Government & Politics

“What Difference Does It Make?”: The Footlong Sandwich Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

mqdefault

Perhaps this week will go down in history as the Week of “What Difference Does It Make?”.

What difference does it make whether or not the Obama Administration misled the public for days about whether the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous demonstration over a video or a planned terrorist attack, indignantly asks Hillary Clinton. What matters is that four Americans died!

What difference does it make that Lance Armstrong doped to win his titles and lied about it for 15 years, poignantly ask Armstrong’s defenders. What matters is that his foundation helped cancer sufferers!

What difference does it make whether or not the version of Beyonce singing “The Star Spangled Banner” Americans heard during the Inauguration was live or studio-recorded, asks comic-turned radio pundit Dennis Miller. She’s hot! (By the way, my conversation about this issue with Bill O’Reilly before Miller issued his verdict—and referred to me as “Daddy Warbucks”—can be viewed here.)

Now we have a much ridiculed scandal over the fact that Subway’s vaunted “footlong” subs are in fact only around 11 inches, which has spawned viral videos and at least two lawsuits. Ethically-challenged Chicago Trib blogger Eric Zorn carries the flag for this latest army of “What difference does it make?” lie enablers. His argument, predictably, comes down to a cross between the Stephen Colbert-Jon Stewart  market-tested “Let’s exaggerate this real issue and make it look ridiculous” formula and the Golden Rationalization, “Everybody Does It”… Continue reading →

The President Locks Up The “Lie of the Year” Early

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

forked tongeThere has been controversy lately over the “lie of the year” designation. PolitiFact, true to its partisan-but-nobody-will admit-it soul, picked a Mitt Romney campaign accusation as its “lie of the year,” even though it wasn’t nearly the worst lie of the campaign, or even Romany’s worst. In fact, it was literally true. Romney had issued an ad saying that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China—that was supposedly the lie—and in fact all Jeeps will now be made in China. Oh, well, election over, Romney lost, what’s done is done, mission accomplished, right, Politifact?

Thus it is mighty kind of President Obama to wrap up the lie of the year competition early and decisively in a national forum where one least belongs, his Inaugural Address. I’m sure PolitiFact won’t see it that way, but I’m engraving his name on the Ethics Alarms trophy right now.

The lie:

“The commitments we make to each other–-through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security–these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” Continue reading →

Now A Brief Promotional Message….

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

Oreilly

Shortly after learning my scheduled NPR spot to talk about Lance Armstrong and Oprah had been cancelled because, I was told, everything has already been said, I was invited to fence with Bill O’Reilly tonight on “The O’Reilly Factor” (Fox News).

The topic? Not Lance, but Beyonce, and the ethics of high-profile lip-syncing. Thankes to you all, I’m more than ready. But will I really be speaking, or will I be lip-syncing?

Another Faked “Live Performance” At An Obama Inauguration

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments
Beyonce, moving her mouth convincingly for the President

Beyonce, moving her mouth convincingly for the President

At this point, I am resigned to being one of the last people on earth who still believes that when a live performance is advertised, we should get a live performance. Clearly nobody in the Obama Administration believes it, because for the second straight inauguration ceremony, a featured musical presentation introduced as a live performance was actually an elaborate fake. I was initially impressed that Beyoncé could sing The National Anthem so well live and in the open air—not quite Whitney, but still excellent. I’m not so impressed that she could do it in a studio, with sound balancing, multiple takes and editing. It does make a difference, you know.

I also assume I’m one of the last citizens who finds the beginning of new Presidential term being launched with a lie both symbolic and disappointing. Everybody does it, who is hurt, it’s trivial, things have changed…I know. Lots of rationalizations fit. I don’t care. Some things should be genuine and trustworthy, and the President’s inauguration is one of them.

Thus here again, slightly edited, is my protest against this deception in 2009, after the first time the American public was faked out. Looking back on what I wrote, and what the Obama Administration turned out to be, it really was symbolic after all. So it is this time around. It’s just not as much of a surprise.

“Why are there American citizens who stubbornly maintain that Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was faked? Why is cynicism becoming a crippling national malady? Look no further for the answer than the inaugural ceremonies of Barack Obama, where a U.S. Senator and a quartet of great musicians couldn’t bring themselves to avoid artifice and deception on the day America displays its democracy to the world. Continue reading →

Ethics Thought Experiment: Let’s Play “What If?”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
"This SWAT gag is, like, hilarious, Kendall!"Totally, Kylie. Hey, look! They just shot Khloe!""Awesome!!!"

“This SWAT gag is, like, hilarious, Kendall!
“Totally, Kylie. Hey, look! They just shot Khloe!”
“Awesome!!!”

“Swatting,” the ultra-vile and dangerous “joke” in which someone falsely calls down a SWAT team on a household that is neither in peril or threatening it, is seriously and criminally wrong—even when the victims are the almost as vile, if not necessarily dangerous, Kardashian family. The victims of a “swatting prank” yesterday, the rich, spoiled, vulgar and useless reality show family immediately reminded us of why someone might be moved to swat them by making a big joke out of the whole thing, or at least the younger generation of Kardashians did. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait until sisters Kendall and Kylie Jenner are posing in obscenely tacky and expensive boob-exposing outfits while having inane and semi-grammatical conversations on their own E! reality show. SWAT me now, Lord!

