Leadership

Ethics Quiz: Photojournalism And The President’s Meaningful, Meaningless Bowed Head

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Putin and Obama

I am looking at a black and white AP photograph re-published from the Washington Post’s front page on September 7. It is similar to the one above, taken seconds before it, and from straight on rather than an angle. That photo, like the one above, shows Vladamir Putin, joining the other attendees at last week’s Group of 20 summit for their formal group photo, but in the one I am looking at Putin is striding across the group to the end of the line, eyes forward, as the rest look on. President Obama alone is standing head bowed as Putin passed, while the other leaders look forward. Unlike the photo above, Obama’s bowed head appears to be in reaction to Putin, but not an effort to listen to something the Russian leader is saying or has said, which is how I would interpret the photo above. The photo above seems relaxed and collegial; the one I am looking at depicts tension. [UPDATE 9/21: A much closer version of the photo is question can be seen here.]

That photograph prompted these criticisms from two Post readers over the weekend.

Mary-Anne Enoch wrote in part…

“I was upset by the photo chosen for the Sept. 7 front page, showing the assembly of the Group of 20 leaders for their traditional “family photograph.”
In that photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin is confidently striding across a stage while others are smiling and probably paying no attention to him. Except for President Obama: In sharp contrast to the rest, he appears to be subservient, shrunken and diminished. His stance reminded me of Forest Whitaker’s portrayal of a long-serving White House butler in a recent movie….it is outrageous that The Post should have selected [ the photo] to accompany an article on the very important and delicate negotiations involving the United States, Russia and Syria.”

Reader Charlotte Stokes had a similar reaction:

“Surely, the wire-service photographer took dozens of pictures, including at least one when the Group of 20 leaders formally posed. So why did The Post choose this one to grace the front page? The photo presented our president in a less-than-honorable light. Given the challenges he faces internationally, why cast doubt on his abilities by sending subliminal messages of this kind?”

[I recognize that it would be better if you could see the actual photo rather than read my description of it accompanied by one that is similar but not quite the same. Interestingly, the Post appears to have purged the picture I am writing about from its website: it does not even use it to accompany the letters about the photo, which it normally would, and which good practice would demand. The photo above, which was widely used by other sources, is the closest I could find, other than the print version that was in my Post on Saturday. If someone can find the actual photo and send me the link, I’d be very grateful.]

Here is your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz to kick off what promises to be an ethically alarming week, on the always tricky topic of photojournalism:

Was it unethical for the Post have prominently run a photograph that presented President Obama in an unfavorable, arguably subservient or weak posture? Continue reading →

Secretary Of State John Kerry, Pants On Fire

/ Jack Marshall / 50 Comments

Kerry SaluteWashington Post Fact-checker Glenn Kessler finally couldn’t stand it anymore regarding Secretary of State John Kerry’s favorite lie, only trailing me by about nine years.  As he was participating as a stooge in President Obama’s improvised vaudeville act regarding his “red line” and Syrian chemical weapons (but then, as Americans, so are we all), Kerry said this in an interview on MSNBC, where he knows any transparent and self-serving lie by a Democrat will be accepted as revealed truth:

“You know, Senator Chuck Hagel, when he was senator, Senator Chuck Hagel, now secretary of defense, and when I was a senator, we opposed the president’s decision to go into Iraq, but we know full well how that evidence was used to persuade all of us that authority ought to be given.”

Now I, for one, am thankful when Kerry, who is not Irish (his heritage is  primarily Jewish) * and was elected Senator in Massachusetts using campaign posters with green shamrocks on them, reminds us all why he never became President. This was yet another re-phrasing of the deception he kept hammering during his 2004 campaign—you remember, the one with John Edwards as his running mate, because Kerry is also a magnificent judge of character?—he didn’t support President Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

Of course, he did, and emphatically too. Kessler, who is inclined to go easy on Democrats for the same kinds of deceptions he slams Republicans for (I measure the discrepancy at just short of two “Pinocchios”) decided to give Kerry a full blast with both barrels: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Prof. Glenn Reynolds, the “Instapundit”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Prof. Reynolds, the iconic conservative bloggers who wields considerable influence in the right-leaning blogospehere and beyond, has frequently displayed a dismaying affection for the unethical response of “tit-for-tat.” Has seldom done so as blatantly, however, as in a post yesterday, linking to a National Review article about CUNY students shouting down General David Petraeus, who is now a lecturer there.

