Etiquette and manners

Badonkadonkeys

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
A face for radio, in D.C., anyway...

A face for radio, in D.C., anyway…

One would think—wouldn’t  one?— that I could listen to a baseball game on my car radio without being jolted intro an Ethics Alarms column, but nooooooo…

Here I am, sort-of listening to the Orioles game while running to the grocery store, and suddenly I hear two morning jocks have this exchange:

“So there, in line for the roller coaster, is this woman eating a funnel cake, and she has this comically huuuuge badonkadonk butt! It is the biggest butt I have ever seen! I couldn’t take my eyes off it!”

“How was she going to fit into the roller coaster seat with that badonkadonk?”

Well, I don’t think she could! And I came this close to saying, “Ma’am, would you please stand over here so I can take a photo of your comically gigantic badonkadonk butt as you eat your funnel cake?”

(hysterical laughter) Continue reading →

On The NFL Player’s Slur, The MSNBC Journalist’s Lie, Words, Conduct, Reason And Proportion

/ Jack Marshall / 60 Comments
If Riley Cooper were black, of course, then he would be "cool."

If Riley Cooper were black, of course, then he would be “cool.”

There are words, there are thoughts, and there is conduct. Thoughts are not unethical.  Conduct can be unethical. Words can be considered conduct when they are intended to have, or do have, material and measurable direct effects. Verbal abuse is conduct. Using a rude, vulgar or hateful word may not be verbal abuse.

Although the NFL and his team, the Philadelphia Eagles have every right, and some good reasons, to punish, suspend or even terminate Riley Cooper because a video reveals the Eagles player as saying, “I will jump that fence and fight every nigger here!” at a Kenny Chesney concert, I don’t see any conduct there, just words. He did not direct the racial slur at any individual, and there is no evidence that it was intended to harm or intimidate any African-Americans. He did not intend for the outburst to be publicized of communicated to anyone but the friends he said it to. On a pure  just punishment for harm intended or achieved basis, it is ridiculous for Cooper to be facing the loss of millions and his athletic career because he uttered a single racial slur that was captured on a video. It cannot be defended logically or as a reasonable position. Using one racial slur in that setting doesn’t prove that Cooper is a racist. It doesn’t prove hate. Even if it did, hate is not illegal or even unethical until the hater acts on it in an unethical way. And a word is just a word. We don’t, or shouldn’t, fear mere words in a rational American society. We shouldn’t have taboos, or people who “cannnot be named,” like in the Harry Potter books. The ease and certitude with which otherwise intelligent people capable of making judgments involving proportion and common sense blithely go along with the batty idea that uttering a word, only uttering it and nothing more, should result in devastating consequences, is frightening. It is a per se unethical position, because it is unfair, and incompetent, because it is essentially crazy.

Having said that, I can understand why, since so many people are irrational about words, why the NFL or the Philadelphia Eagles, as a business decision, may decide that they don’t want Cooper associated with them any more. That is a rational choice, and may even be the best choice. That is not the same as saying that he deserves that result. If the bulk of NFL fans are fanatically politically correct, then the NFL and its teams cannot afford to ignore that. Sorry Riley. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: My “Disrespectful” Comment

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

alas_header3

There has been an epic thread, over a week long now, I think, on Ampersand’s blog about the Zimmerman trial. It has been very illuminating and valuable for me, because the vast majority of the discussion consists of articulate knee-jerk liberals desperately searching for some way to hold on to the myth that Trayvon Martin was the victim of racial profiling, and that George Zimmerman, a closet racist cold-blooded killer, got away with murder. It is fascinating, if depressing. So many seemingly smart people who just “know” that Zimmerman was really guilty, and that Martin was gunned down because he was wearing a hoodie and carrying Skittles.

