Animals

Donald Trump’s Loathsome Lawsuit

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Maher-Trump-Oran

Normally the result of a tiff between Donald Trump and Bill Maher would interest me about as much as I would be invested in the  winner of a battle between Godzilla and Megalon.  Trump’s lawsuit against Maher in retaliation for an obvious joke, however, is unethical and indefensible no matter how much I enjoy seeing Maher, who could only avoid being the most obnoxious human being in world containing the likes of Trump, suffer.

Maher joked to Jay Leno last month that he would pay $5 million to Trump’s charity of choice if Trump could prove that his birth wasn’t the result his mother having sex with orangutan. I missed it, Jay having joined David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel in my talk-show host Hall of Ethics Shame, but the line did make me laugh, I confess. Maher’s faux challenge was an obvious riff on the offensive offer Trump made to President Barack Obama during the presidential campaign, in which Trump raised the birther canard again and offered $5 million to the President’s charity of choice if  Obama released his college records and definitive proof that he was really born in the U.S.A.

Nonetheless, Trump decided to behave as if it were a real offer. He had his lawyers send the verification to Maher (Trump’s father, the brains of the family, was a legendary real estate innovator and mogul), and now Trump is suing for the $5 million on the pretense that the comic welched on a legitimate and enforceable unilateral contract. “I don’t know whether this case will be won or lost, but I felt a major obligation to bring it on behalf of the charities,” Trump said. Continue reading →

Ethics Elephant In The Room: The ASPCA Was Wrong, And Should Admit It

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

circus-elephants-

The  Association for the Prevention of  Cruelty to Animals finally capitulated and has agreed to pay over 9 million dollars in damages to the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. Way back in 2000, the ASPCA and other animal advocacy groups sued the circus company’s owners, alleging cruel treatment of elephants. The problem was, courts found, that the law suit had been built on the claims and testimony of a former Ringling barn helper who had been paid at least $190,000 for his participation in the lawsuit. This meant that the suit was dead.

Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus counter-sued, as would I, as would you. I don’t doubt that elephants are abused sometimes in the circus; I’m sensitive to the argument that putting elephants in a circus is inherent abuse. It seems clear that a lot of dedicated, well-meaning people who care deeply about animals and their treatment couldn’t press their claims persuasively without help, so, essentially, they cheated. You can’t pay witnesses, whether the witness is telling the truth or not. It’s unfair. It’s illegal. It corrupts the justice system. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: CBS Tampa

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Today’s canine bigotry, misinformation and blatantly terrible reporting prize goes to the CBS affiliate in Tampa. It reported a story involving  a man who left a 10-month old baby alone in a home to go out drinking, with only a dog in charge of the child. But the CBS headline was “Man Leaves Pit Bull To Babysit Infant Child,” and included this stock photo of a snarling pit bull:

FILES - Picture taken 24 August 2000 inThe implication of both the headline and the photo is that the child’s peril was increased by its being left alone with a vicious dog. Actually, the child was probably safer with a pit bull than any other breed: this is a breed, after all, that was known as “the nanny dog” for much of the 20th Century. If the mention of the breed had been intended as possible mitigation for the jerk that left the baby without human supervision, that might be legitimate reporting, but what CBS did was pure sensationalism and distortion based on the ignorance of the reporter and the editor. The headline invoked the irrational fear of pit bulls, based on ignorance stoked by reporting like CBS’s. The photo didn’t depict the actual dog involved, which just as easily might look like this…

smiling-pit-bull-dog

… and was intentionally chosen to create the impression that the man, in addition to deserting the baby, left it at the mercy of a dangerous beast. Would the headline have mentioned the breed of dog if it had been a Labrador or a poodle? The breed was only relevant to the story if you believe that it placed the child in more danger than just being left home alone. Journalism is supposed to make us better informed, not more ignorant than we already are. This requires, however, responsible and intelligent journalists.

