Government & Politics

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote of the Week: Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Presenting one of the very best Comments of the Day

Rick Jones, whose own blog Curmudgeon Central should be on everyone’s list of bookmarks and visited often, delivers one of the finest and most thoughtful comments ever to grace Ethics Alarms, and we’ve had many excellent ones. His topic is my post regarding Professor Dyson’s comments on ABC this Sunday about criticism of President Obama, but Rick makes a perceptive connection to the Trayvon Martin controversy as well.And here is the really amazing part: there is not a word here that I don’t agree with completely.

Here is his Comment of the Day, on the post Unethical Quote of the Week: Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson:

“It strikes me that President Obama has come in for at least his share of sniping—legitimate and otherwise. But that isn’t the issue here. Rather, how much of that criticism is based on race? The honest answer is that we can’t say with certainty, but we can make some pretty fair conjectures. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: The American Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Well, I'll be hornswoggled! INTEGRITY!

The mainstream media and left-of-center pundits managed to leave criticism of President Obama’s bizarre—for a lawyer and supposed authority on Constitutional law, and yes, for a President too—assertion that there was something “unprecedented” about the Supreme Court declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional, and something inappropriate for this to be done by “unelected” judges, to conservative sources, an increasingly common and deplorable technique that allows the Left to thereafter discredit legitimate and non-ideological observations as “partisan.” Thus it was a relief, and a credit to the organization, when the reliably liberal American Bar Association weighed in with the same critique of the President’s comments, with similar intensity. Continue reading →

Trayvon Ethics Train Wreck, Next Stop: Is George Zimmerman A Ham Sandwich?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

It now appears likely that Angela Corey, the special prosecutor appointed by Florida Governor Rick Scott, will bring the Trayvon Martin shooting matter before a grand jury this week. Under Florida law, she doesn’t have to do that: she could issue an indictment or clear shooter George Zimmerman of a crime on her own authority. It is likely, however, that a grand jury will get the job of deciding whether there is probable cause that a crime was committed, and whether Zimmerman was guilty of it.

[UPDATE: CNN just announced that there will be NO grand jury. Corey will make the decision herself. The post now applies solely to her, and her alone.]

In Florida, a grand jury consists of between 15 and 21  jurors, who have been appointed for five to six months of intermittent service. For the grand jury to indict Zimmerman, 12 jurors must decide that an indictment can be supported by the evidence. The grand jury’s final decision may take any amount of time, though seldom more than a week.

New York State chief judge Sol Wachtler famously said that if a prosecutor wants it to happen, a grand jury can be made to indict a ham sandwich. Corey will be the only official who interacts with the jury, and she is already in a nearly impossible ethical dilemma. What if, having reviewed the evidence, she sincerely believes that Zimmerman did not commit a crime? Continue reading →

Trayvon Martin Ethics Train Wreck Update: The Wreckage So Far, and The Wreckers

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

The "George Zimmerman Is a Racist" segment in Clinton Mitchell's high school ethics class.

Gallup released a poll yesterday, showing:

  • African-Americans are nearly five times more likely to be convinced that gunman George Zimmerman is “definitely guilty” of a crime than non-blacks.
  • 75% of African-Americans believe that racial bias led to Martin’s shooting, whereas less than half of non-blacks do, though a majority of the public believe that race was a factor in the tragedy.
  • 73% of blacks, about twice the percentage of the rest of the population,  believe that Zimmerman would have been arrested if the person he shot was white.

What we now have, clearly, is  significant, dangerous, and festering racial distrust, not created solely by the Trayvon Martin incident but exacerbated by it. This can only harm race relations, law enforcement, and the nation generally, and yet it is beyond argument that this divide has been encouraged and nurtured. Obviously the potential already existed, and one would think that responsible figures in public life, the civil rights establishment, elected office and the media would take the responsible course and attempt to minimize the shooting’s potential for increasing racial divisiveness in America.

They did not. Once again, they ripped the scab right off racial healing, and did so recklessly, cruelly, ineptly, and in some cases, maliciously. They are still doing it, or passively allowing it to be done by others. This is wrong, and shockingly so. Rational and fair analysts and observers all along the ideological spectrum should be saying so, but they are not. Fairness and honesty should not partisan issues. Playing the politics of hate and divisiveness is a threat to the fabric of the United States of America and in this case, risks unraveling decades of progress in race relations and understanding. There can be no excuse for it, and yet the primary culprits reside among the most influential and prominent institutions in the country. Journalists. Congress. Civil rights organizations. Pundits. Educators. And the President of the United States. Continue reading →

2012 Election Coverage Preview: “Objective” Interviewing Technique, Mainstream Media Style

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

CNN’s Carol Costello: Democrat, Obama defender, Journalist? No.

