Business & Commercial

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month: Tennessee State Rep.Joe Armstrong

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

SEDITION!

In a “who most deserves to have to resign?” contest between Tennessee State Rep. Joe Armstrong and sexting New Jersey County Commissioner Louis Magazzu,  Armstrong wins by a lap. The University of Tennessee bookstore has pulled a brand of novelty breath mints from its shelves, in compliance with a request from Armstrong, a loyal and incompetent Democrat. The mints  lampooned President Obama. They were packaged in tin cans with an  image of Obama and the motto, “This is change? Disappoint-mints.” The horror.

Armstrong said that the mints were offensive. Oh weally? Izzums wittle feewings wounded because evewyone doesn’y wuv your bewuvved weader? Continue reading →

The Ethics of Interviewing Kids on Camera

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

 

Art Linkletter was right: "Kids say the darndest things!"

When I initially learned about  Chicago TV station WBBM editing  an interview with a 4-year-old boy last month to make him sound like an aspiring gang-member when he actually said that he wanted to be a policeman, I decided to pass. I try to avoid making obvious observations, and nobody could defend the conduct of the station’s editors, who intentionally truncated the child’s remarks to the interviewer to make them sound chilling. The larger question of whether the child should have been interviewed at all, however, is more challenging. We see kids being interviewed on TV all the time, and it is far from certain that reporters are doing so ethically.

In the wake of  the WBBM incident, journalistic ethics expert Al Thompkins reprinted his guidelines for interviewing juveniles on the Poynter site. I’m an admirer of Thompkins, but I found his guidelines almost as chilling as the distorted interview itself. Here is his guidance on the issue of interviewing kids, with my reactions: Continue reading →

The Saga of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt: Life in a Culture That Values Lies

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Post-surgery Montag, trying to stay famous

If you have taste, a job, and a brain, or don’t read a lot of “Us” and “People” in doctors’ offices, you may never have heard of Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag. They were stars of the once popular TV reality show “The Hills,” and despite being two vacuous and shallow individuals of minimal common sense, talent or education, they presumed that they could ride the “famous for being famous” gravy train in celebrity-and-media obsessed America indefinitely. They couldn’t.

The Daily Beast features a horrifying interview with the pair, which is worth reading for its ethics lessons on several levels. For one thing, the degree to which the culture of dishonesty has progressed in America  surprises even me. Allowing yourself to be presented to the public as a completely manufactured personality in exchange for fame and fortune has always been part of the celebrity experience, but the reality show phenomenon has removed it from everything else—now the lie is all there is. And there are thousands upon thousands of attractive, young dimwits who actually aspire to such ersatz enshrinement in the culture as their life’s pursuit. Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters are these deluded individuals’ goddesses, despite the fact that 1) there are not 500 IQ points among the four of them and 2) they all have the benefit of rich trust funds to fall back on, so their jaunts as pop culture comets are more like diversions than careers, though profitable ones. Continue reading →

My Grudge

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) has been in the epicenter of the last-ditch debt ceiling negotiations, and will probably deserve significant credit if the nation’s looming, self-created crisis is averted, if only temporarily. I’m going to have a hard time applauding, however, and not just because I think the entire incident has proven that America’s leadership void in all branches of government is terrifying. I can’t stand Mitch McConnell. I can’t stand to look at him, listen to him or read about him, and for the most unfair of reasons. I have a deep personal grudge against his wife, and its aura is wide and strong enough to engulf the Senator as well.

Back in 1987, McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, was a Reagan appointee in the Transportation Department, and I was out of work. Recalling that I had done a lot of work in transportation policy analysis, my former boss of two jobs back, (who is the current President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce), graciously offered to make some calls on my behalf, and set me up to meet with Chao, a friend of his. The meeting that resulted remains the most humiliating and infuriating business-related experience of my life. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Scent Branding, Mind-Control, and Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Elizabeth was the first one to dive into this murky, interesting, science fiction/ “Brave New World” issue that I examined in  “Scent Branding, Mind-Control, and Ethics,” on a topic that confused me more the longer I considered it. What resulted was unusually long, perhaps accounting for the lack of comments, and Elizabeth’s reaction is long as well, but worth reading. There is something potentially sinister here, or perhaps around the corner—or just in our imagination and fears. Scent manipulation, and all it implies, is in the wilderness of ethics, where human nature, science and commerce meet.

Here is the “Comment of the Day”:

“I agree this is a complicated issue.  As you said, restaurant smells (natural, I assume) tend to make people hungry (or more hungry than they really are), as do waiters with large platters of beautiful food which often encourage patrons order more, different, and perhaps more expensive food than what they may have had in mind.  The goal of the restaurant is to sell food:  if memory serves, it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that restaurants had at least parts of their kitchens open to the dining area so “good smells” could waft out from them.  My memory from childhood of elegant restaurants were the multiple green baize doors that completely closed the kitchen off from the dining room.  So was this change intentional or simply simpler and cheaper as restaurant designs?  I don’t know, but it’s different. Continue reading →

Scent Branding, Mind-Control, and Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Agreed: this is scary. We're not there yet. We don't even know if "there" exists.

