Government & Politics

Anything Goes: Campaign by Rumor and Slander in the Wisconsin Recall

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Wait…who’s “Dan”?

Combining  confirmation bias, whereby any uncomplimentary rumor about one’s enemy is assumed to be true, with “ends justify the means” political warfare philosophy, can banish all fairness and honesty from political campaigns. Spreading slanderous falsehoods about candidates for office is as old as the United States, but the internet and social networking sites, along with the increasingly irresponsible news media, allow the unethical tactic to be more effective, and sinister, than ever.

Now, fearing that the vengeance of the public unions, as orchestrated by the Democratic Party, is going to fall short in tomorrow’s recall election in Wisconsin, the foes of Governor Scott Walker grabbed a manufactured smear about Walker fathering a love child 24 years ago, and have made every effort to make it viral. An anti-Walker website called the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op [“a group of citizen journalists who began covering the Wisconsin Uprising in February, 2011. We came from different walks of life, different professional backgrounds and different parts of the state to document the dismantling of democratic process and tradition taking place in our state under the right wing onslaught of the Scott Walker regime”] recounted a second-hand story by an anti-Walker  classmate of the governor, who purported to have inside knowledge about his efforts to cover-up his impregnation of her roommate while he was running for class president (yes, this is another school days smear, like the Romney prep school episode. If you can’t beat ’em as adults, beat ’em as kids. That seems to be the current philosophy in both political camps. Phew!). Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Peter, who is a physician, a libertarian, and one of my oldest friends (we met in the 6th grade) from Arlington, Massachusetts, generously responded to my request for his professional expertise and philosophical perspective regarding the New York City soda ban.  Here is his thoughtful response, the Comment of the Day, on the post The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban: 

“It has become a reflex response to answer adverse circumstances with more regulation. To a lawyer, there is always a law, or regulation for any and every misstep in human behavior. Of course, we forget that we cannot predict the unintended consequences, not even to mention reviewing the effects of the laws we pass to determine if they are even having the INTENDED effect. Somehow, we believe that it is appropriate to pass laws to deny other people’s freedoms due to the “discomfort” of whiny types who have the connections and persistence to keep whining until they can get someone to pass a law. The consequence of such legislation’s continued passage, at ever more confiscatory levels of our liberties, is that we are legislating our way into a police state, and the widespread acceptance of the idea that it’s OK to deny personal liberty because it makes someone else “uncomfortable.” Again, as RR so aptly pointed out, “the government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” And this goes for not just your personal assets, but your freedoms as well.

“That said, in this context, yes, drinking lots of sugary sodas will make you fat, smoking will kill you, too much alcohol will kill you, doing extreme sports can kill you, and so on. And as long as one’s decisions affect only himself, have at it. However, when you want me to pay, through my insurance premiums, and my taxes, for the consequences of your stupidity, you cede the sovereignty of your decision to others beside yourself. If you want to ride your motorcycle without a helmet, while drunk, sure, do it. Just don’t expect me to pay the costs of your head injury. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“It’s a serious problem.”

“Something needs to be done.”

“This is a public health issue.”

The media defenses of New York Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial decision to ban the sale of large soft drink servings in New York City, and Bloomberg’s defense as well, set up a classic utilitarian argument for a government intrusion into personal choice and lifestyle. It is, simply, that the ends justify the means, and as we all know, sometimes they do.

Sometimes, however, those means sacrifice too much: lives, dignity, fairness, liberty, fun. Sometimes employing those means require crossing lines that have not been crossed before, opening the door to more and greater sacrifices that even advocates of the particular measure would find objectionable and wrong. This leads to the slippery slope dilemma, and invokes absolutism. Some things must never be considered as just means, no matter what the ends being sought may be. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of absolutism declared that it was always wrong to use human beings against their wills to solve problems, no matter how great the problems are. The Declaration of Independence holds that a human being’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must never be breached by government. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Massachussetts Democrats

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Then again, the values of Massachusetts Democrats in choosing Senate candidates has a certain consistency…

95.7 percent of the 3,500 delegates attending the Massachusetts state Democratic convention in Springfield, Mass. endorsed faux-Cherokee Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren for U.S. Senator.  Since Warren’s support exceeded 85%, Marisa DeFranco, the only declared opposition to Warren’s nomination to oppose Republican Senator Scott Brown’s bid for re-election, will not have the chance to test Warren in a primary.

Since no Democratic candidate had ever won more than 86 percent of the vote in the 30 years of the state party’s endorsement process, the party’s doubling down on the thoroughly disgraced Warren is a stunning rejection of ethical principles.

