Business & Commercial

Coke Commands Its Lawyers To Discriminate: Can’t Do That, And The Law Firms Should Refuse (But I Bet They Won’t)

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Coke Coercion

This is a major development with narrow implications in the field of legal ethics, but potentially wide-ranging importance in the society as a whole.

We are just now learning—after all, you wouldn’t expect the news media to report this kind of sinister, reverse-racism bullying, would you?—that the general counsel of Coca Cola issued an open letter to the law firms representing it. [Full disclosure: I have taught legal ethics seminars for one of them] The letter decreed that these firms “commit that at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from Black attorneys.” You can read the letter here. Here are the edicts:

Coke demands

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Ethics Dunce: The Florida Bar. Again.

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The reluctance of the legal profession to acknowledge that members of the public are as qualified to recognize metaphors, puffery and hyperbole in the marketing of the legal services as they are when they are buying cupcakes or hiring plumbers continues to astound. Many state bar associations still have, and enforce, ethics rules that make the kind of obvious analogies routine in TV, online and print advertising violations because they are deemed “misleading or deceptive.” Florida has long been one of the most notable laggards in applying common sense to lawyer advertising. In contrast, the District of Columbia, with the largest bar in the nation, has largely eliminated such rules. except in conduct constituting outright lies. Just a few days ago, I told a client that the other bars were slowly moving in D.C.’s direction. I did not expect Florida’s bar to again embarrass itself and its lawyers–AND MY DOG—again, after making itself the butt of jokes over a decade ago with virtually the same complaint it made against a lawyer’s ads more than a decade ago. I thought the Florida Bar had learned. I thought eleven years was more than enough time for it to accept the basic concept of advertising…and to learn about dogs.

Guess not.

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When Ethics Fails, The Law Steps In, And Often Makes An Ass Of Itself…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Greg-Abbott

There is no excuse for this:

Abbott tweet

Well, let me clarify that a bit. Anger, frustration, outrage at the open attack on democracy and a level playing field in the marketplace of ideas are all legitimate reasons for someone to default to “there ought to be a law!,” but there is no excuse for elected officials like Abbott and Texas legislators displaying such ignorance of the Bill of Rights.

Stipulated: what Big Tech and the social media platforms are doing right now, deliberately and brazenly attempting to slam their fists down on the scales of democracy to make it as difficult as possible to communicate opinions, news and other expression that our rising woke dictators find inconvenient, is a genuine threat to the nation’s values and existence. However, those same values will be weakened if laws mandating companies to be fair and ethical undermine the First Amendment. As the giddy AUC and my Trump Deranged Facebook friends immediately reply to any criticism of the growing censorship of conservatives and especially President Trump, a private company has a nearly absolute right to decide who has access to its free services. As the social justice crusaders don’t say, but prove every time they make this kneejerk observation, they are thrilled to see their fellow citizens muzzled this way, since it advances their own interests. Big Tech and the social media companies have the right, but it is not right for them to abuse it this way when they have so much control over public debate and information.

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And Today In The Attack On Liberty And The Pursuit Of Happiness That Is Known At Ethics Alarms As “The Great Stupid”…

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Liberty weeps

Online retailer eBay has announced that it will no longer allow owners of the six Dr. Seuss books eliminated this week from Theodore Geisel’s published children books to sell the books online in its auction platform.

Citing its offensive materials policy, eBay Corporate Communications Specialist Parmita Choudhury explained, “At eBay, we have a strict policy against hate and discrimination to ensure our platform remains a safe, trusted and inclusive environment for our global community of buyers and sellers.We’re currently sweeping our marketplace to remove these items. It can take some time to review all existing listings and provide education to impacted users. We’re also monitoring the newly published list to be reviewed.”

First they came for Yertle the Turtle….

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Ethics Dunce: NYT Columnist David Brooks, Weaving A Web Of Conflicts

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Weave-logo

I figured out a long time ago that David Brooks, one of the alleged conservative voices among the New York Times’ swollen gang of knee-jerk Angry Leftists, was a hypocrite and fraud with barely a hint of genuine integrity. Now comes the proof.

