Family

A Tale of Two Heathers

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

All right, cooking your child doesn't mean you're a bad person.

Heather #1: Ethics Hero Heather Elliott, who saw two small boys locked in a car parked outside a Kroger store in Indianapolis. The temperature was in the 90s and climbing, and the boys looked red-faced and hot. One was screaming and crying, and banging at the closed window. Elliott decided to take action, and began to try to find a way to open the car doors.

Heather #2: Ethics Dunce Heather Query, 21-year-old mother of the two cooking boys, who arrived on the scene just as Heather #1 was trying to rescue her children. “How long were you in that store?’ Heather #1 asked #2.  “It’s 100 degrees outside.” ‘What do you care?” said Ethics Dunce Heather. “Mind your own business” When Ethics Hero Heather responded, “I’m just concerned about your kids. I’m just thinking about the safety of your kids,” Heather #2 attacked her, punching her in the face.

There’s gratitude for you. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Should Shannon Stone’s Family Sue the Texas Rangers?

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

One Thursday, a 39-year-old firefighter named Shannon Stone leaned over a stadium railing at a Texas Rangers game to catch a ball flipped into the stands by Ranger outfielder Josh Hamilton.  Stone’s son, 6-year old Cooper, was a big Hamilton fan, and the devoted father made an extra effort, catching the ball but falling over the railing down to the concrete 20 feet below. He went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, and died.

The railing where Stone fell is 33 inches, seven inches more that the legally required 26 inches. Why is it that short? So people sitting in the front row can see the game without having to look through the railing. Is it dangerous? Well, it was dangerous this time.

Everyone, naturally, is horrified by the tragedy. The Rangers held a moment of silence for the firefighter at the game last night. Hamilton, who like all major league players has been instructed to toss inning-ending balls and retrieved fouls into the stands for fans to catch as souvenirs, is understandably distraught.

Your Ethics Quiz: Should the Stone family sue the Rangers? Continue reading →

The Despicable Nadya Suleman and Ethics Estoppel

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. Octomom, strikes a dignified pose

From the beginning, the only thing keeping Nadya Suleman from being unequivocally despicable has been the lingering suspicion that she was mentally ill. It might be more than a suspicion, to be fair: having octuplets by artificial insemination when one already has six young children and no viable means of support could be called “proof.”  Now even that malady is an insufficient defense: the issue is settled, and she is despicable beyond redemption. One cannot call her the worst mother on the world, sadly, because every day brings the story of another infant thrown down a laundry chute or left in the care of a six-year-old while mom goes partying or looking for drugs. She may be, however, the worst mother ever to become famous for being a mother.

In the latest issue of InTouch magazine—the rag is one full step down from Us magazine, and one half-step up from The National Enquirer—Suleman confesses that she now reviles her octo-brood. “I hate the babies, they disgust me,’ she says. “My older six are animals, getting more and more out of control, because I have no time to properly discipline them.” Elsewhere in the article she bellyaches about how hard it is being a single, unemployed, narcissistic, absurd, irresponsible mother of fourteen children. “The only way I can cope is to lock myself in the bathroom and cry. Sometimes I sit there for hours and even eat my lunch sitting on the toilet floor. Anything to get peace and quiet,” she laments. Yes, Octomom says she regrets having all the children. Continue reading →

Oh, Shut Up! There Is Nothing Wrong With “Go the F*** to Sleep”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

If they think "Go the F*** to Sleep" is bad....

The guilt-mongers and Child Over-Protection Patrol have set their sites on “Go the F*** to Sleep,” Adam Mansbach’s children’s book parody, a cranky, profanity and obscenity-laced release for frustrated and sleep-deprived parents of small children everywhere.

“Imagine if this were written about Jews, blacks, Muslims or Latinos,” intones Dr. David Arredondo, quoted by CNN. He is an expert on child development and founder of The Children’s Program, in the San Francisco metropolitan area, which provides consultation and training for those working with troubled youths. Yes, Dr, imagine. Then it wouldn’t be a humorous satire for the amusement of perfectly loving parents.

“Nobody is suggesting that there’s a connection between Adam Mansbach’s book and child abuse or child neglect,” writes Karen Spears Zacharias, whose essay suggests that there is a connection between Adam Mansbach’s book and child abuse or child neglect. “Still, there’s no denying the reason “Go the F*** to Sleep” should be kept out of reach of children is because of its violent language and because of the way it demeans children.”

OK, there’s a book that is an inside joke for parents that relieves their guilt over the occasional horrible thoughts they have about their children, and children shouldn’t read it, because they wouldn’t understand. So what? Since when was there something inappropriate about enjoying books that shouldn’t be shared with children? I wouldn’t let my child read Dr. Spock, either. Continue reading →

When Business Rejects Ethics: the Sorabella Story

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"So sorry about your wife's cancer, Carl. Let me know if there's anything we can do. Oh, by the way...you're fired."

I usually feel that organized labor rhetoric about cruel and heartless employers is archaic and exaggerated for political effect. This story, however, is almost enough to make me pick up a sign and start picketing.

