Marketing and Advertising

Irresponsible TLC, Promoting Ignorance and Fraud

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

She’s funny, she’s wacky, she’s setting stupid people up to be scammed.

Public ignorance and stupidity costs the nation billions of dollars, kills untold people in the hundreds of thousands, vastly increases crime and unemployment, and generally makes life far less productive, safe and enjoyable for the minority that are not ignorant and stupid, as well as for those who are. Among the most unethical and despicable among us are those who profit from the ignorance of others, and who either plot to keep them that way, or who exploit their dimness for profit. These deplorable exploiters include politicians, advertisers and merchandisers, religious groups and cults, as well as single-issue advocates on a wide range of issues. There should be an especially unpleasant corner in Hell, however, for an organization that does this under the guise of “The Learning Channel.”

The Learning Channel has already established its fondness for either making “entertainment” out of child abuse, as in its execrable reality shows, “Toddlers & Tiaras” and “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” or exploiting child labor, as with the “Jon & Kate plus Eight” franchise. But its “Long Island Medium” show is especially vile, as it prepares gullible fools for manipulation and fleecing by charlatans who claim to be able to contact the dead, read minds, or foresee the future. “Theresa is a typical Long Island mom who has a very special gift. She talks to the dead.,” TLC tells us on its website. Elsewhere, it describes Theresa Caputo as a “real psychic.” These are lies. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Novelist R J Ellory

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Jellybean”

Yes, he really did: best-selling British crime novelist R J  Ellory actually went on Amazon, and using fake names like “Jellybean” and “Nicodemus Jones,” wrote rave reviews of his own books . In one review, he called one of his novels a “modern masterpiece” and wrote that it “just stopped me dead in my tracks.”

How embarrassing. Sales a little soft lately, R J? He also used fake identities to post negative reviews of his rivals’ works. Continue reading →

When Late Is As Bad As Never: The Thalidomide Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Such a nice apology to the Thalidomide victims! Why no applause?

Harald Stock, Chief Executive of the Gruenenthal Group, has issued the company’s first apology and acknowledgment of responsibility for its role in manufacturing Thalidomide, the drug taken by pregnant women for nausea in the ’50’s and ’60’s. The women who took the drug, primarily in Europe, gave birth to children with deformed limbs or no limbs at all.  Stock  apologized to the surviving mothers and to their children, saying,

“We ask for forgiveness that for nearly 50 years we didn’t find a way of reaching out to you from human being to human being. We ask that you regard our long silence as a sign of the shock that your fate caused in us.”

Wow, that’s some case of shock—50 years! And the shock affected not just the executives of the company that were around when the drug was distributed without adequate testing and so-called “flipper babies” were being born in the thousands, but two generations of subsequent Gruenenthal management too. Let’s translate this apology, shall we? Continue reading →

Most Deceitful Magazine Name of the Year: “Newsweek”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

With its current, shocking, attention-seeking and pathetically pandering cover story, Newsweek, once a respected name in news coverage, has officially jumped the shark and self-identified as chum. “Hit the Road, Barack” the cover shouts, in a lame spoof of the classic Ray Charles song. The subtitle: “Why We Need A New President.” Naturally, the Daily Beast, which, like Newsweek, is a left-leaning newsy thing owned by Tina Brown, plugs the issue as its #1 event.

Here is what makes the cover significant: it shows that there is no longer even a pretense of integrity in the business of journalism, only show biz, shock, and tabloid tactics. Newsweek, in its recent incarnation, if it stood for anything other than the demise of weekly news magazines in the internet age, stood for the deification of Barack Obama,  fairness and facts be damned. During the 2008 campaign the magazine ran so many beatific photos of the candidate on the cover that it became laughable and monotonous. Since the election, Brown has stocked the magazine’s  pages with Obama-worshipers who had to turn in their independent judgment and objectivity at the door. The Daily Beast is a bit more diverse, but still hits the same mind-blowing notes of partisan fantasy. Beast regular Peter Beinart pronounced the election a guaranteed stroll for Obama months ago. Michael Tomasky, who also stalks the pages of Newsweek, recently wrote that an Obama landslide was sure thing, so undeniably successful has his term been. The red meat Blue crowd laps it up; never mind that such articles have the approximate enlightenment value of being hit over the head repeatedly with a 9-iron. The President has now devolved into a mere prop for Newsweek to brandish in the pursuit of sensationalism. Remember the cover with Obama wearing a rainbow halo and being hailed as “the first gay President”? This has nothing to do with news. It is only about commerce. Continue reading →

