Arts & Entertainment

5 Things PETA Doesn’t Understand About Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Stay classy, PETA.

PETA—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals— has announced that it is starting a porn website to attract attention to the plight of animals. Over on his Business Ethics Blog, Chris McDonald asks whether this means that PETA has “jumped the shark.” More so than offering Octomom money to put a billboard on her lawn advocating spaying pets so they won’t have litters like hers? More so than complaining that Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog of Groundhog Day fame, should be replaced by a robot? I don’t think so. Besides, jumping a shark would be cruel to the shark.

The tunnel-visioned organization, well on its way to becoming a joke to the detriment of its abused animal constituency, has registered the domain name peta.xxx and plans to launch a pornography website in December that “draws attention to the plight of animals.” How will it do that, you ask? By using images of naked women performing  sex acts on men to attract viewers, and then making the audience observe graphic videos of animal abuse for the privilege of watching the graphic sex. “We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals,” says PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt, who adds that the organization wouldn’t use its “flashier tactics if we didn’t know they worked.”

Let’s put that right at the top of this list, entitled “5 Things PETA Doesn’t Understand About Ethics.” Continue reading →

Ethics, History, and Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

James McAvoy as Frederick Aiken, a Civil War era Ethics Hero you've never heard of.

Throughout Hollywood history, there have been actors who regularly used their screen personas to explore ethical issues: Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Paul Newman, John Wayne of course, Clint Eastwood, and recently, George Clooney. None of these focused their artistic attentions on ethics more sharply than Robert Redford, however, in such films as “All the President’s Men,” “The Candidate,” “The Proposition,” and “The Natural,” and he has continues his exploration of ethics as a director, in such films as “The Milagro Beanfield War” and “Quiz Show.”

Redford’s most recent film, “The Conspirator,” is another ethics movie, as well as one that explores law and American history. I am a Lincoln assassination buff, and I was eager to see the movie until I read several reviews criticizing it as a heavy-handed allegory attacking the Bush administration’s response to 9/11. Score one for the confirmation bias trap: the movie is nothing of the kind. Continue reading →

God, Beck, and the Confirmation Bias Trap

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Hurricane Irene proves that God agrees with Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck says so, and he must be right, because God agrees with him. Hurricane Irene proves it.

Policy makers, decision-makers, journalists, and indeed all of us have an ethical obligation to be on the alert for confirmation bias, that insidious human tendency to interpret all external phenomena as confirmation of our established opinions and beliefs. Why do we have the obligation? We have it because confirmation bias makes us dogmatic, inflexible, close-minded, incompetent, and, in a word, stupid. Life can make us wiser, but not if we misinterpret everything so as not to disturb our most cherished certainties. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Baltimore Orioles Pitching Great Mike Flanagan,1951-2011

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Mike Flanagan, for more than three decades an ace pitcher, coach, executive and broadcaster with the Baltimore Orioles, died of a self-inflicted shotgun blast this week. It is obvious from listening to his devastated colleagues, former teammates and friends that he was genuinely loved and respected, and one reason was his overwhelming decency and strong ethical compass. Many members of the Orioles family recalled how Flanagan was known for taking young players aside and schooling them on how to represent the team with dignity, honor, fair play, hard work, and integrity.

In his lovely column today remembering Flanagan and his values, Washington Post sportswriter Tom Boswell recounts how the ex-pitcher once explained why he wouldn’t cheat. Many sportswriters and former player have offered the argument, during the continuing ethical debate over the culpability of players using steroids, that it is only natural that an athlete, any athlete, would cheat to prolong his career. Flanagan showed why they are wrong, and why we should never excuse unethical conduct on the grounds that “anybody would do it.”

Boswell: Continue reading →

Memorial Ethics,Part I: Recalling The Martin Luther King Memorial Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

  (For Memorial Ethics, Part Two, go here.)

