James Weeks’ Libertarian Strip Tease: New Vistas In Betrayal And Irresponsibility

libertarian strip

I know many libertarians are angry with James Weeks. Not nearly angry enough, though.

Here is the struggling Libertarian Party, with the same Presidential candidate who drew all of 1% of the vote in 2012, finally attracting some attention from serious Americans desperately seeking a viable alternative to the two vile and untrustworthy candidates belched out by the major parties. For the first time, its nominating convention is news rather than trivia or a side-show. C-Span is broadcasting it live. Libertarian James Weeks, a candidate for party chairman, appears at the podium to argue for his candidacy, and knows that the Libertarian Party is being scrutinized and assessed. So what does he do to enhance its reputation, elevate its visibility, and increase the still infinitesimal odds that it will add another shocking and unforseen upheaval to the political landscape in a year that has already experienced so many of them?

He strips. He takes off his clothes until only his briefs remain, to a chorus of boos. “It was a dare,” Weeks explained at the end of his striptease. “I’m gonna go ahead and drop out.”  Continue reading

Hmmm…Might THIS Stem The Ethics Alarms Traffic Slump?

ink tonersI received this e-mail today. If I were Ken White at Popehat, I would deliver an extended faux discourse on ponies, but in this case the message itself suffices:

Hi Jack,

My name is Stephanie Song. I am a freelance writer. I was wondering if you would be interested in allowing me to write a unique article for ethicsalarms.com? I’m working to get myself established in the industry. All I would ask is for a very brief About the Author section at the end of the article that has a single link in it to my site at InkTonerStore.com.

If you check our blog you’ll see that I am very focused on high quality content. Although our blog focuses on ink toners, I can write on any topic.

Tales Of The Self-Righteous And Incompetent: Lawyer/Teacher Malik Leigh And His Donald Trump Exam Question

Malik Leigh

Malik Leigh is an attorney who teaches in Palm Beach Lakes High School’s pre-law academy. He submitted an exam for review, as the school requires of all tests, that included this question:

“If Donald Trump becomes president of the United states, we are:

A.) Screwed

B.) Screwed

C.) Screwed

D.) Screwed behind a really YUGE wall that Mexico pays for.”

In another question on the same test, this lawyer—and I’m still trying to get my mind around that embarrassing fact— asked

“When performing an opening statement, it is best to:

A. Wink at the Judge

B. find the hottest person on the Jury and focus your words on them

C. Speak to them as if they are cordial friends.

D. Treat them like the MORONS they are.”

Leigh was suspended.  The letter he received from Principal Cheryl McKeever announcing the suspension stated that the questions contained “inaccurate content, irrelevant material, unprofessional use of language, inappropriate use of language.” Continue reading

The Amazing Saga Of Big Papi And Maverick Schutte: This One Has Everything, Folks: Baseball! The Bambino! Courage! Kindness! Compassion! Heroics! Moral Luck! Hubris! Consequentialism! And Dammit, I’m Crying Again

Let’s see if I can through this to the Ethics Quiz portion without shorting out my laptop.

Maverick Schutte, a 6-year-old from Cheyenne, Wyoming, has required over 30 surgeries, including five open chest procedures,  to treat a heart condition.He still must be hooked up to a ventilator most of each day to allow oxygen to reach his lungs, and more surgery will be needed, as he is in constant danger of heart failure.

The child’s greatest joy is baseball, and he has adopted his father’s team, the Boston Red Sox, as his passion. The Children’s Miracle Network put the family in touch with former Red Sox player Kevin Millar, now an MLB host and broadcaster, and Millar contacted Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, Maverick’s favorite, after the family explained that Maverick was in the hospital again and needed a morale boost. With Millar, Ortiz made a video for Maverick, ending with Ortiz promising to hit a home run that night, just for him. I didn’t believe it when I heard the story, but it was true. “Stay positive, keep the faith, and I’m going to hit a home run for you (Friday night),” Ortiz says in the video. “Remember that.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz for today before, as Paul Harvey would say, you learn “the rest of the story”…

Was it ethical for Ortiz to make such a promise to Maverick?

Continue reading

Ethics Lessons of The Peter Chang “Plad Asshole” Affair…And No, One Of Them Isn’t “Always Serve Rice In Individual Bowls”

Peter Chang: Chef, ethical restaurant owner, tough father...

Peter Chang: Chef, ethical restaurant owner, tough father...

In my metaphorical back yard, a kerfuffle over whether Chinese restaurants should serve rice  in individual bowls or family style resulted in bad publicity for a burgeoning restaurant chain, a family rift, some lost jobs, and an internet controversy.

