Popular Culture

Avocations and Conflicts of Interest, Part II

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

As if to give ethical guidance to conflicted umpire Joe West, a similarly conflicted judge has shown Country Joe the way by quitting the bench to avoid ethical conflicts.

Admittedly, the ethical issues surrounding independent filmmaker/ New Jersey Judge Kenneth Del Vecchio are a little bit different from Joe’s. One of his creative efforts was called “O.B.A.M. Nude,” and was a satirical critique of the President, though Del Vecchio played the Obama-like hero himself. A judicial ethics panel opined that his film exploits raise the specter of an ethical conflict under the Code of Judicial Conduct, presumably including the section that reads, Continue reading →

Avocations, Conflicts of Interest, and Country Joe West

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Some employers are troubled by the avocations and outside activities of employees, a concern that often deserves a  defiant “none of your business” in response. However, sometimes the concern is justified, such as when the avocation adversely reflects on the individual’s reputation to the extent that it harms his or her ability to perform, or when the avocation actually interferes with the job, such as a when a recreational rugby player keeps missing work because of injuries. Another problem is when the avocation creates a conflict of interest in which conduct that may be good for the avocation undermines the job.

The latter is exemplified by Major League Umpire Joe West, who fancies himself a country music singer and songwriter when he isn’t calling balls and strikes. As nicely narrated on the blog “It’s About the Money,” West has long been the most flamboyant and combative of umps, as proven by the fact that a lot of people know his name. Umpires aren’t supposed to be stars, celebrities or personalities: if you notice a particular umpire, it is almost always because he has made a mistake.  They are important, however. Their acuity of sight and judgment are called upon many times in every game, and can make a significant difference in scores, standings, championships and careers. Like judges, they have to be trusted, and their integrity above suspicion. “The Common Man,” who wrote the blog post, believes that West’s singing career, such as it is, creates a conflict of interest that undermines that trust, and worse, warps his judgment on the field. Continue reading →

AshleyMadison Finds Its Perfect Symbol

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Well, if you run an unethical website, I suppose the most ethical thing you can do, other than shutting it down, is to be transparent about what you are selling, and how wrong it is.

Thus I have to reluctantly tip my ethics cap to the pro-adultery website, AshleyMadison, for finding the perfect symbol. [You can read my earlier commentary on this particularly atrocious site here and here.] Yes, TMZ is reporting that Bombshell McGee, the Nazi-celebrating tattoo model who helped Jesse James wreck his marriage with actress Sandra Bullock just as the couple was adopting a child and while she was proclaiming her trust and love for him to the world, will be promoting AshleyMadison’s adultery services. If seeing Bombshell McGee promoting a service endears makes it attractive to you, AshleyMadison can’t lead you astray: you are too far gone already. Bombshell’s (can I call her “Shelley?”) enthusiasm for adulterous relationships has destroyed a family and devastated another woman who never did her any harm. This is truth in advertising at its best: an irredeemable unethical business, hiring an openly despicable spokeswoman.

Standards, the Salahis, Bluto, and Us

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

A sane culture discourages ethical misconduct by condemning and punishing it. The American culture, thanks to greed, intellectual rot and an irresponsible media, rewards unethical conduct by making it profitable. This isn’t a trivial matter.

Tareq and Michaele Salahi are about as despicable a pair as one can imagine, redeemed only by the fact that they haven’t caused any oil spills, aren’t abusing children and haven’t killed anyone. They are full-time grifters, and are diligently working to profit by exploiting America’s sick obsession with media celebrity. They crashed a White House dinner in November, costing several people their jobs, and launching multiple investigations that added to the tax-payers’ burden. None of that mattered to them, of course, because the irresponsible escapade advanced their idiotic, pathetic and selfish goal: joining the likes of Jose Canseco, Corey Feldman and Gary Busey on TV’s equivalent of belching, a reality show. Then, being completely shameless, they recently stalked a White House dinner again, getting themselves stopped by the Secret Service as they rode in a rented limousine, dressed in formal attire, with an “Inside Edition” camera crew in tow. This was just an “incredible coincidence,” they explained…wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Continue reading →

Chicken Suit Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Ahh—perhaps this is how we lose our freedoms: absurdity. It’s damn hard to get indignant when you’re laughing.

