Marketing and Advertising

Ethics And The 700 Million Dollar Baseball Player

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In Mike Flanagan’s latest horror epic, the Poe mash-up in which “The Fall of the House of Usher” is repurposed into a nightmare scenario for the Sackler family of Oxycontin infamy, the avenging demon named Verna, who sometimes appears as a raven, lectures a soon-to-be victim on the evils of greed:

So much money. One of my favorite things about human beings. Starvation, poverty, disease, you could fix all that, just with money. And you don’t. I mean, if you took just a little bit of time off the vanity voyages, pleasure cruising, billionaire space race, hell, you stopped making movies and TV for one year and you spent that money on what you really need, you could solve it all. With some to spare.

Yes, Verna is a communist and deluded, but it was impossible to read about the $700 million ten-year contract the Los Angeles Dodgers just gave baseball free agent Shohei Ohtani without that speech creeping into my thoughts. $700 million dollars?

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Ethics Pop Quiz: Why Does Amazon Sell “From The River To Te Sea” Merchandise But Not Anything Featuring A Confederate Flag??

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

I find this perplexing, and perhaps attention should be paid. Amazon sells several versions of that attractive shirt above, but stopped making anything with a Confederate flag available in 2015. The impetus for this move was, as you might recall, Dylann Roof, a lone, racist wacko, shooting and killing nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina church. Yet more than a month after approximately 1,200 Jewish civilians were murdered by Hamas in a carefully organized surprise terror attack, merchandise with the Palestinian slogan calling for Israel’s eradication, in accordance with the Hamas charter, is still selling briskly on Amazon to U.S. customers. The U.S. Congress just censured its racist, anti-Semitic “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib for endorsing the very same slogan. The American Jewish Committee regards the phrase as antisemitic.  The White House finally condemned the use of the “inspirational phrase,” as Tlaib called it. Amazon claims to have a policy prohibiting “the sale of products that promote, incite, or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance” and”prohibits or promote organizations with such views, as well as listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence.”

How do you reconcile the contradictory treatment of the Confederate flag, which is a far more ambiguous symbol with important significance in American history, and an infamous anti-Israel rallying cry?

Some possible answers are offered below:

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Today’s Unethical NYT Headline: “Democrats, No Longer Squeamish on Abortion, Lean Into Searing Personal Ads”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

What an infuriating, despicable headline, though the story is equally bad. If abortion supporters—yes, it’s the Democratic Party exploiting the issue—weren’t “squeamish” about what they so indignantly and self-righteously support they wouldn’t have spent the past 70 years trying to figure out ways to avoid directly admitting what they are advocating. “Baby? What baby?”

The argument for abortion, that is, terminating a developing unique human life distinct from that of its mother before it can grow to be born and go on to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has been, and still is, deliberately clouded by misleadng rhetoric about “choice” and “reproductive care,” the current dodge. Wait, how is that other human life in the equation assisted with his or her “reproduction”? Is it “care” to have that life’s own chances of reproducing taken away from it?

And what choice does the victim of an abortion have?

If Democrats weren’t “squeamish” about having to deal with those questions, they wouldn’t be trying (and, tragically, thanks to the abysmal level of attention, critical thought and ethical competence of the average American, largely succeeding) to avoid them.

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This Is The Mentality That Allows You To Thrive As A Democratic Party Political Consultant In 2023…

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

The speaker is Ally Sammarco, a D.C.-based Democratic political consultant who pretends to be a firm, ARS Media LLC. You get an early clue about Sammarco’s ethical orientation by the fact that the ARS media website keeps referring to the company as “we” but when you click on “Who we are” you get just one name, hers. Lawyers are subject to discipline if they do this, but political consultants, obviously, don’t have to be ethical, since their job is recommending lies.

Her presumably self-written description of what she does is working “with clients on messaging to Democrats and swing voters, using creative social and digital media strategies.” You know, like posting misleading, Big Brotheresque videos on TikTok and Twitter, then responding to legitimate criticism with snark like, “Literally the replies on this show how many Republican men actually think that they could actually take out a shooter with an AR-15 with zero training.” Literally! Is this just dishonest deflection when she knows she’s mouthing pro-totalitarian propaganda, or is Ally really that stupid? It doesn’t make any difference really: this woman makes her living getting paid to advise Democrats. Ponder that for a nonce. What does this tell us?

As I noted to Ally, “It will keep you safe” is the standard aspiring totalitarian rationalization for the government infringing on any individual rights, from the First Amendment, to Due Process, to the right to a fair trial. In one of his more prescient quotes, Benjamin Franklin wrote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Today’s Left is charging full-speed against that core American principle, betting that the average voter is too ignorant, too stupid, and too terrified to realize what progressives and Democrats want to do to them until it is too late.

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Ethics Tip: If You’re Illiterate And Front A Literacy Foundation, Don’t Go On “Wheel Of Fortune”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Former NFL running back Rashad Jennings faced the board above on last week’s episode of “Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.” He was playing to win money for the Rashad Jennings Foundation. announcing the right letter would win the game and nearly $5000 for his foundation, whose mission is to “ignite students with a passion for reading and literacy through offering incentives for their efforts.”

Rashad stared at the board, considered the options for __UENTIN, and announced, “P!” The ex-athlete was well-advised to make light of the embarrassing episode, and posted the video of his gaffe on Twitter/X, but if The Rashad Jennings Foundation doesn’t re-brand itself quickly, with the name of someone whose major exposure other than NFL games is failing a basic literacy test that a 5th Grader should pass, its leadership will be breaching its fiduciary duty.