[It is almost forgotten now, but when the design of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was chosen back in 2007, there was much unhappiness in the black community. A Chinese artist was chosen to design the memorial, and this raised issues both ethical and ironic. Now that the memorial is completed (the planned dedication this week has been postponed due to Hurricane Irene), it seems clear that critics aimed their objections in the wrong direction: the problem wasn’t the designer, but the design, an imposing piece of classic Socialist-Worker art that would look at home in Red Square. But, hey, there’s lots of bad art in Washington, covering an abundance of styles: the large bust of JFK in the Kennedy Center makes it look like President Kennedy was made out of chewing gum. At least some bad Communist statuary is a change of pace.

The debate over the choice of artist was interesting, and is even more so in retrospect. It is worth pondering as the new monument joins the National Mall. Here is my article on the matter, slightly edited from the original published on The Ethics Scoreboard in 2007, followed by a response from the artist selection’s most vocal critic.]

An intense controversy surrounds the choice of a statue’s sculptor, specifically the Chinese artist whose design was selected by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation to become a major monument to the martyred civil rights leader in Washington, D.C. Continue reading →

Children’s Book Ethics: “Maggie Goes On A Diet”

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Send it to Hell.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Shel Silverstein’s satirical “Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book,” an adult audience parody of children’s books which, in addition to teaching an incorrect alphabet, included segments that encouraged night terrors and fear of castration, endorsed sibling jealousy, extolled violent conduct and theft, and even tried to convince children to eat the pages. The book is hilarious, but only because it is clear that no parent in their right mind would ever let a child near such a publication.  No parents in their right minds should let their daughters near “Maggie Goes on a Diet,” either.

Paul Kramer’s fable about an obese 14-year-old who turns her life around by losing weight is as potentially damaging to children as anything in Shel Silverstein’s spoof; unfortunately, the author doesn’t realize it. Let’s hope parents do. Continue reading →

Pat Summitt, Failing a Great Leader’s Toughest Test

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Be like Lou, Pat...so the next diminished leader can be like you.

Pat Summitt, the legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach who has won more games than any other college coach ever, men’s or women’s, received test results from the Mayo Clinic at the end of May that confirmed early-onset Alzheimer’s type dementia.  The irreversible brain disease is now at work destroying the 59-year-old Summitt’s abilities of recall and cognition, and as it is for the other estimated 5 million Americans with the disabling disease, the prognosis is grim.

Everyone in the Tennessee and sports community as well as the media and all of us who have seen loved ones suffer with the disease are rallying behind Summitt, who is one of the toughest, smartest, most determined figures in sports. But Coach Summitt has decided that her symptoms are not yet severe enough to force her into retirement, and she intends to stay at the helm of the Tennessee women’s basketball team at least three more years.

It is the wrong decision. It is a selfish and unethical decision. The question is whether anyone will have the courage to try to convince Summitt that she has a duty to the team, the school, her own legacy and basic principles of ethics to change course and do the right thing. Quit. Continue reading →

Ethical Quote of the Week: Angels Pitcher Jered Weaver

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Is enough ever enough?

“How much more do you need? Could have got more, whatever. Who cares? If $85 million is not enough to take care of my family and generations to come, then I’m pretty stupid.”

–—Los Angeles Angels pitching ace Jered Weaver,after signing a 5 year, $85 million contract to stay with Angels.

Weaver hardly signed for chicken feed, but his statement should be heeded by greedy athletes and corporate executives alike. After next year, he probably could have demanded another two or three million dollars a year or more from the highest bidder for his services, in exchange for leaving a team and a city where he is appreciated and comfortable, putting additional pressure on himself, and using funds that otherwise could pay the salaries of many lower paid club workers who might end up with no jobs at all. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Actor Ryan Gosling

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Ryan Gosling....ready for action!

Caught on video: Hollywood hunk Ryan Gosling (“The Notebook”) saw a fight developing on the streets of NYC, dropped his bag of groceries and used his personal-trainer toned bod to break it up.

Stopping violence in public can be dangerous, and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Gosling obviously knew what he was doing, however, and what he was doing was fulfilling the citizen’s duty to fix a problem when he or she can. Proactive participation in society, including discouraging misconduct whenever possible, is profoundly ethical, and too rare. The actor not only stopped a brawl, he also established himself as a member of that endangered species, the celebrity who deserves to be a role model.

