Gender and Sex

The Unethical Indignation of Mandy Caruso, a.k.a. “Black Cat”

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

Mandy, who is incensed that anyone would think that she wants them to think about her boobs.

Let me stipulate that nothing a woman may do, say or wear excuses rudeness, crudeness, disrespectful comments, sexual harassment, sexual assault or abuse, including, of course, rape. This is unequivocal.

Now let me say that the vociferous complaints by Mandy Caruso on her blog regarding the comments she received at Comic Con as a direct result of her dressing like the Marvel Comics super-heroine Black Cat smack of hypocrisy and a “gotcha!” mentality that is strikingly unfair.

Mandy costumed herself as Black Cat at the famous convention for comic book fans, gamers and fantasy buffs, and she has the physical assets to do it. As you can see in the illustration linked above, TBC is a spectacularly endowed, athletic woman who appears in a black mask and skin-tight, curve-hugging leather suit. She makes D.C.’s Catwoman look like a boy. Characters like Black Cat are drawn specifically to appeal to the sexual fantasies of comic book fans, who are overwhelmingly  teenage boys or single men with the sensibilities of teenage boys. The most extreme of these attend events like Comic Con. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Obama-Biden Campaign Co-Chair Eva Longoria

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Stay classy, Democrats.

The co-chair of President Obama’s campaign, showing her qualifications.

“Desperate Housewives” actress Eva Longoria, who for some reason is the co-chair of the Obama campaign, took to her Twitter account and its 4 million, 262 thousand followers to re-tweet this dignified and reasonable message:

“I have no idea why any woman/minority can vote for Romney. You have to be stupid to vote for such a racist/misogynistic twat”

She took down the tweet, perhaps after someone with a brain at DNC headquarters explained why this was an inappropriate message for a co-chair of the President’s campaign to endorse.  Then, after appearing to blame Twitter for it sneaking someone else’s tweet into her feed, apologized, saying via Twitter,

“I use Twitter as a platform for all Americans and their opinions. Sorry if people were offended by retweet. Obviously not my words or my personal view. I respect all Americans #FreedomOfSpeech…”And for the record I have never personally called any conservative women stupid. I think u are all beautiful and strong and smart! I appreciate those conservative women who have sent me some great articles! I respect u, stay involved!”

Oh, really!

Some observations: Continue reading →

Unethical School Disciplinary Decision of the Year: Highland Middle School, Anderson, Indiana

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

This story just can’t be true as reported—can it? Please, please, let it be a hoax!— but every source confirms it, so I am awarding an early Ethics Alarms 2012 Award for the Unethical Disciplinary Decision of the Year to the addled, ethically-inert and incompetent administrators of the Highland Middle School of Anderson, Indiana. I am doing this now, instead of late December, when the rest of the awards are handed out, because no school, anywhere, could make a more unjust and outright stupid disciplinary ruling, this year, or any year.

By the way, this horrifying tale is a rare “Naked Teacher Principle”-“No-Tolerance”  policy hybrid. And what do you get when you cross these two? Jaw-dropping, blood-pressure-spiking incompetence! Imagine: Continue reading →

Worst Dinner Guests Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

If you are invited to dinner with these two, be sure to bring popcorn and a camera.

Jeremie Calo and Tiffani Lynn Barganier decided to have sex on top of their table  at Paddy Murphy’s, an Orlando, Florida restaurant. The fact that many families were there trying to eat didn’t faze them a bit, apparently. The manager  summoned the police after he “was notified by several patrons that a couple was having sex on a table in view of minor children,” according to an Orlando Police Department report.

You can read the report here, at The Smoking Gun.

If anyone has any theories how two adults could be raised in a civilized country and think this is responsible, respectful, tolerable behavior, please pass them on.  My assumption is that anyone with this little respect for others and civilized norms is dangerous, and certainly not trustworthy. Outside of a purveyor of live sex shows in Vegas, what sane employer would hire either of these creatures?

The question of most import is whether they are just outrageous outliers with no greater significance, or whether public manners are in the process of reaching depths we never thought possible?

_______________________________

Facts and Graphic: The Smoking Gun

Debate Alarm: The Fake Statistic Strikes Again

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Outrageous.