The Swiftboating of Mitt Romney, Part II: When “Balanced” is Biased

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

“Did you hear? Mitt Romney killed his wife. At least, that’s what they’re saying…”

I was intrigued to see how my home town paper, The Washington Post, dealt with the latest lower-than-low and Nixonian attack on Romney from Team Obama, the “Mitt Romney killed my wife” ad.

If you have been asleep this week or just in the bathroom vomiting over what “Hope and Change” mutates into when it’s time to pay the piper, the TV ad by pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action features Joe Soptic, a steelworker who claims that Romney is responsible for the death of his wife, because Romney’s company, Bain Capital, shut down his steel plant.  The facts of Soptic’s case, however, are not in dispute: Mitt Romney left Bain in 1999 to work on the Olympics.  Jonathan Lavine, now a top Obama campaign fundraiser, was running the company when it closed the GST Steel plant where Soptic worked in 2001. Soptic was, he now admits, offered a buy-out by Bain, but declined it. He then took another job but declined to purchase his employer’s insurance plan. Soptic’s wife had her own health insurance plan through 2003. In 2006, seven years after Romney gave up the management of Bain, Soptic’s wife was diagnosed with very late-stage cancer, after being misdiagnosed earlier, and died shortly thereafter.

Based on this, Joe Soptic alleges that Mitt Romney killed his wife. He is either lying, or he is nuts. But the point is that he is willing to say it on camera, and has a sad face. That is enough, you see, to justify calling Mitt Romney a murderer. Continue reading →

The Fojol Bros., Innocent of Racism, Political Correctness Victims

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In its advanced stages, 21st century political correctness becomes a kind of delusional illness, causing sufferers to interpret  benign, harmless and even socially healthy conduct as offensive and sinister. An outbreak of this variety of political correctness is in full flower in Washington, D.C., where more than the usual number of officious defenders of that which needs no defending are trying to gin up public outrage against a creative, fun, and successful small business enterprise, Fojol Bros.

The company sends food trucks around downtown D.C. and serves strangely named hybrid ethnic dishes inspired by Indian, Ethiopian and Thai cuisines. The Fojol employees who hand out the delicious fare wear turbans, robes and fake mustaches,  claim to hail from  “Merlindia” and “Benethiopia,” and go by names like “Kipoto.” This was once called “theater” and “fantasy,” no more offensive than Disney employees in Frontierland dressing in cowboy and saloon girl garb and calling themselves “Tex” and “Lilly.” Now some are calling it “offensive,” because too many people have forgotten what offensive is. Continue reading →

Newark Mayor Cory Booker Recants

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Don’t feel bad, Mayor. Galileo understands.

When, I wonder, will the political parties realize that having spokespersons with proven credibility and integrity, who will speak the truth and not embrace cynical, misleading talking points, can only help the parties’ causes? Based on the sad Corey Booker episode, I’m guessing the answer is “Never.”

The Obama campaign, taking its cue from New Gingrich (which itself is disturbing), put out what can only be called an anti-capitalism ad, condemning Mitt Romney’s leadership of  Bain Capital, a private investment firm that acquires companies, streamlines and repairs them to make them profitable, or liquidates them if they are not. The ad relies on breath-taking ignorance of how investment and business creation works, but fits nicely into the Occupy Wall Street mythology. For a President trying, theoretically, to get the economy humming again, it was a stunning example of campaign deceit.

Cory Booker is Newark’s Democratic mayor, a devoted Obama supporter, and like his state’s Republican Governor Chris Cristie, remarkably willing to tell the truth, for someone in his field. On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Booker pronounced the Bain ad “nauseating”:

“If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this [the ad], to me, I’m very uncomfortable with….I have to just say, from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital.” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sportswriter Jason Reid

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I really don’t care how bad you feel, Jason.

