Leadership

Unethical Quote of the Week: President Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens and we’ve moved on to other things? That’s not who we are. That’s not who we are. And I want to make sure every American is listening today…Shame on us if we’ve forgotten. I haven’t forgotten those kids. Shame on us if we’ve forgotten.”

—-President Obama, at a White House event designed to re-energize the push for stricter gun control laws.

Wrong.

Right back at you, Mr. President.

Right back at you, Mr. President.

Shame on the President…for not only making a facile, lowest-common-denominator appeal for gun control regulations, but for implying that policy should be made in the heat of emotional rather than after rational debate and analysis, looking at all sides of an issue, rather than just the most sensational.

Shame on the President…for insulting principled opponents of the Democrat’s irresponsible, hysterical and cynical effort to portray the complex issue of fire arms regulation as a matter of “saving the children” by accusing them of forgetting the horrendous massacre of toddlers at Newtown.

Shame on the President…for dishonestly suggesting that the measures under consideration, good and bad, would have necessarily done anything to prevent the Sandy Hook rampage by a deranged killer. If it would not, then why is the date of the event, whether it was 10, 100, or 1000 days ago, relevant to anything? Investigators found that Adam Lanza had a 28 inch Samurai sword in his arsenal. How many children might he have killed in the same amount of time with that, rather than his assault rifle? Watch “Kill Bill, Part I” and get back to me. Continue reading →

Ethics Poison From Nike and Tiger Woods

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Woods AdWoods Ad2

…and not for the first time, in either case.

But Woods’ new ad for Nike in the wake of his resurgence in his sport, is audaciously unethical, braying a dangerous, corrupting message into the cultural atmosphere, endorsing, in five simple-minded words, consequentialism, the Star Syndrome, the King’s Pass, non-ethical considerations over ethical ones, and “the ends justify the means.” That’s a pretty impressive load of ethics offal in so few words: congratulations to the soulless ignoramus who devised it.

The assorted miscreants, past and present, who would have gladly stood in for Tiger in his damning ad include dictators, despots, mass murderers, gangsters and corrupt politicians like Richard Daley, Marion Barry, Charley Rangel and Tom DeLay, corporate bandits, assassins, robber barons, Wall Street criminals, athletic cheaters like Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds, serial fathers like the NBA’s priapic stars, arrogant social misfits like Charley Sheen, con artists and liars in all walks of life, and of course, our most popular politician, the man whose entire career is based on Nike’s new motto, William Jefferson Clinton.

I almost forgot the terrorists. Continue reading →

Valentining Bobby Valentine, Victim of Three Biases

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

MLB: Boston Red Sox at Toronto Blue Jays

Hindsight bias is bad, confirmation bias is worse, and naked bias is the worst of all. 2012 Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine was the victim of all three with a vengeance during that disastrous Boston baseball season, and is still. I have been tempted to write about Bobby’s plight since last August, when the Red Sox management threw in the towel on the season and the long knives really came out in the Boston press corps. Now Valentine has been gone for six months, half the team has been replaced, and spring is dawning, yet hardly a day passes in which one of these ink-strained wretches  doesn’t take a pot-shot at the deposed manager, leaving the absolutely false impression that he could have done anything to forestall or mitigate the cataclysm that befell the Red Sox in 2012. Continue reading →

“Walking Dead” Ethics: The Worst Leader Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments
Follow this leader at your peril...

Follow this leader at your peril…

“The Walking Dead’s” resolution of the ethical dilemma facing Rick Grimes—give up a member of his group to be tortured by a deranged sadist, on the basis of a dubious promise by said deranged sadist not to attack Rick’s group with a superior force if he receives the sacrificed member as his torture-toy, or resolve to fight said superior force despite the likelihood of defeat—was consistent with what we know of Rick as a leader from past episodes. He is hopeless. With this crucial decision, however, he forged new ground in fecklessness, stupidity and incompetence even for him:

  • He made the wrong decision, deciding to turn over the sword-weilding Machonne as the Governor demanded;
  • He did not tell his group what his decision was;
  • He confided in the most untrustworthy member of the group, the cynical, homicidal Merle, because Rick knew he would have no compunction with executing such a twisted choice;
  • After doing so, Rick changed his mind, but not before Merle, being certain that Rick couldn’t follow through on his decision, went ahead and subdued Machonne on his own and began transporting her back to the Governor’s lair for the trade.

