Character

The Crime That Can’t Be Charged: Humiliation And Harm For Money

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

I hate this topic with a passion. It has come up often: the exploitation of desperate attention-addicts in celebrity reality shows, dwarf-tossing, the ancient pastime of paying geeks and the deformed to present themselves for public ridicule and dehumanizing treatment, and more. The problem is that the phenomenon is indistinguishable from other, societally-approved examples of paying individuals to harm themselves or be humiliated for our entertainment. Pro football, of course, harms more human beings in one game than all the dwarf-tossing since the beginning of time. Child actors are harmed for money, and often they don’t even get the proceeds, or give meaningful consent.

Every example I can imagine feeds directly into the vile Rationalization #22. The Comparative Virtue Excuse: “There are worse things.” The problem is that all of those worse things are legal, and likely to remain so. Yes, there are worse things than paying a drunk to dance like fool in exchange for a few dollars to buy his next drink, like paying young men millions of dollars to pound their brains into jelly. That’s our national pastime!

And yet—how can a society tolerate this? From the AP...

LAKEWOOD, N.J. (AP) — Police in New Jersey say no charges will be filed after a stranger paid a homeless man $5 to pour coffee on himself twice. Police say that’s because Ronald Leggatt consented even though he was embarrassed. The 65-year-old tells the Asbury Park Press he let a stranger videotape him pouring coffee on his head on Monday in Lakewood because he needed the money….

I wish I had a solution. I’d like to know the name of the scum who did this, but then what? Post his name for vigilante justice? I would argue that there is no valid consent when an individual agrees under duress and desperation, but then what is society saying—that a man can’t exchange a humiliating act for money he desperately needs? Continue reading →

The Chris Davis Saga: How Much Money Is “Enough”?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
Chris Davis is under there somewhere...

Chris Davis is under there somewhere…

I have too many political issues on the runway, and I’m about to be buried in snow. This seems a perfect time to reflect on Chris Davis, the slugging Baltimore Orioles first baseman who just re-signed with the team in a seven-year, $161 million deal. Yes, he’s a baseball player, but the ethics issue here is not confined to baseball, or even professional sports.

Two weeks ago, it looked as if Davis and the Orioles were at an impasse. The team had, we were told, offered a take-it-or-leave-it 150 million dollar package, and Davis and his agent had turned it down. Davis’s manager, Buck Showalter, told the press that he had asked Davis, who by all accounts loves playing in Baltimore,”How much is enough?”:  “I asked Chris during the season, ‘Chris, when you walk into a Target store, can you buy anything you want. So, how much is enough?'”

Sportswriters, not being reflective sorts,  even the smarter ones, who are always taking the players union’s position that the more money a player can squeeze out of fat cat owners the better, jumped on Showalter. Said CBS writer David Brown, “Showalter trying to shame him into taking less — so that ownership can keep more — is shameful in itself. Why isn’t Showalter asking Angelos ‘ How much is enough?'”*

Showalter, who is one of the most intelligent and perceptive people in the game, was not trying to shame Davis. He was trying to get him to think; he was trying to impart some wisdom…and some ethics. Continue reading →

Ethics Musings While Sitting In Line At The Gas Station

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments
My future, if I don't figure this out...

My future, if I don’t figure this out…

In the middle of a 20 minute errand that became a 90 minute ordeal today, I found myself sitting in an unexpected long line at the gas station I usually patronize.  Maybe it was because people wanted to top off tanks before the blizzard hits tomorrow, but I was really almost out of gas, and the second I moved into the “tank on the right” line, I was socked in. Finally I had only  one car ahead of me, and an absurdly long line of automobiles behind.

The lady in the car ahead, however, was unbelievable. She wasn’t elderly, but she was obese, had something wrong with one leg, and apparently had never filled a gas tank before in her life. She dithered, she paused, she disappeared and returned. She punched in so many characters at the pump that her Debit card password must have been a chapter of “Martin Chuzzlewit.”

Finally she replaced the pump, after pausing and contemplating it like it was Yorick’s skull, walked around to the driver-side door, then decided to walk back—S-L-O-W-L-Y— and make sure she had replaced the gas tank cap, then again s-l-o-w-l-y  limped and waddled back to the door. She opened the it, stared, then decided to unzip her coat, started to take it off, changed her mind, paused again. The line of cars behind me now reached to Falls Church.

