Author: Jack Marshall

One Ethics Villain Promotes Another, As The Associated Press Pimps For Black Lives Matter On Its Anniversary

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sometimes an ethics story defies my ability to devise an appropriate headline. The AP story “Black Lives Matter movement marks 10 years of activism and renews its call to defund the police” is a prime example. The story is even worse than the headline (“activism” is a deceitful and deceptive euphemism for violence, lies, divisiveness and fraud), with the once-trustworthy news organization displaying the worst of U.S. journalism’s ethics rot.

The scam that is Black Lives Matter has done nothing but damage since its emergence in 2013, but to hear the AP tell it, this is a movement for Americans to honor. Let’s see…I haven’t checked yet, and I promise to reveal what I find: is the AP’s reporter who wrote this junk, Aaron Morrison, an African American?

Why yes, he is! What a coinkydink. This piece of propaganda could only have been written by a devoted supporter; the AP rigged the story. That’s American journalism in 2023.

Let me provide some highlights with commentary:

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Incompetent Elected Officials Of The Month: Oregon Mayors Dean Sawyer And Matt Diaz

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It demonstrates a critical lack of integrity to claim you believe one thing when addressing the community that elected you and to privately say the opposite. It is also irresponsible and incompetent to assert positions your supporters would object to in less-than-reliably private forums, like social media. As an extra layer of incompetence, two Oregon mayors were active on social media behaving like this when they clearly didn’t understand the perils of social media (though I bet they do now).

First let’s take the case of Dean Sawyer, the three term mayor of Newport, a city of about 10,000 residents in Oregon. A 30 year police force veteran, he joined a private Facebook group called “LE (that is, Law Enforcement) Only in2016, two years before he was elected mayor. All these years, while he has been extolling “diversity” and celebrating LGTBQ+ “pride,” he was mocking both, as well as progressive sacred cows like illegal immigrants, in his posts, often with particularly vulgar and juvenile memes. (During “Pride Month,” for example, Sawyer posted a photo of disgusted-looking, scantily clad women in a dressing room with the legend, “Strippers waiting for EMS to untangle the new girl’s balls from the pole.”) his luck ran out as it usually does with reckless social media users. Somehow Oregon Public Broadcasting got a tip and managed to track down Sawyer’s politically incorrect and wildly hypocritical posts. Then it wrote, in a special report headlined, “For years the mayor of an Oregon Coast city has posted hateful memes on Facebook”...

Since 2016, Sawyer has posted racist memes mocking Mexicans and endorsing former President Donald Trump’s hardline policies on immigration. One post in April made fun of trans swimmer Lia Thomas. Several mocked Bud Light, which has drawn the ire of Republicans for the company’s business relationship with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Both Thomas and Mulvaney have been targets of right wing smear campaigns and online harassment.

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Open Ethics Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

(And I haven’t even had time to read what you entered in the last one…)

This has been a genuinely rotten seven days for your host on all fronts including Ethics Alarms, where readership was down even considering the two-day interruption when my PC was fried. There weren’t even Red Sox games to take my mind off of more substantive matters, since this was All-Star Game week, and baseball’s All-Star Game is just one more piece of evidence of societal ethics rot. It used to have integrity and be played like a real game by the best in the sport; now the thing has all the authenticity of a company picnic softball game.

Oh…there was one bit of silver lining: Remember this post? To my shock and amazement, the organization reversed itself and asked me to do a new ethics seminar under its auspices. I had emailed a letter of protest to the Executive Director the same day I blogged about being fired for telling the truth; I did not apologize. The letter included the same points I made here: I said directly that the decision was not only unfair and unprofessional, but that as Continuing Legal Education providers, the company was ethically obligated to make every effort to get lawyers back in the classroom where training is more likely to be effective. I assumed that this would be the last contact I had with it.

And they reversed their decision. Having refused to grovel and held to my principles when faced with the negative consequences of a stand too many times to count over the years (a habit acquired from Jack Marshall, Sr.), I did not anticipate this result.

There is hope.

Of Local Radio, Law vs. Ethics, Ruthless Capitalism And “It Is What It Is”: The WOAS Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

WOAS 88.5-FM is a high school radio station, one of only 200 remaining in the U.S., that has been broadcasting from the Ontonagon High School building in Michigan since 1978. It has only10 watts of broadcasting power, but is still one of only two radio stations in Ontonagon, on Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula. Not only does it provide some listening variety for the town, it also is a valuable educational and recreational vehicle for high school students. Two snack vending machines inside the school largely cover WOAS’s costs, and everyone is a volunteer. After school hours, members of the community volunteer their time as disc jockeys.

