Gender and Sex

More Advice Column Incompetence: The Case of the Jealous Sister

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"My wife is behaving irrationally. Is it me, or might she have a teeny problem of her own?"

Once again an advice columnist’s response has me considering whether there needs to be a standard of malpractice for the profession, especially when desperate, trusting people rely on them in times of crisis. I agree that anyone who is prepared to adopt the recommendations of a stranger that are based on a probably inadequate and incomplete description of a dilemma, especially when the columnist could well be a college intern, the janitor or a lunatic, is in desperate straits indeed.  Still,  if you are going to give advice, it had better meet some bare minimum of competence—even if you are just an intern.

A sad and remorseful man wrote “Annie,” the Boston Globe’s advice maven, about whether there was hope for his marriage, which recently and unexpectedly exploded. Continue reading →

The Saga of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt: Life in a Culture That Values Lies

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Post-surgery Montag, trying to stay famous

If you have taste, a job, and a brain, or don’t read a lot of “Us” and “People” in doctors’ offices, you may never have heard of Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag. They were stars of the once popular TV reality show “The Hills,” and despite being two vacuous and shallow individuals of minimal common sense, talent or education, they presumed that they could ride the “famous for being famous” gravy train in celebrity-and-media obsessed America indefinitely. They couldn’t.

The Daily Beast features a horrifying interview with the pair, which is worth reading for its ethics lessons on several levels. For one thing, the degree to which the culture of dishonesty has progressed in America  surprises even me. Allowing yourself to be presented to the public as a completely manufactured personality in exchange for fame and fortune has always been part of the celebrity experience, but the reality show phenomenon has removed it from everything else—now the lie is all there is. And there are thousands upon thousands of attractive, young dimwits who actually aspire to such ersatz enshrinement in the culture as their life’s pursuit. Paris Hilton and the Kardashian sisters are these deluded individuals’ goddesses, despite the fact that 1) there are not 500 IQ points among the four of them and 2) they all have the benefit of rich trust funds to fall back on, so their jaunts as pop culture comets are more like diversions than careers, though profitable ones. Continue reading →

The Folly of Sacrificing Integrity to Kindness in Competitions

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

"Great idea, Mandy! Let's elect President Obama our school Homecoming Queen! He could use a a boost."

Integrity. 

Violate it at your peril. This is especially true if you are running a competition, no matter how trivial it might be.

Not only may a momentary waiver of integrity for what seems like an admirable cause permanently render a competition and the honor of winning it meaningless, it well may inspire the well-meaning and misguided to stretch the questionable logic of your decision to the breaking point.

Almost everyone has seen the heart-tugging TV ad from the mysterious Foundation for a Better Life, in which a high school girl with Down Syndrome is crowned Homecoming Queen. (“True Beauty. Pass it on!”) It bothered me the moment I saw it—at least after I wiped the tear from my eye. Based on a real incident in Missouri in 2008, the spot illustrates an ethical conflict between kindness and caring on one side and fairness and integrity on the other.

Of course this was a nice thing to do. It was undeniably kind, and the student involved will surely regard it as a high point in her life. But what does the Homecoming Queen title mean now, once it has been awarded for purposes completely divorced from its original purpose? If there is another Down Syndrome student in future years who doesn’t get a crown, will this indicate to her that she is less deserving of the award, and somehow lacking, since, after all, a girl like her won in a past year? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Scent Branding, Mind-Control, and Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Elizabeth was the first one to dive into this murky, interesting, science fiction/ “Brave New World” issue that I examined in  “Scent Branding, Mind-Control, and Ethics,” on a topic that confused me more the longer I considered it. What resulted was unusually long, perhaps accounting for the lack of comments, and Elizabeth’s reaction is long as well, but worth reading. There is something potentially sinister here, or perhaps around the corner—or just in our imagination and fears. Scent manipulation, and all it implies, is in the wilderness of ethics, where human nature, science and commerce meet.

Here is the “Comment of the Day”:

“I agree this is a complicated issue.  As you said, restaurant smells (natural, I assume) tend to make people hungry (or more hungry than they really are), as do waiters with large platters of beautiful food which often encourage patrons order more, different, and perhaps more expensive food than what they may have had in mind.  The goal of the restaurant is to sell food:  if memory serves, it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that restaurants had at least parts of their kitchens open to the dining area so “good smells” could waft out from them.  My memory from childhood of elegant restaurants were the multiple green baize doors that completely closed the kitchen off from the dining room.  So was this change intentional or simply simpler and cheaper as restaurant designs?  I don’t know, but it’s different. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Ameneh Bahrami

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Ameneh Bahrami, now, and then

Ameneh Bahrami, the Iranian woman whom a spurned suitor blinded and hideously disfigured with acid,  had her long-awaited opportunity for both revenge and culturally-sanctioned justice today.  She watched a doctor prepare to put several drops of acid in one of Majid Movahedi’s eyes as his court-ordered punishment for maiming her. Then, at the last moment, she waived her right to have him blinded, as Movahedi, who had repeatedly asked her to marry him before responding to her rejections by throwing acid the young woman’s face, wept in gratitude.

