Ethics Dunces

Ethics Dunces: The Buncombe County (North Carolina) Republican Party.

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
"Who would have guessed that he would look so bad in that interview?"

“Who would have guessed that he would look so bad in that interview?”

If a Republican affiliate has to force its chairman to resign after he proves to the nation that he is 1) so racially insensitive that he might dress up in blackface, tell the AP that Steppin Fetchit was ‘hilarious,’ and call President Obama a “jigaboo”on “Meet the Press” and he 2) doesn’t see what the fuss is, such an affiliate is not responding swiftly to newly revealed crisis. Such an affiliate has a much bigger problem. It has a surfeit of racists, incompetents and idiots. True, Don Yelton, the recently sacked two-term chair of the Buncombe County Republican Party in North Carolina, didn’t quite go that far in his jaw-dropping interview on Comedy Central, but he still spouted enough offensive comments for Match.com to pair him with Michael Richards. Watching the interview, which one can see here, the first impulse might be to ask, “What was he thinking?” Upon reflection, however, the proper question is “Is this man capable of thought?” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Fat-Bashing Film Critic Rex Reed

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

melissa_Elle

Actress Melissa McCarthy stole the film “Bridesmaids” right out from under its better known stars, including the screenplay’s author, Kirsten Wigg. In that film, her hit CBS sitcom “Mike and Molly,” and subsequent films (of varying quality), McCarthy has shown that she is s versatile, appealing comedienne with deep dramatic resources. Film critic Rex Reed, however, is mostly concerned with her weight, which is usually a component of the characters she plays and the quality, other than her talent, that sets her apart from the standard issue, impossibly thin, fit and sexy Hollywood actress.

In his withering review of her latest comedy “Identity Thief,” Reed causally refers to McCarthy as a “female hippo” and reduces her career to this: “Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) is a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious with equal success.” Called on his fat-bashing, Reed responded, “I have lost entirely too many friends to obesity-related diseases to pretend Ms. McCarthy’s alarming obesity is anything to applaud.”

There are two aspects of this that are striking. One is that Rex Reed, who played the pre-op Myra Breckenridge in the awful movie version of Gore Vidal’s gender-bending, and considered scandalous at the time, satiric novel (Raquel Welch, now over 70, was post-op), is still alive and reviewing, albeit obscurely until, as now, he writes something outrageous. At one time—40 years ago? Longer?— Reed was considered the most quotable and one of the most influential film critics; now, to say he is passé would be a compliment.

The other striking aspect of this incident is this:  while the culture will turn with unforgiving venom on any public figure who derides individuals for their color, sexual orientation, malady or disability, any of which would be considered cruel, bigoted, and hateful, deriding individuals because their weight doesn’t meet with aesthetic norms—among which are now out-sized breasts on otherwise fat-free frames and sharply chiseled abdominal muscles, a look that was literally freakish until the dawn of Nautilus and personal trainers—-still is largely regarded as justified and acceptable. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: “Saturday Night Live” Cast Member Jay Pharoah

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments
Maya Rudolph being Oprah, being funny, and nothing else should matter.

Maya Rudolph being Oprah, being funny, and nothing else should matter.

In a spontaneous call for more black cast members to be added to NBC’s long-running late-night satire show, “Saturday Night Live,”  veteran cast member Jay Pharoah told an entertainment reporter that he wanted the producers to add actress Darmira Brunson. “Why do I think she should be on the show? Because she’s black first of all, and she’s really talented,” Pharoah said. “She’s amazing. She needs to be on ‘SNL.'”

By logic, rights and justice, Pharoah should be fired for such a statement. He is pushing his show, and therefore his producers and his bosses, into a controversy that they neither want, need, nor deserve. Sure enough, his comments have already ignited debate and commentary in major dailies and in the blogosphere. He can’t be fired, of course—no producer in Hollywood would dare fire a black performer for advocating politically correct causes like diversity and affirmative action, no matter how inappropriate and unfair his comments were—and Pharoah knows that. Breaking reasonable rules of the workplace—criticizing your own boss in public and causing trouble for your employer are pretty basic taboos—because you know you’re immune from punishment doesn’t make the conduct any better.

He’s not the producer, and casting isn’t part of his job. To announce his own candidate for a hire is as outrageous and out-of-bounds as for a Pentagon general to tell reporters who President Obama should appoint as his Secretary of Defense.

