Character

Heroes, Dunces, Truthtellers, Liars, Spinners, Incompetents, and Fools: More Ethics Forensics On The Government Scandal Wave

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

bosch

This is a mercurial story, several in fact, but one of its most valuable uses is to allow us to sort out various individuals and institutions for their trustworthiness and character based upon their words and conduct regarding the multiple scandals hurtling around Washington.

  • Fool: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Mn). Bachmann is talking impeachment, which has signature significance: any elected official who brings up impeachment now or anytime before hard evidence turns up proving that President Obama personally delivered  a bag of gold to the IRS leadership to make sure proprietary tax information was leaked is an utter, irresponsible dolt. 1) No President has ever been convicted after their impeachment, and heaven knows we have had multiple Chief Executives factually guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It is a waste of time, an all-encompassing political warfare glut that this nation can’t afford at this point, especially when the U.S. Senate is in control of the same party the impeached POTUS belongs to. Yes, I agree with the principle that corrupt Presidents should be punished; I’m glad Bill Clinton got his just desserts, but I also know that if he and the rest of the government had been concentrating on what was going on in the world rather than hiding blue dresses, the Twin Towers might be standing today, and 3000—10,000?—-Americans wouldn’t be dead. Impeachment is like using a nuclear bomb: it’s a useful threat, but the reality is too horrible to permit. 2) Anyone who thinks making Joe Biden President is a solution to anything is certifiable. 3) There is nothing at this point that would support a legitimate impeachment. 4) Putting the scandals in that context just supports the agreed-upon White House and media spin that this is all about politics. Shut up, Michele.

Why Photographer Arne Svensen Is An Unethical Creep

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments
Photographer/artist/ Peeping Tom Arne Swenson as played by Jimmy Stewart in "Rear Window."

Photographer/artist/ Peeping Tom Arne Swenson as played by Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window.”

“For my subjects there is no question of privacy; they are performing behind a transparent scrim on a stage of their own creation with the curtain raised high. The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs.”

Believe it or not, this is how photographer Arne Svensen justifies his wildly unethical photographic peeping Tom excursions into his neighbor’s bedrooms for his own profit. This artist has provoked a controversy by 1) stalking the people who live in the New York apartment building across from his, 2) keeping a camera lens on them when they dare not to keep their windows shuttered as if they were vampires, 3) shooting photographs of whatever he sees that tickles his artistic sensibilities, fetishes or perversions, 4) choosing photos that do not show the faces of his subject victim, and 5) exhibiting and selling the results as artwork.

Amazingly, his neighbors object!

Let me cut to the chase here and be direct, because any minute now we are likely to find out that President Obama’s EPA has been secretly causing coal mine cave-ins and assassinating oil execs to forestall global warming, and that the President is outraged and just heard about it when we did, and will take strong action by telling the officials involved that they have to sit in the back during the next White House concert, and I’ll be distracted. Continue reading →

Twelve Ethics Observations On “The Scandal Trifecta”

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Obama

1. “The Scandal Trifecta” may be gaining traction in D.C. and in the news media as the hot term to handily describe the Obama Administration’s three instances of serious and significant misconduct: the Benghazi deceptions, the I.R.S. harassment of conservatives and conservative groups, and the Justice Department’s surveillance of Associate Press reporters. It should be rejected. I know conservatives and Republicans are especially smug and gleeful right now to have their suspicions and warnings confirmed, but this is a national crisis, at a time of dire challenges to the nation, and tragic in many ways. It is not a game, and should not be likened to one. Nor should the three situations be lumped together, though they have, to some extent, common seeds. They are each important in and of themselves, and packaging them like stop-light peppers risks allowing all or some of them receive less than the individual attention they must have. This is the first and last time I’m using the term, and I urge everyone, in the media or out of it, to similarly drop it. Labels matter, in this is a bad one.

2. Here’s someone Democrats and the rest of us can blame, in part: the left-biased news media. You see, knowing that the news media is looking to expose them when they make mistakes, blunder, show corruption and otherwise do a bad job when entrusted with the welfare of the greatest nation on earth makes our leaders better, more responsible, more objective, and more competent, out of fear, if nothing else. The media does nobody any favors when it lets its biases take over and lies down on the job—not the public, not Republicans, certainly; not the nation, not their profession, but also not even those they are desperately trying to help succeed. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Angelina Jolie

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Jolie

I am pretty certain that actress Angelina Jolie could have undergone a prophylactic double mastectomy and never revealed it, She could have had reconstructive surgery and continuing to appeal to the sexual fantasies of moviegoers, which has been a significant aspect of her movie career. She had no need to disclose the operation, which she underwent last month, and no obligation to. Nonetheless,Jolie revealed her choice to the world in an eloquent, powerful, and courageous op-ed in the New York Times this week, and undoubtedly saved lives by doing so. She also made a critical cultural statement about the worth of women and how they are devalued by being reduced to their body parts in popular culture, the media, and the minds of men.

