Month: May 2024

Ethics Dunce: Ohio State 2024 Commencement Speaker Chris Pan

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Usually the many Ethics Alarms train wreck graphics are reserved for official Ethics Train Wrecks, but not this time. The episode under consideration didn’t involve an actual train, but Ohio State alum Chris Pan‘s commencement address to about 12,000 2024 graduates was somewhat more literally akin to train disasters, at least ones involving trains leaping the tracks.

Outkick has tagged the speech the “Worst Commencement Speech Ever.” I doubt that it is that, but Pan’s self-indulgent blather might be the most unethical one ever—if there have been more unethical addresses, I’m not sure I would want to hear them even as an analytical exercise.

Let’s start with the fact that Pan conceived the speech while he was high on the psychedelic drug Ayahuasca. He admitted this later, and appears to be proud of it, or think its funny, or something. This makes him an Ethics Alarms certified asshole as well as an Ethics Dunce. When people are trusting you to perform at your best in support of an important task, project or event, you don’t impair yourself with foreign substances—not alcohol, not uppers or downers, and definitely not mind altering drugs. Doing so is deliberately defying common sense, personal responsibility, and well-established societal standards.

Moreover, you risk a debacle like the speech you will see in this video. If you like, you can skip the glowing introduction by OSU President Ted Carter, though it provides useful context as Pan was to humiliate Carter as well as himself. It’s a bit like knowing that they called The Titanic “unsinkable” before it sank on its maiden voyage. Pan starts speaking at the 1:47 mark.

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Ethics Quiz: That Apple IPad Pro Ad

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Filmmakers, musicians, writers and other artists began whining about that ad above for the Apple iPad Pro from almost the second it was released. As Sonny and Cher warble one of their lesser efforts, “All I Ever Need is You,” a hydraulic press crushes musical instruments, cameras, a framed picture, paint cans, record albums and other stuff in a colorful explosion of chaos.

“The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” tweeted actor Hugh Grant. “Who needs human life and everything that makes it worth living? Dive into this digital simulacrum and give us your soul. Sincerely, Apple,” added “Men in Black” screenwriter Ed Solomon. There were lots more metaphorical squeals of indignation and alarm on social media, as
“creative people” accused Apple of gloating over how Big Tech is co-opting the traditional tools of art and on the verge of eliminating the human creativity with artificial intelligence.

So, naturally, as is the norm these days, Apple “assumed the position” and groveled an apology. Pledging that Apple would never run the ad on TV again, Tor Myhren, the company’s vice president of marketing communications, said, “Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world.” The statement continued, “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

Seriously?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Oh, lots of things: Is there anything unethical about that ad? Do its critics have a legitimate point? Should Apple have caved to their complaints? Was that apology sincere?

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Baseball Uniform Number Ethics?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

And they say baseball isn’t the national pastime, the fools!

Today the Athletic has the tale of Atlanta Braves back-up catcher Chadwick Tromp. He’s from Aruba. Tromp says he pays no attention to the politics of the nation in which he has spent half the year every year since 2013 and that now supplies him with over a million dollars each annum. For that reason, I have little sympathy for the problems he has encountered because some jerk in the Braves clubhouse gave him uniform number 45 in an election year, making Tromp a walking target and a bad pun. Supposedly this was accidental. Is everyone on the Braves from Aruba?

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Is everything going to Hell, as my sister concludes at the conclusion of every conversation we have that wanders into world events and national politics?

Stay on topic, now; it’s ethics, not politics. I just had to reject a proffered comment that was just a screed against Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who, I agree, appears to be the dumbest member of the Senate but who could probably clobber in Scrabble a dozen or more House members. Read the EA comment policies, Newcomers!