WOAS is a Class D station, the lowest FCC classification, covering low-power, noncommercial radio stations. These are considered too weak and disposable to warrant regulatory protection, so when unprotected” from other broadcasters, which can legally overpower its signal or simply apply to take over the station’s place on the dial. WHWL 95.7-FM, with10,000 times the broadcasting power of the school station, applied to the FCC to take over its frequency and place on the radio dial. The FCC said, “Sure! Go ahead!” granting a license for a new station on 88.5 FM, where WOAS lives. The high school radio station now has to find itself a frequency, which costs money, or go gently into that good night.

When the high school asked the radio giant why it chose its place on the radio dial to invade, the answer was classic Bill Clinton: it did it because it could. The big station said it needs to expand and FCC rules allow them to just take over. A consultant looked at available frequencies available to WHWL to add stations, and it deemed 88.5 FM “the best.”

The fact that a high school was currently operating from there was not, apparently, part of the equation, or considered at all.

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Now THAT’S An Unethical Lawyer…And Maybe Two

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that lawyer James Saunders, who previously worked for the Internal Revenue Service, violated the law by voting twice in both the 2020 and 2022 national elections. His public defender Scott Roger Hurley—he’s on the right above— is arguing that his client should be acquitted because it was “an accident.” “Mistakes do happen, accidents do happen,” he told the court.

Suuuuure.

Saunders voted in two separate locations in two separate states: Cuyahoga County in Ohio, and Broward County in Florida, and in both elections. “The fact that you do that in consecutive general elections I think takes ‘accident’ to the land of imaginary doubt, and not reasonable doubt,” the prosecutor said.

Ya think?

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Unethical Quote Of The Week And Worst Apology Of The Month: Doug Dechert

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

New York gossip columnist Doug Dechert (above right), during the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.presidential campaign event for the press that he was hosting, became enraged during a contentious exchange regarding climate change and shouted,

“I’m farting!”

as he did, in fact, fart loudly for the assembled. That’s The Ethics Alarms Unethical Quote of the Week, ironically, because it was completely honest and factual. Later, he provided the Ethics Alarms Worst Apology of the Month, and maybe the year, by telling the New York Post, “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.”

This is also ironic, because it is a straightforward and seemingly sincere apology without qualifications, and yet is still terrible, indeed uniquely terrible, because it doesn’t even fit on the Apology Scale.

I suppose the closest would be #9: “Deceitful apologies, in which the wording of the apology is crafted to appear apologetic when it is not (“if my words offended, I am sorry”). Another variation: apologizing for a tangential matter other than the act or words that warranted an apology.” But the wording is deliberately humorous, raising the suspicion that Doug Dechert isn’t sorry at all, and doesn’t care if everyone knows he isn’t sorry. Moreover, intentionally farting at a public event you organized for a presidential candidate and announcing it, thus turning the event into a fiasco that can only embarrass the individual it was supposed to benefit, is one of those things that can’t be apologized for, like setting someone’s cat on fire.

Come to think of it, Dechert also should be in the running for the Ethics Alarms’ Asshole of the Year title. For more reasons than one.

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A.I. Ethics Updates

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

1. Apparently Alexa and its ilk are causing heartburn among legal scholars. How should conversations over-heard by virtual assistants be treated when they are offered as evidence in court? Among the analogies that are being run up the metaphorical flagpole is a comparison with …parrots, as an eavesdropper who can accurately repeats information it overheard but was not expected to disclose. Courts have refused to admit testimony by parrots. In one case, a parrot named Max repeatedly cried out, “Richard, no, no, no!” after the murder of his owner. The defense attorney in the case wanted to have this evidence admitted the accused murder’s name was Gary. The attorney argued, unsuccessfully, that the “testimony” was not hearsay, but rather like a recording device. Despite expert testimony that that breed of parrot had the ability to accurately repeat statements, the evidence was excluded.
In another case, Bud the Parrot, began incessantly repeating, “Don’t fucking
shoot!” after one of his owners shot the other.

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Anatomy Of A Canadian Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Ugh.

