Business & Commercial

The Ethics of Singing For Muammar

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Sing, Nelly---and charge him through the nose.

Singer Nelly Furtado has been attacked recently for accepting a million dollars in 2007 to entertain Muammar Gaddafi and his family. The idea seems to be that, as ringingly put by screenwriter Mark Tapper,

“It is quite simply willful blindness to claim that there is no moral dimension in the choice to perform privately for a monster like Gaddafi, and in being paid exorbitantly from funds no doubt stolen from his own people, or misappropriated from foreign aid or dirty deals.”

Furtado isn’t the only one who crooned for the Libyan dictator, apparently. Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Beyoncé and other performers also accepted big bucks to give Muammar and his family a good time.Furtado is donating her fee to charity in the wake of criticism like Tapper’s and Beyoncé has also donated the million that she received to charity, apologizing profusely. Mariah Carey is begging for forgiveness.

I’m glad that the stars are giving their money to worthy causes, and no doubt it is a good public relations move in a society where half-baked ethical notions become conventional wisdom before much thought has been applied to them. Nevertheless, Furtado and the rest did nothing wrong by entertaining Gaddafi. Continue reading →

Wait…This Is MY Fault????

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

We should be ashamed of ourselves.

I have complained, more than once, about the naked greed and obvious incompetence displayed by the airlines charging $25 or more to passengers who check luggage. The results of this reverse incentive are that people carry on too many, and too large bags, boarding takes longer, and flights are delayed. Passengers talk about the idiocy of the policy all the time. So do the airline attendants. Anyone can see how dumb the policy is. The smart approach would be to charge for anything carried on other than a handbag or briefcase, and make checked luggage free. Boarding would be faster and there wouldn’t be passengers using the sneaky (but effective!) trick of carrying a piece of luggage through security only to check it at the gate at no charge when the airline personnel makes the routine plea for passengers to free up luggage bin space by doing so. Continue reading →

“An Army of Fake Personas”? I DO Trust the Military, I DO Trust the Military…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Why does the Air Force want to recruit these people?

Raw Story reports that a United States Central Command spokesman recently confirmed that the US Air Force had solicited private sector vendors for something called “persona management software.” The technology would allow an individual to “command” virtual armies of fake, digital personas across multiple social media portals.

The “personas” would have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds to make them undetectable as fake to outside observers, and there would be sophisticated identity protection to support the deception,  preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real person behind the account. The program would also fool geolocating services, so these “personas” could be virtually inserted anywhere in the world, providing ostensibly live commentary on real events, even while the operator was not present.

Hmmmm. Continue reading →

The White Male Scholarship

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Does he really need a scholarship?

Colby Bohannan, president of the Former Majority Association for Equality, has set up a scholarship program for white males. To qualify, you have to be at least a 25 percent Caucasian, have demonstrated a commitment to education, achieved at least a 3.0 grade average, show financial need, and document a positive contribution to the community. Bohannan’s official reasoning is that white males are the only group that doesn’t have a scholarship dedicated to them. He is, he says, righting an injustice. Continue reading →

Cranky Ethics Encounters In A Rotten Week

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The unexpected death of my mom on Saturday tends to make everything else in my life the past week fade to insignificance, but the last seven days featured more than my usual quota of confrontations when thrust in the path of conduct that seemed just wrong to me:

  • Staying at a Fairfield Inn and Suites, a Marriott chain, in Greensboro, North Carolina, I found myself running behind schedule for a morning presentation. Rushing to take my shower, I was stopped cold by the shower controls, which made no sense at all. The long handle didn’t seem to do anything, and the round knob inside it had no effect either. Since I have the mechanical skills of a rodent, and am constantly embarrassed by my ineptitude, I fiddled with the knobs longer than I should have before giving up in a panic and calling the front desk.

“I can’t get the shower controls to work, and I’m late!” I blurted out to the woman manning the desk. “Send someone up right away!” Continue reading →

Unethical Website of the Month: “University of Redwood”—Or Perhaps We’re Doomed

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

 

Oregon's Reed College...and, in Universe Beta, the "University of Redwood"

“University of Redwood” exists only in cyber-space, the mutated virtual clone, or perhaps evil twin, of Oregon’s prestigious Reed College. The imaginary institution consists only of a website, which rips off most of the features of Reed College’s website, with pictures of Reed’s faculty as the imaginary “Redwood” faculty, photos of Reed alumni as “Redwood” graduates and even a parallel universe history of the school. Reed’s history section begins,

 

“Reed College was founded in 1908, and its first classes were held in 1911. Reed is named for Oregon pioneers Simeon and Amanda Reed. Simeon Reed had been an entrepreneur in trade on the Columbia River; in his will he suggested that his wife could “devote some portion of my estate to benevolent objects, or to the cultivation, illustration, or development of the fine arts in the city of Portland, or to some other suitable purpose…”

Coincidentally, “Redwood” has a very similar background, according to its site: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Texas State Rep. Debbie Riddle

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

 

Look up "Ethics Dunce" in my dictionary, and this picture is under it.

The “Ethics Dunce” designation was invented for people like Texas Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle.

 

She has proposed one of the many anti-illegal immigration bills currently being considered in the Texas state legislature. Her brainchild, and I use that term generously, is House Bill 2012. Man, it’s tough! It  would punish those who  “intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly” hire unauthorized immigrants with penalties up to two years in jail and fines of up to $10,000.

Riddle does have what she considers a reasonable exception, however. She believes it is dastardly to hire illegals, rewarding their disregard of our immigration procedures and willful violation of our laws, and creating an incentive for others to do the same…unless they are hiring a maid, a lawn caretaker or another houseworker! Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Blogger Jeff Jarvis

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

"If Charlie's unavailable, get this guy. He's hilarious!"

“One way or another, by one definition and diagnosis or another, Charlie Sheen is a sick man. He doesn’t need airtime. He needs couchtime. News people are ill-serving him and the issue of mental illness in this country by putting him on the air as if he were just another source, another celebrity. They are not informing the public. They are exploiting Charlie.”

—Blogger Jeff Jarvis on his site, BuzzMachine, on the media’s disgraceful rush to get celebrity meltdown Charlie Sheen to do as many wacky, self-destructive, “did he really say that?” interviews as possible before he falls completely to pieces as addicts in full denial inevitably do.

Jarvis is right. There is no more news to be milked from the sad Sheen story, other than “Charley continues to say things that are destroying his career, making him dislikable and unemployable, and that prove that he is sick, getting sicker by the day.” This is no less despicable than exhibiting freaks, the brain injured and schizophrenics for the amusement of the crowd. “They want him to act nutty,” says Jarvis. “Ratings, man, ratings.” Continue reading →

Oscar Ethics: Was Melissa Leo’s Campaign Wrong?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

On a difficult day, I am not up to writing about heavy ethics issues, so instead I will comment on an ethics controversy that is as inconsequential as possible—one involving the Oscars.

Melissa Leo, a front-running Best Supporting Actress nominee for her role in “The Fighter,” courted controversy by violating one of the Academy Awards’ unwritten rules: “Don’t promote yourself for an Award—it’s tacky!” Leo personally placed Hollywood trade ads showing her in full glamor mode, a sharp contrast to her character in “The Fighter.” The text simply said “Consider,’ then below that, “Melissa Leo,” and in small print off to the side, the web address http://www.melissaleo.com. She argued that she needed to promote herself because her competitors were getting the benefit of big studio publicity, while she was not. Continue reading →

Tip Ethics Are More Critical Than You Thought

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

She needs that 20%

Here’s why you need to tip, and generously: Waiters and waitresses are screwed if you don’t. Continue reading →