Month: June 2021

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

hith-charge-of-the-light-brigade-2

Let’s see if the brilliance, perception and foresight of the Ethics Alarms Commentariat can put an upbeat exclamation point at the end of what for me has been an unexpected entry into my Top Ten Worst Weeks ever—which, by the way, pales in worst-ness compared to what the vast majority of humanity has experienced. I know I’ve been very, very lucky. This is just one of the weeks where I wish I was luckier. And smarter.

As one of the many excellent mentors, role models and teachers I’ve had, Tom Donohue, recently retired as head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, use to say, “Charge on!”

Afternoon Ethics Incitements, 6/17/2021: Goodbye, Victoria’s Secret!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

VC angels

1. IIPTDXTTNMIAFB! Today’s “Imagine if President Trump did X that the news media is accepting from Biden” note officially takes in President Biden’s stumbling, fumbling, often embarrassing conduct during the G7 summit and his meeting with Putin, ranging from calling Putin a “killer” in advance of what was advertised as a diplomatic meeting, to snapping at a reporter, to periodically babbling incoherently and appearing over two hours late for a press conference. To read the conservative media, this was an unequivocal disaster; to read the rest of the news media, Biden’s class and dignity restored respect in the republic. My position is that it is unethical for domestic media to attack the President when he is abroad, so I would generally support the media’s treatment of Joe this week, except for the “refusing to report what happened when it reflected badly on their guy” part. But the news media mercilessly ridiculed President Trump for no more egregious conduct when he was meeting with foreign leaders. With one side of the news media primed to be hyper-critical, and the other side being hypocritical, it is impossible to figure out what really happened.

On the bright side, if you travel to Australia, the media will give you the straight story.“I just think Joe Biden is a lucky person,” said Sophie Elsworth of “The Australian”. “He has got all the media on his side—or most of the media on his side—particularly CNN. Completely at odds with what they did to Trump. So his popularity surely can only win from this because he’s getting so much positive PR through the journalists who are massive fans of him. It’s quite appalling to watch. And what happened to straight news reporting, which doesn’t seem to be existent there?”

It became 100% partisan propaganda, that’s what happened, Sophie.

2. Yeah, I’ll go out on a limb and say this is unethical…During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist, Republican Congressional candidate William Braddock warned an activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary, because he might just put a hit on her.

“I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” Braddock said at one point in the conversation according to a recording “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a fucking speed bump in the road. She’s a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood.” He added, “I have access to a hit squad, too, Ukrainians and Russians … Luna’s gonna go down and I hope it’s by herself.”

I’m sure Braddock will say he was only speaking metaphorically, and maybe he was. By “end anybody’s life,” he just meant their political life. After all, he has no criminal record. I’m sure he will also point out that Florida, like California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington, is a two party consent state regarding recorded conversations, so the taping was illegal, and thus unethical. However the words “I really don’t want to have to end anybody’s life for the good of the people of the United States of America…But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done,” unless accompanied by unequivocal laughter, is too sinister and creepy to ignore. I wouldn’t trust someone who talks like that, even in private.

Would you? [Pointer: valkygrrl]

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Let’s Play “Only In America!” Today’s Quandary: The Gorilla Glue Girl

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

“Only in America!” isn’t exactly an ethics quiz. It’s more of an “Is this a great country of a sick country?” game that focuses on the values and strengths of the culture….or otherwise

Incidentally, June 17 marks the date when, in 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France arrives in New York Harbor after being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean in 350 pieces. The copper and iron statue was reassembled and dedicated the following year in a ceremony presided over by U.S. President Grover Cleveland. The statue was designed by French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, who modeled it after his own mother, we are told—that woman was BIG!—with assistance from engineer Gustave Eiffel, later famous for, well, you know. It was supposed to be up in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, but financing took longer than expected. Even ignoring the pedestal and assembly process, he statue alone cost France an estimated $250,000, or $5.5 million in today’s money). It, or she, finally reached her forever home on Bedloe’s Island nine years late. At the dedication, President Cleveland, said, “We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.” At more than 305 feet from the foundation of its pedestal to the top of its torch, the statue was taller than any structure in New York City at the time.

In 1903, a plaque inscribed with a sonnet titled “The New Colossus” by American poet Emma Lazarus was placed on an interior wall of the pedestal. Lazarus words, especially “Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,’ have caused a lot of confusion over the years, as many people and even some under-educated elected officials seem to think they represent official U.S. policy, hence “Welcome, illegal immigrants!”