Gosling doesn’t just play heroes in the movies—-he knows how to be the real thing.

Comment of the Day: “As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Michael, who knows college culture from personal experience,  elaborates on the University of Miami athletics scandal, which he correctly notes is hardly news, just a predictable escalation of corruption we have tolerated for too long. When the reaction to an instance of corruption is “well, that’s no surprise!” it is a symptom that we are becoming inured to a cultural condition that should not be tolerated.

Here is Michael’s Comment of the Day, on “As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment”:

“Well, this is not news. This is just someone mentioning the elephant in the room. Some things I have noticed in my years of academia about sports include:

From School 1:

• Riding a bus with the campus football players for 3 years and listening to them talk. Things like “The cops said if they caught me beating someone up outside the bar one more time, they would arrest me”.

• An athlete who “only could afford to go to college because of football because his family has no money” had some problems with the law. Six months into the school year, he was living in one of the most expensive condo complexes in town. His beeper went off to notify him that someone was tampering with his brand-new $35,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. He went out on the balcony with his brand-new $1000 Glock pistol. When he saw several people around his Jeep, he started shooting at them. They were the police (condo complexes like this have excellent response time). He said he was worried because he had just installed a $6000 stereo system in the Jeep. No charges were filed.

•My brother ended up in a small class (~20 students) with a Heisman trophy winner. He only found out when the “student” athlete showed up once near the end of the semester. That was the “student’s” only appearance that semester.

From School 2:

• A football player from a poor family who needed the scholarship to go to college moved into my apartment complex one building away from me. After about a month, an electronics store van pulled up and delivered a full-wall sized TV. A brand-new Porsche 924 showed up later that day. Boosters are wonderful.

• The geography department issued a memo to the department that all faculty would provide the keys to their exams to the athletic tutors at least one week in advance of the exam. This explained why geography was one of the most popular majors among athletes at that University. Nationally, such majors are known as ‘safe harbor’ majors by the people who study such things.

From School 3:

•Athletes are paid to ‘watch oil wells’ to make sure they are working (they are on timers and automatically monitored.)

•A local car dealership was caught paying football players as shadow employees.

•A former student reports that he is in the same class with a major college football player. He reports that the player listens to his iPod while an Asian girl (his tutor) takes notes. On test days, the tutor takes the exam, in class, in front of all the students and the professor.

“This is going on at all schools. You can’t stop it with sanctions. Everyone knows about it, and everyone accepts it. The only way to stop it is to restructure it. The judge who accepted the ‘student-athlete’ excuse did everyone a great disservice. If they had ruled for the students as employees, we could go about this without such scandals. Athletes would be employees, could be paid, have insurance, disability, and could get a tuition waiver to take classes. They could take classes part-time and if they didn’t make it to the major leagues, they could stay on and complete their degrees in a couple years. No more dishonesty. The downside is, someone might actually start to look at how much taxpayer money goes to support these programs and start asking why we spend so much ‘education’ money on these teams. Don’t say ‘they make money!’, only about a dozen make more money than they cost and that isn’t every year. In the early 2000′s a team that recently was #1 ran out of money and the college cancelled the journal subscriptions at the library to keep it going.”

Addendum from JAM: I feel compelled to note that the idea of paying athletes as employees, which I hear a lot, is a terrible idea. With the tuition at colleges and universities already making paupers out of students, a university’s resources should never be used to pay entertainers, which is what paid athletes are. Require schools to make sure that every athlete is legitimately passing genuine academic courses, or is caused to withdraw from school. Ban athletic scholarships for students who do not have the academic credentials to be admitted without them. Ban schools that cheat from high profile sports for five years or more. Dissolve the NCAA. Schools are for education, not sports. Sports should have no more prominence than the theater program or the chess team.

It is rare that the application of rational priorities will solve a huge problem of long standing, but this is such an instance.