Health and Medicine

Sorry: I Would Fire Don/Dawn Ennis

/ Jack Marshall / 90 Comments
Old Don, Dawn, New Don

Old Don, Dawn, New Don

Let me begin by saying that I have no idea what is going on, was going on or will be going on with ABC producer Don Ennis. Unless he has the worst sense of humor in the world, whatever it is isn’t good, or anything I would wish on someone else. I am, to a point, sympathetic. However, if I were his employer, I would tell Ennis today that he will have to work out his unusual identity issues somewhere else, and I believe that would be the right thing to do. It may not, however, be the legal thing to do, which is one of approximately 268 reasons I’m glad that I am not Mr. Ennis’s employer.

Not that it wouldn’t be exciting. If you hadn’t heard, last May Don Ennis, a well-respected ABC News editor and previously unambiguously male, entered his newsroom wearing a cute black dress and an auburn wig and announced to a stunned staff, colleagues and superiors that he was transgender. The ABC News national assignment editor said he was forever more to be known as Dawn Stacey Ennis. “Please understand,” he said in a statement, “this is not a game of dress-up, or make-believe. It is my affirmation of who I now am and what I must do to be happy, in response to a soul-crushing secret that my wife and I have been dealing with for more than seven years, mostly in secret. A father of three, “Dawn” announced that the newly-confirmed she was separating from her wife of seventeen years.

His colleagues were supportive, as was everyone else in the media, which is why you probably hadn’t heard the story. They left flowers on Dawn’s desk; ABC News President Ben Sherwood wrote her a note of support. I would have done likewise. This is a real problem, and exactly the kind of personal, medical crisis that the workplace ought to accommodate, while providing emotional support for the difficult and courageous transition. Thus Ennis continued to work at ABC sporting hormone-induced breasts, make-up, lipstick, skirts and heels. This undoubtedly caused a period of adjustment and awkwardness, but I would expect mature professionals to handle it gracefully.

Today, we learned, along with ABC, that Ennis has had a change of heart, and almost everything else. In a jaw-dropping e-mail to family and co-workers  titled “Not Reportable, Very Confirmed,” Ennis explained that he was Don Ennis again. “That will be my name again, now and forever. And it appears I’m not transgender after all.” Continue reading →

Ethics Corrupter: Yankee Third Baseman Alex Rodriquez; Ethics Dunce: Yankee Manager Joe Girardi; Disgraced: The New York Yankees

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Corrupted!

Corrupted!

Today, Major League Baseball announced that it was suspending Alex Rodriquez, the New York Yankees aging superstar, for the remainder of the 2013 season and the 2014 season for  using banned performance enhancing drugs, and impeding baseball’s investigation of his cheating. This was the climax (but not the end) of a long, drawn out, messy process and investigation involving a sleazy Miami drug lab, called Biogenesis, now closed down, which had records indicating that many professional baseball players had obtained banned substances.

Former National League MVP Ryan Braun (who I keep calling “Steve”) has already been banned for the rest of the year by the evidence obtained from Biogenesis records. The process has been marred by serial leaks from MLB  (unfair to the players involved, including Rodriquez) and ugly maneuvering between Rodriguez, who has been recovering from a serious hip issue, and the Yankees, who owe him approximately a gazillion dollars (thanks to an idiotic career contract signed in 2007 after he had already admitted to using steroids once), would like nothing more than for him to vanish in a puff of smoke and sulfur.

To explain the baroque ins and outs of baseball’s steroid wars, its player union relations, and the various intersecting agreements, special clauses and other things that have an impact on Rodriquez’s suspension would take too long here and would even bore the baseball fans. What you need to know now is this: Continue reading →

When Bloggers Screw Up

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Hey, who said that? (It's a trick question!)

Hey, who said that? (It’s a trick question!)

Ann Althouse is a quirky, well-respected blogger, a Wisconsin law professor who is liable to write wittily and perceptively about anything from dogs to politics from her barely right of center political perspective. Recently she banned all comments from her blog, meaning that she now pontificates without the safety net of informed readers being available to tell her when she’s jumped the track of rationality, which, without exception, we all do. This means that on the rare occasions that the erudite and perceptive Ms. Althouse is full of beans, there is no way to let her or anyone else know.

So I’m letting her know.

For some reason, Althouse is indignant over the $800,000 the Interior Department is spending to erase the incorrect quote negligently carved into the Martin Luther King Memorial. She writes with a sneer,

“Martin Luther King said “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness,” which we will remember, even through it’s now off the memorial. It’s off the memorial because, in the “drum major” speech, there were some other words around it — as is always the case with snappy lines in speeches — and Maya Angelou and others felt some shades of subtlety were lost, making the man sound arrogant.” Continue reading →

Well, Let’s Kill All The Lawyers, Then!

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

One reason why democracy doesn’t seem to be working very well is that the public is becoming increasingly ignorant about what makes it work at all. Evidence of this trend comes by way of a provocative study by the Pew Research Center, which polled the public regarding which professions it believes contribute the most to society.

