Year: 2019

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 9/4/2019: “Is We Getting Dummer?”* Edition.

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

The old Simon and Garfunkle song accurately describes when I woke up this morning…

1. I think that settles it. I’m going to flush myself down the toilet...Yesterday, an educated, adult woman of my acquaintance told her Facebook friends about her terrible treatment by Alamo Rental Cars. When a FBF responded with a refeence to Santa Anna, she replied, “???” Yes, she had no idea what “Alamo” referred to. This speaks to a catastrophic failure of the American education system.

On the bright side,  ignorant citizens are the target audience of many of the highest polling Democratic candidates for President.

2. Ethics Hero: Whoopi Goldberg? On ABC’s “The View,” a show that relentlessly lowers the IQ of anyone who watches it for more than 5 minutes, co-host Whoopi Goldberg began the first show of the new season to condemn efforts in actors in Hollywood to  blacklist conservatives and Trump supporters, a practice encouraged by tweets from   “Will and Grace”  stars  Debra Messing and  Eric McCormack over the weekend. After some back and forth with the assorted idiots who share the panel with her, Whoopi said,

Listen, last time people did this, people ended up killing themselves. This is not a good idea, okay? Your idea of who you don’t want to work with is your personal business. Do not encourage people to print out lists because the next list that comes out, your name will be on and then people will be coming after you. No one — nobody — we had something called a blacklist and a lot of really good people were accused of stuff. Nobody cared whether it was true or not. They were accused. And they lost their right to work. You don’t have the right in this country. People can vote for who they want to. That is one of the great rights of this country. You don’t have to like it, but we don’t — we don’t go after people because we don’t like who they voted for. We don’t go after them that way. We can talk about issues and stuff but we don’t print out lists, and I’m sure you guys misspoke when you said that because you — it sounded like a good idea. Think about it. Read about it. Remember what the blacklist actually meant to people, and don’t encourage anyone, anyone to do it!

I wonder how many people who don’t know about the Alamo know about the blacklist? Continue reading →

Headed to The Ethics Alarms “Funny! But Unethical” Files: Ethics Dunce Christina Meador

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Told by her bride-to-be sister that that she could wear “anything” as maid of honor at the wedding, Christina Meador had the brilliant inspiration to acquire a T-Rex costume and show up for the Nebraska ceremony dressed like a promotion for the next Jurassic Park sequel.

Posting the soon-to-go-viral photo on Facebook, the Maidasaurus wrote that she “regrets nothing.” Indeed, it’s a very funny scene. It was also an unethical stunt that made the event about the wacky maid of honor rather than the couple being wed. Laughs notwithstanding, the gag was a betrayal of trust.

Believe me, I am somewhat sympathetic. I was once the best man at a wedding before which the bride had dared me to show up in a chicken suit. I was tempted. I love chicken suits. Nevertheless, I decided that it would have been wrong.

The very least a wedding pair should be able to count on is for the day of their marriage to be one time, among very few in their lives, when everyone’s attention and thoughts are focused on them. Christina Meador robbed her own sister and the man she loves of that for a practical joke and 15 minutes of fame.

It was a rotten thing to do.

The Novelist Is Scared By Red Caps. What’s The Ethical Response To That?

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

“AAAAAAAIIIIIII!!!! Take it away! TAKE IT AWAY!!!”

Rebecca Makkai, an American novelist of moderate success, tweeted,

Fascinating!  And her tweet raises some trenchant ethics questions:

1. How should good Americans regard someone who suggests that it isn’t normal to support the elected President of the United States?

Answer: As a bad American, as well as stunningly arrogant. The impulse is fascist: those who don’t agree with the political positions of Makkai and her ilk are not merely wrong, mistaken or misguided, but abnormal. It is particularly subversive to pronounce those who are behaving exactly as U.S. citizens have behaved and have been expected to behave since 1789 as not being normal, while Makkai, one of the divisive and destructive members of the “resistance” attempting to undermine the nation’s unity and institutions, pose as respectable.

2. Does an individual’s aversion to red caps because one variety carries a slogan deemed objectionable to the Trump Deranged qualify as a sensitivity anyone is obligated to observe in their choice of headgear? Continue reading →

Late-Starting Week Ethics Warm-Up, 9/3/2019: Why We Have Fake News

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

A post-Labor Day mess in San Francisco…

Good morning!

1. Why we have fake news, Part A: “Journalists just make stuff up.” From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

A survey of American Jews showed continued disapproval of President Donald Trump, with anti-Semitism high and Israel low on the priority list for Jewish voters. The survey, conducted for a liberal-leaning Jewish organization, the Jewish Electorate Institute, by Greenberg Research, which does polling for Democratic candidates, showed 71 percent of likely Jewish-American voters disapprove of Trump and 29 percent approve, commensurate with polling since Trump’s election…The survey released Wednesday of 1,000 Jewish voters nationally was taken between May 6 and 12, and is consistent with past polling of a constituency that leans strongly Democratic…The poll showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorable/unfavorable score as 45/38. Netanyahu used to score high approval among American Jews, but his sustained clashes with Obama on Palestinian and Iran policy, and his closeness to Trump appear to have eroded American Jewish support.

