Ethics Dunces

Ethics Mega Dunce And Ethics Corrupter: “Dancing With The Stars”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments
Ryan Lochte, role model

Ryan Lochte…liar, boor, jerk, TV star, role model.

This announcement would warrant a KABOOM! if ABC’s popular reality show/ dance competition hadn’t already demonstrated its lack of responsibility and decency so many times before. I guess my still unexploded head should be grateful for that, at least.

Dancing With The Stars is going to include Ryan Lochte in its line-up of competing celebrity dancers in the upcoming season. Why? Because he urinated on the wall of an establishment belonging to someone else, lied about the immediate consequences, insulted the hosts of the Olympic Games he competed in, and thoroughly embarrassed the United States, of course.  He’s infamous! He’s cute! He’s a moron! Naturally, this makes him attractive to “Dancing With The Stars.”

The undeniable message such casting sends to younger citizens whose sense of ethics and appropriate social conduct are still being formed is that wrongful conduct pays. DWTS is proving that as long as what you do makes you famous, it doesn’t matter if it is reckless, stupid, harmful or illegal. Then you can cash in.

This is the message that the show has often broadcast. Kim Kardashian was a contestant because she made a sex video, was the daughter of one of O.J.’s lawyers, had a freakishly large butt and epitomized hedonism, venality, and style over substance. Perfect! Tom DeLay was on the show because he was a famously vicious and corrupt—and successful— politician. Bristol Palin’s sole qualification for the show was that she managed to be an unwed mother-to-be, engaged to a jackass, while her mother was trying to convince the nation that she was qualified to be a heartbeat away from the White House. Reality shows and the ranks of washed-up actors have  supplied the show with a steady stream of drug addicts and low-lifes  whose sole distinctions have been that they were primarily famous for doing things that would get normal people fired or imprisoned. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Republican Congressional Candidate Dan Bongino

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Soap in mouth

“Marc listen, you can go fuck yourself…You’re a real disgusting piece of shit. You have no idea why I moved to Florida…Hey, shut the fuck up! Go fuck yourself, you piece of shit. You don’t know why I moved to Florida, you motherfucker fucking coward!…Fuck you, fuck yourself! Wait til I shred your fucking ass on the radio. Shut the fuck up.”

—-Dan Bongino, Florida Republican running in a Congressional primary, in a phone interview with Politico reporter Marc Caputo. Yes, he knew it was being recorded.

Stay classy, Republicans.

If you care about the context for this asinine performance, be my guest: read about it here. I don’t care if someone said that his mother slept with alpacas. His string of obscenities demonstrates a lack of respect for the public, miserable judgment, poor self-control, and the powers of expression of an under-educated pimp. Just what we need more of in Congress.

What kind of semi-civilized fool would vote for someone like this? I know, I know…the same kind of fool who would vote for Donald Trump.

Whose Lie Was More Newsworthy, Olympic Swimmer Ryan Lochte’s Regarding His Imaginary Mugging In Rio, Or The Obama Administration’s Regarding Paying Ransom To Iran? [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 83 Comments

U.S. President Barack Obama answers a question as he and Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong hold a joint news conference at the White House in Washington, U.S. August 2, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

News Item #1:

The story that Ryan Lochte told four days ago was frightening and detailed, the Olympic gold medalist recalling a late-night robbery and a pistol pressed against his head. On Thursday, Brazilian authorities presented evidence they say contradicts that account and could turn what at first had been a deeply embarrassing incident for the Summer Games’ host country into a different kind of international incident.

The head of Rio de Janeiro’s civil police, Fernando Veloso, said the version of the events told by Lochte and three U.S. swimming teammates was fabricated. The athletes, he said, damaged a gas station bathroom early Sunday morning and were involved in a confrontation with armed security before paying about $50 to resolve the matter.

“We can confirm that there was no robbery as they described, and they were not victims as they presented themselves,” Veloso told a packed news conference, alleging the athletes had given “a fantastical version of events.”

News Item #2:

The State Department conceded for the first time on Thursday that it delayed making a $400 million payment to Iran for several hours in January “to retain maximum leverage” and ensure that three American prisoners were released the same day.

