Character

When Your Genius Is A Dunce: The Depressing Self-Outing of Rays’ Manager Joe Madden

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I trusted you, Joe. You broke my heart..

Organizations and institutions tell us a lot about themselves by the individuals they hold up as exemplary. To cite an example much on my mind these days, the conservative blogosphere’s canonization of the late Andrew Breitbart, master of the intentional half-truth, makes me dubious about its reliability and integrity. On  the other side of the spectrum, the fact that so many Democrats, and especially Democratic women, worship Bill Clinton reflects horribly on their values and tolerance for hypocrisy. Now, in the wake of Roger Clemens’ well-deserved acquittal for denying under oath acts that he almost certainly did, we have strong confirmation that a prominent individual Major League Baseball holds up as exemplifying, in the immortal and irritatingly pretentious words of “Terence Mann” about that corn field in Iowa, “all that once was good and it could be again”* is in truth an Ethics Dunce, and a big one at that. His name is Joe Madden, the American League’s 2011 Manager of the Year, and I am disappointed and depressed. (Yes, I have named Joe an Ethics Hero in the past.) Continue reading →

Comment of the Day on “Young, Gullible, Lazy, Unimaginative and Unbelievable: I Wonder Why This Lawyer Has Trouble Finding A Job?”

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments

Back in October of 2011, I wrote a post in reaction to the sign reproduced left, held by an Occupy Wall Street protester who either was an unemployed law graduate or who plays one on TV.   Many are the ethical matters and controversies that have spilled on these pages since, and copious is the water that has flowed under the bridge, but because not very many people, comparatively speaking, read ethics websites in general and this one in particular, it took the better part of a year for that post to reach the laptop of  disgruntled law grad with access to a website for disgruntled law grads. Thus suddenly my name has been taken in vain in several fora where underemployed, student loan-burdened JDs hang out. Some, gratefully, have been kind enough to alert me with comments to Ethics Alarms, expressing their unhappiness with my insensitivity. This, the Comment of the Day, is such a post, by lawyer (presumably) Bobby Wilberger.

I must say at the outset that Bobby is lucky to have this posted, and I must say that because I don’t want another lawyer citing it as precedent. Bobby, who by definition if his post is to be taken seriously, had legal training, apparently didn’t absorb the part about following rules, being honest and truthful and reading documents relating to your work carefully. The posting requirements for Comments, clearly indicated at the top of this page, require a valid e-mail address. Bobby did not supply me with such an address, instead giving me a fake address with the clever suffix of “fake.com”.  This would pretty much ding Bobby if I were hiring, and is consistent with my over-all thesis that if you are an un- or underemployed law grad the first thing you need to do to get to the bottom of your problems is to look in the mirror.

I’ll have more to say after Bobby’s post. Here it is, the Comment of the Day, on Young, Gullible, Lazy, Unimaginative and Unbelievable: I Wonder Why This Lawyer Has Trouble Finding A Job?: Continue reading →

Roger Clemens Was Acquitted, Not “Vindicated”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The first ethics breach is the utter incompetence of reporters who nonetheless are permitted to go on the air and mislead the public. A jury acquitted baseball great Roger Clemens  of 6 counts of perjury today, and I have just screamed in my car, frightening Rugby (my Jack Russell Terrier), after hearing three reporters on three radio stations say that Clemens was “vindicated.”

Incompetents. Ignoramuses. Continue reading →

Memo To Ray Dolin: Being Dishonest, Irresponsible and Stupid Is No Way To Promote Kindness, You Boob.

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

A simple Ethics Dunce just doesn’t do Ray Dolin justice.

Yes, I guess you’re kind, Ray—kind of an idiot.

You may have read the initial story. Ray was hiking across America to promote a personal memoir called “Kindness in America,” when, Ray told police,  he was the victim of a drive-by shooting in Montana, leaving him with a bleeding bullet wound in the upper arm. “How horrible and ironic!” the press exclaimed. “What a sad indication of the cruelty in the nation. Imagine–shot while promoting kindness!”

Except that it turns out that Ray shot himself. You see, his promotional hike wasn’t getting the attention he expected, so he thought a random and ironic attack would be just what was needed to give his book publicity a shot in the arm! Har!!!

(I’m sorry.)

The problem was that his description of his drive-by attacker resulted in an arrest of an innocent driver, and when police pressed Ray on the details of the shooting as he lay recuperating in his hospital room, he finally had to admit that the whole thing was a hoax. I suppose one can be kind and be a liar too, but eventually the unethical trait undermines the ethical one. For example, the woman who stopped to help Dolin after he shot himself was being kind, and he he thanked her by making her a pawn in his self-enriching deception. That’s not very kind.

On balance, I would say that Ray Dolin needs to bone up on some of the subtleties of ethics, including the virtue of kindness and the importance of honesty, before he’s qualified to write a book about it. I guess you could say that he jumped the gun. Har!

I’m sorry again.

But what a moron. 

______________________________________

Pointer: Drudge

Facts: Billings Gazette

Graphic: Daily Telegraph

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.

Ethics Dunce: Gina Chon

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“The question I continue to have is when will the conversation return to issues?  Because when they do, I know Brett will become the next ambassador to Iraq.”

Just JKF’s type. Also a Communist spy, but hey, nobody’s perfect!

Thus did loyal wife Gina Chon rationalize away Republican objections to the appointment of her husband, Brett McGurk, to be Ambassador to Iraq. Her point, apparently, is that the fact that he carried on an illicit and secret affair with a reporter—her—while on a previous State Department assignment to Iraq and exchanged e-mails “joking” (?) about exchanging intelligence for sex should be an issue in his conformation.

