Gender and Sex

Penn State, the Child Molester and the Dark Side of Loyalty

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

"Loyalty" by Joe Drache

The ethical issues in the unfolding Penn State scandal are not complex. Unless the grand jury got things completely confused, high officials of the school as well as legendary football coach Joe Paterno had credible information indicating that former Paterno assistant coach Jerry Sandusky sexually molested young boys on the Penn State campus, and did nothing about it. Now, after a three-year investigation, Sandusky has been charged with forty counts of child abuse by Pennsylvania authorities, and Penn State’s athletic director and a university vice-president have been charged with perjury and failing to report the crime. [UPDATE 11/7/20011: the University officials both resigned late yesterday.]

Paterno is apparently not going to be charged, because he alerted university administrators, technically complying with Pennsylvania law. Ethically, it doesn’t matter. Paterno, like University athletic director Tim Curley, Gary Schultz, Penn State’s senior vice president for finance and business, and apparently Penn State president Graham Spanier as well, did nothing for nine years after being alerted to Sandusky’s apparent proclivities, knowing that a probable child sexual predator was not only on the loose, but operated a foundation for at-risk kids that kept him supplied with ready victims. Continue reading →

Final Verdict: The Unethical Media Persecution of Herman Cain, and Five Questions for His Critics

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The media’s relentless coverage of the non-story of Herman Cain’s alleged sexual harassment 15 years ago continues in defiance of all previous standards of journalistic ethics, fairness and decency.It is a disgusting spectacle, yet the number of individuals, including many of my peers, friends and colleagues, who continue to manufacture ways to blame Cain himself for his outrageous treatment continues to grow.  It is almost a full week since Politico published its fact-free hit job, and still there is nothing substantive that would allow anyone to determine with certainty or even probability that Herman Cain did anything other than spark  opportunistic accusations from female employees seeking a swift pay-off. Astoundingly, people who readily assume that Cain was guilty of wrongdoing based on their undefined claims and resulting cash settlements pronounce themselves “shocked” at the Cain’s defenders’ suggestion that the women themselves had no basis for their accusations. Yet that suggestion is at least as supported by the facts, or lack of same, as the conclusion that Cain did anything wrong.

Anonymous sources have been cited as damning accusers without any information whatsoever regarding the nature of the inappropriate conduct Cain was accused of, without any objective determination regarding whether such conduct actually occurred or, if it did, whether it constituted sexual harassment.

Worst of all, and this has been true throughout the episode (which I regard as a journalism scandal rather than a political one), the news stories and news commentary about Herman Cain’s alleged sexual harassment have almost totally neglected to make it clear to readers what sexual harassment is. The story has been repeatedly referred to as a “sex scandal,” which is wrong and misleading: there is no sex in the form of sexual harassment at issue. The so-called charges (there are no charges at this point) are repeatedly being called “serious,” suggesting Cain did something genuinely substantial and wrong, when that is completely unknown. A lot of conduct that can be used to support sexual harassment allegations may be neither intentional nor objectively harmful in any way. The average member of the public who does not deal with the term sexual harassment as a legal term presumes that it always involves so-called “quid pro quo” sexual harassment: a superior’s solicitation of sexual intercourse or other sexual conduct from a subordinate, using threats, direct or implicit, to make the subordinate comply.

This is Bill Clinton-style sexual harassment, which the public heard enough about during the Paula Jones matter to imprint it indelibly on its mind. It is also the kind of sexual harassment usually on display in “Mad Men” and in other fictional venues. The news media knows this, or should know it, so it has an obligation to make clear that this is not what the two women who filed complaints with the National Restaurant Association  alleged, whatever it was that they alleged. This should be done as a necessary component off every single story and piece of commentary about the matter, because to do otherwise is affirmatively misleading.

Cain’s mysterious, undefined, unproven and never-described sexual harassment was what is called “hostile work environment” sexual harassment. Among the conduct that have been held in particular circumstances to constitute “hostile work environment” sexual harassment are using words of endearment or compliments of a physical nature that an employee considers inappropriate, a repeated request to get together socially that an employee considers unwelcome, jokes, songs, non-sexual touching (such as putting a hand on a woman’s shoulder), e-mails including jokes, stories or photos of a sexual or risqué nature, insults with sexual associations, such as “bitch” or “whore,” looks that an individual perceives as leering or uncomfortably intense, an individual repeatedly looking at a woman’s breast, legs or derriere…or an executive encouraging or permitting any of this conduct to occur repeatedly by other employees or, in the case of an association, members or customers. As far as sexual harassment law is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether the offender intended any of this to be disruptive or not, or whether more than one member of the extended staff finds it so.

