Character

“Studies Prove BMW Drivers Are Jerks”….And So It Begins

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments
"Look at THAT jerk. What's he up to, I wonder?"

“Look at THAT jerk. What’s he up to, I wonder?”

If you would like to ponder on how prejudices, stereotypes and bias worm their way into our brains, look no further than here, a Yahoo! report, via the Wall Street Journal, about how research backs up the widespread belief that drivers of BMWs are jerks. (Full disclosure: my son drives an old BMW, and loves it dearly. I love it less, because repairing the damn thing has required me to moonlight by entertaining at kids’ birthday parties and rodeos…)

Various studies, we are told, show drivers of the car are less likely to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks and to take the upper hand at four-way stops. In addition,

“…in the U.K., motorists were asked to identify the make and color of the car from which they have most frequently suffered road-rage incidents…The study of 2,837 motorists found men between the ages of 35 and 50 driving blue BMWs were most likely to be reported as having engaged in road-rage behaviors such as aggressive driving and swearing.” Continue reading →

Exemplary Ethical Conduct I’m Embarrassed I Didn’t Know About Dept.: Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
Salk and Sabin

Salk and Sabin, true professionals. Did you know?

You learn the damnedest things in the damnedest places, which is a good reason to keep your ears open wherever you may be.

Last night I found myself listening to Michael Savage, easily the most offensive of all conservative talk show hosts, and he gives Rush and Mark Levine a run for their money in the ego category, too. I only listen to Savage by accident, and then only in bites of five minutes or less; it frightens me that millions of people might be influenced by such consistently hateful commentary.

But Savage (whose real name is Michael Alan Weiner) is no dummy, and not infrequently goes off on learned tangents about philosophy, history or religion in between declaring that the nation is under Nazi rule. Yesterday, just as I was reaching for the dial, he disclosed that one of his heroes growing up was Jonas Salk, not because he invented the first effective polio vaccine, but because he refused to patent it, and gave it to the world for the benefit of humanity. A bit later, Savage noted that Albert Sabin, Salk’s bitter rival who later invented the oral vaccine, also declined to profit from his invention.

Could all this be true, I wondered?  If it is true, why did I not know about it? Why doesn’t everybody know about it? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
Tornado ruin

A home in Tanner, Alabama, after the events of April 3, 1974…

Here are the always thoughtful and often profound Fattymoon’s reflections, in the Comment of the Day, inspired by the post, Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg:

“This reminds me of the time I made a critical decision, on the spot, while covering the aftermath of a killing F5 tornado at Tanner, Alabama the night of April 3, 1974.

 

“Walter McGlocklin was walking away from me, carrying one of his two surviving daughters. He was cradling this little girl, her upper body and tear streaked face peeking just above her father’s right shoulder. The look of utter horror on her face! The lighting was perfect, an eerie cross hatch of flashlights and spotlights – I KNEW I had the picture of the year. I raised my Minolta 35 mm and focused in. And that’s when it happened. Something inside me said, Do NOT violate this little girl’s privacy. Do NOT allow this little girl’s unbearable pain to act as fodder to sell newspapers across the country. I slowly lowered my camera. It’s a decision, one of only a very few, of which I will forever be proud of.”

_______________

 

 

Hypocritical Comment Of The Century

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Today I received this:

“Hi there, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam responses? If so how do you prevent it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it’s driving me insane so any support is very much appreciated.”

The commenter gave his name as “Ecig” and that “similar” blog is an e-cigarette advertising website. His comment about how irritating spam is is spam itself, one of the nearly 536,000 such comments that I have had to review individually since launching Ethics Alarms.|

A dishonest fake comment, purporting to complain about spam while constituting spam, sent to a blog about ethics.

Nice.

The Ethics of Cheering Alex Rodriguez

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Poor Alex Rodriguez and his wife...

Poor, downtrodden, Alex Rodriguez and his wife…

Baseball’s most embarrassing super-star, the steroid cheat Alex Rodriguez, in playing for the New York Yankees while appealing his long suspension by Major League baseball. As he is unquestionably a repeat liar and a serial violator of the game’s rules against PED’s (performance enhancing drugs), as he signed a contract, in part generated by the results of his cheating, that will both enrich him by millions and handicap his team competitively while conferring few, if any benefits, as he would qualify, by most objective standards, as the antithesis of a sports hero, the fact that Arod, as he is called, still was cheered by a vocal minority in Yankee Stadium when he made his season debut this week is intriguing. What does this mean? Can it be ethical to cheer Rodriquez now?