I was just a smidgen of impulse control away from getting out of my car, which was turned off, and walking up to her, whereupon I would have said, not especially nicely: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

mikulski

“So let’s solve the problem. Let’s not get involved in constitutional arguments, and let’s help our American people be safe and secure in their home, their neighborhood, their school and their house of worship.”

—-Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) in her opening remarks ahead of a Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing, prior to testimony from Attorney General Loretta Lynch regarding the Administration’s proposed gun control measures.

Mikulski, who is mercifully retiring, has been a relentless opponent of gun rights, and if you wanted a poster child for Democrats who would ban guns in a heartbeat if they could, Mikulski’s perfect.

“Let’s solve the problem and never mind what the Constitution says” could be the motto of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party as it is evolving. The quote is signature significance: no elected officials who take their oath of office seriously—you know, the like one taken bu U.S. Senators in which they swear to “support and defend the Constitution?—-would ever say, “Let’s not get involved in constitutional arguments…” in considering any legislative act or Presidential order, because the Constitution must be followed and respected in everything the government does.

This is the arrogant, lawless, totalitarian mindset that the hard-left progressive establishment represented by Mikulski now embodies. Why didn’t any mainstream media journalists immediately expose this? Why was it only the conservative bloggers and news sources who found her statement outrageous? And why didn’t any other Senators have the wit, integrity and sense of responsibility to lay her out for saying such a stupid, arrogant, un-American thing?

Constitutional arguments are what keep us free. Those who sneer at them like Mikulski have other plans.

The Seventh Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Best of Ethics 2015, Part II

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

DavisHand

The Awards continue (Part I is here)….

Most Important Ethical Act of the Year:

The US Supreme Court’s Decision in  Obergefell v. Hodges in which the Supreme Court considered whether states had to recognize a right to same-sex marriages, and narrowly decided that they must. The prejudice against homosexuality is ancient, deep, and complex, mixed up in confounding ways with morality and religion, and deeply divisive. Nonetheless, I felt that the opinion should have been unanimous; it’s a shame that it was not, but in the end, this will not matter. The result was preordained from the moment gays began coming out of the shadows and asserting their humanity and human rights. Since the Stonewall riot, the nation and the culture has learned a great deal about the number of talented and productive gay men and women in our society and our history, the pain, ostracizing, discrimination and mistreatment they have suffered, and the falseness of the myths and fears that lead to this suffering.  In the end, as Clarence Darrow said about blacks, it is human beings, not law, that will make gays equal. No topic immediately causes such emotional and intense debate, on this blog or in society, as this one, but the Supreme Court’s decision is a major step toward changing the ethical culture, by asserting  that gay men and women have the same rights,  in the eyes of the state, to marry those they love and want to build a life with, and by implication, that the beliefs of any religion regarding them or their marriages cannot eliminate that right.

Outstanding Ethical Leadership

Senator Rand Paul.   I am neither a Rand Paul supporter, nor an admirer, nor a fan.  However, his June filibuster-like Senate speech against National Security Agency counter-terrorism surveillance was a brave, principled,  important act, and a great public service. The point Paul made needs to be made again, and again, and again:  there is no reason to trust the NSA, and no reason to trust the current federal government either. The fact that on security matters we have no real choice is frightening and disheartening, but nevertheless, no American should be comfortable with his or her private communications, activities and other personal matters being tracked by the NSA, which has proven itself incompetent, dishonest, an untrustworthy.

 

Parent of the Year

Tonya Graham

Toya Graham, the Baltimore mother caught on video as she berated and beat on her son in the street for participating in the Freddie Gray rioting and looting. Continue reading →

Craig Mazin, FICK

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments
Craig Mazin, terrible human being and proud of it...

Craig Mazin, terrible human being and proud of it…

The short description of a fick would be “public asshole, and proud of it.” That’s a fair description of the indecent Craig Mazin, a Hollywood writer and producer who has decided to ostentatiously violate the Kantian, Golden Rule, common sense-based ethics of being a college roommate to embarrass Senator Ted Cruz as he runs for President.

I write about a lot of awful people, and often have to explain what’s awful about them. If you don’t immediately see what’s awful about what Mazin is doing, I’m not sure there is much hope for you. There is no hope for him.