Gallup:

….Our aggregate from January through August of this year shows a 29% Trump job approval rating among Jews, with 69% disapproval….

Now here’s ABC News Chief Political Analyst Matthew Dowd on Twitter:

Dowd is just citing statistic pulled out of the air, apparently. How can anyone trust these people? Continue reading →

The Division Of Conscience And Religious Freedom Vs. Basic Workplace Ethics [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments

In May, the Trump administration issued a new rule  that gives health care workers the power to refuse to provide services their religion disapproves of, such as abortion, sterilization or assisted suicide. A religious conviction isn’t even essential to trigger the rule; a matter of conscience is enough. The measure essentially revived a Bush rule that the Obama administration reversed.

It’s a bad rule, and an unethical rule, as Ethics Alarms has held before. If you can’t perform all the duties of a job, then don’t take the job. If an employee can get his or her employer to agree that he or she is exempt from certain duties, that’s freedom of contract. Fine.  The Trump rule, however, like the Bush rule before it, breaches a basic principle of the workplace, and common sense as well. It also leads inevitably to messes like this one:

The federal government has accused  the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, Vermont of violating  federal law by forcing a nurse to participate in an abortion despite her objections. The hospital denies it.

The nurse, who is Catholic, filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. It  alleges, that she was misled by supervisors to believe she was assisting in a procedure scheduled after a miscarriage. “After [she] confirmed that she was, in fact, being assigned to an abortion, [her employer] refused her request that other equally qualified and available personnel take her place,” the complaint reads. She then participated in the procedure and “has been haunted by nightmares ever since.”

Now the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services has filed a notice of violation against the hospital, the  first since the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom was added to HHS in  2018. Continue reading →

Labor Day Ethics Run-Down, 9/2/2019: TV Schedule On BEN (The Bad Ethics Network): “The Perfect Stupid Storm,” “The News With Dan Rather,” “Fascist Will And Grace,” “The Tragic Schoolbus,” And More!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

…because I’m feeling run down…

Fake news from a fake journalist, courtesy of the Facebook Borg: A Facebook friend who is a professor circulated this social media post from Dan Rather:

“Reporting that President Trump lied about phone calls with Chinese in order to boost markets shows dangerous behavior, the kind of manipulation that has sent people to prison. It also shows the Chinese his weakness and insecurity, which they are undoubtedly eager to exploit.”

I checked, since Rather has no more credibility as a reporter than James Comey has as a “patriot.” There is no way of knowing whether the President “lied” about receiving phone calls from Chinese government reps that might lead to a break-through in the current trade war. The Chinese denied such calls–so what? The news media routinely assumes Russian statements are lies; I suppose the rule is that when a dictatorship contradicts our President, it must be believed. Then there were unidentified “aides” who “admitted” that the President  “conflated comments from China’s vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese.”  This report comes from CNN. I count four reasons to regard the report as rumor rather than fact, at best….three, if you’re Dan Rather.

Yet when I pointed out that Rather had forfeited the privilege of ever being believed about anything, especially anything relating to GOP Presidents, my professor friend cited with favor a comment from another member of the Borg Collective arguing that a single misstep shouldn’t wipe out Rather’s decades of reporting excellence. Imagine, these are smart people making these desperate and absurd arguments…almost every day.

First, the fact that Rather was knowingly using counterfeit evidence to smear President Bush in the National Guard non-story when Rather and his producer were exposed raises the question of how many times in those decades he engaged in similar breaches of ethics. Second, he has never expressed remorse or contrition for his betrayal of public trust. Third, Rather’s post is false on its face. No elected official has ever been “sent to prison” for a dubious statement that triggered the stock market.

2. Hurricane Dorian ethics: Continue reading →

Labor Day Ethics Quiz: The Dr. Seuss Oath

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Conservative writer Megan Fox was left sputtering with indignation after learning that a Missouri councilwoman, Kelli Dunaway (D…of course), took her oath of  office with her right hand on a Dr. Seuss book. “Just because we’ve done things the way we’ve always done them is no reason to keep doing them that way,” she told ABC News.

Good point! Let’s try taking the oath using a hunk of cheese next time!

The particular children’s classic Dunaway chose for this solemn ritual was “Oh the Places You’ll Go” which, ironically, we recently defended here from the accusation that it was racist.

Fox:

“One can only hope that choosing to make a mockery out of the serious pledge to protect and defend the Constitution will be the catalyst to take her to a new place in the next election–the private sector…Meanwhile, real satirists over at the “Babylon Bee” are suffering trying to come up with something weirder than this to report. No wonder Snopes can’t quit accusing the Bee of trying to sound like real news. The real news is insane.”

Is it?

Your Ethics Alarms Labor Day Ethics Quiz is…

Is it unethical–disrespectful, irresponsible, dishonest— to take an oath of office on a children’s book?

I think I’ll wait for some responses before I give my answer…but I have one.