I watched deposed biased and unprofessional CNN morning show host Carol Costello, subbing for current CNN biased and unprofessional host Soledad O’Brien, interview bumbling GOP Chair Reince Priebus yesterday in disbelief. It was the most blatant example of a network news interviewer shameless stepping into the role of a partisan defender of the President that I had since the stunning 2oo9 spectacle  of CNN reporter Susan Roesgen angrily debating Tea Party rally participants on the virtues of the President’s policies and pronouncing the anti-Obama demonstration as “anti-CNN.”

I have been patiently waiting for a full video of the interview but cannot find one; the full effect of Costello’s partisan contempt can only be fully appreciated by observing her smug smirks and sarcastic tone. In the absence of the video, however, the best I can show you is the transcript, and I’m sure some of you—those who can’t detect left-leaning media bias because it just seems like the honest  truth to you–will say Costello was just doing her job. All I can say to that is: you are dead wrong.

We all know that the vast, vast majority of journalists are liberals, progressives and registered Democrats, disproportionately to the political mix in the country at large. The professional, ethical journalists, and there are still some, can be tough and fair interviewers without their performance a) being guided by the desire to “win” for their side, b) making it obvious with every question where their own sentiments lie, and c)  showing obvious disrespect for their guests.  “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert met that standard routinely (current host David Gregory does not). Doing so takes restraint, skill, respect for the role of journalists and ethics. Costello showed none of these, and in an earlier era, where journalistic integrity had not become a casualty of ratings and competition, I have no doubt that a disgraceful performance like Costello’s would have led to a suspension or a one-way ticket to the local news in Palookaville.  Now it is very close to the norm. and as the mainstream media circle the wagons to protect the candidate it helped elect in 2008, we should expect more of the same, and worse, in the coming months.

And if you think this is fair, responsible, or healthy for democracy, you are dead wrong about that, too.

Here is yesterday’s transcript, which aired on April 5 on CNN’s Newsroom at 9:05 a.m. EDT, with some annotations by me. Continue reading →

The Pink Slime Debacle: Is Anyone To Blame?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

YUM!!!!

The maker of so-called “pink slime” filed for bankruptcy last week as the direct result of a public furor and public relations disaster related to “finely textured beef.” As a result, upwards of 650 people are losing their jobs, perhaps many more. Ground beef and other beef-based food will be more expensive, and quite possibly less healthy. Who, if anyone, is at fault?

The “pink slime” controversy was launched by cable TV chef Jamie Oliver, a healthy eating advocate who urged his viewers to reject ground beef that included the commonly-used filler. It is all meat, you know. In fact, it is virtually fat-free beef that begins as slaughterhouse trimmings, is then heated and spun in a centrifuge to separate tiny particles of meat from fat, and subjected to a puff of ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria. Then it was mixed with ground beef. The process sounded unappetizing, and the nickname, coined in an e-mail by a USDA official, made it seem especially disgusting. The internet and social media got a hold of it, and the next thing you know, there were petitions and outrage. And the net result…jobs lost, beef made more expensive, no improvement in taste or health…a complete loss.

Good job everybody!

And almost everybody’s to blame too.

In rough order of culpability:

  1. The meat industry, for using unnatural, treated meat as filler and hiding it with the deceitful label “100% beef.” Consumers should have known what was being added and how it was produced, and it should have been on the labels.
  2. The clever USDA official. His cute name was a food slur, and in these days of viral tweets, YouTube videos and emails, coming up with a disgusting name for a safe food was reckless and irresponsible.
  3. The news media and websites, for not adequately defusing the controversy by explaining exactly what the substance was, indulging the anti-meat agenda of certain writers and reporters.
  4. Consumers, for being naive, emotional, irrational, and too easily stampeded. Most processed food can be made to seem disgusting,  especially anything to do with meat. So is a lot of food preparation. The public won’t take the time to distinguish between genuinely unhealthy foods and those that just involve processing that isn’t suitable for the squeamish, so they go overboard on the random targets of attention-seeking, half-cocked activists, and often the government and regulators follow the hysteria. This is the tragedy of DDT; this is Alar; this is cyclamates. Industries are destroyed that don’t deserve to be; lives are ruined, and the public health isn’t improved.

