Ethics Dunces

Name Ethics: Well, the British Government Bureaucrats Are Still Worse Than Ours…

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

…I guess that’s encouraging in a faint-praise sort of way.

Seven-year-old Loki Skywalker Mowbray, pictured above, was recently denied a passport to accompany his parents on a family vacation to the Dominican Republic because the British Home Office, which is in charge of the nation’s immigration, security, and law and order, claimed it couldn’t print “Skywalker” on the document because of Disney’s copyright on the name. Some idiot told the shocked parents they either had to change the child’s name or get permission from Disney to use “Skywalker”—and we all know how reasonable Disney is about such things.

After an initial scare, non-morons in the Home Office prevailed eventually. The vacation wasn’t wrecked, and the child got to keep his name (Now watch Disney try to sue the parents.)

A more justified instance of government over-reach would have been questioning the fitness and judgment of parents who name their child after a Marvel villain (even in Norse Mythology Loki is a bad guy) and who feel compelled to saddle a kid with “Skywalker” because he happened to be born on May the 4th, as in “May the forthe be with you,” which is how Obi Wan said it after his front teeth fell out.

At least they didn’t name him “Chewbacca” or “Darth.”

Final tangential thought: Not too long ago Ethics Alarms used to have an entertainingly didactic British commenter whom I could count on to “pounce” on posts like this. I miss him…

Kamala Harris, the “Integrity? What’s Integrity?” Candidate

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

As an ethicist, I don’t have to agree with a Presidential candaidtes policies to find him or her ethical, unless a policy are per se unethical (like validating terrorism by forcing a ceasefire on Israel before it has destroyed Hamas), involves not enforcing laws (like at the Southern border) or violates the Constitution (as with Gov. Walz’s declarion that “hate speech” should be illegal). However, as an ethicist, it is explicitly my business when a Presidential candidate demonstrates a cynical contempt for integrity as an ethical value, for integrity is one of the most important of ethical values. An individual without integrity cannot be trusted.

Harris’s whole campaign is an effort to pretend integrity is a myth. Bernie Sanders issued a damning verdict on Harris (and himself) when he told NBC’s “Meet the Press “ that despite her efforts to moderate her positions since taking over from Joe Biden on the top of the ticket, such as purporting to support fracking and opposing “Medicare for All,” Harris was just being “pragmatic” and “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”

In other words, lying.

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From the “Ethics Corrupters” File: “Law and Order SVU,” “Part 33.”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I got sick of “Law and Order: SVU” long ago, so this 2019 episode, from the 20th season (and it’s still going!) escaped my ethics radar until I reached it by accident this morning and had to watch the whole thing as an obligation to Ethics Alarms.

The episode titled “Part 33” is a perfect example of how popular culture is corrupting American values and ethics problem-solving skills with Hollywood’s constant propaganda opposing personal responsibility, the Rule of Law, and promoting emotion-based judgement rather than decisions based on fact and logic.

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The Teamsters: Saving Democracy By Being Undemocratic

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

…you know, like rest of the Establishment Left.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, one of the US’s largest and most powerful labor unions, declined to endorse a candidate for President. This was widely seen as a rebuke of Kamala Harris, but it also revealed the hypocrisy and ethics rot at the union’s core (and, sad to say, most unions’ cores). The Teamsters, as usual, polled members on their Presidential preferences prior to making an endorsement. The September telephone poll showed 58% of Teamsters members supporting Republican candidate Donald Trump, and 31% said they support Harris. Too close to call? The union justified its decision by citing major political divides among its membership and dissatisfaction with each candidate’s stances on key union priorities; I call BS. Is there any doubt that if the numbers had been reversed, the Teamsters would have endorsed Harris and pointed to a nearly 2-1 polling result to justify their decision?

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Ethics Dunces: Rob McElhenney, Kaitlin Olson and the Hacks Who Wrote Their Material For The Emmys

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I usually ignore the Emmys unless something especially egregious happens on this perpetually unexciting and predictable awards show. Even the current topic, the rude and unfunny jibes of two C-list show-biz types at the expense of Meryl Streep during the latest installment, isn’t a big deal, just a provocative one prompting several ethics musings on the state of American culture and society.

Presenting the award for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series ( Streep was a nominee) Rob McElhenney and wife Kaitlin Olson engaged in this scripted banter:

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Accountability, Please. If or When Trump Loses the 2024 Election And Says It Was Rigged, Ethics Villain ABC Will Join In The Chorus That His Claim Is “Baseless” [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

During the (one hopes) final 2024 Presidential Debate, GOP nominee Donald Trump stated that “Crime here is up and through the roof, despite their fraudulent statements that they made. Crime in this country is through the roof.” Since Democratic appointee Kamala Harris was indicating disagreement, ABC moderator David Muir rushed to her aid, saying, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”

As you know, Muir believed his role in the debate was to”factcheck” Trump while letting Harris declare outright falsehood if she chose to. This time, Trump tried to rebut Muir, saying “…the FBI — they were defrauding statements. They didn’t include the worst cities. They didn’t include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud.”

Well, as usual Trump misused the word “fraud,”the FBI didn’t issue the jobs report, and if you think he is Satan, or Hitler, or Godzilla, you are not inclined to believe anything he says, but Trump was right and Muir was wrong in addition to being a biased and unethical debate moderator. Newly released data from the Dept. of Justice this week backed Trump. Okay, the crime didn’t literally break through any roofs, so I’m sure that characterization by Trump goes into the Washington Post’s Trump lies database, but still… This was DOJ’s survey from Bureau of Justice statistics  that includes crimes that may not have been reported to police. The annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) showed total instances of reported violent crime — including rape, robbery and aggravated assault — is up from 5.6 per 1,000 in 2020 to 8.7 per 1,000 in 2023.

