Two recent ethics stories involving the famous, accomplished and popular:
1. Bill Murray The aging bad boy of SNL and “Groundhog Day,” found himself in some trouble recently when he was trying to chill at the Vesuvio rooftop lounge in Carmel, California, convenient to the annual Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tourney in which Bill was playing. A few patrons started flashing cameras at him from close range—without asking, of course–and true to his on-screen character (and off-screen, where he is known as an impulsive jerk), Murray got up and chucked their phones off the 2nd story rooftop. Obviously, whatever the provocation, you can’t do that.
Bill paid for the phones, and the owners didn’t press charges. The problem for me were the typical reactions of commenters on the story, proving once again that the average, even above average member of the public can’t solve a simple ethics problem. Continue reading →
Kanye West, a major and influential figure in pop music and with young black African-Americans particularly, has been a constant force for racial division, most notably when he told a live national audience that the response to the New Orleans recovery after Katrina was deliberately slow in order to harm African Americans. Despite the fact that he has repeatedly revealed himself to be a shameless jerk as well—really, it’s inconceivable that someone of such taste and class as Kim Kardashian would marry someone like that, but who can map the human heart?—West continues to promote racial distrust and division, making the musician a cultural and societal pollutant, the human national equivalent of Flint water.
His latest racist outburst was a series of tweets yesterday to his millions of followers that proceeded this way, within a minute…
To Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, New York Times, and any other white publication. Please do not comment on black music anymore…
I love love love white people but you don’t understand what it means to be the great grandson of ex slaves and make it this far…
The system is designed for colored people to fail and one of our only voices is music. One of our only ways out is music.
Hilariously, West’s complaint was that a Pitchfork review “only” gave his album a “9 out of 10” rating. He explained that he deserved a “30 out of 10.”
The racists.
This is more evidence that strong, vocal and influential forces in pop culture and the black community have abandoned the goals of racial respect, integrated society and equal justice and opportunity for the new goals black separation, special status, double standards, and disrespect. This has been the message of protesting activists on dozens of campuses; it was the message of the Black Lives Matter/Black Panthers salute Americans were subjected to by Beyoncé at the Super Bowl halftime show, and that is West’s irresponsible message as well.
The Tennessee Senate’s Senate Health and Welfare Committee members have overwhelmingly approved a proposed bill that seeks to protect therapists from 2014 changes in the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics. The Code decrees that “counselors refrain from referring prospective and current clients based solely on the counselor’s personally held values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.” The bill, however, will allow practitioners to refuse to accept a patient without legal or professional penalties as long as they refer the individual to another qualified professional.
The Tennessee Association for Marriage and Family Therapists opposes the legislation, saying “This bill is in direct opposition to the ethical code of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and potentially harmful to clients,” the group said in a statement. “Our mandate to do no harm to the consumer, we believe, would be violated.” A therapist who testified before the committee opined that “they can keep their belief system and still offer good counseling but not based on their religious beliefs.” Others have objected to a legislative body dictating professional ethics.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz today is…
Is the proposed bill reasonable and ethical, or just a way to allow bigoted counselors to discriminate?
Based on his unprofessional outbursts during the last Republican debate, Donald Trump has blown a fuse, and is edging ever closer to that inevitable moment when he loses the crucial brain synapse that leaves him drooling and proclaiming himself Prince of the Pangolins, or something similar. He has continued his meltdown with an anti-Ted Cruz rant released on his website as a press release. He laughably accuses Ted Cruz of being unstable, which is like Charles Manson calling Caligula nuts. He recites a number of what he calls Cruz’s lies, but they are just Cruz’s opinions. He is of the general opinion that Trump is lying about being a conservative. That seems fair and reasonable to me. What Cruz is really doing is pushing Trump’s buttons. The Donald can dish it out, but Cruz, like Megyn Kelly, is proving that he can’t take it. Trump is whining, threatening, bluffing and blustering, and generally acting like the pampered, narcissist he has always been. Finally, poor, abused Donald writes this:
“One of the ways I can fight back is to bring a lawsuit against him relative to the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be President. If he doesn’t take down his false ads and retract his lies, I will do so immediately. Additionally, the RNC should intervene and if they don’t they are in default of their pledge to me.”
It’s President’s Day, and I see that it has been five years since the most popular Ethics Alarms President’s Day post was published. That one, from 2011, reminds us of the ethics wisdom and leadership acumen of the remarkable men who have served their country in the most challenging, difficult, and ethically complicated of all jobs, the U.S. Presidency.