That damn statistic again. Well, there goes THAT head!

Candy Crowley, disgracefully, chose another question at a Presidential debate—the last one was 12 years ago—based on the completely false and misleading statistic, made up by activists, that women earn “72%” of what men do in the workplace, suggesting that there is widespread gender discrimination in wages. It’s not true; it hasn’t been true for decades. It’s a myth, and one that misleads the public by being given this kind of publicity and credibility. ( The question Crowley allowed even lowered the fake percentage an extra, and fake, 5% from the “77%” Bernard Shaw negligently used in a question to Joe Lieberman. in 2000.) I’m glad Romney didn’t dignify it with a direct answer—he was placed in the position of either telling the questioner, “That stat is imaginary,” or furthur imbedding it by treating it as reality.

I’m generally a fan of Candy’s, but this was irresponsible, and I’m disappointed in her. Public policy debate shouldn’t be framed by simple-minded, misleading factoids, and it is the duty of journalists to insist on facts.

The American Family Association Snaps

/ Jack Marshall / 98 Comments

Oh-oh. The American Family Association  is losing it….

The American Family Association, which holds that it supports “traditional values,” has been feuding with the liberal, diversity and civil rights-minded Southern Poverty Law Center, which designated it a “hate group.” In turn, the AFA has called the SPLC some other nasty things. They really don’t like each other.

Not liking an adversary group is hardly unusual, but detesting one so much that it robs you of whatever common sense, rationality and proportion you have is both self-destructive and unprofessional, and a clear sign that the group’s judgment is poisoned by emotion and non-ethical considerations. This is what the American Family Association is demonstrating now.

It is difficult to imagine a school program less sinister than “Mix It Up at Lunch Day.” One of the efforts sponsored by Teaching Tolerance, the October 30 nationwide effort has encouraged schools for eleven years to urge students  to sit with kids they don’t normally eat lunch with, giving members of different groups and cliques an opportunity to branch out, and to get to know students who are different from themselves. The phenomenon of high school gradually sorting itself into exclusive groups of various levels of social status was neatly captured in “Mean Girls,” where the school’s lunch table cliques were divided into “freshmen, ROTC guys
preps, J.V. jocks, Asian nerds, Cool Asians, Varsity jocks, Unfriendly black hotties, Girls who eat their feelings, Girls who don’t eat anything, Desperate wannabes, Burnouts, Sexually active band geeks,” and, of course, the dreaded Plastics, the social queens, and the Outcasts. “Mix It Up at Lunch Day,” properly handled, is a splendid idea.

But, you see, it is the inspiration of the dreaded Southern Poverty Law Center, so the AFA has decided that it must be evil. Pointing out that the Southern Poverty Law Center is a “fanatical pro-homosexual group, ” the association is urging parents to block their children’s schools’ efforts to hold “Mix It Up” day, by complaining, protesting and, if necessary, keeping their children home. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Conundrum of the Anti-Gay Marriage Diversity Officer

/ Jack Marshall / 121 Comments

…But be sure to think about it who will see it before you do!

Ethics, law, fairness and common sense are locked in a complex battle in this story, which comes out of Gallaudet University, the famous Washington D.C. school for the deaf.

Dr. Angela McCaskill, Gallaudet’s chief diversity officer, has been put on administrative leave and may face dismissal because the school learned that she had signed a petition opposing Maryland’s same-sex marriage law.  McCaskill apparently signed the petition at her church after her preacher spoke against gay marriage. A measure is on the Maryland ballot that could overturn the recently-passed state law approving same-sex marriage.

Does she have an absolute right to sign a petition in favor or opposing any political or social policy? Yes. Is this a petition something a university official in charge of promoting diversity is wise to sign? No. Is a university whose diversity officer chooses to sign such a petition behaving fairly and responsibly to decide that it should have someone else in that position?

Hmmmm.

And that’s your weekend Ethics Alarms Quiz:

Is it fair and responsible for a university to fire its diversity chief because she signed a petition opposing gay marriage? Continue reading →

Here It Is, The Ethics Exception You’ve Been Waiting For: When The Naked Teacher Principle Doesn’t Apply

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The Naked Teacher Principle: The Principle states that a secondary school teacher or administrator (or other role model for children) who allows pictures of himself or herself to be widely publicized, as on the web, showing the teacher naked or engaging in sexually provocative poses, cannot complain when he or she is dismissed by the school as a result.

