Arts & Entertainment

OH NO! Political Correctness Got Me!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Late last night as I was battling worry and insomnia, my TV remote transported me to the Cartoon Network where I encountered, for the first time  in 40 years, a minor Hanna-Barbara animated series called “The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.” Like all Hanna-Barbara shows, but especially the Saturday morning variety, “Penelope” was crudely drawn and aimed its humor at the lowest common denominator: compared to it, Woody Woodpecker is Faulkner. Drawn in by the comforting sounds of great vocal artists of the era like Mel Blanc and Paul Winchell, however, I watched about ten minutes of the show and realized, to my horror, that I now found it offensive…and not for the reason that I found it annoying in 1970 (it is, after all, moronic).

The plot of  every episode of “The Perils of Penelope Pitstop” (a spin-off of H-B’s more successful but just as repetitious and silly “Wacky Racers”) was the same. A female auto racer who is also a blonde, helpless bimbo with a Southern accent is stalked by a villain called “The Hooded Claw,” voiced by the great Paul Lynde.  The Hooded Claw, for no discernible reason,  concocts elaborate plots to kill Penelope, but is foiled, at the last second, every time. The cartoon is an obvious riff on “The Perils of Pauline,” the famous Pearl White silent movie cliffhanger serial in which each segment ended with the heroine tied to a railroad track or falling to earth dragging a collapsed parachute. Yet I found it impossible to appreciate the cartoon’s meager charms because of the loud clanging of  ethics alarms in my brain. Why is the only woman in the show portrayed as a walking, talking Barbie Doll? And why are kids being encouraged to laugh at a woman being stalked by a homicidal maniac? Because he’s an inept homicidal maniac? What could possibly be funny about stalking, an insidious phenomenon that every year leads to multiple murders?

“Oh my God,” I thought. “I’m politically correct!” Continue reading →

How Unethical Is This Feature Story? Let Us Count The Ways:

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Next amusing list from the Houston Press: "Ten Hottest Serial Killers"!

The feature, courtesy of the Houston Press, and I’m not making this up, is headlined  “The Ten Hottest Women on the Texas Sex Offenders List”, which is sure to make another list somewhere, “The Ten Most Offensive Ideas for a Feature Story.” The author, Richard Connelly, introduced his list of child-molesting hotties by writing,

“We combed through 15 of the biggest counties in Texas and came up with the ten hottest women in the database. Warning: In some cases, we picked out the best of a series of mugshots. Alternative choices were starkly different. So click on each link before you send any marriage proposals.”

What was wrong with this article, besides the obvious drawbacks that it wasn’t funny or satirical, and that the women weren’t hot (but then, who takes a hot mug shot)?

Let’s tally them up: Continue reading →

Appearance of Impropriety II: “Here’s Approval For That Deal You Wanted…What? Sure I’d Like to Work for You! Wow, I Never Saw THAT Coming!”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

What's there to be suspicious about?

Meredith Attwell Baker, a member of the Federal Communications Commission who voted to approve Comcast’s takeover of NBC Universal in January, is leaving to  become senior vice president of government affairs for ….Comcast-owned NBC Universal.

Hey, why are you so suspicious, you jaded cynic, you? Comcast says it did not begin discussions with Baker about a possible job until after the takeover had her seal of approval. So it’s all on the up and up! Right? Right?

Okay, let’s say we believe that, since doing otherwise would amount to bribery. It doesn’t matter, and I don’t care. Taking a major job with  a company whose back you scratched with a favorable ruling as a government regulator looks terrible, promotes public distrust, erodes faith in regulatory structures, and is unethical. There are other jobs in the world for people with Baker’s credentials; she doesn’t have to take one that makes the U.S.  government’s business regulatory apparatus look like it’s fixed.

A condition of any regulator’s employment with a federal agency should be a pledge that he or she will never accept a paid position for a company that has benefited from the regulator’s rulings…not in a year, not in a decade, not ever.

Ethics Dunce: Tucson’s NBC Affiliate KVOA

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Next  Monday night’s“Law & Order: LA” episode involves “a crazed gunman” who “goes on a rampage at a political rally, killing a state senator.” Sound’s upsetting. Hmmmm...where have I heard of something like that happening?

