Arts & Entertainment

Proof of Dead Ethics: Attacking Your Adversary’s Family

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It is a standard threat in movies about the Mob and TV dramas about thugs: “Do what I tell you, or your family’s dead.” The tactic of going after loved ones as a particularly awful form of revenge is a calling card of the truly despicable. That is why the Valerie Plame scandal so damaged the Bush Administration’s popularity, even though it was never clear (and still isn’t) that anyone there really did try to “out” Plame’s CIA status to get even with her obnoxious husband’s fueling opposition to the Iraq invasion. Just the plausible suggestion that Vice President Cheney’s gang may have committed such an ethical outrage was too much to bear.

You would think, then, that those who most revile Cheney’s no-holds-barred approach to political combat would be the least likely to emulate him. You would be wrong. Continue reading →

When Money Curdles Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

A stimulating ethics alarm drill surfaced over at Freakonomics, where Stephen Dubner challenged the site’s  readers to help him compile a list of goods, services and activities that one can legally give away or perform gratis, but that  when money changes hands, the transactions become illegal. It is a provocative exercise, especially when one ponders why the addition of  money should change the nature of the act from benign to objectionable in the view of culture, society, or government. It is even more revealing to expand the list to include uses of money that may not create illegality, but which change an act from ethical to unethical. Continue reading →

Save Lindsay Lohan

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

It’s interesting, isn’t it? People who would never think of ridiculing the sick or mentally ill, who would never dream of condemning emotionally crippled individuals broken by dysfunctional families, will gleefully heap public abuse on a celebrity with the same problems. Why is this? A human being in trouble is a human being in trouble. It seems, however, that with the exception of little girls who fall down wells, the more people who know you are in crisis, the less sympathy you are likely to get.

Take, for example, the sad case of actress Lindsay Lohan, a talented young woman cursed with two narcissistic and exploitive parents. Continue reading →

Christmas Card Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

My family just received a Christmas card from the family of a long-time friend, and my wife commented on how good his wife looked in the photo. I mentioned this to my friend, and he laughed. “That’s what I was going for when I photoshopped out  the crow’s-feet and wrinkles. She does look good–just not that good.”

My gut feeling is that this is misrepresentation, and unethical. Continue reading →

Is Gossip Unethical? Is the Pope Catholic?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A recent Wall Street Journal blog post included this surprising statement:

“Amid a rise in office gossip, researchers are disagreeing over whether it is fundamentally good or bad.”

Pardon? Dictionaries are unanimous in defining  gossip as “idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.” That’s pretty clearly unethical, wouldn’t you say? Continue reading →

More Ethics Lessons from Tiger and His Friends

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The fact that a story is tabloid fodder doesn’t  mean  it can’t carry ethical wisdom along with its titillation content. As the number of alleged Woods mistresses continues to climb ( fifteen, the last I checked, but that was three hours ago), the Woods saga is casting light on more ethics issues than most. Such as… Continue reading →

“Law and Order, SVU” vs. O’Reilly: Was Bill Smeared?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Even if you can’t stand Bill O’Reilly, you have to admit that the Fox bloviator has an entertainingly thin skin. Are you a struggling TV talking head in need of a  ratings boost? Just take a shot, cheap or otherwise, at Battlin’ Bill, and he’ll double your audience by turning red-faced and calling you a slime. This time, O’Reilly is riled at Dick Wolf, the “Law and Order” producer, who recently had a character played by John Larroquette argue on “Law and Order, Special Victims Unit” that a man who killed the children of illegal immigrants had been primed by “Beck, Limbaugh, O’Reilly” who were like a “cancer spreading ignorance and hate.”  Continue reading →

The Ethics of Ignorance and Apathy: Gore’s Million Degree Gaffe

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I didn’t watch Al Gore when he appeared on the Tonight Show a couple weeks ago. What he said then while hobnobbing with Conan should be old news, but in fact it was no news at all, because virtually no news media gave it more than a passing mention. Then, by purest accident, I heard a talk-radio host ranting about a shocking statement Gore had made on the show, and I checked to see if he could possibly be quoting the former Vice-President correctly.

He was. Here is the exchange: Continue reading →

Breaking Promises to the Dying and the Dead

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

"Bye, Marilyn...it was nice lying over you."

My Dad detested wakes and viewings, and used to say that after he died, he wanted to be exhibited sitting up, eyes open, with a tape recording that would be triggered every time anyone stood in front of him. The recording would be of my father saying, “Hello! Thanks for coming! Hope to see you at my funeral!” Luckily, Dad didn’t make me promise to do anything that bizarre, although it would not have been out of character for him to do so. His recent death caused me to wonder: what if he had? Would I be obligated to keep my promise? Would I be justified in making such a promise, if I knew it wouldn’t be kept? Continue reading →

Tiger Woods Ethics, Part I: Betrayal’s Not for Heroes

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I wasn’t planning on commenting on the Tiger Woods soap opera. Its ethical lessons seemed obvious, and merely xeroxed themes that I have, in the eyes of some, thumped to death. I do feel that the apparent glee with which some in the sports media have attacked Woods for revealing his true character is damning…of them. Golf’s Golden Child finally outed himself as a phony “good guy” and a classic case of the prodigy who won’t or can’t grow up, a man who has been carrying on multiple adulterous affairs while using his bottomless checkbook to cover his tracks. It seems that many reporters have long known that Tiger’s public image was a fraud, and  had chafed over the adulation heaped on him as they witnessed the golfer being mean, petty and boorish, often to them. Now these journalists feel it is “safe” to skewer Woods, and are doing so with gusto. Cowards. They were parties to a mass public deception, and their duty was to let us know Tiger was playing us for suckers when they knew it, not when his lies became National Enquirer headlines.

As for Tiger’s own conduct, however, I presumed most could see the ethics issues clearly. Then the apologists and rationalizers started writing their columns. Continue reading →