In the end, Machonne wasn’t handed over to the Governor, and Merle ended up dead, but that’s irrelevant here. “The Walking Dead,’ in addition to being a handy primer on how ethics evolves when civilization collapses and zombies outnumber human beings, is a tutorial on leadership do’s and don’ts. Sheriff Rick, who has been the leader of the central band of survivors from the start, is the George Constanza of leadership: to be successful, do the opposite of what Rick would do. Continue reading →

Tell-Tale Signs Of An Incompetent Government: Rationalization # 32, Star Trek and Chairman Who?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

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One of the common rationalizations that leads to both unethical conduct and an unethical organizational culture is “The Management Shrug,” often verbalized as “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”  (It is #32 on the Ethics Alarms ever-lengthening Rationalizations List; it really should have been in the top ten.) This is a favorite excuse of self-anointed big thinkers of the arrogant and incompetent breed, and is an attitude at the core of a much more sinister ethical fallacy, “the ends justify the means.” The Obama administration has been habitually guilty of the Management Shrug, as has a national news media that largely refuses to hold it accountable, and the U.S. public, which pretty obviously doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

Here’s a ridiculous example: some idiot paid  with your tax dollars thought it was appropriate to place a quote from Chairman Mao on the Kids’ Zone page at the National Center on Education Statistics website. Continue reading →

Bloomberg Is Right About Teen Pregnancy, We Are Right To Condemn It

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
murphy_Brown3

No, Candace, we haven’t forgotten Murphy and her amazing vanishing baby.

Conduct that is harmful to society needs to be rejected and condemned by society, and society has limited options for accomplishing that. It can make destructive and harmful conduct illegal, but some kinds of conduct can’t be illegalized. Uncivil speech, for example, is ugly and causes discord, and the only way to make it less common is to let those who engage in it know that neither they nor their communication habits are appreciated. The Supreme Court has decided that we can’t make lying illegal, but we certainly have the power to make habitual liars feel unpopular.

When society sends mixed messages about destructive conduct, or worse, tell those who engage in it that they are still wonderful people and that their conduct might be just fine for them, it poisons itself. There is a solid, practical reason for Kant’s Rule of Universality, which holds that conduct that would be lead to societal catastrophe if everybody engaged in it is wrong should be discouraged. If everybody doing it would be bad, it’s a good bet that the fewer doing it, the better.

No toxic social conduct illustrates the folly of hesitating to condemn it more vividly than unwed pregnancy, particularly teen pregnancy. While shunning and shaming pregnant teens was undoubtedly cruel, sending the message that unwed motherhood is socially acceptable is arguably crueler. This kinder, gentler response, combined with the warping influence of wealthy celebrities proudly parading their “baby bumps” courtesy of equally rich celebrity boyfriends, has led to an explosion of births without wedlock, especially in the black community. The children of these non-marriages are handicapped from birth, more likely to fall into poverty,substance abuse, illiteracy and crime; the mothers involved less are likely to succeed in careers or life; government programs, funded by taxpayers, are too often required to mitigate the damage. Continue reading →

The U.S. Senate’s Disgrace

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

us-senate

The news that the U.S. Senate passed its first budget in four years yesterday (by the skin-of-the-teeth vote of 50-49) heralds the utter disgrace of that body, the President, the government itself, and the nation.

Whether or not the impetus for the Senate to shake off its arrogant and irresponsible torpor and do the job commanded of it in the Constitution was really spurred by the passage of  HR 325, No Budget No Pay Act of 2013, that is sure what it looks like. Thus we are presented with a supposedly essential, honorable, patriotic and dedicated body that only chose to do its duty when its own paychecks were at risk. Meanwhile, over the past three years, a budgetless government spent money like a math-challenged teenager abusing his parents’ credit cards.

How despicable is this? I would find it less disgusting if the Senate showed that it really believed there were good reasons not to pass a budget, or at least that the Senators thought so, by refusing to do it again even though it would hit them in the wallets. This nauseating display alerts us, as if we didn’t already know, that this great country is being managed by 100 elected representatives who have no more sense of dedication or grasp of obligation than a middle school student council, and seemingly less. They actually had to be threatened to buckle down and do the jobs they were elected to do. And the threat involved money, clearly the only thing, other than power, that this revolting body cares about. The nation? The public? Right.

