Character

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 2/5/2022: Part I, A Special “I Sure Hope You’re Not Watching The Olympics” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

In 1936, human rights activists unsuccessfully argued for the U.S. to boycott the Berlin Summer Olympics to protest the Nazis’ ongoing persecution of German Jews. However, foreshadowing the “Holocaust? What Holocaust?” stance that preceded the U.S. entry into World War II, FDR gave Adolf the propaganda bonanza he sought, and no, Jesse Owens couldn’t spoil it. Now the Biden Administration is similarly engaged in contrived ignorance regarding China, which is making Hitler’s Olympic Games look like Oktoberfest. All right, there’s a “diplomatic boycott,” but that’s meaningless since spectators are mostly banned anyway. This tweet is apt:

The main reason we are there, as many have pointed out, is to accommodate the giant broadcasting companies and corporate sponsors who view the Games as a money-making opportunity. It’s a dilemma: my refusal to watch a second of the Games prevents me from knowing who to boycott. But then no ethicist, or anyone who cares about ethics, should watch the Olympics wherever they are being held. We know they are corrupt; they no longer celebrate “amateurism,” and U.S. athletes continue to use them to insult their own country, which paid to let them compete.

Nancy Pelosi got the Games off to a rousingly unethical start—wait—can one behave unethically regarding Olympics in China? Isn’t this a case where Bizarro World ethics apply, which hold that in a Bizarro World culture, normal ethics often don’t work, and may be futile? It’s unethical to be ethical in a place like China! That seems to be the Speaker’s position.  the Pelosi said, “‘’”

“I would say to our athletes, ‘You are there to compete.’ Do not risk incurring the anger of the Chinese government, because they are ruthless. I know there is a temptation on the part of some to speak out while they are there. I respect that, but I also worry about what the Chinese government might do.”

If they are so ruthless, why is the United States participating in their Olympic Games? The U.S. Olympic Committee always muzzles, or tries, our athletes, but Pelosi is a high government official telling Americans to shut up because it may make a totalitarian government angry. If I were competing, Pelosi’s statement alone would be enough to make me speak up. We shall see if any of our athletes have the courage to speak up for real human rights abuses when they know the nation they are criticizing, unlike their own, might take serious action against them.

My guess: no.

In response, Joy Behar, the reigning moron on “The View,” stepped up in the absence of Whoopi and reached new idiotic heights, defending Pelosi with this:

“She’s being maternal I think. You know Nancy is momala. You know she’s always like ‘I think about the children. It’s for the children.’ She cares about the kids. That’s her.”

The New York Times clearly has its marching orders.  Right around the time the opening ceremonies were starting in Beijing, the Times published an article highlighting the upside of China’s totalitarian response to the pandemic—yes, it was even tougher than in Michigan. The strict lockdowns and other acts of state coercion  have been a major success, the article told readers. (Not like the wimpy, mildly Constitution abusing measures those conservatives are whining about!) China’s strategy, it says, shows what a society can do when it makes the prevention of “Covid” its “No. 1 priority.”

Really? And how would the Times know that? The Times knows dictatorship is successful with viruses because China says it has one of the lowest pandemic death rates in the entire world, though the story notes that the Chinese data “can be suspect.” Ya think??? Never mind: China has “almost certainly” done better than the democracies, even if the official numbers are “artificially low.” No kidding: China has reported 3 deaths per million from COVID, compared with almost 2,700 in the United States. Do you believe that? Does anyone? The Times doesn’t believe it, and still is publishing this bootlicking junk. Continue reading →

Don’t Censor The Anti-Police Mob, Do Expose, Reject And Condemn Them

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Susan Sarandon proved with this ugly, stupid and unethical tweet that she is another talented artist, like Robert DeNiro and so, so many others, whose work has to be separated from their ill-informed, ignorant, politically-warped and outrageous personal opinions in order to tolerate it, never mind enjoy it. Sarandon is and always has been one of our very best film actresses, but my Cognitive Dissonance Scale is going to make it very hard for me to watch her performances after this.