A recent article on the web that purported to explore the ethics of “scent branding” was fascinating for two reasons.

First, “scent branding” is a term I had never encountered before, for a practice that I had not focused on. About five seconds of thought, however, made me realize that indeed I was aware of the phenomenon, and had been for quite a while. “Scent branding”—using fragrances in a commercial environment to create a desired atmosphere and to prompt positive feelings, recollections and emotions from patrons—has been around a long, long time, though not under that label. When funeral parlors made sure that their premises smelled of flowers rather than formaldehyde, that was a form of scent branding. Progress in the science of scent allowed other businesses to get into the act: I was first conscious of the intentional use of smell when I spent a vacation at the Walt Disney World Polynesian Villages Resort. The lobby and the rooms had a powerful “tropical paradise” scent, a mixture of beach smells, torches and exotic fauna. It was obviously fake, like much in Disney World; also like much in Disney World, I found it effective, pleasant, and fun. I certainly didn’t think of it as unethical. I was normal in those days, however.

Well, more normal.

The second aspect of the article, entitled “Is it Ethical to Scent Brand Public Places?”, that caught my attention was that it had an obvious agenda. The piece was opposed to scent branding, and set out to find the practice unethical in order to justify condemning it. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Larry Flynt

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

BLECHHHH!

I know, I know. “In other news, the Earth spins, and the Atlantic ocean is wet!” Nevertheless, it is occasionally worth the trouble to remind ourselves what an unprincipled sleaze Larry Flynt is, especially with people still around who argue that he’s a hero.

Flynt announced on Nancy Grace’s show last night that talks are ongoing with Casey Anthony to have her nude and tattooed bod featured in Hustler magazine for $500,000 up front plus 10% of all profits. Flynt said he decided to make the offer after concluding there was a big market for seeing the acquitted child murder suspect in the buff. Continue reading →

MSNBC Hires Al Sharpton, As “Network” Becomes Reality

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Satire no more.

Noting that MSNBC has given Rev. Al Sharpton his own show, I am compelled to ask: What is broadcast journalism’s accepted criteria now that justifies an individual’s enshrinement as a cable news commentator?

Is it name recognition? The “right” political orientation, in this case, knee-jerk liberal? A ready-made fan base?  Theatrical presence? If these are the criteria, by all means, hire Al Sharpton. Hire Alec Baldwin, Donald Trump, Rod Blagojevich and Jane Fonda, too. Gary Busey. Manny Ramirez. Hulk Hogan. Bozo the Clown.

Or is the proper and responsible criteria credibility, integrity, honesty, fairness, and journalistic credentials? If those archaic standards are still in place, or if MSNBC wants to pretend that they are, then the hiring of Sharpton marks a new low in broadcast news coverage cynicism and recklessness. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Provocative T-Shirt Problem”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Rick Jones, whose excellent blog posts on ethics, academia, politics and life can be read here, at Curmudgeon Central, again delivers the Comment of the Day, on my post about the gay couple asked to hide an innocuous T-shirt message while visiting Dollywood.

“It strikes me that attempting to draw clear lines of demarcation in terms of either content or location is inherently fraught with peril. The best determinant may indeed be the Golden Rule. But that inevitably touches on intent. The purpose of a “marriage is so gay” t-shirt isn’t to “get in the face of” opponents of gay marriage; it’s to make a mildly humorous point about an issue without being strident.

“The guy who wore the “I’m a Muslim. Don’t Panic” t-shirt to the Ground Zero celebration after the killing of Osama bin Laden—not terribly clever, but not at all offensive, either.

I wouldn’t be offended by a t-shirt backing a political candidate I’d never support (I might have an indication of whether to engage in conversation with this person as we wait in the queue, but that’s another matter); I would be by a t-shirt defaming that same candidate: comparing him to Hitler, for example. Yes, intent matters. Continue reading →

Cheater’s Remorse: ABC News Gets Ethical Without Knowing What “Ethical” Means

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

"Right now, cheating doesn't pay, so we're committed to ethics."

If you think ABC News is going to get any credit here for officially (sort of) banning the practice of paying so-called “licensing fees” to get exclusive interviews, I’m going to disappoint you. For there is nothing admirable about….

1….. engaging in the discredited practice of paying big money to central figures in news stories in order to gain access to them, and

2….disguising the practice by technically paying them inflated fees for the rights to photographs, even though the real reason for the pay-off is #1 above, then…

3….rejecting the practice when it leads to questions about how the network got an interview when it didn’t pay “licensing fees,” but…

4…noting that it might still go back to the unethical practice “perhaps once every couple of years,” since…

5….the other networks do it.

Yuck, pooie, ichhhh, petah!  ABC’s decision, outlined in a report by media watchdog Howard Kurtz, tells you everything you need to know about the state of ethics in broadcast journalism in general and ABC in particular, and I have seen prettier sights floating in an unflushed toilet bowl. Continue reading →