The blogs are still buzzing over the bickering between “American Idol” judge Kara DioGuardi and guest judge Katy Perry during the show’s under-whelming auditions in L.A. The key exchange was over so-so singer Chris Golightly, whose troubled upbringing in foster care touched Kara’s soft nougat center, and inspired her to suggest that this made him a viable contestant. Katy Price, a so-so singer herself, sharply objected, saying,“This is not a Lifetime movie, sweetheart,” and reminded Kara, in essence, that “Idol” is a talent competition and not “Queen for a Day.” Continue reading
Business & Commercial
State of the Union Ethics Alarms
President Obama’s State of the Union message didn’t quite set off accusations of mendacity on the scale of President Bush’s yellow cake uranium comment in 2003, and Rep. Joe Wilson didn’t yell out “You lie!” (thanks for that, Joe), but the President did make some assertions that, if not intentionally inaccurate, were recklessly misleading. The most striking one was contained in the President’s attack on the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission He said:
“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that, I believe, will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.”
This prompted Justice Joseph Alito, sitting with his colleagues, to say quietly, to himself or to Justice Sotomayor who was next to him, “Not true, not true.” And he was right: much of the statement wasn’t accurate. (Was Alito’s mouthed protest any sort of civility breach? No. Obama couldn’t see it; it is possible nobody heard it at all. Justice Alito was not mouthing the words for lip-readers in the television audience. No ethics foul. However, Alito may want to practice his poker face in the future. Next time, he won’t be so surprised: for a President to directly criticize the Supreme Court in his address is almost as rare as a Congressman shouting “You lie!”) Continue reading
James Cameron, Poul Anderson, and Posterity’s Loss
James Cameron, whose ground-breaking film “Avatar” will soon be the top-grossing movie of all time, is currently being bashed in some of the more obscure corners of the blogosphere for plagiarism. This time the criticism is not based on his blatant borrowing from Russian science fiction, but for his lifting of ideas from an American master of the genre, Poul Anderson. Anderson wrote a novella in 1957 entitled “Call Me Joe” that chronicled the adventures of a paraplegic who becomes telepathically merged with a manufactured alien life form created to explore a planet. He is exhilarated by the sensations and power of his artificially-created body, and eventually is seduced into abandoning his humanity completely to become a significant figure in the development of a new civilization. Along the way, he battles vicious alien creatures. Sound familiar? Yes, these are major components of “Avatar” as well. Continue reading
Agent Scott Boras’s Conflicts Surface Again
Last year, almost to the day, I posted an article on “The Hardball Times” site arguing that baseball super-agent Scott Boras, an attorney, frequently has client conflicts of interest that violate the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct. You can read it here. Now the issue has surfaced again, in relation to the problems Boras has had finding a satisfactory contract for Johnny Damon, a left-fielder, while he also represents other left-fielders competing with Damon for the same job.
I believe he has serious conflicts of interest as both an agent and as a lawyer. The two articles lay it all out; maybe my small cry in the wilderness is beginning to have some effect.
Stay tuned.
Ethics and Valleywag’s Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt
Today is the day Apple will unveil its long-awaited tablet device, destined to be the most culture-altering advancement since, well, the Segway or something. Apple’s excited about it, anyway, and as is usual for that company, it has fiercely guarded against premature leaks regarding its newest innovation. In the process, it threatened to sue the proudly sleazy website “Gawker,” which had one of its misbegotten offspring, the Silicon Valley gossip site “Valleywag,” announce the “Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt,” which dangled cash prizes for anyone who would uncover and leak tablet information to the website before January 27. Saying said it had “had enough of trying to follow all the speculation,” Valleywag published a bounty list describing what it would pay for and how much, ranging from $10,000 for photos to $100,000 for anyone who could put the tablet in its editors hands.
Apple’s lawyers responded with a cease and desist letter, saying that the scavenger hunt scheme violated trade-secret law and induced others to breach their confidentiality agreements with the company. Naturally, Gawker cried “First Amendment!”
It appears that the lawsuit won’t go forward, since the tablet announcement date is here; a pity, because a lawsuit couldn’t happen to a more deserving operation, and because a court decision would have clarified an interesting issue. We all know the media happily acts as information-launderers, accepting documents and secrets from lawyers, government officials and corporate whistleblowers who could be fired, disciplined, sued or prosecuted for leaking them, and publishing the illicitly acquired information with self-righteous pride, not to mention confidence, since the Constitution says the press can print anything. The issue is this: if the media can publish such leaks, can it also induce them directly with cash? Continue reading
Solving the Spouse Conflict Problem
When spouses are professionals whose jobs intersect, they will usually maintain that they never “talk shop” at home, and that for all intents and purposes, they are two unrelated workers, ships passing in the night. Nobody believes them, and nobody should. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Trijicon Inc
Once again, being an Ethics Dunce and being a regular, garden variety dunce goes hand in hand.
Last week it was reported that Trijicon Inc of Wixom, Michigan, the company that makes the scopes on rifles used by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been engraving them with a Biblical reference. The reference is 2COR4:6, short for 2 Corinthians 4:6, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Terrific idea, guys. As Americans fight conflicts in the Middle East while maintaining to the Muslim world that we are in not engaging in a war against Islam, you send our soldiers into battle with Christian quotations on their weapons. Continue reading
Jean Simmons and Sexual Harassment
Jean Simmons has died at the age of 80. She was a marvelous actress, one who began as a child star and had major roles in three classic films before she turned 20. Today we remember her primarily as the beautiful slave who bore the son of Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick’s sword and sandal blockbuster, and perhaps as playing herself as the movie star who sends Felix Unger gaga in a memorable episode of “The Odd Couple.” We do not remember much more; her career never reached the heights predicted for it, primarily because she fell victim to sexual harassment by a powerful, unscrupulous man. Continue reading
Ethics Hero: Conan O’Brien
I know I just used one of Conan’s farewell comments as the Ethics Quote of the Week, and I know saluting him again risks my being called a Conan booster, which I am not. (Full Disclosure: Conan and I graduated from the same college, and my mother thinks that should matter to me. It doesn’t.) I have also been accused of not having enough Ethics Heroes, and it is a fair beef. I would be remiss not to give Conan that designation for a segment of his “Tonight Show” farewell that I left out of the earlier post. It was this: Continue reading
The Ethics Verdict on Haitian Luxury Cruises
Luxury cruise lines and their passengers are being condemned in some quarters for continuing to dock their ships at Haiti’s private beaches while the rest of Haiti is in the midst of destruction, death and horror. “Royal Caribbean is performing a sickening act to me by taking tourists to Haiti,” one critic wrote one poster on CNN’s “Connect the World” blog. “Having a beach party while people are dead, dying and suffering minutes away hardly makes me want to cruise that particular line,” wrote another. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 