The photo in the retweet shows the NYPD police gathered to honor slain NYPD Detective Jason Rivera. Officer Rivera and his 27-year-old partner Wilbert Mora died answering a 911 call from a mother in Harlem who said her son had verbally threatened her. They walked down a hall in the apartment and the son jumped out and opened fire, fatally wounding both officers. The outpouring of grief and professional respect from the New York police was traditional, appropriate and necessary. Continue reading →

The Jeff Zucker Scandal’s Emerging Details Confirm The Long-Time Ethics Alarms Verdict: This Is And Has Been A Corrupt, Untrustworthy News Organization

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

And it, meaning its unethical and unprofessional leadership, management and employees, was allowed to manipulate public opinion, national politics, and the nation. Think about that.

We didn’t need more to know CNN President Jeff Zucker was a slimy, ruthless hypocrite—his network was proof enough— but the unfolding scandal has certainly provided spectacular confirmation. You need to thoroughly update yourself at the links, but here are some basics:

  • CNN’s President Jeff Zucker announced on February 2, 2022, that he was resigning from the company, over his illicit affair with subordinate Allison Gollust. The spin on this includes calling her a “colleague.” No, she worked for Zucker. That makes the relationship toxic, not just “inappropriate.” Both Gollust and Zucker left their marriages during the affair.

Who knows what employees, or female or minority employees, were passed over so Zucker could advance his lover’s career? That’s a major reason why the boss having affairs with subordinates is always wrong, always destructive, and must be addressed.

  • CNN talking heads and execs are making excuses for Zucker. One CNN executive told The Daily Beast, “People are pissed. No one thinks the punishment fits the crime.” And that proves how thoroughly ethics brain-dead Zucker has left CNN. When the head of any organization is caught violating that organizations rules and policies, he or she must resign of be fired.

The punishment does fit the crime. Continue reading →

Catching Up: Professional Ethics And The Challenger Disaster

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Because of non-ethical matters in the Marshall household, I missed posting about the January 28 anniversary of the Challenger disaster, as it is labeled among the thousands of Ethics Alarms tags. I have written about and alluded to the completely avoidable explosion of the Space Shuttle in 1986 many times (you can check here), and there may be no other incident that so perfectly encapsulates the complexities of professional ethics, especially in a bureaucracy. In 2016, I offered an ethics quiz on the topic.

In 2020, Netflix presented an excellent, if extremely upsetting, docudrama on how the fiasco unfolded, “The Challenger Disaster.”

I have used the tragedy in my legal ethics continuing legal education courses to force attendees to consider what might make them decide to breach legal ethics and place their careers at risk when an organizational client is hell-bent on what the lawyer knows, or thinks he or she knows, will be disastrous. Legal ethics rules are different from engineering ethics, though the latter has caught up considerably since the Space Shuttle explosion, and in part because of it. However, I view the ethics conflict in parallel situations in both professions the same, as well as situations in medicine, organized religion, the military, and government. When would, and should, professionals decide to do everything in their power to stop the consequences of a terrible decision when it is outside their role and authority to do so?

In my legal ethics seminars, a majority of lawyers ultimately say they would have done “whatever it took” to stop the Challenger’s launch, whatever the consequences, if they knew what the engineers knew. They said they would go to the news media, or chain themselves to the rocket if necessary. Of course, saying it and doing it are very different things.

Here is the most recent incarnation of my Challenger disaster legal ethics question, which I presented to government lawyers a year ago. What would you answer? It is called “The Launch.”

***

In 1986, Roger Boisjoly was a booster rocket engineer at Morton Thiokol, the NASA contractor that, infamously, manufactured the faulty O-ring that was installed in the Space Shuttle Challenger, and that caused it to explode. Six months before the Challenger disaster, he wrote a memo to his bosses at Thiokol predicting “a catastrophe of the highest order” involving “loss of human life.” He had identified a flaw in the elastic seals at the joints of the multi-stage booster rockets: they tended to stiffen and unseal in cold weather.  NASA’s shuttle launch schedule included winter lift-offs, and Boisjoly warned his company that sending the Shuttle into space at low temperatures was too risky. On January 27, 1986, the day before the scheduled launch of the Challenger, Boisjoly argued for hours with NASA officials to persuade NASA to delay the launch, only to be over-ruled, first by NASA, then by Thiokol, which deferred to its client. Another engineer, Bob Ebeling, joined Boisjoly and begged for the launch to be postponed, only to be overruled.

