I know I just used one of Conan’s farewell comments as the Ethics Quote of the Week, and I know saluting him again risks my being called a Conan booster, which I am not. (Full Disclosure: Conan and I graduated from the same college, and my mother thinks that should matter to me. It doesn’t.) I have also been accused of not having enough Ethics Heroes, and it is a fair beef. I would be remiss not to give Conan that designation for a segment of his “Tonight Show” farewell that I left out of the earlier post. It was this: Continue reading
Popular Culture
Ethics Quote of the Week
“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard, and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
—-Former “Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien, bidding farewell in his final show. O’Brien was shabbily treated by NBC, beginning with its bait-and-switch game that kept him behind Jay Leno even after his “promotion” to the prestige late night show, and ending with its making him the scapegoat of a ratings debacle entirely caused by the cheap and incompetent management of the NBC brass. Conan still managed to preserve his dignity and integrity while keeping his justified anger in control, and exited “Tonight” as gracefully as humanly possible.
Media Ethics and Haiti
- Rebecca Solnit has written a powerful piece questioning the news media’s accounts of “looting” in Haiti. She argues that people in the midst of a disaster with a breakdown of infrastructure and government assistance are acting reasonably and justifiably when they take food and other necessities from abandoned stores. She believes that media accounts emphasizing looting warp the public perception of what is happening, vilifies the victims of the disaster, and prompts excessive measures against the “looters,” who are only trying to survive. She has a point. You can read her whole piece here.
- There is something oppressive and coercive when so many networks and cable channels interrupt regular programming to carry a telethon, as they did last night. It turns an appeal for help into a demand for help. Continue reading
Hell Freezes Over: Olbermann Relents
If any of the talk radio and cable news demagogues (Rush, Glenn, Laura, Ed, Michael, Marc, Bill, Monica, Rachel, Chris and the now-unemployed shouters over at Air America) have ever publicly admitted their rhetorical excesses, I’ve missed it. Thus I was stunned to witness just such an admission from arguably the worst offender of all, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. Continue reading
Martha Coakley, Bloody Socks and Democracy
If Republican Scott Brown, the former Cosmo fold-out, defeats Martha Coakley, the designated 60th Senate vote for Obamacare, in the special election in Massachusetts to fill Ted Kennedy’s long-time seat, there will undoubtedly be a flurry of columns about how she was beaten, in the end, by irrelevant, trivial gaffes that only prove how silly and provincial Massachusetts voters can be. In particular, the state’s voters will be ridiculed for rejecting Coakley after she airily dismissed Boston Red Sox legend Curt Schilling as “a Yankee fan.” O.K., so she doesn’t follow the Red Sox. Big deal. You want to choose a senator on stuff like that? Continue reading
Ed Schultz Shows How to Be Wildly Unethical in Fifty Words Or Less
The pattern is distressingly clear now. Fox News finds an arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on the Right, Bill O’Reilly, and soon its Left-tilted rival, MSNBC, has recruited an even more arrogant, doctrinaire talking head on that side of the spectrum, the assaultive Keith Olbermann. O’Reilly uncivilly calls those he disagrees with “pin-heads,” while Olberman calls them “the Worst Person in the World.” This motivates Fox to find a commentator on the Right who makes O’Reilly seem modest and measured, Glenn Beck. This, naturally, pushed MSNBC to look under every rock to find a liberal host who can out-Beck Beck.
The bad news: they succeeded, and found Ed Schultz, who is louder, cruder, more uncivil and less fair than any of the above-mentioned blowhards. The worse news: if you out Beck Beck, no responsible station should put you on the air. Continue reading
On Hoaxes, Avatar, and More Late Night Ethics
Hoax Update
- Singer, model, television personality and inexplicable celebrity Tia Tequila announced in December that she was engaged to the heiress to the Johnson and Johnson fortune, Casey Johnson. The troubled Johnson turned up dead in squalid circumstances in January, prompting a grief-stricken online statement from Tia in which she spelled her beloved’s name wrong. Shortly after this, it was revealed that the engagement was a publicity stunt by Tequila, who barely knew Johnson. Fake romances for publicity purposes are as old as the Tudors, but this sort of thing further trivializes truth for an entire generation. Continue reading
Late Night Ethics at NBC, and an Ethics Hero
Conan O’Brien did the only honorable, dignified thing left for him, which was to tell NBC to enjoy the rubble of its schedule, because he wasn’t going to be part of it. Continue reading
Now For Something Completely Different: Conjoined Twin Ethical Dilemmas!
I am officially mint-green with envy: Daniel Engber, who writes “The Explainer” column over at Slate, has written an informative, off-beat, thought-provoking column on just the sort of ethical/legal hypothetical I adore. The topic: If a Siamese twin commits murder, does his brother get punished too?
He does a terrific job. his essay also reminded me of a classic “Tales from the Crypt” episode involving a fictional pair of conjoined twins that one could imagine getting into such a dilemma.
Team Obama:Reinforcing National Apathy and Warped Priorities
President Obama is re-scheduling his State of the Union message to avoid preempting of the premiere of “Lost,” the cult sci-fi series that will be starting its final season.
Let me say that again so it sinks in: President Obama is re-scheduling his State of the Union message to avoid preempting of the premiere of “Lost.”
Ethics Alarms 