Ethics Dunces

Ethics Dunce: The ABA Journal

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
"I just know we're forgetting something! "Effects"? No, that's not it..."Ethanol"? No, no..."Prosthetics"? Arrrgh! What IS it?

“I just know we’re forgetting something! “Effects”? No, that’s not it…”Ethanol”? No, no…”Prosthetics”? Arrrgh! What IS it?”

This is as disheartening and it is shocking. The American Bar Association Journal, the monthly magazine of the nation’s largest lawyer organization and in many ways the face of the legal profession in the United States, just announced its 6th Annual Blawg 1oo, its reader-chosen list of the best law-related blogs on the web. There are many excellent blogs honored, of course; indeed all of them are useful or entertaining. I’ve visited most of them, and some, like Popehat, the Legal Professions Blog, Above the Law, the Volokh Conspiracy, Scotus Blog,  the New York Personal Injury Law Blog, and Over-Lawyered, I check on several times a week. There is a remarkably wide range of blog topics covered, including superhero law, practicing law in China and zombies. Guess what’s not covered?

Legal ethics. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Matt Lauer

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments
It's lucky you're dead, Dave, because this would kill you...

It’s lucky you’re dead, Dave, because this would kill you…

Matt Lauer, as the primary host of the “Today” show, reigns where once distinguished journalists and professionals like Dave Garroway, Bryant Gumble, Tom Brokaw and Frank McGee made the show a morning oasis of news and pleasant banter. Yesterday Lauer, who has already revealed himself beyond any reasonable argument as a hack (yes, “Today” has had other hacks), showed himself to be an unmannerly creep as well. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce Déjà Vu: Drew Curtis’s Fark

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
"Ma'am, your teenage son was raped by this woman, Isn't that great?"

“Ma’am, your teenage son was raped by this woman, Isn’t that great?”

Once again, one of my favorite news aggregation websites, the prolific and often hilarious Fark, is laughing at child rape. Its comment on the story from Nehalem, Oragon about the arrest of a 31-year-old model for sex crimes involving at least three under-age boys—15 and 16 years old—was this…

“…niiiice”

Not funny. An adult woman using—that’s the correct word, using—teenage boys as her personal sexual aids isn’t niiice—it’s criiiiminal. In October, I gave Fark an ethics dunce cap for an earlier wink-wink-nudge-nudge comment about a teacher who added statutory rape to her duties, and that was surely worse; after all, she was a teacher, and violating the trust of the school, the parents, the students and the community to get herself laid. Nonetheless, the conduct of model Anna Walsh was neither harmless nor trivial. I know: Fark’s official stance is sophomoric; I get that. I also get that sophomores, and other morons, have staked out the position that any male child who has obtained a sufficient level of sexual maturity to be used as a human dildo by a “hot” woman is a lucky dog. Well, that spectacularly stupid and unethical position does a great deal to help sexual predators like Walsh victimize children, who are misled into feeling that something must be wrong with them if they really don’t want be used.

Since the site is a repeat offender, I’m sure Fark’s wags intend to keep doing this. So I guess Ethics Alarms will have to keep reminding everyone what irresponsible ethics dunces their warped sense of appropriate treatment of young boys shows them to be.

“Duuuunce”

____________________________

Spark: Fark

Facts, Graphic: KATU

Ethics Dunce: CBS Tampa

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Today’s canine bigotry, misinformation and blatantly terrible reporting prize goes to the CBS affiliate in Tampa. It reported a story involving  a man who left a 10-month old baby alone in a home to go out drinking, with only a dog in charge of the child. But the CBS headline was “Man Leaves Pit Bull To Babysit Infant Child,” and included this stock photo of a snarling pit bull:

FILES - Picture taken 24 August 2000 inThe implication of both the headline and the photo is that the child’s peril was increased by its being left alone with a vicious dog. Actually, the child was probably safer with a pit bull than any other breed: this is a breed, after all, that was known as “the nanny dog” for much of the 20th Century. If the mention of the breed had been intended as possible mitigation for the jerk that left the baby without human supervision, that might be legitimate reporting, but what CBS did was pure sensationalism and distortion based on the ignorance of the reporter and the editor. The headline invoked the irrational fear of pit bulls, based on ignorance stoked by reporting like CBS’s. The photo didn’t depict the actual dog involved, which just as easily might look like this…

smiling-pit-bull-dog

… and was intentionally chosen to create the impression that the man, in addition to deserting the baby, left it at the mercy of a dangerous beast. Would the headline have mentioned the breed of dog if it had been a Labrador or a poodle? The breed was only relevant to the story if you believe that it placed the child in more danger than just being left home alone. Journalism is supposed to make us better informed, not more ignorant than we already are. This requires, however, responsible and intelligent journalists.

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Source and Graphic: CBS

Ethics Dunce: Rapper and Hip-Hop Music Mogul Ryan Leslie

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
I wouldn't mess with this guy. No way.

I wouldn’t mess with this guy, Ryan.  No way. But be my guest…

The real mystery for me in this silly scenario is why the rapper would think he could publicly promise a $1 million reward and not have to make good on it. Any rational theories will be received with pleasure.

