Character

The Bill James Effect, Or How Nature Conspires To Make Us Irresponsible

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Quiz: What do Gen.Lee and Bill James have in common?

You see, our strengths do us in, sooner or later. The greater the strength, the more successful it has made us, the more dangerous it is.

In the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee was the smartest general on the field…so smart that he broke iron-clad rules of battle strategy again and again, and prevailed every time. When everyone told him how it was usually done, always done, Lee knew that he could get an edge by doing something else. You never divide your forces, his aides, subordinates and the military books told him. So Lee did, at Chancellorsville, and won an incredible victory.

Then came July 3, 1863: the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, and Pickett’s Charge. Everyone told Lee that a massed Napoleonic assault, over an open field, into enemy artillery and a fortified line, was suicidal. But when conventional wisdom dictated a course of action, that was when Lee had always succeeded by ignoring it. So he ordered Pickett’s Charge. This time, conventional wisdom was right. The same qualities of creativity, courage, certitude, and willingness to resist the power of convention that had caused Lee’s men to trust him unconditionally had resulted in the massacre of thousands. Pickett’s Charge wasn’t bold or ingenious. It was irresponsible. Lee, because of a lifetime of success challenging what others thought was obvious, was no longer able to tell the difference. Continue reading →

London’s Curfew Fiasco: Sir Paul, The Boss, and Exception Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

It was the stuff of legends, the kind of moment that onlookers would cherish and tell their grandchildren about. American rock icon Bruce Springsteen was on a roll before a huge Hyde Park crowd, and suddenly he was joined on stage by Sir Paul McCartney. The two giants of rock and roll began spontaneously jamming, and then some bureaucrat who worked for the concert organizers pulled the plug, cutting off power because the concert was running over its permit allotment and a local sound curfew.

Good ethics can require knowing when rules and even laws should be stretched, amended, finessed, or even ignored. This takes some skill, of course, and some character. It is much easier, and certainly entails lower risk, to just go by the book, and permit no exceptions. It is also lazy, uncaring, and leads to needless fiascos like this one. Continue reading →

Obama Resorts To Swiftboating

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“It was despicable what they did to John Kerry. Hey! Maybe it will work on Romney!”

I didn’t see this coming from the Obama campaign, and I suppose I should have. The President has shown a willingness to abandon virtually every one of the principles his piously stood for during his “transformational” 2008 campaign; the unifying, bi-partisan, President-of -all-Americans has meticulously worked to seed distrust and enmity between black and white, Anglo and Hispanic, business owners and labor, rich and poor, non-Catholic and Catholic, young and old, men and women, and, of course, Republicans and Democrats, as a desperate and cynical strategy to stay in power, disregarding the inevitable harm such a scorched earth strategy will do to the nation. If anyone can recall in our history such a total breach of integrity by a major American political figure, please enlighten me. The closest I can find is President Obama’s 2008 opponent, John McCain, who thoroughly disgraced himself to fend off a tea party challenger in his 2010 Senate bid in Arizona….and it really isn’t close.

Still, I didn’t expect the President to resort to Swiftboating, the political tactic that derives its name from the attacks on John Kerry’s military heroics from some of his fellow Vietnam swift boat commanders (“Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”) who financed a devastating series of negative campaign ads alleging that Kerry’s decorations for valor were based on fraud. Though the ads were based on rumor, hearsay and animus, they put Kerry on the defensive in his 2004 campaign against President Bush. I doubt that the smear really lost Kerry the election—he was a terrible candidate—but Democrats have continued to cite the Swiftboat ads as proof of conservative perfidy and ruthlessness. They, of course, would never stoop so low. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Tia Skinner

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Tia wonders why her family has abandoned her. Uh,…Tia? Aren’t you forgetting something?

“It’s been rough. It’s hard losing your whole family in a blink of an eye. It’s tough because that’s my family; they’re supposed to stay by you through thick and thin.”

—– Tia Skinner, a teenager serving life in prison for plotting a home invasion attack  that killed her father and seriously injured her mother, who was stabbed 25 times.

That’s right, Tia: it’s your family’s fault.

___________________________

Pointer: James Taranto

Facts and Graphic: Detroit Free Press

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Boooo!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

When we can’t even figure out what ethical conduct is, it’s hopeless.

Mitt Romney’s appearance before the NAACP this week gives us a classic and depressing example of how the collision of confirmation bias, an unprofessional news media, impenetrable partisanship and political cynicism not only obscure the truth, but make it literally—and I mean literally literally, not as Joe Biden uses the term, which is to mean figuratively—impossible.

Consider:

  • The media, in almost every case, highlighted the fact that Mitt Romney was booed by the NAACP audience when he swore to abolish “Obamacare.” Did you know that at one point in his speech, when Romney mentioned defending traditional—as in same sex—marriage, the audience applauded, and some stood? If you do, you only found out by digging into so-called “conservative media sources.” Why isn’t this more of a story than the booing? Why wasn’t at least part of the story? Isn’t that useful information? Why does the media want to show nothing but enmity between African-Americans and the Republican nominee? Why wouldn’t the fact that the audience was listening to the substance of his remarks and responding positively in some cases be significant?
  • The NAACP has criticized prominent Republicans for not accepting it invitations to speak, maintaining the fiction that this wholly owned  subsidiary of the Democratic Party is “bi-partisan,” as its charter falsely claims. Then when one of them accepts such an invitation, these gracious hosts boos him. Booing is bad manners at a baseball game; in this circumstance, it is infinitely worse. If Romney had advocated a return to Jim Crow or used a racial epithet, then maybe booing would be justified. He did not. He merely stated a policy position, repealing the Affordable Care Act, that audience members did not like. They boo him, and this indignity becomes the story, thanks to the media’s tunnel vision. Why would any Republican accept such an invitation? The NAACP has proved itself to be an unethical and abusive host. Continue reading →

The Ethical Fate For Joe Paterno’s Statue

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

In the wake of the Freeh Report’s revelations regarding the extent of the late Joe Paterno’s involvement in allowing Jerry Sandusky’s child molesting appetites to be sated with Penn State’s  assistance, many are calling for the campus statue honoring the now-disgraced coach to be removed.

