Journalism & Media

The Cowardly GOP Presidential Field

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments

Cowards. All of them.

In three consecutive Republican presidential debates, members of the partisan audience have displayed obnoxious and callous attitudes in response to questions directed to the candidates. In the first, a portion of the assembled conservatives cheered an accounting of the convicted murderers put to death by the Texas penal system. During the second, vocal members of the audience shouted “Yeah!” to Wolf Blitzer’s questioning whether uninsured Americans should just be allowed to die without medical care. Then, in this week’s debate, the crowd jeered a videotaped soldier who declared himself as gay before asking if the candidates would support the recent elimination of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” as military policy.

Pundit efforts to characterize these outburst as typical of the Republican, conservative or Tea Party constituencies are blatant stereotyping, cynical and unfair. Anyone who has any experience speaking or performing to an audience knows that a few people can dominate audience reaction without being representative of it. No, it is not the Republican constituency that was exposed by these incidents, but the contenders for that party’s and the nation’s leadership. The failure of any one of the assembled candidates, nine in the first two debates, ten this week, to clearly and emphatically condemn the offensive reactions and the “thinking” underlying them suggests that none of the candidates possess the integrity, courage, confidence and values required to be a trustworthy leader of the United States. Continue reading →

Uncivil Exchange of the Week: Bristol Palin and a Heckler

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Bristol Palin's celebrity in the absence of talent, wit or achievements is one good reason to resent Sara Palin

In a spontaneous encounter posted on YouTube, Bristol Palin was confronted by an insult-spewing patron the at Saddle Ranch Bar and Restaurant in West Hollywood last night.

Palin, 20-year-old daughter of  Sarah Palin had just been thrown from a mechanical bull while filming her reality show for the BIO Network, when  a 47-year-old man began shouting at her.

“Did you ride Levi like that?” he yelled, referring to  the father of Bristol’s child, who has just published his memoirs of their relationship for the brain-damaged market. “Your mother is a whore! Your mother is a fucking devil!” he continued.

Bristol approached the man and asked, “Is it because you’re a homosexual and that’s why you hate her?”

“Pretty much … and why’d you say I’m a homosexual?” he responded.

“Because I can tell you are,” Bristol said, setting off the heckler again. “You’re fucking white trash from Wasila!” he screamed as she left the bar with her production crew. “Fuck you, you fucking bitch!”

Internet commenters are praising Palin for standing up to the clod. She deserves no praise. His sexual orientation had nothing to do with episode, and for her to raise that as her initial response to his unprovoked and hateful rant demonstrates that

1. She’s a bigot

2. She’s not ready for prime time, even as a reality star, and

3. She’s not even smart enough to realize that the episode reflects poorly on her, since the incident was taped and posted by her own film crew.

But we already knew that, didn’t we?

The Deceitful, Illogical, Unethical Disclaimer

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Don't be fooled by Voldemort's disclaimer!

I once worked for a company that was specifically targeted by an industry group for coordinated attacks and anti-competitive tactics. We obtained a copy of the agenda for the planning meeting for this onslaught, and the bullet points looked like part of a hypothetical in an anti-trust class law school exam. This was the most blatant collusion in restraint of trade imaginable. But the  lawyers for the group apparently thought all could be made benign and legal by a disclaimer on every agenda copy that  said, in effect, “Don’t pay any attention to what this agenda says—trust us, it’s all fair and legal.” The disclaimer stated that the organization fully supported and followed all provisions of U.S. anti-trust statutes, and would never, ever do anything to violate them. This is roughly the equivalent of a mugger telling his victim that he is non-violent while he’s punching him in the face.

I am reminded of that agenda when I see commercials for new drugs, which show healthy, happy, beautiful models frolicking with their families or lovers in idyllic settings while the announcer, usually at breakneck speed, warns that the drug may cause violent flatulence, boils, locusts, insanity, cannibalism and excruciating death. I was reminded of the agenda again when I learned of the latest gambit by PublishAmerica, which earlier this year got in trouble with “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling by soliciting money from authors by promising to bring their works to her attention: Continue reading →

Shameless Oglers, Ethics Chess, and the Duty to Confront

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Men who openly ogle the body parts of women in public make me want to turn in my Man Card and start dating Chaz Bono. I don’t know how people get like that, but no male should survive into his twenties with the idea that it is socially acceptable to stare at a woman’s breasts, legs, derriere or comely visage without an express invitation—and yes, some clothing choices can constitute such invitations. Absent that, however, a woman has the right not to be made to feel like a pole dancer, meat on the hoof, or a Sports illustrated swimsuit model simply because she is in public and in the presence of Y chromosomes.

The great relationship advice columnist Carolyn Hax addresses herself today to the lament of a woman who found herself unable to muster a response to a man in a restaurant who continued to stare at her chest, ruining her dinner. Hax initially disappointed me by suggesting that the woman should have simply switched seats, removing the attractive nuisance from his view. But she redeemed herself as she went on to urge the woman to prepare for her future encounters with ogling pigs, since given her natural endowments these were likely to occur:

“Learn to perform under duress through preparation.Ask yourself, now, what you can realistically hope to do in these situations, then prepare the words, gestures and/or actions. Say your plans out loud in the shower (seriously); repeat them to your friends by telling them the restaurant story and spelling out what you wish you had done. Even when practicing feels stupid, use repetition to teach your brain where the path is. In time, you’ll be able to find it no matter how rattled you get.”