That night, Ebeling told his wife, Darlene, “It’s going to blow up.”

Question 1:  Should one or both of the engineers have “blown the whistle”?

  1. They did.
  2. Only the engineer who was sure that it would be a disaster.
  3. No, that’s not their role, their decision, or their call.
  4. After the explosion, but not before.
  5. I have another answer.

 Question 2: How are the ethical obligations in such a situation different for government lawyers than engineers?

  1. Government lawyers have to disclose when human life is threatened, engineers don’t.
  2. Engineers have to disclose when human life is involved, government lawyers don’t.
  3. Lawyers get kicked out of their profession for blowing whistles, engineers just get blackballed.
  4. There is no difference.
  5. I have another answer.

Baseball Hall Of Fame Ethics: This 2016 Post Just Became Ripe And Moot At The Same Time

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The sportswriters who decide who is admitted to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame voted in David Ortiz yesterday. The Red Sox and Boston icon (Carl Yastrzemski once said that while Ted Williams was the greatest Boston baseball player, Ortiz was the most important, and he was right) sailed into the Hall in his first year of eligibility, an honor few players have ever been accorded.

It was no surprise. In addition to having unquestionable statistical qualifications, “Big Papi” is also personally popular. That matters, a lot; the writers this year rejected Boston pitching ace Curt Schilling who also has impeccable Hall qualifications, because they don’t like him. Schilling is opinionated, combative, religious, and worst of all, politically conservative. Can’t have that. On the plus side, the writers also rejected steroid cheats Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, as well as almost certain steroid cheats Roger Clemens, Sammy Sosa and Gary Sheffield.

In 2016, anticipating and dreading yesterday’s news, I wrote a post titled, “The Wrenching Problem Of David Ortiz, The Human Slippery Slope.”

Here it is again.

Ethics conflicts force us to choose when multiple ethical principles and values point to diametrically opposed resolutions.  Often, a solution can be found where the unethical aspects of the resolution can be mitigated, but not this one. It is a tale of an ethics conflict without a satisfactory resolution.

I didn’t want to write this post. I considered waiting five years to write it, when the issue will be unavoidable and a decision mandatory. Today, however, is the day on which all of Boston, New England, and most of baseball will be honoring Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz, who will be playing his finale regular season game after a 20 years career.  His 2016 season is quite possibly the best year any professional baseball player has had as his final one; it is definitely the best season any batter has had at the age of 40 or more. Ortiz is an icon and a hero in Boston, for good reason. Ortiz was instrumental in breaking his team’s infamous 86-year long “curse” that saw it come close to winning the World Series again and again, only to fail in various dramatic or humiliating ways. He was a leader and an offensive centerpiece of three World Champion teams in 2004, 2007, and 2013. Most notably, his record as a clutch hitter, both in the regular season and the post season is unmatched. You can bring yourself up to speed on Ortiz’s career and his importance to the Red Sox, which means his importance to the city and its culture, for nowhere in America takes baseball as seriously as Beantown, here.

That’s only half the story for Ortiz. Much of his impact on the team, the town and the game has come from his remarkable personality, a unique mixture of intensity, charm, intelligence, generosity, pride and charisma. After the 2013 terrorist bombing of the Boston Marathon, which shook the city as much as any event since the Boston Massacre, Ortiz made himself the symbol of Boston’s anger and defiance with an emotional speech at Fenway Park. Then he put an exclamation point on his defiance by leading the Red Sox, a last place team the year before, to another World Series title. Continue reading →

From An Ethics Perspective, No Change Since 2015: Almost Anyone But Trump As The GOP Nominee In 2024

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It’s too early, of course; many a Presidential candidate has emerged out of the primordial ooze to evolve from a near unknown to the nominee in three years. In the case of the Republicans (and the Democrats too) such an emergence is greatly to be wished. However, two objectives will remain constant: it is imperative that the lying, Machiavellian, totalitarianism-embracing Democrats be ejected from both branches of the government with sufficient force that they ponder their sins and reform, and that Donald Trump does not return to the Presidency.

