Character

The Corruption Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“Maybe, just maybe, the legislative and judicial systems have been corrupted, by, dare I say it, corporations?”

—Ethics Alarms commenter and OWS warrior Jeff Field, in his comment regarding the weekend post, The Marianne Gingrich Ethics Train Wreck

I don’t know how Jeff reaches the conclusion that the judicial system has been corrupted by corporations. Judges, unlike legislators, do not grow rich as a result of their inside knowledge and corporate connections. Judges, unlike revolving-door Congressional staffers and lawyers, do not generally come from corporate backgrounds. The fact that a judicial decision benefits the interests of some corporations, and many do not, does not mean that the decision was not just or was influenced by more than persuasive legal arguments. Those who believe that begin with the biased and untenable position that any decision that benefits a corporation must be, by definition, wrong.

So let me put that dubious assertion aside as the result of excessive reformer’s zeal and crusader’s license, and deal with the general proposition that corporations corrupt the legislative system, and society generally. Well, sure they do, but the statement is misleading, and, I would argue, meaningless because it places disproportional importance on the corrupting influence of this one, admittedly important, societal force.

Yes, corporations can be corrupting influences. So can government, and the lure of public office. The news media is a corrupting influence on the legislature, and upon society generally. Religion corrupts; as does popular culture, with its celebration of empty celebrity, glamor and wealth. Non-profits and charities are corrupted by their tunnel vision of specific worthy objectives to the neglect of others; the civil rights movement corrupts, as does feminism and all other advocacy efforts, which often, if not usually, succumb to an “ends justify the means” ethic, which is unethical. Indeed, freedom corrupts, as does dependence. Cynicism corrupts, and corrupts with a vengeance. Ignorance corrupts; so does the belief, however well-supported, that one knows it all. Ideological certitude and inflexibility corrupts.

Education, and the cost of it, corrupts. Sports, both professional and collegiate, corrupt people, students, and institutions. Science corrupts; technology corrupts. Heaven knows, the internet corrupts. Leisure and success; triumph and defeat; wealth and poverty, love and hate, desperation, patriotism; kindness, loyalty, sex, lust; intellectual superiority, beauty, physical prowess, passion. Talent corrupts. Kindness and sympathy too.

Self-righteousness. Fear. Worry. Envy. Stupidity. Zealotry.

And, as we all know, power and the love of money.

All of these and more corrupt human beings and the institutions, organizations and governments that they make up. If individuals are corruptible, something will corrupt them, as sure as the sun rises and the quinces ripen. To focus upon any one of the limitless and abundant sources of corruption and to say, “This, above all, is the cause of our problems” is naive and unfair. By all means, we must seek ways to limit the opportunities for corruption and the damage it can do, but we must also recognize that the ability to corrupt does not mean that something or someone does not or cannot contribute much good to society as well. Heroes can corrupt, as we saw in the tragedy of Joe Paterno, but we need heroes. Leaders can corrupt, and often do, but we still need leaders.

Ultimately,  the best way to stop people and things from corrupting us is to understand what corruption is and how easy it is to be corrupted. Our inoculation is ethics, understanding right and wrong and how to recognize both, and learning to recognize when we are biased, conflicted, or being guided by non-ethical or unethical motivations. Shifting the blame for corruption away from ourselves is comforting, but intimately counter-productive. We have the power to resist corruption, just as it is within out power to select public servants who are not likely to be corrupted. It is our responsibility to do so.

 

Better Late Than Never Dept.: Rep. Giffords Finally Does The Right Thing

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

That's the Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona in the center.

Ethics Alarms first stated that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was seriously disabled and needed to resign from the house on January 17, 2011. I wrote:

“Almost no medical experts foresee a woman with such massive head injuries being able to return to work within a year, if she can return at all. She only has a two-year term. Is it fair to the people of Arizona, not to mention the country, to have a member of Congress who is unable to work during the days ahead, which are critical to the nation on so many fronts?”