In the middle of a campaign season littered with some disturbingly unethical candidates, it seems especially appropriate to re-post that entry now….with some updates. In 2011, I left out three Presidents, including the current one. Now all are represented, most of them well.
So…
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Presidents of the United States of America:
George Washington:“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”
John Adams: “Because power corrupts, society’s demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.”
Thomas Jefferson: “On great occasions every good officer must be ready to risk himself in going beyond the strict line of law, when the public preservation requires it; his motives will be a justification…”
James Madison: “No government any more than any individual will long be respected without being truly respectable.”
James Monroe: “The best form of government is that which is most likely to prevent the greatest sum of evil.”
John Quincy Adams: “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
Andrew Jackson:“One man with courage makes a majority.” (Attributed)
Martin Van Buren: “No evil can result from its inhibition more pernicious than its toleration.”
William Henry Harrison: “There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.” Continue reading →
Washington Post Democratic-shill-masquerading-as-a-journalist Dana Milbank is trying a new tact: if you think Hillary is a lousy campaigner, you’re a sexist. In fact, he came this close to saying that there’s “a special place in hell” for anyone who doesn’t find Hillary Clinton a treat for the eyes and ears.
Of course, he began his column–it is called “The sexist double standards hurting Hillary Clinton”— with a statement designed to make me break some teeth: “Much of Hillary Clinton’s difficulty in this campaign stems from a single, unalterable fact: She is a woman.” No, almost all of of Hillary Clinton’s difficulty in this campaign stems from a single, unalterable fact: She is an untrustworthy liar who can’t stop lying.
Never mind quibbling over that. Here is Dana’s argument in brief:
“The criticism is the same as in 2008: She doesn’t connect. She isn’t likeable. She doesn’t inspire. She seems shrill. “She shouts,” Bob Woodward said on MSNBC this month, also suggesting she “get off this screaming stuff.” Joe Scarborough, the host, agreed: “Has nobody told her that the microphone works?”…That’s not about Clinton; it’s about us. “It is a subtle kind of sexism that exists that we don’t recognize,” said Newton-Small, who literally wrote the book on the matter… “When women raise their voices, people tend to get their hackles up. People I talk to at Clinton events put her in a maternal role: Why is she screaming at me? Am I in trouble?”
Wrong. In fact, laughably wrong. In fact, political-correctness mongering in the First Degree. Clinton is engaged in fields, advocacy, politics and leadership, where effective communication skills and tools are essential, and her job, indeed, is to communicate in ways that her intended audience finds persuasive and easy to listen to. She can’t say, as Milbank tries to on her behalf, “Enjoy or you’re oppressing me!” Continue reading →
Brent Staples, who I’m sure is certain I am criticizing him because he is black…
I view this as tragic, in so many ways. Brent Staples himself is apparently the victim of the cultural poison he is peddling, that every failure, misfortune or criticism of an African American must be presumptively rooted in racial animus rather than the shortcomings or fault of the black citizen involved. Others who use this strategy of race-baiting as a political weapon are not as sincere as Staples—he writes this kind of thing in editorial columns all the time—but they have joined with him to do terrible damage to race relations, all in defense of a President whose incompetence is too painful for his supporters to accept.
I realized that this would be an unethical political weapon Democrats could not resist using back in 2008, when Obama was running against John McCain. I warned against it then. The Democrats were arguing that Obama was so clearly the only choice for voters that he could only be defeated by racism, for only racists would oppose him. I wrote..
This strategy would be unethical even if the Democrats weren’t the party nominating an eloquent abstraction with less governing experience than any Chief Executive within memory. It is insanely irresponsible when used to back a candidate about whom there are many legitimate doubts, mysteries and questions. Both parties deserve respect; both candidates deserve respect. And the democratic system deserves the most respect of all.
But is the Democratic message wrong if party decision-makers and faithful really believe it? Yes, because the belief is unsupported by hard, persuasive, un-slanted facts, and that makes it irresponsible and unfair…A belief alone is not enough to justify claiming victory for an untested leader with plenty of holes in his resume. Belief alone is not sufficient justification to lay the groundwork for race-baiting in the wake of an electoral loss in November.
I’m a rational, informed voter who does his research and knows the issues, and I may choose not to vote for Barack Obama for any number of legitimate reasons—including the offensive attitude of his party—that have nothing whatsoever to do with his race. How dare the Democratic Party, Obama, or anyone shout to the media that my vote is motivated by racism? This is playing with societal dynamite.