None of which has anything to do with the issue at hand, which is this: In February, Ethics Alarms examined the weird story of Tessica Brown, who decided that the the perfect hair product for her needs was Gorilla Glue adhesive spray. Then, after the predictable result, she posted a video showing the world what an idiot she was, and threatening Gorilla Glue with a lawsuit, an idea the company quickly knocked down for the count. She lost a lot of hair, and even needed plastic surgery. Here’s angry Tessica in the video:

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Baseball Has A Cheating Problem That Is Old, Was Supposedly Addressed Decades Ago, And Is Strangling The Game. It Is Relevant To More Than Baseball (Part 3: The Crackdown)

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Before the 2021 season started, Major League Baseball claimed that it was about to start enforcing the rule against applying foreign substances to the baseball. Why. one might wonder. As Part I described, baseball has been casual about this rule for a long time, and the pattern goes back even longer than when Ethics Alarms first discussed it. In 1920, the game, trying to clean up its tarnished image in the wake of 1919 Black Sox scandal, banned the spitball as well as other “trick pitches” that involved altering the ball itself a few pitchers who were regarded as “spitball specialists” were “grandfathered” meaning that they were allowed to keep throwing the otherwise illegal pitch while others were not. This is not the way to make a rule against cheating, and the ambivalence about the spitball continued well into the 1980s. Baseball, and especially sportswriters, seemed to think this particular kind of cheating was cute. Only a few pitchers could throw a spitball, and those who did, notably Gaylord Perry, now in the Hall of Fame, were only occasionally caught and punished. Baseball finally made a rule that a pitcher couldn’t bring his fingers to his mouth; if he did, an automatic ball was called. Meanwhile, umpire searches of a suspected pitcher using other substances like K-Y jelly, usually hidden in a cap, became the stuff of comedy, as in the famous sequence from “The Naked Gun” above.

MLB became lax about enforcement, and predictably, some pitchers, and eventually most pitchers, took what was accepted as a “little” pine tar to get a better grip on the ball and, aided by modern chemistry, began using so-called “sticky stuff” to get higher rates of spin on the ball than they could with their natural talents. This development accelerated after 2018, when home runs became more common than ever before. When the rate of homers reached absurd levels in 2019, breaking the rules against putting foreign substances on the ball was viewed as a matter of professional survival. Pitchers experimented, trying Tyrus Sticky Grip, Firm Grip spray, Pelican Grip Dip stick and Spider Tack, a glue intended for use in World’s Strongest Man competitions and whose advertisements show someone using it to lift a cinder block with his palm. Some combined several of those products to create their own personal “sticky stuff.” Their clubs used Edgertronic high-speed cameras and TrackMan and Rapsodo pitch-tracking devices to see which version of the glue worked best.

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Unethical Email Of The Month: Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Lightfoot email

That obnoxious, bullying, uncivil and unprofessional memo from Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, is signature significance. Competent and effective managers don’t write and send memos like that, not even once. As a subordinate, I would resign after receiving such an email. As a supervisor, I would place a staffer who sent that memo on probation after requiring her to apologize to the recipient.

Chicago is one of the most difficult American cities to govern. Lightfoot is currently facing legal problems as a consequence of her discriminatory announcement that she would only do interviews with “journalists of color.” The email, just another of many pieces of evidence showing Lightfoot’s arrogance and incompetence.

This is what happens when voters elect officials based not on their management experience and revealed leadership skills, but on their gender and skin shade.

[Instapundit’s Ed Driscoll had a funny line about the email: “CHICAGO’S MAYOR MORPHED INTO JACK TORRANCE SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED…”

Afternoon Ethics Afterthoughts, 6/16/2021: Baseball Free Zone [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

no baseball

You really didn’t think I was only going to write about baseball today, did you? Now, if I operated like CNN and the other networks, I might skip the current baseball ethics story entirely, since it’s not what my audience wants to hear about, obviously. But it is, in fact, the newest, most generally revealing and best ethics story out there, and Ethics Alarms isn’t here for profit or popularity. ALSO obviously.

Unfortunately, this has some unintended consequences, like my choice, 25 years ago, to concentrate my professional efforts on ethics. Despite all lip service to the contrary, law firms, Fortune 500 companies, professions, local governments and businesses generally don’t regard ethics as a high priority, so when the lock down made these and other entities cut “non-essentials,” ethics training was one of the first to go. ProEthics has weathered this period better than it might have thanks to legal ethics consulting and expert witness work, but right now we’re in our worst and scariest cash crunch ever, thanks to a wave of unexpected expenses arriving at exactly the wrong time. The reason there were no posts up yesterday afternoon and this morning is that I have to solve this problem, and the time and effort it requires risks interfering with Ethics Alarms.