Gag! Ack! Blechh! Yechhh! Ptui! 

There are no words that can adequately express my contempt.

Incompetent Elected Official of the Month, Sandy Hook Ethics Train Wreck Division: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)….Plus A Major News Media Ethics Foul

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Now if she gave a statistic like this, it would be news.

Now if she gave a statistic like this, it would be news.

Rep. Charlie Rangel, I should mention at the outset, should have been sent home by his constituents after demonstrating beyond question that he had reached the point of entitlement and arrogance where he believes principles of ethics no longer apply to him. But the Democratic Party chose to nominate the venerable Harlem icon, and his loyal, if irresponsible, New York district re-elected him, as it has been doing approximately since the dawn of time. Don’t think for a moment that this doesn’t have relevance to Rangel’s recklessness in the case I’m going to discuss. Why should we expect Rangel to be responsible, accurate or prudent in his public statements if nobody will hold him accountable? It’s not as if ethics is going to be a priority for him for its own sake.

Discussing the demise of Diane Feinstein’s assault weapon ban in the U.S. Senate, Rangel blamed the National Rifle Association in a videotaped, semi-incoherent rant that included this:

“I’m ashamed to admit it but its politics and its money. The NRA has taken this position, there is no reason, there is no foundation. There is no hunter that needs automatic military weapons to enjoy the culture of going hunting. But you know it’s really basically the absence of the voices of good people. I cannot believe that politicians are afraid of the NRA. We’re talking about millions of kids dying — being shot down by assault weapons, were talking about handguns easier in the inner cities, to get these guns in the inner cities, than to get computers. This is not just a political issue, it’s a moral issue and so when we condemn the NRA we should not ignore the fact that a lot of people that have taken moral positions have been solid on this big one.”

That’s right: Rep. Rangel said that millions of kids are being shot down by assault weapons. That’s what he said, on camera. Now, the facts in this case are not only easily checked, they are also at variance with reality in the approximate proportion that 2013’s America is not like Oz. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Michael Moore

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

“If a man with an assault weapon goes into the school where Harry Reid’s grandchildren go to school tomorrow and kills his grandchildren, would he stand in front of that microphone at five o’clock and say, ‘I know how Dianne [Feinstein] had to witness the mayor getting murdered, but my grandchildren just got killed today, but, you know, we can’t get it passed because we just don’t have the votes.’”

—Documentary Film-Maker Michael Moore, ranting about Senate Majority Harry Reid’s decision to remove Sen. Feinstein’s assault weapons ban from the Senate gun reform package.

This is when I should not say anything at all, my mother told me.

This is when I should not say anything at all, my mother told me.

I know ad hominem attacks are uncool, but truly: what an awful, awful man Michael Moore is. He lies in his documentaries; he engages in deceit routinely; he abused Charlton Heston, knowing he was in the throes of Altzheimer’s Disease; he praised Fidel Castro; he is, for all intents and purposes a Communist, his public statements are fueled by and designed to ignite hatred more often than not, and, on top of it all, he says unethical and asinine things like this. Moore is to progressives what Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump are to conservatives: any group that can endure, indeed, applaud such people has serious, deep-rooted ethical and cognitive problems. Continue reading →

“There Is No Debt Crisis” ? Boy, That’s A Load Off My Mind!

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments
"So far, so good!"

“So far, so good!”

The confluence of head-exploding statements and news keeps coming, with the worst being the recent unconscionable announcements out of the mouths of the President and some of his political adversaries that “there is no debt crisis.”

This is exactly like the old joke about the man falling from a 40 story window, being asked by someone on the tenth floor, shouting through a window as he passes, “How are you doing?” “So far, so good!” he answers. Yet these ridiculous, idiotic or intentionally dishonest statements by President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and others are being cited by the news media as reassuring! No, there’s no debt crisis, if you regard that falling optimist as not being in a smashing-to-pulp-on-the-sidewalk-crisis. The debt increased by a trillion dollars last year, and looks as if it will increase by close to a trillion more by October, 2013. The government has no leadership on the issue, and the various sides appear incapable of forging a solution, with the current Administration actually going out of its way to try to make less than 2% in budget cuts under the absurd sequester hurt as much as possible, to convince a math-deficient public that cutting the size of government is not only impossible but undesirable. This scenario doesn’t demonstrate that there’s a debt crisis? Continue reading →