Author: Jack Marshall

Late Night Ethics Insurrection, 1/6/23: Disgraceful

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Some years from now, when “This Day in History” expounds on January 6, will the foolish rioting of 2021 be number one on the list of notable anniversaries, or will it have fallen to where it belongs, which is somewhere between FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech ( 1941) and the the admission of New Mexico as the 47th state (1912)? Unfortunately, the ugly incident is probably destined to always be regarded with inflated importance if for no other reason than it became the focus of one of the most protracted and cynical partisan political propaganda efforts by any party since the United States was founded.

Like the Kardashians who are famous for being famous, the January 6 Capitol rioting will be important because so many people have said it was important for so long. It was destructive and it was embarrassing, but the rioting was not an insurrection, nor was it part of a plot by Donald Trump to somehow hold on to the White House. The hacks and demagogues in the media and elected offices who have claimed otherwise are only better than the rioters in that they have been less violent. Both disgraced themselves and their country.

1. Now THIS is a frivolous lawsuit…The estate of Brian Sicknick is suing Donald Trump and two rioters, Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios, for $10 million in damages from each of the defendants based on the theory that the Capitol Police officer’s death was “a direct and foreseeable consequence” of Trump’s words and action on January 6, while the two rioters are accused of assaulting Sicknick with bear spray during the conflict. Sicknick died of a stroke the next day, and it is literally impossible to trace the stroke to the riot. Sicknick’s death was attributed to “natural causes.” If Rudy Giuliani is facing discipline by the D.C. Bar for not having sufficient evidence to justify his lawsuit claiming voter fraud in Pennsylvania, sanctioning the lawyer who brought this “Hail Mary” lawsuit should be automatic. If the lawyer isn’t sanctioned, we will have even more evidence that the posse chasing Rudy is motivated by politics, not a sincere desire to police the legal profession’s ethics.

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Yet Another Weird Tale Of The Great Stupid: Leveling All Resumés

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

A LinkedIn posting by HR&A Advisors, a TriBeCa-based real estate consultancy, asked job applicants for a $121,668- to $138,432-a-year position to apply while removing “all undergraduate and graduate school name references” from their résumés, citing only the degree itself. Apparently this policy applies to all HR&A job postings, which the company says is part of its “ongoing work to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance.”

Oh, good plan. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month (Alleged): Damar Hamlin

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“Did we win?”

Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety who suffered a near-fatal heart attack during a Monday Night Football NFL game this week, after two days in intensive care and still breathing with the help of a ventilator, in a scribbled a note shortly after regaining consciousness.

Well, it’s a great story. In the spirit of the old newspaperman at the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” [“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”], I’m going to assume it’s true, though I have grave doubts. For one thing, it’s hearsay; for another, the account comes through the NFL publicity staff, and the NFL’s any-staff has no ethics credibility at all. But the quote is possibly true, and it certainly conveys an ethical lesson: Put your “team,” whatever it may be, above your own concerns; care about whether your misfortune in pursuit of a shared goal interfered with that goal rather than focusing only on your own welfare. There really have been documented instances where an athlete did give the equivalent quote following a serious injury. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is Incompetent Policing! (International Division)

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Police in Santa Marta, Colombia, recently published a wanted poster for 12 dangerous criminals in the town, asking the public for help in apprehending them. All are members of the “Los Pachenca” drug cartel and are suspects in a series of crimes committed in Santa Marta in recent months. The published poster (above), however, only mentioned the suspects’ nicknames without revealing their real names, and only generic silhouettes were offered rather than actual photos.

Nevertheless, the police department acted as if their procedure was serious and reasonable. “It is very important that citizens help us identify the people who are affecting life throughout the city,” the police high command said to supplement the poster. “We are going to provide payments for data that allow us to identify them.”

The mockery of the absurdly inept dragnet was instant and relentless. One wag noted that it should be easy to identify cartel members since “they all look identical.”

The department quickly pulled the poster. See? It’s not completely incompetent after all!

First Open Forum Of 2023!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Here is as good a place as any to note, since Ethics Alarms is also concerned with leadership as a sub-category to ethics, that Kevin McCarthy’s only ethical course at this point is to withdraw from the Speaker of the House race. It is clear that he cannot lead Republicans in the House, and the compromises and concessions he will need to make to get the support of the 20-plus member faction that opposes him would cripple his leadership as well as his party. Now it’s just selfishness, obstinacy and ego that has him holding on. None of those are ethical reasons to inflict yet another weak GOP Speaker on the nation.

