John Adams’ heroic defense of the British soldiers accused of murder in the Boston Massacre has moved to the front of the line in the competition for favorite historical comparison to the controversy over the so-called “Al Qaeda 7,” the Justice Dept. attorneys under attack for their former representation of Gitmo prisoners. Over at The Legal Ethics Forum, law professor Richard Painter has posted a fascinating essay on John Adams’ own ethical conflicts in his most famous case, and they were far from minor. You can, and should, read it here.
History
Nomar, Beantown, and the Legacy Obligation
Organizations have histories, and that means they have debts to pay. Time moves on, and personnel changes, but the organization that neglects the human beings who played major roles in defining their image, goals, achievements and success has breached its integrity, and violated its Legacy Obligation.
For nearly eight seasons, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra was the face, heart, and soul of the Boston Red Sox. A spidery gymnast in the field who completed the Holy Trinity of Hall of Fame-bound shortstops—Jeter, A-Rod and “Nomah” —who lit up the American League in the mid-Nineties, Garciaparra was a home-grown fan idol. He did everything wonderfully and with panache; Ted Williams, the city’s reigning baseball god, pronounced him his official successor.
Then, suddenly, it all unraveled. Continue reading
Pit Bulls and Bigotry
Writer Charles Leerhsen has experienced a conversion. After witnessing his best friend being viciously attacked and nearly killed on a city street without provocation, he has embraced bigotry with both hands. Now he writes screeds condemning not the attacker, but all individuals of the attacker’s race. In a passionate and angry essay for The Daily Beast, he denigrates not only those individuals but also anyone who defends them, such as “certain PC urban professionals who long to tell the world that they are super-sensitive and understanding souls.”
It’s an ugly essay, emotional, doctrinaire, and illogical, employing the well-worn racist technique of generalizing from the individual to the group and back again. Why would any respectable media outlet print such bile?
Perhaps it is because Leerhsen’s best friend was Frankie, a Wheaton terrier, and Frankie’s attacker was a pit bull. Continue reading
“Raving Private Gump”: Tom Hanks Lets Political Correctness Eat His Brains, and Gets Called On It
I am a big fan of Tom Hanks’ work as an a comic, a dramatic actor, a producer, and in drag, but he has been reliably attached to what may end up being the most infuriating quote of the year. If not the most infuriating, then at least the most ignorant and irresponsible. In an interview with historian Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine feature about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific, Hanks said this:
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
If you are not now running in circles, wide-eyed and screaming, you should be. Continue reading
The Unethical Message of the Dems’ “Hypocrisy Defense”
The response of the Democratic Party to their recent flood of ethics embarrassments tells us all we need to know about why the ethics problems exist in this Congress and will doubtless continue. It has, predictably, resorted to the time-tested, playground strategy I like to call the “Hypocrisy Defense,” which aims at avoiding accountability by accusing the accusers. Other names for the Hypocrisy Defense: “Changing the Subject,” “The Incorrigible Scoundrel’s Last Hope,” “The Guilty Condemning the Convicted,” and “Making Yourself Look Less Dirty By Throwing Mud on the Other Guy.” If that’s the best you have, all it shows is that your accusers, hypocritical or not, are telling the truth. Because when you accuse the pot of calling the kettle black, its still means that you are a filthy kettle. Continue reading
Forgetting Farrah
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
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
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
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
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
