Character

Ethics Quote Of The Month (Alleged): Damar Hamlin

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“Did we win?”

Damar Hamlin, the Buffalo Bills safety who suffered a near-fatal heart attack during a Monday Night Football NFL game this week, after two days in intensive care and still breathing with the help of a ventilator, in a scribbled a note shortly after regaining consciousness.

Well, it’s a great story. In the spirit of the old newspaperman at the end of “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” [“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”], I’m going to assume it’s true, though I have grave doubts. For one thing, it’s hearsay; for another, the account comes through the NFL publicity staff, and the NFL’s any-staff has no ethics credibility at all. But the quote is possibly true, and it certainly conveys an ethical lesson: Put your “team,” whatever it may be, above your own concerns; care about whether your misfortune in pursuit of a shared goal interfered with that goal rather than focusing only on your own welfare. There really have been documented instances where an athlete did give the equivalent quote following a serious injury. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Fake Status Devices

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The AcryPhone, created by eKod Works, is literally a piece of acrylic shaped to look like a smartphone. It has no screen, speakers, nor even an LED. What’s it for? Supposedly the fake is for cellphone addicts to wean themselves off addiction to their smartphones. Do you believe that? I don’t. I think that explanation is like the ad copy for those suspiciously shaped battery-powered “massagers” for women that have photos showing a model using it on her neck.

The Acryphone is a prop for insecure people who can’t afford a smartphone or the costs of its service, but who want to look like they can. One reason I am quite certain of this is another product from the same country (Japan) that you see on the right: Stone Watch, a fake smart watch that doesn’t even tell time. The Stone Watches are just glossy, black pieced of plastic with a silicone band so the wearer will look like he or she is using the current fad gadget.

You have a double Ethics Quiz of the Day, and the two questions are,

Is it ethical to pretend to use one of these props in public?

and

Is it ethical to manufacture and sell them?

My tentative answer: they are both visual lies, like a phony Tale diploma hanging on an office wall. Making and selling products that have no legitimate use other than to deceive is itself unethical.

But I am open to being convinced otherwise.

David Brooks, A Trump Derangement And “Bias Makes You Stupid” Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks should have that famous epitaph tattooed on his forehead.

He was once an independent, erudite, interesting essayist of conservative leanings. Then he accepted big bucks to be the New York Times’ token conservative pundit. Soon, after forced contact with Charles Blow, Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman, the Times version on the Stockholm Syndrome took over shortly before the election of Donald Trump, whom, to be fair, the tweedy and classist Brooks surely would have regarded as icky even before his re-education by the Times. Today’s model of David Brooks is incapable of objective analysis, He serves a neon-bright cautionary tale of what happens when bias eats away at one’s analytical abilities and credibility.

Take his latest column…please.

It is called “The Sad Tales of George Santos,” but it quickly devolves into one more gratuitous attack on Donald Trump. What it most reveals, however, is how far David Brooks has fallen.

Halfway through this mess, Brooks writes, after stating the obvious about Rep.-elect George Santos,

Continue reading →

Representative-Elect Santos Update: George Just Overtook The Field For The 2022 “Most Incompetent Elected Official Of The Year.” Wow.

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Rep. George Santos (R-NY) really accomplished something here. At virtually the last moment, he came from nowhere tho snatch the coveted Ethics Alarms Award for 2022’s Most Incompetent Elected Official from an amazingly credentialed group of hacks, liars and fools. There are Joe and Kamala, of course, each with multiple nominations here. All the big city mayors who have fiddled while wokism allowed crime to fester and spread. EA nominees for the honor: Brevard County (Florida) Sheriff Wayne Ivey, Oregon Governor Kate Brown, GOP Reps. Scott Perry and Mario Diaz-Belart, Rep. Swalwell, of course, Senator Dick Durbin (as usual), Virginia Delegate Elizabeth Guzman, Rep. Louise Frankel, the ridiculous Rep. Matt Gaetz, twirking Rhode Island. State Senator Tiara Mack, Rep. Mary Miller, Mass. State Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa (who was horrified that the courts would stop unconstitutional uses of federal power), Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Virginia House Of Delegates Member Wren Williams.

But emulating the “Immaculate Reception” that made Franco Harris an NFL legend, the 1968 Harcad -Yale game 29-29 tie (when Harvard scored two touchdowns with less than a minute left) and Bobby Thompson’s home run (“The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!), Santos did the imposiible and made every one of his competitors look like Teddy Roosevelt. I posted last week about the emerging (and inexcusably late) discovery that many of the claims he made while running for office this year appeared to be false, concluding that he should resign his freshly won seat in Congress. Then Santos’ statements confirming the scandal, made after three days of thought, or the best he could do to approach thought, proved beyond challenge that he is even more of an ethics-free disgrace and menace to the public welfare than I initially thought.

“I am not a criminal,” Santos said during his interview with the New York Post, thus embracing Marion Barry’s infamous, “It it isn’t illegal, it’s not unethical” rationalization. “My sins here are embellishing my resumé,” he added, in a masterpiece of understatement. Since voters elect representatives based on their qualifications, “embellish” gives Santos too much credit. He HAD no credentials to embellish. He never graduated from college. He didn’t work at the prestigious Wall Street firms he claimed he had.

Continue reading →

“Keeping It Real” When “Real” Means “Selfish, Unprofessional Jerk”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I tried to find a straight video of  KWWL-TV’s Mark Woodley, its sports reporter, modeling unethical workplace conduct and a complete lack of professionalism in his emergency stint this week as a weather reporter. I couldn’t: every available clip compilation is presented like the CNN version above. Isn’t this cute and hilarious?