Carl Sorabella, 43, got a merit raise in November for Haynes Management,  a real estate company in Wellesley, Mass., where he has worked as an accountant for almost 14 years. Then he learned that his wife, Kathy, had been diagnosed with advanced cancer. Told that the likelihood was that she had only months to live, Carl approached his boss. Sorabella explained that his wife’s illness would require him to have flexible hours as he supported her during her tests and treatment. He assured her that he would do whatever was necessary to keep his work up-to-date and complete his duties.

She fired him anyway. Continue reading →

The Offensive Battle Over “Seven in Heaven Way”

/ Jack Marshall / 113 Comments

"There goes Fred, getting all religious again...."

With some hesitation, I must re-open the issue of officious inter-meddlers and grievance-mongerers who get satisfaction and empowerment from claiming to be offended by things that could not possibly harm them or genuinely infringe on their rights. The atheists are at it again.

My position has been stated here and elsewhere many times: in the absence of genuine long or short term harm, the ethical human response to a symbolic grievance is to keep one’s response proportional to the offense, which sometimes means considering how many individuals will be made miserable in order to satisfy one individual or a small group, and letting it go. Forcing a university to change the long-standing name of its football team based on a dubious argument that the name is an offense to Native Americans when most Native Americans couldn’t care less, for example, is wrong. Forcing a school to stop teaching kindergarteners to sing “Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer” because a Jewish parent thinks the song promotes Christianity is wrong.

Now a group of New York City atheists is demanding that their city re-name a street that was dedicated to the memory of seven firefighters killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  Continue reading →

A Three-Year-Old’s Privacy, Sacrificed For A Story

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

"Dad???"

Showing the excellent ethical instincts that frequently characterize his blog for the Wall Street Journal (though not always), James Taranto accurately identifies blatantly callous and unethical conduct by the New York Times, its reporter, and the adult subjects of a Father’s Day feature called”And Baby Makes Four.”  The story, intended to highlight the proliferation of non-traditional family structures in modern America, focused on a 3-year old boy whose mother conceived him using the sperm of a gay friend.

The Times named and interviewed both the mother and the friend, who often babysits the toddler but professes no desire to ever be a father to him in the parental sense. The Times story describes how the sperm-donor watches the clock in boredom, waiting to be relieved of his child-care duties, and how observing the child—his son— play sometimes fill him with “profound despair.” Continue reading →

Horrifying Mothers To Sell Videogames

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

What mom wouldn't like THIS?

This month’s Games Magazine’s column “Inside the Box” has some exemplary ethics commentary from video game reviewer Thomas McDonald, who took “Dead Space 2” makers Electronic Arts to task for its advertising campaign for the horror game, to which he had given a rave review.

The campaign’s theme is “Your mom hates this game,” and the company set out to prove it. “A mom’s disapproval has always been an accurate barometer of what is cool,” the company explains on its website, as it offered a viewing of the gruesome game to 200 members of an all-mother focus group recruited from “the heart of conservative America,” seeking horrified reactions, and almost unanimously getting them. Continue reading →

Crystal’s Evil Plot: Competition for Fick?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

 

More attractive than Leroy Fick, but just as rotten inside...

Leroy Fick, the lottery winner/millionaire who still shamelessly collects food stamps because a flawed law lets him, was laps ahead in the race for the Creep of the Year  (non-criminal division), when out of the pack came Crystal Harris in a sprint. Fick is still ahead, if only because Harris was foiled in her despicable plans, but even having the idea she is reported to have concocted puts her on Fick’s heels.

Hugh Hefner has stuffed his Playboy Mansion with ambitious, busty bimbos for decades, and now that he is in his 80’s and providing for 25-year-old sex-kittens while lounging around in  pajamas, the whole thing is vaguely distasteful. Hef decided to go beyond his traditional harem bit by actually marrying one of the bimbos, Crystal Harris, who Hefner simultaneously would feature au natural (well, sort of) in a Playboy foldout. The marriage, alas, wasn’t to be, as Crystal had what Hef called (via Twitter), a “change of heart” shortly before the planned wedding day. Eh, big deal. Everything Hefner has done in his personal life has been 50% or more promotion for his business anyway, and one can hardly blame a young woman from deciding that whatever financial benefits Hefner offered were inadequate for what she was agreeing to—whatever it was. (Ick.)

At least, that was what I thought until reports started surfacing that Crystal had a diabolical plan. Continue reading →

Unraveling the Ethical Dilemma of the Unappreciated Treasure

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“I’m passing this on to you, son. You know how how much I loved old Nibbles.”

As I have mentioned here before, I give ethics advice to inquirers on AllExperts.com, when the rare individual can actually find “ethics” among the categories—it’s buried somewhere under “philosophy,” which is doubtlessly why so many of my questions are from students who want me to write their homework essays for them. (I decline, but a lot of experts on the site don’t. A topic for another time…)

Today I received a question on one of those difficult family problems that any of us could face. The writer’s elderly father, with some ceremony, gave his only son one of the father’s most cherished possessions, something that had sentimental value to the father that far exceeded its monetary value, which was considerable. “I recently moved into an apartment,” the writer explained, “and after rent and bills, I only have about $200 a month to live on.” He said he could barely afford food, and had an urgent need for clothes, shoes, and other essentials, so he sold the heirloom for a pretty penny.

Now his father is heartbroken, and his mother is furious, demanding that he get the heirloom back, or else she won’t speak to him again. He wrote that he was depressed, and doesn’t know what to do. Continue reading →