Trump himself isn’t dangerous. If fact, in many ways he was an effective President, and his policies were more often reasonable than not; my objections to him as President involve character and style (and they are major objections that his accomplishments cannot counter-balance). However, the Left’s reaction to him is an existential threat. They have convinced themselves that eliminating him is a mission that must be accomplished by any means necessary, and they will continue to work to terrify the weak-minded, inattentive and gullible from now until the 2024 election…and, if necessary, after, no matter what the consequences may be.

They succeeded in convincing millions of Americans that he would destroy the country when he was elected the first time; he didn’t, but their tactics against him nearly did, and might yet. The nation cannot withstand another polarizing election with both sides claiming the other is trying to wreck all that is good about America, and with Trump as the Republican nominee.

Continue reading →

So Maybe Biden’s Georgia Tantrum Wasn’t Necessarily The Worst Presidential Speech Ever…

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

President Biden’s angry, shouting, hyperbolic speech condemning anyone and everyone who opposes him was, most objective critics agree, an epic botch: unpresidential, undemocratic, nasty and bad politics as well. “[It] was aggressive, intemperate, not only offensive but meant to offend, ” was Peggy Noonan’s assessment in the Wall Street Journal. “It seemed prepared by people who think there is only the Democratic Party…in America, that’s it, everyone else is an outsider who can be disparaged. It was a mistake on so many levels…. The over-the-top language of the speech made him seem more emotional, less competent. The portentousness—’In our lives and . . . the life of our nation, there are moments so stark that they divide all that came before them from everything that followed. They stop time’—made him appear incapable of understanding how the majority of Americans understand our own nation’s history and the vast array of its challenges. By the end he looked like a man operating apart from the American conversation, not at its center…”

Noonan’s evaluation was just about the consensus, and it sent historians to the archives to find another POTUS speech of similar rotten timber. Professor Andrew Busch at Claremont McKenna College believes he found one: as Harry Truman fought for his political life as the underdog to Republican Presidential nominee Tom Dewey in the 1948 campaign, he stooped to similarly vile demagoguery. “In our time,” Truman told a Chicago audience little more than a week before the polls opened, “we have seen the tragedy of the Italian and German peoples, who lost their freedom to men who made promises of unity and efficiency and sincerity…and it could happen here.” He went on to say, “Republican leaders, of course, give lip service to the principles of democracy. But the Republicans preach one thing and practice another. The actions of the Republican 80th Congress opened the gate to forces that would destroy our democracy…This is not just a battle between two parties. It is a fight for the very soul of the American Government.” Truman also implied that Dewey was a “front man” for fascist interests, just as Mussolini and Hitler had been.

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Golden State Warriors Owner Chamath Palihapitiya

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay. You bring it up because you care and I think it’s nice that you care. The rest of us don’t care. I’m just telling you a very hard, ugly truth. Of all the things that I care about, yes, it is below my line.”

—–Golden State Warriors owner Chamath Palihapitiya, in an interview.

This statement, classic signature significance, neatly explains why the National Basketball Association remains metaphorically in bed with the brutal regime in China, why the Biden Administration refuses to hold the country responsible for its role as an international outlaw (and inflicting its virus on our population,economy and the world), and if you change just one word, why the United States allowed Hitler’s Final Solution to proceed as far as it did.

Give credit where it is due: at least Palihapitiya is being honest. As for his fellow owners, we can see that they feel exactly the same way through their conduct, but prefer not to say so out loud. It might cut down on the profits from souvenir NBA jerseys. Continue reading →

AARGH! The University of Michigan Firing Its President Made Me Think About Bill Clinton Again!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Mark S. Schlissel, the president of the University of Michigan, was fired  yesterday after an emergency meeting of the Board of Regents His relationship with a subordinate at the university had been revealed by an anonymous whistleblower who was, ironically, named Linda Tripp. Nononono! I’m sorry: damn flashback again.