It isn’t either.  I can see that CNN’s talking heads might thinks so, since that network allows unprofessional conduct by the ‘talent” regularly, like Don Lemon getting bombed on the New Year Eve. Unless Woodley was told to be whiny prima donna as a publicity stunt and he might have been, given the state of journalism, broadcast and otherwise, in 2022, his attitude and ostentatious bitching should have guaranteed a suspension or worse.

When one is called upon by one’s employer or leader to fill in, do extra duties, help get through a crisis or emergency, or to be a team player and do what the team needs to have done, the  ethical and professional response is to do the best possible job you can with good cheer and without complaint. Woodley, who did the opposite, helped metastasize “quiet quitting” and many other forms of workplace societal rot.

This is how society becomes miserable in a Nation of Assholes. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Colorado Avalanche Defenseman Cale Makar

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I bet this doesn’t become a trend.

During the Colorado Avalanche–New York Islanders game last night in the first period, Avalanche star defenseman Cale Makar had the puck behind his team’s net while being pursued by Islanders forward Mathew Barzal. Makar fell, and looked like that Barzal tripped Makar, so a penalty was called, which would give Colorado a one-player  advantage. But when the referee blew his whistle, Makar  waved at him to indicate it wasn’t a penalty after all.  After briefly conferring the referees retracted the penalty.

This literally never happens in hockey, nor basketball, nor pro football, not Major League Baseball. A player telling a referee or umpire that a call benefiting his team was wrong? That’s not how the professional sports roll. The assumption is that eventually the bad calls even out. If you don’t accept gifts, your team will suffer in the long run.

Barzal’s reaction:  “I honestly didn’t even know he waved it off until I saw it after. I thought the ref just made the call but, yeah, good sportsmanship on his part, not taking that. I don’t know if I would have done the same, to be honest with you.” Continue reading →

Nah, The Democrats Would Never Cheat To Hold On To Power! Whatever Would Make Anyone Think That?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I saw the photoshopped Joe Biden photo that “allegedly” had been sent out by “Team Biden” last night, and decided that I couldn’t rely on the conservative source, since I would not put it past “Team GOP” to photoshop a picture and then claim Democrats were responsible. This is what we’ve come to—we literally cannot trust any source, any account, any claim, and neither Right nor Left nor their media mouthpieces are sufficiently trustworthy, fair, honest or decent that you, I or anyone can be sure of the facts about virtually anything.

(Fuck.)

However, I traced down the source of the fake. Here’s the whole photo, in a tweet from Democratic strategist and former party chair Chris Jackson….

Continue reading →

Unethical Tweet(s) Of The Month And Ethics Dunce, Res Ipsa Loquitur Division: Jessica Valenti

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

What more needs to be said about a) a woman who would tweet this ethically-deranged nonsense, and b) a society in which substantial numbers of people think she’s worth paying attention to? Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Neil Diamond

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Singer-songwriter Neil Diamond has the reputation of being a really nice, down-to-earth guy, and there have been many episodes in his career demonstrating that. He’s over 80 now, and years ago announced that his singing days were over because, like fellow retired singer Linda Ronstadt, he is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, which makes controlling one’s vocal chords difficult. Nonetheless, when he has been feeling well and the occasion is right, Diamond has warbled, a bit wobbly, despite his malady, as when he sang briefly at the Keep Memory Alive Power of Love Gala at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, where he was being honored, and last summer at Fenway Park, where “Sweet Caroline” is played during every Red Sox game as a crowd sing-along, when he made a surprise appearance and joined the crowd.

Over the weekend, the new Broadway jukebox musical “A Beautiful Noise” opened on Broadway. Diamond was guest of honor naturally, and, as you can see in the video, got up in his box and sang “Sweet Caroline” as the audience went nuts. Sure, Diamond was assured of a positive response no matter how he sounded. but he is in a distinct minority among famous performers, most of whom are sufficiently vain (or perfectionists) to refuse to perform, or in some cases, even appear in public, once their talents have decayed to a point they deem unacceptable. The rare ones like Diamond, however, are willing to be a shadow of their former selves to give an audience a thrill they will never forget.

And that’s what he did—a gift, to them, to Broadway, even to me.

Bravo.

NOOOOOO! “The Ethicist” Just Endorsed The Golden Rationalization As Justification For Deception.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It isn’t quite head-exploding, because the New York Times “The Ethicist” column has seen its columnist—there have been five of them, I think—promote unethical conduct all too frequently over the years. But the current ethics advice maven, Kwame Anthony Appiah, is a real ethicist, unlike the others, and I expect better of him. Because of his credentials and assumed authority, his unethical advice this week is particularly damaging. And to clarify my statement I quote one of many memorable exchanges during the testimony of Miss Mona Lisa Vitto (Marissa Tomei) in the climax of “My Cousin Vinny”:

D.A. Jim Trotter (Lane Smith): Objection, Your Honor! Can we clarify to the court whether the witness is stating opinion or fact?

Judge Chamberlain Haller (Fred Gwynne) : [to Lisa] This is your opinion?

Mona Lisa Vito: It’s a fact.

The inquirer asked whether it was unethical for him to list a fake publisher on the title page of his self-published book that he created on Amazon, apparently a common practice that Amazon permits. He also asked whether it would be unethical to tell a bookstore owner who agreed to sell the book on consignment that the book was published by his made-up book company.

“The Ethicst” answers the first query this way:

Continue reading →