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Republican Nomination Ethics Points, 1/18/2012

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I’m sitting here watching the GOP Final Four debate. Here are some brief ethics observation on a lively day in the race:

  • At the opening gun, Newt Gingrich gave a bravura performance of indignation personified when moderator John King asked him about the looming ABC interview of his ex-wife, Marianne, in which she impugns Newt’s character and claims that he asked her to agree to an “open marriage.” He told King it was a despicable question and said that the issue was not worthy of mention. Good act, but of course the question of character is relevant, and of course Gingrich, who has none, wouldn’t think so. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Greta Van Susteren

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Newt: ” Honey, I’m divorcing you to marry the woman I’ve been cheating on you with for the last 6 years.” Marianne: “Fine. Just wait til you run for President. I’ll be ready.”

Newt Gingrich’s second (of three) wife, Marianne Gingrich, has said in the past that she had it within her power to  end her ex-husband’s career with a single interview. This is not as remarkable as it sounds; just consider how many political spouses past and present have or had that power regarding their own power partners. Let’s see: Eleanor Roosevelt…Jackie Kennedy…Coretta Scott King…Lady Bird Johnson….Pat Nixon…Hillery Clinton, of course…Bill Clinton…Laura Bush…Tipper Gore. That’s just for starters. I have no doubt that Marianne Gingrich might be able to tell tales that would make any of these women feel fortunate by comparison, but on the other hand, what could she say that would be a surprise? Anyone who doesn’t know by now that Newt is about as miserable an excuse for a human being as one can be and avoid being shot or imprisoned hasn’t been paying attention.

This is the problem, however. People don’t pay attention, and have the memories of Eric Holder under Congressional questioning about Fast and Furious. After Gingrich’s deft response to Juan Williams’ accusatory race-baiting question at the last South Carolina debate sparked a standing ovation, you would have thought that he was the new star on the scene to hear callers on conservative talk-radio rave.* Yes, yes, Gingrich is smart and articulate. So were Richard Nixon, Tom DeLay, Huey Long and Joe McCarthy. So were Professor Moriarty and Goldfinger. We know Newt is smart; we also should know other things about him by now, like the fact that he’s an untrustworthy narcissist and a cur.

Apparently Marianne Gingrich has decided to do America a favor and to remind amnesiac Republicans once and for all who they were cheering this week. She has taped a two-hour spill-the-dirt interview with ABC News. The Gingrich camp is in a panic, and supposedly there is an ethics debate at ABC about whether the interview should air before the critical South Carolina primary, possibly Newt’s last chance to stop the Mitt Romney juggernaut, or after. Fox host and legal analyst Greta Van Susteren comes down on the side of holding the interview in the can until Monday. On her blog, she writes: Continue reading →

The “I Have A Dream” Speech Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Dr. King's familiy says this was a "performance" not a speech. Funny: I thought he was just speaking the truth. I guess I was dreaming.

Take Martin Luther King Day, turn right at the “Stopping Online Piracy Act” (SOPA/ PIPA) protests, and you get to the ridiculous fact that you are breaking the law anytime you circulate a recording or video of the Martin Luther King’s immortal “I Have A Dream” speech.

Through a baroque combination of expediency, legal maneuvers, luck and greed, this vital part of American thought, rhetoric, culture and history is restricted by the copyright laws, and will not be in the public domain until 2037, or more than 70 years after King’s words were spoken in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Now, under SOPA/PIPA, if it passes, any educational website that includes a video of the King Video could be taken down by the Feds, but that’s a side issue. I am no expert on the bill, but you can brief yourself on what all the fuss is about here, here, here, and here, the bill itself. Similarly, if I tried to explain the legal process by which courts agreed that a critical chapter in American history should be unavailable to Americans unless they pay a fee, it would 1) bore you stiff, 2) confuse you, and 3) probably be wrong. So I recommend this post by Alex Pasternak over at Motherboard, who does a great job laying out the whole, tortuous, tragic story.

I’ll concentrate on the ethics train wreck feature, of which the basic elements are these: Continue reading →

“Ask Amy” Tackles A Classic—And Misses

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Advice columnist Amy (of the syndicated column “Ask Amy”), was just asked one of those questions that every advice maven has to have in their files, with the perfect answer ready to go. If Amy had her answer prepared, it was  the wrong one.

The question was the deathless classic, “I just found out my husband has been having an affair with a married co-worker. Should I tell the other spouse?”

