In Obion County, Tennessee, a man’s home burned to the ground as the local fire department refused to do anything about it. The homeowner, Gene Cranick, had refused to pay a County fee for fire control services from the neighboring city of South Fulton. It was understood that only homeowners paying the fee would be provided assistance by the fire department, but Cranick, the sly fox, decided to test the system. Not only did he start burning rubbish in his back yard, he let the fire spread to his home. Then, in a panic, he dialed 911 and offered to pay whatever it would take for the South Fulton firefighters to put out the flames…but was told it was too late. They wouldn’t do anything to stop his house from burning down. They did arrive to help put out the fire when it spread to Cranick’s neighbor’s home, but then he had paid the $75. Continue reading
Government & Politics
Sunday Morning Revelations: Kurtz, Feldstein, Anderson, and Why We Can’t Trust the News Media
Media critic Howard Kurtz interviewed reporter/author Mark Feldstein this morning on CNN’s “Reliable Sources, who is promoting his book, Poisoning the Press, an insider’s account of how famed Washington, D.C. muckraker Jack Anderson bent, broke, or entirely ignored basic principles of ethics and decency in his quest to fill his column with damaging information about President Richard Nixon and his allies.
There were two moments in the interview that stand as persuasive evidence against anyone who maintains, against mountains of evidence to the contrary, that American journalism is fair, responsible, unbiased and ethical.
One was at the start of the interview, when Kurtz characterized Feldstein’s book as showing that Anderson was as willing to cut ethical corners as Nixon was. “Well, Nixon’s were felonies, and Anderson’s were misdemeanors,” Feldstein corrected him. “Nixon’s felonies killed thousands of people.”
What? Exactly what “felonies” was Feldstein referring to? Continue reading
Rahm Emanuel, History and Hyperbole Ethics
There are times when obvious exaggeration is nothing worse than politeness, nothing more than an expression of admiration and affection. “You’re the best boss anyone ever had,” is in this category, especially when the boss is retiring or dying. But when one is speaking in public about controversial and historical matters involving well-known public figures, the margin between excusable hyperbole and unethical dishonesty or worse is much smaller. Al Gore learned this when he played loyal Vice-President on the day his President was impeached by vote of the House of Representatives. Gore’s statement that Bill Clinton was “a man I believe will be regarded in the history books as one of our greatest Presidents” was intended as supportive, but interpreted as a toadying endorsement of Clinton’s unsavory and dishonest conduct, impeachable or not. It probably cost Gore the Presidency.
Worse yet was Trent Lott’s clumsy effort to praise the ancient, infirm and mentally failing Sen. Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party. Lott said, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have all these problems over all these years, either.” Thurmond, running on the Dixiecrat ticket, had opposed segregation, and Lott’s comment, less fact than flattery, made him sound like he longed for the days of Jim Crow and “white only”rest rooms. The lessons of these hyperbolic gaffes are similar: if the well-intentioned compliment concerns a public figure in historical context, historical exaggerations either appear to be unjust to history or its important figures, seem to make inappropriate value judgments, or come off as a blatant effort to mislead the public.
Rahm Emanuel hit the Trifecta with his fawning farewell to President Obama, as he left the White House to run for Mayor of Chicago. Obama, he said, is “the toughest leader any country could ask for, in the toughest times any president has ever faced.”
Wow. Continue reading
Yucks All Over:Sifting Through the Whitman/Allred/Diaz/Brown Ethics Train Wreck
Is anyone doing or saying the right thing for the right reasons in the current controversy in California over Meg Whitman’s housekeeper? I think not. Let’s look at the main participants, and avert your eyes. It ain’t pretty:
Gloria Allred: Emerging out of nowhere to manufacture a campaign controversy that may sink conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s chance of beating liberal Democrat golden oldie Jerry Brown, feminist advocate Allred is exploiting a long-time illegal immigrant for political purposes (Allred’s support for Brown goes back decades), torpedoing the campaign of a woman trying to be the state’s first female governor. Continue reading
The Facebook Founder’s Sinister and Unethical Hundred Million Dollar Gift
When is a hundred million dollar gift to help schools unethical?
It is unethical when it represents the power of money taking control of government. It is unethical when it induces politicians to breach their duty to obey the law. It is unethical when it demonstrates that the principles of democracy and law can be bought, sold, and distorted for a price.
