Ethics Quotes

Unethical Quote of the Month: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!…Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us…This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!…Our country is now in serious and unprecedented trouble…like never before…Our nation is a once great nation divided!..The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”

—-Republican Designated Buffoon Donald Trump via Twitter, in the wake of last night’s election results.

Stay classy, Donald.

I can’t stand another picture of Donald Trump, so here is a great photo of a mastiff with a friend. I love mastiffs.

While most Americans instinctively understand that the great strength of our democracy is that after the votes are counted, we stand behind our collective decisions and support our chosen leaders. Not Trump. He doesn’t comprehend that vile comments like these, published to the world, are not merely irresponsible but also unpatriotic.

There is an upside to Trump’s poor impulse control, however. The possibility that a Romney administration might have found any role for Trump at all should make everybody, even die-hard partisan Republicans and end-of-civilization Rush Limbaugh conservatives feel better about last night’s vote tally.

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Pointer: Ron Sarro

Source: The Examiner

 

Unthical Quote of the Week: Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Very sadly for the country, for a charity — and for the president himself, President Obama has just missed the deadline and now a charity of his choice will not be receiving $5 million — or as I stated much more than $5 million.”

—- Real state tycoon, self-promoting birther and Romney supporter Donald Trump, blaming President Obama for not accepting his challenge to produce various personal records in exchange for Trump sending $5 million dollars to a charity of the President’s choice.

What a mind-boggling, species-embarrassing ass.

OK, this isn’t really Donald Trump; it’s one of the evil, people-eating monsters from “Killer Klowns From Outer Space,”  one of the cleverest tongue-in cheek horror films. But there’s really not much difference, when you get right down to it. Mitt Romney shouldn’t want the support of either of them. In fact, I’d take the clown over the Donald.

Trump also noted that his money could have been used to swell the relief funds for Superstorm Sandy. That’s right: According to Trump, President Obama is responsible for Donald Trump not being generous, charitable and patriotic by  contributing to help the victims of a disaster.

I know that it is a tight election contest, and no candidate should be expected to toss away any voter or supporter—“Any port in a storm,” and all that. (Remind me to add that one to the ratioanalizations list.) Nevertheless, Mitt Romney would bolster credibility and reputation for integrity if he repudiated this awful man, and pronounced him what he is beyond all argument: a vile, irresponsible, offensive buffoon whose admiration, endorsement friendship or support sullies and diminishes anyone and anything he bestows it upon.

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Facts: The Blaze

Graphic: Release Donkey

Unethical Quote of the Month: Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock

/ Jack Marshall / 73 Comments

“The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother. I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

—–Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock in Tuesday’s televised debate, in response to a question regarding the candidates’ position on abortion.

“If found, please contact Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who will answer the phone by saying, “URUHHHHGHHAR???”

Ah, so few words, so many options for Ethics Alarms!  Should we make Richard Mourdock an Ethics Dunce? The Incompetent Elected Official of the Week, perhaps? Since it is his quote that opened up this cornucopia of possibilities, I decided that it should be the quote that gets nod.

How is Mourdock’s quote unethical? Let me count the ways:

1. It needlessly confuses right and wrong. If God intends that a pregnancy should result from a rape, then one can argue that the rapist is just doing God’s will. I know that people like Mourdock answer that the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this argument does nothing but undermine the victims of rape (“If God wanted this, is it wrong for me to complain? To reject the pregnancy?”) and hands a rationalization to rapists.

Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Drew Curtis’ Fark

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

“Seduced by your teacher at 16 thereby robbing of your childhood, oh yeah that’s surely worth 10 million…”

—Drew Curtis’ Fark, satirical news aggregation site, commenting on a mother’s 10 million dollar lawsuit against Brooklyn and the teacher who had repeated sex with the mother’s 16-year-old son, whom she was supposed to be tutoring.

Erin Sayer—teacher, child molester, sex fantasy. “How to GO kid! I’d hit that, for sure!”