In 2019, Brooks introduced Times readers to his vision of “Weavers,” a movement to fight social isolation by “building community and weaving the social fabric” across the nation. In a Times column called “A Nation of Weavers,” Brooks wrote that he had launched Weave at the Aspen Institute, a prominent think tank based in Washington, DC. Brooks went on to author several columns to praise and promote Weave. He also had other columns mentioning, positively, Facebook, its founder Mark Zuckerberg, andFacebook’s products and activities.

Facebook, unreported by Brooks or his paper, had contributed $250,000 to the Aspen Institute to help launch Weave in 2018.

Now, thanks to Buzzfeed, we learn that Brooks has been drawing a second salary for his work on Weave, meaning that he is being paid at least in part through the largess of Facebook. He has not mentioned any of this in his columns. Thus, when David Brooks promoted the good work of Weave, he is using his Times column to do work that he is being paid for by someone else, and secretly advancing the interests of Facebook and the Aspen Institute, not because the columnist objectively has concluded that they warrant it, but because he benefits financially when they benefit.

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Is It Possible All News Organizations Are This Incompetent? Nah, Couldn’t Be…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Booker Hoax

That’s the uncanny Booker imposter on the left, the real Senator on the right…

There is incompetence, and there is mind-melting, skin-flaying, “You did WHAT???” incompetence. A story that I read while laughing last night is the latter. Here is the whole thing, from The Hill:

The BBC has apologized for airing an interview with someone posing as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Friday.

According to a post on the BBC website, the interview only aired at 3 p.m. EST last Friday but was not used any other time.

“In our Newshour radio programme on Friday, a man claiming to be Senator Cory Booker was interviewed in what appears to be a deliberate hoax,” the BBC wrote in a post it called a correction and apology.

“We have apologised to Senator Booker and are looking into what went wrong to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The message was posted to the BBC website over the weekend and the network made an on-air mea culpa Monday. The BBC declined to comment on how the incident occurred or when the faux U.S. politician was booked. Press representatives from Booker’s office did not immediately comment on the incident.

Now I’m laughing again. This would be embarrassing for my high school newspaper, The Arlington High Chronicle, but the BBC? An apology is hardly sufficient. This goes way beyond fake news to fake newsmaker, fake interview, fake journalists, and fake trustworthy news organization. I’m trying to think of a similarly outrageous news media botch, other than CNN allowing Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo and Brian Stelter to masquerade as competent commentators. After all, at least they really are Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo and Brian Stelter...or are they?

Other observations:

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Ethics Verdict: It Doesn’t Matter Whether Or Not Coke’s Diversity Training Specifically Tells Employees To “Try To Be Less White”—It’s Still Unethical.

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

Less white

Coke 1

One of the ways the news media and factcheckers confuse the public rather than enlightening them is their well-developed penchant for complicating an issue beyond comprehension so normal people just shrug and say, “I don’t have time for this: the sock drawer beckons.” This strategy allows all sorts of unethical conduct to fly under the radar. A recent example has been the controversy over Coca-Cola’s corporate diversity training, a current obsession of the rightish media which I admit that I skipped when I saw the first of the Powerpoint slides above. I saw it, and concluded that it could not possibly be part of an official major corporation’s diversity course despite what I was being told so I and any other woke-averse Americans would become livid. As it happens, I was right, but that misses the real issue.

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Quasi-Apology Of The Month: Attorney John Morgan

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Screen_Shot_2021_02_24_at_2.35.38_PM.6036aadd5594c

I’m not sure where this falls on the Ethic Alarms Apology Scale.

I admit that I’m never heard of John Morgan, but I am told he is a well known attorney in Orlando, Florida, and like so many trial attorneys, a character. Morgan keeps his name before the public in part by posting self-made videos on Twitter posted ( #Johnin60secs ) videos where he gives spontaneous running commentaries on life in general in the conversational and engaging style that makes him a successful litigator. It is a clever marketing approach: I’m pretty sure it gets around Florida’s strict lawyer advertising rules. For example, in one video he described his head as being “ the size of a watermelon,” which is obviously hyperbole. In a legal advertising, a lawyer can’t me make any false or misleading statement or one that can’t be verified.