Is this what the news reports and commentary about Cain’s phantom harassment charges have clearly suggested he was guilty of fifteen years ago? Absolutely not.

I challenge those supposedly fair and unbiased critics of Cain now arguing, in classic Big Lie fashion, that it is his reaction to the misleading and vague allegations that now condemn him, to answer these five questions: Continue reading →

Not That It Will Do Any Good To Say So, But U.S. Acceptance of Prison Rape Is An Ethics Outrage

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

LOL?

I keep an informal score each television season of how often one of the heroes in a cop or other law enforcement drama will pointedly tell a finally-cornered criminal that he can now look forward to being raped in prison. Of course, this is only representative of the shows I actually see. Even counting only them, however, I have heard such a speech four times in 2011. (The all-time champs in this celebration of prison rape are Dick Wolf’s Law and Order dramas.)

Think about what this means. The scriptwriters are presuming that such a forecast of impending sexual abuse will be enjoyed by the audience, a case of just desserts for the wicked. The casual acceptance of prison rape in America’s penitentiaries is a continuing scandal, and an indictment of our society’s compassion and commitment to the Constitution. Continue reading →

The Media’s Despicable Catch-22 Against Herman Cain

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

Mr. Cain...meet Capt. Yossarian. He'll expain everything.

I have to rub my eyes, slap my forehead, and keep reminding myself that astounding as it seems, many of the same journalists I hear calling the detail-free and meaningless sexual harassment rumors about Herman Cain “devastating” never considered the sexual harassment issue worth discussing during President Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky crisis, and ignored Juanita Broderick’s credible claims that Clinton sexually assaulted her when he was Arkansas Attorney General. Times have changed, have they? How convenient.

CNN’s Gloria Borger, whose sneering daily coverage of all Republican presidential candidates on has to be seen to be believed, asked the Perry campaign operative Cain has accused of leaking the story to Politico what it would mean for Cain’s candidacy “if the sexual harassment charges are true.” That question is incompetent, dishonest and reckless journalism, because there are no “sexual harassment charges,” and there is no possible way that they can be proven “true.” Borger’s phrasing of her question implies that there is a standing accusation of wrongdoing, and there is not; it also suggests that there is a fair process available to determine truth, when there is not. Thus she exploits the public’s ignorance about sexual harassment (which she quite possibly shares) to impugn Cain without a molecule, atom, or photon of evidence. Nothing. Continue reading →

Herman Cain, the News Media’s New Sarah Palin

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Calling Herman Cain an Oreo and an Uncle Tom is bad, but comparing him to Sanjaya? Is there no limit to media cruelty?

At least when the media and pundits decided to suspend basic principles of fairness and decency to attack Sarah Palin for the unforgivable crime of being an outspoken conservative woman (even before she had a chance to show she deserved to be attacked for other reasons), she had been nominated for Vice President. Business executive Herman Cain, a similarly reviled aberration from the expected norm as a black Republican, is now getting equally unconscionable journalistic treatment just for getting decent poll numbers.

I will move past the race-based attacks from columnists and the MSNBC hit squad that have explicitly referred to him as an Oreo, an Uncle Tom, a black man who “knows his place,”  “the GOP’s token,” and “the Sanjaya of the Republican field,” as well as the many demeaning references to him as a “joke candidate,” and go right to this weekend, when the Palin standard was on bright display.

Here is part of the interview of Cain on “Face the Nation,” after host Bob Scheiffer showed Cain’s bizarre web ad, which ends with his campaign manager taking a puff on a cigarette:

Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Naming Your Kid After Hitler: 100% Legal, 100% Child Abuse”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Moon Unit Zappa: Only in America!

Site quotemaster and resident pedant Tom Fuller comes through with a rare comment of his containing no quotations whatsoever! (Tom is, among other things, a contributor and researcher for The Yale Book of Quotations.) He adds some useful perspective on the issue of naming children, in his Comment of the Day to yesterday’s post, “Naming Your Kid After Hitler: 100% Legal, 100% Child Abuse.”  I must point out that “Choo Choo” was not the 1962 Mets catcher’s real name, any more than Red Sox pitcher Dennis Boyd was really named “Oil Can.”

