Ethics Dunces

Comment of the Day on “Ethics Triple Dunces…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

[In his Comment of the Day, Jeffrey Field endorses the actions of both the teacher and the superintendent that I labeled “ethics triple dunces” for making students write letters lobbying for more money in school budgets, raises some other provocative ethics issues related to teacher and student conduct, and questions my indictment of the ethics of the teaching profession. I think he’s wrong on every count (you can read my response with my original post), but it’s a terrific comment.]

“When I was a 5th grade teacher teacher at Clements school in North Alabama, the all-white Limestone County School Board voted to allow students the Martin Luther King holiday, but teachers would be required to work that day. So, partially in self interest and partially in empathy of the small percentage of black teachers, I got my 5th grade class to write letters to the board asking them to reconsider. Long story short, the board reversed position and everybody got a day off.

“Yes, I used this as a writing exercise, and I offer no excuses. You see, too many times teachers have students write a paper with no real purpose in mind. In this case, my students had a real purpose in penning a persuasive letter to the people who ran the schools (btw – no one was required to write the letter, but they all did). And boy, you should have seen the smiles and heard the whoops of joy the morning the Athens News Courier ran a story saying the board had reconsidered its position. Continue reading →

Ethics TRIPLE Dunces: Tramway Elementary Teacher Melanie Hawes and Lee County Board of Education Superintendant Jeff Moss

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

"MUST...WRITE...LETTER ....TO...DAD....

North Carolina state legislator Mike Stone is a budget hawk, and is supporting a budget-cutting proposal that could eliminate 9,300 positions in the public schools. It’s a contentious issue, and the representative has received many letters—including a plaintive one from his own third grader daughter, a student at Tramway Elementary, who was one of several students in her class directed by teacher Melanie Hawes to write to the  Republican and plead with him to save the jobs of their two teacher assistants.

“Our school doesn’t want to lose them,” she wrote. “Please put the budget higher, dad.”

Ugh. Ethics foul; in fact, three of them:

1. It is unethical for teachers to indoctrinate their students in political positions in which the teachers have a personal interest.

2. It is unethical to exploit children as lobbying tools, under the pretense of educating them.

3. It is extremely unethical to recruit a legislator’s 8-year-old daughter to carry a lobbying message. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Broward (Florida) Circuit Judge Barbara McCarthy

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Come on! How can you put a guy like this in jail?

Many Americans don’t comprehend the meaning of “justice.”  It is unfortunate that some of these Americans are  judges.

Ryan LeVin, 36, is a drunk, a drug abuser, a playboy, a scofflaw and a killer. He killed Craig Elford, 39, and Kenneth Watkinson, 48, as they were walking to their beachside hotel in 2009. LeVin was driving recklessly in his $120,000 Porsche 911 Turbo, ran them down, and  fled the scene. That was only the latest of his offenses: LeVin was already on probation in Illinois for crashing into a Chicago police officer and instigating a high-speed chase. He has more than 50 traffic violations. What really matters, however, is that Ryan LeVin is rich.

Because he is rich, when LeVin offered enough money to the widows of the two men he killed in his act of vehicular homicide, a Florida judge agreed to let him off with two years of house arrest rather than the 45 years in prison that you or I would serve for a similar crime. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Joe Klein and Chris Matthews

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

John Edwards agrees with Chris Matthews

Journalist Joe Klein has been a candidate for an Ethics Dunce award for a long time, because he has been ethically suspect or worse for a long time. His defining integrity moment came when he lied about his authorship of the Bill Clinton roman-a-clef, “Primary Colors.” Since that time, Klein has gradually evolved into a shamelessly biased and ethically muddled political commentator from the left. Too bad. He’s a perceptive guy and a wonderful writer, but he makes his living now shooting from the hip, so we seldom get the benefit of his best qualities.

It was inevitable that the Chris Matthews Show would allow Klein’s ethical blindness to reach full flower.  Matthews has been on his own journey of self-diminishment since MSNBC decided to become the anti-Fox; where once he could be counted on to treat the issues of the day fairly and avoid partisan cheerleading, the Obama years have seen him abandon any effort at objectivity or even-handedness. Matthews’ Sunday morning panel show now eschews ideological balance and has Matthews posing questions to a rotating group of reliable conservative-bashers, with an occasional straight journalist mixed in who at least pretends to be neutral.  On Sunday, Matthews asked his panel about the appropriateness of the Justice Department’s prosecution of uber-cad John Edwards for violations of the federal election laws. It’s not a bad question, and reasonable people can disagree about the answer. The charges against Edwards stem from solicitation of large cash gifts from two long-time friends and supporters while he was simultaneously running for president and trying to cover up the existence of his love-child with Rielle Hunter and the adulterous affair that spawned her.  The money was given directly to Hunter, raising a legal question as to whether it was really a campaign contribution at all. Continue reading →

Jerk of the Year: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Where Donald Trump is King

I know it’s only May, and I know that Rev. Jones is still out there somewhere, planning on burning a picture of Mohammad or making confetti out of the Quran or some other offensive stunt designed to attract the attention of Fox News and sell some tee shirts. I know Allan Grayson can surface at any time, and that Michael Moore is joining forces with Keith Olbermann, which is a good bet to make both of them more obnoxious. And I know Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michele Bachman and some other GOP candidates for president can be counted on to say or tweet outrageous things in the coming weeks and months. Yes, and Harry Reid is still running amuck, and there are plenty of athletes, singers and actors who will be embarrassing themselves, their profession and their species before the year is out.

