Around the World

PM Ethics Medley, 5/26/2021: It’s A Strange, Strange World

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Pastiche

1. Priorities! Major League Baseball has placed Angels pitching coach Mickey Callaway on its ineligible list through at least the 2022 season, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred announced. The league made the decision after investigating Callaway for sexual sexual harassment allegations reaching back several years, with several female sporstwriters among the alelged victims. The Angels fired Callaway this afternoon. Opines a major baseball news site: “Callaway is facing a year-plus ban, and it seems hard to believe any MLB team will hire him when he’s eligible to return.”

Hmmmm…

Alex Cora was suspended and fired as manager by the Boston Red Sox after a one-year suspension, then immediately hired back by the team. All he did was play a major role in devising a cheating scheme for one team, the Houston Astros, that extended through the play-offs and World Series, then oversaw a second team, Boston, that was found to have engaged in cheating, though less extensively, the next season. Cora’s cheating scheme with Astros was unprecedented, and cost two other professionals their jobs and the Astros millions in fines,while seriously scarring the integrity of the game. The conduct Callaway engaged in has been routine among professional athletes for decades, though in his case it was apparently 1) a bit more extreme than the norm and 2) “unwelcome.” After all, he was just a coach. So far, nobody has accused a player making more than $10 million a year of making sexual advances that were “unwelcome.’

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Comment Of The Day: “Will The BBC’s Princess Diana Scandal Be A Tipping Point For Public Acceptance That The News Media Can’t Be Trusted?”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Princess Di

As he (and other veteran commenters) often do here, Steve-O-in NJ doesn’t merely comment on the post but elaborate and expand it, for which I am grateful. Literally by chance, my wife was watching a Netflix documentary on the Windsors, a British production that discussed the Bashir interview of the late Princess but spun it as an example of her vindictive and manipulative use of the press to strike back at the Royal Family. The producers did not, when it was written, know that Bashir had deliberately deceived Diana and her brother to provoke her.

One bit of rebuttal to Steve-O is, I think, required. Diana may have been “not too smart, not too stable” as Steve says, but like Donald Trump, who is also described that way by those who underestimate him, she had her own special genius and unique gifts. The most stunning quote in the documentary is Charles’ statement, in a letter to a friend before the wedding, that Diana was going to have a difficult time “always living in his shadow.” I am a stage director who has made a lifetime study of what gives an individual “presence” and star power, but it didn’t take an expert to discern that however young, naive and ignorant she may have seemed, Diana had blinding charisma. People with that particular gift cast shadows, they don’t get covered by them.

Here is Steve-O-in NJ’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Will The BBC’s Princess Diana Scandal Be A Tipping Point For Public Acceptance That The News Media Can’t Be Trusted?”:

So Bashir committed fraud and forgery, there’s no other way to describe it, and the BBC buried it. Generally speaking the elements of fraud are:

1. Misrepresentation of a material fact
2. Knowledge on the part of the accused that they were misrepresenting the fact
3. The misrepresentation was made purposefully, with the intent of fooling the victim
4. The victim believed the misrepresentation and relied upon it
5.The victim suffered damages as a result of the misrepresentation

Elements of forgery are:

1. False making – The person must have taken paper and ink and created a false document from scratch. Forgery is limited to documents. “Writing” includes anything handwritten, typewritten, computer-generated, printed, or engraved.
2 Material alteration – The person must have taken a genuine document and changed it in some significant way. It is intended to cover situations involving false signatures or improperly filling in blanks on a form.
3. Ability to defraud – The document or writing has to look genuine enough to qualify as having the apparent ability to fool most people.
4. Legal efficacy – The document or writing has to have some legal significance affecting another person’s right to something. A writing of social significance cannot be the subject of forgery.
5. Intent to defraud – The specific state of mind for forgery does not require intent to steal, only intent to fool people. The person must have intended that other people regard something false as genuine. A forgery is complete upon having created such a document with this requisite intent.

Sounds like both to me. Bashir should be in jail, but I’m sure the statute of limitations has long run. I’m disgusted reading this. He had written lies mocked up to fool Earl Spencer and Diana into believing that the Royal family was out to get her, to push her into spilling embarrassing facts and nasty attacks on her former in-laws. This would be criminal even if was just an ordinary woman having the ordinary problem of being dissatisfied with her marriage and not getting along with her former in-laws. It should get no pass because the people involved were public figures.

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Saturday Ethics Cool-Off, 5/22/2021: Another “Bad Ethics Date”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

dog-cooling-off

Yikes. May 22 is another of those cursed dates where ethics rot was in the air. For example, in 1958, rock superstar Jerry Lee Lewis admitted that his new bride was a child. He even lied while doing that, “admitting” she was 15 when Myra Gail Lewis was actually only 13 years old,and also Jerry Lee’s first cousin. Another detail Lewis didn’t mention was that the loving pair had married five months before his divorce from his second wife. Jerry Lee insisted the second marriage wasn’t legally valid because that one had taken place before his divorce from his first wife.

