Business & Commercial

Tiger Woods Ethics, Part I: Betrayal’s Not for Heroes

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I wasn’t planning on commenting on the Tiger Woods soap opera. Its ethical lessons seemed obvious, and merely xeroxed themes that I have, in the eyes of some, thumped to death. I do feel that the apparent glee with which some in the sports media have attacked Woods for revealing his true character is damning…of them. Golf’s Golden Child finally outed himself as a phony “good guy” and a classic case of the prodigy who won’t or can’t grow up, a man who has been carrying on multiple adulterous affairs while using his bottomless checkbook to cover his tracks. It seems that many reporters have long known that Tiger’s public image was a fraud, and  had chafed over the adulation heaped on him as they witnessed the golfer being mean, petty and boorish, often to them. Now these journalists feel it is “safe” to skewer Woods, and are doing so with gusto. Cowards. They were parties to a mass public deception, and their duty was to let us know Tiger was playing us for suckers when they knew it, not when his lies became National Enquirer headlines.

As for Tiger’s own conduct, however, I presumed most could see the ethics issues clearly. Then the apologists and rationalizers started writing their columns. Continue reading →

“Biggest Loser” Ethics: “They Shoot Fat People, Don’t They?”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Lawyers being lawyers, it is not surprising that a New York Times article about the unhealthy physical stresses endured by contestants in the “Biggest Loser” reality show inspired a legal blog to wonder how long it would be before the show was hit with a large law suit. “I’m waiting for the first person to have a heart attack,” THR, ESQ quotes  Dr. Charles Burant, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, as saying. The core problem is not liability, however. The problem is that the show is horribly, indefensibly unethical. It shouldn’t be waiting for a lawsuit, or a heart attack. The program is wrong to continue, advertisers are wrong to support it, and we are wrong to watch it. Continue reading →

Trusting Google

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Google is a significant force in the dissemination of information, and that translates into power. The most ethical use of that power is no use at all: just give us a way to find what’s on the web, and let us do the filtering, thanks. As you probably know, Google has the credo “Don’t be evil,” a three-word invitation to controversy. What does Google regard as “evil,” exactly? Its Code of Conduct Preface explains:

“Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally — following the law, acting honorably and treating each other with respect.”

Good. That’s seems exactly right— unbiased access to information. Two recent situations, however, have raised questions about how unbiased Google really is. Continue reading →

The Airline, the Columnist, and “Go Plane Go!”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

It is rare that an ethics issue breaks down neatly into two well-defined camps, but that is the what has happened regarding an October episode in which Southwest airline flight attendants kicked a mother and her unusually loud two-year old off a flight. Continue reading →

“Scroogenomics”: Clueless About Holiday Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I had decided to write about the new book “Scroogenomics: Why you shouldn’t buy presents for the holidays”early yesterday. I should have assumed that our current Scrooge-in-Chief, George Will, would have the same idea. He did, and greeted his readers with typically sour tidings as he heartily endorsed this commercially clever and ethically fatuous book. The brain-child of economist Joel Waldfogel, “Scroogenomics” argues that holiday gift-giving makes no economic or social sense, and is a net drag on everyone. Will’s quote from it is as revealing as any:

Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched to the recipients’ preferences. What the recipients would willingly pay for the gifts is usually less than the givers paid. The measure of the inefficiency of allocating value by gift-giving is the difference between the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent on gifts and the yield per dollar spent on the recipients’ own purchases.

All of which means that Waldfogel (and Will) are hopelessly confused about the social and ethical value of gift-giving, which has little to do with the ratio of “the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent.”  Continue reading →

“The Good Wife” and Bad Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Julianna Margulies’ latest attempt to find another hit series after “ER” is a lawyer drama, “The Good Wife.” It tells of the travails and trials of a former litigator who returns to law firm practice after her prosecutor husband, played by “Mr. Big” Chris Noth, is sent to the slammer in a scandal that also involved marital infidelity. As lawyer dramas go, “The Good Wife” is fairly good about not distorting the legal ethics rules. It still slips up, however, as this week’s episode showed. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: “Pharmed Out”

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A group of 100 medical ethicists, physicians and others calling themselves Pharmed Out have written the head of the National Institutes of Health and requested that the NIH fund studies examining the effect financial and industrial conflicts of interest have on medical research. Continue reading →

Lobbyist Ventriloquism and the Abysmal State of Congressional Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

When Washington, D.C. attorney Robert Trout delivered his closing argument in the trial of former Rep. William Jefferson (now known as “Inmate CB476881”) for, among other things, accepting a large cash bribe that was later found in his office freezer, he told the jury that the prosecution was hypocritical and unfair. After all, he said, “If seeking political help was a crime, you could lock up half of metropolitan Washington, D.C.” Jefferson’s actions may have been unethical, and they were certainly a mistake, but really now: isn’t this just what all Congressmen do? Jefferson, Trout argued, just got a little bit carried away.

Jefferson was convicted, so there is some distance left for our faith in our elected representatives to fall before it hits rock bottom. The argument was still ethically disturbing in two respects. First of all, Trout’s pitch amounted to a jury nullification plea, a defense in which a jury is encouraged to ignore the law, and that is unethical lawyering.

Second, Trout may well have been right. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

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“People seem to listen to you more when you’ve got a bagful of cash.”   Thomas J. Donohue, president of The U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  From a story in The New York Times, noted by City Ethics.

Throughout his career, Donohue has demonstrated a talent for distilling fact, wisdom, irony and humor into plain-speaking quips. My all-time favorite:  “Sometimes I don’t know what I think until I hear what I have to say.”

The Ethics of Bigotry, Part II: Unethical Tactics in the .gay Wars

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The real test of one’s understanding of and opposition to bigotry arrives when it isn’t directed at you or you group, but suddenly becomes a useful tool.

Two for-profit groups are competing to establish a .gay internet suffix, which sounds like a very good idea. Getting it established will be expensive, but it also will be lucrative if it catches on, with each registered internet site using the domain having to pay a fee. Both groups say they plan on contributing a chunk of those future profits to gay causes. Continue reading →