Daily Life

Tide Commercial Reflections–with Acti-Lift!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

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 →

Lying to Mom

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The call was from my mother’s case worker at the hospital.

The night before, my mother, 89, had fallen in her apartment, the seventh fall in ten days and, like the others, a direct result of her stubborn refusal to use a cane or a walker despite her unsteadiness. This time she had not been able to dissuade me from taking her to the emergency room, where we both lingered until nearly 6 AM as she was X-rayed, CAT-scanned, and given a battery of tests. The staff felt she needed to be checked-in to stay for a couple of days, especially since she was hallucinating. I agreed, over Mom’s protests; it would also provide me some more time to figure out how to prepare my home for her to move in, at least temporarily. There is no way I am going to let her fall again.

Now the case worker was calling to tell me that my mother was resisting treatment. She wanted to go home, she said, and was physically resisting efforts to give her an M.R.I. Would I please come over and persuade her?

The hospital was only fifteen minutes away, and as I drove there, I pondered various strategies. With my mother, you get one shot. If your first argument doesn’t persuade her, nothing will. I could explain why the M.R.I. would help the doctors clear her for release, but that one could backfire if the test revealed something that in fact led to a longer stay. One ploy kept pushing itself to the front of the line: Continue reading →

Ten Useful Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

It occurred to me, after more than a year, that I’ve never actually posted the basic ethics alarms we all should have installed and in working order, ready to sound when we are in, or about to be placed in, situations that are rife with ethics peril. Here are ten basic ones; there are lots of other useful ethics alarms to have, but these will serve you well. When one starts buzzing, it’s time to step back, thinks, and perhaps most useful of all, talk to someone whose ethical standards and reasoning you trust: Continue reading →

Rush, E-Cigarettes and the Niggardly Principle

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Rush Limbaugh was enjoying himself hugely yesterday, as he usually does, relating one more way that he has devised to tweak America’s Enemies of Freedom.

The radio talk show king’s topic was electronic cigarettes, those increasingly popular devices that deliver a nicotine jolt while emitting faux “smoke” (it’s only odorless water vapor), all while looking like a real cigarette—the tip even glows red when you puff it. Rush keeps the things handy, he explains, to provide a balm to his nicotine cravings when he is in public places, but even more so, it seems, to annoy anti-smoking zealots. Rush gets a rush when he pulls out the plastic devices and observes reflexive coughs and frowns from those in his vicinity who regard cigarettes as the equivalent of rotting cats. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarm: Are You A Potential Jerk?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Eric Schwitzgebel, Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside, posted an essay on his terrific blog, “The Splintered Mind,”in which he speculates on the phenomenology of being a jerk, giving all of us some tools to determine whether we are jerks, or in imminent danger of jerkhood.

His method centers on two key features of a jerk mindset, both of which lead to the rationalization of unethical behavior: Continue reading →

Random Encounters with the Human Race: Caring and Helpless

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One of the few pleasures left in business travel these days is the chance to meet interesting people who are very different from those I typically encounter at home. One my last trip, waiting for a connection, I was buying a cup of specialty coffee an airport stand from a friendly man with a lovely African accent. “How much?” I asked.

“All of it,” he said, smiling, as he glanced at the travel funds in my wallet.

“Can’t do that, ” I joshed. “It all belongs to my wife.”

And suddenly this stranger who I was never going to see again was pouring out his life story, choking up with emotion in the process. Continue reading →

The Embarrassed Management Apologizes

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I just cleaned up about seven typos in the Randy Cohen post, which was up on the site including them for most of the day.

I apologize profusely for the sloppiness. I am the world’s worst proof-reader, and when I am rushing to get a post finished under a deadline, I am even worse than that. Nonetheless, this is no excuse, and readers who are kind enough to come here shouldn’t have to endure extra or missing words and illiterate spellings, most of which, by the way, is  because I can’t type, though my rotten spelling doesn’t help any.

I am so grateful to those of you who continue to flag the more egregious typos for me. Finding out that an article has been hanging out there with these errors is exactly like learning that you’ve been smiling at people with a piece of spinach on your front teeth all day. So I mean it: it isn’t because I don’t care. I’m trying. Obviously I have to try harder.

And I was so proud of myself for not misspelling “Beuhrle”…

Gallup’s 2010 Ethics Poll: Little Trust Where We Need It Most

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

As it does periodically, Gallup has released the results of its surveys to determine what professions Americans regard as ethical, and which ones they don’t. Gallup notes that there has been very little change over the last two years; on its site, it compares the results to those of polls taken from 2004 to the present.

The professions that have positive ratings from the public are nurses, the military, pharmacists, grade school teachers, doctors, police, clergy, judges, and day care providers.

The rest are in the red, trust-wise, with TV and newspaper reporters coming in below auto mechanics and bankers, lawyers below them, business executives even below lawyers, and well below them, Congress, which comes in barely above car salesmen—and more people actually have a low opinion of Congress members than of car salesmen. Congress inches ahead because a larger number also think that members of Congress are ethical.

Probably federal workers… Continue reading →

Hitler’s Ethics, and Ethics Malpractice From A Health Activist

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I am sure “Ellen S.” is a sincere, caring, lovely person, but the Ethics Police need to put an electric monitor on her tongue that sets off a warning every time she tries to utter the word “ethics.” There are many divergent ethical systems and many legitimate ways of analyzing an ethical problem, but Ellen’s sincere, caring blog illustrate why so many people’s eye glaze over when ethics comes into a conversation, and worse, it shows why so many otherwise educated people let their conduct be governed by rationalizations. The latest post on Ellen S.’s blog for the WEGO Health website illustrates my point; I didn’t have the courage to read more, and you will see why.

The post is entitled “Was Hitler More Ethical Than You?” Continue reading →

Ethics and the CALM Critics

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, or CALM Act, is now on the way to President Obama’s desk. The law addresses a long-time irritation to TV viewers, who have been complaining about television commercials booming out at ear-splitting volume as soon as a moderately-loud program takes a break. The advertising trick, which has been around for a while, has become even more blatant in recent years with availability of new sound technology. Some televisions have been equipped with devices that supposedly even out sound variations, but they do not completely solve the problem. The new legislation directs the Federal Communications Commission to require advertisers, within a year, to adopt industry technology aimed at lowering the volume on televised sales pitches.

This is a classic example of law doing what law is supposed to do: step in when individuals or organizations refuse to respect ethical values and cultural norms in the pursuit of their own self-interest, and set penalties to inspire them to engage in fair conduct, since “doing the right thing” isn’t motivation enough. Continue reading →