Almost everything has been reminding me of the “Ground Zero Mosque” lately. It is driving me crazy, perhaps because the rhetoric of the pro-Cordoba House “You’re a bigot if you don’t think this is the best idea since Disney World” crowd is increasingly unfair and absurd, and getting worse by the minute. Or perhaps it is that the inconsistent reasoning and blindness to embarrassing analogies exhibited by just about everyone who comments on this issue has reached the detonation point. Continue reading
Leadership
“Birthers”: Unethical, or Merely Deranged?
Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, a military expert who appears as an analyst on Fox News, has submitted an affidavit in support of Army Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin, who is refusing to deploy to Afghanistan because of his belief that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Lakin faces a court-martial for his refusal. Thus has General McInerney officially admitted to being a “birther,” one of the legion of conspiracy theorists who deny Constitutional eligibility for the White House.
From McInerney’s affidavit: Continue reading
Ethics Quote of the Month: Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson
“I did not have an ethical alarm go off.”
—Dallas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, explaining (but not really) how she managed to give 23 of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships Johnson has awarded since 2005 to two grandsons from Austin, two great-nephews from Plano, and two children of her top aide, despite explicit rules prohibiting nepotism, and requiring the scholarship to go to needy recipients in her own district, which none of these recipients were.
But thanks for the plug, Congresswoman! (It is “ethics alarm,” however, not “ethical alarm.”) Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Glenn Beck
No, it wasn’t a big lie, a harmful lie, or a malicious lie that Glenn Beck told at his recent rally. Beck had claimed that he held George Washington’s handwritten first Inaugural Address “in his hands” at the National Archives, but a spokeswoman at the institution denied it: they don’t allow that. After Keith Olbermann and other full-time Beck-bashers kept pressing the issue, Beck admitted that he had fabricated the story to cut through the extraneous details of the real process:
“…Yesterday I went to the National Archives, and they opened up the vault, and they put on their gloves and then they put [the document] on a tray. They wheeled it over and it’s all in this hard plastic and you’re sitting down at a table…you can’t actually touch any of the documents, these are very very rare. So … they have it in this plastic thing and they hold them right in front of you; you can’t touch them, but then you can say ‘can you turn it over,’ and then they turn it over for you and then you look at it.”
“I thought it was a little clumsy to explain it that way,” Beck told his cable audience, shrugging off the controversy. No, as lies go, it was about as harmless as it gets.
Except. Continue reading
Unethical Quote of the Week: Columnist Eugene Robinson
“According to polls, Americans are in a mood to hold their breath until they turn blue. Voters appear to be so fed up with the Democrats that they’re ready to toss them out in favor of the Republicans — for whom, according to those same polls, the nation has even greater contempt. This isn’t an ‘electoral wave,’ it’s a temper tantrum.”
—Op-Ed writer Eugene Robinson in the Sept. 3 Washington Post
The surest proof that a citizen or commentator is partisan beyond the point of fairness, objectivity, or even common sense is the abandonment of the ethical principle of accountability. Voters with this malady re-elect demonstrably corrupt politicians, cheats and liars, using the argument that they are still the “best candidates.” While this is fortunate for elected officials, past and present, like Tom DeLay, Bill Clinton, Charlie Rangel, Maxine Waters, Eddie Johnson, Ted Stevens, and many, many others, it guarantees bad government and a rotting political culture, perpetrated by increasingly arrogant, unresponsive, incompetent and dishonest public servants. Continue reading
Fairness and Gov. Brewer’s 16 seconds of Panic
[Personal Note: I apologize for the dearth of posts since Wednesday. I have been on short but intense road tour of Virginia, presenting three three-hour legal ethics seminars in three days, and driving long distances in-between. My sincere intentions to keep up the commentary on ethics developments elsewhere fell victim to fatigue, age, and the surprising discovery that vene I get sick of thinking about ethics sometimes. I am sorry, and will catch up diligently.]