Mazin roomed with Cruz during their freshman years at Princeton University, from 1988-1989. Cruz was 18 at the time. This week, apparently spurred by Twitter followers, Mazin began spewing contempt and insults about Cruz, using his “inside” experiences as material and justification.  This, of course, attracted media attention, magnifying the harm to Cruz, although anyone who thinks that conduct by an 18-year-old is a fair or meaningful  way to attack the 46-year-old U.S. Senator he grows into is a per se dim wit. Continue reading →

Mission Accomplished: Hillary Corrupts The Human Rights Campaign

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

corrupted2

Hillary Clinton’s dishonest spinning of her gay rights positions received an endorsement today, as the U.S.’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization chose her as its choice for President. The Human Rights Campaign’s  board of directors, made up of community leaders nationwide, voted to endorse Clinton, and said in a statement:

“All the progress we have made as a nation on LGBT equality — and all the progress we have yet to make — is at stake in November…Despite the fact that a majority of Republican and independent voters today support federal protections for LGBT Americans, the leading Republican candidates for president have threatened to halt progress as well as revoke, repeal, and overturn the gains made during President Obama’s two terms…”

This statement means, in essence, that the largest group of LGBT advocates have openly endorsed the Joy Behar approach to civic responsibility. Behar, on “The View,” you may recall, said brazenly (well, she says everything brazenly) that she’d vote for a proven rapist as long as he “voted” for issues that were important to her, a.k.a. abortion rights. Single issue voters of this low ethics threshold are irresponsible and breach their civic duties by making democracy itself incoherent and too easily manipulated—by cynical, ethics-free, power-mongers like Hillary Clinton. Are they even aware, I wonder, that openly associating a group with a candidate of proven ethical bankruptcy—even on the issue they think she embraces!–calls into question their own integrity, trustworthiness and values?

The disconnect between conservatives and LGBT Americans stems in part from a false belief that gays and other Americans of non-traditional sexuality aren’t as red, white and blue as they are. Being American means caring more about, say, the economy, unemployment, the debt, the collapse of schools, the miserable state of colleges, terrorism, racial distrust, the still burgeoning cost of health care and the welfare of your neighbors, children and fellow citizens than about narrow, single issues of special concern to you or your “tribe.”  I think this way; so do most of the LGBT people I know.  It is the ethical value of citizenship in action. Could I respect someone who found Donald Trump appropriately nauseating, knew he would be a human and cultural disaster for the nation, but supported him solely because he swore he would protect LGBT interests? No. Of course not.

This endorsement of Hillary Clinton is exactly as irresponsible. Continue reading →

How Unethical Is Spike Lee’s Oscar Boycott?

/ Jack Marshall / 55 Comments

SpikeLee

Short answer: Incredibly unethical.

Spike Lee, ground-breaking black director, social commentator, Knicks fan and hot-head, announced that he’s boycotting the Oscars because its 2016 nominations list did not meet diversity mandates, and posted this rant/manifesto on Instagram:

“Again. I Would Like To Thank President Cheryl Boone Isaacs And The Board Of Governors Of The Academy Of Motion Pictures Arts And Sciences For Awarding Me an Honorary Oscar This Past November. I Am Most Appreciative. However My Wife, Mrs. Tonya Lewis Lee And I Will Not Be Attending The Oscar Ceremony This Coming February. We Cannot Support It And Mean No Disrespect To My Friends, Host Chris Rock and Producer Reggie Hudlin, President Isaacs And The Academy. But, How Is It Possible For The 2nd Consecutive Year All 20 Contenders Under The Actor Category Are White? And Let’s Not Even Get Into The Other Branches. 40 White Actors In 2 Years And No Flava At All. We Can’t Act?! WTF!! It’s No Coincidence I’m Writing This As We Celebrate The 30th Anniversary Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday. Dr. King Said “There Comes A Time When One Must Take A Position That Is Neither Safe, Nor Politic, Nor Popular But He Must Take It Because Conscience Tells Him It’s Right”. For Too Many Years When The Oscars Nominations Are Revealed, My Office Phone Rings Off The Hook With The Media Asking Me My Opinion About The Lack Of African-Americans And This Year Was No Different. For Once, (Maybe) I Would Like The Media To Ask All The White Nominees And Studio Heads How They Feel About Another All White Ballot. If Someone Has Addressed This And I Missed It Then I Stand Mistaken. As I See It, The Academy Awards Is Not Where The “Real” Battle Is. It’s In The Executive Office Of The Hollywood Studios And TV And Cable Networks. This Is Where The Gate Keepers Decide What Gets Made And What Gets Jettisoned To “Turnaround” Or Scrap Heap. This Is What’s Important. The Gate Keepers. Those With “The Green Light” Vote….”