Amy gets it half right: she tells the reader that the other spouse has a right to know; that this is not a case of meddling because the reader is directly involved in the betrayal; and that not to make sure the other spouse learns the truth would now be abetting the deception. All true. BUT…

…Amy forgets the Golden Rule as it applies to the reader’s husband’s adulterous lover (yes, the rule still applies to busted wrongdoers) and the whistleblowers obligation to minimize needless harm. She tells the victimized wife to spill the beans to the victimized husband.

Wrong.

The adulterous wife deserves the opportunity to tell her husband herself. That would allow her to reveal the affair to her spouse with the least damage to the marriage, and providing that opportunity to her is kind and fair. Amy should have told her reader to contact her husband’s paramour and say this: “I will be calling your husband and telling him about your relationship with my husband in three days. You should tell him the truth yourself, and then all he needs to say to me when I call is, ‘Yes, she told me.’ But if you haven’t told him, he’ll hear it all from me.”

File it away, Amy, and get it right the next time.

The Third Annual Ethics Alarms Awards: The Worst of Ethics 2011 (Part 1)

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Yes, it was Joe Paterno's year, all right.

Welcome to the Third  Annual Ethics Alarms Awards, recognizing the Best and Worst of ethics in 2011!

This is the first installment of the Worst; Part 2 is here. And the Best is here. 

2011 prompted more than 1000 posts, and even then I barely scratched the surface of all the ethical dilemmas and unethical conduct swirling around us. If you have other choices for the various distinctions here and in the subsequent Awards posts, please make them known.

Here are my selections:

Unethical Community of the Year:  Huachuca City, Arizona. Leading the way among American communities that believe, in their hysteria, that former sex offenders who have served their sentences are nonetheless fair game for persecution and the denial of basic rights as citizens and human beings, Huachuca County passed an ordinance that bans registered sex offenders from the use of all public facilities, including parks, school and libraries.  Runner-up: Obion County, Tennessee. Last year, Ethics Alarms gave the county runner-up status as “Unethical Community of the Year” for sending its volunteer fire department to watch a man’s house burn down because he had failed to pay a $75.00 fee. In 2011, it did it again. I swear: if Obion County hasn’t come up with a better system and this happens again in 2012, Obion County will get the title no matter what some other unethical community does.

Most Warped Ethical Values: The Penn State students who protested the firing of football coach Joe Paterno, because, you know, he was such a great football coach that a little thing like allowing a predatory child molester to run amuck on campus shouldn’t be blown all out of proportion. Runner-up: Ron Paul supporters.

Unethical Website of the Year: Lovely-Faces, the anti-Facebook stunt pulled by Paolo Cirio, a media artist, and Alessandro Ludovico, media critic and editor-in- chief of Neural magazine, to show how inadequate Facebook’s privacy controls were. To do it, they stole 250,000 Facebook member profiles and organized them into a new dating site—without the members’ permission. The site embodied “the worst of ethical thinking: taking the identities of others for their own purposes (a Golden Rule breach), using other human beings to advance their own agenda (a Kantian no-no) and asserting that their ends justify abusing 250,000 Facebook users, which is irresponsible utilitarianism.” Continue reading →

Sarah Palin, Obama and The Dumbest Christmas Controversy of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Not Christmasy?

The President of the United States, especially this one, is blamed for enough without having to endure trumped up charges on trivial issues. Nevertheless, some Republicans and conservative pundits are criticizing President Obama because his Christmas card and the National Christmas Tree aren’t Christmasy enough.

Yes, I really wrote that. I can’t believe it myself. Sarah Palin, echoed by a chorus of talk radio hosts, finds the Obama card “odd” because, she says, it doesn’t feature traditional American values like “family, faith and freedom.” No, it features traditional Christmas imagery like a crackling fire, gifts, Christmas greenery and a Poinsettia plant. At least it isn’t a Gary Larson “Far Side” Christmas card, or the legendary Charles Addams card with the empty manger and a tiny foot sticking out of the cow’s mouth. Who appointed Sarah Palin the Christmas card critic? The card reads,

“From our family to yours, may your holidays shine with the light of the season.”

Completely appropriate. Then there is the tree, which, breathlessly reports the CNS News Service:

“… includes a prominently displayed ornament paying homage to President Barack Obama, but includes no ornament readily visible to a person standing near the tree’s base that uses the word “Christmas,” or includes an image of the Nativity, or bears the name or image of Jesus Christ.”

Wait, I’m checking...oops! Neither does mine! Well, mine has a bunch of angels, now that I check it. And so what? If the government isn’t in the designating official religion business, and it’s not, a religiously neutral tree is completely sensible. Oh, I’m not saying hanging a wise man ornament or two would be a constitutional crisis, but isn’t it enough that Obama has a Christmas tree, instead of Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee’s politically correct, pusillanimous “holiday tree”?