Like William Saroyan, I resent that the need for money conflicts with doing what we want to do in life, but then, having chosen ethics as my vocation over many more traditional and lucrative options open to me (except theater: ethics is a lot more lucrative than theater), I set my self up for the Hyman Roth lecture: “This is the life we have chosen…” I give myself that one at least once a week.

But enough about my problems. On to Not Baseball!

1. Are you sick of this unethical narrative? I sure am. On today’s NYT front page, we are told that then-President Trump, “defying norms”—there’s that phony “norms” charge again—urged the Justice Department to investigate “false claims” of election fraud after the 2020 election. Well.

A. There is no norm for what a President should do if he genuinely believes that an election was rigged, stolen, or that there is a strong possibility that it may have been. The office is charged with protecting the Constitution, and such entreaties to the DOJ seem to me to be absolutely consistent with a President’s obligations.

B. The Times cannot say such claims are false, because the Times doesn’t know they are false.

C. As Nate Silver noted recently in another context, the constant refrain that a claim is false by those implicated in that claim without an accompanying desire to investigate the matter raises a rebuttable presumption that the claim may not be false after all.

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Baseball Has A Cheating Problem …It Is Relevant To More Than Baseball (Part 2): Unethical Quote Of The Week: Boston Red Sox Manager Alex Cora

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Cora

“I come from suspension and I know how embarrassing that is and how tough that is, not only on you as a person but your family, your friends and the people that love you. Ten games, a year, two years, three years, it doesn’t matter. Being suspended is hell and you don’t want to go through that. I was very open to them and hopefully they understand that.”

—Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora on Major League Baseball’s threat of 10 game suspensions for pitchers  caught cheating by using sticky substances on baseballs , a practice that has been against the rules  for a hundred years.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote that Alex Cora, then serving a one year suspension from Major League baseball, didn’t “get it,” it being why cheating is wrong, what ethics is, and why it is important to act ethically in all aspects of life. He still doesn’t get it. Cora (you can catch up here) was suspended because he engineered and oversaw a  season long sign-stealing scheme as bench coach in 2017 for the Houston Astros, who used it to inflate their offense and ultimately win the World Series. When it was finally discovered, Cora was the acclaimed manager of the Boston Red Sox, who succeeded the Astros as World Champions in 2018. The Red Sox had been cheating in their triumphant season too, though not as extensively, and  an investigation blamed it all on a low-level coach., not Cora, though Cora was his supervisor, and the whole thing seemed oddly reminiscent of Cora’s cheating in Houston. Continue reading →

Baseball Has A Cheating Problem That Is Old, Was Supposedly Addressed Decades Ago, And Is Strangling The Game. It Is Relevant To More Than Baseball (Part 1: Introduction)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Baseball sticky

Since about four other readers pay any attention to my baseball ethics posts, let me say right up front why this a mistake. Baseball’s current pitchers using foreign substances on the ball problem is, ethically, exactly the same as our nation’s election cheating scandal, or the illegal immigration crisis. It arises from the same dead-headed rationalizations, intellectual laziness, and self-serving deception. We can and should learn from it. But we won’t.

If you want to ignore the latest baseball ethics scandal as a niche problem unrelated to greater ethics principles, be my guest. You will be missing an important and still developing lesson.

Baseball’s hitting is way down this year, and pitching is more dominant than it has been since the mid-1960s. There is a reason: almost every pitcher is using some kind of sticky substance on the ball. This increases “spin rate,” which before computers and other technology was impossible to see, much less measure. The faster a pitcher can make a ball spin, the more it moves, curves and dives at higher speeds. Sticky substances allow a pitcher to do that. Using them is against the rules; it’s cheating. But for years now, the same kind of ethics-addled fools who allowed Barry Bonds and other cheats to use illegal steroids and wreck the game’s home run records as long as they lied about it have let pitchers illegally doctor the ball.

This week, the whole, completely avoidable ethics train wreck became an engine of destruction for the National Pastime.

Unfortunately, one has to understand the context to comprehend what is going on now, and that means looking backwards, in this case, to 2014. Here, with some edits, are two Ethics Alarms essays that provide the context. The first was titled “The Abysmal Quality of Ethical Reasoning in Baseball: A Depressing Case Study.” The second, Pineda-Pine Tar, Part II: Baseball Clarifies Its Bizarro Ethics Culture, appeared 13 days later. Yes, what is happening now was foretold by conditions that were evident seven years ago. The remaining parts of this series will bring you, and the train wreck, up to date.

***

What happened was this: During last night’s Red Sox-Yankee game in Yankee Stadium, the Boston broadcasting team of Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy noticed a glossy brown substance on New York starting pitcher Michael Pineda’s pitching hand. It was very obvious, especially once the NESN cameras started zooming in on it.   “There’s that substance, that absolutely looks like pine tar,” play-by-play man Don Orsillo said. “Yeah, that’s not legal,” color commentator and former player Jerry Remy replied.