In a shocking development last week that received very little thoughtful or critical coverage from the news media, Facebook mogul and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg gave the Newark schools $100 million in return for dictating how the schools are run. Zuckerberg, backed by Oprah Winfrey, another billionaire, who put the school governance sale on her TV show, wants Newark Mayor Cory Booker to run them. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who also appeared on the strange Oprah segment, has agreed in principle to make Booker the overseer of his city’s infamously bad school system. As for the fact that a New Jersey statute doesn’t allow the governor to put the mayor of a city in charge of its schools once the state has taken over control of them, well, money, not the law, rules in New Jersey, and that appears to be just dandy according to the state’s governor, Zuckerberg, Oprah, Republicans, Newark parents, news editors and citizens.
Meanwhile, that whirring sound you hear is Thomas Jefferson spinning in his grave. Continue reading
Three Strikes—Wait—Four? Five? on Christine O’Donnell
At some point, the Tea Party stalwarts are going to have to accept the fact that Christine O’Donnell is an untrustworthy, credential fabricating dud, much like Mark Kirk, the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Illinois who has been caught embellishing his resume with fantasy and exaggeration. Continue reading
Despite Evidence, Obama’s D.O.J., Democrats and News Media Stonewall Black Panther Case
The bizarre conduct of the Obama-Holder Department of Justice in refusing to to fully prosecute a 2008 instance of blatant voter intimidation at the polls by members of the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia has been denied by D.O.J. (despite a video that proves the Voting Rights Act violation ), ignored or buried by most major news sources (despite Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander chiding his own paper for failing the public with inadequate coverage of the story) and attacked as manufactured by Republicans by partisan Obama defenders (despite the fact that, well, it just isn’t.) It is both disturbing and depressing that this conduct persists, long after the event itself, months after one Justice Department Civil Rights attorney quit to expose the episode publicly, and while the non-partisan U.S. Commission Civil Rights holds hearings on the case.
At issue is racial bias in Attorney General Erik Holder’s Civil Rights Division, which the Obama Administration must not permit, tolerate or excuse, but appears to be anyway. Continue reading
9-11 Conspiracy Claims: The Hate Crime We Cannot Stop, But Must Not Tolerate
The stated belief that the United States government murdered its own citizens and military personnel on September 11, 2001 is, if sincere, proof that an individual possesses intractable misconceptions, hatred and disrespect for America’s history, culture, and ideals. If the belief is not sincere, then the claim that the Bush administration orchestrated (or allowed) the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks is an effort to harm our nation by destroying its reputation and honor, dragging it into the swamp of other nations to which murder and dictatorship are traditional. The First Amendment requires that we allow these individuals, be they deranged, sinister, irresponsible or merely stupid, to deny what makes the United States unique and slander its elected leaders, but it does not require that we accord them respect or tolerance. Continue reading
A New Outrageous Excuse! Unfortunately, It Was True…
When the African nation of Togo protested that its embarrassing soccer loss to the Bahrain national team was due to a group of imposters masquerading as the Togo squad, I was excited: at least I had a new desperate, brazen and hopeless lie to enter the Ethics Alarms Futile Lie Hall of Fame, joining Jimmy Durante’s immortal “Elephant? What elephant?” line in the musical “Jumbo” (in response to being caught red-handed stealing the largest elephant in captivity, Lindsay Lohan’s explanation to police officers who had found cocaine in her pockets that “these aren’t my pants,” and comedian Michael Richards’ claim that he has no idea why he started yelling “Nigger!” at two black audience members when he has not a bigoted bone in his body—the controversial “I was possessed!” excuse.
The “It’s not our fault: someone was impersonating me!” lie has great promise, not just for other disappointing athletic teams, but for politicians, John Edwards, the Democratic Congress, the producers of the “Sex in the City” movie sequel, Kanye West and Goldman Sachs. Thus I was devastated to find out that Togo wasn’t lying at all: their soccer team had been replaced by imposters.
Oh, well. And because the excuse now has validity, the “Someone was impersonating us!” excuse no longer qualifies as a sufficiently desperate and hopeless lie. It looks like Li-Lo, Kramer and “the Schnoz” will have to wait a bit longer for their quartet.
Accountability Alert: The “Embarrassment” Was the Nation’s, Not Colbert
In a stunning failure of perception, accountability and responsibility, the second most powerful Democratic House leader, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, actually had the gall to criticize Stephen Colbert for Hoyer’s own party’s disgraceful conduct, which was egregious enough to humiliate the institution of Congress, the democratic process, and the nation as well.
“I think it was an embarrassment for Mr. Colbert more than the House,” Hoyer told “Fox News Sunday.”
“What he had to say was not the way it should have been said.”
Unbelievable. Hoyer’s party’s own committee invited Colbert, a comedian whose shtick is mocking conservative Republicans, to testify about the wisdom of allowing illegal migrant workers to harvest crops despite the fact that he has no special expertise or credibility on the subject whatsoever. Continue reading
