Character

The Golden Rule Sets Off An Ethics Alarm At Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I posted earlier here about the efforts by lawyers (and bloggers) Marc Randazza and Ken at Popehat to foil the despicable operators of “IsAnybodyDown?” That vile website solicits and uses nude photos of women who have not given permission for them to be posted. It often posts contact information for the women as well, and, as a final touch, promotes an alleged legal service that guarantees that it will get the photos taken down. This is a good bet, since the legal service is operated by the same two men who run the site, though it is very unlikely that the “lawyer” really exists. After Marc and Ken challenged the site, its purveyors launched another one accusing them of secretly working for pornography interests and being funded by the Mob.

These are not, in other words, nice people.

In his most recent post about their ongoing battle, Ken recounted an e-mail exchange with Chance Trahan, who founded and operates  “IsAnybodyDown?”with Craig Brittain. It is an exchange that confirms what one would assume about someone who engages in a business like his. A typical tweet from Chance to Craig reads in part, “You aren’t shit to the world you immoral fuck.” Yet Ken was moved to reflect upon even this individual’s humanity, applying the Golden Rule to and musing about how even the likes of Trahan and Brittain can have redeeming qualities. In doing so he provided as profound and lovely reflection on the ethical process of reciprocity, as well as kindness, fairness, forgiveness and empathy. With Ken’s permission, I present it here. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Golfer Blayne Barber

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Aspiring professional golfers can’t just join the PGA tour. They have to qualify by completing and passing PGA school.  Blayne Barber is one such golfer, and his dreams of winning tournaments and cash prizes will have to wait at least another year, if they are realized at all. He washed out this year. The way he washed out, however, is remarkable, and shows that if he does make it into the PGA ranks, Barber will be a credit to his sport.

Indeed, most pro golfers are credits to their sport, because golf has managed to hold the line against the increasing cultural acceptance of poor sportsmanship better than any of our professional pastimes, with tennis a distant second, and third place too far away to see without binoculars. This is a sport where the honor system is mandatory. One reason the tradition of self-regulation has persisted in golf may be because cheating in contests is so easy, and because there are so many ways to do it. Players find their own balls, and write down their own scores. Anyone who has seen James Bond and Auric Goldfinger take turns cheating each other in the famous grudge match from the movie knows that amateur golf can be cutthroat and nasty. The pros have built a culture that requires exemplary conduct.

Few would be this exemplary, however. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!…Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us…This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!…Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble…like never before…Our nation is a once great nation divided!..The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”

—-Republican Designated Buffoon Donald Trump via Twitter, in the wake of last night’s election results.

Stay classy, Donald.

I can’t stand another picture of Donald Trump, so here is a great photo of a mastiff with a friend. I love mastiffs.

While most Americans instinctively understand that the great strength of our democracy is that after the votes are counted, we stand behind our collective decisions and support our chosen leaders. Not Trump. He doesn’t comprehend that vile comments like these, published to the world, are not merely irresponsible but also unpatriotic.

There is an upside to Trump’s poor impulse control, however. The possibility that a Romney administration might have found any role for Trump at all should make everybody, even die-hard partisan Republicans and end-of-civilization Rush Limbaugh conservatives feel better about last night’s vote tally.

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Pointer: Ron Sarro

Source: The Examiner

 

Chris Christie and the Curse of Consequentialism

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

It will be scant consolation to Chris Christie, who probably lost forever any chance of becoming President, but his bi-partisan actions in the wake of Superstorm Sandy provide a perfect example of how a completely ethical and responsible decision can have consequences that cause it to be judged unethical and irresponsible.

Even before Obama won Ohio’s electoral votes, guaranteeing his re-election, analysts were pointing to Christie’s much-photographed stroll with (and hugging of) the President, and the well-timed opportunity it provided to allow Obama to appear both Presidential and willing to co-operate with Republicans, as the tipping point in a close race, breaking Mitt Romney’s momentum and undercutting the argument that only he could “reach across the aisle.” I doubt that Chris and Barack’s New Jersey Adventure was in fact the primary reason Romney lost, but I have no doubt at all that conservatives will blame Christie, among others, for the loss. Continue reading →

There Is Nothing Noble About A Deathbed Confession…

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Don’t you just hate it when you think you are going to die and confess a horrible crime and then you miraculously recover?

…which is why this O. Henry-esque story makes me smile.

Someone stabbed Joyce Goodener in the neck, set her on fire and bludgeoned her to death with a cinder block in 1995. Nobody was arrested for her murder. But three years ago, James Washington, a Tennessee prisoner, thought he was dying from a heart attack. The downside of confessing to a crime right before you kick off is nil, and the up-side might be admission through the Pearly Gates, so Washington confessed to a prison guard that he had killed Goodener. “I have something to tell you. I have to get something off my conscience and you need to hear this,’” he told the guard, James Tomlinson. “I killed somebody. I beat her to death.”  He confessed all the gory details. Then, conveniently unburdened, Washington waited to go into the light, to mercy, forgiveness, and maybe a nice pair of wings and a golden harp.

Oops. He recovered. Now he’s facing at least another 50 years in prison.

There is nothing admirable or ethical about a death-bed confession. It doesn’t show contrition, honesty, accountability or good citizenship. Such confessions are examples of self-serving cowardice. Although it is true that the world would be a better, safer place with Washington gone, the fact that he now has to face earthly retribution rather than reap the benefits of heavenly absolution is the essence of justice.

But hey, thanks for sharing, James!

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Facts and Graphic: Daily News

Relax, Americans: The President Will Be A Good Man…Whoever He Is.

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The good guys.