Although the answer to this question was obvious at the time, Rep. Giffords did not resign. I returned to the topic in March, June, September and November, but not only did the Giffords camp and Democrats continue to ignore the issue, the media largely did as well. Never mind that during a contentious and important year of critical legislative issues, one Congressional District in Arizona was essentially unrepresented.

Today, finally, Rep. Giffords announced that she had resigned, more than a year after being shot in the head. Her friend, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, told the press that her friend’s recovery was likely to take years, not months. WOW! That’s a bulletin! Who had any idea that the Congresswoman was that seriously injured? Continue reading →

Post-South Carolina Confession

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Sunday morning, I am duty bound to play roulette with the talking head shows on the networks, watch “Reliable Sources,” Howard Kurtz’s weekly journalism ethics critique on CNN, and scour the Washington Post, all in search of contentious or interesting ethics topics.

But rather than listen to endless rehashes of the South Carolina Republican primary, endure Newt Gingrich’s gloating, and again hear so-called experts repetitively apply their imaginary expertise to musings about what will happen in the next primary, Florida—-last week’s consensus: Romney had South Carolina wrapped up– I am watching “MVP: Most Valuable Primate” on Encore Family. It’s about a hockey-playing chimp (named Jack, appropriately enough).

It’s not bad.

Screw it. A man can only take so much.

The Marianne Gingrich Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Ugh. What a mess.

The ethics miscreants:

Marianne Gingrich: Seething with hate for Newt, she decided to try to metaphorically stick a shiv in his back by airing dirty laundry from their marriage right before the South Carolina primary, a do-or-die for him. Her interview with ABC was unfair and an act of pure revenge. You couldn’t call it whistle-blowing, since anyone who doesn’t already know what a likely sociopath Gingrich is has been watching too many re-runs of “NCIS.” Gingrich’s character, or lack of it, was established and in the books by 1998. Marianne should have not had to say a word, but everything she did say, she had said before, in an interview in 2010 in Esquire. Continue reading →

Lindsay Lohan Dethroned As “All-Time Most Outrageous Excuse” Champion!

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Linday Lohan, the former title-holder, and the new champion, Michael West

Back in 2007, I awarded Lindsay Lohan the championship for most brazen and manifestly ridiculous excuse ever. She had just been arrested for driving intoxicated and possession of cocaine, which had been found in the pocket of her jeans; Lindsay’s profession of innocence was that 1) she wasn’t driving her own car and 2) the pants belonged to somebody else. I noted at the time that she hadn’t yet claimed that the body she was in at the time wasn’t hers, but absent that, the “these aren’t my pants (TAMP)” excuse might well stand for all time.

In retrospect, that was rash. For one thing, many celebrities then as now already employed the Pazuzu Excuse, just a hair less ridiculous than TAMP, in which an offensive and career jeopardizing utterance is explained by the utterer as being inexplicable, that for some presumably supernatural reason—like being possessed by the demon who used Linda Blair as his ventriloquist dummy in “The Exorcist”—the individual has said something he or she not only didn’t believe, but never had even thought. The most recent purveyor of the Pazuzu Excuse noted here was Kobe Bryant; other infamous possessed have included Mel Gibson, Helen Thomas, and Michael Richards. That’s uncomfortably close to “it wasn’t my body.”  A few months ago, Newt Gingrich attributed his serial adultery and his habit of dumping his beloved wives when they got sick to his extreme patriotism; still short of TAMP, but getting close. Then, just this week, a strong contender nearly grabbed the title from Lindsay when  the chicken-hearted drunk who piloted the Costa Concordia cruise ship onto the rocks claimed left the capsizing vessel before his passengers because the he “fell into a life boat.” Uh-oh. Clearly, Lindsay’s title was teetering.

And quickly it fell. The Smoking Gun reports that in Wisconsin on Sunday, police responded to a domestic abuse call to find Mrs. Michael West bleeding from her face and saying that her husband Michael beat and tried to strangle her. Confronted by the officers, Mr. West explained that he was innocent.

