Character

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 →

Ethics Dunce: Fashion Model Melissa Stetten

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Hideous.

We have covered this territory before: the unethical conduct of the cruel and arrogant conversant or correspondent who publicizes private communication over the internet in order to embarrass someone whose only offense was social awkwardness or a moment of bad judgment, and whose biggest mistake was trusting a heartless jerk.  It is the Golden Rule breach of breaches, and is social misconduct that shows a serious deficit in kindness, fairness and decency.

Model Melissa Stetten, however, takes the cake, except that models aren’t allowed to have cake. Flying in First Class  from New York to Los Angeles, Stetten found herself next to actor Brian Presley, who was apparently rendered weak-kneed and stupid in the proximity of such beauty, plus he was a little drunk. His flirtatious chit-chat was both awkward and  pompous, so Stetten, who, like most models, undoubtedly has the conversational skills of Dorothy Parker, decided to  live-tweet their conversation to her 30,000 followers.

Brian Presley, naturally, was humilated. His wife was probably furious with him. His fans now know him as a dork who trots out the lamest pick-up lines ever devised. He also, apparently, was in the midst of an alcoholic relapse, so naturally Stetten mocked him for that too in her tweets. (Her entire performance is available on the web; I’m not going to circulate it. Unlike the New York Timse, jI don’t believe that just because I have access to information  I should magnify the harm it can do by helping to circulate it.) Continue reading →

The Importance of American Culture

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Pericles delivering his famous funeral oration

By necessity, Ethics Alarms often ventures into the realm of culture, because ethics defines a culture as surely as culture determines ethical standards. This, unfortunately, make politics unavoidable as well, because politics are the means by which laws, primary tools of culture as well as the products of it, get made.

In The New Criterion, Roger Kimball has written a thoughtful essay about the current stakes in America as our culture evolves. He discusses politics and Pericles, and makes his own orientation (classic conservative) clear, and proudly clear at that. It is also an essay with great relevance to ethics. I recommend it highly. Here are some excerpts. The link to the whole article is at the end. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Ronan High School Principal Tom Stack

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is a dream Gerald Molen had about Tom Stack. Stack is the one on the toilet.

Gerald Molen is a major Hollywood producer, and one of the best; among his accomplishments are “Rain Man,” “Schindler’s List,” “Jurassic Park,” and “Twister.” He was invited to deliver a speech to graduating seniors at Ronan High School in Ronan, Montana, and out of the graciousness of his heart,  agreed. Molen prepared a speech evoking the heroism of Oskar Schindler, and planned to ask the students to “imagine your future is a movie. Forty years from now, you’re writing a script about your accomplishments. What would that script look like?”

When Molen arrived to give his speech ( the high school is a 90 minute drive from his Montana home) the school  principal, Tom Stack, informed him that he had  decided to disinvite Moler. Apparently some parents had complained that Moler was a “right winger,” and objected to him speaking to the seniors. Stack didn’t care what the actual speech was about; mustn’t upset those progressive parents! Molen wasn’t welcome because of his political beliefs, and not even any specific belief. He was just one of those cruel and mean conservatives—you know, the ones Nancy Pelosi, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell are always condemning—and his contagion couldn’t be allowed to spread. Molen, understandably insulted,  told the story to the Hollywood reporter.  Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Wellesley High School Teacher David McCullough

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them.  And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.  The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special. Because everyone is.”

———-Wellesley High School Teacher David McCullough, in his commencement speech to graduating seniors. McCullough annoyed some parents by basing his speech on the fact that students today are encouraged to believe that they are more “special” than they are, leading to selfishness, narcissism and delusion.

Yes, the parents apparently wanted something more conventionally inspirational, like a speech telling their children how special they are.

The speech, in text and in video, has gone viral on the web; obviously it struck a chord that needed to be struck. I wasn’t going to post about it, I must confess; I think it McCullough’s speech is being over-praised. It is disorganized. It includes false information (50% of all marriages do not end in divorce, but that fake, unsubstantiated statistic  is harder to kill than the Hydra), and I don’t think teachers should be disseminating bad facts. It contradicts itself: “Don’t bother with work you don’t believe in” is dangerous and confounding advice for narcissists who one is trying to convince to think of the needs of others. And throbs with the smug contrariness of someone who set out to be controversial. Continue reading →

Unappreciated Ethics Hero: Facebook? Oh, Yes!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Unlike more primitive methods of mind control, Facebook is painless!