For months the Obama administration had maintained that the payment was part of a settlement over an old dispute and did not amount to a “ransom” for the release of the Americans. Instead, administration officials said, it was the first installment of the $1.7 billion that the United States intends to pay Iran to reimburse it for military equipment it bought before the Iranian revolution that the United States never delivered.

But at a briefing on Thursday, John Kirby, the State Department spokesman, said the United States “took advantage of the leverage” it felt it had that weekend in mid-January to obtain the release of the hostages and “to make sure they got out safely and efficiently.”

There is little doubt as to which of the two lies the U.S. public is being informed about most thoroughly today: It’s #1. After all, Ryan Lochte is a reality TV star, and a celebrity, and an athlete, and this is the Olympics! Up close and personal! Bread! Circuses!

The second story? Meh.What’s the big deal? So the Obama Administration paid ransom for hostages, endangering U.S. citizens all over the world, and repeatedly lied to the press and the public about it over the past two week, issuing unequivocal denials that the 400 million dollar payment and the hostage release were related in any way. So what?

On CNN this morning, the stupid, stupid, stupid story about how a group of boorish Olympic athletes (‘USA! USA!”) peed on the walls of a Rio bathroom and made up a robbery —at gun point!—story to cover up their vandalism was the subject of a full panel discussion. If the Obama version of Iran-Contra was covered at all, it wasn’t in the hour I saw.

Google News search, “Ryan Lochte”…nearly 10 million results.

Google News search, “Iran ransom”…about 220,000 results. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Month: Wonkette Writer Rebecca Schoenkopf

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

juanita

I can absolutely see Bill Clinton doing this (then, not now) and not even thinking of it as rape, but thinking of it as dominant, alpha sex. I can see a LOT of men doing that during that time period, before we started telling them in the ’80s, “hey, that is rape, do not do that.” I can see YOUR NICE GRANDPA doing that, back then…I think good men can rape, and be sorry, and not do it again. This is very bad feminism…To sum up, I think Bill Clinton could very well have raped Juanita Broaddrick; that it doesn’t make him an evil man, or irredeemable (I’m Catholic; we’re all forgiven, if we’re sorry, and Broaddrick says Bill Clinton personally called her up to apologize). It doesn’t even necessarily make him a bad feminist — you know, later, once he stops doing that.

   —Rebecca Schoenkopf, writing in the progressive blog Wonkette, talking about Juanita Brodderick’s rape accusation against Bill Clinton

Broaddrick’s claims are back in the news, now that it was noticed that the Hillary Clinton website quietly pulled its statement about the victims of sexual assault having “the right to be believed,” Clinton’s jaw-dropping assertion—given her despicable role in silencing and discrediting Bill’s various victims—that Ethics Alarms discussed when it was first made.

I awoke to multiple rightish blogs, and Ann Althouse, who is dead center, going bonkers over this piece, and rightly so. My initial query is, why only right wing and moderate blogs? Is the left this corrupted by Bill and Hillary? (Okay, that’s rhetorical: the answer is “Damn right they are.”) When did it become progressive to argue that “good men can rape”?

I thought that was a misogynist pig position scrawled on the walls of a troglodyte’s cave.

Good men do NOT rape. Ever. Rape—do I really need to say this?—is signature significance. It was in the 80s, it was in the 60s, it has always been. If you rape (and if you defend rape), you’re not good, you’re not ethical, and you’re not trustworthy. And–do I really have to say THIS?–you’re not just a bad feminist, you’re a phony feminist. (By the by way, you gotcha-masters out there: I am not saying that there is anything wrong with a lawyer defending an accused rapist, like Hillary Clinton did. That is not defending rape itself.)

So why aren’t the indignant, politically correct, feminist, war-on-women-deriding left-leaning web sites, commentators and bloggers collectively retching at the Wonkette post? Explain that to me, someone. Explain why it isn’t evidence that integrity hasn’t died in their skulls, and is stinking up their ethics like a dead rat under the floor-boards. Continue reading →

Was It Ethical For Donald Trump’s Former Lawyer To Trash Him In The Huffington Post?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Backstabbed

That’s an easy question.

The answer is maybe, and no.