One of the outnumbered rational commenters there, a chap calling himself Conrad, responded to a persistent Zimmerman-hater who kept saying that it was “50-50” who started the fatal fight, and that it should disturb anyone that there is, therefore, a 50-50 chance that Zimmerman got away with murder. Conrad pointed out that the evidence, in fact, strongly suggested that Zimmerman did not provoke the physical encounter, and, sure enough, none of the  factual arguments to the contrary were deemed persuasive. I had intervened several times in the discussion (since it was launched in the blog post by Ampersand saying that my assertion that there were no legitimate grounds on which to challenge the jury’s verdict as anything but compelled by the evidence was biased), and this was the final straw.

I wrote, to Conrad:

“Fascinating, isn’t it? So many compassionate, fair, intelligent people tying their brains into knots because they have staked everything on a badly cast George Zimmerman being the epitome of a murderous, conservative, vigilante racist. Oops! He’s not white! Oops! His prom date was black! Oops! He voted for Obama! Oops! He never used a racial slur! Oops! He was jumped by the victim! Oops! He really was injured! Oops! The evidence and all the witnesses support his account! Never mind…you just KNOW he did it.

“This is the real lesson of this endless mess–how confirmation bias makes good people into bigots and persecutors.

“There is another piece of evidence: when police, while interrogating Zimmerman, told him that the entire altercation was caught on a security camera—a lie, to check his reaction–his instant response, according to witnesses, was “Thank God!” Clever guy, that George. Quick thinking!

“But this has never been about evidence. It was about making Obama’s base fear for their lives just in time for the 2012 elections, and increasing racial divisiveness for cynical political gain. At least I hope that was what it was about, because if there wasn’t some tangible reason for it, it is the stupidest self-inflicted wound on society that I can remember.”

I was shortly thereafter shocked to receive Ampersand’s stern reprimand for this comment.

“Jack, please reread the moderation goals for this blog. In particular, this bit: “Debates are conducted in a manner that shows respect even for folks we disagree with.” If you don’t find it possible to disagree with people while treating them with respect, then I’ll ask you to stop leaving comments here. Where would make me unhappy, so I hope it doesn’t come to that. –Amp”

He generously left my entire post up with a strike-through, making it unreadable as well as  hanging a scarlet letter on the content. Nice. Apparently it was all too disrespectful. (In fact, I would judge many of the approved comments in the thread far more directly insulting to specific commenters than mine, which impugned the whole anti-Zimmerman chorus.)

Your Ethics Quiz as we head into the first August weekend:

Was it too disrespectful? Continue reading →

More Juror Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

funny judgeFrom the Erie Times News:

An Erie woman, dismayed that she had been picked to serve as a juror in a weapons case, audibly harrumphed the worst curse word of them all, then huffed and puffed her way to her seat in the jury box. Erie County President Judge Ernest J. DiSantis was having none of it. When apprised of the outburst by the lawyers on the case, DiSantis came to the courtroom and called the woman, Kathleen Port, in front of the bench.

Port was off the jury, for start, DiSantis said. “But we are not done,” he said. DiSantis held Port in contempt of court and fined her $500 for the improper behavior. “You are totally out of line,” he said….Jury service is a duty of citizenship, he said.

“It is inconvenient at times,” he said.

Good.

That’s one less juror who will go on ABC to prove that her vote was meaningless and that she had no idea what she was doing.

____________________________

Pointer: ABA Journal

The Weiner Joke Orgy

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

Conservatives will grandstand about declining standards of dignity and decorum in the U.S., happily blaming the decline of gentility and civil public expression on rappers, Hollywood liberals and Joe “This is a big fuckin’ deal” Biden, until a Democrat with a name ready-made for bad sex puns and double-entendres shows up, and then its a mad stampede to bad taste.

Wow. Clever.

Wow. Clever.