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Source and Graphic: CBS

Parenting While Drunk

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“The hell with the kid—SAVE THOSE DUCKS!!!”

We have enough laws; too many, in fact. This ridiculous incident reminded me of a question that has been bothering me for a long time, however.

In York County, Pennsylvania,  mother and wildlife-lover Justina Laniewski was taking care of her toddler.  She was also drunk as a skunk, and decided, in her wisdom, that a flock of wild ducks were endangered by the  swift currents of Codorus Creek, swollen by Hurricane Sandy. Ducks are water birds, swim well, have webbed feet and also can fly away in the presence of danger. They seldom, if ever, drown. Never mind all that: Justina—who has no wings or webbed feet, or a brain either, apparently–-jumped in to rescue them. Her toddler, left unattended on the shore, was about to toddle in after her mother, but was grabbed at the last second by a neighbor. Firefighters had to rescue Laniewski from the neck-high water, as the ducks, I presume, laughed their tail-feathers off. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: You Now Know That Your Neighbors Are Irredeemable Creeps—Now What?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

“Now that you are all grown up, I want to tell you about the Duffs, and you can decide what to do…”

And you think you have rotten neighbors! Meet the Duffs.

Scott and Roxanne Duff of Leechburg, Pennsylvania found their neighbor’s Golden Retriever and new Rottweiler puppy  wandering in their yard. They called the police, who said to describe the dogs and hand them over to a local animal shelter. They finally returned the Golden to the owners, who lived on the same street, but told the police and the owners that the puppy had run away. Actually, the Duffs were in the process of trying to sell the Rotty on Craig’s List.

The next day, the owner of the dogs called police to say he had heard that the puppy was still at the Duffs’ house, as someone reported seeing it in their yard. Police inquired, only to be told, “Puppy? What puppy?”  Eventually the Dastardly Duffs confessed to selling the dog for $50. The puppy was duly retrieved from a Pittsburgh woman who police said was unaware of the theft, and reunited with its owner. Continue reading →

Unethical Feature: “Top 10 People Who Don’t Deserve To Be Millionaires”

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

And leave Bubbles alone.

I know: it’s a feature, it’s a gag, it’s not meant to be taken seriously. I don’t care: the underlying attitude behind The Daily Caller’s recent slideshow, “Top 10 People Who Don’t Deserve To Be Millionaires” is too common these days to be emulated, even in half or whole jest. The belief that citizens of the U.S. “don’t deserve” to have the money they do is at the root of toxic politics, bad economic policy, class resentment and self-excused jealousy, and it shouldn’t be encouraged. If there is a genuine and persuasive argument to be made that people don’t deserve the money they earn, then make it, and you have to do better than “you didn’t build that!”

Taylor Bigler, the Caller’s entertainment editor who compiled the list, doesn’t. She just appeals to jealousy, as if nobody really really does resent people who have made more money than they have so its fine to pretend they do. “Now, some people are millionaires because they are ambitious and kept their noses to the grindstone,” she says. “Those people certainly deserve their hard-earned success. But honestly, there are many other people who are millionaires that simply don’t deserve to be.” Like? Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: The American Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments


This week, the American Bar Association House of Delegates passed Resolution 100.

The measure reads:

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges all state, territorial, and local legislative bodies and governmental agencies to adopt comprehensive breed-neutral dangerous dog/reckless owner laws that ensure due process protections for owners, encourage responsible pet ownership and focus on the behavior of both dog owners and dogs, and to repeal any breed discriminatory or breed specific provisions.

Translation: stop discriminating against pit bulls and all the dogs that look like pit bulls, might be pit bulls, or that people who don’t know anything about dogs might think are pit bulls, as well as the dogs’ owners. It’s not fair, it’s unethical, and it’s un-American. Or, as Elise Van Kavage, chair of the Animal Law Committee of the Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section, put it, “People love their pets, no matter what their appearance,” she said. “This is America. Responsible pet owners should be allowed to own whatever breed they want.” Continue reading →

The Pasco School District (Florida) Flunks Its “Cone of Shame” Lesson

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Isn’t this hilarious? The student looks just like that funny animated dog!

