Government & Politics

Orc Attack! The Unethical GOP Campaign Smear With the Built-In Punishment

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“Citizens of Maine, I give you your next state Senator! Her campaign slogan: “Better an Orc than an idiot!”

In Maine, Republicans have attacked a state Senate candidate with an unfair and stunningly silly accusation devised by fools for consumption by the gullible, ignorant and confused. Fortunately, such an attack comes with its own punishment, for it constitutes a smoking gun that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Maine Republican Party is not only run by dolts, but dolts who never made it into the 21st Century.

Imagine: in a campaign mailing this week, Maine Republicans accused Democratic state Senate candidate Colleen Lachowicz of making “crude, vicious and violent comments” and living in a fantasy world because she plays the fantasy role-playing game World of Warcraft, and comments in online forums dedicated to the popular online pastime.”We need a senator who lives in our world, not Colleen’s world,” the mailing says. Continue reading →

Empty Chair Vindication: Don’t Wait For An Apology, Clint, But You Deserve One

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

The media abuse heaped on movie icon Clint Eastwood for his unexpected performance at the Republican National Convention was one more link in the chain of blatant and unprofessional anti-Republican bias that will surely continue right up to election day.  Eastwood, you recall, memorably held a one-way dialogue with the President as the invisible occupant of an empty chair. The pundits and columnists didn’t like Eastwood taking on their hero, so they trashed his method of doing it; they were personally offended by his message (which competent, objective journalists, now as rare as Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, would be able to put aside to give fair commentary), so they insulted Clint: they called him old (naturally; if he were fat, they would call him that, too); they called him out his depth, they called him befuddled and inept. The fact was, however, that it was they who were out of their depth, and they, not Eastwood, who embarrassed themselves. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Conspiracy Theories and the Disrespect Follies

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

One of the problems with the hateful, vicious, hyper-partisan politics that now grips the nation is that its most severe sufferers, inevitably the so-called “bases” of the two political parties and their most vocal advocates, end up making themselves look like fools because of it. Their fervor drives out rationality, and by refusing to assign decent and reasonable levels of  respect to their political opponents, they devalue their own credibility, sometimes to the vanishing point. They may not really be fools (though some of them are), but in a real sense, they have been driven insane…by hate, by lack of proportion, and a respect deficit that banishes both fairness and responsible conduct.

Crazy Accusation A: Republicans/Conservatives… Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: CNN Morning Anchor Carol Costello

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“There was criticism when Jim Lehrer was initially named to be a moderator. People said: ‘oh, another white guy; he’s too old to be doing this; we live in a new world — we don’t need an old-fashioned journalist doing these things any longer.’”

—-CNN Morning host Carol Costello, communing with PBS head Paula Kerger over Mitt Romney’s (obviously correct) assertion that public support for PBS has got to go, and joining in the despicable Democratic spin that President Obama’s less-than-stellar performance in the first debate was moderator Jim Lehrer’s fault.

Worst of the worst? I mean, if you don’t count MSNBC?

Carol Costello, Soledad O’Brien; Soledad O’Brien Carol Costello. Who is the most biased, smug, unethical news host not on MSNBC? Just when I think O’Brien has locked up the prize, Costello comes roaring back with something like this.

She ought to be fired. It’s as simple as that. Her statement is racist and ageist in the worst sense or the words; her implication is an unforgivable insult to a veteran newsman infinitely her superior, and her the content of her statement is proof of a deficient mind. Fire her. The AARP should demand it; the Republican should demand it; the Democrats should demand it, and CNN should see it as essential to maintaining whatever shred of credibility and integrity it has left. Continue reading →

Liars and Lies: Cal Thomas, Bob Beckel and USA Today’s Deceptive Debate Feature

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Beckel, Thomas…Liberal, Conservative…Liar, Liar…Disgrace, Disgrace.

 

Yesterday, after the first Presidential debate had concluded, USA Today columnists Cal Thomas and Bob Beckel’s joint feature was posted on the USA Today website; this morning, the same feature graced the newspaper’s print edition, on its op-ed page. Thomas and Beckel do a regular “point-counterpoint”-style debate which is presented as a conversation, and this one was about sprucing up the presidential debates.

“Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckel is a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot” is how USA TODAY always introduces the hackneyed format. The most recent feature began like this:

BOB: Wednesday ‘s debate was déjà vu all over again. It made me wish for a fresher format. The two major party candidates for president looked and sounded presidential, standing behind two lecterns with a nice television-friendly backdrop facing a single moderator. But we’ve seen it many — too many — times before.

CAL: Don’t forget the television-friendly ties both wore after their handlers probably spent hours coming up with the right color.

BOB: And then there was the “spin room” where surrogates for both candidates claimed victory for their guy. It resembled a summer TV rerun: same script, but with different “stars.” The debate was broken into six segments, each with a question chosen by the moderator. Each was given the same amount of time to respond to the question followed by a period of discussion. The moderator, Jim Lehrer, did try to keep the candidates focused on the question at hand, but each response was obviously practiced. Except for those with HD quality sets, debates haven’t changed much since 1960.

Wait—what debate did these guys watch? Obviously, none at all.  Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: White House Spokesperson Stephanie Cutter

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

“I sometimes wondered if we even needed a moderator because we had Mitt Romney.”

White House’s spokesperson Stephanie Cutter in CNN’s “spin room” following the first Presidential debate last night, in the wake of a near unanimous media verdict that challenger Mitt Romney had bested the President in style and substance. Moderator Jim Lehrer was criticized by Cutter and others in the President’s camp for being too passive and allowing Romney to control the debate.

“Hmmmm. who can we blame?”

The comment, like most of Cutter’s statements to the media this campaign season, was both unfair and dumb:

  • It was an excellent debate. I thought it was the most lively and substantive debate since the Kennedy-Nixon debates, with both candidates addressing each other directly and having sufficient time to argue complex issues without resorting to sound bites and canned responses. I moderate discussions for a living, and one rule a good moderator follows is that when the participants are engaging in valuable discourse, don’t allow rigid adherence to your plan to interfere with it. Lehrer, to his credit, let the candidates talk. The debates should not be about moderators, and his example should be followed by future debate questioners.
  • Characteristic of this White House and this President, Cutter’s immediate reaction to a perceived failure was to blame someone else and duck accountability. It may be the most exasperating ethical flaw in this administration.
  • Knowing how to work the moderator is a debating skill (as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews pointed out in his lament over Obama’s performance.) Romney did not abuse the moderator (as Newt Gingrich did routinely in the GOP debates), nor did be ever seem petulant, as Obama did when he briefly groused to Lehrer that “I had five seconds before you interrupted me.”
  • Here is the dumb part of Cutter’s complaint: taking over and controlling dynamic situations is what effective leaders tend to do. Viewers saw that aspect of Mitt Romney’s experience and character last night, and it was one of the features of his performance, I think, that created a positive impression. Yes, he was commanding, and managed the situation, with the President of the United States on stage next to him. How dare he?

Personally, I was surprised at the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Obama’s performance. Yes, Romney was better, but the President hardly embarrassed himself. I think the negative reaction by the Democrats and the Obama-promoting media occurred because that they have deluded themselves into believing that Obama’s record is defensible, when it isn’t and has never been: he has an impossible task. The positive reaction of the public to Romney’s debate performance is similarly the result of a misconception. The picture of him they had been fed by attack ads and the media was of a cold-hearted, mean and venal monster prone to sticking his foot in his mouth. The reality was on display last night, and it exposed that cartoon for what it was: a grotesque misrepresentation..

Ethics Heroes: President Obama and Mitt Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Congratulations to President Obama and Mitt Romney for being respectful, civil, dignified, good-natured, articulate and presidential in tonight’s debate.

I was proud of both of them.

Thanks. We needed that.