The Instapundit wrote:

“I think right-leaning groups should similarly hound Hillary and other Obama Administration apparatchiks — including Obama himself, when he ventures onto campuses, both now and post-Presidency. The standard of behavior has been established. Let them live with it.”

Even giving Reynolds the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he is speaking tongue-in-cheek or hyperbolically, as he often does, this is an irresponsible statement if he doesn’t mean it, and an unethical one if he does. He is considered a sage and an opinion leader among many conservatives, and for such a prominent figure to expressly approve of the downward behavioral tail-spin that inevitably results when each competitor or adversary re-aligns  ethical standards according to the unethical acts of the other is embracing all-out culture war and chaos, with no standards at all.

“They started it, so let’s give them a taste of their own medicine and see how they like it!” is street gang thinking, (Jets: “Well they began it!” Sharks: “Well they began it!” Both: “And w’ere the ones to stop it once and for all…tonight!”— “Quintet” from West Side Story) as far from ethics as one can get, and this is exactly what Professor Reynolds is endorsing. That ethically bankrupt approach, and the fact that our political system has been operating by it at least since 2000, accounts for today’s poisonous culture in Washington D.C. It has crippled both the Bush and Obama administrations, paralyzed the government and divided the public. If political and intellectual leaders embrace this reaction to misconduct in one setting, they are implicitly accepting it as a justifiable strategy, and it is not. It is a brutal, unethical strategy.

Students who interfere with invited speakers’ efforts to challenge or enlighten university audiences should be disciplined; it doesn’t matter whether the speaker is an ex U.S.general or Ilsa, Wolf of Dachau. Interfering with speech isn’t protected speech, nor is it ethical protest. That behavior isn’t a “standard of behavior,” it is a defiance of civilized standards. The President, Hillary Clinton and other targets of the right should be allowed to speak, listened to politely, and then confronted, if they are confronted, with civil and articulate rebuttals on the basis of their words and ideas. For a university professor to advise otherwise is unconscionable. For one who is respected and followed as extensively as Reynolds to write this defies reason.

____________________________________

Spark: Instapundit

Sources: NPR, National Review

Ethics Quote of the Week: Eliot Cohen

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

captain-america

“Above all, a president has no business confessing to war-weariness. Sending soldiers to war is a hard business. But President Obama knew he was going to be a war president; if that duty was too trying for him, he should not have run for reelection, because, as he has discovered, he might have to fight new wars and not merely end old ones.

“For a president to confess to war-weariness is to confess weakness.

“It is the business of the commander in chief to inspire, either with tempered optimism or grim determination. He fails in his duty if he tells his subordinates, his people and the world that he is weary of the burden that he assiduously sought. In their dark moments, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who presided over infinitely more consequential and bloodier wars than Barack Obama, were undoubtedly war-weary. Can anyone imagine them proclaiming it to the world? “

—–Eliot Cohen, a teacher at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, concluding a Washington Post op-ed titled (in the paper’s print version), “We have not earned war-weariness.”

If there is a silver lining to the President’s Syrian Ethics Train Wreck, other than convincing those still capable of independent thought that we who saw the weakness of President Obama’s leadership skills were the ones whose eyes were open all along, it is that it has provoked some perceptive writing and debate on the topics of leadership, character, and America’s role in the world. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Vladamir Putin

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

“It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

—-Former KGB officer and Russian leader Vladamir Putin, lecturing President Obama and the U.S. public on right, wrong, and human potential, in a New York Times op-ed that neatly exploits the stumbling White House diplomacy efforts regarding Syria. And yes, it made my head explode.

Oh-oh...this was bad one...

