Citizenship

Keith Olbermann’s Alan Grayson Imitation

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As bad as it is for an elected official like Rep. Alan Grayson to say publicly that “Republicans want you to die,” at least his status as a politician (and Grayson’s record as a politician lacking rudimentary respect, fairness, and honesty) alerts most listeners that his statements cannot to be trusted. Such statements are more harmful and less tolerable when they come from media commentators, however, even shameless partisan blow-hards like Keith Olbermann.

Olbermann began his coverage of the fire department in Tennessee that allowed a man’s home to burn down by calling it “a preview of an America as envisioned by the Tea Party…just a preview of what would come in a kind of a la carte government.” Continue reading →

Fire Fighting in Obion County, Unethical Community of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

In Obion County, Tennessee, a man’s home burned to the ground as the local fire department refused to do anything about it. The homeowner, Gene Cranick, had refused to pay a County fee for fire control services from the neighboring city of South Fulton. It was understood that only homeowners paying the fee would be provided assistance by the fire department, but Cranick, the sly fox, decided to test the system. Not only did he start burning rubbish in his back yard, he let the fire spread to his home. Then, in a panic, he dialed 911 and offered to pay whatever it would take for the South Fulton firefighters to put out the flames…but was told it was too late.  They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning down. They did arrive to help put out the fire when it spread to Cranick’s neighbor’s home, but then he had paid the $75. Continue reading →

Rahm Emanuel, History and Hyperbole Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

There are times when obvious exaggeration is nothing worse than politeness, nothing more than an expression of admiration and affection. “You’re the best boss anyone ever had,” is in this category, especially when the boss is retiring or dying. But when one is speaking in public about controversial and historical matters involving well-known public figures, the margin between excusable hyperbole and unethical dishonesty or worse is much smaller. Al Gore learned this when he played loyal Vice-President on the day his President was impeached by vote of the House of Representatives. Gore’s statement that Bill Clinton was “a man I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest Presidents” was intended as supportive, but interpreted as a toadying endorsement of Clinton’s unsavory and dishonest conduct, impeachable or not. It probably cost Gore the Presidency.

Worse yet was Trent Lott’s clumsy effort to praise the ancient, infirm and mentally failing Sen. Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party. Lott said, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have all these problems over all these years, either.” Thurmond, running on the Dixiecrat ticket, had opposed segregation, and Lott’s comment, less fact than flattery, made him sound like he longed for the days of Jim Crow and “white only”rest rooms. The lessons of these hyperbolic gaffes are similar: if the well-intentioned compliment concerns a public figure in historical context, historical exaggerations either appear to be unjust to history or its important figures, seem to make inappropriate value judgments, or come off as a blatant effort to mislead the public.

Rahm Emanuel hit the Trifecta with his fawning farewell to President Obama, as he left the White House to run for Mayor of Chicago. Obama, he said, is “the toughest leader any country could ask for, in the toughest times any president has ever faced.”

Wow. Continue reading →

Yucks All Over:Sifting Through the Whitman/Allred/Diaz/Brown Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Is anyone doing or saying the right thing for the right reasons in the current controversy in California over Meg Whitman’s housekeeper? I think not. Let’s look at the main participants, and avert your eyes. It ain’t pretty:

Gloria Allred: Emerging out of nowhere to manufacture a campaign controversy that may sink conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s chance of beating liberal Democrat golden oldie Jerry Brown, feminist advocate Allred is exploiting a long-time illegal immigrant for political purposes (Allred’s support for Brown goes back decades), torpedoing the campaign of a woman trying to be the state’s first female governor. Continue reading →

The Facebook Founder’s Sinister and Unethical Hundred Million Dollar Gift

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

When is a hundred million dollar gift to help schools unethical?

It is unethical when it represents the power of money taking control of government. It is unethical when it induces politicians to breach their duty to obey the law. It is unethical when it demonstrates that the principles of democracy and law can be bought, sold, and distorted for a price.