I am generally opposed to removing memorials and honors to historical figures according to the popular verdicts of the day, for several reasons. The main one is that every individual who ever achieved something worthy of such honor also was guilty of misconduct that someone could convincingly argue outweighs it on moral or ethical grounds. New facts are uncovered, cultural values shift, and over time, no revered figure is safe from deconstruction. The reverse is also inevitable: if a life can be judged unworthy of honor, subsequent generations may well disagree. The verdict of a community, a culture and an era should be given due weight and respect;  a statue, memorial or monument not only recognizes an individual but also represents the judgment of our predecessors. Leave their judgments alone, and if we disagree with them, try to make ours better. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Joe Paterno

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“This is not a football scandal and should not be treated as one.”

—The late Joe Paterno, legendary Penn State football coach, in a previously unreleased and unpublished column he wrote in the wake of the  Joe Sandusky child abuse scandal, in which he played a major role. The internal Penn State investigation into the university’s handling of the episode was released today.

Denial

In denial to the end, Paterno never understood how he, and football, contributed to the culture that allowed Sandusky to prey on young boys with the passive assistance of Joe and the school he loved.

Of course the scandal was about football. It was about how reliance on football to the exclusion of all other priorities and values warped an academic culture. It was about the danger of elevating a football coach to such status and power that his tunnel-vision could infect an entire college campus. It was about how the grotesquely exaggerated importance, popularity, visibility, and financial profitability of a football program can elevate those responsible for its success to a degree where they become unaccountable, and able to exploit their power for private and possibly criminal motives. Continue reading →

Liars For President

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a liar as President. I’m not talking about the kind of lies that are periodically unavoidable in leadership and governance, as much as we would like to pretend they are not. I’m talking about “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” type of lies, intentional falsehoods designed to deceive the public for  political advantage with no benefit to the nation or its occupants whatsoever. Unfortunately, we are about to elect a liar as President, because lying in political campaign ads, and particularly negative ads, is sunk deep into the system like an inoperable brain tumor. It is fair to say that every President since George Washington has done it, and thus the public accepts it, and the news media shrugs it off. Continue reading →

Banning the Privacy Bomb

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Yes, I think posting this photo is a lousy thing to do to your dog, too.

The stories come out routinely, and the opposing opinions are predictable. A boorish date dumps a woman via arrogant e-mail, which is promptly forwarded to thousands, making him a national laughing stock and pariah. A movie star sends an angry and mean-spirited message to his teenage daughter, who places it in the hands of the celebrity-devouring media…which then use it to savage the star’s reputation.  A Harvard law student takes an e-mail sent by a friend and fellow-student as a follow-up to a contentious discussion about race, and forwards it to minority advocates on campus, who then condemn the “friend” as a racist. A model live-tweets her encounter with the married actor sitting next to her on a flight, as he engages in awkward flirtation. In each case, defenders of the punitive distributor of the embarrassing communication argue that the victim deserved it, while critics of the conduct insist that it is a betrayal of privacy and trust.
We need to decide, as a culture, whether we believe that reasonable expectations of privacy should be respected or not; indeed, whether they should survive or not. Those who endorse, defend and encourage the kind of conduct in these incidents and many more are, whether they realize it or not, fouling the nest of our national culture and community, making not just privacy, but also friendship and intimacy, almost impossible. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce and Unethical Quote of the Day: Jon Dawson

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

“OH, you mean the one with the word “Column” at the beginning?”

—-Jon Dawson, alleged columnist for the Kinston Free Press, in snotty response to my query regarding his fake story that prompted my recent post, “Ethics Train Wreck in a Little Tea Pot.” I asked if his story was a hoax.

Yeah, you’re right…if I had seen the photo first, I might have been more suspicious….

I guess his answer means yes. I also guess somebody ought to tell all the other local news and city beat columnists around the country that the heading “column” by their names is supposed to be understood as “Don’t believe a thing I say.” Someone should also let national writers like E.J. Dionne, Robert Samuelson, Kathleen Parker, John Avlon, Andrew Sullivan…anyone with a column, really…that their brand of punditry and journalism is supposed to be assumed to be satirical and tongue-in-cheek, because “column” gives proper notice that the “facts” the column contains are likely to be hooey.

Back when I lived in Boston, there was a city beat columnist I enjoyed and read often. He was clever and funny, and his specialty was local Boston stories. His name is Mike Barnacle. He’s not in Boston any more: they ran him out of town for making up stories or embellishing them with phony facts. (He is now seen on MSNBC, where facts are beside the point.) I thought they were a bit rough on Mike in Boston, and I wonder why he didn’t inform his paper that the fact that he wrote a “column” gave him leave to test the gullibility of his readers every day. Continue reading →