These are deceptively complex and difficult questions. The threshold  issue is whether cheering or jeering any sports figure, or any public figure at all, is an act with ethical content rather than just a communication of an opinion. Is it conduct, or just “words”? I think, in the context of the Rodriquez situation, a sound argument can be made that it is conduct. Registering group approval or disapproval of prominent conduct by someone of status and influence is a crucial societal function in setting standards, registering disapproval, and prompting shame, regret, apology and reform—none of which, so far at least, seem to register with Arod.

That is pretty clearly what the boos convey, but what about the cheers? If the boos are ethical—they are if the disapproval is proportionate, rational, fair, and just—then are the cheers automatically unethical? Not necessarily. Here are some of the things those cheers could be expressing: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Reddit Ethics And The Non-Privileged Confession

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

confessions

Reddit’s OffMyChest forum is promoted as a safe social media site to post confessions and to seek support or advice for very difficult, personal, potentially embarrassing problems. Of course, there is no such thing on the web, and such posts are only as confidential as the forum’s participants are trustworthy.

An 18-year-old poster calling himself Pilot94 unburdened himself about a statutory rape (or two) that he escaped punishment for thanks to some good luck. But the episode obviously still troubled him. He began…

“I’ve never been good at this sort of thing. Never in my life have I fully told the truth to anyone, except my best friend…But there are things I need to say that I’ve never been able to say before. I am purposefully not using a throw away account, I highly doubt anyone I know will find this but if they do, I’m glad you now know… “

He went on to describe his life to date, and how it had begun to spin out of control:

“I basically turned into a drug dealer with my best friend. He took the pills and I sold them. We started to get into trouble with the police. Patrick and I vandalized numerous parks and places around our town. We got caught for that had probation and fines, etc. That didn’t stop the Dynamic Dumbasses though. We picked up charges for shoplifting, under age consumption, speeding, drunk driving, etc. But nobody knew. We were such good liars that we were able to keep it all to ourselves. …We ran from cops all the time and partied, got drunk, got high, and raised hell. I kept dealing drugs and we kept taking them. Somehow we avoided getting charged for that, though we were close multiple times.”

Then came the incident that prompted the post:

“I knew some girls from school (I thought they were 15-16, they ended being 13-14) that I met at a party. One night they called us up and said they were drunk and wanted to have fun. We couldn’t say no. We drove out and picked all 3 of them up. We parked by the neighborhood pool, got in the back of the truck, and started going at it. Everyone had their clothes off, the girls were making out with each other and having sex…After about an hour, we headed back to their house. We were out front when a cop pulled up. Then shit hit the fan. The girls accused us of raping them, getting them drunk and supplying drugs. They revealed their true age to the police…One of the girls was so drunk she had to have her stomach pumped and spend the night in the hospital. [My friend} and I went home with our parents as the police impounded my truck and started a full criminal investigation into what had happened. Apparently all 3 were virgins prior to the night, and only did this because they were drunk. The one with alcohol poisoning also had vaginal tearing, and they performed a rape kit on her. The evidence against us was incredible. I don’t know why we weren’t arrested on the spot…But for some reason, both the lead detective on the case and the chief of police were fired shortly after. We were told we would hear from the new officer in charge of our case, but we never did. I don’t know how or why, but it just disappeared.”

The near disaster prompted a life turnaround, he wrote, that at least so far was a success:

“Needless to say this scared us beyond straight. Going from expecting 10+ years in prison to miraculously being free was incredible. Somehow I straightened my life up and actually graduated with honors from a Top 500 school….I received a full ride Army ROTC scholarship to a prestigious military school to study Russian and International Affairs and eventually receive a commission as an officer. [My friend and I]  both have no idea how or why we were given another chance, but we definitely aren’t going to fuck it up. I know there are stories on here about suicide and other heavy subjects, but this is the most honest I’ve ever been in my life, and it feels amazing. Sorry for making it so long!”

So trusting was the author that he later posted a photo of a scholarship he received from Army Reserve Officer Training Corps to Reddit’s military forum. It included his name, and some Reddit users connected the scholarship, the school, the name and the earlier confession.

And alerted the school.

Now he may be kicked out, and perhaps prosecuted. When he asked on the forum why anyone would do this to him, one Reddit member, perhaps the same one who revealed his secret, wrote…

“You ruined a couple of girls’ childhoods. You make it sound like your a good person now and that you have turned over a new leaf but you never once indicated that you felt any remorse for these people you destroyed. I think you far exaggerate to us and yourself how good of a person you are, and how deserving you are of forgiveness.”

