Popular Culture

Tiger Woods Ethics, Part I: Betrayal’s Not for Heroes

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I wasn’t planning on commenting on the Tiger Woods soap opera. Its ethical lessons seemed obvious, and merely xeroxed themes that I have, in the eyes of some, thumped to death. I do feel that the apparent glee with which some in the sports media have attacked Woods for revealing his true character is damning…of them. Golf’s Golden Child finally outed himself as a phony “good guy” and a classic case of the prodigy who won’t or can’t grow up, a man who has been carrying on multiple adulterous affairs while using his bottomless checkbook to cover his tracks. It seems that many reporters have long known that Tiger’s public image was a fraud, and  had chafed over the adulation heaped on him as they witnessed the golfer being mean, petty and boorish, often to them. Now these journalists feel it is “safe” to skewer Woods, and are doing so with gusto. Cowards. They were parties to a mass public deception, and their duty was to let us know Tiger was playing us for suckers when they knew it, not when his lies became National Enquirer headlines.

As for Tiger’s own conduct, however, I presumed most could see the ethics issues clearly. Then the apologists and rationalizers started writing their columns. Continue reading →

Climategate, 2012, and Bruce Willis

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Professor Eric Posner has proposed a provocative analogy to the global warming controversy over at the Volokh Conspiracy, an exercise that probes the logic and ethics of the popular “let’s act assuming the majority opinion is right, because if it’s wrong we’re just poor, but if the minority is wrong, we’re dead” refrain. The comments, most of them pointing out where the analogy breaks down, range from insightful to hilarious.

You can read it all here.

“Biggest Loser” Ethics: “They Shoot Fat People, Don’t They?”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Lawyers being lawyers, it is not surprising that a New York Times article about the unhealthy physical stresses endured by contestants in the “Biggest Loser” reality show inspired a legal blog to wonder how long it would be before the show was hit with a large law suit. “I’m waiting for the first person to have a heart attack,” THR, ESQ quotes  Dr. Charles Burant, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, as saying. The core problem is not liability, however. The problem is that the show is horribly, indefensibly unethical. It shouldn’t be waiting for a lawsuit, or a heart attack. The program is wrong to continue, advertisers are wrong to support it, and we are wrong to watch it. Continue reading →

Climategate’s Ethics Heroes, Villains and Dunces

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The hacked East Anglia University computer files are slowly revealing the ethical values of more than just the scientists. They are also serving as accurate detector of integrity or the lack of it; bias or fairness, honesty, accountability, and courage.

Almost every day, a public statement, op-ed or news item exposes a hero, dunce, or villain or in the climate change debate, like those nifty reagents and black lights they use in the  “CSI” TV show and its 37 spin-offs. Here are some who have appeared thus far: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Marc Levin

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Mark Levin is the resident screamer among conservative talk show hosts, and basic civility is clearly not on his menu, as he routinely cuts off any caller whose opinions vary from his by deriding the caller as an “idiot” or a “drone,” his pet word for liberals. One of Levin’s stunts is to broadcast presidential addresses, like President Obama’s speech last night on Afghanistan, with “commentary,” meaning that he delivers nasty asides, sarcastic quips and mocking rants while the President is speaking. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: NBC and the Today Show

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

NBC has announced that the couple that crashed the White House dinner, thus breaching national security as well as basic standards of honesty and manners, will appear on the Today Show. This adds one more reason to detest the two, who by combining the two things the news media can’t resist—the Obamas and reality show wannabes—have inspired the irresponsible news media to once again neglect genuinely important news events in favor of trivia. But the real ethics miscreants are NBC and the Today Show. Given two self-involved, irresponsible fools who break into the White House in order to become celebrities, the network and its morning show decide to make certain that their plan achieves its goal.  And if this motivates the next, slightly more unhinged would-be celebrity to do something more harmful to innocent people or the nation?  Hey, as long as the ratings are boffo, why should the Peacock Network worry about irrelevant issues like the President’s safety? Continue reading →

Justice for the Serenity Prayer’s Author

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“God, grant me the serenity to accept what I can not change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

This is the Serenity Prayer. Few combinations of twenty-six words have altered more lives for the better: it is the credo of Alcoholics Anonymous, and the foundation of the famed “Twelve Steps” developed by Bill Wilson to arm the victims of alcoholism for a lifetime battle for sobriety. Thanks to an academic controversy, the author of the prayer may finally get the credit he deserved all along. Continue reading →

“Scroogenomics”: Clueless About Holiday Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I had decided to write about the new book “Scroogenomics: Why you shouldn’t buy presents for the holidays”early yesterday. I should have assumed that our current Scrooge-in-Chief, George Will, would have the same idea. He did, and greeted his readers with typically sour tidings as he heartily endorsed this commercially clever and ethically fatuous book. The brain-child of economist Joel Waldfogel, “Scroogenomics” argues that holiday gift-giving makes no economic or social sense, and is a net drag on everyone. Will’s quote from it is as revealing as any:

Gifts that people buy for other people are usually poorly matched to the recipients’ preferences. What the recipients would willingly pay for the gifts is usually less than the givers paid. The measure of the inefficiency of allocating value by gift-giving is the difference between the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent on gifts and the yield per dollar spent on the recipients’ own purchases.

All of which means that Waldfogel (and Will) are hopelessly confused about the social and ethical value of gift-giving, which has little to do with the ratio of “the yield of satisfaction per dollar spent.”  Continue reading →

Landrieu’s Pay-off: Ethical and Playing by the Rules

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

[Like you, I am thoroughly tired of seeing Claude Rains’ Capt. Renault quoted in these situations, but sometimes his famous “Casablanca” line is too apt to resist. This is such a time.]

Pundits are “shocked—shocked!” that Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu traded her vote to allow debate on the health care bill for $100 million dollars of earmarked funds for Medicaid subsidies in her state. Fox demagogue/clown Glenn Beck called Landrieu a prostitute and a hooker. Time Magazine columnist Mark Halperin accompanied his condemnation of Landrieu with a disgusting photoshopped picture of the Senator sporting the infamous semen-hair gel ‘do from the raunchy comedy, “What About Mary?” The deal was widely called a bribe by indignant bloggers, angry conservatives, and even some liberals. Continue reading →

“The Good Wife” and Bad Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Julianna Margulies’ latest attempt to find another hit series after “ER” is a lawyer drama, “The Good Wife.” It tells of the travails and trials of a former litigator who returns to law firm practice after her prosecutor husband, played by “Mr. Big” Chris Noth, is sent to the slammer in a scandal that also involved marital infidelity. As lawyer dramas go, “The Good Wife” is fairly good about not distorting the legal ethics rules. It still slips up, however, as this week’s episode showed. Continue reading →