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Is “Sondheim’s Final Musical” What It Claims To Be?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Two years after Stephen Sondheim’s death, “Here We Are” will premiere Off-Broadway in a 526-seat theater. Previously titled “Square One,” the show is based on Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.” The producers are advertising it as “the final musical by composer Stephen Sondheim;” it will open this week and run until January.

Sondheim, however, never finished the musical. In fact, when he announced that he had given up on writing it, Ethics Alarms saluted him, praising the Broadway icon for “doing the responsible thing, quitting….Virtually no composers and very few artists generally do anything but decline after the age of 60, though many try to keep churning out wan imitations of their best work as long as someone will pay them.” Sondheim’s last reasonably successful Broadway musical was “Passion,” in 1994, when the composer was 64. Before “Here We Are,” he labored for a decade over a musical that hit the stage in multiple versions with several titles. None of them were successful. Asked days before his death if he foresaw when his final musical would be finished, Sondheim curtly replied: “No.”

Yet now, mirabile dictu, his collaborators are announcing that the musical is complete. Interesting: Sondheim had said he finished all the songs in the first act, but had been stuck on writing songs for Act II. No problem! The show’s producing team now says that two months before Sondheim’s death, he had agreed to let the show go forward following a well-received reading of the material that existed at that point. That reading, however, contained no music. I’ve directed and organized many readings of new works, and the amount of rewriting, cutting and re-conceiving a show that takes place after that starting point is always massive–and often a show never makes it to production.

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Ethics Quiz: Oprah’s Surprise

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I did not see this coming at all. Obviously, neither did Oprah Winfrey.

On August 31, Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson united on their Instagram and TikTok accounts to promote their People’s Fund of Maui, which they had co-launched with a combined $10 million donation. The fund would support the victims of the Maui wildfires, and O joined with The Rock to call on the public for more contributions. The following accompanied their joint video, shot in Hawaii, naturally:

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An Invitation To Be An Unethical Lawyer…

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Just as I was preparing yesterday for today’s 3-hour legal ethics CLE seminar (which, coincidentally, contained a section about the unsettled status of lawyers using artificial intelligence for legal research, writing and other tasks in the practice of law), I received this unsolicited promotion in my email:

Let’s see: how many ways does this offer a lawyer the opportunity to violate the ethics rules? Unless a lawyer thoroughly understands how such AI creatures work—and a lawyer relying on them must—it is incompetent to “try” them on any actual cases. Without considerable testing and research, no lawyer could possibly know whether this thing is trustworthy. The lawyer needs to get informed consent from any client whose matters are being touched by “CoCounsel,” and no client is equipped to give such consent. If it were used on an actual case, there are questions of whether the lawyer would be aiding the unauthorized practice of law. How would the bot’s work be billed? How would a lawyer know that client confidences wouldn’t be promptly added to CoCounsel’s data base?

Entrusting an artificial intelligence-imbued assistant introduced this way with the matters of actual clients is like handing over case files to someone who just walked off the street claiming, “I’m a legal whiz!” without evidence of a legal education, a degree, or work experience.

On the plus side, the invitation was a great way to introduce my section today about the legal ethics perils of artificial intelligence technology.

Comment Of The Day: “Painkiller”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Most of the comments on EA posts come from a solid base of experience and knowledge, but it is especially welcome when a commenter enlightens us on a subject he or she really knows well. Thus Tom P.’s observations on the pharmaceutical industry in light of the EA post on the Perdue Pharma/Sackler/ OxyContin horror as dramatized in “Painkiller” is a special pleasure. Here it is, a Comment of the Day:

***

I apologize for the length of this post, but the topic is complicated and does not lend itself to sound bites. What follows is my experience and opinions based on working in the pharmaceutical industry and extensive reading on my part.

Full disclosure: I am a retired pharmaceutical company executive. During my career, I worked for various cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies. I held positions in R&D, manufacturing, quality control, and supply chain management. For most of my career, I was responsible for a major Pharma manufacturer’s anticancer and biologics global supply chains. As a point of reference, I have not seen “Dopesick” or “Painkiller”. I am familiar, however, with the travesty the Sacklers perpetrated on the sick and society. The best summary of their unethical and probably criminal behavior I have read is in an LA Times May 5, 2016, article: https://www.latimes.com/projects/oxycontin-part1/

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KABOOM! How Can A Company—A CANDY Company No Less!—Possibly Think This Packaging Is Responsible?

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

Well, there goes my head again, and I really need it this weekend.

Hold on to yours: this really and truly is one of the “Pride” packages for Mars Inc.’s Skittles:

I don’t understand how this could happen in a major corpoation. In a pluralistic society, it is unethical for products and services to deliberately polarize the public, politically, socially, in any way whatsoever. True, the temptation for rainbow-colored Skittles to try to exploit the LGTBQ propaganda for marketing purposes must have been strong for some marketing execs with the cranial depth of a walnut shell, but the fact that sane parents don’t want their kids proselytized by their candy shouldn’t be that hard to grasp.

If the type is too small for you to read, the legends somewhere under the rainbow include “Joy is Resistance” and “Black Trans Lives Matter,” both of which are semi-incoherent, but the intent is clear. (Is the character with the sunglasses supposed to be in drag? What does “skate & live” mean? Is skating on the rainbow a metaphor for embracing an LGBTQ identity?)This is the equivalent of forced political speech, and the force is being applied to children. Holding that package sends an unintended message, weird as it is, and once that political message is associated with the brand, eating Skittles at all becomes a political act.

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