Business & Commercial

Ethics Quiz: Truck Nutz vs. Schweddy Balls

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Remember Truck Nutz? That may the name of Ben and Jerry's next flavor, if Schweddy Balls catches on...

I’ve been driving or lecturing all day and may be a little punchy.  Yet having last posted on Ethics Alarms about Ben and Jerry’s crude homage to Alec Baldwin (FULL DISCLOSURE: I would be likely to find any homage to Alec Baldwin offensive, since I find Alec Baldwin offensive) and juvenile word-play, I found myself wondering: which is more uncivil and disrespectful, Ben and Jerry’s new Schweddy Balls ice cream, or the large, red, swinging plastic scrotum decorations that some truckers hand at the tail end of their rigs, Truck Nutz?

So that’s your Ethics Quiz, dear readers, as we head into the weekend: Which is more arrogantly disdainful of public decorum, decency, and respect for one’s fellow community members? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces, and Crude Ones at That: Ben and Jerry

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Stop, you're killing me...

Sorry. I’m ready to be jeered as a humorless prude.  Ice cream flavors should not be named after gross double entendre Saturday Night Live skits. Ben and Jerry’s new Schweddy Balls ice cream (‘sweaty BALLS,” get it?? HAR!)  is just one more step in coarsening the culture, and an unnecessary one.

The skit was a one-joke parody of earnest NPR cooking shows in which a character named Mr. Schweddy talked about his signature holiday confection, rum balls, or “Schweddy balls.” It was funny (hardly hilarious, though; anyone who thinks that is hilarious is 12); it also aired after midnight. Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is sold during the day, the joke is old, and the only point to naming the ice cream after the joke is to sneak something crude into plain view. Wow. What an accomplishment.

The ice cream name is no more or less tasteless, rude and juvenile than naming a New York bar “Buck Foston,” or a TV show called “$#*! My Father Says.” The slobs and foul-mouthed jerks among us won’t rest until everyone talks like sailors and ugliness is everywhere, and they will do it while being applauded by self-styled “liberals” who are really just old-fashioned boors.

It’s not a big deal, any more; the boors are getting their way, because not enough people are willing to endure the guaranteed “Oh, lighten up!” and “Get off your high horse!” sneers that will follow any objections. I hope those big belly laughs from  “Sweaty Balls” ice cream are worth it, I really do. As long as it makes you guys happy.

“Sweaty Balls” ice cream. You slay me.

Comment of the Day: “Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Sen. Claire McCaskill”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Karl Penny’s Comment of the Day is further reflection on the futile effort to turn back the tide of new technology, which Senator McCaskill apparently believes can be accomplished with a good marketing campaign, making her a candidate for institutionalization.  A prize for the first reader who identifies what a klepsydra was!

“Jack, sometimes I get a little nostalgic about older technologies, generally ones that figured so prominently in my youth, but have now gone the way of the klepsydra. I get nostalgic enough that, almost, for a moment, ideas like Sen. McCaskill’s seem to make sense, and a gleam comes to me eye, and I begin to think, “Yeah….” Then I remember that it’s daylight out, and however pleasant dreams can be, they’re just dreams.

“I also remember that there are reasons—good reasons—why I and millions of others adopted email, wrote documents on a computer, listened to music through an MP3, read my books on a Kindle, and played games on a computer. Truth to tell, most of us don’t really miss those older technologies, except in brief spurts. I have an old Olympia Portable typewriter in a closet. I must have typed a million documents on that thing, from my freshman year of high school through college. Letters, papers, notes, forms, checks (!) even. It was so indispensable, I took it with me most everywhere. Now, it just sits in that closet, and I hardly ever take it out even to look at. The last time it saw any use was last year, when a local high school was doing a play, and they needed an old manual typewriter as a prop. Now, it’s back in the closet.

“Sen, McCaskill may have successfully deluded herself, but I don’t think she’s going to delude much of anyone else, and thank heaven. But, if this is what passes for progressive thought among our elected leaders, then God help us all.”

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo)

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

This box of rocks also has an idea about how to save the Postal Service, and it's probably better than Sen. McCaskill's.

[ I know—I need some Republican IEOTWs. There have been a lot of Democrats lately. The problem is that the things presidential candidates say don’t qualify (Michele Bachmann’s claim that she could lwoer gas prices to $2 would have been a sure winner), and the Democrats have been unusually inept lately.]

From the New York Times, discussing the U.S. Post Office’s impending insolvency:

“An overarching trend that has fueled the Postal Service’s crisis — and reduced annual mail volume by 22 percent since 2006 — is that Americans are e-mailing, paying bills electronically and reading shopping catalogs and news online.

“Noting that some great books have been written based on letters sent by the Founding Fathers and by soldiers, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, urged the postmaster general to run an advertising campaign urging Americans to send more letters to each other.

““There is something special about receiving a piece of first-class mail, knowing that it comes from someone you care about,” she said. “I really believe that if someone would begin to market the value of sending a written letter to someone you love, you might be surprised what it will do for your Christmas season.”

That’s brilliant, Claire: spend money the Post Office doesn’t have to urge more people to use an archaic method of communication they no longer use since it is slower, less reliable and more expensive than the alternative, because there’s “something special” about it! That’s going to turn everything around. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Nutrition Advocate Marion Nestle

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

"First the came for the Frankenberry, and I said nothing..."

“The intent of the First Amendment was to protect political and religious speech. I cannot believe that the intent of the First Amendment was to protect the right of food companies to market junk foods to kids.”

—- Nutrition advocate, NYU professor and blogger Marion Nestle, arguing that the government should censor advertising “aimed directly at children,” in the interests of public health.