I think perhaps we have not been giving Facebook its due, and now, as the social networking monster is still reeling from its botched IPO, is a good time to right that wrong. We’ve been looking so hard at Facebook’s privacy settings, dadta collection, layouts and pointless games that we’ve missed the most important feature of it—magic. Like Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, but  a really, really big one, Facebook magically persuades people to not only tell the truth about the rotten things they are doing (like going dancing or golfing after persuading an employer to pay them disability because they are permanently unable to work), will do (like planning, in advance of the hearing the evidence, to vote guilty on a jury) or did (we’re getting to that), but to tell it to millions of people, potentially, so that they get punished.  Facebook’s power to compel confessions causes users to post videos or photographs of themselves in the process of doing incriminating things, so they can be then used as evidence in court. You have to admit, this is a wonderful thing. I don’t know how Mark Zuckerberg and his pals figured out how to do it, or what book of spells they stumbled across at Harvard, but they have performed a boon for humanity, and we ought to stop giving them grief.

Take the case of Michael Ruse, a charming Brit standing trial, accused of helping a friend beat up his father using a baseball bat. Micheal’s trial was going well for him, until Facebook took over his mind, such as it is, and flooded it with virtue. Suddenly, he was sending out a the message to his friends—and everyone else, for it was a public message—that he thought he would “get away with it.” An anonymous observer of the post—it could have been Wonder Woman, come to think of it, or at least Linda Carter— printed it his incriminating words and brought them to the court’s attention.

Under the advice of his barrister, Ruse changed his plea to guilty. The judge was not impressed, telling Ruse, “You pleaded guilty part way through the trial only really because you were stupid enough to put on Facebook what amounted to a full confession.” Well, yes, but as usual, he’s not giving Facebook credit for its uncanny ability to compel the truth. (Ruse’s lawyer replied to the judge, “He needs help with regards to thinking skills.” Perhaps. )

Ruse was  sentenced to 46 weeks in jail, another example of justice through Facebook magic. But apparently Zuckerberg’s magic lasso isn’t finished with him yet, for after sentencing Ruse got back on his Facebook account and insulted the judge.

Thank you, Facebook!

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Pointer: Fark

Facts: Gawker

Graphic: Mind Control Blog

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.

More Respect For The President, Please.

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Now if Redd Foxx were President, that would be different…

I thought the lack of respect his political opponents showed to Bill Clinton was shocking, and dangerous. I thought the escalation in this respect deficit Democrats displayed in their treatment of President Bush was worse. And I think the disrespect shown to President Obama by Republicans and partisan media critics is worse yet. In all three cases, the unjustified lack of respect resulted and is resulting in absurd distortions and accusations. A case in point:

The conservative blogosphere is convincing itself that President Obama made….a blowjob joke. Here is the “smoking gun”, from a fundraising event hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, attended by many gays:

“I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in pushups — (laughter) — but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down. (Laughter.) That’s what I heard. I just want to set the record straight — Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well. (Laughter.) So she shouldn’t feel bad. She’s an extraordinary talent and she’s just a dear, dear friend — Ellen DeGeneres. Give Ellen a big round of applause…”

The usually rational Ann Althouse polls her readers on the question of whether Obama was being intentionally suggestive, and an amazing 42% voted that he was.

Obama was not making a blowjob joke. Presidents do not make blowjob jokes in public, no matter what the audience is. Cultured men with manners and common sense do not make blowjob jokes in public, and President Obama is certainly that. I cannot think of any President who would be so careless as to utter a crude joke of that sort before an audience. LBJ comes the closest…maybe Lincoln? But never. Never. It would be disrespectful of the office, and a major, pointless political gaffe.

People are willing, indeed eager, to believe such things of President Obama because they refuse to accord him the basic respect any occupant of the Oval Office deserves, and needs. They need to get a grip. This isn’t healthy for the nation, and Obama’s critics look like fools when they show such abysmal regard for the country’s elected leader, and dirty-minded fools at that.

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Source: Ann Althouse

Graphic: Biography

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.