Then there is the  statement itself, which in the context of entertainment and show business, is an endorsement of racial bias and discrimination, even more than with most workplace diversity and affirmative action advocacy. “Because she’s black first of all?” First of all must only be “because she’s funny, and the funniest female comic available.” Saturday Night Live’s goal, which it fitfully achieves, is to make its audience laugh. If Brunson is the best performer to accomplish that, then it makes sense to hire her. Her skin color is irrelevant, except to the extent that it opens up comic opportunities for the show. Otherwise, Brunson is pressuring his employers to hire Brunson over  superior white, Hispanic or Asian performers because of some theoretical diversity formula.

The resulting media focus on the imaginary problem to which Pharoah’s comments alluded is full of reflections, names and statistics, but the basic facts are these:

  • Professional performance comedy is completely utilitarian: if a cast entirely made up of black performers of any gender mix could be shown to be the optimum way to get laughs, ratings and make money for the network and SNL’s producers, that’s what we would have.
  • A funny, talented, improvisational skilled black actress has obvious benefits for a weekly satire show, as the reign of Maya Rudolph amply demonstrated.  There is no reason to presume that the producers would not immediately hire such a performer if one was available.
  • The pool of top-rate improvisational comic actors in general isn’t large (if it were, SNL would be funny more often), the pool of such performers who are African-American is much smaller, and the number of female black improvisational comics is tiny. When the African-American Wayans brothers wrote and produced their own satire show (Jim Carrey was the token white), they included only one full-time black female in the cast, and she was their sister (also the weak link in the cast.)

We can argue about the general principle of affirmative action at another time and place, but applying them to entertainment, sports or any field that must be a pure meritocracy is irresponsible and unfair. Saturday Night Live “needs” funny, talented performers who its audience finds funny…like, say, Eddie Murray. It does not need any black performer, male or female, just to have more black performers, and to take away performing and career opportunities from superior performers whose sole deficit is skin color or ethnicity while simultaneously getting fewer laughs and lower ratings.

Oddly, nobody has ever argued that Saturday Night Live discriminates against improvisational comic actors over the age of 35. Only once has it cast an actor of that age—Randy Quaid, in 1985. 1985 was also the most disastrous and unpopular season in the show’s history. Why no middle age or senior cast hires?  The reasons are legion: 1) Improv comedy is demanding physically and psychologically. Few older performers practice it, or are capable of doing it on a regular basis. 2) SNL’s audience is very young (as well as very male and white). Comedy is generational. 3) Older performers are seldom “new faces.” The ensemble’s called the “Not Ready For Prime Time Players” for a reason. 4) Young actors playing older real life figures and comic characters can be funny; old actors playing younger celebrities or characters is seldom funny, and often creepy. Age diversity, in brief, would not improve Saturday Night Live. Diversity is only an asset to the extent that it allows more comic opportunities. The U.S. does not require, not should ikt ask for, a contemporary satire TV show that “looks like America.” What  it needs is a show that is good.

All of which makes Pharoah’s comments irresponsible, unfair, disloyal, and racially offensive.

And not funny.

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Sources: Washington Post, Policy Mic

Graphic: Hello Giggles

Ethics Dunce: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

dunce-capSenators should not intentionally set out to make the American public stupid, or to validate invalid ethical constructs. Thus this explanation of his current proposal from Sen. Rand Paul needs to be derided, and should also cause concern for anyone who thinks it’s important for the Republican party to find some leaders who are trustworthy. Paul, in the course of pushing his stillborn, grandstanding plan to use a constitutional amendment to require government bigwigs to live with the same health care laws they impose on the rest of us, said this to The Daily Caller:

“My amendment says basically that everybody including Justice Roberts — who seems to be such a fan of Obamacare — gets it too. See, right now, Justice Roberts is still continuing to have federal employee health insurance subsidized by the taxpayer. And if he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts.”