Indeed it isn’t.  According to rule 8.02(a)(2), (4) and (5), the pitcher shall not expectorate on the ball, either hand or his glove; apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball; [or]  deface the ball in any manner.

The Red Sox, who probably knew about the gunk on Pineda’s hand, didn’t complain to the umpires, and just went about their merry way, losing the game. Asked about the stuff on his hand, Pineda demonstrated the full range of body language indicating that he was lying his head off. “It was dirt,’ he said. Later, when the ick appeared to be gone,  Pineda explained, he had just sweated his hand clean. Right. Whatever was on his hand—beef gravy, crankcase oil, chocolate syrup…the majority of pundits think pine tar—it wasn’t “dirt.” Pineda’s manager, Joe Girardi, was brazenly evasive.

The Yankee pitcher was cheating. This isn’t a major scandal, but cheating is cheating: sports shouldn’t allow cheating of any kind, because if a sport allows some cheating, however minor, it will encourage cynical, unscrupulous and unethical individuals on the field, in the stands, and behind keyboard to excuse all other forms of cheating, from corked bats to performance enhancing drugs. Cheating is wrong. Cheating unfairly warps the results of games, and rewards dishonesty rather than skill. Cheating undermines the enjoyment of any game among serious fans who devote energy and passion to it. Any cheating is a form of rigging, a variety of lying.

And yet, this clear instance of cheating, caught on video, primarily sparked the sports commentariat, including most fans, to cite one rationalization and logical fallacy after another to justify doing nothing, and not just doing nothing, but accepting the form of cheating as “part of the game.” I’ve been reading columns and listening to the MLB channel on Sirius-XM and watch the MLB channel on Direct TV since this episode occurred. Here are the reactions:

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“Manifest,” An Ethics TV Series Unethically Cancelled By NBC

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

2PromoPoster

In the era of streaming, nothing is more annoying than a TV series having its final episode be a cliffhanger, with no resolution because the series was cancelled. Right now, it looks like NBC’s time- and ethics-warping missing plane drama “Manifest” will join the cursed group of shows forced into being cruel teases forevermore. Yesterday, NBC ended the series after its third season of what was planned to be a six-season epic. Sure enough, the final installment was a special two-hour cliff-hanger that raised more questions than were already lingering, since “Manifest” is a “Lost”-style many-layered mystery. To make things worse, the first two seasons were just unveiled on Netflix, where audiences were sucked in and have made it an instant hit. Presumably Season Three will arrive on Netflix soon, but I, for one, don’t start watching movies that I know will be missing the final reel, reading novels that have had the last three chapters ripped out, or following a baseball season that I know will be cut short by a player strike.

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This Is IT! In Charlottesville, Va.’s Schools, The Apotheosis Of The Great Stupid!

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Lake Wobegon

This would be funny, if it were not so ominous. In fact, it already was funny, many years ago when monologist/author Garrison Keillor (now cancelled for alleged sexual harassment: he doesn’t exist any more) introduced the fictional Minnesota community where so many of his shaggy dog stories were set, with “Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average!” [Laughter from the NPR audience.] All but the most dim-witted could get the joke in the last part, for it is impossible for everyone in any group to be above average.

Ah, but that was before The Great Stupid spread over the land like one of the Egyptian plagues in the Bible. Neither irony nor logic flickered in the brains of the Charlottesville, Virginia’s school board, which is patting itself on its mass back for the achievement of identifying 86% of its students as “gifted.” This qualifies those brilliant students for the system’s special, theoretically challenging, gifted classes.

The revelation was made during a Charlottesville school board meeting last week, and the members were thrilled. This was, obviously, impressive progress. Of course, one doesn’t have to be gifted to figure out what’s going on here. As in the memorable past cases of Washington D.C.’s rogue mayor Marion Barry telling the media that D.C.’s crime rate was pretty low as long as you didn’t count all the murders, and rogue President of the United States Bill Clinton explaining that he did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, because oral sex isn’t sex, Charlottesville is adopting the now epidemic Rationalization #64, Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is.”

We had seen many signs that this was coming, notably in the efforts of New York city’s communist mayor, Bill de Blasio, to change the admission standards of the New York City’s elite specialized high schools because not enough minority students (except for Asian-Americans of course) were getting in. It is also an extension—heh, I almost said “logical extension”!—of the woke fundamentalist article of faith that skin color itself should be considered a qualification on par with, indeed above, such characteristics as skill, knowledge, achievements, experience, character and intelligence—thus resulting in Kamala Harris becoming Vice-President of the United States.

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