But let’s not talk about how unethical swatting is, which is obvious, or how depressing the celebrity of the Kardashians is, which is makes me want to stick my head in a fryer. Let’s muse on what will happen if and when one of these swatting incidents leads to an exchange of gunfire—perhaps because a Second Amendment enthusiast is convinced that President Obama is making his big move to enslave the populace, and by God, he’s not going down without a fight. Let’s also muse on what will happen if that exchange of gunfire results in the deaths of one or more children. Just to make sure something happens in our hypothetical, let’s stipulate that the dead children are white, cute, and recently recorded a tear-inducing video urging world peace and racial harmony. Continue reading →

The FIRE To The Rescue Again: But How Can This Keep Happening In U.S. Schools?

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

MontclaireThe FIRE, admirable campus First Amendment watchdog and champion that it is, is once again charging to the rescue of an innocent student being subjected to censorship, oppression and mind-control by a Stalinist state university…in new Jersey. Its victory is pre-ordained, as you will shortly see. The troubling questions are: Why are there schools in a democracy that act like Montclair State, presuming to tell students how to speak to each others and what views they can communicate in public? How do administrators that make and enforce such manifestly unethical and unconstitutional rules get hired in higher education—indeed, how are they bred at all? Finally, what vile and totalitarian principles does a school run by such dictators teach its students?

The facts of the case warrant little debate. Montclair State, in northeastern New Jersey, suspended Joseph Aziz, a 26-year-old graduate student, for comparing another student’s legs to “a pair of bleached hams” in a YouTube comment and defying a resulting ban on his internet speech. After his YouTube comments came to the attention of the school, Montclair State Coordinator of Student Conduct Jerry S. Collins  barred Aziz from all physical, verbal, and electronic contact with the student he had referred to in his YouTube comments. He also issued a virtual gag order, forbidding Aziz from posting on “any social media regarding” the student in question. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quote of the Day: Blogger Jeff Dunetz”

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I know the blog has been heavy with gun control essays of late, but the post-Sandy Hook Hysteria Express is the current runaway train wreck right now, with no end in sight. Michael R. (formerly just Michael) scores another Comment of the Day by focusing on one of the aspects of the President’s kids-and-guns show yesterday that set my teeth on edge but that somehow was left out of the post about  all the other things that set me teeth on edge about the event. Well done.

Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Quote of the Day: Blogger Jeff Dunetz:

“I always find it troubling when someone uses the sentence “If it just saves one life, it is worth [giving up one of our rights and freedoms]“. There is no way to say it without dishonoring the memory of the many people who have died to uphold those freedoms, to establish those freedoms. How many people have died to preserve these rights and freedoms? Will we willingly give them away so cheaply?

“As far as our problems go here are some causes of death: Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: Blogger Jeff Dunetz

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“One thing the POTUS missed…there is no executive order preventing the Federal Government from selling weapons to Mexican Drug Cartels…everyone would support that one.”

—- Jeff Dunetz on his blog “The Lid,” criticizing President Obama’s list of 23 Executive Orders as “a pile of nothing.”

Obama And Biden Unveil Proposal To Decrease Gun Violence In U.S.There was a lot to dislike about today’s cynical exercise by President Obama on the topic of gun control. I already mentioned, in a post yesterday, its offensive exploitation of young children as props. James Taranto visited that issue today in his “Best of the Web,” pointing out the hypocrisy of White House spokesman Jay Carney going into high dudgeon and attacking the NRA for alluding, in a recent advocacy ad, to the fact that the President sends his own children to a private school that employs armed guards, and that his daughters are the beneficiaries of armed protection from the Secret Service. Said Carney:

“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the President’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”

Taranto, who does not agree with NRA’s reasoning in the ad, writes of today’s White House performance,

“If the president wants his critics to refrain from even indirectly referring to his daughters, he ought to stop exploiting ordinary people’s children in this manner. Even if the NRA missed the mark in accusing him of elitist hypocrisy over school guards, his display today makes him a fair target for such a charge.”

Yup. Continue reading →

What An Untrustworthy National Media Has Brought Us To: The Sandy Hook Truthers

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
One big wedge is missing.

One big wedge is missing.

Until recently, I was happily unaware that an active conspiracy theory has metastasized around the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, what can be thought of as the soot and sludge of the still-rolling ethics train wreck created by that tragedy, except that this is unfair to soot and sludge. The internet is abound with theorists, including at least one professor, who believe that the shooting was an elaborate hoax, possibly engineered by the Obama administration to facilitate gun confiscation and the repeal of the Second Amendment.

In a recent incident reported by Salon, a Newtown man who sheltered some students from the school after the shooting has been relentlessly harassed by Sandy Hook Truthers who have accused him of being part of the government plot. Continue reading →

The NRA’s New Video Game: Maybe Bad Tactics, Not Bad Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments
Oh, the humanity!!!

Oh, the HUMANITY !!!

Me, I was always taught not to taunt angry dogs, or aggravate bullies who have good left hooks, or make faces at teachers who were mad at me for not turning in my homework. Thus I think the National Rifle Association may have been, if not foolish, needlessly provocative by choosing this moment in time to tweak its intractable and largely unhinged opposition by releasing a new smart phone app for iPhones and iPads, a 3D shooting range game.

Nevertheless, there is nothing unethical about it. This is a classic example of the ick factor at work. (The ick factor is the common phenomenon in which conduct that is unusual,strange, new, surprising or shocking are seen by many as unethical, when in fact they are just unusual, strange,new, surprising or shocking.) Continue reading →