Warren, just this week, admitted that she had told Harvard that she was a Cherokee after she had been hired, prompting the University to list the blue-eyed, blonde-haired scholar as “a woman of color” in its diversity statistics. She had explicitly denied this for months. She has shown to be a plagiarist, a liar, a fake, and a hypocrite, and an inept politician as well. Her party’s response to all of this was to make it impossible for its members to reject her at the polls, and to nominate a candidate of integrity to oppose Brown.

What does the conduct of Massachusetts Democrats demonstrate? Continue reading →

Why We Shouldn’t Elect Liars

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

You can’t tell from the picture, but Senator Kirk’s pants are on fire.

It took a great deal of restraint for me not to write a post after reading the Daily Beast’s Micahel Tomasky’s infuriating essay about the “media witch hunt” against Elizabeth Warren. If there ever was a piece destined to send me over the edge, that was it: not only did Tomasky express indignation that anyone would use Warren’s pose as a minority to impugn her integrity, but he ridiculed concern over her plagiarism as well. Here, however, was the capper: he compared criticism of Warren to the attacks on Bill Clinton during the Monica fiasco, writing,

“The situations are in fact almost precisely the same. You had then a press pack that had decided that whether Bill Clinton was telling the truth about Monica was a question on which the fate of the republic hinged. The press became self-righteously consumed with its search for The Truth. Meanwhile, outside the Beltway, and outside of Wingnuttia (it existed then, just at about half of its current GDP), nobody cared what the truth was. The media kept producing revelations; surely, now, swore Maureen Dowd and Michael Kelly, America will see this man for the reprobate he is! America looked, yawned, told the press to start acting like grownups, and continued to approve of the job Clinton was doing as president at rates near 70 percent and to oppose impeachment at similar levels.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Jenny McCarthy Body Count

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Sure, bet your kid’s life on the wisdom of Jenny McCarthy. Makes sense to me!

From The Jenny McCarthy Body Count:

“In June 2007 Jenny McCarthy began promoting anti-vaccination rhetoric. Because of her celebrity status she has appeared on several television shows and has published multiple books advising parents not to vaccinate their children. This has led to an increase in the number of vaccine preventable illnesses as well as an increase in the number of vaccine preventable deaths. Jenny McCarthy has a body count attached to her name. This website will publish the total number of vaccine preventable illnesses and vaccine preventable deaths that have happened in the United States since June 2007 when she began publicly speaking out against vaccines.

“Is Jenny McCarthy directly responsible for every vaccine preventable illness and every vaccine preventable death listed here? No. However, as the unofficial spokesperson for the United States anti-vaccination movement she may be indirectly responsible for at least some of these illnesses and deaths and even one vaccine preventable illness or vaccine preventable death is too many.”

You can visit the Jenny McCarthy Body Count, which stands at 888 preventable deaths as of May 31, 2012, here.

Your Ethics Quiz is simple: Is the website fair?

My answer: sure.

McCarthy is an engaging, attractive, well-meaning woman and semi-talented comic actress who has misused her celebrity, as many celebrities do and have, to exert more influence over the public and media than her experience, education, intelligence, wisdom and expertise justify. Are the various television programs, media outlets and hysteria-peddlers also accountable for giving someone with McCarthy’s thin credentials and outsize influence a platform to frighten and mislead the many members of the public who are even more ignorant than she is? Absolutely. Does that reduce McCarthy’s culpability for spreading misinformation that leads to potentially deadly neglect of the health needs of children? Not one bit.

Using the Jenny McCarthy Body Count to call attention to the foolishness of anti- vaccine hysteria is a clever idea, and if it keeps even one parent from being misled by the medical nonsense pushed McCarthy and her allies. it is performing a public service.

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Pointer: Instapundit

Facts: Jenny McCarthy Body Count

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

AM Cable News Horror: Fox Eliminates All Doubt

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Unfair, imbalanced, and proud of it!

Thoroughly traumatized and disillusioned by the blatant partisan cheerleading on CNN’s “American Morning”–courtesy of Carol Costello and Soledad O’Brien—-I made the quite idiotic mistake of having today’s morning coffee to “Fox and Friends,” the Fox News counterpart. Despite the fact that I already knew that jumping from CNN to Fox News as a respite from biased reporting was like leaving the Titanic for a quiet voyage on the Hindenburg, I was still shocked at what I saw.

Head morning stooge Steve Doocy introduced “a look back” at President Obama’s 2008 campaign. What followed was a long, slick attack ad, contrasting film footage of various Obama “Hope and Change”- themed speeches and campaign pledges, such as his infamous promise to halve the deficit by the end of his first term, intercut with contrasting images, statistics and graphs making a mockery of his words. “Ah!”, thought I. “They are showing the latest Republican National Committee ad. I certainly hope the Republicans paid the going rate for this, because it would be unethical for Fox to show a complete, three-minute GOP anti-Obama ad gratis on the pretense of analyzing it.” I have seen this trick on CNN and NBC, and it is abysmal broadcast journalism.