Never mind all that. I’m ready to declare Donald Trump the Jerk of the Year.

I’ll admit my bias up front: I think Trump has been a contender for Jerk of the Year every year for at least two decades. Even I, however, never thought he was a big enough jerk to use the developing 2012 campaign for President of the United States—at a critical juncture in the nation’s history, with literally life-and death crises in the nation’s economy, housing market, and job markets, with the Middle East erupting and America involved in three armed conflicts, with a leadership vacuum at the highest levels of the government and with American trust and hope for the future at a record low—for personal ego gratification and to promote his cheesy, freak-show reality program “The Celebrity Apprentice.” But that’s what he did, soiling the news and  political discourse along the way by giving aid and support to the assortment of paranoids, wackos and racists who had been denying that Obama was a natural born citizen. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Dunce: Guitarist Carlos Santana”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Michael has posted the Comment of the Day regarding my post of Carlos Santana’s criticism of Georgia’s new anti- illegal immigration law. The post expresses my continuing amazement and dismay at the strong support for illegal immigrants in the media and in segments of the public, which I view as both irrational and impossible to defend without recourse to rationalizations and dishonesty. In his comment, Michael is less critical of these defenders as he explores the factors that could make reasonable people oppose efforts to crack down on illegals.

“I can understand why reasonable people are against laws that punish illegal immigrants. I understand your conviction that a law should be either enforced or repealed, but sometimes a law is a bad law that, for whatever reason, legislators cannot or will not turn into a good law (given your frequent posts criticizing Congress, you can understand why some bad laws are not changed). When such a bad law is in place, there is often sympathy for those who break it because reasonable people conclude that, if they were in the same position as those who break the law, they would break the law as well. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Guitarist Carlos Santana

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Legendary rock guitarist Carlos Santana thought it was appropriate to lecture a ballpark full of Atlantans when he was  honored with a “Beacon of Change” award at Sunday’s MLB Civil Rights Game at Turner Field. Pronouncing Georgia’s  new immigration law just signed into law by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal “anti-American,” the Mexican-born Carlos Santana said,“I represent the human race. The people of Arizona, the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Dear Carlos: If you can't say something responsible about immigration, please just shut up and play.

Later, he told reporters , “This is about fear, that people are going to steal my job. No we ain’t. You don’t clean toilets and clean sheets, stop shucking and jiving.”

Santana is entitled to express his opinion; he is even entitled to express stupid and ignorant opinions. But when he uses his fame, name recognition and a forum given to him as an honor to express a stupid, ignorant and irresponsible opinion, that is intolerable. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Tucson’s NBC Affiliate KVOA

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Next  Monday night’s“Law & Order: LA” episode involves “a crazed gunman” who “goes on a rampage at a political rally, killing a state senator.” Sound’s upsetting. Hmmmm...where have I heard of something like that happening?

Oh, right.

Tuscon, Arizona, where the NBC affiliate, KVOA  has decided that residents are not only too traumatized  to view such an episode “ripped from the headlines,” but apparently to be in the same city where anyone else can view it. Station president and general manager Bill Shaw explains that “the Tucson community is still going through the healing process” and NBC’s show has too many similarities to “that horrible day.” KVOA will broadcast the episode on May 17 starting at 1:05 a.m, because…gee, I can’t figure out what the logic is. To make the show as difficult and inconvenient as possible to see for those in the Tucson area who want to see it?  To punish NBC for broadcasting it at all? This is paternalism of the most offensive and insulting kind.

The censorship of the TV episode is an abuse of the station’s responsibility to the community, and if I was in a position to do so, I’d pull KVOA’s license. Who are the station execs to decide what network fare is or isn’t too traumatic for its viewers? Why would a Tuscon resident who would be traumatized by a fictional drama based on January’s tragic events in the city watch the show? Why shouldn’t a viewer who feels up to the task be allowed to see what everyone else in the country is watching? If the episode is a masterpiece, or sets off a national debate, what right does Bill Shaw have to take Tucson citizens—of all people— out of the debate?

The station’s decision is unfair, disrespectful, presumptuous, an abuse of power and, as is often the result of such ingredients, utterly, utterly stupid.

Ethics Dunce: Steelers Running Back Rashard Mendenhall

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Translation: "I am an Ethics Dunce."

Twitter is a wonderful invention; it used to require a blog to efficiently alert the world to one’s intellectual, logical and ethical deficiencies.  Now NFL star Rashard Mendenhall is using 140 characters to accomplish the same task, and doing a bang-up job of it, I must say.

Mendenhall has his employers, the Pittsburgh Steelers—not to mention his agent—scrambling to do damage control after the athlete emitted a series of provocative tweets in response to the death of Osama bin Laden. My personal favorite:

“What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Daily Kos Blogger “bal”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Did Past Paul Ryan make Future Paul Ryan a hypocrite, or vice-versa? Is that even possible?

I sometimes comfort myself with the fantasy that the extreme left websites like The Daily Kos are written and read solely by 15-year-olds. While this adds to my anxieties about the public schools’ incompetence at teaching basic skills like logic, analysis and argument, it soothes my fears that our nation’s policies and political discourse are being dangerously warped by millions of addled adults whose passion is untempered by even a modicum of fairness and common sense. In this spirit, I am hoping that bal is a teenager, which would explain, though not justify, his absurd post on Kos. I fear he is not.

He writes, “I guess it’s only when social programs help other people that they’re bad, because I haven’t seen Paul Ryan acknowledging how Social Security benefits helped him and his family in trying times. Continue reading →