McCarthy’s allies should also recognize this and 1) shut up or 2) move on. One, of course, is Donald Trump who can’t shut up, but who should be completely irrelevant to the Speaker battle. Another is Sean Hannity. It’s depressing that such a dim-wattage Fox News pundit as Hannity has the influence he does, and he proved his Peter Principle creds again in an argument on the air with conservative House member and anti-McCarthy leader Lauren Boebert. Sean apparently thought he had a “gotcha!” by calling Boebert on her statement that McCarthy should just give it up because he didn’t have the votes to win the Speakership. “But he has over 200 votes, and your group has just 20!” Hannity replied. “Shouldn’t you be the ones who give up?”

Uh, it’s like a filibuster, Sean, you dummy. Or a veto. The 20 don’t represent an alternative to McCarthy; they don’t have to elect a candidate to win. Their purpose is to block his ascension to the job, and they have enough votes to do it.

And this guy was advising President Trump…..

Anyway, you talk about what you want. I just needed to get that out. As Jimmy Durante would say, “It showed up on my last X-ray as a safety pin!”

Oh, NOW Football Is Too Violent?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Kurt Streeter, the New York Times’ uber-woke, progressive sports columnist, had the nerve to post a column this week headlined, “We’re All Complicit in the N.F.L.’s Violent Spectacle.” Uh-uh, no sir, not me, baby. I have always found pro football repulsive and barbaric, and for many years have worked here and elsewhere to ensure that the NFL is accountable for crippling and killing its players for profit, which is what it does. A single player for unknown reasons goes into cardiac arrest mid-game this week, and suddenly people are discovering what a sick,  unethical sport professional football is? “My prayer, aside from seeing Hamlin leave that Cincinnati hospital able to live a fruitful, productive life, is that we never watch a single snap of an N.F.L. game the same way again,” Streeter intones. Oh Kurt, you’re so sensitive. You won’t watch it the “same way,” but you’ll keep earning money covering it, won’t you? Continue reading →

Mid-Day Ethics Missives, 1/5/23: Fakes, Ghouls, Creeps, Hacks And Liars

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Finally! I had fallen hopelessly behind in my efforts to compile the various Twitter Files releases in readable form, because, as they used to say, “the hits just keep on coming.” Now Matt Taibbi helpfully has compiled them all on his substack site, here: “Capsule Summaries of all Twitter Files Threads to Date, With Links and a Glossary.”

I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad about falling down on the job since it isn’t my job, though it is the news media’s. Those disgraceful full-time propagandists have made the disturbing revelations about how Twitter was manipulated into censoring conservatives, Republicans and actual news by Democrats and the FBI the Jumbo of all Jumbos: “Censorship? What censorship?”

Among the revelations this week was that Rep. Adam Schiff hectored Twitter to suspend journalist Paul Sperry. I’d call a House member conspiring with social media to silence a journalist a First Amendment violation, but that’s just me. (As the original reporter of the hunter Biden laptop story, the New York Post is an exception to the “mainstream media” slur. The New York Times—you know, the iconic newspaper in the city—hasn’t mentioned this story at all.)

1. Oops! Sorry we wrecked the economy, our children’s education and social development, the travel industry, the entertainment industry, the restaurant industry, and so on, and so on, but we had to DO something…A new research paper indicates that the pre-vaccination case fatality rate was extremely low in the non-elderly population, meaning that the reaction to the pandemic was hysterical, irresponsible and unsupported by reality. At a global level, the pre-vaccination infection fatality rate may have been as low as 0.03% and 0.07% respectively for 0–59 and 0–69 year old people, respectively, with rates in the U.S. lower still.

The frustrating aspect of this is that there was no practical and politically feasible way for policy makers to resist the panic and hysteria deliberately created by health care professionals and the news media.

2. These are the kind of people our young regards as role models and “influencers.” Here’s actress and ethics dunce Gabriel Union explaining on the “Armchair Expert” podcast why she was “entitled” to cheat on Chris Howard during their “dysfunctional” marriage:

“I was paying all the bills, I was working my ass off and I felt like that’s what comes [with it]…Like my dad before me, whoever has the most gets to do whatever the hell they want, is what I thought.”

