The Wall Street Journal has a depressing piece about recent examples of unethical and fraudulent conduct in the world of science, including, naturally, the latest global warming flap resulting from the UN mistakenly warning that the Himalayan ice caps were melting away, and would be gone by 2035. This story, coming on the heels of the East Anglia email revelations, has added to justifiable public confusion over climate change, how fast it is happening, how well it is understood, and why governments are so eager to throw billions at a “solution” when there seems to be so much uncertainty. Continue reading
Around the World
Unethical Website: www.r-word.org
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, criticized for using the word “retarded’ during a private meeting last summer, has told advocates for the mentally disabled that he will join their campaign to help end the use of the word.
I’m sure he will. Emanuel, like too many politicians, is willing to throw Freedom of Speech and thought under the bus if it gets him out of hot water with the politically correct. But while the efforts of the Special Olympics to “end the r-word,” as its website http://www.r-word.org puts it, are understandable and well-intentioned, they couldn’t be more wrong. Or dangerous. Continue reading
More Tebow Ad Ethics: Allred’s Complaint
The much-anticipated Super Bowl ad telling the story of how quarterback Tim Tebow was born because his mother rejected a doctor’s advice to have him aborted for medical reasons is spinning off ethical issues at a dizzying rate.
Some are easily settled, as Ethics Alarms has already noted. There is nothing wrong with a Super Bowl ad raising substantive issues in the middle of beer commercials and tackles, as some have (incredibly) argued. There is nothing unethical about CBS changing its policy regarding issue-oriented commercials. The fact that the network rejected such ads in the past does not make it hypocritical now. CBS, having ended a blanket prohibition, must now be fair and reasonable in deciding which issue ads to accept. Let’s see how it goes before we cry foul.
And there is nothing “anti-choice” about a woman’s story of how she chose not to abort her son, and is glad she did. It is not even an anti-abortion ad, unless the pro-abortion movement literally believes that it is wrong not to have an abortion. She had a choice, and she made it. The message of the ad does encourage thought about the consequences of having the procedure, which is unequivocally good.
Now, however, Hollywood lawyer and woman’s rights advocate Gloria Allred has suggested that Tebow and his mother are spinning a tale that is inspiring, powerful, and full of baloney, and she has sent CBS a letter of protest. Continue reading
What Rudyard Kipling Taught My Father
Today the Army buried my father, Major Jack Marshall, Sr., with full military honors. He had earned them, for he was a hero in World War II. Let me correct that: every soldier who serves in battle is a hero, but my Dad had a few special distinctions, like a Silver Star and a Bronze Star to go with his Purple Heart. He sustained a crippling wound to his foot from a hand-grenade, healed enough to jam what was left of it into a boot, and went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge.
Under the clearest of blue skies, with the cemetery covered in snow, a caisson drawn by black horses, one without a rider, carried my father to a gravesite ceremony where the American flag draping his casket was carefully folded by six soldiers and given to my mother, following a 21-gun salute. My father was a hero off the battlefield as well, a profoundly ethical and courageous man throughout his life, and how he got that way is worth examining. Continue reading
Ethics Trumps Morality: Ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
Almost lost in the din of President Obama’s defiant State of the Union address was his promise to finally end “Don’t ask, don’t tell” as military policy. There is no ethical argument against this long overdue move. It has always been a policy based on the political expediency of politicians afraid to do the right thing.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is unethical. The law treats gay Americans in a biased and discriminatory manner, reinforcing negative stereotypes and the irrational fears. It also hurts the military and the nation by robbing it of able soldiers and military personnel. Continue reading
State of the Union Ethics Alarms
President Obama’s State of the Union message didn’t quite set off accusations of mendacity on the scale of President Bush’s yellow cake uranium comment in 2003, and Rep. Joe Wilson didn’t yell out “You lie!” (thanks for that, Joe), but the President did make some assertions that, if not intentionally inaccurate, were recklessly misleading. The most striking one was contained in the President’s attack on the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission He said:
“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”
This prompted Justice Joseph Alito, sitting with his colleagues, to say quietly, to himself or to Justice Sotomayor who was next to him, “Not true, not true.” And he was right: much of the statement wasn’t accurate. (Was Alito’s mouthed protest any sort of civility breach? No. Obama couldn’t see it; it is possible nobody heard it at all. Justice Alito was not mouthing the words for lip-readers in the television audience. No ethics foul. However, Alito may want to practice his poker face in the future. Next time, he won’t be so surprised: for a President to directly criticize the Supreme Court in his address is almost as rare as a Congressman shouting “You lie!”) Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Trijicon Inc
Once again, being an Ethics Dunce and being a regular, garden variety dunce goes hand in hand.
Last week it was reported that Trijicon Inc of Wixom, Michigan, the company that makes the scopes on rifles used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been engraving them with a Biblical reference. The reference is 2COR4:6, short for 2 Corinthians 4:6, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Terrific idea, guys. As Americans fight conflicts in the Middle East while maintaining to the Muslim world that we are in not engaging in a war against Islam, you send our soldiers into battle with Christian quotations on their weapons. Continue reading
The Ethics Verdict on Haitian Luxury Cruises
Luxury cruise lines and their passengers are being condemned in some quarters for continuing to dock their ships at Haiti’s private beaches while the rest of Haiti is in the midst of destruction, death and horror. “Royal Caribbean is performing a sickening act to me by taking tourists to Haiti,” one critic wrote one poster on CNN’s “Connect the World” blog. “Having a beach party while people are dead, dying and suffering minutes away hardly makes me want to cruise that particular line,” wrote another. Continue reading
Media Ethics and Haiti
- Rebecca Solnit has written a powerful piece questioning the news media’s accounts of “looting” in Haiti. She argues that people in the midst of a disaster with a breakdown of infrastructure and government assistance are acting reasonably and justifiably when they take food and other necessities from abandoned stores. She believes that media accounts emphasizing looting warp the public perception of what is happening, vilifies the victims of the disaster, and prompts excessive measures against the “looters,” who are only trying to survive. She has a point. You can read her whole piece here.
- There is something oppressive and coercive when so many networks and cable channels interrupt regular programming to carry a telethon, as they did last night. It turns an appeal for help into a demand for help. Continue reading
On Hoaxes, Avatar, and More Late Night Ethics
Hoax Update
- Singer, model, television personality and inexplicable celebrity Tia Tequila announced in December that she was engaged to the heiress to the Johnson and Johnson fortune, Casey Johnson. The troubled Johnson turned up dead in squalid circumstances in January, prompting a grief-stricken online statement from Tia in which she spelled her beloved’s name wrong. Shortly after this, it was revealed that the engagement was a publicity stunt by Tequila, who barely knew Johnson. Fake romances for publicity purposes are as old as the Tudors, but this sort of thing further trivializes truth for an entire generation. Continue reading