Ethics True Or False: “The KKK Has As Much Right To Have A Cookout As Anyone Else”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

This is an excellent question to ask your Facebook Borg friends to determine if they support and understand the meaning of freedom of thought, freedom of association, free speech, and the Bill of Rights generally. Most of them will get the question wrong, because they don’t. Some of them will probably call you a racist for explaining what the correct and ethical answer is: TRUE.

It’s not a matter of debate either, unless one believes that the First Amendment is debatable—as, depressingly, a growing number of progressives do.

In Madison, Indiana, a mob of antifa members (with bandanas covering their faces)  and others conspired to prevent the local KKK chapter from holding its annual annual “Ku Klux Kookout” picnic in a public park. They beat the Klan group to the site, then confronted hoodless “Kookers”, who they outnumbered, and intimidated them into retreating after a ten minute confrontation.

“The ‘honorable sacred knights’ of the KKK showed up here at the park and were chased out within minutes because hate has no place here in Madison, Indiana,” Mike Gamms, one of the antifa organizers of the counter-cookout, or whatever you call it, said with misplaced pride. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month (With Bonus Points Because Saying Something This Gallactically Stupid On TV Makes Other People Dumber When They Are Watching To Learn Something): MSNBC’s Chris Hayes

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

“The weirdest thing about the Electoral College is the fact that if it weren’t specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional.” 

MSNBC host Chris Hayes. Yes, he really said this. He really did.

Res ipsa loquitur. I suppose I won’t be excessively stating the obvious to again note, for the second time today, that when a pundit utters something this idiotic,  no one should care what he thinks about anything else.

Oh, one more thing. Imagine the mockery on Hayes’s own network if President Trump said this.

The commentary around the web on Hayes’ revelation has been hilarious, and I was tempted to re-publish some of the best here, but I’m curious to see what the Ethics Alarms regulars will come up with.

Don’t let me down.

Mid-Labor Day Weekend Ethics Barbecue, 9/1/2019: Good Quotes, Bad Quotes, And Someone To Avoid Forever

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Boy, it seems like everyone’s on strike this week. I can actually see tumbleweeds rolling across the Ethics Alarms traffic stats…

1. Ethics quote of the weekend: Former GOP House member Trey Gowdy, on the astounding gall of James Comey (and Rep Adam Schiff, who apparently lacks the embarrassment gene) to call on Gowdy to apologize for his criticism of Comey’s unquestionably unethical conduct, after it had been thoroughly confirmed by the recent Inspector General’s report.  Comey even said Gowdy “defamed” him, an inexcusable hyperbole for a lawyer—even he knows better. Gowdy said,

“I never said Comey would or should go to jail. I’m certainly not going to apologize to anyone who violated FBI and Department of Justice policy, who violated an employment agreement, who shared sensitive information about an ongoing investigation, who sent classified information to an unauthorized person and then had amnesia when the FBI came to his home to try to retrieve government property…I will give him a piece of unsolicited advice: You should aspire to more in life than simply skating by without having been indicted.”

Bingo!

2.  What is the proper societal response to this horrible, horrible human being? Because it was her last day on the job and she had given her two weeks notice, Donna Reneau, a 911 operator, decided she would take out all of her grudges and frustrations on emergency callers she didn’t know and was obligated to assist. After all, what could her employers do, fire her?

So, when a flash flood swept away  Debbie Stevens’ car, with her in it, a week ago in  Fort Smith, Arkansas and she desperately called 911, instead of the trained professional she needed,  she reached Reneau, suddenly an avenging operator from Hell.

“Please help me, I don’t want to die!”, Stevens pleads at the start of the  22 minute recorded call. “I can’t swim! I’m scared! I’m going to drown!” Reneau reponded by telling the terrified woman that rescuers would “get there when they get there,” and even told her to  “shut up” as Reneau’s hysteria grew.

As the water began filling Stevens’ SUV and she cried, “I’m scared! I’ve never had anything happen to me like this before,” the 911 operator jeered. “Well this will teach you, next time don’t drive in the water,! I don’t see how you didn’t see it, you had to go right over it…”

When police were finally able to reach the swamped car, Debbie Stevens was dead, drowned. Fort Smith Interim Police Chief Danny Baker, in a statement, acknowledged public outrage but said  Reneau had not  broken any laws nor “violated policy.” THAT’S got to be a mistake, unless the policy in Fort Smith is to razz citizens in crisis.

Now the question is what should be done with, to, and about Reneau. Her performance on the recording is signature significance: nobody behaves like that who is fit for human association. She can’t be trusted as an employee, a neighbor, a colleague or a friend. She lacks empathy and decency; if she isn’t a psychopath or a sociopath, she’s too close for comfort. I don’t want her in my cul de sac…do you? I don’t want her associated with my city, or anything related to me, and that’s how every resident of Fort Smith should feel…and behave toward her accordingly.

And if, because she can’t find a job and no one wants her in their establishment or business—there is no law preventing discrimination against individual blights on society—she ends up living in a shack somewhere in the Okefenokee Swamp with the company of  snakes and leeches,  if they’ll have her—GOOD.

Be on the look-out! Here she is…

Reneau had her chance at living with civilized Americans, and blew it. [Pointer: Reg Fife. Keep those ethics story tips coming, everybody!] Continue reading →