Let me begin by saying that Fark is one of my favorite sites. It is consistently irreverent and funny, and its news links have inspired some of the most interesting exchanges on Ethics Alarms. Let me also say that I understand that the point of the site is to make snarky, often irreverent, sometimes obscene and intentionally outrageous tongue-in-cheek comments about news stories  trivial, major and odd, and that for the most part, it accomplishes its mission with wit and good humor.

This comment, however, is wrong, unethical, because whatever value it has as humor is outweighed by the harmful attitude it reinforces. Whether it is the  sentimental, , “Summer of 42” myth of the beautiful right-of passage of a teen-aged boy with the help of a loving, lovely, adult woman, or the macho “All right–I sure would have loved to have had a roll in the sack with MY hot high school teacher!” reaction of the locker room crowd, the idea that an adult teacher seducing and having sexual relations with a minor student is anything but sexual assault, rape, and a dastardly breach of trust, position and power does affirmative and continuing harm. The currency and resiliency  of this enabling attitude (read the comments to any online news story about a female teacher prosecuted for having sex with a student) emboldens sexual predators in the schools, reinforces an indefensible double standard ( a male teacher who has sex with a female student is an unequivocal villain, but a boy being raped by a female teacher is a lucky stiff) ) and worst of all, makes student victims more vulnerable.

The cultural assumption that a boy who is seduced by a teacher has been given some kind of gift is in the same category as the claim that women who are raped secretly “want it.” It is important that this theme be rejected, which means that websites like Fark shouldn’t reinforce it even in jest, because the jest does reinforce it.  Hitting communities, schools and teachers with tough jury verdicts is an essential part of eliminating this far too common crime in our schools. Ten million dollars in damages properly states how wrong and intolerable the conduct is, and like all forms of rape, it is nothing to laugh at.

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Facts: Fark

Source, Graphic: Daily Mail

(Again, thanks to Jeff Field for catching a typo!)

Unethical Quote of the Week: Vice-President Joe Biden

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy — any hospital — none has to either refer contraception. None has to pay for contraception. None has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.”

—– Vice-President Joe Biden, in a rare moment during Wednesday’s Vice Presidential candidates debate when he wasn’t interrupting, mocking, shouting, or otherwise setting new lows for national debate civility and decorum, on the topic of the Administration’s contraception and abortion mandate. The problem: it isn’t a fact. In fact, it isn’t true at all.

I was not going to touch on the substance of any of the debates, because I do not want to play the “fact check” game that has already warped the campaign and given partisan journalists the opportunity to misrepresent any the statement of any politician—usually a Republican—whom they disagree with as “a lie.” Perhaps inspired by this trend, the Obama-Biden campaign’s strategy has devolved into calling Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan “liars” when 1) they may be mistaken, they may be inexact, they may be overstating, and they may be wrong, but are not lying, and 2) President Obama and Vice-President Obama, not to mention other Democrats involved in the campaign, have not set their own bars for accuracy, honesty and fairness any higher than the GOP side. But the refrain of “Liar!” has been so emphatic and repetitive that the fans of the Democratic ticket are adopting it as a rallying cry, usually without the slightest idea of whether there have been any actual lies or not. Meanwhile, the tactic demeans the electoral process and our democracy. Columnist Dan Henniger expressed my feelings on this topic well when he wrote, before Wednesday’s debate: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Dana Balicki, Proud OWS Protester

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“There’s tens of millions of dollars spent protecting the perimeter so we’re shaking something up.”

—-Dana Balicki, Occupy Wall Street protester, on today’s “birthday” protest of about 1000 nostalgic OWS types that resulted in almost 150 arrests and a disruption of traffic and commuter travel, but, as ever, nothing coherent, useful or productive.

Well said.

Yes, this is Occupy in a nutshell: happily wasting the publics money despite rising deficits at all levels of government, inconveniencing honest people trying to make a living, and annoying as many  as possible without having anything constructive to contribute to the nation’s policy debates or to offer as practical solutions to its intensifying problems.

A year ago, I summed up the efforts of this irresponsible, arrogant, lazy, destructive group, and was too kind.

But 100% correct.

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Source: Wall Street Journal

Ethics Quote of the Day: Calvin Coolidge

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”

—-Calvin Coolidge, then Governor of Massachusetts, soon to be Vice-President and later President upon the death of Warren G. Harding, in a September 14, 1919 telegram to labor leader Samuel Gompers on the occasion of the Boston police department strike.