Ryan Leslie, who has penned a hit song or two and performs as a hip-hop artist himself, had his laptop and external hard-drive stolen while he was on tour in Cologne, Germany two years ago. Apparently he felt that the demos and songs on the equipment had potential, because he offered $20,000 for the laptop and hard-drive’s return. When that didn’t work, he upped the reward to $1 million. A man named Armin Augstein found the computer while walking his dog in a park not far from where the computer had been taken, and he turned it over to German police. When the man claimed his reward, Leslie refused to hand it over, claiming that Augstein must have been involved in the theft, though police found no evidence supporting that allegation. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Petraeus Defenders

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I know I have touched on this before regarding the Petraeus scandal (and elsewhere), but it bears emphasizing—especially since so many seem to be unable to process the concept. Leaders cannot be seen as willing to violate their own rules, principles and those of the organizations they represent. Arguing that the rules violated are foolish, or outdated, or too restrictive does not rebut this fact of leadership in any way, but making that argument does show beyond question that the pundit making it doesn’t comprehend the most basic facts of leadership and the building of ethical cultures.

Today’s Sunday papers are awash in editorials and op-ed pieces by former intelligence personnel, lawyers, social scientists and other pundits blaming the widening Petraeus scandal ( now focusing on Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Kabul, and the significance of his exchanging thousands of inappropriate emails with Jill Kelley, the Tampa socialite who is apparently the military equivalent of a rock-and-roll groupie, only older) on antiquated morals and political opportunism. There are too many of these bewildered commentators to count, but their views all ooze from the same basic, shockingly facile, and in some cases intentionally misleading theory, which is that Petraeus’s and Allen’s conduct are irrelevant to their ability to do their jobs. The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, usually one of the more rational and objective of that paper’s leftward chorus, actually reprints verbatim an e-mail he received from an Arab diplomatic source as if it contains illumination rather than naiveté:

“He needs to resign cause he has an affair? What da hell??? He is brilliant!!!! Why like this????” Continue reading →

A Disappointing and Damaging Ethics Dunce: The Obama Campaign

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

No matter who wins the Presidency on November 6, one thing is for certain. We now can be sure that the day will come when a future Presidential campaign runs an ad that concludes, “Don’t vote for him: he’s an asshole!” For that, we will be able to place the blame on, of all people, Barack Obama, and his 2012 campaign. This is the same Barack Obama who promised, the first time he was running for President, to change the tone in Washington; the same President Obama who told a group in 2010…

“But there is a sense that something is different now, that something is broken, that those of us in Washington are not serving the people as well as we should,” Mr. Obama said. “At times, it seems like we are unable to listen to one another, to have at once a serious and civil debate. This erosion of civility in the public square sows division and cynicism among our citizens. It poisons the well of public opinion….Civility is not a sign of weakness.”

Yet his 2012 campaign’s embrace of gutter-level name calling and divisive rhetoric, with the full participation of both the President and the Vice-President, has guaranteed that the tone Obama promised to change will change for the worse, and that the well of public opinion will be more toxic than ever. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Obama-Biden Campaign Co-Chair Eva Longoria

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Stay classy, Democrats.

The co-chair of President Obama’s campaign, showing her qualifications.

“Desperate Housewives” actress Eva Longoria, who for some reason is the co-chair of the Obama campaign, took to her Twitter account and its 4 million, 262 thousand followers to re-tweet this dignified and reasonable message:

“I have no idea why any woman/minority can vote for Romney. You have to be stupid to vote for such a racist/misogynistic twat”

She took down the tweet, perhaps after someone with a brain at DNC headquarters explained why this was an inappropriate message for a co-chair of the President’s campaign to endorse.  Then, after appearing to blame Twitter for it sneaking someone else’s tweet into her feed, apologized, saying via Twitter,

“I use Twitter as a platform for all Americans and their opinions. Sorry if people were offended by retweet. Obviously not my words or my personal view. I respect all Americans #FreedomOfSpeech…”And for the record I have never personally called any conservative women stupid. I think u are all beautiful and strong and smart! I appreciate those conservative women who have sent me some great articles! I respect u, stay involved!”

Oh, really!

Some observations: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Ryan Thompson

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

You may have heard about this guy: he took his girlfriend up in his private plane, and pretended that the plane was about to crash as part of his set-up to propose to her. As he supposedly tried to get the plane under control to save their lives, Thompson told Carlie Kennedy to read from an emergency protocol explaining how to pull the plane out of a dive. “I genuinely did believe that we were going to die,” Kennedy told ABC News. “I felt like our lives depended on me making it through that checklist.” Then, as she read through the list, it slowly dawned that it was actually an marriage  proposal leading up to the final bullet point: “Will you marry me?” She turned to the smiling pilot, who was holding a ring. She said yes.

And then they crashed.

No, not really. And I suppose this sadistic narcissist has found a perfect mate, a naive victim who will doubtless enjoy all the hell he puts her through for his own amusement. It was a pretty good test, when you think about it. What better way to let your intended know exactly what she’s getting into, and to find out whether she’ll tolerate despicable treatment and outrageous conduct with a smile and a kiss?

Good luck, Carlie, and I mean that sincerely. Your husband to be is an Ethics Dunce, an especially cruel one, and you’re an idiot.

You’ll need all the luck you can get.

Ethics Dunce: Lindsay Lohan

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

So, Lindsay, you really are a “mean girl,” eh? Good to know.

I have been sympathetic to Lindsay Lohan, a tragic example of a child star who has been programmed by an abnormal upbringing and awful parents to be self-destructive and irresponsible. However, Lohan has just signaled that she is also a mean-spirited jerk. Fellow child star Amanda Bynes, once frequently cited as an example of a performing tot who grew up normal, has had a bizarre string of hit-and-run accidents and appears to be dealing with some substance abuse issues. Bynes is facing charges, and has lost her license to drive. So is Lindsay, who has been in and out of court, jail and lawyers’ offices repeatedly over the last several years over everything from drunk driving to violating probation to grand theft, empathetic?  Hardly. Here was her recent tweet regarding Bynes’ problems:

Continue reading →