A couple of weeks ago, a real estate lawyer named Thomas M. Wells provoked a lively debate in the legal ethics community when he authored a Huffington Post piece titled “Donald Trump Hired Me As An Attorney. Please Don’t Support Him For President.” I’m proud to say that I flagged the issue for my colleagues first, in part because they unanimously detest Trump, even the tiny minority who aren’t full-blooded Democrats or progressives, and may have been blinded by that bias.

For me, the issue was crystallized by the headline. Wells’ headline (it doesn’t matter if it was really his or the site’s: as a lawyer, he is obligated to make sure that his article doesn’t breach legal ethics rules and principles, and the headline is part of his article) suggested that he had some special knowledge and authority regarding Trump because of what he had learned while representing him decades ago. The ethics rules prohibit lawyers from revealing client confidences, which are usually defined as what a lawyer learns about a client during the course of a representation that the client would not obviously want revealed to the world. Confidences can be revealed by actions, as well as words, and the headline comes very, very close to saying “I know things you don’t about Donald Trump because of what learned when I was his trusted lawyer.” What follows from that may be  a reader’s conclusion that the post reflects secret information. Thus the headline made my legal ethics alarms sound.

Wells has the same right as you or I to register a public opinion about his former (or current, for that matter ) client, as long as the opinion doesn’t interfere with his representation. Lawyers do not give up free speech right by being lawyers. That’s where the “maybe” comes from. There is strong disagreement in the profession about whether the answer to “Is this unethical?” should be an outright yes. The status of loyalty among the legal ethics values hierarchy is as hotly contested now as it ever has been. If a lawyer wants to attack a former client in a matter unrelated to the representation and no confidences are revealed in the process, is that a legal ethics breach? If it is, it would be a very tough one to prosecute. I think it’s a general ethics breach, as in wrong and unprofessional. It is disloyal, and clients should be able to trust their lawyers not to come back years later, after a client let the lawyer see all of his or her warts, and say, “This guy’s an asshole.” It undermines the strength of the public’s trust in the profession. Continue reading →

KABOOM! The Wrigley Field DJ Really Thought This Would Be OK! (And The Cubs Get A Jumbo…)

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

exploding-head5

Talk about malfunctioning ethics alarms! This story made my head explode, once I confirmed that it was not a hoax, as I desperately hoped. It apparently made the heads of a lot of Cubs fans and Cubs executive blow craniums too.

If you don’t follow baseball closely, and by the way, what’s the matter with you?, you probably don’t know two crucial facts about the Chicago Cubs closer (that’s the pitcher who comes in to pitch the ninth when his team is ahead in a close game) Aroldis Chapman:

1. He throws the baseball over 100 mph. on almost every pitch, and has hit 105 mph. on the radar gun this season. Traditionally 90 mph on a pitcher;s fastball is considered good. 95 mph is considered very good. 100 mph is outrageous. Last year, Chapman threw more pitches over 100 mph than the rest of his league’s pitchers combined.

2. Chapman was suspended for much of this season for domestic abuse, under baseball’s new policies.

The Cubs recently acquired Chapman (from the Yankees) to be the team’s closer, in this, a season that bids fair to be the one that finally ends the team’s epic string of seasons without a World Series title. The Cubs last won the Series in 1908, over a century ago. The team hasn’t even made it to the Series since 1945.

Now here’s the punch-line.

Hold on to your head. Continue reading →

Wow: A Whole Unethical TOWN!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Upsidedownflag1

In Somers, Iowa, Homer Martz  flew his  U.S. flag upside down  to protest the future placement of an oil pipeline near his home.  He has been charged with desecrating Old Glory under Iowa code 718A , which makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to 30 days in jail  to “publicly mutilate, deface, defile or defy, trample upon, cast contempt upon, satirize, deride or burlesque, either by words or act, such flag, standard, color, ensign, shield, or other insignia of the United States, or flag, ensign, great seal, or other insignia of this state…”

The law, however, is unconstitutional. So said an  Iowa Federal District Court judge in 2004, when he ruled Iowa’s flag desecration laws violated the First Amendment. Martz, a U.S. Army veteran, has told anyone who will listen that the Supreme Court has ruled citizens can burn the American flag, so presumably flying it Bizarro World-style is also okay. He’s right, too. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), that prohibitions on desecrating the American flag were unconstitutional.. It reaffirmed the holding in  1990.

