Ethics Dunces

Ethics Dunces: Roland Mason and Phoebe Wilson

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The moral of this story is that something can be whimsical, charming, funny, creative and effective, and still be wrong.

Roland Mason and Phoebe Wilson both garnered 317 votes in the November 3 race for the Crested Butte, Colorado city council race. That tied them for third place. Four seats were up for election, with the fourth place finisher getting a two-year term instead of a four-year term, so a tie wouldn’t do.  There was a recount  but no change: 317 votes for each. Colorado law directs that such dead heats must be settled by “lot,” which in most towns means flipping a coin. But Roland Mason had a better idea.

Cowboy-Bear-Ninja. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: The Learning Channel, and Us

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Remember “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” the late, unlamented TLC cable hit that managed to  destroy the Gosselin family, turn a mother of eight young children into a single mom, and raise troubling questions about child labor and the exploitation of kids by the entertainment industry? Apparently the only thing the Learning Channel remembers about it is all the money the channel made from the show, because it has recruited yet another family to exploit and destroy. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: the Rosewood School

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Rosewood Middle School in Goldsboro, North Carolina needs money, so it decided to sell the one thing that it knew parents and students would pay for.

Grades.  I’m not kidding. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Tony Kornheiser

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Cincinnati Bengals receiver Chad “Ochocinco” is a talented professional football player whose specialty is self-promotion and media buzz. (His silly name change to reflect his uniform number is an example: his real name is the unspectacular “Chad Johnson.”) Several of his stunts have gotten him fined by the NFL, but he has received generally good reviews for his latest: a “Lambeau Leap” into the hometown Green Bay Packers crowd following a touchdown.

Ochocinco vowed to score a TD and then make a “Lambeau Leap” into the Green Bay crowd when the Bengals played the Packers. (The “Lambeau Leap” is a traditional celebratory maneuver reserved to Packer players, as Green Bay fans are not inclined to be hospitable to opposing team players invading their domain.) Johnson did make a touchdown, and did leap into the arms of fans in the end zone, some of whom appeared to be Bengal fans. It was an immediate sports show highlight. A few days later, the truth came out: Ochocinco had planted four fans for the purpose, buying them tickets and having them ready to catch him. The whole thing was a set up.

But Tony Kornheiser, the former Washington Post humor writer turned cuddly sports commentator on ESPN’s breezy show,“Pardon the Interruption,” pronounced the stunt “cool.”

No, it’s not cool. Athletes staging “moments” in games using paid confederates undermine the integrity of sports. There are people—my own father is one of them—who have reached the point of cynicism where he believes most, and maybe all, sports are like professional wrestling, staged for television and gullible fans. The fake “Lambeau Leap” reinforces his conviction, and makes even more trusting fans wonder, “What else is staged?” For his own publicity and fame (and the resulting increase in his value for endorsements), Chad Ochocinco took all of professional sports a little further down the road away from athletic integrity toward ersatz drama. And the reaction of Tony Kornheiser (not just Tony, to be fair; call this “selective ethics prosecution”) was that it was “cool.”

Fake masquerading as genuine and spontaneous is never “cool.” It is always unethical. In sports, fake threatens to permanently reduce the thrill and enjoyment of sports for everybody, by making fans wonder whether the amazing moment they saw was real.

People like Tony Kornheiser, who are paid to help us enjoy sports, should at least understand that.