Was Jaime Oliver’s conduct wrong? I don’t think so. He’s a natural foods advocate; he has philosophical objections to processed food, and he  performed a public service by letting the public know something about its food that it should have been told about sooner. The story of “pink slime” could and should have been explained truthfully by someone who approved of it; it’s not Oliver’s fault that the job fell to an opponent.

How Extreme Ideology Makes You An Insufferable, Mean-Spirited Jerk: Case Study…William Ayers

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Thank you for your service, and of course you can board the airplane before I do. By the way, Bill Ayers says you don't work.

Barack Obama’s friend Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, the now retired terrorists, found their way to Occupy Wall Street yesterday, which figures, and these murderous Sixties socialists were welcomed as heroes by the OWS crowd, which figures even more.

In the course of their joint rant about how doomed and terrible the United States is, Ayers, who apparently resented not being in the first group to board a recent commercial flight by virtue of his first class ticket, posed this question:

“We’ve got a militarized society and its become so common sense that, getting on the airplane coming out here, the first thing they said was let all the, uhh, let all the ya know, uniformed military get on first and thank you for your service.  And I said as I always do: let’s let the teachers and nurses get on first and thank them for their service.  I mean, why is it that everything military has got to be good and everything that has to do with actual work, real work, not jobs, real work for people, that stuff gets discouraged and marginalized?” Continue reading →

Lawrence O’Donnell and the Missing Religious Bigotry Ethics Alarm at MSNBC

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Really?

Religious bigotry? Hey, whatever works!

Is this really how it is going to be? Are the media protectors of President Obama really going to stoop to anti-Mormon bigotry to attack Mitt Romney?  First New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow writes disparagingly about the Mormon “magic underpants” with nary a peep of  protest or discipline from his bosses at the New York Times, and now MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell spews out this last night as Romney’s three primary wins were being tallied:

“Mormonism was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it. Which Mitt Romney says he believes.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Prof. Paul Horwitz

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“I can think of a number of posts about the ACA from legal scholars last week that were clearly and openly offered as advocacy and did a fine job of it. And I can think of others that were clearly not offered as advocacy at all, and said useful and interesting things about the oral arguments…But I do believe that some posts last week traded on the authority of their authors, made overconfident or disingenuous claims about the state of current law and the strength or weakness of opposing arguments, and did so for strategic reasons. I see those reasons as more inculpatory than exculpatory. I don’t see the minimal requirements for scholarly integrity that I offered as changing because of the medium, or because of the importance and currency of the case.”

Hey, Professor! We assume you're smarter than we are: don't play games with our trust!

—-University of Alabama Law Professor Paul Horwitz, writing about the confounding number of liberal law professors and scholars who wrote internet posts professing that the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate was obvious and undeniable, and that the provision’s Supreme Court approval was assured. As Ethics Alarms did regarding other commentators, Prof. Horwitz suggests that some of the commentary was designed as spin, or to use his term, to “shape the narrative.” He argues that in cases where the scholar was deliberately over-stating the case for constitutionality, this constituted a breach of integrity and honesty. Hie professor-speak for this is “inculpatory.” He means that it was unethical.

Which, of course, it was. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Residents of Ward 8, District of Columbia

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Here’s an all-too-brief synopsis of the political career of Marion Barry, City Councilman for Ward 8 in the District of Columbia

  • As Mayor of Washington, D.C. from 1979- 1991, he appointed unqualified and corrupt cronies to key positions, many of whom, under his watch, either embezzled government funds or otherwise lined their own pockets. Barry set the standard by spending lavishly on his own travel and amenities while keeping the actual expenditures secret. His multiple infidelities to his wife and abuse of cocaine and alcohol was widely publicized. He hired loyal supporters for jobs they either could not or did not do, swelling the D.C. budget and lowering service to abyssal levels. Wards that did not vote his way when he came up for election didn’t get their streets plowed. Contracts were awarded to Barry’s political connections rather than by such quaint criteria as cost-effectiveness and demonstrated  ability to perform. Each year of his tenure, the budget deficit got worse, crime and violence rose, and Barry’s addictions and illegal drug use became more obvious. Finally, he was caught on camera smoking crack, arrested, and forced to resign. The accumulated charges against him, including more than one drug possession charge and multiple counts of perjury still didn’t stick, because Barry Squad jurors hung the jury with absurd claims that the mayor was the victim of a “racist conspiracy.” Continue reading →