What is it with the Right: is everybody 12? From Rush Limbaugh (“Weiner is hard to swallow…”) to The Daily Caller (“Weiner blows his lead”) to the New York Daily News (“Cuomo Spanks Weiner!”) to dozens of websites that can’t resist versions of “Will Weiner pull out?” and “Weiner Exposed,”  to Drudge (“Weiner Goes Soft”) to CNS (“Boehner Won’t Bite On Weiner”) to, naturally, the reliably crude New York Post ( “Too Hard To Stop!’…”Tip of the Weiner”…”Obama Beats Weiner”…”Weiner: I’ll Stick It Out”…and on, and on–okay, it’s  abrand, I get it ), apparently conservative pundits and headline writers can’t resist seeking naughty snickers from obvious gags.  Continue reading →

Web Shaming Ethics: A Wife’s Tantrum, A Husband’s Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

A fed-up husband named Jim decided to pave the ground for his impending divorce announcement by uploading a video of his wife’s ridiculous tantrum to YouTube, where it went viral. The wife, known to us only by her first name of Whitney, reacts to her husband’s refusal to “take her to the lake” with the kind of meltdown that would get any seven-year old to time-out. During her antics, Jim sounds alternately resigned and amused, playing the role of a long-suffering spouse who is tolerating, once again, his wife’s and abusive bizarre behavior.

But then he knew he was being recorded.

Here’s the video.

 

Obviously Whitney has problems. Jim, however, is a cur. Every marriage has its moments where one or both partners behave outrageously, childishly, disgracefully, foolishly, abusively, embarrassingly, and it is a vital component of the unspoken pact of wedlock that these moments are private and confidential. Marriage is a relationship of trust, the one safe environment in which husband and wife can be completely free to be themselves without fear of wider exposure, criticism or humiliation, because each is secure in the belief that the other’s conduct is governed by unconditional love. What Jim did to Whitney is a horrible betrayal, a vicious act of cruelty designed to cause humiliation and shame to someone who trusted him.

You can say he couldn’t stand her tantrums any more, you can say he had been pushed to his limit, you can say that she got what such immaturity deserves, you can find all manner of rationalizations. Nevertheless, placing this video of a private encounter on the web is indefensible and unforgivable, a breach of trust, honesty, fairness and respect. It causes me to wonder what other cruelties accumulated to make his wife into the unstable basket case she appears to be. She is the victim here.

Post script: Once again, I am faced here with the dilemma we have debated  before, regarding the ethics of my posting the video, the vehicle of the unethical web-shaming, and thus adding to the victim’s humiliation.  My decision is to post it, because the video is so easily accessible on the link provided and elsewhere, because realistically, my contribution to its circulation is minimal, and most of all, because it is presented here in a context that is very different from that of the original sites, like Gawker, that initially commented on it. This is presented as an example of unethical web-shaming, with the message that the treatment of the wife that it represents is unethical, unconscionable, and cruel. I do not believe there is sufficient basis for considering the issue without viewing the video itself. If this additional circulation adds to Whitney’s pain, I am genuinely sorry. My hope is that I can make some progress is stemming what I consider to be a dangerous social trend of using the internet as a weapon of revenge and gratuitous meanness.

_________________________________

Source: New York Daily News

Travel Ethics: Of Restroom Horror, Furious Apes and Dying Canaries

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

horrified_look

Perhaps with the sole exception of running into Larry Craig, my biggest fear in airport restrooms is encountering a bathroom stall that appears to have been last used by one of the baboons of the Kalahari. Why, in the name of humanity, would there ever be a reason for someone to leave a toilet seat dripping in urine, or the floor in front of the toilet covered and piled high with soaked and soiled toilet paper, or the toilet bowl filled with something that looks like it was deposited by an incontinent yak? Who among my civilized-appearing fellow travelers is secretly engaging in the manners of an Australopithecus? What ‘s the matter with these people? Continue reading →

The Cabbie’s Ethics Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Back of a cab

A frustrating aspect of my business travel, other than that raw fact that travel itself is inherently frustrating, is that I accumulate a backlog of ethics issues but am often unable to take the time to write about them until I return home, where I am again free of airplane delays, unreliable internet connections, sleepless nights and dimly lit hotel rooms apparently designed for the comfort of Jose Feliciano. The occasional compensation arrives in the form of enlightening conversations with fascinating people.