I should not need to lay out the slippery slope perils of accepting a definition of the First Amendment’s free speech guaranty that limits its protection only to “political and religious speech.” For a professor at a prestigious university to advocate this because it would make her own pet crusade easier should send chills up the spines of every citizen. Let’s see…what kind of speech isn’t political or religious? Commercial speech…artistic speech…workplace speech…academic speech… To zealots like Prof. Nestle, all of this, as well as the liberty it bolsters, should be put at risk in the pursuit of skinnier children, by designating the government to assume the parental function of teaching good eating habits. Continue reading →

Hole-in-the-Roof Ethics: If Obama Asks For Massive Infrastructure Renewal, the GOP Must Support It.

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Seldom is a solution to a problem so obvious, and so conducive to bi-partisanship. It is a solution to two problems, really: America’s dangerously rotting infrastructure, and the nation’s dismal unemployment rate. Spend the money, trillions if necessary, to repair and replace existing roads, railway beds, waterways, sewer systems, airports and bridges.  It still won’t get us where we need to be, but we’ll be much better off than if we let the current deterioration continue, and we’ll save money in the long run, too—real savings, not phony health care reform savings that evaporate once reality kicks in.

There is no justification not to do this, nor is there any legitimate excuse for any elected official not to vote for it. (And no, not wanting to give the President a victory is not legitimate…or ethical, or patriotic.) Repairing the infrastructure isn’t “discretionary spending,” it is essential, unavoidable and cost-effective spending, unless it is diverted into new boondoggles and pork. No new structures, unless they replace unrepairable old ones. No light rail systems or bullet trains; what is needed is basic maintenance and repair….everywhere. It is already late, but “better late than never” has seldom been as appropriate. Continue reading →

Labor Day Ethics Dunce: The Muscular Dystrophy Association

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Jerry Lewis earned the right to say good-bye on his terms--even if they were the wrong ones.

Nobody expected it to be easy for the Muscular Dystrophy Association to part ways with Jerry Lewis, who gave everything he had to building the organization over nearly six decades. Now 85, Lewis, a famously difficult talent with an outsize ego even by show-business standards, was bound to insist that he be allowed to all but drop dead at his post, mid-Labor Day telethon. In recent years, that seemed a real possibility, as Jerry’s health and age made him more a figure of pity and curiosity than a viable host.

Nonetheless, Jerry Lewis has raised, by the MDA’s own calculations, about $2,5 billion dollars, beginning when Eisenhower was president and TV was a novelty. The organization owes him, well, everything. They certainly owed him the opportunity to exit on his own terms, even if it was too late, even if it was self-indulgent on his part, and even if, though this is highly unlikely, it cost the organization more in lost contributions than kicking him to the curb will. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “The Twins and the Amazing Hockey Shot: the Public Flunks Its Ethics Test…Badly”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Reader Jim Weaver came up with an especially deflating and insulting Comment of the Day by taking literally my lament, in the post about the twin winning, then being denied, a cash prize while masquerading as his brother, that I was disappointed that after almost a decade of my ethics commentary that the public was still ethically out to lunch.

His comment:

“Did you really think that this blog would make a difference in America’s ethics? Is that really why you write this thing? If so, then you should be depressed because you are sadly deluded. 99.99% of the country has never heard of you or read your blog.

“I thought you wrote it to get attention and to try to drum up business for your training company. Just exactly how many readers do you have anyway?” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: What Was Unethical About ESPN’s Illustration To “What if Michael Vick Were White”?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

What if Michael Vick were a hippopotamus?

For your first Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz this September, we revisit ESPN’s controversial article by journalist Touré, who was assigned the task of engaging in the thought experiment,“What would have been different if Michael Vick were white?”

Vick, for all you football-challenged readers, is the current star quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles who just signed a $100 million contract with the team and another rich deal with Nike. A few short years ago, Vick was in prison, his NFL and endorsement contracts cancelled, his career seemingly over, because of his conviction on multiple counts of animal abuse charges and running a dog-fighting ring. Since his release, Vick has done all the right things in the public rehabilitation of his image, and his remarkable football talents did not erode in jail. When Vick was being prosecuted, a number of journalists and commentators who should have their brains put out to pasture asked if Vick, who was shown to have personally electrocuted and beaten to death some of his dogs, would have been treated less harshly by the law had he been white. The answer was and is no (or perhaps “no, you idiots”), just as it was for O.J. Simpson. Continue reading →

Ethics Train Wreck Warning: Affirmative Action for the Hideous

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

You won't need that portrait any more, Dorian...the Americans with Disabilities Act has you covered!

It is rare that an ethics train wreck of culture-wide proportions can be prevented with a firm, “Shut up, and go away!” This appears to be one of those times, however, and if anyone is reluctant, I hereby volunteer for the job.

Daniel S. Hamermesh, a professor of economics at the University of Texas, is shilling for his book, “Beauty Pays,” in which he proves the unremarkable fact that being attractive is an advantage in society , and being unattractive is an impediment. He recently hit the op-ed pages of the New York Times, writing, among other things, this:

“Why this disparate treatment of looks in so many areas of life? It’s a matter of simple prejudice. Most of us, regardless of our professed attitudes, prefer as customers to buy from better-looking salespeople, as jurors to listen to better-looking attorneys, as voters to be led by better-looking politicians, as students to learn from better-looking professors. This is not a matter of evil employers’ refusing to hire the ugly: in our roles as workers, customers and potential lovers we are all responsible for these effects.”

“How could we remedy this injustice?”

Whoa! There it is, the magic words that open the door for ham-handed social architects to do what they always to do, try to remedy the results of natural human proclivities and preferences with laws. Continue reading →