Oh, right.

Tuscon, Arizona, where the NBC affiliate, KVOA  has decided that residents are not only too traumatized  to view such an episode “ripped from the headlines,” but apparently to be in the same city where anyone else can view it. Station president and general manager Bill Shaw explains that “the Tucson community is still going through the healing process” and NBC’s show has too many similarities to “that horrible day.” KVOA will broadcast the episode on May 17 starting at 1:05 a.m, because…gee, I can’t figure out what the logic is. To make the show as difficult and inconvenient as possible to see for those in the Tucson area who want to see it?  To punish NBC for broadcasting it at all? This is paternalism of the most offensive and insulting kind.

The censorship of the TV episode is an abuse of the station’s responsibility to the community, and if I was in a position to do so, I’d pull KVOA’s license. Who are the station execs to decide what network fare is or isn’t too traumatic for its viewers? Why would a Tuscon resident who would be traumatized by a fictional drama based on January’s tragic events in the city watch the show? Why shouldn’t a viewer who feels up to the task be allowed to see what everyone else in the country is watching? If the episode is a masterpiece, or sets off a national debate, what right does Bill Shaw have to take Tucson citizens—of all people— out of the debate?

The station’s decision is unfair, disrespectful, presumptuous, an abuse of power and, as is often the result of such ingredients, utterly, utterly stupid.

The Uncommon Common Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Emily Dickinson, he's not.

It is unusual to encounter a situation where there is no course that doesn’t violate some legitimate ethical principle. The dilemma involving rapper Common’s controversial invitation to the White House is one of them. None of the options are strictly ethical, and this has led advocates both for and against his inclusion in Michelle Obama’s poetry event, “An Evening of  Poetry at the White House,” to behave unethically themselves. Let’s see: what comes closest to being ethical conduct of the possible outcomes?

Option A: Michelle has her poetry event, but doesn’t invite any mainstream rapper. Ethical breaches: Incompetence, bias, censorship, dishonesty.

Rap is the most dynamic and popular form of poetry in America today. Having an event to “showcase the impact of poetry on American culture” at the White House that excludes popular rappers is absurd on its face; it would be like the White House celebrating the influence of sports in American culture and omitting football. Continue reading →

Legal Ethics Train Wreck on “The Good Wife”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Oh, Alicia, Alicia...what have they done to you?

The CBS legal drama “The Good Wife” continues to show the seamy side of big firm legal practice, with heroine Alicia Florrick’s firm, Lockhart, Gardner and Bond, its adversaries, and even Good Alicia herself violating legal ethics rules with abandon, and at an accelerating rate, based on recent episodes. There is nothing wrong with this as entertainment, as long as the Rules themselves are not being misrepresented (they aren’t), the misconduct isn’t being presented as ethical (it isn’t, though it is sometimes hard to tell), and viewers don’t get the idea that this is how most law firms behave. Unfortunately, like most legal shows, “The Good Wife” fails in this important realm. I work with many large law firms, and they are all very aware on the ethical lines, bold or fuzzy, that they must not cross, and take their obligations seriously.

The most recent episode of “The Good Wife,” entitled “Getting Off” included a full-fledged ethics train wreck sparked by the firm’s habitually unethical adversary, the fecund Patti Nyholm. In the middle of representing the defendant hospital in a lawsuit brought by a Lockhart, Gardner and Bond, Nyholm is fired by her firm and removed from the case. With a twinkle in her eye, she approaches none other than the Lockhart firm to represent her in a multi-million dollar lawsuit against her former firm for discrimination and wrongful termination, on the theory that it fired her because she was pregnant. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The great Marlene Dietrich, Ethics Hero

It was on this date in 1992 that the magnificent Marlene Dietrich died, in her sleep, in her Paris apartment at age of 91. She had hidden her face from the world since she had stopped performing over a decade before, saying that the public should remember her as she had been. Sadly, Dietrich is one of those former icons of Hollywood whom the public is slowly failing to remember anything about at all; most are more familiar with Madeleine Kahn’s send-up of her in the Western spoof “Blazing Saddles” than they are with Marlene herself. That is wrong, for she deserves better. Not only was Marlene Dietrich a unique performer and important cultural figure, she was also an Ethics Hero.

