Daily Life

The Center for Science in the Public Interest=Self-Righteous Bullies of the Month

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

We will begin with a proposition: “Toys do not make children fat.”  Certainly eating too much makes children fat.  Eating exclusively high-caloric foods makes children fat. Failing to exercise and sitting around playing video games all day can make children fat. Over-indulgent or unassertive parents, who allow their children to develop and continue bad eating and exercise habits, can help children get fat. But toys will not make children fat. Even if the kids eat the toys, they won’t get fat.

Nonetheless, the Center for Science in the Public Interest is threatening to sue MacDonald’s if it doesn’t stop putting little toys in its “Happy Meals.” The “You’re Going To Eat Tofu and Like It!” consumer group has sent a letter to the fast-food company, long a convenient villain for those who want to control our basic right to eat what we want to, giving them due notice that either they take those “Shrek” promotional toys out of the “Happy Meals,” or  it’s “see you in court.” Continue reading →

Vuvuzela Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Applied to an international soccer match, the argument that players, fans and broadcasters should be broad-minded and tolerant of the peculiar conduct of various national groups is a good one—up to a point. The point is reached when a custom begins ruining the game for everyone else. The vuvuzelas–those small plastic horns that produce an ear-splitting atonal drone like a horde of cicadas— go well beyond that point at the World Cup, and in any other sports setting are the equivalent of racist taunts, 400 pound naked men, on-field trespassers and giant fart machines. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Abby Sunderland

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

“Since when does age create gigantic waves and storms?”

—16-year-old sailor Abby Sunderland, blogging from the ship that rescued her from her failed attempt to sail around the world, and responding to critics of her parents for permitting the adventure,

This may not be an ethics quote as much as it proves an ethics point. Abby’s quote is pure teen logic, and shows that her wisdom and judgment are not sufficiently sophisticated or developed to make decisions that could cost her life. No, Abby, your age didn’t create the waves and storms. It’s just that a sixteen-year-old shouldn’t be placed in a situation—or be allowed to place herself in a situation— where those age-ignorant waves and storms might kill her. Age doesn’t create rapists, drug pushers, unwanted pregnancies, drunk drivers or other perils either, but that doesn’t mean that it is responsible for parents to allow their children to be harmed by them.

When I tell my son he can’t do something that I think is too risky, he is likely to come up with an argument just as naive and irrational as Abby’s. The fact that his mind works like that shows how immature he is, and why I need to fulfill my duty to him as a parent, by protecting him from his own bad judgment.

Abby’s quote doesn’t prove the critics of her parents wrong. It proves them right.

Credential Deceit From Rand Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Rand Paul’s resume dishonesty is not in the same league with Richard Blumenthal claiming Vietnam service that wasn’t. It is closer in unethical heft to Illinois Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk’s representation of a group military award as in individual one on his resume. Still, if candidates for national office show a penchant for dishonesty and deceit before they are elected, what can we expect later, when they have the keys to the candy store and genuine power? Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: South Carolina Democrats, Voters and News Media

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Mystery man Alvin Greene upset a respectable, accomplished and well-known opponent in the Democratic primary that decided who would try to unseat South Carolina G.O.P. Senator Jim DeMint in November. Even before the vote, it was widely reported that Greene was unemployed, with no political experience. After the vote and the stunning results, it came to light that in 2009, the victorious Democratic Senatorial nominee asked a young college girl to look at some pornography he had downloaded, leading to an obscenity charge that is still pending. Embarrassed, chagrined and confused by the fact that their standard-bearer appears to be a goof or worse, Democrats are accusing everyone in sight, especially Greene and Republicans, convinced that there must have been a plot, a scam, anything to explain what happened without focusing blame where it belongs: on the Democratic candidates who couldn’t defeat Greene, and the South Carolina voters who elected him. Continue reading →