Look! Now Obama Has a Suck-Up Speech To Explain…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The Daily Caller found a previously uncirculated Barack Obama speech from 2007, and the conservative media has been giving it the “47%” treatment. No wonder. The speech is uncommonly ugly, with the future President channeling Rev. Wright and Kanye West, encouraging black anger and racial hate. Needless to say, he does not sound like a leader of “all the people” here.

I am on record as believing that such partisan audience speeches should be taken for what they are, and thus with several grains of salt, but never mind: the standard, a different one, has already been decreed by the mainstream news media, which treated Mitt Romney’s unscripted remarks about the government-dependent “47%” as more significant than the collapse of Obama’s foreign policy, the negligent death of our Ambassador, and a protracted White House cover-up of a terrorist attack. If they want to aspire to any fairness and even-handedness at all, it should devote a similar amount of attention and outrage to Obama’s remarks to black clergy, which were, in my view, far worse, because they were designed to exploit racial fears and divisiveness. They are also, like Romney’s comments, misleading and unfair.

I could argue that it is more reasonable to focus on Obama’s speech, because it was made in public, and presumably was fair game for criticism at the time. Why didn’t the reporters who witnessed it raise any alarms then? Wouldn’t such a racially divisive speech during the campaign (for the nomination) be at least as newsworthy in 2008 as the “47%” line by Romney 2012? Of course not—because the media was trying to elect Obama then, and it is trying to defeat Romney now.

Don’t be silly. Continue reading →

The “Homeland” Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

In “Homeland,” Showtime’s excellent Emmy-winning drama starring Claire Danes, a G.I. named Nick Brody imprisoned for years returns to the states a hero, and, secretly, a converted Muslim and terrorist. By Season Two, which premiered last night, Brody has risen to be a member of Congress, where he is working from the inside to benefit the interests of his captors. He has kept his conversion to Islam secret from everyone but his teenage daughter Dana, who accidentally caught him praying to Mecca in the basement in the first season.

Now Brody’s name is being floated as a possible running mate for the current Vice President, who is a presumptive presidential nominee. The Veep tells Congressman Brody that if there are skeletons in his closet that his researchers wouldn’t have found—I’m pretty sure being a secret terrorist would qualify—Brody needs to air them. Brody says there aren’t any. We know better.

Meanwhile, at Sidwell Friends, the tony Quaker private school in D.C. that all the pols send their kids to, Dana is fuming because she has to listen to the  Vice-President’s obnoxious son  go on about how “Muslims aren’t like us” and “don’t respect human life.” Dana, having been admonished for insulting him, blurts out, “Well, my father’s a Muslim!” in class.  Dana’s subsequent position is that she was joking to make a point. At home, however, her outburst causes a domestic crisis, as her mother feels that Brody has been lying to her, which he has.

I’ll leave Rep. Brody out of this ethical dilemma, as he is suffering from an Islamic strain of the Stockholm Syndrome, but what about the family? From their perspective, which is that they don’t suspect for a second that Brody is a traitor, what is their ethical obligation should he announce that the Vice President is going to choose him as a running mate, and that he expects them to keep his secret?

His argument, of course, is that his religion shouldn’t and doesn’t matter. It is true that the “public would want to know,” and also that the public would probably not feel very comfy electing a Muslim these days to be a heartbeat away  from the Presidency, fair or not. The family knows he is a good man (they think) and like the idea of being Second Family; there is no reason to sink his career and their aspirations to celebrity by allowing irrational bigotry to take hold. Is there?

That’s not the whole truth, however. Brody has lied to the Vice President and to his constituents, and they do have a right to know that. In my view, both wife and daughter have an ethical duty as citizens to tell husband and father that if he accepts the nomination, they will be forced to expose him. They should also tell him that he needs to resign from Congress, or, if he’s willing, tell the public about his deception and ask for their forgiveness. I think, in short, that this is a John Edwards situation.

Is that what you would do, in their place?

And my favorite hypothetical of them all, that I refuse to believe wasn’t lurking in the minds of the writers:

Michelle discovers Barack praying to Mecca in the basement.

Tomorrow.

What would be her ethical duty?

“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 →