The Democratic message that the election is a slam dunk for Obama if America can only avoid bigotry and election fraud is a recipe for civil unrest, racial tension, and the unraveling of public faith in our institutions. It is reckless and offensive, and, take note, Democrats, idiotic.
“I have no illusions that your man will nominate someone who shares my orientation, but I hope he sends us someone smart. Let me put a finer point on it. I hope he sends us Elena Kagan.”
—The recently departed Antonin Scalia, speaking to Obama advisor David Axelrod seven years ago, as President Obama was faced with making his first Supreme Court nomination upon the retirement of Justice Souter.
Kagan, of course, was finally chosen to fill the second SCOTUS vacancy. Axelrod treats this conversation as somehow shocking, which I guess it would be to a political operative like him, to whom partisan warfare is everything,. Yet Scalia, who was known to be good friends with several of the more liberal members of the court, including Kagan, displayed with that private statement to Axelrod the professional attitude I have heard from many lawyers, and that perfectly describes my own. What is important to have on the Supreme Court are the best and most competent legal minds available. Assuming such judges also possess integrity, the third branch of the government will be in good hands. Continue reading →
I knew this time would come, and it came the same week for both parties: I’m getting sick of the debates, and it’s harder and harder to find new illumination and conclusions with each one. For some reason, however—the effect of the unsettling news of Justice Scalia’s sudden death. perhaps?—last night’s Republican debate (transcript here) was nastier and more personal than any of the debates this cycle, and Charles Krauthammer may be correct that that it was the most ugly Presidential candidates debate ever.
Observations:
1. This was 100% the fault of Donald Trump. I keep reading that the Republicans should be embarrassed—-what control does the party have over Trump? He’s in the race, and that means that he will drag down the conduct in the race. Arguing with him is like arguing with a 12-year-old—I was reminded of Erma Bombeck’s line that it is impossible to argue with a six-year-old without sounding like a six-year-old. Sometimes I think all the debaters should agree to turn their backs on Trump when he’s ranting, like all the jurors do in “Twelve Angry Men” when the racist finally lets it all out.
I wrote months ago that Republicans should have told Trump he wasn’t a Republican and thus wasn’t welcome in the debates, the nomination race or the party. They had neither the foresight, principles nor guts to do that, and now they are stuck with him polluting the debates and the race, engaging in the equivalent of belching and farting, as the juveniles supporting him cheer and snicker. Good job, everybody.
2. That was excellent, fair, competent moderation by John Dickerson. You know the debate has been a mess when the moderator is the star.
3. I have really come to resent Ben Carson’s sleepy, arrogant, useless statements and observations, wasting precious time, blathering platitudes, appealing only to those ignorant souls, like him, who really think the most challenging and consequential job on Earth should be handed to a proud amateur. In that respect, he is the most unethical individual on the stage. Continue reading →
I must admit: I thought the “unequal opportunity race” video that was the subject of my post to be so outrageously simplistic, exaggerated, insulting to white Americans and discouraging to minority Americans that nobody would defend it. The lively debate that the post sparked proved that the white privilege deflection has seeped into mainstream thinking far more than I had previously understood, and that the position the progressive movement wants to communicate to African Americans is that absent aggressive, government-executed hobbling of present day white citizens as they pursue their own ambitions and dreams, and opportunities for their children, black Americans are doomed to comparative failure, cursed to be victims of traps, gaping craters and metaphorical sharks.
To which I say b.s. (as a black man). I have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that I have succeeded (and failed at times) solely based on my merit, talents, and desire. I have not been unemployed for even a second, since the age of 18 (I am 37). I have applied to many, many jobs that I have desired, and been hired for many of those jobs. I have been accepted and attended 8 (8!) different colleges, earning 3 different degrees. I have spent the last 20 years working in education, from ECE to college, and spent 3 years as a preschool director (a black male preschool director is about as rare as a unicorn that poops gold).
None of this is meant to be taken as bragging, as my story is no more successful than anyone else on this blog. Nor am I more successful then any average black man, who grew up with loving, educated parents, who forced me to have a good head on my shoulders, taught me the importance of education, and did not teach me to be distrustful of whites, or to blame shift my failures elsewhere. I find it patronizing to be told that individual merit is not enough for me to succeed, when compared to whites; that if I truly want to compete on an even playing field, I need those same whites to level the field.
Ethics Alarms 