One of these was a cab driver on my latest trip. We shared the same space on an interminable ride from the airport to the hotel, the last leg of a theoretical ninety minute journey that stretched into 6 horrible hours. He was an educated, articulate, lively minded man whose life story (so far) would make an entertaining, if inherently incredible, movie. An African American son of two wealthy academics, he misbehaved in a ritzy private school and was sent, as punishment, to finish his high school years in an inner city private school. There he encountered drugs, gangs, bullying and racism, and became a strong social conservative. He dropped out of high school, entered the military and ended up in the Special Forces in the Middle East; he returned, graduated from college, went into the financial industry, rose quickly, got rich. He told me that he saw all of the cheating and manipulation in his own company and the industry in general, but did nothing about it (the money was too good, he said). Then came the crash. He lost everything, including his wife and kids, in the carnage. Resolved, he said, to work for justice and ethics, my driver had just graduated from law school and flunked his first try at the bar exam. (So did my dad, who would have liked this guy a lot.)

We got on the topic of the “bystander syndrome” and our duty to intervene and sometimes confront wrongdoers even at some personal risk—-the subject came up in the context of the Brooklyn EMT who has  been cleared of criminal charges arising from her refusal to assist a pregnant woman who had a heart attack (The EMT was on break, you see. I wrote about that terrible incident here. ) My cabdriver was a large, burly man, but he said that every time he intervened to confront a wrong doer in public, he feared that he would be shot. Once, when he stopped a man in a wheelchair from beating the man’s apparent girlfriend, he told me, my cabbie found himself staring down the barrel of a .44. This story, however, had a very different resolution: Continue reading →

Hilaria Baldwin’s Funeral Etiquette

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

[Update: June 28…The tweets that inspired this commentary were shown to be wrongly time-stamped, and the reporter’s newspaper have apologized for the error, but not before there were some other developments, discussed here.  Ethics Alarms apologizes to Hilaria too. The criticism of her is withdrawn; the commentary below about tweeting at funerals, and Hilaria’s husband stands.]

In case you wondered what kind of a woman would marry actor Alec Baldwin during his late career, “mega-jerk and proud of it phase, wonder no more.

Baldwin’s wife Hilaria demonstrated that she is at least as self-centered, rude and lacking respect for basic human courtesies by tweeting her head off during James Gandolfini’s funeral in New York.

It’s simple, really. You don’t have to attend anybody’s funeral (though, as Yogi Berra famously warned, if you don’t go to theirs, they won’t come to yours), but if you do, you are obligated to put aside the petty details of your life for a few hours while you solemnly and respectfully join family members and friends in remembering and honoring the concluded life of the deceased. You don’t spent the time passing notes with knock-knock jokes on them to other mourners, you don’t hum inappropriate ditties, and you sure as hell don’t spend the funeral tweeting inane stuff like like this... Continue reading →

Well, Now We Know What Kind Of Bandleader The New “Tonight Show” Will Have…

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
"Welcome to the show, Congresswoman!"

“Welcome to the show, Congresswoman!”

Amazingly, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the leader of the band “the Roots” that backs Jimmy Fallon’s late night show who will soon step into the shoes of “Doc” Severinson and other renowned musical pros, still doesn’t see what is wrong with insulting an invited guest on a talk show, or doing so in a sneaky manner, so the guest doesn’t even know she is being mocked. 

Meanwhile, in the headline to the relevant excerpt from his autobiographical book,  Salon inaccurately quotes Questlove as blaming his victim, Rep. Michele Bachmann, for the fact that his uncivil, cowardly and disrespectful stunt nearly got him fired. Score one unethical headline for Salon. Questlove blames himself. He obviously feels no remorse for being unfair and disrespectful to Bachmann, but he doesn’t blame her.

I wrote about the incident when it occurred: Continue reading →