Another wrote:

“He considers drugging and raping 3 14 year olds in the back of his pick up “minor”, he has no remorse for the lives he’s hurt, only that he was caught. He is deserving of no forgiveness until he can show that he actually feels remorse.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz Question is this...

Was reporting him to his school based on his post ethical, or unethical? Continue reading →

Sorry: I Would Fire Don/Dawn Ennis

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments
Old Don, Dawn, New Don

Old Don, Dawn, New Don

Let me begin by saying that I have no idea what is going on, was going on or will be going on with ABC producer Don Ennis. Unless he has the worst sense of humor in the world, whatever it is isn’t good, or anything I would wish on someone else. I am, to a point, sympathetic. However, if I were his employer, I would tell Ennis today that he will have to work out his unusual identity issues somewhere else, and I believe that would be the right thing to do. It may not, however, be the legal thing to do, which is one of approximately 268 reasons I’m glad that I am not Mr. Ennis’s employer.

Not that it wouldn’t be exciting. If you hadn’t heard, last May Don Ennis, a well-respected ABC News editor and previously unambiguously male, entered his newsroom wearing a cute black dress and an auburn wig and announced to a stunned staff, colleagues and superiors that he was transgender. The ABC News national assignment editor said he was forever more to be known as Dawn Stacey Ennis. “Please understand,” he said in a statement, “this is not a game of dress-up, or make-believe. It is my affirmation of who I now am and what I must do to be happy, in response to a soul-crushing secret that my wife and I have been dealing with for more than seven years, mostly in secret. A father of three, “Dawn” announced that the newly-confirmed she was separating from her wife of seventeen years.

His colleagues were supportive, as was everyone else in the media, which is why you probably hadn’t heard the story. They left flowers on Dawn’s desk; ABC News President Ben Sherwood wrote her a note of support. I would have done likewise. This is a real problem, and exactly the kind of personal, medical crisis that the workplace ought to accommodate, while providing emotional support for the difficult and courageous transition. Thus Ennis continued to work at ABC sporting hormone-induced breasts, make-up, lipstick, skirts and heels. This undoubtedly caused a period of adjustment and awkwardness, but I would expect mature professionals to handle it gracefully.

Today, we learned, along with ABC, that Ennis has had a change of heart, and almost everything else. In a jaw-dropping e-mail to family and co-workers  titled “Not Reportable, Very Confirmed,” Ennis explained that he was Don Ennis again. “That will be my name again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.” Continue reading →

Ethics Corrupter: Yankee Third Baseman Alex Rodriquez; Ethics Dunce: Yankee Manager Joe Girardi; Disgraced: The New York Yankees

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Corrupted!

Corrupted!

Today, Major League Baseball announced that it was suspending Alex Rodriquez, the New York Yankees aging superstar, for the remainder of the 2013 season and the 2014 season for  using banned performance enhancing drugs, and impeding baseball’s investigation of his cheating. This was the climax (but not the end) of a long, drawn out, messy process and investigation involving a sleazy Miami drug lab, called Biogenesis, now closed down, which had records indicating that many professional baseball players had obtained banned substances.

Former National League MVP Ryan Braun (who I keep calling “Steve”) has already been banned for the rest of the year by the evidence obtained from Biogenesis records. The process has been marred by serial leaks from MLB  (unfair to the players involved, including Rodriquez) and ugly maneuvering between Rodriguez, who has been recovering from a serious hip issue, and the Yankees, who owe him approximately a gazillion dollars (thanks to an idiotic career contract signed in 2007 after he had already admitted to using steroids once), would like nothing more than for him to vanish in a puff of smoke and sulfur.

To explain the baroque ins and outs of baseball’s steroid wars, its player union relations, and the various intersecting agreements, special clauses and other things that have an impact on Rodriquez’s suspension would take too long here and would even bore the baseball fans. What you need to know now is this: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg

/ Jack Marshall / 92 Comments

 

"No emoticons were upset in the writing of this post."

“No emoticons were upset in the writing of this post.”

In Slate, renowned photographer Jill Greenberg returns to the topic that gained her unwanted notoriety in May: her exhibition of photographs of children crying their little eyes out. Greenberg revealed at the time that she captured the powerful photographs by giving the very young children lollipops or something else they liked or wanted and then having family members ask the kids to return the item. Strangely,  as Drew Curtis’Fark, one of my favorite web  sources for stories is wont to say, some people had a problem with this.