But I digress. There is a danger any time anyone, no matter how glib or accustomed to speaking off-script, does so for public consumption, as the late Rush Limbaugh, acres of crushed”shockjocks,” Michael Richards and I, among others, can attest. And so it was that Morgan, in one of his videos, was riffing on fast food franchises, and said about Arby’s,

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Tuesday Ethics Torture, 2/23/21: Stevey’s Going, Peter Suprises, Ian Shrugs, And California Dictates…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Torture of Brinvilliers, 17th Century

I spent a half-hour searching for ethics stories that made me feel good. All I found was more sources of gloom and depression. I have a headache, and no matter how many times I play, “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart!,” it doesn’t male me want to laugh, gambol and frolic….

1. Normally the baseball season’s impending approach would cheer me up, as it has for more than 50 years (and that’s another damn thing—I can’t possibly be that old), and this time, nothing. It’s like I’m dead inside. The twin curses of the Boston Red Sox pandering to Black Lives Matter and the team’s rehiring of a proven, and as far as I can see, unrepentant cheater as manager have apparent sucked all of the joy out of what has been a lifetime passion. Now I’m bothered more by the flaws that once I would have shrugged off, like this one: Ian Desmond, a 35-year-old outfielder with the Colorado Rockies, has “opted out” of playing for the second straight season.

“For now, I’ve decided to opt out of the 2021 season,” Desmond wrote on Instagram. “My desire to be with my family is greater than my desire to go back and play baseball under these circumstances. I’m going to continue to train and watch how things unfold.” Between the two seasons, the player has now walked away from a combined $13.56 million. He was owed $8 million this year and was set to make $5.56 million of his prorated $15 million salary last season, though the Rockies have a $2 million buyout for 2022.

Desmond, 35, hit .255 with 20 homers in 140 games in 2019. He’s not special. Yet he has made so much money in a slightly above average career that he can afford to toss away millions of dollars. An industry that pays its workers so much that they have no financial incentive to work makes no sense, and any team that would keep a player like Desmond, whose attitude is, “Eh, I don’t feel like playing baseball…maybe later,” is foolish. He’s healthy, relatively young, and his risks of serious health problems from the Wuhan virus are slim: my grocery store clerks face greater risks by far. Yechhh.

2. Slippery Slope Warning! The slippery slope is both a phenomenon and a fallacy, as when someone objects to something benign by arguing that it creates a theoretical slippery slope that is not benign. Of late however, the assault of the Woke has made slippery sloping a national pastime, particularly involving slopes that lead governments to dictate all manner of conduct that should be none of its damn business.

For example, in California, good little brain-washers Evan Low and Cristina Garcia introduced Assembly Bill 1084 to require gender neutral retail departments. The bill would add Part 2.57 (commencing with Section 55.7) to Division 1 of the Civil Code, to be titled “Gender Neutral Retail Departments.” The bill would enact a regulation based on “legislative findings” that there are unjustified differences in similar products traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys. Thus the bill, on the theory that it will be easier on the consumer if similar items are displayed closer to one another in one, undivided area of the retail sales floor, mandates eliminating gender distinctions in clothing sales. In addition, keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate, the bill claims/

Ah! Illegal implication. Can’t have that!

I would assume that even an idiot could see that this is government indoctrination and has zero to do with serving consumers. If a retail company chooses to market clothing as unisex, they should go for it, but it is not the role of government to dictate how merchandise is displayed.

California is a contagious carrier of terrible and infectious ideas. The other states should be wearing big masks…

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A Culture That Regards “The Muppet Show” As Offensive Is A Culture Without Humor, Nuance, Or Proportion. Thanks, Disney!

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Muppets

Disney’s streaming service, Disney+, made episodes of “The Muppet Show” available to subscribers last week, and attached the disclaimer:

“This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together. Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe.”

This alone will prevent me from ever considering a subscription to Disney+. How many negative descriptions apply to that disclaimer, in addition to the obvious “stupid”? Shameless woke virtue-signaling? Cowardly betrayal of a genius’s art? Grandstanding to curry favor with our new censorious and fascist Masters of the Left? Utter crapola?

Let’s see:

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