Other ethics low points on this day:

  • In 1939, Italy and Germany agreed to a military and political alliance, giving birth to the Axis powers, which would eventually include Japan.
  • In 1856, Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber. On May 19, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner began a two-day speech on the Senate floor in which he attacked three pro-slavery colleagues by name, one of whom, South Carolina Senator Andrew P. Butler, was sick and absent from the proceedings. Butler’s cousin, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, decided to defend the honor of his kin. Wielding a cane, Brooks entered the Senate chamber and began beating Sumner at his desk, which was bolted to the floor. Sumner’s legs were pinned by the desk so he could not escape, and the beating continued until Senators subdued Brooks. Brooks supporters cheered the vicious act and sent him many replacement canes. Sumner could not return to the Senate for three years while he recuperated from his injuries.
  • In 2017, right after pop star after Ariana Grande finished the final song of her May 22 concert at Manchester Arena in Great Britain, a suicide bomber detonated an explosion killing 22 concertgoers and injuring 116 more. ISIS claimed responsibility.
  • In 1868 the “Great Train Robbery” was pulled off, with seven members of the Reno Gang getting away with $98,000 in cash from a train’s safe in Indiana.

And a special Happy Birthday to Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” born this day in Evergreen Park, Illinois in 1942. Yes, we’re still keeping him alive; after all, he only murdered three innocent people (he maimed or injured 23 others.).

1. The Great Stupid, International Strain: The Globe Theatre, Great Britain’s famous reconstruction of the Elizabethan playhouse where William Shakespeare had his works first performed, has launched a project to “decolonise’ Shakespeare’s plays, the centerpiece of Western literature. The Globe has been listening to experts who conclude that his work is ‘problematic’ for linking whiteness to beauty. Another academic maintains all of Shakespeare’s plays are “race plays’ as they all contain ‘whiteness’. For example, the first line of the 1595 comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” famously opens with Thesus saying: “Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace.”

The Horror. Why any “expert” who makes an argument like this isn’t regarded exactly as if she had appeared in public naked, painted blue and wearing a squid on her head is beyond me. As Great Stupid break-outs go, this one is pretty trivial. Shakespeare plays have been routinely debased by absurd adaptations and meat-axe editing for centuries. The only reason this example is noteworthy is its source. You’d think the keepers of the Bard’s flame in England would have more sense, not to mention respect. [Pointer: Other Bill]

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Will The BBC’s Princess Diana Scandal Be A Tipping Point For Public Acceptance That The News Media Can’t Be Trusted? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

DIANA

I hope so. It’s a long shot, but you never know when something is the proverbial final straw. The BBC is often held up as a model of ethical journalism—that’s nonsense, but a lot of Americans believe it. Now we have proof of just how scummy and corrupt the BBC is, and the company can’t deny it.

An investigation into the BBC’s conduct that produced the 1995 interview of Princess Diana by Martin Bashir revealed that the interview was based on despicable and unethical practices. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who remembers Bashir, who became an MSNBC host and was sacked after saying on the air that Sarah Palin should be forced to eat shit. He handled the sensational interview in which Diana talked about her bulimia, the miseries of royal life, and her husband’s ongoing infidelity with Camilla Parker Bowles. Her shocking attacks on the Royals completed her rift with Buckingham Palace and, as Prince William said yesterday, damaged Diana’s relationship with Prince Charles beyond repair.

Even for a journalist, what Bashir did was beyong unethical tending into evil. Bashir told Diana’s brother, the Earl of Spencer, that he had acquired canceled checks proving the Royal Family was paying individuals, including Charles’ aides, to spy on Diana. He “acquired” them because he had the BBC’s graphics department to mock up fake checks to show to Spencer. This “evidence” convinced the Earl that Diana’s fears were justified, so he told her immediately about the supposed surveillance plot. This, in turn, so infuriated Diana that she agreed to a “tell-all” interview.

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Dear Hawaii: Aloha! You Can Be A State, Or You Can Be A Country. Pick One.

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Surfer Hawaii

This was news to me: in the World Surf League and in international surfing competitions generally, surfers from Hawaii can represent island, or the United States. If they represent Hawaii, they are not regarded as representing the U.S.

Surfing will be an event in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, and the option of just representing Hawaii will disappear. Hawaiian surfers will represent the United States, since, after all, Hawaii is a state. This, believe it or not, is causing outrage and consternation in the Aloha State. Two of the four Americans on the team, John John Florence (above) and the four-time world champion Carissa Moore, were born and raised in Hawaii and are accustomed to competing under the state flag. Moore is doing so again this month as the global tour holds major events in Australia.

