Ethics Heroes

Ethics Hero: Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Those are four words I once would have bet I would never type.

Real. Honest. Brave. Beautiful. Thanks.

The Secretary of State deserves them though, for appearing in public, before the cameras, with no make-up and just a touch of lipstick. Let Fox News and the Matt Drudge mock: Hillary didn’t “forget her make-up.” She just decided “to hell with it.” And, as the Washington Post correctly noted, she looks just fine.

I just spent an event sitting next to the wife of a friend. She must be pushing 70, and her face and hair would not provide a single clue that she was more than 45, except for this: but for the movement of her eyeballs and occasionally her lips, her expression was completely unchanging.It was creepy. Her husband, whom I hadn’t seen in about ten years, was aging normally, but now his marriage of 40-plus years looked like he had robbed the cradle, albeit the cradle of a family afflicted with genetic facial paralysis. What’s the point? Why do American women feel the need to feign youth, even to those who they can’t possibly fool? Hillary looks like a real person to me; my friend’s wife looks like she may crumble into dust when the sunlight hits her. Continue reading →

The Curse of the Honest Vice-President and the Evolving President

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“EEEK! The President is EVOLVING!!!”

Vice-President Joe Biden sent Washington, D.C.’s pundits into a tizzy when he told  NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday that he was“absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage. It is amazing, when Biden has lapped all previous Vice Presidents in goofs, mistakes, outrageous statements and embarrassments that this statement—honest, reasonable and forthright—should be regarded as a serious blunder. What did he do wrong this time? As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post put it, Biden “committing the classic Washington gaffe of accidentally speaking the truth.”

And why is it a gaffe for this Vice President to tell the truth by stating his support for a position strongly favored by the majority of Democrats, and increasingly the public as a whole? Why would Biden be off message by embracing a core cause of the gay, lesbian and transgendered community, which is overwhelmingly in the Obama camp? The answer is that he has embarrassed the President by calling attention to the fact that President Obama has conspicuously avoided making such a clear and unequivocal statement on the issue, because he wants to avoid being open, honest, direct and truthful about his views on gay marriage until after the election. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: “Gaia” Scientist James Lovelock

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

James Lovelock

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened. The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.”

With that admirable statement of candor and humility, renowned earth scientist James Lovelock did what everyone in the climate change debate should be doing, and should have been doing all along. He admitted the uncertainty of climate science, the fallibility of models and projections, and the fact that the extent, speed, predictability and causes of climate change are still far from certain. If other scientists involved in this critical issue had Lovelock’s integrity,  perhaps ignorant pundits, journalists and politicians would not feel so justified in calling skeptics about climate change the equivalent of Holocaust deniers. Continue reading →

The Heroic Bird-Watchers and The Shame of the Star Princess

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If Captain Stubing had been at the helm, a tragedy might have been averted.

Rescue is a frequent topic on Ethics Alarms, usually in a disturbing context. We all have a duty to rescue others in peril, but we should never underestimate the powerful forces that often work against that duty. Rescue can be dangerous or frightening, and often there are perplexing questions about when an individual has done enough to ensure a rescue, and what constitutes “enough,” especially if the rescue fails.

In March, the Star Princess—a luxury cruise ship operated by Carnival—was on a cruise around South America. Three of the passengers were bird-watchers, who eschewed shuffleboard and the other fun activities organized by whoever was the counterpart to Lauren Tewes on “The Love Boat” to use their binoculars and telescopes to spot seabirds from the ship’s decks.