Now enlighten us…

Comment of the Day: “Comment of the Day: ‘Fat-Shaming Ethics'”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It’s like Russian dolls! Joel Mundt’s Comment of the Day on the uses of shaming spawned this profound Comment of the Day by Ryan Harkins on the evolution of shame, all triggered by the post, “Fat-Shaming Ethics”:

***

I don’t believe we’ve removed shaming people from our cultural habits. Rather, what has shifted are the things by which we find shame. Out are failing grades, disruptive behavior, criminal record, sex out of wedlock, picking up a welfare check, impoliteness, slovenly appearances, and the like. In are being white, being conservative, using the wrong words, insisting on the reality of biological sex, being male, being trans-exclusive, insisting on merit, and the like. 

Shame is the basic negative feedback that tells us we should not do something. While it can definitely be applied in harmful ways, I don’t think there is a way out of applying shame. Society cannot function if everything is permissible and even applauded. Our efforts, as [commenter] Old Bill has pointed out, to prevent anyone from feeling shame has made a culture that cannot tolerate even the slightest psychological discomfort, and which feels entitled to everything. 

Discomfort prompts us to move. That is why negative reinforcement works. Taking a positive-reinforcement-only approach tries to lure people into moving because of being tempted by a nice reward. But the problem with that is that many people will find remaining in place more tolerable than putting forth the effort for the reward. Many people find the short term pleasure of doing what they want now more tempting than the long term pleasure of self-discipline, attainment, and success. In order to get moving, there has to be something that overpowers the temptation to stay put, and sometimes that something has to be sufficiently painful.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Ann Althouse

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“My working theory would be that Joe Biden has prioritized his own reelection. And he’s not even performing well at that. Ironically, his reelection theme seems to be that he — and not Trump — is a man of integrity. I would recommend that the old man step back from the tawdry exercise of getting reelected and actually behave with integrity.”

—Law professor/”Fiercely neutral” blogress Ann Althouse, characterizing President Biden’s contradictory and cynical treatment of Israel after he announced that the U.S. will withhold critical arms support for the attack on the Hamas stronghold of Rafah despite previously agreeing that Hamas had to be destroyed.

Ann adds, “But I suspect he’s too far gone to give us that.”

I was pondering how to frame a post about Biden’s craven perfidy regarding the Hamas-Israel conflict, as he literally tries to take both sides at once in order to avoid rejection by the Democratic Party’s pro-terrorism bloc, which has turned out to be a lot bigger than even critics suspected. Then I read Ann’s post highlighting Jon Podhoretz’s article for Commentary, “Biden’s Shameful Betrayal.” (Full disclosure: I know Jon, and like him: he was a member of my theater company’s board until he moved out of the District.) I don’t think Althouse has been red-pilled exactly—I’ll still lay odds that she ends up voting for Biden—but she seems genuinely disgusted by the age-addled President’s latest example of fecklessness and irresponsible leadership, as should we all.

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Dead Wife Condolences Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Consider this a further reflection on the matters explored in this post, written just two days after my wife Grace died suddenly of causes undetermined.

The past two months have been a series of revelations. People’s responses to a personal tragedy befalling someone else illustrate a lot about them, society, and human nature generally.

Such moments are when true friends show their character. I wrote earlier about my friend Tom Fuller jumping into his car and driving the ten hours from Connecticut to Alexandria even as I told him not to. Tom checked into a hotel and gave me desperately needed emotional support and expert assistance—he’s a lawyer, tax specialist and obsessively organized individual in sharp contrast to me—for five days. My sister, with whom I have often had an adversarial relationship, also came through, handling many tasks related to Grace’s death that I was ill-equipped to deal with emotionally and in some cases financially. Both of them have subsequently checked in with me by phone almost every day.

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Ethics Dunce: Scientific American

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The ethical principle at issue here shouldn’t be hard: “Do your job.” Unfortunately, it is apparently too hard for the scientists and researchers at Scientific American. Just as American journalism, sports teams, the entertainment industry–ethicists!— and others have been unable to resist the siren song of political activism, the once reliable and trustworthy general consumption science magazine so essential to my early education in the subject has capitulated to wokeness and now feels that its mission of exploring and explaining science to non-scientists includes political and partisan advocacy.

Will going woke mean, as the saying goes, that “S.A.” (as its friends call it) will “go broke”? Time will tell. This kind of beach of trust, integrity and mission, however, deserves to be fatal.