I think it is one of the most courageous acts by an entertainment figure that we have ever witnessed.

Jolie writes in part… Continue reading →

Further Refining The Naked Teacher Principle: The Firing of Olivia Sprauer,

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
But she's not naked!

But she’s not naked!

It will be therapeutic, I hope, to  take a breather from considering the steadily increasing seriousness of the various government scandals, as well as reviling the increasingly desperate spin being employed to try to deflect them, and to focus on something both far removed and of vital national interest. Of course, that means buckling down and refining the Naked Teacher Principle, which in its formal explication, is that a responsible high school teacher has a duty to take reasonable care that her students do not see her in the nude, and if she does not, and her students do see her in the nude, she has no standing to complain when the school deems her unable to maintain the proper and necessary credibility and dignity necessary for teaching.

Now comes the news that at Martin County High School, in Florida, a ninth-grade English teacher of otherwise good repute named Olivia Sprauer has been fired for being shown on the web modeling bathing suits, and offering her services to photographers for less clothed presentations. Should the Naked Teacher Principle or any of its variations apply? Continue reading →

How Amy Bouzaglo Makes Us Better People

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments
Run away! But pay attention!

Run away! But pay attention!

I’m not going to take back every negative thing I’ve ever said about reality shows, but there is no getting around it: now and then an episode of one of them is a better training film for good ethics than  “Leave It To Beaver,” “Star Trek, The Next Generation,” and “Father Knows Best” combined.

A case in point was a recent episode of “Kitchen Nightmares,” a Fox reality show that sends chef and restaurateur Gordan Ramsay to turn around failing eateries, usually by his browbeating them into basic management competence and the use of fresh ingredients. This time, however, Ramsay was pitted against the proprietors of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro in Scottsdale Arizona, specifically the eponymous Amy Bouzaglo, a textbook narcissist who dominates her much older husband and partner, abuses employees, and treats all criticism and constructive suggestions as a personal attack. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Ken at Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“If you practice as a lawyer, you owe it to your clients only to do the things you are competent to do. Embarking on the defense of a man accused of murder as your first trial is a moral and ethical outrage. Regrettably, the profession is barraged with eager voices telling us that attracting clients with puffery and keywords and Twitter accounts is the way to build a practice. Nobody’s reminding us that you have an obligation to know what you’re doing before you accept the client. Somebody should.”

—-Ken, the lead blogger/attorney/libertarian/ wit/ First Amendment champion at Popehat, summarizing the lessons of the Joseph Rakofsky saga. Rakofsky was a green D.C. lawyer ( he is still a lawyer, less green but sadder and wiser) who indeed did take a murder defense as his first trial, made an epic botch of it, and then launched a desperate defamation lawsuit at legal bloggers, like Ken, who had told his cautionary tale to the world with appropriate ire. The law suit was dismissed last week.

What's next for Joseph Radofsky? Maybe he'll run for President....

What’s next for Joseph Radofsky? Maybe he’ll run for President….

Competence is an ethical value, especially in the professions, but also in most pursuits. Taking on the responsibility of accomplishing a task creates a duty, and doing so without being justifiably certain that you will have the skills to do it is reckless and irresponsible.

Ken, an experienced and accomplished attorney whom I have consulted for his professional advice in the past, also knows that inexperience does have to be eradicated with experience, and a strict application of his statement in all cases would lead to a frustrating Catch 22. Every pilot has to take that first solo flight; every head surgeon has his first major operation; and Clarence Darrow had to take on that first murder trial before he could say with complete confidence that he knew exactly what to do. On a more basic level, any lawyer taking on a representation in a type of matter she has never handled before, such as drafting a will, will be, in  a sense, accepting a client before she knows what she is doing, because she hasn’t done it before. That’s okay, however: the ethics rules, as expressed in the American Bar Association’s Rules of Professional Conduct (in Rule 1.1) say its okay, as long as, by the time the task is underway, the lawyer is sufficiently competent: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Too Stupid To Be Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Little Tommy flunked Ethics 101. Should we blame him?

Little Tommy flunked Ethics 101. Should we blame him?

An incident in Jefferson City Missouri nicely raises an issue I think about often.