This is what I like to call “ethics chess;” preparing yourself to handle ethical problems and dilemmas when they arise…thinking ahead regarding your tactics when a predictable event occurs, so you do the responsible and ethical thing. Continue reading →

If Fox Will Fake A Headline, What Else Will It Lie About?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

As part of its coverage of the NFL opener for the Chicago Bears, Fox Sports wanted to use as graphics some news media headlines from last season that questioned Bears quarterback Jay Cutler’s courage and guts in the NFC Championship game, when he left the field with an injury that some felt Cutler should have played through.  It couldn’t find any such headlines, however because there weren’t any. No problem: Fox just had its crack graphics department make some up.

Fox flashed three newspaper headlines across the screen:

Cutler Leaves With Injury
Cutler Lacks Courage
Cutler’s No Leader

Fox announcer Daryl Johnston then told viewers that “these are the actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago.” But one of those local papers, the Tribune, decided to check. There were no “actual headlines” like those, in Chicago, or anywhere else. Caught in an outright misrepresentation, Fox Sports came clean, sort of. Continue reading →

Rep. Schakowsky Was Right…Inarticulate, But Right

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Okay, Jan Schakowsky's not exactly Daniel Webster.But she's not wrong, either.

As proof of the degree that Tea Party anti-tax mania has unhinged the brains of conservatives generally, especially hyper-ventillating  pundits, consider last week’s controversy over poor Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill), who told a morning talk show, Wade & Roma on WLS-AM in Chicago, that citizens were obligated to pay a portion of what they earned to the government, and as a result became the poster girl for What’s Wrong With America, or at least the Democratic Party.

To read and listen to the abuse and ridicule heaped on Schakowsky, one would have thought that she was Lenin-in-a-bra, advocating government confiscation of the wealth stolen from the workers—in fact, that’s what I did thought when I heard some of the furious rants about her comments from the conservative talk show circuit. Then I listened to the clip. Do you know the horrible, foolish thing she said? You’ll be shocked. Here’s the key exchange: Continue reading →

The Washington Post’s Hypocrite Who Doesn’t Understand Hypocrisy

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple says he really, really believes that it is bad journalism to write about the pre-marital sex of public figures, particularly before they were public figures. After all, 1) it’s nobody’s business and 2) it’s an invasion of privacy. But Wemple wrote this week that he makes an exception to that rule when hypocrisy is involved. Thus it is OK for Sarah Palin’s slimy biographical hit-man Joe McGinnis to dish about rumors of her dalliances before she was wed, because, Wemple says, in a 2006 Eagle Forum questionnaire, Palin indicated that she supported funding abstinence-until-marriage education programs and opposed teaching sex-education programs. This makes her a hypocrite, he claims, so journalists quoting McGinnis’s invasion of privacy and violations decency is fine and dandy with him.

Wemple is wrong once, twice, three ways:

1. What Palin says years after her pre-marital sexual exploits, assuming there were any, can’t possibly make her a hypocrite. It is not hypocritical for a mature and experienced adult to decide that her conduct in the past was mistaken, unwise and risky, and to advocate policies that discourage it in others. Condemning someone for learning from mistakes and trying to craft public policy based on acquired wisdom is the mark of a fool. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Tavis Smiley

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Tavis Smiley believes in traditional American political values...like those of Boss Tweed.

Tavis Smiley, Black Educational TV’s provocative talk show host, unveiled remarkably shameless and divisive tribalism in his remarks to NBC’s Lester Holt.

“What is the presidency really worth? Is it worth not saying anything? Is it worth being silent when you’re catching the most hell, when you’re suffering the most pain? Especially, when you’re the most loyal part of the President’s base?” Smiley asked, speaking of the African-American electorate’s proper response to President Obama’s handling of the economy.

“That’s not hating on the President, it’s defending your own flanks. And whatever happened to that notion that to the victor goes the spoils? If anybody ought to be looked out for, it ought to be the persons who represent the most significant and the most loyal part of the base. That would be African-Americans.”

That would be Tavis Smiley, at his most irresponsible and racist. Continue reading →

Wolf’s Question and the Ethical Answer

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"Upon reflection, perhaps failing to buy health insurance was a mistake..."

Wolf Blitzer’s question to Rep. Ron Paul at the CNN/Tea Party Express Republican debate in Tampa, Fla. has received most of its publicity because of the idiotic response it elicited from the audience, or some of it. That is good fodder for the Tea Party-slimers, but it was the query itself that raised the most interesting ethical issue.

What should happen, Wolf asked, when a healthy 30-year-old man who can afford insurance chooses not to buy it, and then goes into a coma and needs intensive care for six months? Ron Paul, true to his libertarian soul, muttered unhelpfully that we should all take responsibility for ourselves, which is true, but non-responsive. Blitzer followed up: “But, Congressman, are you saying the society should just let him die?” (This is where the barbarians at the gates added their bloodthirsty shouts of “Yeah!”)

Slate’s Jonah Goldberg has written about what he calls the three possible options available to American society to handle the comatose slacker: Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Nobel Prize Recipient Ivar Giaever

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

"You keep using that word 'incontravertible.'; I do not think it means what you think it means."

Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever just resigned as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in protest over the group’s official position that

 “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring,” the APS stated. “If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.”

Giaever, an 82-year-old Norwegian, sent an e-mail to the APS  announcing his resignation, saying he  “cannot live with the statement” on global warming. Giaever wrote:

“In the APS, it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is ‘incontrovertible?’ The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.” Continue reading →