Breach of Duty: Hallmark Capitulates to the Race Card

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Every time an individual or a corporation meekly submits to the demands of  bullies, it harms the rest of society by giving that bully more power and credibility. It doesn’t matter if the bullies are jihad-minded Islamic extremists threatening the creators of “South Park,” an extortion-minded Congresswoman threatening NBC of dire consequences if it doesn’t start meeting her racial quotas, or a schoolyard bully intent on stealing lunch money. Give a bullies what they want, and they will continue to abuse their power until someone else does his or her ethical duty, which is to confront bullying and stop it. I call this “The Duty to Confront,” and it is a responsibility of citizenship and being a member of society. Corporations will hold symposiums and issue bold words about their commitment to good citizenship and corporate responsibility, but when it comes to a citizen’s duty to oppose bullies, they are worse than the meekest. weakest wimp in the school yard. Exhibit A:  the disgraceful example of Hallmark, which has capitulated to the N.A.A.C.P.’s most ridiculous and embarrassing accusation of racism yet, which is quite an accomplishment. Continue reading →

Asking For a Favor And Turned Down Flat

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Has this ever happened to you?

There is someone who has needed a lot of help from me recently—rides, errands, a shoulder to cry on, and mostly time.  I try to help out people when I can, especially if I am asked, because, obviously, it’s the right thing to do.

After a day in which my assistance to this individual was especially inconvenient and aggravating, essentially blowing a day that I could not afford to have blown, I learned about a personal situation facing me the next day that was going to be a problem, and realized that the person I had been assisting would be able to make my life a lot easier by granting a favor, and not a very difficult one.  So I asked her. Continue reading →

When An Ethical Parent Must Veto a Child’s Dream

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

It looked grim for a while yesterday, when the media was reporting that the sailboat carryingAbby Sunderland, the 16-year old seeking to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo by sea, had been lost. Now it looks like she may be safe after all, as a rescue of her crippled craft is underway in the Indian Ocean.  That a tragedy may have been averted, however, doesn’t mitigate that unethical abdication of responsible parenting and trust by Abby’s parents that set the stage for a calamity.

Had the ill-conceived adventure ended fatally, it is certain that we would have heard her heart-broken parents eulogize their daughter as intrepid,  courageous and mature beyond her appearance, who lived a full life in her sixteen years, and perished “living her dream.”  All true, but those aren’t the facts that matter.  What matters is that she is a dependent, trusting, sixteen-year old child who desperately needed her older and supposedly wiser parents to say “No. Being the youngest woman to sail around the world is good, living long enough to go to college, have a family, have a career and experience the joys of life over many decades is better. Sorry. It’s too dangerous. When you understand a little bit more about life, you may be capable of deciding when to risk it.”

They failed her, and the fact that she isn’t dead as a result is only luck. Continue reading →

When a Crime Is More Unethical Than Illegal

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“It’s just a dog folks!!! Why not go after people that brutally slaughter cows, chicken and pork. Oh wait, you eat those animals so that justifies killing them. This country’s priority is screwed up. He got what he deserved, fine, buy the couple another dog and perform community service. Now leave him alone.”

This was the reaction of a Washington Post reader to the widespread out rage over the cruel act of David M. Beers, a Marine Corps veteran who expressed his anger with a Maryland couple by taking their 4-pound pet Chihuahua and hurling her off a bridge to her death. A judge has sentenced him to four months in jail, and ordered him to pay a $1,000 fine, perform 300 hours of community service, and pay $318 restitution to Caisha and Timothy Wantz, who had just had a heated dispute with Beers before he took their pet.

The sentence is appropriately stiff, and yet inadequate too. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: This Guy at a Mets Game

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In this video, a grown man reaches over and intercepts a tossed baseball obviously intended to reach a specific little boy with a glove in an inning-ending gesture by New York Mets third baseman David Wright. The fan snags the ball just as it was about to land in the shocked kid’s glove, and then hands it to his own child.

There are rumors, unconfirmed, that after being berated by surrounding fans, he returned the ball. It doesn’t matter if he did or not: doing the right thing after you have been caught, shamed and threatened is not an ethical act, just a pragmatic one. The deficiency of values displayed by the act of taking a baseball from the child, and the stunning lack of kindness, empathy and fairness it shows, would be sufficient to dissuade me from hiring such an individual for a job, allowing him to marry my daughter, or associating with him socially. I think he should have been thrown out of the park.

Many ethical decisions require thought and reflection. Deciding that it’s wrong for an adult to take a gift from a child is not one of them.