In designating national sportswriter Jason Reid an Ethics Dunce because of his sensitive, thoughtful, brave but ultimately unethical column this morning, I don’t intend to suggest that his ethical failing is unusual, or noteworthy for any reason other than the fact that it is universal.

Sometimes we are all like Jason Reid, I think. We all engage in conduct that we suspect is wrong, but we enjoy it. Gradually, truth breaks through our denial and we cannot avoid the conclusion that the conduct is wrong; still, despite the fact that we do not believe human beings should willfully do wrong, we persist in the conduct.

Because we enjoy it.

Reid’s column is titled “Seay’s Death Forces Uncomfortable Questions For Football Fans,” referring to the recent suicide death of former NFL star Junior Seau, the second suicide of a former pro football star in recent weeks. The uncomfortable question is the same one I raised on Ethics Alarms in November of 2009, which tells you how many NFL fans read ethics blogs. I wrote then,

“Simply put, it is wrong to pay money to persuade people to permanently damage themselves for our entertainment. No fight fan can watch Muhammad Ali today, recalling his nimble wit and amusing patter, and not feel complicity in his current near-mute condition, the result of being induced to box after his skills were eroded by time. When we know, and players know, that playing football in the NFL is going to lead to premature dementia for a significant number of players who will accept the risk if the money is right, can we ethically continue to provide that money?”

Sportswriters don’t read ethics blogs either, so in May of 2012, Reid has decided that this and related questions need asking. So he writes.. Continue reading →

When A Corporation Trusts Too Much: The Saga of the Unlimited AAirpass

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

If you sell this guy a ticket to your all-you-can-eat buffet and he eats the table, is he at fault, or are you?

A strange subplot of the American Airlines bankruptcy is the saga of its unlimited AAirpass, a special deal offered by the airline in 1981. The company sold passes for a lifetime of free and unlimited First Class travel with no limitations at a price of $250,000. An additional $150,000 permitted AAirpass customers to buy one “companion ticket” that would let one person—anyone— accompany them on any flight, anywhere, again, for life.

Apparently eschewing competent market research—and you wondered why this airline went belly up?—American assumed that the lifetime luxury travel passes would be bought by corporations for their high-flying employees. But no; the purchasers were almost all very rich people with a lot of time on their hands. As designed, American got a quick influx of cash, but at an unacceptable and strangely unanticipated cost: the AAirpasses placed the company at the mercy of  few profligate travelers who exploited American’s carelessness to the edge of absurdity, thereby raising a fascinating ethical question: If someone lets you have the right to ruin them, is it ethical to do it? Continue reading →

Fox News’ War on Women’s Hair

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Did Walter Cronkite ever pose like this, Megyn?

I can’t stand this any more.

I just watched Fox news trot out five, count them, five comely, bleached blonde talking heads in a row. Some were radio hosts, were news readers, some were columnists, but none of them would have been out of place in a Maxim feature on “the Babes of Cable News,” or perhaps “The Stereotypical Babes of Cable News.” How demeaning and unfair to women, how warping for young women seeking careers in broadcast journalism, and how insulting to men!

The percentage of blondes on Fox defies random statistics, and when the rare brunette appears as a change of pace, it is clear that the Fox talent bookers just moved down from “head” to another part of the anatomy to compensate. I know that CNN Headline News has its pin-up morning gal Robin Meade, but the station’s parent at least employs Candy Crowley. I want to see female journalists, experts and commentators who are old, who are fat, who are homely; who are flat-chested, have crossed eyes or bad skin, and who are perceptive, professional and able. Fox’s cynical bias toward the young, shapely, blonde and beautiful is obnoxious, archaic, and offensive. Even its serious and talented women, like Megyn Kelly, have allowed themselves to be packaged as Playmates.

Enough. I don’t care how many pigs watch Fox. There’s no excuse for this.

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Graphic: Gentlemen’s Quarterly

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of  facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.