I am relieved to report, however, that this is not what Fox News did this morning, because the video was not made by the RNC, and it wasn’t produced by an independent pro-Republican PAC, either.

It was produced by Fox News. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Michael Fumento

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“As a conservative, I disagree with the political opinions of liberals. But to me, a verbal assault indicates insecurity and weakness on the part of the assaulter, as in “Is that the best they can do?” This playground bullying – the name-calling, the screaming, the horrible accusations – all are intended to stifle debate, the very lifeblood of a democracy.”

—-Michael Fumento, writing powerfully in Salon about the increasingly viscous rhetoric of too many conservatives, and how it has left him estranged from his own political philosophy.

He writes,

“Civility and respect for order – nay, demand for order – have always been tenets of conservatism. The most prominent work of history’s most prominent conservative, Edmund Burke, was a reaction to the anger and hatred that swept France during the revolution. It would eventually rip the country apart and plunge all of Europe into decades of war. Such is the rotted fruit of mass-produced hate and rage. Burke, not incidentally, was a true Tea Party supporter, risking everything as a member of Parliament to support the rebellion in the United States.

“All of today’s right-wing darlings got there by mastering what Burke feared most: screaming “J’accuse! J’accuse!” Turning people against each other. Taking seeds of fear, anger and hatred and planting them to grow a new crop.”

You can read his whole essay, “My break with the extreme right” in Salon, here.

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Pointer: Volokh Conspiracy

Source: Salon

Graphic: Sleepless heretic

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Unethical Quote of the Month: Howard Kurtz

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“Brinkley’s book will undoubtedly tarnish the Cronkite legacy. But my admiration for the man is only partly diminished. Perhaps it is too easy to judge him by today’s standards, any more than we should condemn Thomas Jefferson for owning slaves. Perhaps he simply reflected his times, when some journalists and politicians quietly collaborated, when conflicts of interest were routinely tolerated, when a powerful media establishment could sweep its embarrassments under the rug. Cronkite thrived as television came of age, always protecting what we would now call his brand. That’s just the way it was.”

—-CNN good journalism watchdog Howard Kurtz, closing his review of the new Douglas Brinkley biography of Walter Cronkite, which shows that the legendary paragon of broadcast journalism was biased, often dishonest, and frequently conflicted.

No, no, no, no.

And that’s the way it wasn’t…

The “things were different then” excuse won’t fly as a defense of Cronkite, and shame on Howard Kurtz, who is supposed to stand for ethical journalism, for trying to rationalize the obvious conclusion demanded by Brinkley’s biography. That conclusion is that there was no Golden Age of TV journalism, and that rampant liberal bias infected the nightly broadcasts then as now, but we were too trusting and unsophisticated to realize it. Kurtz spends an entire book review extracting information Brinkley uncovered that proves Walter Cronkite’s image as an objective, incorruptible truth-teller was a lie, and then attempts to make the case that we shouldn’t judge him harshly.

Why? Because he was one of Kurtz’s heroes? Perry Mason made me want to be a lawyer, and it wasn’t until I became one that I realized that the fictional defense attorney was the sleaziest criminal lawyer this side “The Practice.” Tarnished heroes are part of growing up, Howard. Don’t pretend that journalistic ethics were different then…journalism schools were teaching objectivity, transparency, fairness, honesty and avoidance of conflicts of interest when Walter was saying “And that’s the way it is!” in a high soprano. Yet Brinkley shows that he… Continue reading →

The Significance of Obama and “Choom”

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Hey! Isn’t that guy a little young to be President?

Conservative bloggers and talk show hosts who should know better are running gleefully with the tales out of David Maraniss’s new biography of the President in which young Obama is revealed as a pothead. “Choom” apparently means marijuana, and at the Punahou School in Hawaii Barry belonged to the “Choom Gang,” the members of which were apparently obsessed with weed.

The Choomies drove around in a Volkswagen bus called the “Choomwagon,” and were especially fond of “roof hits,” smoking pot inside the Choomwagon with all the windows rolled up,  to maximize the amount of smoke they inhaled. Barack Spicoli Obama was apparently known for renowned for his “interceptions”…joining a group of stoners passing around a joint, taking a hit and yelling, “Intercepted!”

All of which tells us 100% of nothing regarding the fitness of Obama to lead the country today. Continue reading →