A ghost did it.

Well, Lindsay’s one remaining accomplishment since “Mean Girls” is history. The new champion for “All-Time Most Outrageous Excuse” is Michael West.

This time, I’m not making any predictions. It’s crazy out there.

________________________________

Epilogue: As I re-read my Ethics Scoreboard post from 2007 about Lindsay Lohan’s ridiculous episode, I found myself becoming depressed. In 2007 she was just 21 years old and looked it; she had a career, she was obviously talented, and despite the arrest, had plenty of time to turn things around and get what had once looked like a charmed life back on track. She never did. In the intervening years leading up to 2012, she has had multiple stays in rehab and two stints in jail. She had to stand trial for grand theft, and is still on probation. This month she is featured posing nude in Playboy, usually the last ditch recovery vehicle for fading actresses who are too unstable or unpopular to get on “Dancing With the Stars,”  have too much pride to sign on to “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, and are not fat enough for “Celebrity Boot Camp.”  As she sheds her dignity in Hugh Hefner’s anachronistic soft-porn glossy, looking far older than her years, Lohan’s over-shadowed cast-mates from “Mean Girls,” Amanda Seyfried, Rachel McAdam and Tina Fey, have all become respected, bankable and still rising stars.  Her supposed teen rival from years ago, Hillary Duff, has a singing and acting career, a husband and a baby on the way. Lohan is still only 26; many people have sunk far lower than she has with fewer assets to draw on and pulled their lives out of  tailspins to be happy, successful, and productive. I hope she can too. Right now, however, her life is a cautionary tale about how a badly-parented young woman who was never taught responsibility, accountability, respect for authority or self-control can find life unmanageable despite possessing all the gifts that American society foolishly admires more—youth, beauty, riches, talent and fame.

And it makes me sad.

Dear Banks: This Is Why Nobody Trusts You

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

I know I’ve been hard on the Occupy movement, but I don’t want to let the protesters think that I’m pals with all of their targets. Take the banks, for example.

The “waiting for the check to clear” scam engaged in by banks has always been annoying, but I now realize, thanks to bitter personal experience, that we have been fools to tolerate it. Once upon a time, before electronic transfers and computers, it really did take a check at least “five business days” to go from one bank to another, but the banks have held on to the fiction that nothing has changed, presumably to give them free use of our money while we patiently wait for the completion of transactions that have already been completed. Running a small business with perpetual cash-flow problems, the Marshalls constantly hectored our bank (then Wachovia, which bought it from American Security Trust, and there may have been another one in there somewhere) about speeding up the process, and in fact they did: our checks from clients often had money available to us within a day or two. That’s right—the bank let us use our own money while telling less long-standing, savvy, or persistent customers that the checks they deposited were taking almost a week to clear. Continue reading →

Republican Nomination Ethics Points, 1/18/2012

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I’m sitting here watching the GOP Final Four debate. Here are some brief ethics observation on a lively day in the race:

  • At the opening gun, Newt Gingrich gave a bravura performance of indignation personified when moderator John King asked him about the looming ABC interview of his ex-wife, Marianne, in which she impugns Newt’s character and claims that he asked her to agree to an “open marriage.” He told King it was a despicable question and said that the issue was not worthy of mention. Good act, but of course the question of character is relevant, and of course Gingrich, who has none, wouldn’t think so. Continue reading →

The Great American Hindsight Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Mark Wahlberg, awash in delusions of competence

Actor Mark Wahlberg has already apologized, but it’s too late: he has ascended into the Valhalla of Ethics Alarms icons, and henceforth those who repeat his offense will be referred to here, and undoubtedly elsewhere, as having “done a Wahlberg” or perhaps, for simplicity’s sake, “wahlberged.”

