Leadership

Ethics Dunce: France

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

France

France doesn’t seem to comprehend it yet, but it is embarking on an uncharted and dangerous journey by installing a leader whose lifestyle argues for the irrelevance of marriage.

Valérie Trierweiler, the partner of France’s newly-elected president François Hollande, is being referred to world-wide as France’s new, and unmarried, “First Lady.” She seems like a serious, admirable professional, and there are certainly benefits to any nation by having a woman of substance, intelligence and talent at or near the top of that country’s public figures. I know very little about Hollande, but I am assuming that he is qualified for the difficult job he is undertaking, and that he, like Trierweiler, are mature adults who have every right to structure their personal relationships however they please. That assumption, however, requires the omission of the duties of leadership from the calculation. Leaders cannot make personal decisions based only on their own needs, but must make those decisions while acknowledging an immutable and long-proven fact: leaders have a disproportional, almost frightening power to influence, shape and change a culture, and the more successful and popular  leaders are, the greater that power is. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Washington Post Blogger Greg Sargent

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“But when it comes down to it, this all happened too long ago and too early in Romney’s life to know with real certainty whether it’s revealing of any of those things or not — particularly when it comes to who Romney is right now. I can’t get around the simple fact that I wouldn’t want to be judged today by some of the things I did in my teens, and I suspect many others feel the same way.”

—Washington Post blogger-from-the-Left Greg Sargent, concluding his post entitled, “What Does Mitt Romney’s Bullying Tell Us?”

My god, man! I think you’ve discovered The Golden Rule!

Who the heck is THAT guy?

Sargent, being a designated left-wing mouthpiece for a newspaper that often fulfills that role itself, naturally toes the company line in most of his post before having this lucid ethical moment. He spends part of the article speculating on what the Post’s “bombshell story” about what Mitt did or maybe did in prep school might suggest about Romney—all the better to throw out indictments “from some” like cruelty, “a real mean streak,” “a disdain for the weak,” just to plant a seed in the minds of voters that might bloom Greg’s way by November. But he edges into Ethics Hero territory for making the necessary “Never mind!” point in fairness and common sense. Continue reading →

The Washington Post’s Teenage Romney Smear Job

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

This just in: When he was 2 months old, Mitt Romney made boom-boom in his didies!

The Washington Post, which reached its previous nadir of attempted disgraceful and irresponsible character assassination of a GOP Presidential candidate with its “Niggerhead” hit job on Gov. Rick Perry*, sunk lower still with today’s stunningly unfair attack on Mitt Romney. Reporter Jason Horowitz wrote a bottom-of the-barrel story about an incident in which Romney bullied and harassed a gay class mate when Romney was at prep school, and 17-years-old. Naturally, this was published to contrast with President Obama, finally being shamed into announcing his support of gay marriage, in order to embarrass Romney, and force him to apologize for an episode that took place nearly a half-century ago when he was legally a minor.

If you want to read this garbage, it is here. You shouldn’t want to, however. It has no relevance to Mitt Romney or his qualifications for the Presidency. Paying any attention to it at all, even if you are actively trying to torpedo Mitt, is a bright-line violation of the Golden Rule…unless, of course, you never did anything you’re now ashamed of when you were a selfish, hormone-addled, ignorant teen, and are perfectly willing to have colleagues and potential employers judge your current character on the wedgies you handed out in gym class. Continue reading →

The Curse of the Honest Vice-President and the Evolving President

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“EEEK! The President is EVOLVING!!!”

Vice-President Joe Biden sent Washington, D.C.’s pundits into a tizzy when he told  NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday that he was“absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage. It is amazing, when Biden has lapped all previous Vice Presidents in goofs, mistakes, outrageous statements and embarrassments that this statement—honest, reasonable and forthright—should be regarded as a serious blunder. What did he do wrong this time? As Dana Milbank of the Washington Post put it, Biden “committing the classic Washington gaffe of accidentally speaking the truth.”