See, the fact that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts refused to declare the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional using a highly-controversial legal distinction in no way suggests that he personally “likes” it, and anyone who thinks that is what judicial opinions, especially Supreme Court Opinions, mean is shockingly ignorant of the judicial system, the legal system, the law, the role of judges in society, the Constitution, and by extension, pretty much most of the principles that give government, management and leadership any integrity or competence. The fact that such an anyone has risen to the level of U.S. Senator goes beyond shocking to terrifying. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Prof. Glenn Reynolds, the “Instapundit”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Prof. Reynolds, the iconic conservative bloggers who wields considerable influence in the right-leaning blogospehere and beyond, has frequently displayed a dismaying affection for the unethical response of “tit-for-tat.” Has seldom done so as blatantly, however, as in a post yesterday, linking to a National Review article about CUNY students shouting down General David Petraeus, who is now a lecturer there.

The Instapundit wrote:

“I think right-leaning groups should similarly hound Hillary and other Obama Administration apparatchiks — including Obama himself, when he ventures onto campuses, both now and post-Presidency. The standard of behavior has been established. Let them live with it.”

Even giving Reynolds the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he is speaking tongue-in-cheek or hyperbolically, as he often does, this is an irresponsible statement if he doesn’t mean it, and an unethical one if he does. He is considered a sage and an opinion leader among many conservatives, and for such a prominent figure to expressly approve of the downward behavioral tail-spin that inevitably results when each competitor or adversary re-aligns  ethical standards according to the unethical acts of the other is embracing all-out culture war and chaos, with no standards at all.

“They started it, so let’s give them a taste of their own medicine and see how they like it!” is street gang thinking, (Jets: “Well they began it!” Sharks: “Well they began it!” Both: “And w’ere the ones to stop it once and for all…tonight!”— “Quintet” from West Side Story) as far from ethics as one can get, and this is exactly what Professor Reynolds is endorsing. That ethically bankrupt approach, and the fact that our political system has been operating by it at least since 2000, accounts for today’s poisonous culture in Washington D.C. It has crippled both the Bush and Obama administrations, paralyzed the government and divided the public. If political and intellectual leaders embrace this reaction to misconduct in one setting, they are implicitly accepting it as a justifiable strategy, and it is not. It is a brutal, unethical strategy.

Students who interfere with invited speakers’ efforts to challenge or enlighten university audiences should be disciplined; it doesn’t matter whether the speaker is an ex U.S.general or Ilsa, Wolf of Dachau. Interfering with speech isn’t protected speech, nor is it ethical protest. That behavior isn’t a “standard of behavior,” it is a defiance of civilized standards. The President, Hillary Clinton and other targets of the right should be allowed to speak, listened to politely, and then confronted, if they are confronted, with civil and articulate rebuttals on the basis of their words and ideas. For a university professor to advise otherwise is unconscionable. For one who is respected and followed as extensively as Reynolds to write this defies reason.

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Spark: Instapundit

Sources: NPR, National Review

“Ethics Dunces Assemble!” Supporting Vigilante Justice In The U.S.

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

“You know…morons.”— The Waco Kid, “Blazing Saddles.”

This really does explain a lot…

The Waco Kid’s (Gene Wilder) sage description of “the common clay” to Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) when the latter was devastated by his treatment at the hands of the good (but  racist) citizens of Rock Ridge often comes to mind in times like this, when I see a large portion of the public, pundits and the media taking a position that is not merely ethically indefensible, but suggestive of brain death.

Such a position is the rush to rally around Emilio Chavez III, an understandably enraged father who caught a naked peeping Tom masturbating outside his  teenaged daughters’ bedroom window. From media reports:

“Police said Emilio Chavez III, his brother and a family friend beat the alleged peeper, Dylan Maho, 29, so badly that he was hospitalized, a local television station reported. The district attorney wants to charge Mr. Chavez with aggravated battery, a third-degree felony that could land him in jail for three years…Mr. Maho is in stable condition at the hospital and will be charged with voyeurism, a fourth-degree felony that only brings between one and two years of jail time.”

The headlines in the majority of national news sources—all what the mainstream media would call “the conservative media”— that have covered this story, for this is the feature of the incident that they deem makes it “national news,” is the “Believe It or Not!” angle that so backward are the priorities of the U.S. justice system that the father will face harsher punishment for his conduct than the sick pervert will for his! Here’s passage and quote included in most of the reports:

“Community members voiced their outrage and sympathy for their neighbor’s plight. ‘There’s a naked man outside his daughter’s window,” Mr. Chavez’s neighbor Bill Morgang told the station. “I think he was well within his rights chasing him down and beating him.”’

The overwhelming majority of the online comments to these news reports agree with Morgang.