She was a rising German stage and screen actress when director Josef von Sternberg cast her as Lola-Lola, the beautiful, cynical leading character in “Der blaue Engel,” (The Blue Angel), Germany’s first talking film. The movie made Dietrich a star. Von Sternberg took her with him when Hollywood beckoned and signed her with Paramount Pictures. There Dietrich built her image and legend by perfecting her femme fatale film persona in a series of classic films directed by her mentor: “Morocco” (1930), “Dishonored” (1931), “Shanghai Express” (1932), “Blonde Venus” (1932), “The Scarlet Empress” (1934), and “The Devil Is a Woman” (1935).

Meanwhile, she had already begun fighting Hitler’s regime. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: New Orleans Saints QB Drew Brees

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Drew Brees is one professional athlete—yes, there are others—who sees the riches he acquires in his high-paid trade as a star NFL quarterback as tools to achieve good ends. He has established an impressive foundation to assist children in New Orleans, and now he is using his wealth to keep his team together and get them ready for the coming season.

As NFL training camps remain in limbo while the courts decide the legality of the owners’ lock-out, Brees’s Saints are training anyway, because he is picking up the bill, paying Tulane staff to help out during practices and flying in his personal trainer to oversee the team’s conditioning program, even arranging for the Tulane Institute of Sports Medicine to provide insurance for players who need it. Brees has also arranged for lodging for some of the younger players on the team.

Quarterbacks are always team leaders in name and reputation, but Drew Brees is exhibiting exemplary leadership and character by acknowledging his special resources and using them for the benefit of his colleagues during a crisis. Wealth and influence can accomplish wonderful things if the individual who is wealthy and influential has the ethical character to make it so. Drew Brees is such an individual, and a magnificent example of leadership as well.

____________________________

Note: Ethics Bob posted on Drees right about the same time I did. You can read his comments here.

Unethical Quote of the Week: Adam Dachis

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

“All posts that belong to the Dark Side are going to feature some ideas that might be a little evil or at least require some flexible ethics. Some things will be downright horrible, and you should not do them, but are either for your information or simply for the point of interest (and will be noted as such). Your judgment and actions are your own, so think before you do anything you read here and only use your dark side for good.”

—Adam Dachis, ethics corrupter, in the “Dark Side Disclaimer” that accompanies his column on the website Lifehacker, called “Secrets from the Dark Side.”

His current “Secrets from the Dark Side” column is entitled “How to Lie, Cheat, and Steal Your Way to a Perfect Flight,” which is an accurate description of its contents. Some of Dachis’s “tips” (scams? cheats?) are interesting, some are humorous, and all (well, maybe with one exception) are unethical. Dachis, for his part, doesn’t have the guts to advocate outright the conduct that he is explicitly promoting, nor does he condemn it. As his ethically incoherent ( “Only use your dark side for good”) disclaimer demonstrates, he thinks ethics is a game of some sort, and that being a “little evil” is cute, or trivial, or something.

A true ethics corrupter, Dachis wants to avoid personal accountability for the unethical acts of his readers spurred entirely by his post, while at the same time getting credit for his cleverness. This is the Richard Nixon approach to ethical corruption, planting seeds and disclaiming responsibility for the crop, telling followers, “We could do that, but it would be wrong.” Wink, wink.

Yechhh.

Ethics Quote of the Day: Lori Palatnik

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Is "ding-dong" wrong?

“In life we must know what is good and what is evil. Yes, we are commanded to remember that there is evil in the world, and not only are we allowed to celebrate when it is destroyed, we must.”

—Mrs. Lori Palatnik, in an essay today entitled “Is It Proper To Celebrate Osama bin Laden’s Death?”

Writer David Sirotka at Salon, among others, has sharply criticized the jubilant reaction of most Americans to the terrorist’s death. He found the chanting crowds in front of the White House and Times Square disturbing, symbolizing a gleeful embrace of violence as the way to address problems, an instance of becoming the enemy in order to defeat it: Continue reading →