Writes an exasperated Jonathan Turley, a Constitutional law expert,  “The town of Somers appears to lack a single lawyer — or a telephone number for a single lawyer — to explain free speech protections to them.”

Is it too much to expect a municipality to absorb a First Amendment right that was settled almost a quarter century ago, and not persecute a veteran for exercising the rights he served to protect and preserve?

Apparently. They could google flag burning and learn that this law is void. Such incompetence in government, at any level, is unconscionable.

Unethical Quote Of The Week, Olympics Division: Hope Solo

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments
"Jim Kaat, meet Hope Solo. Hope...Jim."

“Jim Kaat, meet Hope Solo. Hope…Jim.”

“I thought that we played a courageous game. I thought that we had many opportunities on goal. I think we showed a lot of heart. We came back from a goal down; I’m very proud of this team. I also think we played a bunch of cowards. But, you know, the best team did not win today; I strongly, firmly believe that. I think you saw America’s heart. You saw us give everything that we had today. Unfortunately the better team didn’t win.”

—-U.S. women’s soccer team goalie Hope Solo,after the Swedish team eliminated the United States from the Olympic women’s soccer tournament in a penalty shootout Friday.

Diagnosis: Jerk.

I remember the first time I ever heard a representative of a losing team use the old “the best team didn’t win today” line.

It was 1967, the best summer of my life, when I spent my last carefree teenage school break following the greatest pennant race in baseball history. My team, the Boston Red Sox, were the surprise underdog in an amazing, see-saw four team race that had its outcome in doubt until the bitter end. The Sox, led by MVP and Triple Crown winner Carl Yasrtzemski, entered the final series at home against the first place Minnesota trailing by a single game. It was a two game series. If the Red Sox won both, they would be American League Champions after nearly 20 years of losing.

They did win both. I was at one of the games, among the most hopeful, raucous, joyous baseball crowd I have ever had the honor to be part of. Both games were hard fought, with surprising twists and turns like the whole season. Still, the Sox won. I was so proud of that gutsy young team, which I had rooted for through every nail-biting inning—the team was nicknamed “The Cardiac Kids”—of their 162 games, and never more happy going to bed after enduring a crucial, nerve-wracking contest.

The next day, I read in the sports pages a post-game statement by Twins pitcher Jim Kaat, who had started the game I attended. He said, “We’ve got to give Boston credit,but I think the best team and the best fans will be watching the Series on television.”

I thought it was an astonishingly  graceless and obnoxious quote by a losing athlete, the epitome of bad sportsmanship, and stupid to boot. If the Twins were so damn great, why were they ending the season tied (with the Tigers) for second place? By definition, the team that ends a season with the best record is the best team, and the team that loses the decisive game has proven that it is not the better team.

Solo’s statement was worse. Continue reading →

The Daily Beast’s Nico Himes Tricks Gay Olympian Athletes Into Revealing Themselves And Their Sexual Orientation To Him…And His Editor Sees Nothing Wrong With That [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

_Sex-in-VillageThis is another one of those stories that makes me wonder it it’s time to switch fields. My current one feels especially futile this week.

The sleazy feature story from the Daily Beast’s Nico Hines was about how Olympic athletes were hooking up for hot, sweaty, muscle sex in Rio. Hines writes…

“Perhaps the question most people have is: How do the rest of us get an invite? Can an Average Joe join the bacchanalia?”

That’s right: that’s what most people think about when they watch the Olympics. Good lord. The creep continues:

After 60 minutes in the Olympic Village on Tuesday evening, I’m surprised to say that the answer is “yes.”Armed with a range of dating and hookup apps—Bumble, Grindr, Jack’d, and Tinder—your distinctly non-Olympian correspondent had scored three dates in the first hour. Athlete profiles on the various apps during my short exploration included a track star, a volleyball player, a record-holder in the pool, a sailor, a diver, and a handball player.