Christmas is a cultural holiday celebrated by Americans of all creeds. There is nothing wrong with the tree omitting Christian symbols completely, much less having “no ornament readily visible to a person standing near the tree’s base that uses the word “Christmas,” or includes an image of the Nativity, or bears the name or image of Jesus Christ.”

Give me a break. Give Obama a break. Give us all a break. Be fair.

After all, it’s Christmas

Comments of the Day: “UNICEF’s Unethical War Against International Adoption”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A Rumanian child in an orpahanage for "incurables," circa. 1990, enjoys his "heritage."

A post that is a year old recently attracted two important comments, thanks to a link to the essay from another website. The topic is international adoption, an issue that I have a special interest in as the parent of an adopted son who was born in Russia. I have seen first hand the conditions described in these posts, and when I wrote the original article, I was unaware of the substantial movement opposing international adoption, a misguided effort with tragic consequences to the children these people supposedly want to protect. I am aware of it now. It is an especially tragic example of what happens  when tunnel vision and ideology causes individuals to lose perspective and objectivity.

I am taking the unusual step of pairing two comments as the Comment of the Day.  They arrived together, and compliment each other well. You might want to read the original post, “UNICEF’s Unethical War Against International Adoption.”

Here are the Comments of the Day, by Mel and Holly F. Continue reading →

Three Terrible Tales From the Busted Ethics Alarms Files…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

An unfortunate side-effect of writing Ethics Alarms is becoming aware of such stunningly unethical conduct in all reaches of American society that it risks sending me into despair. I have no illusions about my level of influence over the problem—virtually nil—and the mounting evidence, often bolstered by the tenor of the comments to some posts, that our society does a poor job installing functioning ethical reflexes is both frightening and intriguing. What percentage of the American public go through their lives without functioning ethics alarms, and how do we tell who they are in time to protect ourselves?

As to the first question, I have no idea, but I suspect it is disturbingly high. The second question is even more difficult. Fear of consequences keeps most unethical people from revealing themselves until they face a crisis or an opportunity too tempting to resist. Then they do things like this: Continue reading →

George Will Is Conflicted, and Telling Us That He Is Doesn’t Cure It

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Is George Will's wife making him pull his punches?

Conservative columnist George Will has a conflict of interest problem not of his making. A regular, and superior, commentator on politics and current affairs in op-ed pages and on television, Will’s objectivity and independent judgment is apparently compromised by the fact that his wife is an advisor to the presidential campaign of Texas governor Rick Perry

Initially, Will took the position that his wife’s business and his were independent, and that his integrity should be presumed based on his long and distinguished record as a columnist. But the Washington Post ombudsman, among others, declared that Will’s readers needed to be able to make their own judgment about his objectivity, and lately Will has been issuing formal disclaimers whenever he wades into Republican presidential politics. Most recently he did this while slamming New Gingrich—accurately and with precision—for taking a cheap shot at Mitt Romney regarding Romney’s work at Bain Capital.  Will wrote: Continue reading →

Stop Cruelty To Children—Or To Put It Another Way, Stop Jimmy Kimmel

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Bulletin to Jimmy Kimmel: Enough is enough, you sadistic jerk.

Also known as "Jimmy Kimmel Cruel!" and "Jimmy Kimmel Sadistic!"

Flush with his “success” of persuading his most irresponsible viewers to make their own children cry by lying to them about eating all their Halloween candy and then posting the videos of their kids’ emotional distress on YouTube, ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has told the same warped people to traumatize their children again, this time by granting the kids the special treat of opening a Christmas gift early, but having a terrible gift (like a half-eaten sandwich) inside. The emotional reactions of the children thus deceived are also, per Kimmel’s directive, videotaped for posterity  to inspire mirth on the part of  his similarly warped viewers who don’t have children (and thank God for that), because, as we all know, disappointing kids at Christmastime is fun.

This has got to stop. It doesn’t matter if some, like Mediate’s Jon Bershad , think this is “the cruelest, funniest joke ever,” and others, like the Huffington Post’s reviewer, think the pranked children’s misery is “hilarious.” Children are not props for Jimmy Kimmel’s sadistic amusement, and parents who are willing to use their children this way, intentionally spoiling their Christmas anticipation for the entertainment of sadistic strangers, are, to be blunt, rotten, despicable, and untrustworthy parents. Something important—Compassion? Kindness? Empathy? Loyalty? Responsibility? Love? — is absent in their parental make-up, and that void is being cynically exploited by Kimmel, who has crossed the threshold from arrested adolescent to full-fledged villain. Continue reading →