Greenberg revisits the issue because she has a book of the weepy photographs coming out. Seldom does one read a more casual, “What is the matter with people?”, utterly clueless display of invalid rationalizations for unethical conduct as Greenberg belches out. Unfortunately, another tendency illustrated by the article is far more common: a news sources examination of an ethics issue without any apparent sensitivity or understanding of the ethics issues involved.

Here are Greenberg’s rationalizations, or at least the ones she gave to Slate. I’m sure she has many more.

  • The Trivial Trap, or “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” “I have two children of my own. Crying is not evidence of pain or any real suffering. It’s really just the way children communicate.” Ah. Not real suffering. Then it’s all right, then. The bottom line is that Greenberg is intentionally upsetting the children, who, it can be fairly said, are less anxious and happier when they are not crying. Children who are teased, frightened or otherwise made uncomfortable can also be said not to be in pain or “real” suffering. It’s still cruel, and an abuse of power, to treat them this way. Come to think of it, Greenberg could make the same argument about some of the models in child pornography. Would she, I wonder?
  • “Everybody does it” and the “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse. “Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural.” And, I suppose, making a Bangladesh child cry by taking food from her to make her cry is just as exploitative  and more natural than giving her food to make her smile, because, after all, she’s usually starving anyway.
  • The Saint’s Excuse or “It’s for a good cause” a.k.a “The ends justify the means.” Slate:  “The still image continues to have a ton of strength. An image taken out of context from one fraction of a second to the next can tell a story, and if photographers are looking to tell a certain story, they can curate those slices of time to their advantage. What’s weird about the images is they seemingly can be applied to all these random disparate causes. My husband was saying they’re like emoticons.” True, Jill, but those little smiley faces don’t have to be tortured to get them to frown or cry, because, unlike babies, they aren’t real human beings.

The bottom line is that Greenberg made money and got a lot of ink by making children unhappy, so she can’t see why anyone would argue that the conduct wasn’t justified, and based on the article, neither does Slate or its writer, Jordan G. Teicher. The photographer’s methods are, of course, obviously and indisputably unethical:

  • She exploited the children for her own agendas and benefit.
  • She abused her superior power over the children to get the reaction she wants.
  • She induced anxiety in another, causing needless harm.
  • She created a product, the photo, which memorializes a form of child abuse.
  • She recruited the children’s parents into assisting in the exploitation for the artist’s purposes, rather that doing their job as parents, thus inducing a breach of loyalty and a betrayal of parental duty.
  • She created and profited from a materialization of an unethical abuse of a child, which is identical to what child pornography does.
  • She encouraged others to create similar photographs, which will be created, in some cases, with even less humane methods.

Of course her methods were unethical. She deserves every bit of criticism and hate mail that she has received. But the sophisticates, like Slate and others, just shrug off the concern as foolishness, much ado about nothing. So she made kids cry! They cry all the time! What matters is that she got some great pictures!

Many of society’s problems arise from the fact that our media can’t recognize, and thus encourages, unethical behavior, even obvious examples like making little children cry for fame and fortune.

__________________________

Pointer: Alexander Cheezem

Sources: Bored Panda, Slate, Fully M

 

Unethical Quote Of The Year: Ariel Castro

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
Well, now, Ariel, with all due respect, I have to disagree with you here. You are, in fact, a monster.

Well, now, Ariel, with all due respect, I have to disagree with you here. You are, in fact, a monster.

Perhaps some gratitude is due to convicted Cleveland kidnapper, torturer, rapist Ariel Castro for yesterday’s long, rambling, thoroughly disturbing statement to the court before sentencing. Within the nearly 1900 words he inflicted on everyone present are a true treasure trove of rationalizations, ethical dodges and classic excuses for wrong-doing, many of which, in different contexts, we use ourselves or accept from others. Perhaps, in the future, when we hear or read of these very same rationalizations and deceit from politicians, celebrities, Wall Street manipulators, media flacks and the people who enable them, or when we detect the seeds of one of them germinating in our own heads, we will recognize them as the property of Ariel Castro, and reject them promptly.

Here is what Castro said yesterday, in its entirety. Read the whole thing…just picking out the highlights doesn’t do the statement justice. It is a masterpiece of evil. I’ll break in from time to time, in bold:

Continue reading →