Cal made his words count.

The Boston police were fired for extorting the city, and Coolidge’s words were in the air when President Ronald Reagan responded to an illegal strike by air traffic controllers by firing the strikers and banning the union.

Now Chicago’s teachers are striking, not against the city management that is denying their demands, but against the children of the city and their families.

What would silent Cal say? I think I can guess. Harming children and families for higher wages is as much extortion as leaving a city unprotected against crime, and cannot be defended ethically. The defense will be, inevitably, “Well, management is unfair, and their offer is unjust. What are we supposed to do?”

The answer is: something else.

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Facts: Chicago Tribune

Source: Wikipedia

Graphic: Washington, Jefferson and Madison Institute

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Unethical Quote of This And Any Other Month: Bonnie Pollack

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

“It was a real dilemma. I decided to do the right thing.”

—-58-year-old Bonnie Pollack of Manhattan, a doctoral student in social welfare who lives in Manhattan, telling the Wall Street Journal about the time she threw away her husband’s absentee ballot after promising to mail it, because she knew he was voting Republican. She didn’t tell him about the fate of his vote for years.

This photo of a baby polar bear has nothing to do with Bonnie Pollack, but it cheered me up after having to think about her. UPDATE: Now I find out that it’s a toy, so I’m depressed  all over again. If you can’t even trust cute, all is lost.

Ms. Pollack’s jaw-dropping admission appears in an article called “The Marriage Problem That Comes Every Four Years,” but is an example of the year-round ethics problem that makes life intermittently miserable for us all: people whose concept of right and wrong consists of arrogance, self-righteousness, and a full embrace of “the ends justify the means” without any moderation.

Let us do an ethics audit of Bonnie’s words and deeds: Continue reading →

Disturbing Ethics Quote of the Week: Terri Miller

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

“It is very common for the teachers of the year, the championship coaches and the vanguards of education to be perpetrators…They will put on this mask of an exemplary teacher to look the same as a true exemplary teacher.”

—Terri Miller, president of the national organization Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation.

Erica Depalo (right): Teacher of the Year, vanguard, child-molester

Miller’s quote was prompted by the recent arrest of West Orange High School English teacher Erica DePalo, 33,  who is accused of having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old male student she taught in her honor’s English class. Prosecutors charged DePalo with first-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child. DePalo, who teaches Honors English to ninth and tenth-graders and is also the school’s junior varsity tennis coach, was honored as Essex County’s top teacher for 2011-2012  as part of the state Department of Education’s “New Jersey Teacher of the Year” program. Accepting her award, she said, “I am merely a representative of all the hardworking dedicated teachers, especially those with whom I work at West Orange High School … teachers who are committed to their students, who consistently advocate for their students, and who exceedingly go above and beyond their everyday duties and job descriptions.”

Yes, I’d say having sex with 15-year-old student qualifies as going above and beyond their everyday duties and job descriptions. Or perhaps below and beyond. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Yahoo Washington Bureau Chief David Chalian

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“[Mitt Romney and the GOP] are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”

–—Yahoo! Washington Bureau Chief David Chalian, caught on an open mike during the Republican National Convention and broadcast live. Chalian was promptly fired.

I didn’t believe it, to be honest. When I stumbled upon Rush Limbaugh ranting about how the broadcast media was trying to make the case that the Republicans should cancel their convention because of Hurricane Isaac heading to Louisiana, that it was callous and insensitive for them not to, I thought Rush was having one of his increasingly frequent paranoid moments. Yet incredibly, he was not. I personally heard the theme echoed on ABC, on CNN, on NBC and, of course on MSNBC, the latter repeatedly. How “awkward” it was going to be for the GOP to be “having a party” while people were again suffering in New Orleans. How hard it was going to be to explain, how “bad it would look.” Then came Chalian’s gaffe, which was, it is clear, not a sudden Pazuzu moment, but a symptomatic one, as he felt comfortable enough in a thoroughly hateful anti-Republican media culture to make his absurd and insulting comment. Continue reading →