Capital 8 Theaters in Jefferson City, Missouri sent actors dressed as gunmen, wearing assault gear and carrying what appeared to be semi-automatic weapons, into a screening of the film “Iron Man 3”  last weekend. Really. Apparently the similarity between this scenario and the deadly shooting last year in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater premiering another big budget movie about a superhero never occurred to the theater manager, because he is, you see, a moron. It sure occurred to the patrons, though, and one of them called in the police, saying that gunmen had entered the theater. SWAT teams were called. Luckily nobody was shot or had cardiac arrest, no thanks to the theater.

Interviewed by a local TV station, manager Bob Wilkins was asked if he had any regrets. “No, my job is to entertain people,” he said. Asked if he considered  how  his stunt might affect patrons who remembered the mass shooting in the theater in Aurora, Wilkins responded, “Absolutely. That’s my number-one priority every day. It’s the safety and security of our guests.”

Okay, this pretty much tells us what we need to know about old Bob, so here is your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz question:

May abject stupidity be a complete defense to the accusation that one is unethical? Continue reading →

The Trustbusters Circle The Wagons: Why?

/ Jack Marshall / 57 Comments

Why do they always do this?

"Thank you, Sen. Reed, for your comments. You can stop spinning now."

“Thank you, Sen. Reed, for your comments. You can stop spinning now.”

Republicans, Democrats—why? Why do they think, when they are caught in an obvious example of misconduct, it is smarter and more useful—it certainly isn’t honest, courageous or ethical—not to simply confess and apologize, even if it’s with hardly an ennobling statement no better than, “You got us. Yeah, we were lying. That was wrong. Sorry,'” rather than continue to lie? The now ridiculous contortions of Democrats (and their knee-jerk supporters in the public and the media, but forget about them, for they are merely pathetic) are doing independent harm, because they destroy trust in government generally, and that, for a democratic republic, is potentially fatal.

Way back in September, when U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice disgraced herself by going on five Sunday talk-shows and stating with deceitful certitude ( “our current best assessment”…”we believe”)  that the deadly attack on the U.S. outpost in Libya was solely the result of spontaneous outrage on the part of extremists over a video, and not an organized terrorist attack, critics said that the Administration was covering up what really happened, and lying about what they knew. The accusation was shouted down and indeed ridiculed by Administration officials, Democrats in Congress, and the Obama-promoting media (it was in the middle of an election campaign) as a partisan smear, but in fact the critics, partisan though they were, were right. Rice was disseminating disinformation. The Administration and its State Department were intentionally blaming a video when they knew better. Why is another story: conservative pundits believe it was to avoid having to admit, mid-campaign, that the signature accomplishment of the President’s term, killing Osama bin Laden and supposedly crushing al Qaida, was not quite the complete victory the Democrats were claiming. If that was the reason, it was a stupid reason, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen that way. Hiding inconvenient facts before an election is despicable, but lying to the public and the world is serious enough, whatever its motive.

When she was questioned in Congress about the misleading descriptions, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled that the Administration was in cover-up mode, both by lying outright (“I did not say … that it was about the video for Libya.”) and making her infamous and ethically indefensible statement,  ”With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided to kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?” Now, thanks to multiple revelations, the testimony of whistle-blowers, and newly released e-mails, there is no question that Clinton’s State Department took the lead in scrubbing the CIA talking points that immediately attributed the attack in Benghazi to identifiable terrorist elements connected to al Qaida, and not a spontaneous demonstration against the video. Not only are the Administration’s defenders refusing to admit that what happened happened, they are recycling old tactics from other scandals to do it, which if nothing else is lazy and boring:

  • “This is old news.” Or, as (Liberal! Obama-loving!) NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd termed it, “It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true, it’s old news.” Dowd also correctly identified this as a classic from the Bill Clinton playbook, used for too many bona fide scandals to list. Continue reading →

Jay Carney Must Resign

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Ron Ziegler would understand, Jay.

Ron Ziegler would understand, Jay.

I know it hasn’t been reflected in the essays here, but I have great sympathy for Jay Carney and all of his predecessors. He has a terrible job. Sometimes it’s an inherently unethical job, as when the White House spokesperson, aka “press secretary,” is sent out to spin, tap-dance, and otherwise obfuscate for his boss, the President, presumably but not always for the good of the nation.

Nonetheless, when someone in Jay Carney’s position loses all credibility and can no longer be trusted to deliver information that can be called truthful by any stretch of the imagination, that individual has to go. The official spokesman of the White House cannot be seen as someone who intentionally lies to the press and the public, and this is the status Carney has now. He has an obligation to resign, even if his boss isn’t astute enough to tell him to, and history indicates that he is not. Continue reading →