The story of Banrani’s insistence on the full retribution available to her under Islamic law had spurred human rights protests around the globe. In the end, with all of Iran watching on live television, she decided on mercy instead of revenge. Continue reading →

Scent Branding, Mind-Control, and Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Agreed: this is scary. We're not there yet. We don't even know if "there" exists.

A recent article on the web that purported to explore the ethics of “scent branding” was fascinating for two reasons.

First, “scent branding” is a term I had never encountered before, for a practice that I had not focused on. About five seconds of thought, however, made me realize that indeed I was aware of the phenomenon, and had been for quite a while. “Scent branding”—using fragrances in a commercial environment to create a desired atmosphere and to prompt positive feelings, recollections and emotions from patrons—has been around a long, long time, though not under that label. When funeral parlors made sure that their premises smelled of flowers rather than formaldehyde, that was a form of scent branding. Progress in the science of scent allowed other businesses to get into the act: I was first conscious of the intentional use of smell when I spent a vacation at the Walt Disney World Polynesian Villages Resort. The lobby and the rooms had a powerful “tropical paradise” scent, a mixture of beach smells, torches and exotic fauna. It was obviously fake, like much in Disney World; also like much in Disney World, I found it effective, pleasant, and fun. I certainly didn’t think of it as unethical. I was normal in those days, however.

Well, more normal.

The second aspect of the article, entitled “Is it Ethical to Scent Brand Public Places?”, that caught my attention was that it had an obvious agenda. The piece was opposed to scent branding, and set out to find the practice unethical in order to justify condemning it. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Washigton Post Reader Elizabeth Grover

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“Sun wrote: ‘Most doctors will not perform abortions beyond 22 or 24 weeks for various reasons, including legal concerns, social stigma, inadequate training or inexperience.’ She left out perhaps the biggest reason: Most doctors believe that late-term abortions are morally wrong.”

—-Elizabeth Grover of Washington, D.C., in a letter published in the Washington Post “Free for All” section. Reader Grover was commenting on a glowing Post profile of Maryland physician Dr. LeRoy Carhart by feature writer Lena Sun, extolling his willingness, indeed eagerness, to perform late term abortions, which are illegal in several states. Dr. LeRoy dismissed state restrictions on abortions of any kind as “ridiculous.”

Grover was absolutely correct to flag the bias and misrepresentation in Sun’s article. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Larry Flynt

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

BLECHHHH!

I know, I know. “In other news, the Earth spins, and the Atlantic ocean is wet!” Nevertheless, it is occasionally worth the trouble to remind ourselves what an unprincipled sleaze Larry Flynt is, especially with people still around who argue that he’s a hero.

Flynt announced on Nancy Grace’s show last night that talks are ongoing with Casey Anthony to have her nude and tattooed bod featured in Hustler magazine for $500,000 up front plus 10% of all profits. Flynt said he decided to make the offer after concluding there was a big market for seeing the acquitted child murder suspect in the buff. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Provocative T-Shirt Problem”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Rick Jones, whose excellent blog posts on ethics, academia, politics and life can be read here, at Curmudgeon Central, again delivers the Comment of the Day, on my post about the gay couple asked to hide an innocuous T-shirt message while visiting Dollywood.

“It strikes me that attempting to draw clear lines of demarcation in terms of either content or location is inherently fraught with peril. The best determinant may indeed be the Golden Rule. But that inevitably touches on intent. The purpose of a “marriage is so gay” t-shirt isn’t to “get in the face of” opponents of gay marriage; it’s to make a mildly humorous point about an issue without being strident.

“The guy who wore the “I’m a Muslim. Don’t Panic” t-shirt to the Ground Zero celebration after the killing of Osama bin Laden—not terribly clever, but not at all offensive, either.

I wouldn’t be offended by a t-shirt backing a political candidate I’d never support (I might have an indication of whether to engage in conversation with this person as we wait in the queue, but that’s another matter); I would be by a t-shirt defaming that same candidate: comparing him to Hitler, for example. Yes, intent matters. Continue reading →

The Provocative T-Shirt Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Dress codes+grievance-mongers+freedom to be rude...oh, it's hopeless.

An ethical dilemma occurs when a clear ethical principle clashes with a strong non-ethical consideration. An ethical conflict occurs when multiple ethical principles suggest diametrically opposed results. The question of what is ethical conduct when it comes to wearing apparel bearing controversial messages has the elements of both a dilemma and a conflict.

                                                                                Welcome to Dollywood!

A same-sex couple visiting Dollywood Splash Country with friends and their children was told by a park gatekeeper that one of the women had to wear her T-shirt inside-out because its message—“Marriage is so gay”— “might be objectionable” to some visitors at the “family-friendly” park.

   <Sigh.> Continue reading →