There is one teeny ethics problem. Well, several. The obvious one is that he wasn’t looking for real dates, just trying to see if he could attract some. That’s deception. It is an obvious Golden Rule breach, as well as misconduct in any other ethical system. It is like advertising a job opening to write a story about how many desperate unemployed people apply for job openings. How dead do your ethics alarms have to be not to instantly understand this? Well, as dead as Nico’s and the Daily Beast’s, I suppose.

Here’s the smoking gun quote:

For the record, I didn’t lie to anyone or pretend to be someone I wasn’t—unless you count being on Grindr in the first place—since I’m straight, with a wife and child. I used my own picture (just of my face…) and confessed to being a journalist as soon as anyone asked who I was.

Isn’t that great? Nico didn’t lie, except to suggest that he was looking for sex when he wasn’t, or pretend to be someone he wasn’t, other than pretending to be gay by the very fact of posting on Grindr, a gay social media site that exists so gay men can find other gay men seeking hook-ups.

Continue reading →

Observations Regarding Donald Trump’s Most Recent Idiotic Ad Lib

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments
Just more of the same...

Just more of the same…

The statement, which has dominated social media and news commentary since burped out by Trump during what he calls “a speech” yesterday:

“Hillary wants to abolish — essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know…”

Observations:

1. Trump’s juvenile and inarticulate habit of expressing half-formed thoughts as they occur to him requires him to figure out what he has said after the fact, as he is now with his latest blather. This is no different from his infamous “rapist” remark, his complaint about the “Mexican” judge, and so many, many others. When a competent adult makes a mistake with dire consequences, he or she typically adjusts future conduct accordingly. Not this idiot. This kind of thing will happen over and over again, almost daily, until the election. This was obvious too, years ago. Good job, Republicans. You disgust me.

2. Even knowing that Trump says things extemporaneously with no more thought than a frog gives to catching a fly, the news media (and of course the Clinton campaign) intentionally are treating it was if it were a solemn scripted statement developed over days of careful consideration. The Clinton campaign can be forgiven: any political campaign would do this when an adversary makes a fool of himself. The news media, however, is intentionally reporting the comment as something it’s not. It was not a call to assassinate Hillary. It was just an ad-lib that popped into Trump’s alleged brain. Was it a bad joke? A “speako”? Who knows? Trump definitely doesn’t know. Whatever it was, the comment was not a serious, substantive statement, though certainly not something a responsible or trustworthy individual would utter in public. And, of course, Trump is 100% accountable for it, and all the disruption it causes, as he will be for the hundreds of similar irresponsible ad libs he makes between now and November.

3. Much more substantive news could and should be covered by the news media, including newly released Hillary Clinton e-mails that show the extent to which she used her position and her staff in the State Department to enrich the Clinton Foundation. This is pure corruption, a true outrage, and a smoking gun. But we know that the news media is rooting for Hillary, so Trump’s comment–did I mention that he’s an idiot?—give journalists an excuse to allow Clinton’s actual misconduct slip under the radar, while they obsess about The Donald’s addled musings. Although the fact that Trump is an irresponsible fool is something the public needs to know, they also have a right to know that the woman they have to elect to protect the nation from Trump is perhaps the most corrupt and dishonest individual ever to be this close to the White House.

4. Trump’s latest self-created controversy is signature significance. No trustworthy, competent, intelligent candidate for high office would or could be so undisciplined, inarticulate, and impulsive to allow something like this to issue from his mouth, in public, on video. Those who are defending him in this instance are proving themselves to be untrustworthy, or incompetent, or both.

________________________

Sources:  Daily Kos, Mother Jones, Politicus USA, Washington Post, Raw Story, Taylor Marsh, Common Dreams, Boing Boing, Occupy Democrats, The American Spectator, The Atlantic, Business Insider, BuzzFeed, The New Civil Rights Movement, Vox, Mashable, Media Matters for America, Mediaite, Washington Free Beacon, MichelleMalkin.com,  Althouse, Esquire, BizPac Review, The Times of Israel, Occupy Democrats,  twitchy.com, NBC News, KTLA, Politicus USA, ABC News, The Week, The Democratic Daily, Politico, Deadline,  CBS Pittsburgh, CBS Los Angeles