Ethics Heroes

Ethics Dunce: Safeway…Ethics Hero: Ryan Young. Justice? Waiting…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

“You’re suspended, Kent.”

I’ve asked many times on Ethics Alarms why so many Americans stand by, inert and passive, when a fellow citizen is in peril.  Maybe the stunning ethics blindness exhibited by Safeway in a recent incident is part of the answer.

Ryan Young, who works in the meat department of a Safeway grocery store in Del Rey Oaks, California, was on the job when he witnessed a man beating a pregnant woman, apparently his girlfriend. Young told the man to stop, but he continued with his assault, shoving and kicking the her.  Young jumped over his counter, pushed him away, and ended the attack.

His reward was to be suspended without pay. Safeway has a policy that directs employees to summon security personnel and not to personally intervene when they see a crime or fight in progress. Even though police confirm that Young may have saved the woman and her unborn child from serious injury, the company is insisting that Young’s conduct warranted discipline, not praise. Continue reading →

Editor, Plagiarist and Ethics Dunce Extraordinaire Robert Ripley Meets His Worst Nightmare…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

….and that nightmare is Duane Lester, a hard-working, honest, courageous, organized and determined blogger who wasn’t going to let a newspaper rip him off and get away with it. Lester researched and posted an original local news story, a true scoop, and days letter was shocked to find that a local paper, the Oregon Times Observer, had lifted his entire post and put it on the paper’s front page, without credit, permission, or attribution. Shocked and unprepared for such flagrant and shameless appropriation of his labors, he researched the issue, wrote a letter, and then visited the paper to demand payment. Brilliantly, he also brought along a friend with a video camera.

The whole story, as well as the enlightening and satisfying confrontation between the Blogger and the Word Thief, is on the resulting video. There is a lot to see here.

Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: Seniors at Lexington (Ky) Catholic High School

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The fun prom…in the parking lot.

When Lexington (Kentucky) Catholic High senior Hope Decker, 18 tried to take sophomore Tiffany Wright, 16, to the school’s senior prom as her date, school officials told the couple that they would not be admitted, because their unholy same-sex coupling violated the Catholic Church’s teachings. Defiant, the couple tried to enter the school’s gymnasium that night, where the prom was held, but as promised, their tickets were refused. So their fellow students held an impromtu protest prom outside the official one, in the parking lot. They played music from their cars, and set up a table for refreshments.

“We had a wonderful night, and we were surrounded by true friends,” Wright said. “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”

Here is what else she will remember for the rest of her life: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: The Boston Red Sox

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Hold onto this one, Derek.

They can’t play baseball very well right now, but the Boston Red Sox*, my home town team, currently in last place in the American League East, knows how to make an ethical and generous gesture of respect and gratitude.

It has been largely forgotten now, but pitcher Derek Lowe was a big disappointment to the Red Sox during the regular 2004 season, barely winning as many games as he lost and pitching to a high earned run average. In the play-offs and World Series, however, Lowe was as good as good as a starting pitcher could be, going 3-0 and winning the clinching games of both the team’s stunning comeback play-off series win over New York and it sweep of St. Louis to win Boston’s first World Championship since 1918.

Tired of Lowe’s inconsistency and unpredictability (he had a reputation of partying too hard, especially on road trips), the Red Sox let him leave as a free agent after the 2004 season. Since 2004 he has been for the Atlanta Braves what he often was for Boston: a sometimes brilliant starting pitcher with a deadly sinkerball, and for the Red Sox, a distant memory. Last season Lowe’s home was robbed, and among the more than $90,000 of baseball memorabilia that was stolen was his Championship ring from that 2004 season. His insurance covered the monetary loss, but the ring, Lowe’s personal symbol of his key role in a Historic sports event, was lost forever.

Last week, when he was in Boston with his latest team, the Cleveland Indians, Lowe beat the Red Sox as a starting pitcher, and later received a message from the Red Sox owners that they wanted to give him something. Then John Henry, Larry Lucchino and Tom Werner, the trio of tycoons who have owned the team for a decade,  personally presented him with a 2004 World Series ring to replace the one that was stolen from his Florida home. Continue reading →

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.