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Ms. Webb, NYC school guidance counselor, circa 1995. Va-va-voom.

Tiffany Webb is, or was, a 37 year-old  guidance counselor in the  New York City public schools. She had excelled at her job for 12 years until photos she posed for as a 20-year-old lingerie model turned up on the internet.  When a student showed  photos of Webb that he had found online to her principal, it was recommended that she be fired. After an investigation, an Education Department committee voted 2-1 to do just that, concluding, ‘The inappropriate photos were accessible to impressionable adolescents. That behavior has a potentially adverse influence on her ability to counsel students and be regarded as a role model.”

Her firing came as she was scheduled to gain tenure. Naturally, she’s suing.  I hope she wins, because while the committee’s rhetoric is in line with the sound reasoning behind the Naked Teacher Principle, the facts dictate that this is the point—and all rules have such a point point— where “ethics incompleteness” occurs and the rule, however valid it is the vast majority of the time, accomplishes unethical rather than ethical ends.

The Naked Teacher Principle doesn’t apply to Tiffany Webb because:

1. She is not naked, though the photos doesn’t leave much to the imagination, either. OK, forget #1. Continue reading →

The Times Square Kiss, and Feminist Blogs’ Fanatic Crime Against Joy

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

The blog posts at issue make me angry. Usually it is silly to be angry about mere opinions, I know. However, the opinion registered by “Lori” on the blog Feministing, taking her cue from another feminist blogger, is a symptom, a symptom of the scourge of pernicious, political-correctness zealots, who refuse to recognize the important distinctions between malice and human beings being human, and seek to wipe out that distinction by distortion, sophistry, historical revisionism and bullying.

The bloggers’ target is an iconic photograph from the heart of American history: LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt’s shot of an American sailor kissing a nurse on August 14, 1945, in a moment of jubilation on Victory over Japan Day in the heart of New York City. Ah, but all is not as innocent and blissful as it would appear. Some historians think they have finally confirmed the identities of the mysterious couple (the photographer never identified his subjects) as Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental nurse at the time, and George Mendonsa, a sailor. [Despite the assertions of the bloggers and the historians, we can never know for sure. There were apparently many similar pairings that day, and several couples have credibly claimed to be those kissing through the decades.] Greta was recently interviewed, and noted that that she was just grabbed by a sailor she didn’t know and kissed. “That man was very strong. I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me,” Greta told interviewers.

Ah HA! declare the feminist bloggers. Don’t you see, you addled, male-culture dominated, female-subjugating fools? This wasn’t a pure expression of joy in the long-awaited  end of a world conflict that had killed millions and laid waste to much of the planet! Oh, no! The famous photo was something dark and sinister: Continue reading →

“Progressive” Totalitarianism In California: Legislative Quackery, and Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

Well, they did it.

If you think Jerry’s moonbeam has expired, you should see Linda…

The California Sate Legislature,  spurred on by State Senator Ted Lieu and with the approval of erstwhile “Governor Moonbeam” (nobody calls Jerry Brown this anymore since he went bald and gray, but he’ll always be that in my heart! ), has decreed that if you think your son or daughter may be confused about their sexuality, you’re out of luck, or you’d better move to a state that hasn’t made political correctness mandatory—which is to say, to this degree, anyway, any of the rest. It’s a truly sickening law, and the fact that none of the news reporting of it indicates that the reporters are properly nauseous scares the pants off of me.

I wrote about this despicable measure when it was still a twinkle in California’s jaundiced eye, and I’m not going to repeat myself—except to reiterate that my objections have nothing to do with believing that “gay conversion therapy”  is usually anything but a wishful and desperate brainwashing attempt by parents who are homophobic and whose religion teaches them that Satan just chose to give their son the Pervert Virus. Nonetheless, therapists talk, and this is a law that tells them what they can and can’t talk about. Ethics Foul I: abuse of power and violation of  Free Speech.  Continue reading →