Now let me list as many of the ways Lee’s boycott is unethical (I may stray into why it is stupid as well),  as I can before my fingers get tired and nausea overwhelms me: Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week: Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Hillary-Clinton-behind-Bars

“There should be no bank too big to fail and no individual too big to jail.”

—Hillary Clinton, in last night’s NBC Presidential debate.

Like Hillary’s infamous declaration that all accusations of sexual assault must be believed, this statement shows a troubling disconnect between Clinton’s own complex and corrupt life and her rhetoric. 15o FBI agents are investigating what may be very serious violations of national security laws by Clinton, with penalties including prison. Shall we presume that Hillary is issuing a preemptive, honorable insistence that if Obama’s ultra-politicized Justice Department is tempted to try to oppose an FBI conclusion that an indictment is warranted by the evidence, it should treat her like anybody else?

Ethics Observations On The South Carolina Democratic Candidates Debate

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Debate transcript here.

1. The cynical effort to protect Hillary Clinton by scheduling debates at times when as few people as possible will watch them has officially become ludicrous, and also beyond denial. CNN’s alleged media watchdog Brian Stelter, in one of his occasional non-partisan episodes, grilled Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the strategy Sunday, and got a typical Wasserman Schultz-ish non answer, as she compared the TV rations with past debates and then mocked the Republican debates, which have been more conveniently scheduled and have garnered far more viewers. This time the tactic worked on me: my wife wanted to watch “Downton Abbey” (during the debate, one website wag on a post about the Democrats wrote, “Lady Crawley is losing the debate with Mrs Hughes and with The Hospital Board merger. Sad.”) Showtime was also running “The Godfather Epic,” which I had never seen, re-editing I and II together (but somehow differently from “The Godfather Saga.” I didn’t last to the end, so I assumed it also included III, and so wrote until a commenter put me straight), and then there was the football game. I had to watch the MSNBC re-run late into the night.

2. Several commenters claimed that Bernie was rude to Hillary, making funny faces, shouting. That’s Bernie, though, and here we go again: Hillary’s a feminist, but her supporters want to impose a double standard of how she is treated in the rough-and-tumble world of politics. This has, after all, been very effective from the race perspective insulating Barack Obama. If the Democrats dare to run such a corrupt candidate as Hillary, they will deserve Trump as the opposition, the one candidate who won’t pay any attention to media claims that he should pull his punches.

Nothing Bernie did during last night’s debate was nearly as outrageous as Joe Biden’s snorting, snickering, eye-rolling and constantly interrupting performance in the 2012 Vice-Presidential debate with Paul Ryan, as Martha Raddatz played “boxing referee who has taken a bribe” by ignoring it all. Well, but Ryan’s a guy, and a Republican , so he didn’t deserve common civility.

3. The central dishonesty in this debate and all of the Democratic debates is the inherent hypocrisy of simultaneously saying the economy is a mess and Wall Street is pulling the strings, while extolling the record of Barack Obama. Sanders is the most hypocritical, at one point proclaiming his pro-Obama bona fides as he runs a campaign calling for a revolution.  Here’s Sanders in his opening:

“As we look out at our country today, what the American people understand is we have an economy that’s rigged, that ordinary Americans are working longer hours for lower wages, 47 million people living in poverty, and almost all of the new income and wealth going to the top one percent….This campaign is about a political revolution to not only elect the president, but to transform this country….”

4.  Once again, all three candidates used cover words and vagueries to advocate “comprehensive immigration reform” without saying what that is. Nor did  NBC’s softball-tossing moderators, nor the candidates to each other, demand details and meanings. What “reforms”? Opening the borders? Making all illegal immigrants citizens? How long will illegal immigrant-pandering Democrats be allowed to get away with this? If they really are willing to sacrifice U.S. sovereignty, they have an obligation to say so, and clearly. Continue reading →