Oh-oh…this was bad one…

John McCain’s tweet in response to Putin’s cheeky op-ed was on target: “Putin’s NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American.” [Aside: Of course, so was President Obama’s speech. As always these events give us a chance to gauge which journalists warrant ever regarding seriously again. On one side there are the likes of the Daily Beast’s toadying Michael Tomasky, who pronounced the President’s speech “great.” On the other is the Washington Post’s generally left-leaning Dana Milbank, who decided to be honest, pointing out how the President’s speech arising out of his contradictory and incoherent statement about Syria was…contradictory and incoherent: “The president, in the space of his 16-minute address, was often at odds with himself. He spent the first 12 minutes arguing for the merits of striking Syria — and then delivered the news that he was putting military action on hold. He promised that it would be “a limited strike” without troops on the ground or a long air campaign, yet he argued that it was the sort of blow that “no other nation can deliver.” He argued that “we should not be the world’s policeman” while also saying that because of our “belief in freedom and dignity for all people,” we cannot “look the other way.” He asserted that what Bashar al-Assad did is “a danger to our security” while also saying that “the Assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military.” In other words, “great.”] It was more than an insult, however. Putin’s screed was ethics poison: dishonest, manipulative, and malign. Continue reading →

Vote Rugby Marshall For Governor Of Virginia: It’s The Right Thing To Do!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
That's Rugby on the right...

That’s Rugby on the right…

Periodically,  the same contentious argument breaks out on Ethics Alarms after I assert my position that voters should support the candidate who is the most honest and trustworthy–the one with the most ethical character—regardless of his or her policy positions. My argument is bolstered when someone like Anthony Weiner—and fortunately there aren’t many candidates like him—  runs for office on the extreme opposite concept, that even demonstrably horrible character and dubious trustworthiness are irrelevant as long as a candidate holds the right policy views. He was just clobbered in his quest for NY mayor, getting just 5% of the vote, every one of them cast by a lunatic, porn star, mental defective or ethics dunce.  I doubt that his wife voted for him. Client #9. Eliot Spitzer, also lost in his race for Controller…and he is like Weiner.

My position is shaken when faced with a fiasco like Virginia governor’s race, where a proven huckster, Terry McAuliffe, is carrying the Democratic banner and Ken Cuccinelli is the Republican choice. (I live in Virginia.) That McAuliffe is corrupt to the core, like his pals, the Clintons, there is no doubt. He is pure Machiavelli, and worse, he is gleeful about it, like his pal Bill, but without the charisma. I learned all I needed to about McAuliffe’s character when I learned that he tried to bribe Ralph Nader to drop out of the 2000 Presidential race, but that was hardly the only evidence. Virginia Democrats disgraced themselves by nominating him. I wrote about his public dissembling here and here; I didn’t even go into his dubious financial dealings andthe strange way —well, if you think cronyism is strange— he got rich investing in Global Crossing—as I said, the sliminess of his character has never been in doubt.

Cuccinelli, however, is worse: he’s just unethical in different ways. Continue reading →

Presenting the Ethics Alarms Heroes’ Hall Of Honor

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

remember

Today, the anniversary of September 11. 2001, American minds should be occupied with thoughts of gratitude for heroes, the often anonymous and unknown people we may pass in the street every day, as well as the justly famous and celebrated, who make our lives and many others better by living their own selflessly and well. They are our salvation, role models and neighbors, and they teach us the lesson that all is never lost, and hope is always thriving, as long as there are good and courageous people who will do the right thing, no matter what the cost, when fate turns to them.

This seems like a propitious time to dedicate the Ethics Alarms Heroes Hall of Honor, the list of the Ethics Heroes Emeritus whose stories have been told here (and on this site’s predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard.) Every current member of the Hall is now deceased, like the brave men and women who died this day, 12 years ago. Each of them, in a unique way, teaches how human beings can rise above the vicissitudes of mere survival, self-interest, personal benefits and the base desires of the species  to live  meaningful and virtuous lives. Some accomplished this over decades, some with one brilliant and transforming act of distinction.

There are currently 32 members enshrined in this virtual Hall. Obviously, it is far from complete. They are just symbolic representatives, worthy ones, of millions more who once breathed the same air we do today, and like those who perished twelve years ago, face the prospect of being forgotten over time, as we all go about the consuming task of getting from one day to another. Each one of us, I believe, is capable of emulating their example.

