Conan O’Brien did the only honorable, dignified thing left for him, which was to tell NBC to enjoy the rubble of its schedule, because he wasn’t going to be part of it. Continue reading
Arts & Entertainment
Lies, Scams, Fiascos, and “Saved By the Bell”
Some diverse ethics observations while living the lonely existence of a traveling ethics trainer… Continue reading
Letterman’s Extortionist Tries A New Theory
I suppose you have to give Joe Halderman’s lawyer some credit for coming up with a creative defense. If you don’t think too hard about it, it almost makes sense. In a variation on the “everybody does it” ethical rationalization, Halderman’s bid to avoid prison for hitting up David Letterman for two million dollars in hush money (Halderman’s ex-fiancé was one of the female employees Letterman used in workplace harem) is based on a “Tiger does it” theory. Or to be accurate, “Tiger’s girlfriend did it.” Continue reading
The 2009 Ethics Alarms Awards, Part 1: The Worst
Welcome to the first annual Ethics Alarms Awards, recognizing the best and worst of ethics in 2009! These are the Worst; the Best is yet to come. Continue reading
The Wrong Lesson from Tiger’s Fall
So that’s the lesson, is it?
As the year end lists almost unanimously “award” Tiger Woods the distinction of engineering the Scandal of the Year, pundits also seem to be nearing consensus on the lesson we should take from the golfer’s fall, which is: “Don’t make athletes and celebrities your role models or heroes. They are human beings like everyone else, and are guaranteed to disappoint you.”
Oh, I see…it’s all our fault. Continue reading
The Ethics of Letting a Lying Defendant Testify
It’s snowing like crazy outside, and I’m stuck putting the lights on a nine-foot tree. My only escape from the pine needles assaulting my tender skin is ethics reverie, and I find myself thinking, once again, about the classic criminal defense attorney’s ethical challenge:
What do you do when your guilty client wants to claim he’s innocent in the witness chair, under oath? Continue reading
“Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” and Reality Show Ethics
Duncan Roy is a director, producer and writer whom I had never heard of, and I didn’t watch his exploits as a patient/reality show performer on VH1’s “Celebrity Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew .” The reason for the latter was a mixture of ethics and taste: feeding the fame addiction of celebrities while supposedly treating their other addictions seemed wrong to me, and inducing sex-addicted female porn stars, beauty queens and models to go into therapy with similarly attractive and sexually obsessive men is ridiculous, like setting “The Biggest Loser” at a 24 hour, all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. Continue reading
Proof of Dead Ethics: Attacking Your Adversary’s Family
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
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
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