And why is it a gaffe for this Vice President to tell the truth by stating his support for a position strongly favored by the majority of Democrats, and increasingly the public as a whole? Why would Biden be off message by embracing a core cause of the gay, lesbian and transgendered community, which is overwhelmingly in the Obama camp? The answer is that he has embarrassed the President by calling attention to the fact that President Obama has conspicuously avoided making such a clear and unequivocal statement on the issue, because he wants to avoid being open, honest, direct and truthful about his views on gay marriage until after the election. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Ancestry

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Remember that old Cher song, “1/32 Breed”?

If Scott Brown wins re-election as a Republican Senator from Massachusetts this fall, he will go on record as one of the luckiest political candidates since, well, Barack Obama. Brown won an upset victory in the special election in 2009 (any time a Republican wins in my home state, it’s an upset) in part because his inept Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, showed herself to be unforgivably ignorant on the one topic most state residents really care about—the Boston Red Sox. Now he has the latest contender for his job, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, on the ropes because of her own self-inflicted wound, Warren’s dubious claim of minority status as a Native American between 1986 and 1995.

Warren listed herself as part Native American in the Association of American Law Schools desk book, she says, in the hope of meeting others in her field with similar backgrounds. She did not, she insists, do so to gain any professional edge. Yet in 1992 she was hired to teach at Harvard, and when she became a permanent faculty member in 1995, Warren dropped the minority claim from her profile in the directory. Harvard, meanwhile, began counting Warren as a Native American in its diversity statistics, just as her previous employers had at the University of Texas and the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever her intent may have been, a former chair of the AALS confirms that minority listings in the organization’s directory were used in hiring decisions by members.“In the old days before the internet, you’d pull out the AALS directory and look up people. There are schools that if they were looking for a minority faculty member, would go to that list and might say, ‘I didn’t know Elizabeth Warren was a minority, ” George Mason University Law professor David Bernstein, a former chairman of the American Association of Law Schools, has told reporters. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: David Barton

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

David Barton, telling fairy tales to Jon Stewart

Pseudo-historian and evangelical leader David Barton went on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” this week and trotted out a factually dubious story ( and one that is almost two decades old) about a St. Louis elementary school student named Raymond Raines who was, the story goes, reprimanded by both his teacher and a principal for praying over his lunch in the cafeteria. Jon Stewart was skeptical, but Barton, an author, a self-styled historian and, of course, a man of God, insisted that the tale was true, and indicative of the persecution Christians are subjected to in Obama’s America. The story is  not “true;” at best it is disputed; I think, as Stewart suggested, that it is highly unlikley. It is dishonest to state that it is fact, because Barton doesn’t know that.

There is no excuse for this, but plenty of possible reasons. One is that Barton was intentionally lying to bolster his claim of culture-wide persecution. Another is that he was in the throes of confirmation bias, and assumed that a horror story that seemed to support his already-formed beliefs must be true. A third is that he related a popularly-repeated myth on national television without bothering to check whether it was true or not. None of them are acceptable. Continue reading →

Did Any Journalists Actually READ Obama’s Autobiography?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Today Rush Limbaugh was fuming over a Politico report that the President had admitted to biographer David Maranis that “Genevieve Cook,” the New York girlfriend depicted in his 1995 autobiography “Dreams From My Father,” was not a real person but a composite of several girlfriends. Rush’s point: the book was widely represented, by the President as well as others, as true. What else in the book is a lie?

Politico, however, did something novel: its reporters went to the book itself. They found that Obama had written, right up front, that some characters were composites, though he didn’t say which. Limbaugh’s larger point is still valid: if it contained fiction, and composite characters are that, the book is not reliable, and is not truly a work of non-fiction that can or should be trusted. Obama did not hide that fact, however…if anyone had been paying attention. Continue reading →

The Matthew Owens Attack: For Obama, Impossible Choices and Deserved Accountability

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Actually, Matthew Owens DOES look a little like my son...Of course, it's hard to tell...

