regret that I didn’t think of the gag  “Auntie Maim” in the original post, which admittedly went a bit overboard in its condemnation as it was. Mostly, however, I am gratified that I was quoted in the piece after a well-handled interview with Charlotte, and indeed that she used my perspective to sum up the significance of the episode.

You can read it all here.

KABOOM! From The Niggardly Files: It Has Come To This!

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments
No, this graphic makes no sense, but neither does anything in the post...

No, this graphic makes no sense here, but neither does anything in the post…

A whole set of ethical guidelines were built upon the infamous episode in the District of Columbia government when a white executive was disciplined for using the word “niggardly,” because some of the products of the District of Columbia public schools were unfamiliar with the word and took offense. Then there was the time the Los Angeles NAACP attacked Hallmark for a “talking card” with an outer space theme that mentioned “black holes,” thinking the card was talking about “black ‘ho’s.”

These and similar episodes are usually fairly filed under “Morons” and can be recovered from if not forgotten. College students, however, engaging in this kind of race-obsessed word confusion is too much for my always combustible brain. This caused my head to do its best Krakatoa impression.

Ready? You are warned: Continue reading →

Ethics Musings Sparked By The Passing Of Ken Beatrice, D.C. Sports Talk Legend

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

kbeatrice2

If you did not live in the D.C. area in the Eighties, you probably never heard of Ken Beatrice, who just died in a hospice at the age of 72. There was a time when Beatrice was the radio sports authority in pro football crazy Washington D.C., and star of the most popular and talked about call-in show of any kind on the local radio. He deserved his popularity, for Beatrice was smart, hard-working, knowledgeable, professional, and nice. His career, its rise and fall, was also a hard ethics lesson, for anyone paying attention, on why it is that good people do unethical things that hurt themselves more than anyone else.

Beatrice’s acclaim arose out of his astounding knowledge of football at all levels, from the pros to high school. I’ve never cared about football, but I listened to Ken’s show just because he was amazing. From his Washington Post obituary:

“His knowledge of pro football players, current and potential, was nonpareil. Call in to ask about the third-string quarterback at a second-tier college, and Mr. Beatrice could tell you the player’s height, weight and 40-yard dash time.He was so attentive to the game, a sportscaster once told The Washington Post, that he was able to recite a team’s depth chart off the top of his head, naming both the starters and the second- and third-stringers who would eventually replace them.”

This doesn’t even do Beatrice justice: you had to hear him. It was like a Las Vegas magic act. A caller would say, “I graduated from Madison High in Rexburg, Idaho, and I hear they have a running back on the football team that may have pro potential…I can’t think of his name..” Continue reading →