The highest recent rate of violent crime during the Biden years was in 2022, when the survey counted 9.8 instances per 1,000 people over the age of 12 being victims, Rape increased from 1.2 incidents per 1,000 in 2020 to 1.7 in 2023. Robbery rose from 1.6 per 1,000 in 2020 to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2023. Aggravated assault rose from 2.9 per 1,000 in 2020 to 4.5 per 1,000 in 2023. As Crime Prevention Research Center president John Lott tried to explain in a piece published after Muir’s deliberately misleading “factcheck,”

Here’s the full report, and like so many statistics, one can spin and arrange the numbers to make various points, some contradictory. What you can’t do with them, at least ethically, if you are an alleged journalist is interrupt a Presidential debate to make one candidate look dishonest in front of a national audience because you and your employers want his opponent to win the election.

Muir and ABC should suffer serious consequences for their conduct, but they won’t. At very least, both should correct the false impression left by Muir and apologize to the public, and not just in a quiet tweet. That won’t happen either.

ABC is biased, corrupt and untrustworthy.

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Source: Legal Insurrection

Opera Ethics! A Diva Attack In Seoul

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Yikes. A performer who did this in one of my shows would have to enter the witness protection program, because I would be hunting her down. With a crossbow.

South Korean tenor Alfred Kim, responding to uproarious applause, was performing an encore of “E lucevan le stelle,” a famous aria in the third act of Puccini’s “Tosca” at an opera house in Seoul. His co-star, celebrated soprano Angela Gheorghiu who was singing the title role, marched onstage and demanded that he stop.

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The Dumbest Ethics Train Wreck Ever Is Still Barreling Down The Tracks!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Australian Olympian Rachael ‘Raygun’ Gunn has been named as the world’s top female breakdancer by the World DanceSport Federation. Raygun topped the ranking with 1,000 points thanks for her single win at the Oceania Continental Championship last October. This, despite her losing every match in the field during the Paris Olympics each by scores of 18-0, and thoroughly embarrassing the “sport,” herself, and the Games themselves.

So how could this academic narcissist, Dr. Rachael Gunn, who hopped around like a kangaroo in her Olympic routine be the #1 ranked women’s breakdancer in the whole wide world in the latest rankings when her total score of 0 points put her in last place among the 16 breakers in the main Olympic competition?

My answer: it’s the “March of Folly” phenomenon. Everyone knows this honor makes no sense, and everyone knows that such a self-evidently absurd rankig will discredit everyone involved. However, just as in the Charge of the Light Brigade, the launching of the Challenger Space Shuttle, and so many other disasters throughout history where it seemed easier to just stay on the path to chaos than to stand up and scream, “NO! Stop! This is insane!” the World DanceSport Federation decided it was easier to look ridiculous than to avoid an obvious fiasco.

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More Evidence That Winston Churchill’s Misquoted Statement About Democracy Is Right Even If He Didn’t Say It….

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Winston Churchill is often quoted as as observing that democracy is “the worst form of government except for all others.” In truth he was not so cynical: what he really said in a speech to the House of Commons in 1947 was that “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, and that public opinion expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.”

If he were around today and watching recent developments in our depressing Presidential race, however, I think Winston might go with the misquoted version.

Item: MoveOn, a progressive public policy advocacy group that has been much-derided on Ethics Alarms over the years, is partnering with Ben & Jerry’s radical Left co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield to release a special Kamala Harris-inspired ice cream flavor. (Send in related joke suggestions, by all means.) Limited edition pints of “Kamala’s Coconut Jubilee”are being released in a limited edition; it is a coconut flavored ice cream layered with caramel and topped with red, white and blue star sprinkles. Why coconut? This, apparently. (Winston is starting to roll already.)

The new flavor will be the center of the “Scoop the Vote” free ice cream truck tour that kicks off next week. Cohen and Greenfield will be on board while the truck makes 20 stops in the so-called battleground states as part of a push to register voters. Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, told USA TODAY that the tour aims to inspire voters to register and cast their votes for Harris in the 2024 presidential election, noting that even non-political activities like getting free ice cream have an impact on the election.

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I Know, I Know: “The Heart Wants What the Heart Wants.” Tough. Grow Up.

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Norfolk Southern’s board has fired CEO Alan Shaw after an investigation found that he has been “engaging in a consensual relationship with the company’s chief legal officer,” the colorfully named Nabanita Nag. She was also canned from her positions as executive vice president corporate affairs, chief legal officer and corporate secretary.

Those are the lovebirds above.

Because this is a firing for cause, Shaw might have lost millions of dollars in what otherwise would be a “golden parachute.” This kind of vertical messing around is always stupid and unethical (but so romantic!), but it is particularly reckless for a CEO who is on metaphorical thin ice already, for then the “King’s Pass” is not going to be in play.

His two-year tenure included bitter labor negotiations that nearly resulted in an economy-crippling strike and the horrific derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that released tank cars full of toxic materials. This was not a good time for the company’s chief executive to go all Woody Allen.

But there is never a good time. When Cupid’s dart strikes, the only professional, ethical decision is to suck it up and resist, or play Edward the Eighth and abdicate “for the woman you love.”

The fact that Shaw was married to someone else should have giving him a strong hint that his ethics alarms should be ringing.