Let’s see, now. One of the gazillion women President Kennedy may have had an affair with while he was in the White House was Ellen Rometsch, an East German spy. (JFK consistently ranks #1 in polls of which Presidents Americans think were the best. Discuss) Imagine that this came to light, that somehow JFK avoided impeachment for it (he would not have), and avoided Oswald’s magic bullet in Dallas. How would Jackie have sounded, if she argued to the press that since Jack didn’t blab state secrets during his pillow talk, his indiscretion jeopardizing U.S. national security was a non-issue?

Like a loyal wife, like a loyal Democrat, and like an idiot.

Like Chon. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: The Producers of HBO’s “Game of Thrones”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush. In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.”

—– David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the producers of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” explaining how a replica of former President George W. Bush’s head came to be placed on a pike in one episode. HBO had previously apologized for the display as “in very bad taste.”

Stay classy, Hollywood.

I detest public lies that the liars know nobody in their right mind will believe, as they are insulting, dishonest (obviously) and degrade the culture by sending the message that lying is just a game., and being a liar is nothing to be ashamed of. I also detest fake forced apologies, in which  individuals have been ordered by some authority to issue mea culpas or else, and the result is  apologies so insincere that they border on parody.

This statement by the producers of “Game of Thrones,” then, is especially objectionable, because it meets both criteria. Continue reading →

Armstrong’s Unmasking: Better Late Than Never

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Don’t worry, Barry; Lance should be joining you soon.

Well, I guess I  have to hand it to Lance Armstrong, a bit like Ozzie Guillen when he praised Fidel Castro for surviving his dictatorship against all odds. The evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, that Armstrong is a  prohibited drug cheater ( like most successful cyclists) has been mounting for over a decade, and yet he has managed to hold on to much of his prestige and iconic status. Meanwhile, retired baseball slugger Barry Bonds has been reviled, condemned, prosecuted and vilified, by me among many others, for presumed illicit performing enhancing drug use in his sport that is backed by very similar kinds of evidence that  incriminate Armstrong. Yet while Bonds faces the humiliation of being rejected for election to baseball’s Hall of Fame next year when he becomes eligible, despite being the sport’s all-time career home run leader, Armstrong was preparing to race again to cheering throngs  in an upcoming iron man triathlon.

Then came the news, yesterday, that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has brought formal doping charges against him.  No one should underestimate Armstrong’s skill in wiggling off the hook, but this really should settle the issue of whether he is a hero or a manipulative charlatan. He is the latter. Whether he was a good but weak man trapped in a lie, or a sociopathic con man and cheat can be investigated by biographers and sportswriter, and psychologists. The harm that will be done when his false heroism is irrefutably exposed, however, will be the same no matter how Armstrong came about causing it.  His sport will be permanently tarnished beyond recovery. Scores of children and teens will be disillusioned, betrayed into a cynicism about role models and human nature that should only descend later in life. Worst of all,. his example will stand for some as proof that cheating pays. Armstrong, whatever happens to him, will be rich, like Barry Bonds, even if he is disgraced. He will, as my father liked to say, cry all the way to the bank. Continue reading →

Funny, Clever, Convenient, And Wrong: Housebites

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“Your dirty pans, sir…just as you ordered them!”

Normally I wouldn’t post about the practices of a U.K. company, since there are already too many U.S. stories involving ethics for me to keep up with. The innovation added to the world of deception by Housebites, however, has United States written all over it, and I predict it will travel across the pond in about a minute and a half.

The British company will not only cook and deliver a gourmet meal to order for your dinner party or romantic evening…it will deliver dirty pots and pans, to give your claims of hard labor in the kitchen that extra believability. From the company’s press release:

“Housebites.com, the takeaway service that delivers restaurant quality food has today announced a service called ‘pretend you cooked’ that allows customers to pretend they have slaved away at a hot stove more convincingly by delivering dirty pans alongside the food. Cooked by a professional chef and delivered to your door, Housebites main courses cost on average between £10 and £12, and now for an additional £5, customers can request the pans used to cook them for added authenticity. Collection of the pans is then arranged as easily as the original delivery slot.”

How nice. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Jeffrey Warren

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

You’ve probably heard or read the story by now.

Wait! Maybe he’s Cherokee!

17-year-old Jeffrey Warren rose to accept the $1,000 college scholarship awarded by the local Martin Luther King Senior Citizens Club during seniors night at Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, and provoked both laughter and awkward gasps. He was obviously white—as white as Elizabeth Warren—and the scholarship for intended for black students, though Warren didn’t know that when he applied.

Later, Warren decided to give back the money. His family said they didn’t want the African-American women who gave out the award to be foiled in their attempt to help young black scholars, and that it was the right thing to do. I would say that it was a right thing to do, and showed exemplary kindness, compassion, empathy, generosity, charity and altruism. Jeffrey had every right to accept the money. The Club’s requirements were vague, and did not make it clear that he was not eligible when he applied. If he and his parents had wanted to make a political and philosophical statement about the hypocrisy of a race-based scholarship in the name of Martin Luther King, this was an ideal opportunity, and an argument could be made that this would have been the “right” thing to do as well, if not “righter.” Continue reading →

Now THAT’S An Unethical Excuse!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

“My dog ate my brother.”

There is misconduct that suggests that an individual’s normal ethics alarms malfunctioned. There is misconduct that indicates that an individual has no ethics alarms. (An aside: I have just about concluded that model/vicious tweeter Melissa Stetten is in this category. She’s really proud of herself for humiliating a doofus actor who was trying to impress her, judging from her narcissistic website, and accepting accolades from fans who appear to be just as ethically warped as she is. This makes her a fick.) Finally there is misconduct so irresponsible and completely devoid of its impact on others that it is convincing proof that nothing exists between the individual’s ears at all—a conscience, common sense, gray matter.

This is a tale of that last variety of misconduct. Continue reading →