From the Washington Times: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Dunce: Fox News”

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments
Bradley then, Chelsea now.

Bradley then, Chelsea now.

Responding sharply to a commenter’s expressed criticism of the argument that convicted classified data leaker Bradley, now Chelsea, Manning, sentenced to Federal prison and seeking treatment as a trans-gendered female, ought to have his treatment needs served by prison authorities at public cost, Ethics Alarms’ own expert on such matters (from Australia), provided this fascinating overview of U.S. law and medical ethics on the topic. Here is zoebrain’s Comment of the Day on the recent post flagging Fox News’ juvenile mockery of Manning’s gender issues, Ethics Dunce: Fox News:

“There are two disputes here. The first is whether prisoners have a right to medical treatment, and if so, to what degree.I’ll deal with that first.

“Brown v. Plata 131 S.Ct. 1910 (2011):  “To incarcerate, society takes from prisoners the means to provide for their own needs. Prisoners are dependent on the State for food, clothing, and necessary medical care. A prison’s failure to provide sustenance for inmates “may actually produce physical ‘torture or a lingering death.’ ” ….Just as a prisoner may starve if not fed, he or she may suffer or die if not provided adequate medical care. A prison that deprives prisoners of basic sustenance, including adequate medical care, is incompatible with the concept of human dignity and has no place in civilized society.” Continue reading →

Ethics Mega-Dunces: The Republicans

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments
"You're right, Abe; they're all rock-heads. I'd like to beat some sense into them with a big stick, but I have no arms."

“You’re right, Abe; they’re all rock-heads. I’d like to beat some sense into them with a big stick, but I have no arms.”

Not a single invited member of the Republican leadership accepted an invitation to attend the official March on Washington anniversary event yesterday.

This is practically all that needs to be said. That fact alone is sufficient to show an appalling lack of leadership, respect, common sense, common purpose, values and priorities within the highest reaches of the party.

Everyone had a “good reason,” of course—Boehner, Canter, McConnell, McCain, Romney, both Bushes,  But the excuses don’t matter. A responsible, intelligent, public minded, fair and  statesmanlike political organization would have made certain that a representative delegation attended, and prominently so. How or why no major Republican figures were present is irrelevant. If the commemoration of the March on Washington, Dr. King’s iconic and transformative speech, and the cultural transformation of America that they helped achieve are as important to the party as they must be--because of the GOP’s origins, because of what it represents, and because, dammit, Republicans are Americans, then attendance was mandatory. They manage to make it to the State of the Union and Presidential inaugurations, because they recognize it as important to do so. They should be able to recognize that showing solidarity with the  Democrats, African-Americans and the public on the core principle of equal rights for all is even more important. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Colin Powell

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments
I will file this under "disillusionment."

I will file this under “disillusionment.”

Another prominent African-America leader lept on board the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmmerman Ethics Train Wreck Sunday, when General Colin Powell aided and abetted the increasingly successful effort by divisive activists to re-write the history of the George Zimmerman trial into an example of a racist all-white jury freeing the murderer of a black man in defiance of the evidence and justice.

Appearing on “Face the Nation,” the former Secretary of State said that he thought the jury’s verdict “will be seen as a questionable judgment on the part of the judicial system down there,” adding that he didn’t know if it would have “staying power.” Powell’s comment was an especially pusillanimous fog on the issue, not explicitly endorsing  the criticism of the verdict—“Now I never said it was questionable, just that it will be seen that way,” the General can claim—but appearing to support it nonetheless. How weak, irresponsible, and disappointing. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: ARod-Plunking Red Sox Pitcher Ryan Dempster

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I’ll admit it: I came thiiiiis close to designating Red Sox pitcher Ryan Dempster an Ethics Hero. Right after he intentionally threw a fastball  into Alex Rodriguez’s ribs on what would have been ball four, I was ready to write the post. Good for Dempster, I thought, making a statement for all the players who deplore steroids and the cheats who use them and for all the fans who feel that sociopathic, lying, greedy players who have debased the greatest game on earth with their use of PEDs. I continued to think that even after the Red Sox lost last night’s game against the Yankees, in no small part because Dempster put the Yankee third baseman, who continues to play while he appeals Major League Baseball’s suspension of him for this season and next, on base.

I was not, however, thinking clearly or ethically at the time.

Now, I am. Continue reading →