Governor Jan Brewer suffered through an elected official’s nightmare, beginning her televised gubernatorial debate with Democrat Terry Goddard with an embarrassing meltdown, complete with a garbled opening statement and a 16 second pause when she lost her bearings entirely and went mute, despite having her notes in her hand. Ben Smith of Politico wrote that “Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s opening statement in last night’s debate reflects either an amazing lack of preparation, or sheer panic.” Well, nobody who is going to appear on television for a debate that will decide her future employment fails to prepare. It was obviously panic, and the kind of panic that has very little to do with being governor of Arizona or the ability to do any other job, except perhaps host the “Tonight Show.” Continue reading
Obama’s Damaging Ethical Blind Spot
For several years, I have been using a hypothetical in my business ethics courses involving the head of a non-profit who brings in a fundraising whiz to help the organization survive. While he is settling in and before he has had time to rescue the organization with his fundraising wizardry, she has asked the staff to accept a freeze on raises and hiring, and has cut other expenses, and even some staff. She asks the new fundraiser to live with his dilapidated office, though she had promised him a redecoration while recruiting him. But he objects: Continue reading
Ethics Alarms Presents “The Mosquies”…the Best and Worst of the “Ground Zero Mosque” Ethics Train Wreck
As I previously noted, the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy is an epic “ethics train wreck” that has spread its destruction far and wide, across regional, ideological and national borders, leaving confusion, misunderstanding and bad feelings in its wake. Now is as good a time as any to take stock of the situation, and to recognize those who have distinguished themselves during the carnage, for good or ill. To this end, Ethics Alarms presents its first annual (and hopefully last ever) awards for outstanding ethical and unethical conduct during the whole mess, “The Mosquies.”
The envelope, please… Continue reading
Unscrupulous Rep. Johnson, Lying Through Her Teeth
Which is the more unethical conduct for a U.S. Congresswoman: handing out non-profit money to relatives and friends, or lying about it so flagrantly that it insults the intelligence of everyone within earshot? It’s a tough call. Luckily, we really don’t have to decide in the case of Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), because she’s done both. Continue reading
What Was Right and Wrong With Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” Rally
The pundits of the airwaves, newsprint and blogosphere have issued their assessments of the Glenn Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial with predictable results: those who admired Beck before the rally liked it, and those who detest him ridiculed it. The New York Times, in its inimitable fashion, showed contempt for the proceedings by relegating its account to page 15, even though every past D.C. rally and march of equivalent or lesser size (especially those advocating social or political positions popular with the Times staff) received more prominent coverage. To Times columnist Frank Rich, Beck’s rally was part of a racist conspiracy hatched by billionaires—yes, Frank, sure it was. John Avlon, who long ago branded Beck as a wingnut, reasonably pointed out that it was a wee bit hypocritical for Beck to preach against divisiveness when his own cable show is one of the most polarizing, even by Fox news standards. And John Batchelor, who may be the most serious, erudite, and balanced public affairs radio talk show host in captivity, dismissed the rally as harmless and Beck as a clown:
“I think of him now and again as Quasimodo Lite, a deaf bell-ringer swinging from the Notre Dame of Fox, a man who is eager to confess his own unsightly warts—“I’ve screwed up most of my life”—and who is also heroically delighted to be our slightly stooped “Pope of Fools,” because this accidental role, in this Festival of Fools called 2010, wins the cheers of the crowd.”
Even less charitable was the Baltimore Sun’s TV critic, who accused Beck of “stealing Martin Luther King’s moral authority.” Less charitable still was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who seems to have been driven a little mad—or at least a little unprofessional, perhaps— by the fact that Beck had the audacity to hold his rally on the anniversary of King’s iconic “I have a dream” speech. Matthews’s hyperbole was, well, Beck-like:
“Can we imagine if King were physically here tomorrow, today, were he to reappear tomorrow on the very steps of the Lincoln Memorial? “I have a nightmare that one day a right wing talk show host will come to this spot, his people`s lips dripping with the words ‘interposition’ and ‘nullification.’ Little right wing boys and little right wing girls joining hands and singing their praise for Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. I have a nightmare!”
Was Beck’s bash really a nightmare? Political biases aside (Chris), the question for Ethics Alarms is what was right and wrong about the “Restoring Honor” rally. Continue reading