In a shocking development last week that received very little thoughtful or critical coverage from the news media, Facebook mogul and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg gave the Newark schools $100 million in return for dictating how the schools are run. Zuckerberg, backed by Oprah Winfrey, another billionaire, who put the school governance sale on her TV show,  wants Newark Mayor Cory Booker to run them.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who also appeared on the strange Oprah segment, has agreed in principle to make Booker the overseer of his city’s infamously bad school system. As for the fact that a New Jersey statute doesn’t allow the governor to put the mayor of a city in charge of its schools once the state has taken over control of them, well, money, not the law, rules in New Jersey, and that appears to be just dandy according to the state’s governor, Zuckerberg, Oprah, Republicans, Newark parents, news editors and citizens.

Meanwhile, that whirring sound you hear is Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave. Continue reading →

Food Preparation and the Right to Have Unethical Views

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Ethicist Chris McDonald, who holds forth on his  Business Ethics Blog, has a provocative post on the right to know what you’re eating on another of his blogs, the Food Ethics Blog. I have no quarrel with the main point of his post, which I recommend that you read it here.

A related point in the article, however, not involving ingredients but food preparation, caused me to stop and ponder. Dr. McDonald writes…

“… imagine again that you’re a waiter or waitress. As you set a plate of food down in front of a customer, the customer asks: “Were any ‘minorities’ involved in the production of this food? Do you have any foreigners working in the kitchen?” Appalled, you stammer: “Excuse me?!” The customer continues, “I don’t like immigrants, and I don’t like the idea of them touching my food. I have the right to know what I’m eating!” Does this customer have the right to that information? Most of us, I think, would say no, of course not. She might see that information as really important — important to letting her live her life the way she wants to — but few of us would agree that anyone else is obligated to help her live out her racist values.”

I think the customer’s request for information regarding who is preparing one’s food is a valid one. Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: “The American Muslim’s” American and Canadian Muslims

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

On the website The American Muslim, a statement has been posted that condemns the threatening and violent acts by Muslim extremists. Signed by approximately 200 Muslims so far, many of them distingusihed leaders and intellectuals in the Muslim community, it is welcome, helpful, and courageous.

Entitled “A DEFENSE OF FREE SPEECH BY AMERICAN AND CANADIAN MUSLIMS,” it reads: Continue reading →

Three Strikes—Wait—Four? Five? on Christine O’Donnell

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

At some point, the Tea Party stalwarts are going to have to accept the fact that Christine O’Donnell is an untrustworthy, credential fabricating dud, much like Mark Kirk, the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Illinois who has been caught embellishing his resume with fantasy and exaggeration. Continue reading →

Despite Evidence, Obama’s D.O.J., Democrats and News Media Stonewall Black Panther Case

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The bizarre conduct of the Obama-Holder Department of Justice in refusing to to fully prosecute a 2008 instance of blatant voter intimidation at the polls by members of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia has been denied by D.O.J. (despite a video that proves the Voting Rights Act violation ), ignored or buried by most major news sources (despite Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander chiding his own paper for failing the public with inadequate coverage of the story) and attacked as manufactured by Republicans by partisan Obama defenders  (despite the fact that, well, it just isn’t.) It is both disturbing and depressing that this conduct persists, long after the event itself, months after one Justice Department Civil Rights attorney quit to expose the episode publicly, and while the non-partisan U.S. Commission Civil Rights holds hearings on the case.

At issue is racial bias in Attorney General Erik Holder’s Civil Rights Division, which the Obama Administration must not permit, tolerate or excuse, but appears to be anyway. Continue reading →

9-11 Conspiracy Claims: The Hate Crime We Cannot Stop, But Must Not Tolerate

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

The stated belief that the United States government murdered its own citizens and military personnel on September 11, 2001 is, if sincere, proof that an individual possesses intractable misconceptions, hatred and disrespect for America’s history, culture, and ideals. If the belief is not sincere, then the claim that the Bush administration orchestrated (or allowed) the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks is an effort to harm our nation by destroying its reputation and honor, dragging it into the swamp of other nations to which murder and dictatorship are traditional. The First Amendment requires that we allow these individuals, be they deranged, sinister, irresponsible or merely stupid, to deny what makes the United States unique and slander its elected leaders, but it does not require that we accord them respect or tolerance. Continue reading →