Alberta premier Danielle Smith was photographed with a man wearing the T-shirt you see above. It was circulated on social media. Immediately, she was criticized intensely, and predictably, Smith immediately groveled. Her spokesperson said, “The premier didn’t read his shirt and obviously doesn’t agree with its message. She has always been clear that she supports the LGBTQ+ community and will continue our work to make sure they feel safe in our province.”

What’s going on here?

1. The guy, whoever he is, is a jerk. That’s not a T-shirt, it’s a protest sign, and intentionally confrontational. I have always agreed with the maxim that a person’s IQ is inversely related to the number of words on his or her T-shirt. This is a prime example.

2. Further proving that the T-shirt wearer is someone to be avoided: the back of it read, “Good people disobey bad laws.” No, in fact good people obey all laws, or if they want to engage in civil disobedience, violate the “bad law,” accept the consequences, and see how many people agree with them. Asserting that it is good to break laws you happen to think are “bad” is a recipe for societal chaos.

3. The premier lied, and obviously so. How could she miss all those words, unless she can’t read? The guy’s a walking billboard; you can’t stand next to someone like that and not appear to be endorsing his message.

4. Whoever drafted that statement should be fired. What is it that Smith doesn’t agree with? Should straight people be ashamed? It’s not the message that is objectionable but the in-your-face gesture. It’s like “It’s OK to be white”—the shirt’s purpose is to annoy and start an argument.

5. What does a T-shirt have to do with “feeling safe”? Safe from words? Should non-LGBTQ individuals feel “unsafe” when they see Pride parades, signs and slogans?

Spain Demonstrates Why We Have The First Amendment, And Why The US Must Protect It

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Spain’s Parliament, in its wisdom, has declared dwarf bullfighting illegal. Not because the bulls are treated cruelly, mind you: oh no, that part is fine. It’s the small bullfighters the legislators find intolerable. (That’s a group of them rehearsing above.)

Comic bullfighting shows in which individuals with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, fight with juvenile bulls are now illegal. A new law bans “shows or leisure activities” employing a disability “to provoke public mockery, ridicule or derision.” As a result, the performers who earned their living putting on such shows are now forbidden from plying their craft, and citizens willing to pay to watch them can no longer do so. This is also embarrassing: the same law directs that “people with disabilities will participate in public shows and recreational activities, including bullfighting, without discrimination.”

Spain’s law arises from a failure to distinguish “Ick” from ethics, the same problem that has led some states to try to ban drag shows. There is no question that the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights would absolutely prohibit a law such as the Spanish dwarf bullfighting ban, and we should be grateful for that. The ethical principles embodied in freedom of expression include autonomy as well as intrinsic fairness and the Golden Rule validity of allowing others to have the same right to make their living as they choose without others deciding that because they wouldn’t make the same choices, those choices shouldn’t be available to anyone.

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“Nah, Colleges Don’t Indoctrinate Students! It’s A Conspiracy Theory!” Brown Replies, “Hold My Beer!”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The Washington Examiner reports that 40% of Brown students now identify as LGTBQ+. The Brown Daily Herald’s 2023 Spring survey revealed that 38% of students, more than five times the national rate, no longer consider themselves “cis.” The gay and lesbian population has increased by 26% and the percentage of students identifying as bisexual has increased by…wait for it!… 232%. Just eleven years ago, in 2010, only 4% of Brown University students said they were not conventionally heterosexual. Now it’s 38%.

Commenting on this phenomenon at the Victory Girls blog, Lisa Carr writes in part,

The new “cool kids” now are changing their names every other day, along with changing their identities to anything contrary to their biological sex. Joe becomes Joelene who is dating Mary who wants to be known as “Mike”. Mary is nominated for Homecoming King while Joe is the Homecoming Queen; both in their gender-fluid and ambiguous outfits. And yes, they are probably still wearing those filthy, ugly masks because society told them to stay scared. (But alas, don’t be scared to cut off your genitalia.) This is the new cult. This is the trend we are seeing in colleges but I would argue that this seed is being planted as early as elementary school….This is no longer about loving and accepting all. This is about subtle conversion by suggestion.

Apparently a Brown professor, Dr. Lisa Littman, argued that campus culture and peer groups were pressuring students into such epiphanies regarding their true sexual identities, and got herself fired for it. Continue reading →