A recent Wall Street Journal blog post included this surprising statement:
“Amid a rise in office gossip, researchers are disagreeing over whether it is fundamentally good or bad.”
Pardon? Dictionaries are unanimous in defining gossip as “idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.” That’s pretty clearly unethical, wouldn’t you say? Continue reading
According to the annual Gallup poll on the public’s perceptions of ethical conduct among professionals, the following is the ranking, best to worst, of those most trusted by the American public. The percentage is the proportion of poll respondents who ranked each profession “very high” or “high” in ethical standards. Continue reading
A silly e-mail is circulating again, as it has this time of year since 2005, encouraging recipients to engage in a pointless and ignorant protest against the American Civil Liberties Union.
It reads: Continue reading
"Bye, Marilyn...it was nice lying over you."
My Dad detested wakes and viewings, and used to say that after he died, he wanted to be exhibited sitting up, eyes open, with a tape recording that would be triggered every time anyone stood in front of him. The recording would be of my father saying, “Hello! Thanks for coming! Hope to see you at my funeral!” Luckily, Dad didn’t make me promise to do anything that bizarre, although it would not have been out of character for him to do so. His recent death caused me to wonder: what if he had? Would I be obligated to keep my promise? Would I be justified in making such a promise, if I knew it wouldn’t be kept? Continue reading
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
—- Google CEO Eric Schmidt to CNBC interviewer Maria Bartiromo
Bingo!
Former Arkansas Governor and current talk show host Mike Huckabee, an early leader among GOP presidential contenders in 2012, is the process of being vilified and ridiculed by conservative commentators and talk radio hosts for what appears to be a tragic instance of moral luck. Nine years ago, he issued clemency to a prisoner named Maurice Clemens, a man who had been convicted of larceny and burglary at the age of 16 and had served seven years of a 108 year sentence. Clemens was just killed after going on a two-day rampage in Seattle, Washington murdering four police officers. Now critics are blaming the deaths on Huckabee, calling him a “bleeding heart” who cares more about criminals than their victims, and demanding that this tragedy permanently end his presidential ambitions. Continue reading
Ethicists are unduly fond of presenting lose-lose hypotheticals, “Sophie’s Choice” situations in which a necessary action will also create a horrible result, and inaction is not an option. Fortunately for us, such situations rarely occur outside the pages of William Styron novels. A New Zealand man recently faced such a crisis, however, and he took the ethical course, and the only course: the best he could do under the circumstances, knowing he would have to live with the consequences for the rest of his life. Ironically, in the ultimate ethical dilemma, ethics becomes irrelevant.There is no right choice, and there is no wrong one, except to do nothing at all. Our sympathy and sorrow go out to Stacy Horton and his family.
Three springs ago on the streets of Pittsburgh, David Hackbart was starting to parallel park when a car pulled up behind him. Don’t you hate that? Hackbart did too, and presented his flip-off finger to the anonymous driver in silent protest. “Don’t flip him off!” came a shouted edict from someone outside his car, and Hackbart, not in the mood for officious intermeddling, gave the anonymous civility referee The Finger as well. Continue reading
It is rare that an ethics issue breaks down neatly into two well-defined camps, but that is the what has happened regarding an October episode in which Southwest airline flight attendants kicked a mother and her unusually loud two-year old off a flight. Continue reading
Yesterday was November 22. According to the vast majority of the news and entertainment media, it was no different from any other day, apparently. In all likelihood, the same was true of most Americans. “Oh, yeah…November 22! Better buy that turkey!”
November 22 is not like any other day in America, however. It is the date in 1963 that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 46 years old and the 35th President of the United States of America, was assassinated on the streets of Dallas. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 