The results can be found in this press release, this summary, and this article in The Careerist, but here is a snapshot:

Worth study

Continue reading →

“Yeccch!” Ethics, The Saint’s Excuse, and Shotgun Shock PSAs

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

crap poster

The above poster is being used by the Bristol, England, city council to get dog owners to pick up after their pets.

My reaction:

Yecccch! Ack!!! Gag!

Also this: What a lazy, inconsiderate, unfair and unethical assault on the majority in order to make an impact on a minority. Given the choice between wiping dog poop off my shoe or having my stomach turned by the image of a child eating it, I’m not sure which I’d take, or who I hate more, the inconsiderate dog owner, or the jerk who is willing to sicken me to get at him.

Good, noble, arrogant, self-righteous advocates for responsible behavior increasingly behave as if any collateral damage is acceptable, while their dubiously effective advocacy gets more shrill and ugly. Every time that current TV ad featuring the croaking, hideously disfigured ex-smoker talking while a photo of her lovely pre-cancer visage shows us the ravages of tobacco, I literally dive for the remote, just as I do when the animal cruelty spots begin bombarding me with images of sad-eyed, neglected and abused cats and dogs.

(I also do this when Piers Morgan, Nancy Grace, Donald Trump, Sean Hannity or Al Sharpton flash on the screen, but I digress.) Continue reading →

Actor Patrick Stewart (“Captain Picard”) Is A Father’s Day Ethics Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The video is self-explanatory.

_________________________

Pointer: Alexander Cheezem

 

 

 

Still A Jerk After All These Years: Jimmy Connors Takes Revenge On Chris Evert

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
"Chris! Chris! Run away! What are you thinking?"

“Chris! Chris! Run away! What are you thinking?”

Why anyone would want to read the autobiography of former tennis bad boy Jimmy Connors is beyond me. When he was playing, Connors personified poor sportsmanship and a confrontational attitude toward authority and the world in general. The only cause women’s tennis icon Chris Evert ever gave me to doubt her character was the fact that she actually was romantically involved with such a creep. She’s paying the price now.

In his new tell-all memoirs “The Outsider,” published this week, Connors decided to settle scores with Evert for the reason for the disintegration of their engagement. He writes, vaguely but pointedly, that Evert became pregnant during their relationship and had an abortion without consulting him, though, he says, he was prepared to “let nature take its course.” “Well, thanks for letting me know. Since I don’t have a say in the matter, I guess I am just here to help,” is what Connors says he told Evert over the phone, shortly before they broke up.

As despicable celebrity breaches of confidence and privacy go, this may not be the worst, but it is cruel and ugly. Continue reading →

Sarah Murnaghan’s Lungs: Unfortunately, Sebelius Is Right

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
Secretary Not-A-Death-Panel

Secretary Not-A-Death-Panel

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is refusing to intervene so that ten-year-old Sarah Murnaghan can jump ahead in line to get the urgent lung transplant that will save her life. Naturally, Sebelius is being attacked as  heartless, and conservatives are having a field day equating her decision with Sarah Palin’s infamous “death panels” characterization of Obamacare.

The manner in which organs are allocated for transplants is justly controversial, obviously flawed, and arguably unethical. Any real person whom the system will fail, however, instantly becomes sympathetic beyond the mere faceless numbers she is being compared to. Sebelius is quite correct: if the girl is moved ahead in line, someone else won’t get lungs, for this is musical chairs and a zero sum game.  If she was to make an exception to the policy for this case, it would be impossible for her to deny the next case, and soon Kathleen Sebelius would indeed become a one-woman death panel.

That’s not what she is doing now. What she is doing is adhering to an existing policy in which there are winners and losers, and the losers die, until the policy is reviewed and perhaps changed for the better. Her decision isn’t cold-hearted, cruel or unkind. It is responsible, fair and courageous. The alternative is to have no policy at all.

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Source: NBC News

Unethical Quote of the Week: A Taco Bell Employee

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

tacobell

“WE WEREN’T EVEN IN THE FOOD AREA! IF YOU CAN SEE IN THE BACK IT’S THE SODA MACHINES!… YOU’RE OPINION DOESN’T EVEN MATTER BECAUSE THIS HAPPENED A LONG TIME AGO! DAMMIT!”

—-The Taco Bell employee who allegedly took the photo above of a colleague licking a stack of taco shells. The image was, naturally, posted by one of them on Facebook, and re-posted, with appropriate alarm, by Consumerist.

The runners-up for this quote of the day were several jaw-dropping comments on Facebook, such as…

  • Wes Abdi, who says: 1. I know the person in the photo, not just from work, but from school as well; and I know that he is not dumb enough to lick a stack of taco shells and then serve them to the public. 2. There is a 99% chance that stack of Tacos was getting thrown out, as in: getting thrown away, so it’s not as if they were going to be served to anyone. 3. This was obviously done out of humor. I know most of you don’t see it as this, but this is friggin hilarious, sit back and just laugh at it.