The degree of anxiety over today’s Presidential election—perhaps more accurate than anxiety is hysteria—is palpable. It is also unnecessary and foolish. I have read the fevered rantings of Andrew Sullivan, who fears Mitt Romney like the Germans feared the invading Russian army at the end of World War II, and the apocalyptic monologues of conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin, who is prone to statements like, “It’s over, that’s all! Do you understand? If Obama wins, this country is never coming back!” I have watched both parties exploit and encourage this kind of irrational fear, and its by-products, predictably, are hate, division and anger. There was a time in America when political adversaries referred to each other as “my honorable opponent.” The candidates were not more honorable then. We were more sensible.

The history of the United States has shown that very few truly bad men have the opportunity to run for President. It makes sense, if you give it a modicum of thought. A Presidential contender must negotiate the perils of life for at least four decades without accumulating damning evidence of disqualifying character traits and malign intent. The candidate must have shown sufficient ability and character to impress those he worked with and owed duties to. Most of all, a potential President must have been able to engender a sufficient amount of trust over more than half of his natural life.

We should not judge political leaders by the same standards as other professionals, because the nature of politics, by definition, is ethically ambiguous. Politics knows only one ethical system: utilitarianism. The practice of governing and making human progress advance in the civic arena rules out absolute principles, and requires delicate calculations of ends and means. This often appears, to non-practitioners, as corruption, and it certainly can become that. Effective, trustworthy leaders are able to avoid the occupational hazard of believing that the ends necessarily justify the means. If they cannot, they will not have the opportunity to be President. Continue reading →

Most Cynical and Hypocritical Statement of the 2012 Campaign: Bill Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

 “Who wants a president who will knowingly, repeatedly tell you something he knows is not true?”

—-Bill Clinton, speaking at an Obama rally in Pennsylvania.

Unbelievable shamelessness, even for Clinton.

Yeccch.

Gee, I don’t know why I picked this particular photo. I just like it, I guess. I wonder what Bill was saying?

I don’t know who disgusts me more, the impeached ex-president who has the gall to utter this after repeatedly lying about Monica Lewinsky, or the values-challenged fools that would listen to him insult their intelligence like that and not walk away laughing.

Democrats disgrace themselves by allowing this man to represent them, and that applies to the President as well.

Why Nate Silver Is Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 156 Comments

Funny, Nate, I don’t see “leadership” anywhere in here…

I have wrestled with whether to write this post for about a month now. I am not in the election predicting business, which is a fool’s game, and this is tangential to ethics at best. On the other hand, leadership and American culture are among the subjects frequently explored here. Nate Silver’s analysis of the Presidential election on his New York Times blog has been at once fascinating and aggravating for me, though it has been a godsend to my nervous friends on the ideological left. Silver has insisted that his statistical analysis of the polls fortells an Obama victory with increasing certainty. Last I looked, his model was showing the election to be all but in the bag for the President, with, Silver calculates, an 86% chance that Romney goes down to defeat.

I don’t question Silver’s figures or formula. He’s a statistics whiz. His mistake is trying to use the tools he has used to great success on the poker table and in the world of sabermetrics to analyze the election of a President of the United States, without acknowledging or understanding the core of the process, or the culture and context in which it occurs. In many elections, most perhaps, his model would work perfectly. This time, it is going to fail. Silver won’t see his failure coming because as brilliant as he is in his chosen field, his demonstrated expertise is in economics and statistics. He really believes, apparently, that American history doesn’t matter, that what Americans think about when they choose a President is irrelevant, and that numbers purify the discussion and remove all the bias and static. He couldn’t be more wrong. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The Single Mother Tip-Stiffer

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

According to a poster on Reddit, a woman allegedly left the message above on her receipt after eating a pricey meal at a restaurant. “Single mom, sorry,” she wrote, in the space left for a tip. “Thank you—it was great!” The furious waiter’s colleague scanned and posted  the receipt, with appropriate invective that has been matched and exceeded by others on the site.

As usual, there are denials that the story is genuine, and claims that some single mother-hating trouble-maker created this miserable ethics smoking gun. “I think this bill is a fraud because I’ve met very few single mothers who expected to get special treatment for their status. They’re just hoping no one holds their situation against them,” wrote one skeptic. This is the “No True Scotsman” fallacy in Technicolor. The fact, if it is a fact, that few single mothers expect special treatment doesn’t prove that this one didn’t or doesn’t. Continue reading →

Unthical Quote of the Week: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Very sadly for the country, for a charity — and for the president himself, President Obama has just missed the deadline and now a charity of his choice will not be receiving $5 million — or as I stated much more than $5 million.”

—- Real state tycoon, self-promoting birther and Romney supporter Donald Trump, blaming President Obama for not accepting his challenge to produce various personal records in exchange for Trump sending $5 million dollars to a charity of the President’s choice.

What a mind-boggling, species-embarrassing ass.

OK, this isn’t really Donald Trump; it’s one of the evil, people-eating monsters from “Killer Klowns From Outer Space,”  one of the cleverest tongue-in cheek horror films. But there’s really not much difference, when you get right down to it. Mitt Romney shouldn’t want the support of either of them. In fact, I’d take the clown over the Donald.

Trump also noted that his money could have been used to swell the relief funds for Superstorm Sandy. That’s right: According to Trump, President Obama is responsible for Donald Trump not being generous, charitable and patriotic by  contributing to help the victims of a disaster.

I know that it is a tight election contest, and no candidate should be expected to toss away any voter or supporter—“Any port in a storm,” and all that. (Remind me to add that one to the ratioanalizations list.) Nevertheless, Mitt Romney would bolster credibility and reputation for integrity if he repudiated this awful man, and pronounced him what he is beyond all argument: a vile, irresponsible, offensive buffoon whose admiration, endorsement friendship or support sullies and diminishes anyone and anything he bestows it upon.

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Facts: The Blaze

Graphic: Release Donkey