From the Huffington Post:

“Alabama police are trying to track down a mob that beat a man into critical condition — leaving their battered victim with the words, ‘Now that’s justice for Trayvon.’ Cops told WKRG that Matthew Owens got in an argument with some kids playing basketball at a court in the city of Mobile on Saturday night. The kids left and a group of some 20 adults arrived at Owens’ front doorstep, armed with chairs, brass knuckles, pipes and paint cans. The group, all African American, allegedly beat him into a bloody pulp before someone uttered the words that connected the crime to the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teen who was shot and killed in Florida by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman.”

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UPDATE (4/25): New reports question some of the details above. The dispute may have started over thefts in the neighborhood witnessed by  Owens’ niece; a neighbor says that Owens had been in disputes frequently; police now say that the beating was administered by only members of the group, with the rest standing by and watching. There has been at least one arrest. Also of note: Owens’ sister’s claim that one of the attackers said “Now that’s justice for Trayvon” may have been corroborated by other neighbors.

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This was completely predictable, and indeed it is only the worst, not the first, incident in which an attack on a white victim was linked to “justice” for Trayvon Martin. Now, the reasons I laid out a month ago that made President Obama’s reckless comments about the Sanford, Florida killing divisive and dangerous ought to be obvious to all, but if not, here are some questions to consider: Continue reading →

Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck Post-Bail Update

/ Jack Marshall / 103 Comments

Sadly, still with a good head of steam...

George Zimmerman has been released on $150,000 bail, prompting more ethical misconduct from the media and the lynch mob on the Left:

  • Cable news was reporting that Martin’s parents are “devastated” at the news of Zimmerman’s release. They should not be devastated that an innocent man (in the eyes of the law) is not being forced to stay in prison for more than a year to await trial, and the fact that they are suggests that vengeance, not “justice”, is their true objective. Meanwhile, for CNN et al. to be reporting this as if releasing a defendant on bail is some kind of gift to Zimmerman or affront to Martin’s family is irresponsible and provocative. The news organizations have an obligation to explain that bail is based on the likelihood that the defendant is not a danger to others and not a flight risk. Zimmerman is neither: he turned himself into police as soon as he was charged, and has ties to the community. In America, we do not keep people in jail before they have been convicted unless it is absolutely unavoidable. Citizens interested in ‘justice” should not be devastated when any fellow citizen is afforded freedom up to and until his guilt of a crime has been proven. It is a right they may need themselves some day. Continue reading →

The Heroic Bird-Watchers and The Shame of the Star Princess

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If Captain Stubing had been at the helm, a tragedy might have been averted.

Rescue is a frequent topic on Ethics Alarms, usually in a disturbing context. We all have a duty to rescue others in peril, but we should never underestimate the powerful forces that often work against that duty. Rescue can be dangerous or frightening, and often there are perplexing questions about when an individual has done enough to ensure a rescue, and what constitutes “enough,” especially if the rescue fails.

In March, the Star Princess—a luxury cruise ship operated by Carnival—was on a cruise around South America. Three of the passengers were bird-watchers, who eschewed shuffleboard and the other fun activities organized by whoever was the counterpart to Lauren Tewes on “The Love Boat” to use their binoculars and telescopes to spot seabirds from the ship’s decks.

It was March 10 when one of the bird-lovers, Jeff Gilligan from Portland, Oregon., saw a boat with a person standing up in it, waving a dark piece of cloth. The vessel was at least a mile away.  Another Oregon bird-watcher, Judy Meredith, told reporters that when she focused her lenses on the boat, it was clear to her that the man waving the cloth was trying to get the Star Princess’s attention, and that the boat was drifting, without an engine. She went inside to try to alert the crew about the situation. After she talked to one crew member, she says, he called the bridge and she talked him through what she and Gilligan had seen.”I was trying to have a sense or urgency in my voice — and tell them that the boat was in distress, and they were trying to get our attention.” Another crew member used Gilligan’s telescope to look at the drifting boat, and confirmed their assessment. The boat was drifting in the open seas and in peril. Gilligan said that at that point “We were a bit relieved because he had confirmed that he had seen what we were describing. We expected the ship to turn back or stop or something.” Continue reading →