Laurie Bailey-Cutkomp is, among other things that I will enumerate as we go, a  science teacher who until recently was employed at Zephyrhills High School in Dade County.  The Pasco School District fired her for devising and employing a unique form of punishment for misbehaving students: she placed them in a wide plastic collar of the sort used by veterinarians to keep dogs from licking their stitched up wounds, what the talking dogs in Disney’s  animated film “Up” amusingly called “the Cone of Shame.” But they were dogs, and they were animated. The Cone of Shame isn’t funny on kids, except maybe to Ms. Bailey-Cutkomp.

Then the same school district that fired her, following negotiations and a settlement agreement, allowed another school in the same district, Middle School, to hire her to teach science there.

Oh, darn…my head just exploded all over my computer screen! There…it’s wiped off now. Continue reading →

Quest for Fairness: What Will It Take For America To Treat Blacks Like Regular Human Beings?

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

“Look, a monkey! Must be racist.”

Two recent incidents at the London Olympics—really, really stupid incidents—-caused me to wonder anew what it must be like to be black in this country, and to despair. I’m not referring to discrimination, exactly.  I think a better term would be  “unhealthy obsession.” To be black in America is to be automatically a subject of controversy and conflict, and I assume this is a crushing, almost irreducible burden that makes daily life, happiness and sanity infinitely more difficult for African-Americans than for any other  group. It appears that the culture, the media, the public, interest groups and government just won’t ever leave them alone to just live.

Here is U.S.tennis star Serena Williams, and she has just won a Gold Medal in singles tennis. Williams, whose passion and effervescence is almost as attractive as her athleticism, does a little happy dance. Not too much of one—nobody could accuse her of preening or taunting like NFL players after a touchdown. And yet she is criticized anyway, by Fox Sports among others, because what looked like just a happy dance to me was really a version of the “Crip Walk,” a hip-hop move adopted by the notorious L.A. street gang, the Crips, about 40 years ago. Since Serena is black, some saw this as a poorly-timed reference to drug-dealing killers, or even glorification of gang culture. Three seconds of a little jig, and suddenly the Olympics is the site of a race incident—and this is an ethics alarm that should never have gone off.

Or should it? The “Crip Walk” is considered so provocative in some neighborhoods that schools have banned it. From that perspective, maybe critics have a point; it might have been irresponsible for an African-American athlete from L.A. to do the move.  Williams—I love you, Serena!—brushed off the controversy by saying, simply, “I don’t care.” Still, a pure moment of an athlete’s joy in victory was marred, because the victor happened to be black. Continue reading →

Now THESE Are Irresponsible Parents!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

What could go wrong?

When a mother in Maine Township, Illinois noticed that her 18-month-old daughter’s finger was missing, her first thought, the news item tells us, was that the family pit bull did it. Sure, always blame the pit bull. Pit bulls are no more likely to chomp and infant than any other dog, but if the mother assumed that, why was the toddler permitted to have unsupervised contact with the dog? Well, you see, this particular family never heard of the concept of “child-proofing.” Given the real reason for the toddler’s amputated finger, I’m sure other thoughts were going through her mind, like…

.…”I wonder if she did that with the power saw we always keep plugged in for emergencies?”

…..”Maybe that zombie we keep chained in the basement bit it off?”

….”Has she been in my scalpel collection again?”

But no. The real reason that the girl was missing her finger was that she had stuck it in the fish tank, where Mom kept her pet piranha.

If this kid makes it to 12, she’ll be lucky.

Meanwhile, the parents should alert all those kind contributors to weepy bus monitor Karen Klein, who will doubtless send the parents contributions out of sympathy because that mean piranha mistreated their child.