The Board easily concluded that Schlissel had violated university policy and behaved “in a manner inconsistent with the dignity and reputation of the university.” His employment was terminated effective immediately, canceling a contract that would have continued paying him his base salary of $927,000 for four more years. The letter to Dr. Schlissel informing him that he was being fired said the complaint had arrived on December 8. “There can be no question that you were acutely aware that any inappropriate conduct or communication between you and a subordinate would cause substantial harm to the dignity and reputation of the University of Michigan,” the letter said.

The month long investigation triggered by the anonymous tip revealed dozens of email exchanges using “inappropriate tone and inappropriate language,” and showed that Dr. Schlissel used official business to carry out the relationship. His conduct was “particularly egregious,” the letter said, because he had taken a public position against sexual harassment, handing out pens to feminists like Bella Abzug after signing into law an anti-sexual harassment…no, I’m sorry, that was Bill Clinton.  Schlissel had only used the occasion of a university provost, Martin Philbert, being accused of sexual misconduct in August 2020 to send a letter to the university intoning that “the highest priority” was to make the university “safe for all.”

Dr. Schlissel, who is married and has four grown children. His wife, in response to the firing, immediately declared his demise to be the result of a vast right wing conspiracy. DANG! There go those flashbacks again!

I vowed a while back not to write any more about Bill Clinton. It was, as a few of you remember, the revolting ethical blindness revealed by Clinton’s defenders during Monica Madness and the even more revolting hypocrisy by passionate feminists who refused to condemn the POTUS’s text-book sexual harassment of a lowly intern (Bill supported abortion, you see, so that gave him immunity) that got me into the ethics blogging trap in the first place.

As an ethicist, I found the rationalizations being thrown out to get Clinton off the hook copious and nauseating, beginning with “Everybody Does It,” Number One, and including the worst of all. #22, “It’s not the worst thing!” Even though Clinton used Monica Lewinsky as his personal inflatable sex doll in his workplace, during work hours, with the knowledge of other subordinates, Democrats and pundits insisted on dismissing this as “private, personal conduct.”

Continue reading →

Yikes! I Better Finish “Will The Audacious ‘It Isn’t What it is’ Propaganda Assault By The American Left Succeed?” Quick Before The Answer Is Too Obvious To Bother With: The Democrats’ Amazing Filibuster Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wowie Zowie, Democratic “It isn’t what it is” grandstanding is reaching record heights faster than I can comment on them!

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), cementing her Ethics Hero credentials that (I admit) I doubted would stand up in June) delivered a speech yesterday in which she reiterated her  support for the filibuster, pretty much killing Democrat Party efforts to unilaterally change the rules to enable the party to ram through legislation that would federalize elections and permanently weaken their integrity. The filibuster is a long-standing procedural device that requires three-fifths of Senators to agree in order to advance toward a vote. It is very much a pro-democracy measure, instituted to prevent a bare Senate majority from passing important and controversial legislation without bi-partisan support. You can’t have a smaller Senate majority than Democrats do now, with a 50-50 split only enhanced by the Vice-President’s tie-breaking vote.

Sinema said that she personally supports both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, but does not believe it is wise to kill the filibuster. “And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” Sinema said. “There’s no need for me to restate my longstanding support for the 60-vote threshold to pass legislation.” 

She did this despite President Biden’s disgraceful speech this week claiming that anyone who continues to support a filibuster to stop his party’s voting rights legislation is choosing to “stand on the side of George Wallace over Dr. King, Bull Connor over John Lewis, and Jefferson Davis over Abraham Lincoln.” It had to be one of the worst examples of race-baiting as an illicit political tool of recent memory, particularly since the claims that the legislation has any connection to race is fictional. It is not discriminatory to require voters to prove who they are at the polls. It is not “racist” to limit early voting. I would eliminate it entirely: the procedure encourages blind, knee-jerk, fact-free partisan voting over voter consideration of all relevant information during the campaign. It supports incompetent democracy. It is not racist to place limits on mail-in voting, vote-harvesting, or drop-boxes. It is responsible. Moreover, allowing such easily manipulated weaknesses in election controls encourages distrust in the final results.

It is profoundly disturbing that all but two Democratic Senators have the courage and respect for democracy to oppose the filibuster rule change, and apparently none will stand up for the integrity of elections. Meanwhile, Sinema is being called a racist and a foe of democracy for doing the right thing. Continue reading →