From Chanhassen, Minn, an awful experience that is just the beginning—trust me on this. Yet our politicians don’t have the courage or integrity to do what has to be done to stop it.
A taste:
“Along Lake Susan and Chanhassen Hills drives, residents learned that something was terribly wrong in their homes Wednesday night when a geyser of sewage began spewing from toilets on the lower levels…”
Be very afraid. More than that, be angry. A must read.
She needs that 20%
Here’s why you need to tip, and generously: Waiters and waitresses are screwed if you don’t. Continue reading
Prodigal Commenter Penn re-entered the ethics fray with two anecdotes about ethics and Japanese culture in reaction to the Ethics Alarms quiz, “The Cabbie and the Jewelry.” This was the second COTD to be inspired by that story of the ethical—or pragmatic—cabbie who rescued $100,000 worth of jewelry left in his cab by a careless fare.
Here is Penn’s “Comment of the Day”:
“70s, Tokyo, 2 anecdotes: Continue reading
With all the alcoholics in my life, and there are and have been many (some of whom I undoubtedly never knew qualified), today was the first time I ever actually attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Indeed, before yesterday I didn’t know I could attend. Many groups have periodic “open” meetings, however, to which friends and family members of alcoholics as well as “anyone interested in learning about alcoholism” are invited. I know a lot about alcoholism, learned the hard way. Now I know more. More important than that, I realize that Alcoholics Anonymous has a great deal to teach everyone…not just about alcoholism, but about ethics. Continue reading
[ The discussion in the earlier post today regarding ABC’s revolting “What Would You Do?” convinced me that I should re-post this essay about a real-life “What Would You Do?”tragedy, which originally appeared on The Ethics Scoreboard in 2006. Entitled “Death on Everest,” It has been lightly edited to bring it up to date.]
As 34-year-old mountaineer David Sharp lay near death on Mount Everest, over 40 other climbers trudged past him on their march to the peak. All had oxygen with them, and a few even stopped briefly to give Sharp a few breaths. But still they climbed on, and Sharp perished. His demise on May 15, 2006 has gone into ethics lore alongside the infamous death of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964. Genovese was murdered outside her apartment building in Queens while thirty-eight neighbors watched and did nothing.
The two incidents stem from very different causes, however. While Genovese’s death was fueled by urban fear and apathy, a mass failure of courage and the willingness to assume responsibility in a crisis, Sharp was the victim of that universal ethics-suppressant, the powerful non-ethical consideration. Continue reading
Has this happened to you?
My firm submitted materials for a presentation to a client weeks before it was scheduled, sending them to the contact’s assistant, and asking that if there were any problems, to let us know. The day before the presentation, I received an urgent e-mail from the assistant, reading, “I am copying you in on this because I had not heard from your partner. The materials you sent may need revisions, as I informed her in my previous communication, and we were getting concerned because the revisions had not been received by us.” CC’d on the message were the assistant’s supervisor (my contact), and other firm members. Not my partner, however.
Panic ensued at ProEthics. After checking all phone logs, e-mail files and spam-blockers, it became abundantly clear that no such message about revisions was ever sent to my partner. Continue reading
At the risk of being accused of proving the old proverb that when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, let me offer the observation that the apparently acrimonious departure of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC, despite being the cable channel’s biggest star, is a cautionary tale about ethics.
The lesson: the absence of respect for the opinions of others, accompanied by a lack of humility and a surplus of contempt for fairness and civility, will doom even intelligent, talented and hard-working individuals to inevitable failure, because they cannot be trusted, not by employers, not by colleagues, not by friends.
This is why ethical values are valued: they are essential to individual success, because they contribute to societal and social success. This is, I believe, the fourth time an Olbermann show has ended like this, and like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” he is doomed to repeat the pattern until he learns how to be a more caring, more trustworthy human being.
I hope he makes it. Keith Olbermann has the ability to help make this a better country, instead of a nastier, meaner, more divided one. I hope he gets another chance, and that this time, he figures out how to use his abundant talents to do it.
Ethics Alarms reader Lianne Best weighs in on the Tide (with Acti-lift!) ads, with a valuable observation with far broader ethics significance. She aptly describes exactly how norms of appropriate conduct become corrupted and coarsened (or sometimes enlightened and improved!) over time:
“I hope I’m not too late to the Tide with Acti-Lift! party, but for those who say these ads are “just marketing” and don’t have any real impact … the first time I saw each of these ads, I was horrified. With each subsequent viewing I was less and less offended, until they became normal. Participating in unethical behavior starts with it becoming normal, so these seemingly innocuous commercials are actually pushing the snowball down the slippery slope. Those with influence, whoever they may be, must be cautious with its use.”
Ethics Alarms has been getting some excellently written and reasoned comments lately, and it is time to institute a feature I have enjoyed on other blogs, and that is especially appropriate for this one: “The Comment of the Day.”
There won’t be one every day, of course, and the criteria is variable. In general, a Comment of the Day is one that I feel is especially well-stated rather than one I necessarily agree with—like the first entry, in fact. As I have stated elsewhere on the site, I don’t find the Tide mini-skirt commercial unethical, and would not have featured it on Ethics Alarms had readers not brought it into the discussion. I think it is culturally wrong-headed; I think it is obnoxious; I think the choice of song is in poor taste. Still, if Proctor and Gamble thinks it can sell more Tide by attaching its pitch to the assertion that fathers are boobs to question overtly sexual fashion choices by teenagers, and that mothers who encourage underage daughters (Yes, yes, we don’t know that the “daughter” isn’t 25, but the actress sure is doing her best giggly teen impression. We don’t know the “father” isn’t really the next door neighbor, either.) to wear skirts the size of dinner napkins sure to expose the Britney Zone every time the daughter sits down are being responsible parents, I wish them luck. I buy the detergent in our house, by the way; the commercial is sexist by its assumptions.
Here is the comment… Continue reading
This post isn’t going to have any additional ethical musings on the Tide commercials themselves, for I am sick to death of them, and almost as sick of arguing about them. What I have been thinking about instead is what to glean from the fact that an ethics critique of a 30 second laundry soap commercial has become the most viewed post on Ethics Alarms after fourteen months and about 1,100 posts, and has generated more debate than all but a few other issues.
Not that I much mind becoming the apparent ethics authority on Tide (with Acti-Lift!). It’s a small niche, but at least it’s a niche. If you Google almost anything about the original commercial—“green shirt” and Tide, for example—Ethics Alarms is the first non-Tide site that gets listed. Still, with carefully considered ( and occasionally proofed) posts on politics, immigration, global warming, education, sex, law enforcement competing with it for attention, my ethics review of a TV commercial has attracted far more interest than any one of them.
Why? My thoughts: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 