The act of proclaiming, after a disaster or misfortune, how an individual involved could have prevented the situation has always been infuriating. My father’s favorite term for the practice was “Monday morning quarterbacking,” and he despised it. Psychologists identify the roots of the phenomenon as hindsight bias, but it’s more pernicious than that. What Mark Wahlberg did, however, is worse still: not only second-guessing those involved, but announcing that he personally would have saved the day if he had been there. Mix Monday morning quarterbacking and hindsight bias, blend in a distorted belief in one’s own ability to handle difficult situations that caused others to fail, add the eagerness to blame someone and make them feel as guilty and incompetent as possible, and add dashes of arrogance, lack of empathy and unfairness, and you have it: a perfect Wahlberg soufflé! Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Greta Van Susteren

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Newt: ” Honey, I’m divorcing you to marry the woman I’ve been cheating on you with for the last 6 years.” Marianne: “Fine. Just wait til you run for President. I’ll be ready.”

Newt Gingrich’s second (of three) wife, Marianne Gingrich, has said in the past that she had it within her power to  end her ex-husband’s career with a single interview. This is not as remarkable as it sounds; just consider how many political spouses past and present have or had that power regarding their own power partners. Let’s see: Eleanor Roosevelt…Jackie Kennedy…Coretta Scott King…Lady Bird Johnson….Pat Nixon…Hillery Clinton, of course…Bill Clinton…Laura Bush…Tipper Gore. That’s just for starters. I have no doubt that Marianne Gingrich might be able to tell tales that would make any of these women feel fortunate by comparison, but on the other hand, what could she say that would be a surprise? Anyone who doesn’t know by now that Newt is about as miserable an excuse for a human being as one can be and avoid being shot or imprisoned hasn’t been paying attention.

This is the problem, however. People don’t pay attention, and have the memories of Eric Holder under Congressional questioning about Fast and Furious. After Gingrich’s deft response to Juan Williams’ accusatory race-baiting question at the last South Carolina debate sparked a standing ovation, you would have thought that he was the new star on the scene to hear callers on conservative talk-radio rave.* Yes, yes, Gingrich is smart and articulate. So were Richard Nixon, Tom DeLay, Huey Long and Joe McCarthy. So were Professor Moriarty and Goldfinger. We know Newt is smart; we also should know other things about him by now, like the fact that he’s an untrustworthy narcissist and a cur.

Apparently Marianne Gingrich has decided to do America a favor and to remind amnesiac Republicans once and for all who they were cheering this week. She has taped a two-hour spill-the-dirt interview with ABC News. The Gingrich camp is in a panic, and supposedly there is an ethics debate at ABC about whether the interview should air before the critical South Carolina primary, possibly Newt’s last chance to stop the Mitt Romney juggernaut, or after. Fox host and legal analyst Greta Van Susteren comes down on the side of holding the interview in the can until Monday. On her blog, she writes: Continue reading →

Phony Smile Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

From David Foster Wallace’s hilarious essay in Harper’s about a luxury cruise that did not (exactly) end in disaster:

“This is related to the phenomenon of the Professional Smile, a pandemic in the service industry, and no place in my experience have I been on the receiving end of as many Professional Smiles as I was on the Nadir: maItre d’s, chief stewards, hotel managers’ minions, cruise director-their P.S.’s all come on like switches at my approach. But also back on land: at banks, restaurants, airline ticket counters, and on and on. You know this smile-the one that doesn’t quite reach the smiler’s eyes and signifies nothing more than a calculated attempt to advance the smiler’s own interests by pretending to like the smilee. Why do employers and supervisors force professional service people to broadcast the Professional Smile? Am I the only person who’s sure that the growing number of cases in which normal-looking people open up with automatic weapons in shopping malls and insurance offices and medical complexes is somehow causally related to the fact that these venues are well-known dissemination-loci of the Professional Smile?“

I too hate the Professional Smile, which is, at its core, a lie. It is a mask, a fake-friendly message that may of may not have any truth behind it, and that at its worst has the frightening menace of  Sen. John McCain or Nancy Pelosi, both of whom specialize in the obviously false grin that has seething anger behind it, the smile that says, “I’m going to put you at ease and then, if you give me a chance, slit your god damned throat.” Continue reading →