Across the islands, on cars and on porches, Hawaii flags fly upside down, signifying distress. “Hawaii has had so much erased history,” said Duane DeSoto, the 2010 longboard world champion, told the New York Times. “Surfing prevailed against the possible suppression into oblivion. It endured the challenge of being exterminated at one time. And now it needs to be a source of Hawaiian pride.” Another surfer said, “In surfing culture worldwide, everybody looks at Hawaiian surfing as different. Even California surfers look at Hawaii different. But the Olympics see us as the same.”

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/21/2021, To A Chorus Of Cicadas

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Cicada Ethics: Sweep up all the disgusting things (and their husks) that have accumulated on your front walk at least twice a day so people don’t have to walk on them and their dogs don’t eat them.

1. Charles Grodin (1935-2021): Thanks a lot! Charles Grodin was a talented and versatile actor who was extremely good at playing dislikable characters. We can blame him (not Jon Stewart) for creating the unfortunate cultural phenomenon of the allegedly funny TV talk show host who decides he is qualified to bombard viewers with partisan rants. It’s a self-indulgent abuse of power, position and trust, but it’s also now the norm, with every late night talk show host (and Staurday Night Live) but the generally sweet James Cordon using their show as a platform to bash Republicans and conservatives and extoll progressives no matter how mockworthy they are. Grodin started the bait-and-switch (He’s funny! Wait, why is he so angry and preaching at us?) in the mid-Nineties, and though it eventually killed his show (not soon enough), the template was born.

Grodin made Ethics Alarms in 2014, with his campaign against the felony murder rule.

2. Speaking of staying in one’s lane…Yet another ugly result of social media is the phenomenon of people publishing uninformed opinions that they are unqualified to be so emphatic about. A baseball writer and recovering lawyer, Craig Calcaterra, whom I have referenced here before, has migrated from NBC Sports to substack, and is asking me to subscribe to his newsletter. Craig is funny and smart, and his baseball analysis is superior to most. But he is addicted to making political pronouncements, and while he has a right to his biased and often ignorant opinions on things he’s far from an expert on, I’ll be damned if I’ll pay to read them. For essentially the same reasons I object to watching football players “take a knee” during the National Anthem, I expect sports writers to stick to sports. Here’s a tip to anyone peddling a newsletter to me: I regard referring to the January 6 Capitol riot as a “deadly insurrection” as Democratic Party propagandist and signature significance for a pundit who is not concerned with facts.

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 5/18/2021: Terrible Ideas, Past, Present, And Future

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

1. Gee, I’m surprised CNN didn’t give him Don Lemon’s old show…Over the weekend, Adeel Raja, a CNN contributor in Pakistan, tweeted, “The world today needs a Hitler.” Raja has repeatedly praised Hitler for trying to exterminate the Jews. During the Wold Cup in soccer, he said that he was rooting for Germany in the final against Argentina because “Hitler was a German and he did good with those jews!” (Actually, there may be more old Nazis in Argentina than Germany, but that’s quibbling.)

Last week’s tweet was deleted (Twitter did not suspend his account; after all, he’s not a Republican or President of the United States). Raja had 54 articles published under his byline at CNNbetween September 1, 2014, and September 15, 2020, all focusing on Pakistani news. CNN apparently didn’t mind relying on an open anti-Semite for news analysis until the latest tweet caused the issue to be raised.

After initially saying that it didn’t recognize Raja’s name, CNN released a statement that “he will not be working with CNN again in any capacity.”

2. The latest strategy in the Left’s plot to keep American masked forever. By “Left” I also mean “the news media,” since they are virtually identical. Digression: Judge Silberman’s brave and accurate confirmation of this provoked fear and horror among the AUC. I wrote about it here, but in case you missed it, here is his entire dissent in a recent libel case. He wrote in part,

“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news. It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy. “[The New York Times and the Washington Post ] are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction…Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet.”

USA Today, a lesser trumpet to be sure, more like a kazoo, gave us this:

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Horrifying Tales From “The Great Stupid”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Horror comics

  • This month ,two black Penn State University professors reported a “noose” in a tree behind their home The PSU student newspaper Daily Collegian quoted the professors said the “noose” was “deliberately placed [on the tree] to harass them” and was “deeply distressing to them and their family.” PSU President Eric Barron quickly posted a statement “expressing concern” about the incident and “offering support,” adding,

    “[T]he incident underscores the importance of our anti-racism work as a University, and as a community of scholarsIt also underscores the importance of our town-gown work to build a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for all who live here. Groups like Community & Campus in Unity that have formed the Centre Region Anti-bias Coalition are critical to helping create a climate of acceptance and support.”

