History

Forgetting Farrah

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The film montage of significant Hollywood figures who have died since the last Oscars broadcast is always an emotional and evocative feature of the Academy Awards, as well as a time to bid a final  farewell to various faces that became affectionately remembered parts of our past. Except for fanatic film buffs, there is always the occasional “who the heck is that?” moment, as a the image of a”famous” make-up artist or key grip passes by. But they were all important, in their own ways, and deserve their final salute.

Farrah Fawcett,  who died of cancer last year, deserved her final salute too. Yet she was missing. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Henri Salmide, 1919-2010

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Henri Salmide by the port he saved, and came to love.

Henri Salmide by the port he saved, and came to love.

In the Nuremberg war crimes trials following World War II, the Allies took the high-minded position that “just following orders” was no defense to “crimes against humanity” committed during wartime. It is and has always been much easier to argue for defying military orders in the abstract, however, than in real combat situations. Conveniently, the victors in a war can take such a position, even knowing in their hearts, as most honest soldiers do, that they themselves might not be able to muster the courage and conviction to tell a commanding officer, “No!”

Henri Salmide, a former German soldier in World War II who died in France this week, would have been an appropriate judge for the trials, for he would not have been plagued by any such conflict or hypocrisy. For Salmide, back when he was called by his birth name of Heinz Stahlschmidt, was a rare and remarkable man who did defy an order he knew was wrong, and saved a city with his courageous, dangerous, and principled actions. Continue reading →

Premature Ethics Alarm on Obama’s Judicial Appointment, Day 2

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Amazingly, even liberal journalists are now presuming that Obama’s appointment of attorney Scott Matheson signals that a deal has been struck with his Congressman brother to reverse his previous votes and support the health care bill, whatever its current form may be. And they are saying that this is hardly sinister, as such deals are commonplace in the rough-and-tumble, amoral world of politics.

Deals like this one, if that’s what it is, are not commonplace. Not when the object is a major systemic overhaul costing billions, not when so much of the public is dubious about it, not when the legislation is so complex that almost nobody completely understands it and definitely not after previous efforts to buy votes–as in the “Louisiana Purchase” and Ben Nelson’s extortion—caused so much public revulsion that they swept a Republican into a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts. Nobody knows what unsavory back-room tactics L.B.J. used to get the civil rights legislation passed, but that’s the point: you don’t mind the little piece of rat in your sausage if you’re not certain it’s there. Continue reading →

Honoring O.J.: Your Tax Dollars at Work

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

We haven’t had an example of jaw-droppingly incompetent, outrageously irresponsible teacher behavior for a while, so this story from the Associated Press is timely, if not welcome.

Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers gave children portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul to carry in a Black History Month parade. Honest. The teachers have been removed from their classrooms, and investigation is pending. All the teachers were white men, and the classes involved were first, second and fourth grades. Continue reading →

Bertolli Makes Us Dumber

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Just as sick people have an ethical duty not to spread their illnesses, ignorant people have a duty not spread their ignorance far and wide. This duty is not observed with much fealty by school teachers, much less the writers of TV shows and commercials, so my expectations are low. Still, there are limits. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce Revisted: Jay McGwire

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

About a year ago, over on the Ethics Scoreboard, I made former baseball slugger Mark McGwire’s brother, Jay McGwire, an Ethics Dunce. At that time Mark McGwire was still mum about his widely-suspected steroid use, and his brother was  peddling a book proposal that supposedly exposed his home run-hitting bro’s cheating ways. I then wrote…

“… Brother Jay says he has written the book “out of love” for his brother, who no longer sees, speaks to him, nor, presumably, gives him hand-outs. Right. Jay McGwire is selling out his brother for cash. This is not a courageous whistleblower alerting a company to crime in its ranks. This is not a family member doing the right thing by refusing to help a parent, sibling, or offspring get away with child abuse, treason, fraud or murder. There is nothing admirable, selfless or courageous here. Jay McGwire wants money, and he is willing to embarrass and exploit his brother to get it.” Continue reading →

A Recall For Bad History?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The New York Times reports that The Last Train from Hiroshima, a critically acclaimed new book about the  destruction of Hiroshima that is already being prepared for a film adaptation by James Cameron, was substantially based on fraudulent “eye-witness” recollections by a man who wasn’t there. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Sen. Scott Brown

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It doesn’t matter whether the Obama Administration jobs bill Sen. Brown voted for is a good bill or not. He is an Ethics Hero for not marching in lock-step according to the demands of those who voted him into office to break the Democratic so-called “filibuster-proof” majority. A U.S. Senator, any Senator, has an ethical duty to excercise independent judgment. In light of the weight of expectations placed on him by conservatives and Obama opponents in the wake of his upset victory in Massachusetts, Scott Brown’s willingness to break ranks so early in his tenure speaks well of his character. Continue reading →

Shin-Soo Choo and the Duke’s Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

You wouldn’t think that a South Korean baseball player could have much in common with John Wayne, but a slugging first baseman for the Cleveland Indians named Shin-Soo Choo now faces an ethical dilemma strikingly similar to the one “the Duke” encountered in 1942. Continue reading →

Fat Ethics and Kevin Smith

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Cult film director Kevin Smith was ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight last week for being fat. The talented  director (and sometime actor: he plays the character of “Silent Bob” in several of his own films) of “Clerks,” “Chasing Amy,” “Dogma,” and the Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan comedy “Cop Out” was deemed too obese to fly, although he passed the supposedly definitive armrest test: he could lower both. Smith says this has never happened to him before, perhaps because he is in the habit of buying two seats—not because he needs them, but because he says he “hates people.” Although the airline apologized to him, Smith still hates Southwest, and is inclined not to let the matter drop.

Apparently a lot of people hate him too, just because of his weight.  Continue reading →