This week, the magazine unveiled its criticism of news media reporting on the campus pro-Hamas demonstrations. Science! In fact, the article is little more than a standard progressive rationalization of the protests. It is transparently presented with rhetoric that suggests legitimate scientific inquiry, (“For over a decade, my research has extensively explored…”) but the author isn’t a scientist. She’s a professor of journalism; more to the point, she’s a black community activist journalist clearly in the intersectionality and advocacy journalism camps:

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The Nathan Wade Interview: Apparently Fulton County Lawyers Don’t Get That “Legal Ethics” Thingy…or Ethics Generally

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I find the transcript of the interview of deposed Fani Willis prosecutor and loverboy Nathan Wade many things: damning, outrageous, disgusting, shocking. Mostly I find it to be more evidence that I have wasted the last 25 years trying to make the legal profession more ethical. This guy, a “prominent and respected Atlanta lawyer,” not only doesn’t know what ethics is, he’s infuriatingly smug about his ignorance.

These are the people Democrats have placed in charge of “saving democracy” by using the criminal laws to keep Donald Trump from delivering condign justice to the Biden presidency, as in crushing, unequivocal defeat.

On Sunday’s “World News Tonight” and Monday’s “Good Morning America” ABC revealed two segments (here and here) from an “exclusive” interview with former Fulton County, Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade. He was, you’ll recall, forced to withdraw from the lucrative gig gifted to him by his girlfriend Fani Willis by the judge in the case, Willis’s prosecution of Donald Trump for “election interference.”

If there are more segments, I think I’ll pass: cleaning up the serial head explosions caused by what I’ve seen already is more than enough for me. Nothing in them could change my mind about Wade (or Willis) at this point. He’s not just an unethical lawyer.He’s a fick. And an asshole.

I’ll just repeat some of the more glaring statements so you get the idea:

  • Asked how he could endanger a high profile prosecution by letting an illicit romance pollute the prosecution: “You don’t plan to develop feelings. You don’t plan to fall in love. You don’t plan to  have some relationship in the workplace that we  you don’t set out to do that and those things develop organically. They develop over  over time. And the  the minute we had that sobering moment, we discontinued it.”

I see: he’s 13 years old, then….just so darned romantic or horny that he couldn’t help himself, even though this was exactly the opposite of professional behavior. Continue reading →

Performers Making Random People Happy: This Is a Good Thing

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“In these troubled times,” as a weenie college president would put it today, we need to acknowledge the random acts that make life a little bit brighter for people, especially those acts that might file themselves permanently in an individual’s “thrills and fond memories” collection.

In the video above, the singer/songwriter known as Jewel (her real name is Jewel Kilcher) provided one of those random acts. At 49, she’s past her pop culture stardom prime by about two decades, transitioning into the “Masked Singer” contestant and “Star-Spangled Banner” stage. But she’s sold 30 million albums, and qualifies as a major singing star, if one whose fan base now mostly qualifies as middle-aged.

Jewel was recruited by the website “Funny or Die” for a stunt reminiscent of the old “Candid Camera” show. She agreed to submit to extensive make-up and wardrobe subterfuge to disguise herself, and to visit a Karaoke bar as a mousy, reluctant recruit to go on stage and sing some of her own songs. The results can be seen in the video. First the crowd is thrilled at the spectacle of an unlikely candidate revealing herself as a genuine talent, and later, when she revealed her true identity, joyful in the realization that a celebrity singer had given them an unexpected fun experience they could tell their friends and family about.

I love this kind of thing. Back in 2013, Ethics Alarms saluted Neil Diamond for spontaneously and for no compensation leading Red Sox fans in their nightly “Sweet Caroline” serenade. I have been consistently critical of Mandy Potenkin, but he has revealed in interviews that when a child recognizes him in public as “Inigo Montoya” from “The Princess Bride,” he leans down and whispers in the kid’s ear, “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Celebrities can abuse their unique status in our society, or they can employ it to bring a little joy into our hum drum lives, as Lena Lamont so memorably said…

Good for Jewel.