Uh, Wes….1. He was dumb enough to post the picture, causing a business crisis for his employer, causing Taco Bell to lose untold sales and presumably putting his job at risk. He’s pretty dumb. 2. You know, a 1% chance that I’m going to be buying and eating a taco that has been ore-licked by an idiot is still too high for me, and, I bet, the FDA. 3. Yeah, food adulteration and tampering is hilarious. Now we know why you and The Mad Licker are friends, you idiot. (By the way, over a hundred readers “liked” this fatuous comment. What does that tell us?)

  • Aj Hackett, one of the hundred plus who think Wes is brilliant, wrote: One reason why I dislike this post so much is that you don’t know any side of this story. You only have a picture and you’re reading too much into it. What happened to “innocent until proven guilty”? You talk of freedom of speech and differences of opinion, yet you ignore one of the nation’s founding creeds. I do believe that Wes Abdi is correct in saying that you…should be the one to prove that this employee was ignoring his duty in properly handling food items. Once again, “innocent until proven guilty.” So prove it.
What? There is a posted photo of a Taco Bell employee licking food! There aren’t two sides; there is only one that matters: the side of the tacos being licked. No one’s reading too much into the photo at all, A.J., and may I add, what the hell’s the matter with you? The picture is what the law calls res ipsa loquitur. It speaks for itself. The existence of such a photo is proof that an employee licked the food, thought it was funny, and posted it so everyone could see the care and professionalism of those entrusted with handling the meals of Taco Bell customers. It is also proof that Taco Bell has at least one irresponsible idiot handling food. Nobody is “reading too much into it.” Meanwhile, your reference to “one of the nation’s founding creeds” is ignorant, misplaced, and mistaken, and your high school needs to be torn down and its teachers sent off to work at Taco Bell. “Innocent until proven guilty” is not a founding creed in any way; it is a convention of the justice system, and simply establishes who has the burden of proof in criminal prosecutions by the government. It has absolutely no application to private or public conclusions about an individual’s guilt when evidence is overwhelming. Nor does criticism of the photo or subsequent negative consequences being inflicted on the Mad Licker and his accomplices in any way relate to free speech. He’s free to post the photo: it’s still up, in fact. Free speech means the government isn’t allowed to stop anyone from posting photos that prove they are mentally deficient and that Taco Bell’s food might have god-knows-what done to it before we eat it.
  • Rebekah Becky Majors-Manley, another Wes fan, writes this stunner:  EXACTLY WES- TELL THAT KID THAT THIS OLD MOM OF 5 SONS THINKS IT IS A SCREAM AND HILARIOUS. TELL HIM HE IS MY HERO OF THE WEEK. I WOULD HIRE HIM IN A RED HOT MINUTE FOR HAVING FUN WHILE WORKING- VERY IMPORTANT TO HAVE FUN ON THE JOB. PEOPLE FORGET HOW IMPORTANT FUN IS- !LIFE IS SHORT AND THEN YOU DIE. HAVE FUN AND NEVER STOP LAUGHING. TACO BELL WILL SURVIVE IT-LOL. Look out, World…Rebekah has raised five sons who think like her.

There is no reason to expound further on what is unethical about posting a photo of yourself licking food that may or may not have ended up in a customer’s lunch, to the detriment of your employer and horror of its customers. If that isn’t immediately apparent, you’re either beyond hope, like Rebekah, Wes, A.J., and the unidentified photographer, or you work at Taco Bell.______________Pointer: tgtFacts and Graphic: Consumerist

 

 

Renée Richards, Fallon Fox, and Déjà Vu: Transgender Ethics In Sports

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

MMA-Fighter-Fallon

I think I’ve seen this movie before.

On May 24, Mixed Martial Arts fighter Fallon Fox moved to 3-0 in her MMA career, beating Allana Jones and earning a spot in the finals of the Championship Fighting Alliance’s featherweight tournament.  Her victory was accompanied by a chorus of jeers. Why? Fallon Fox is a transgendered male, now fully female—except for the unremovable Y chromosome—thanks to gender realignment surgery. Her rise through the female martial arts ranks has been greeted by a mixture of horror, ridicule and revulsion. When she came out for her most recent bout, some wit had the Aerosmith song “Dude Looks Like a Lady” blaring  over the loudspeakers. Some of her MMA competitors have declared that they will not fight her, and here’s sports commentator/pundit/personality Joe Rogan opining on her qualifications to compete:

“You can’t fight women. That’s fucking crazy. I don’t know why she thinks that she’s going to be able to do that. If you want to be a woman in the bedroom and you know you want to play house and all of that other shit and you feel like you have, your body is really a woman’s body trapped inside a man’s frame and so you got a operation, that’s all good in the hood. But you can’t fight chicks. Get the fuck out of here. You’re out of your mind. You need to fight men, you know? Period. You need to fight men your size because you’re a man. You’re a man without a dick.”

How quickly they forget. Continue reading →