It was March 10 when one of the bird-lovers, Jeff Gilligan from Portland, Oregon., saw a boat with a person standing up in it, waving a dark piece of cloth. The vessel was at least a mile away.  Another Oregon bird-watcher, Judy Meredith, told reporters that when she focused her lenses on the boat, it was clear to her that the man waving the cloth was trying to get the Star Princess’s attention, and that the boat was drifting, without an engine. She went inside to try to alert the crew about the situation. After she talked to one crew member, she says, he called the bridge and she talked him through what she and Gilligan had seen.”I was trying to have a sense or urgency in my voice — and tell them that the boat was in distress, and they were trying to get our attention.” Another crew member used Gilligan’s telescope to look at the drifting boat, and confirmed their assessment. The boat was drifting in the open seas and in peril. Gilligan said that at that point “We were a bit relieved because he had confirmed that he had seen what we were describing. We expected the ship to turn back or stop or something.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Jackie Robinson (1919-1972)

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Yesterday, the media, history buffs and Kate Winslet fans were obsessed with remembering the Titanic, sometimes even with proper reverence to the 1500 men, women and children who lost their lives in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. A strong argument could be made, however, that the most significant event that occurred on April 15 took place in 1947, in Brooklyn, New York. For that was the day that Jackie Robinson ran out to his position at first base as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and became the first African- American to play baseball in the Major Leagues since the earliest years of the game.

With that act, and his epic heroism for the rest of the season, Robinson changed baseball, sports, American society and history. It was a cultural watershed in a nation that had been virtually apartheid since the end of the Civil War, a catalytic moment that served notice that racism was no longer the future of America. Robinson’s dramatic debut in 1947 was more than a year before President Harry Truman desegregated the military, and seven years before the Supreme Court ruled that “separate is inherently unequal” in declaring public school segregation unconstitutional. Further down a difficult road that has not ended yet were the crusade of Rev. Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights Act, Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, but it was Jackie Robinson who led the way.

And no one should ever think that he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It wasn’t merely the opportunity. It was him. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Ashley Judd

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Actress Ashley Judd (Full Disclosure: I am a long-time fan) finally has had it with snarky and degrading public speculation about her face, her weight, her appearance, and whether the star of TV’s “Missing” has “had work done,” and properly slams the celebrity media and those journalists who either write about her like she’s a competitor in a dog show or question her conduct and character based on their assessment of what she “should” look like.  Her verdict: it’s misogyny. The acting member of the Judd family has written a passionate, perceptive, articulate (if you forgive occasional lapses into feminist jargon, like objectification otheration, and (yuck)  heteronormative) and courageous essay over at the Daily Beast. If you have a daughter, have her read it. If you have a son, have him read it too. Heck, everybody should read it….here.

I wonder if the Daily Beast editors read it.  Here is Ashley Judd, eloquently pleading that women should be assessed base on how they do their job rather than on their perceived sex appeal, and where does the website post it?

On the page called “The Sexy Beast.”

You have a lot of work to do, Ashley, but you’re fighting the right fight.

Brava.

Ethics Hero: The American Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Well, I'll be hornswoggled! INTEGRITY!

The mainstream media and left-of-center pundits managed to leave criticism of President Obama’s bizarre—for a lawyer and supposed authority on Constitutional law, and yes, for a President too—assertion that there was something “unprecedented” about the Supreme Court declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional, and something inappropriate for this to be done by “unelected” judges, to conservative sources, an increasingly common and deplorable technique that allows the Left to thereafter discredit legitimate and non-ideological observations as “partisan.” Thus it was a relief, and a credit to the organization, when the reliably liberal American Bar Association weighed in with the same critique of the President’s comments, with similar intensity. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: National Guard Sergeant Dennis P. Weichel Jr. (1983 -2012)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

There are those who say that human beings are incapable of truly altruistic conduct, and that everything we do, no matter how outwardly generous and selfless, is in fact self-serving. There are others, and I am among them, who believe that human beings have natural ethical instincts that lead them to sacrifice for the benefit of society generally, those in peril, and those who are weaker than themselves, especially children. Those instincts can be nurtured by our culture or extinguished by it, but I believe that they are there in most of us….for a while, at least, sometimes weak or dormant, but there, nonetheless.