Nice explication of “The King’s Pass,” there, Gabriel! Continue reading →

Romeo and Juliet’s Ethical Unethical And Really, REALLY Late Law Suit

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

It is hard not to be cynical about the news that Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, the now-aged stars of the Oscar-winning 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet,” are suing Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse over the dreamy, artsy nude scene that was included in Franco Zeffirelli’s hit. When I told my wife about it, her snap reaction was “I guess they need money.”

It’s fair conclusion, especially regarding Whiting, who never had much of a career after the great success of “Romeo and Juliet.” Hussey, at least, worked pretty consistently after her debut, among her credits being a classic horror film, the ahead-of-its-time slasher flick “Black Christmas” which introduced “The calls are coming from inside the house!” to our cultural vernacular.

The first thing I thought of was the California statute of limitations, forgetting that California has temporarily suspended it for child sex abuse, in part because of an emerging Hollywood scandal involving child stars. The suspension has spurred new lawsuits and the revival of others that were previously dismissed.

The actors, both seniors now, claim director Zeffirelli tricked and bullied them into doing a nude scene despite giving them assurances that they would not have to bare themselves on screen. The director reportedly told the two teens (Hussey was 15 at the time; Whiting 16) that without the tasteful nudity the film would lack artistic integrity. Solomon Gresen, who represents the pair, says in explaining the suit,

“Nude images of minors are unlawful and shouldn’t be exhibited.These were very young, naive children in the 60s who had no understanding of what was about to hit them. All of a sudden they were famous at a level they never expected, and in addition they were violated in a way they didn’t know how to deal with.”

The actors’ spokespeople now say that the lawsuit comes so late because Hussey and Whiting were afraid that suing earlier would adversely affect their careers (regarding Whiting: What career?) and that no one would believe them. A lot of people won’t believe them now, either: in a 2018 interview, Hussey defended the brief view of her breast. “Nobody my age had done that before,” she said, adding that Zeffirelli shot it tastefully. “It was needed for the film.” In a another interview the same year, Hussey said that the scene “wasn’t that big of a deal. And Leonard wasn’t shy at all! In the middle of shooting, I just completely forgot I didn’t have clothes on!”

So we come to the question that so often must be answered to assess an ethics controversy: “What’s going on here?”

Some answers:

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Discrimination By Any Other Name

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Colleges and universities have become masterful at the sophistry of claiming that their discrimination isn’t discrimination, not really. A new example from Berkeley is very close to the line.

The Berkeley Law chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine announced over the summer that it had altered its bylaws to prohibit “speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views or host/sponsor/promote events in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel and the occupation of Palestine.” Eight other student groups adopted similar bans. In response, two lawyers filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights claiming that the ban amounts to antisemitic discrimination. DOE is investigating.

The lawyers, Arsen Ostrovsky and Gabriel Groisman, argue,

The student groups at Berkeley Law are being willfully deceptive. Rather than simply exclude Jewish speakers, they exclude speakers who have expressed and continue to hold views in support of Zionism. Zionism refers to the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and liberation in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel. It is not merely a “viewpoint” as the Dean suggests, but rather something that has for millennia formed an integral and indispensable part of Jewish identity. A rejection of those who identify as Zionists, which is a vast, overwhelming majority of Jews, is therefore no different to excluding anyone else on the basis of their faith, shared ancestry or national origin. And Title VI of the Civil Rights Act specifically states that “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in … any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Title VI also provides protection from discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.

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Dead Body Ethics: Why Is “Mind Your Own Damn Business!” Such A Difficult Principle To Grasp?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

This post was almost titled “Stop Making Me Defend Governor Hochul!” Conservative pundits, bloggers and busybodies are freaking out over Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) signing into law legislation that makes New York the sixth state to legalize the composting human remains. The law adds “natural organic reduction” to cremation and entombment as legal ways to dispose of bodies. The new law defines the practice as the “contained, accelerated conversion of human remains to soil” in a “structure, room, or other space” in which decomposition can occur.

To all of which I say, “Fine.” Any time government increases individual autonomy and the liberty to do as citizens please as long as it doesn’t harm society or other individuals, or infringe on their rights, that’s an ethics win. It is especially encouraging to see a Democratic governor move in this direction, since her party has lately embraced a philosophy of seeking more restrictions on core American rights—like, say, freedom of speech— rather than fewer.

Never mind, though: some on the right are eager to bash Hochul anyway.

Here’s “Not the Bee”s” John Knox:

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