Here it is Tom’s comment:

“This is a good illustration of how America’s concept of free speech is such an unusual legal and cultural norm. In many countries, including Germany, a child’s name must be legally approved in advance (in Germany, by the Standesamt — office of vital statistics).

“By German law, a child’s name has to meet two conditions: (1) it must reflect the sex of the child, and (2) it must not endanger the ‘well-being of the child.’ No “Moon Unit” Zappa, no “Choo Choo” Coleman, and — especially — no “Adolf” anybody, unless the local office says “OK”.

“According to wire service reports, hundreds of Algerians wanted to name their babies “Scud” during the 1991 Iraq war, but the local officials nixed the idea.

“My point? Only that Americans are often more likely than those in other countries to regulate speech and behavior in ways other than by prior legal restraint — like ethics, which is what this odd corner of the Web is all about. Sadly, as history has shown, when ethics fails, many people turn to the law to fix things. It doesn’t always work.”

Count The Ethics Alarms: A Lingerie Football YOUTH League?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Looking forward to the opening of the Lingerie Football Junior League...

The headline: “Lingerie Football League Wants to Start a Youth League.”

All right, maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds. Still, we can watch four-year-olds wearing falsies and “shaking it” in kiddie beauty pageants on “Toddlers and Tiaras.” How far removed from that is a future football league with 13-year-old girls tackling each other in their training bras?

Lingerie Football League founder and chairman Mitchell Mortaza issued this statement on the LFL website:

“Obviously the improvement of our game is directly tied into the development of the future LFL athlete. What excites us at the league is seeing the caliber of athletes improve so vastly each season, now imagine in five years when we start fielding athletes that have trained their entire life for the opportunity to play LFL Football.”

And what does early training to to play lingerie football consist of, I wonder? The more important and troubling question: what does it say about our cultural health that the only route available for young female athletes who enjoy football to practice their sport is to train to eventually play the game while dressed like a Victoria’s Secret model?

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Allahpundit

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Hide! The Vice-President says that if the jobs bill doesn't pass, we might be raped!!!"

“The very first question at the next Solyndra hearing should be, “How many rapes could Democrats have prevented by giving that $535 million to cops instead?”

—“Hot Air” blogger Allahpundit, marking the below-the-belt tactics of Vice President Joe Biden, who angrily suggested that Republicans who voted against the President’s jobs bill would be responsible for rapes and murders because of the resulting inadequate numbers of police.

Biden’s fear-mongering is beyond demogoguery, whatever the virtues of the President’s bill. States make budgetary decisions, and if a state’s priorities in funding didn’t include sufficient police personnel to prevent rapes and murders, the state is accountable, not Congressional Republicans (and Democrats) who don’t like the President’s bill. Meanwhile, the jobs bill seeks $5 billion for cops (and firefighters) and $30 billion for teachers. Is Obama willing to risk more rapes by not putting more money into law enforcement and less into teacher’s unions?  Continue reading →

Herman Cain’s Unethical Abortion Doubletalk

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Republican presidential contender Herman Cain’s explanation of his position on abortion while chatting with CNN’s Piers Morgan is causing his growing legion of fans and supporters discomfort, and with good reason. It was ethically incoherent at best, unethical at worst. In either case, his comments show that he hasn’t devoted sufficient serious analysis to the issue to allow him to have a responsible and consistent approach. That is status quo for most Americans. It is not acceptable for a President of the United States.

Here is the relevant section of the interview (emphasis mine):

PIERS MORGAN: Abortion. What’s your view of abortion?

CAIN: I believe that life begins at conception. And abortion under no circumstances. And here’s why —

MORGAN: No circumstances?

CAIN: No circumstances. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Is There An Ethical Obligation To Help An Actress Lie About Her Age?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

An actress who is, so far, unidentified is suing Amazon.com in federal court for over $1 million in damages for disclosing her age on its Internet Movie Database website, and refusing to remove the reference when she requested, then demanded, that it do so.

She says that IMDb misused her personal information after she signed up for the “industry insider” IMDb Pro service in 2008. Soon she saw that her legal date of birth had appeared on her online acting profile. IMDb refused to remove it.

Now, she says, she is being discriminated against in Hollywood for her age (40), as is its custom. Producers won’t hire her for younger roles, because she’s now regarded as “too old.” Yet she can’t get older roles either, because she still looks much younger. The lawsuit seeks $75,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

Your Ethics Quiz question of the day:

Did the Internet Movie Data Base do anything unethical by publishing the actress’s real age without her permission? Continue reading →