I almost missed the last part. Luckily, my issue scout Fred misses nothing.

It unfolded thusly:

A group of four diners at the Peter Chang restaurant in Arlington, Virginia included a man who had lived in Beijing, and he expressed  surprise when the obligatory steamed rice arrived at their table in one large bowl.  He asked, “‘Oh, you guys don’t serve them in individual rice bowls?'” The server told the group that when rice is served to three or more diners at Peter Chang, it comes in a large bowl.

After the former Beijing resident (later termed “the know-it-all” in the ensuing social media debates) noted that it was an odd choice, considering that personalized bowls  were the norm in China, the server then offered to bring individual rice bowls instead. The group declined.

Oh…for some reason, three of the four men were in plaid jackets. Believe it or not, this detail is relevant.

When the diners received their bill, they saw that it had insulting typed commentary on it as well:  “im a plad asshole” and “i have a small penis”:

peter-chang-bill

When they complained to the manager, he apologized and brought out the two servers responsible for the typed insults on the point-of-sale slip. One of the diners told the Washington Post that the manager and the server appeared embarrassed but not contrite. “It was just a joke” and “You weren’t supposed to see it” described their attitude, he said. Continue reading

From The Law vs. Ethics Files: The ‘Be My Guest, Rob My Anti-2nd Amendment Neighbor’ Sign

Gun Lawn Sign

I can’t seem to find out for certain if anyone has been so vile and foolish as to actually put up the sign shown above. (That photo is obviously fake.) Even if there are genuine photos posted somewhere, I doubt that such a sign would ever be left up for long. I could be wrong.

It’s probably not protected speech, as the sentiment invites violence toward another citizen. It is undoubtedly unethical speech, just like signs that say “My neighbor’s door sticker saying the house has burglar alarms is a bluff” or “The lady next door is beautiful and incapacitated” or “The little girl next door is excessively trusting.”

Yet the sign shown above is sold on line. Selling a sign with a dangerous, hateful and irresponsible message is legal. This one is also completely unethical. I know: it’s a joke.  I don’t care. To sell a sign that you know might cause harm if anyone used it as a sign is still indefensible, especially since we know how many Americans voted for Donald Trump.

In other words, there are a frightening number of hateful, reckless fools out there.

The company selling these abominations is called Zazzle.

Treat the company appropriately.

DirecTV Apparently Thinks Promoting Child-Killing Is A Cool Way To Sell Subscriptions

Six years ago, I flagged an ugly series of DirecTV commercials. One showed police casually tasering people, yet another approved of stealing stamps from one’s employer. Then there were a series of commercials promoting the satellite company’s NFL package, with the theme that hate is hilarious. Among the incidents featured:

  • In Wisconsin, a Green Bay Packers fan welcomes her 49er fan neighbor by leaving a cake on his stoop. The cake reads “DIRT BAG.”
  • A group of Patriots fans in wintery Foxboro, Mass. grumble about the Miami Dolphin fan next door (“Moron!” says one woman). One of them throws a shovelful of snow on the Miami fan’s door.
  • A Dallas Cowboy fan sends her dog to trash and pee in her Redskin fan neighbor’s house.
  • In another Dallas setting, a diner, the waitress expresses her contempt for Philadelphia Eagles fans by secretly squeezing her dishrag into their beers.

That was mild, however, compared to the vicious sentiments being sold in a new DirecTV commercial.  A married couple sits down in their living room to watch some television when the husband realizes he forgot to record the show. Jon Bon Jovi appears behind them and sings about the power to turn back time with DirecTV, with its new feature that allows viewers to track down and watch  shows after they have been broadcast. to  That’s not the only magic they can accomplish by turning back time, the aging rocks star sings.  For example, they can go back in time and reconsider having their second child, who looks about 7, and is drawing on the walls.

Poof! He’s gone! His crayons fall to the floor. The boy is erased, and the two parents smile at each other as Bon Jovi smirks. Continue reading

DOUBLE KABOOM!! Ignorant, Abusive And Incompetent: How Much More Evidence Do We Need That Our Educators And Schools Are Untrustworthy?

double KABOOM

I’m sorry to endanger the integrity of your head—mine may never be reassembled, by the looks of things—but here are two recent high school horror stories, one in Texas and one in Arizona, and they do not even involve sexual predators or kids being suspended for pretending to shoot someone with a finger gun.

