Popular Culture

A Commercial for Liars: Tide..with Acti-lift!

/ Jack Marshall / 110 Comments

Yes, Procter and Gamble, makers of Tide laundry detergent, thinks lying is cute, and that Americans will run out and buy a product advertised as useful for assisting lies.

And who knows? Maybe they’re right. We certainly wouldn’t expect a corporation or an ad agency to see anything wrong with lying, since it is business as usual for them. They probably don’t even realize such messages are corrupting.

The new TV ad for Tide and its new “Acti-Lift” secret ingredient (It’s called “Closet Raid”; you can see it here…) shows the heart-warming saga of a teenage girl who trustingly asks her mom whether she borrowed a favorite green blouse. Continue reading →

Headline Deceit, the N-Word, and Dr. Laura

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Curse you, Gawker, for making me defend Laura Schlesinger!

Radio talk show host/advisor/scold Laura Schlesinger, a.k.a. “Dr. Laura,” has a target on her back for liberal sharpshooters, thanks to her persistent demonization of gays and her advocacy of female subjugation in marriage. Outside of those two areas (“And aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”), Schlesinger’s ethical instincts are usually sound, and her advice to troubled callers is usually good. But she has a lot of enemies, and proof of that is today’s eye-catching headline on the gossip website Gawker, which can fairly be described as “ethics-free.”

The headline:

Dr. Laura Apologizes for Shocking, N-Word Filled Radio Rant Continue reading →

Steven Slater And The Rest of the Story: No Surprises

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Occasionally, there is cosmic justice. The astounding number of bloggers, media commentators and  ordinary working folks who have expressed admiration for Steven Slater, the irresponsible and unprofessional flight attendant who threw a tantrum of Adam Sandler proportions at the end of a recent Jet Blue flight, appears to have been itching for a confrontation throughout the flight, and had behaved is a rude and provocative manner to more than one passenger.

Well, of course. Continue reading →

Worst Ethics Article Ever!

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

On a very strange blog called “Approaching Women is An Art” appears an even stranger post called “Creationism in Schools: an Unethical Approach,” apparently imported from another blog. This essay suggests several possible conclusions: that illiteracy is apparently no bar to writing what purports to be a scholarly essay; that the American educational system has hit rock bottom; that English is an endangered language, and that Ed Wood is alive and blogging. It is also possible, I suppose, that the article was originally written in Mongolian and translated by a fifth grader. Continue reading →

The Human Ethics Train Wreck, Levi Johnston

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Some people think that Sen. John McCain will go down in infamy for turning a little-known Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, into a wild-card political power. His surprise choice of Palin to join him on the 2008 GOP ticket also set into motion a chaotic series of events that have turned an ordinary, not too bright young man into a celebrity monster, allowing him to display his own serious character deficits while simultaneously enticing others into further degrading their own.

To paraphrase the great Basil Faulty: Thank you, ohhh thank you, so bloody much, Sen. McCain, for giving us Levi Johnston! Continue reading →

Pimping Kim Kardassian’s Little Sis: A New Cultural Norm?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Blogger Joel Schwartzberg asks, “Should 14-year old Kendall Jenner Be Doing a Bikini Shoot?

You ask, “Who the heck is Kendall Jenner?” She is the half-sister of the Kardashian girls, Kim, Kourtney and Khloe, all three of reality show stars, celebrities, paparazzi fodder, and lacking in any discernible talent, wit, or justification for their existence. Kim’s claim to fame is a spectacularly cantilevered derriere, and Kourtney and Khloe are distinguished by the fact that they are related to her. In 21st Century America, this is enough for to get you endorsements, clothing lines, and a place on “Dancing With the Stars.”

Kendall, whose father is former Olympian Bruce Jenner, apparently thought it was time to get into the family business (trash) before his three comely stepdaughters’ 15 minutes of fame ran out, so he and his wife approved a photo shoot of her in a bikini. Continue reading →

Porn: Finding Ethics in the Strangest Places

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

It should surprise nobody that Amy Fisher, the “Long Island Lolita,” now out of jail for shooting her lover’s wife, married and in her mid-thirties, is outfitted with nifty breast implants and making money shooting porn films. At least her notoriety is being exploited in a manner that does not confer true celebrity status for her misconduct, unlike, for example, Michaele Salahi, who has been featured in glamour shots by the national media as a  direct result of her crashing a White House social event with her equally shameless husband. Amy was dismissive of her part-time porno career in a recent interview, and the woman she shot in the head, Mary Jo Buttafuoco, suggested in a follow-up interview that Fisher was ethically clueless (a not too far-fetched conclusion, all things considered), and that the fact that she made her living being photographed performing various sex acts despite being the parent of small children proved it.

This got me thinking about pornography..no, no, wait!—I mean about the ethics of pornography. Continue reading →

Andy’s Unethical Health Care Propaganda

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I understand the government’s problem when it passes legislation in a fog of lies, misinformation, spin and deceit so think on both sides that nobody even pretends to know what the consequences will be. And it certainly is embarrassing when claim after claim about the legislation made by the House Speaker and President himself is shown to be untrue or mistaken after the fact: “Oops! The law won’t really be budget-neutral!” “Sorry! Many of you won’t be able to keep your health care plans after all!” “Darn! There really isn’t anything in here that will keep costs from rising!”

Gee, maybe they should have read the thing before voting for it.

Be that as it may, it does not justify the Obama Administration paying $700,000 in taxpayer funds to run TV ads showing avuncular old Andy Griffith, of Mayberry fame (Pssst! Andy used to specialize in playing con-men and scam artists before he and Don Knotts teamed up), telling seniors how peachy the new system will be. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

From the “What was he thinking?” files:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson says that he is considering whether to pardon Henry McCarty, a.k.a. William Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid (1859-1871), because in 1879 one of Richardson’s predecessors, Gen. Lew Wallace (who, among other things, presided over the trial of the Lincoln conspirators, headed the military tribunal that condemned the Confederate commandant of the infamous Andersonville prison camp, and wrote Ben-Hur,)  reneged on a deal to grant Billy amnesty in exchange for some helpful grand jury testimony in the prosecution of vigilantes.

Of course, when Billy didn’t receive his pay-off quickly enough, he escaped from jail and killed two deputies in the process. He was that kind of guy. Continue reading →

Lincoln Chafee’s Unethical Attack on Curt Schilling

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Former G.O.P. Senator Lincoln Chafee, now running for Governor of Rhode Island as an Independent, did a despicable thing yesterday, and almost certainly has no idea why it was so wrong.

During a radio interview, Chafee criticized a deal state economic development officials approved with 38 Studios, a game development company owned by former Red Sox pitcher and World Series hero Curt Schilling. Chafee, who is not alone in his criticism of the loan, argued that too much taxpayer money is being entrusted to a company that has no proven track record. That’s a legitimate point. But to hammer home his point, Chafee decided to attack the character, career accomplishments, reputation and integrity of Schilling, a man he has never met…based on nothing at all. Continue reading →