Here are the thirty-two members and their stories, as of this date,

September 11, 2013... Continue reading →

The Ethics Of Amateur World Leadership

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Student Driver

The only rational way for any American to respond to the absurd and unprecedented bungling by President Obama and his tight circle of incompetents is sheer terror. If this was the level of care, seriousness, responsibility and professionalism employed by—oh, pick one; let’s say President Kennedy and his all-star advisors during the desperate efforts to avert nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we might all be cockroaches today. That this particular series of inept maneuvers, verbal gaffes and brain-numbing rationalizations may not be the one that sinks the United States like Titanic Jr  should not be the cause of cheering by anyone. We are stuck with this, because the news media of the United States conspired with well-meaning ideologues to place the fate of the nation in the hands of an arrogant amateur without even the ability to realize how little he knows what he is doing. Now we are awaiting what must be the most surreal Presidential speech in U.S. history—or at least we can hope it is—by a leader who has only one skill, and is once again relying on it to bail him out of a mess of his own making. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: RFK Jr.’s Despicable, Private Journal

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
RFK Jr

News value? We already knew that the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree—did we need to read RFK, Jr.s diary to prove it?

This is a straightforward one. Apparently a New York Post reporter somehow came into possession of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s personal journal for 2001. It is, as I imagine President John F. Kennedy’s journal for, say, 1962 would have been, largely a diary about sex, chronicling RFK Jr.’s battles with and evident enjoyment of the family malady, at least on the male side, sex addiction.

The journal is juicy, to say the least, and it also has a tragic side: allegedly Kennedy’s wife Mary discovered and read it shortly before committing suicide last year. RFK Jr. is a radio talk show host, an author, and something of a conspiracy theorist; he also has participated in the shameful and deadly practice of scaremongering regarding vaccines. He is also a Kennedy with a famous father, so in a small bore, minor way, he is sort of a public figure, on the same scale as, oh, let me think…Joey Buttafucco, of Long Island Lolita infamy? Patrick Wayne, the Duke’s B-movie star son? That’s not quite it…something less than Jon Gosselin, Kate’s abused ex-hubby, and more than Daniel Baldwin, the least of the four Baldwin bros.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is this:

Is it ethical for the news media to acquire and publicize the details of a private journal belonging to a minor celebrity with no  relevance to current events? Continue reading →

Leadership Trust: Is This Finally The Public’s Tipping Point On President Obama?

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

giant-jengaTipping points are events that establish major shifts in public attitudes and the culture, and what determines a tipping point varies from circumstance to circumstance. When the switch is flipped on public trust, a leader is done for, at least in a democracy. This is why, in a parliamentary system,  prime ministers call for elections at such times, or even resign. It’s a tradition the U.S. might do well to consider.

The tipping point on the George W. Bush presidency was glaringly obvious: it was the botched handling of Hurricane Katrina, even though that particular fiasco was mostly an example of effective  blame-shifting by New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin. Bush had already accumulated many legitimate reasons to doubt him, but the traditional American eagerness to like and trust whoever holds the same job as Washington, Lincoln and FDR had kept his presidency afloat…until it drowned in Katrina. All was downhill from there.

Interestingly, nobody at the time argued that Americans should support the lousy response to Katrina because not doing so would cripple the Bush presidency going forward. But I digress..

Now it appears that the Obama proposal/decision/ argument—who knows what it really is?—to engage in a limited missile attack on Syria may be the public tipping point on Obama’s leadership, the moment when the veils fall and the nation reluctantly but decisively admits that the man it elected—twice—as its leader cannot be trusted. If so, it is remarkable this took so long, testimony to how much we all wanted our first African-American President to succeed. The tipping point for me was years ago. Following the Bush experience, I thought that the bungled government handling of the Gulf oil spill would clinch it, but no. Then came the Benghazi mess, with an ambassador and other Americans murdered without any decisive response other than deceptive spin and obfuscation to avoid electoral consequences—the I.R.S. tea party harassment (still being investigated, and looking worse all the time)—the NSA revelations, and the growing evidence that while the Affordable Care Act may not be the cataclysmic socialist disaster conservatives claim it is, it is also far from what the President promised. No tipping point though, until Syria, and the consequences flowing directly from the President’s undisciplined off-the-cuff rhetoric—a constantly repeated flaw in his leadership style.

Now, as tipping points do, this current controversy is resuscitating all of the past incidents, and serving as the catalyst for a reappraisal of Obama’s leadership. The looming conclusion is that he cannot be trusted.

Occasionally am beaten to the punch by a pundit or blogger who delivers an essay that says exactly what I was preparing to write, even as I was almost finished writing it. Such a pundit is Forbes contributor Merrill Mathews, who delivered an article on that publication’s website over the weekend, titled “What Happens When You Can’t Believe A Thing The President Says?” (My title was going to be “When Trust Is Gone”).

Some key quotes from the article: Continue reading →