Nevada has banned the wearing of chicken suits at polling places, a clear infringement of political speech. Republicans were alarmed because the front-runner in their June primary to decide who will challenge the vulnerable Harry Reid for the U.S. Senate, Sue Lowden, inspired a wave of giant chicken sightings after she opined that perhaps citizens should be able to barter for medical care, paying doctors, for example, with chickens. Now wags in chicken suits are clogging her rallies to mock her, and Democrats have launched a “Chickens for Check-ups” website. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Campbell Brown

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Almost nobody is ever fired anymore. Obviously sacked Presidential staff, agency heads and Cabinet officials announce that they are leaving to “pursue other opportunities” or to be with their families. (Recent glaring example: Desiree Rogers, who “resigned,” just coincidentally after being instrumental in allowing two gate-crashers into a White House star dinner.) Nobody believes it, of course. The same is true of actors fired from movies, TV shows, and plays for being wrong for their parts or just impossible bt work with, who then announce that it was a “mutual decision.” All of this is intended to avoid the stigma of losing a job because, well, the individual just wasn’t delivering as hoped or promised. It doesn’t work, of course: nobody is fooled, but the charade simply adds to the public belief, increasingly justified, that everyone lies, all the time.

So although Campbell Brown’s stark honesty about why she is leaving her low-rated CNN show shouldn’t be anything special, it is. Continue reading →

Empathy and Ethics Insanity in Hollywood: “CSI New York”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In this week’s episode of C.S.I. New York, entitled “Unusual Suspects,” a 14-year old is shot and his younger brother intentionally misleads the police regarding the shooter, identifying the wrong suspect who is ultimately chased by the police and fatally hit by a bus while trying to flee. Eventually the truth comes out. The two boys–armed with a gun!—robbed a bank, and the older boy, who engineered the crime, was shot by a man who subsequently took the loot from them.

The boys knocked over the bank because they overheard their mother say that she couldn’t pay the rent. This is apparently sufficient justification for the bank and the District Attorney to decide not to press charges against the little dears. As the show ends, two of the C.S.I. squad look in on the hospital room, misty-eyed. where the wounded boy lies recovering, as his brother and mother sit vigil by his bed.

“There’s a lot of love in that room,” observes one of the officers.

A lot of felons, too. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Lena Horne, 1917-2010

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

When actress Hattie McDaniel, the imposing African-American actress who played “Mammy” in the film “Gone With the Wind,” was criticized for her willingness to accept stereotypical and often degrading roles, she countered, “I’d rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be one for $7.”  Not Lena Horne.  Breaking into the movie business as a dynamic and glamorous singer-actress in 1942, she insisted on a long-term contract with MGM that specified that she would never have to play a maid. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Silencing Hate

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Good and just people are not just bothered by the bad things people do, but also by the bad things they may be thinking while they do it.  This is reasonable, on its face, because a lot of  the time (though far from always), misconduct arises from ideas, emotions, motives and intentions that are not very admirable and sometimes despicable. The indisputable connection between what we think and what we do increasingly is fueling the idea that we can and should try to control people’s thoughts—not by encouraging good ones through education, culture, philosophy, role models and positive reinforcement, but by preventing bad thoughts through punishment, enforced conformity, censorship, and linguistic controls.

The civil rights movement, once dedicated to wiping out discrimination, which is a kind of conduct, now focuses on eliminating bigotry and bias, a form of thought. Hate crime legislation extends penalties for criminal acts beyond the act itself to what the criminal was thinking while he committed it.  The term “hate speech” is frequently used to describe any intense negative opinion as a way of both suppressing and de-legitimizing political opinion. The label effectively argues that an opinion, even a reasonable opinion by itself, should be shunned and even suppressed based on the “illegitimacy” of the thought process used to arrive at it.

As many predicted, this device or tendency (which you call it depends in part on how cynical you are) has intensified with the election of our first African American president, allowing the kind of intense opposition rhetoric, satire, condemnation, hyperbole and ridicule that has been directed at virtually every president before him to now be characterized as hate speech, or proof of racial prejudice. People, of course, have a right to engage in this tactic, but it is wrong.

Over on Facebook, over a million people have joined a fan page called “DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN”, inspired by a joke that is a lot older than Barack Obama, and probably older than Millard Fillmore. Continue reading →