I. The Two Dollar Bill

Two dollar bill

I’m going to just summarize this stunningly stupid story, and you can read the details here. 13-year-old eighth grader Danesiah Neal, a student  at Fort Bend Independent School District’s Christa McAuliffe Middle School, attempted to pay for her lunch one day with a two-dollar bill given to her by her grandmother. The lunch lady had never seen a $2 bill, so she alerted the school administrators, who called the police. THEY had apparently never seen a $2 bill, and told the girl that she was being investigated for counterfeiting, a felony, as the school allowed this idiocy to unfold. They called the grandmother, and told her she was under investigation too.

A campus officer traced the bill to where granny got it, a 7-11, and then cleverly traced the bill to…THE BANK, which informed these officious, incompetent morons that the two is a genuine piece of currency, and has been in circulation since 1862. Continue reading

Apology Ethics 2: Is This A Legitimate Excuse? Does It Matter?

Skydiving

Tom Angel was chief of staff for the Los Angeles County sheriff until emails he had sent to friends four years ago, prior to becoming the sheriff’s top aide, denigrating several different groups of minorities including Muslims, Catholics and Latinos surfaced in the media. Now Angel  has resigned.

His boss, Sheriff Jim McDonnell,  announced the departure  in a statement posted to Facebook that called the messages “inappropriate and unprofessional.”  That was fair.

Originally, the department defended Angel, saying in part,

“Although his judgment in this situation is of concern to members of the Sheriff’s Department, no one is more distressed about it than Chief Angel himself.  His apologies for this uncharacteristic act have been profuse and sincere. Chief Angel’s decision-making and actions in his long prior career with the Sheriff’s Department and since his return in 2015 reveal more about his actual character and typical good judgment than the instances from four years prior currently reported in the media.”

It didn’t work, especially after Angel’s apology, quoted in the LA Times, was this:

“Anybody in the workplace unfortunately forwards emails from time to time that they probably shouldn’t have forwarded. I apologize if I offended anybody, but the intent was not for the public to have seen these jokes.”

Should that have been sufficient? Continue reading

“Yo, Barry, You Did It, My Nigga!”

Larry Wilmore

Wrong.

“Yo, Barry, You Did It, My Nigga!” This was “The Nightly Show’s” Larry Wilmore’s final salute to the President of the United States during an alleged comedy routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Here’s what’s wrong with it:

1. The comment was cynically calculated to cause an uproar, even at the cost of embarrassing the President and causing a racial incident. This is neither good hosting, nor ethical citizenship. Wilmore was only aiming at exploiting an opportunity to expand his rating, which aren’t so great.

2. It is disrespectful, no matter how one interprets the word. Barack Obama isn’t “Barack,” “Barry,” “Bro’,” or “Nigga” to Wilborn. He’s “Sir” or Mr. President. His job as M.C. didn’t permit that liberty.

3. It adds to a widespread and societally disruptive belief that Barack Obama is the black community’s President, and the black community has special privileges as a result. It certainly suggests that’s how black America views him. That’s not the legacy the President seeks, and thus the comment was uncomfortable for him.

4. Most white Americans and a lot of black ones do not agree that “nigger” and variations thereof are taboo when uttered by whites but benign when wielded by blacks. Why look, even Al Sharpton objected! “Many of us are against using the N-word period,” Sharpton told the LA Times. “But to say that to the President of the United States in front of the top people in media was at best in poor taste.”  “So we end the WHCD by touting the historical implications of 1st black president… and we use the N-word. Not cool,” tweeted  ABC producer Sarah Thomas, also an African-American.

5. The comment fed the racial divisiveness that has been the hallmark of Obama’s presidency. “Black Twitter,” as it is called, was full of African American celebrities and commentators making it clear that they didn’t care what white people thought. Mediaite’s resident race-baiter Tommy Christopher approvingly cited many of them, including his own.

I wonder who it was who convinced African-Americans that it was either wise, strategic, fair, reasonable or ethical to simultaneously express contempt for the opinions and feelings of whites while demanding hyper-sensitivity from whites about any word, innuendo, opinion or topic that could be considered the least bit uncomfortable for blacks?

6. “Barry” did what, exactly? What is “it”? Massively increasing the national debt? Dangerously dividing the nation? Undermining the rule of law, free speech and the system of checks and balances? Making a mockery of his promise to be transparent? Nurturing the anger, despair and cynicism that led to the rise of Donald Trump?

Barack Obama’s singular and historical accomplishment was being elected the first black President. Yes, he did that, but he did that almost eight years ago, and it’s old news. After that, his job was to be a good, fair, hard-working, effective, unifying and successful President of the United States, and his color was and is irrelevant to those tasks.  He hasn’t been any of those things, so what has he done? Finished his terms? That not a big accomplishment. I guess he created an environment in which a TV personality thought it was appropriate to call him a “Nigga” in public.

He did that, all right.

I’m not applauding.