They were obviously there in Specialist Dennis P. Weichel Jr. of Providence, Rhode Island, a National Guardsman serving in an Afghan province east of Kabul. On March 22, he left the 16-ton gun truck he was riding in to disperse local children who were wandering in front of his heavily armored convoy, searching for treasure, the brass shell casings that could be melted down for other uses or be sold.  Suddenly a small girl saw a casing and ran into the path of one of the huge military vehicles. Weichel, a father of three, dashed to her, grabbed her, and threw her to safety unharmed. The gun truck struck the Guardsman instead, fatally injuring him.

Weichel was engaged to be married. He is the first member of the Rhode Island National Guard to die in Afghanistan.

Nothing can erase the tragedy of the U.S. serviceman who turned mass murderer in Afghanistan a month ago, and Weichel’s heroism is unlikely to change any hearts and minds there. That wasn’t Weichel’s objective anyway. He saw a young life in danger and acted, risking his own. It would be a better United States if all of us were raised to react as he did, and if our culture more unambiguously encouraged our best instincts rather than our worst ones. The cliché mouthed by politicians is that our military combat personnel are fighting for American values. Dennis Weichel demonstrated that they also carry American values with them, and in his case, he displayed the very finest.

Weichel was promoted posthumously from specialist to sergeant and awarded the Bronze Star, which is appropriate, and Rhode Island’s flags are being flown at half-mast. The honor he most deserves, however, is to be remembered and emulated by the rest of us.

Ethics Hero: Kendra Wilkinson

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“I have no talent. I have nothing to offer.”

Are you paying attention, "Sitch"?

With that honest, candid, unadorned, modest and undeniably true self-assessment in a recent interview with People magazine, cable reality show star (“Kendra”) Kendra Wilkinson instantly became an Ethics Hero, a role model for other empty-shell pop culture celebrities, and my favorite Hugh Hefner girlfriend of all time.

Now if Kendra’s integrity could only persuade Nicole Richie, Snookie, “The Situation,” Paris Hilton, Megan McCain, Bristol Palin, Tori Spelling, Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag, Ivanka Trump, Jack and Kelly Osborne, Michael Lohan, and, of course, all the Kardashians, to make the same confession and voluntarily hurl themselves into a landfill (in Jersey, of course), our trivialized, brain-rotting culture can finally start to heal itself.

But you don’t have to go to the landfill, Kendra.

You do have something offer.

Ethics.

Ethics Hero: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Today the National Football League announced the following response to the results of its investigation of bounties being offered and paid by the New Orleans Saints to its players for injuring key opposition players in games. From the NFL press release:

“Commissioner Roger Goodell notified the New Orleans Saints today of the discipline that will be imposed on team management for violations of the NFL’s long-standing “bounty” rule that endangered player safety over a three-year period.

“Discipline for individual players involved in the Saints’ prohibited program continues to be under review with the NFL Players Association and will be addressed by Commissioner Goodell at a later date. The program included “bounty” payments for “knock-outs” and “cart-offs,” plays on which an opposing player was forced to leave the game. At times, the bounties even targeted specific players by name.

“The NFL’s extensive investigation established the existence of an active bounty program on the Saints during the 2009, 2010, and 2011 seasons in violation of league rules, a deliberate effort to conceal the program’s existence from league investigators, and a clear determination to maintain the program despite express direction from Saints ownership that it stop as well as ongoing inquiries from the league office.

“We are all accountable and responsible for player health and safety and the integrity of the game,” Commissioner Goodell said. “We will not tolerate conduct or a culture that undermines those priorities. No one is above the game or the rules that govern it. Respect for the game and the people who participate in it will not be compromised.”

“A combination of elements made this matter particularly unusual and egregious,” Commissioner Goodell continued. “When there is targeting of players for injury and cash rewards over a three-year period, the involvement of the coaching staff, and three years of denials and willful disrespect of the rules, a strong and lasting message must be sent that such conduct is totally unacceptable and has no place in the game.”

…Based on the record, Commissioner Goodell has imposed the following discipline on Saints management: Continue reading →