    When police interviewed the professors’ neighbor, they learned that the “noose”  was part of a swing set. The neighbors’ kid told police he had thrown the rope “into the woods.” Police concluded  “no kind of crime [was] committed at all” and that the rope was not intentionally used to suggest a noose, or any racist statement.

  • But things could be worse, as in Scotland. There,  Lisa Keogh, a mother of two and a law student at Abertay University, faces discipline for saying that women are born with vaginas and are physically weaker than men. Keogh was taking part in a virtual discussion on “gender feminism and the law” and was discussing transgender women participating in women’s sports, Keogh also said her classmates were “man-hating feminists” after a peer stated that all men were rapists.“I didn’t deny saying these things and told the university exactly why I did so,” Keogh said. “I didn’t intend to be offensive but I did take part in a debate and outlined my sincerely held views. I was abused and called names by the other students, who told me I was a ‘typical white, cis girl’. You have got to be able to freely exchange differing opinions otherwise it’s not a debate.”

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Most Ethical Quote Of The Month Apologized For After Being Called Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Singing Conductor

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys!”

—A British railway conductor to his train’s passengers. After a “non-binary” passenger complained, the London North Eastern Railway apologized profusely.

The complaint, via Twitter, stated, “As a non-binary person, this greeting doesn’t actually apply to me, so I won’t listen.” As is now the pattern, the railway’s management grovelled,

grovel2

The better response would have been, “Thank-you for alerting us. In the future, we will have all our conductors greet the passengers with “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, and assholes!” so you feel included.”

I’m kidding…but barely. The presumption by extreme minorities that they have justification to claim mistreatment if society does not distort its traditions, customs and procedures to include every variation of the norm, no matter how exotic, is pure narcissism and imaginary entitlement. The railway’s management’s response would have been appropriate for a conductor who spewed obscenities and blasphemy, not a cheerful welcome that conservatively applies to 99.9% of the population, and those who it does not apply to are in such outlier category based on a conscious choice: intersex individuals once did the practical thing and picked a gender. That was before they realized that power and victim status lay waiting for them by remaining ambiguous.

Did non-English speakers on the train complain bitterly that the conductor’s greeting wasn’t repeated in their language? Were deaf passengers offended that the conductor didn’t sign? I wonder if an expectant mother felt that her unborn child was being snubbed because the conductor didn’t welcome fetuses…

“Laurence” set out to get an innocent conductor disciplined or fired so in the future conductors would be less welcoming to everyone.

Maybe I wasn’t kidding.

End Of Week Ethics Regrets, 5/14/2021: Trevor Noah’s Wit, The Yankees’ Great Vaccine Experience, And Other Puzzlements

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

regret

1. Baseball Ethics notes:

  • Ethics Heroes: The Houston Astros. When I forgive them for cheating their way to the 2017 World Championship, they might be worthy of a full post the next time they do something exemplary. The Astros are providing furnished apartments to minor-league players across all levels this season. According to The Athletic, they are  the only club doing this. Minor league players are obscenely underpaid, and have to find desperation lodging on salaries that aren’t much better than minimum wage. What the Astros are doing should be the industry standard. Is this an attempt by a bad actor to prove it has come into the light? Maybe. It’s still admirable.
  • In the category of “It isn’t what it is,” we have a bizarre statement from New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. The Yankees have confirmed eight cases of the Wuhan virus this week, with shortstop Gleyber Torres  the first player to test positive. The other seven cases had been among the Yankees’ coaching and support staffs, including pitching coach Matt Blake, third-base coach Phil Nevin and first-base coach Reggie Willits. Something is clearly amiss, either in what the team has been doing or in the effectiveness of the Johnosn and Johnson  single shot vaccine, which is what the Yankees provided to the team. Cashman said, in a longer statement to the press,

“The one thing I take from this is I believe the vaccine is working. We can take great comfort, thankfully, that all who were vaccinated with the J&J, provided from two different states, the one batch in New York, the other batch in Florida, at various different times, one in March versus obviously earlier in April, we believe it has protected us from obviously something severe or something much more difficult to be handling than we currently are.”

Or, the fact that so many Yankees who were  “fully vaccinated” got the virus anyway might suggest that the vaccine involved isn’t that great. I would come to that conclusion before “the vaccine is working.” Baseball players are young, athletes, and as far removed from high risk as one could find. Before the vaccine, only one player who contracted the virus last season became seriously ill, and that was from aside effect of the illness rather than the illness itself.

2. Explain those rules again for me, please? In today’s Arts section of the New York Times, we have this note:

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