Popular Culture

“Ethics Dunces Assemble!” Supporting Vigilante Justice In The U.S.

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

“You know…morons.”— The Waco Kid, “Blazing Saddles.”

This really does explain a lot…

The Waco Kid’s (Gene Wilder) sage description of “the common clay” to Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) when the latter was devastated by his treatment at the hands of the good (but  racist) citizens of Rock Ridge often comes to mind in times like this, when I see a large portion of the public, pundits and the media taking a position that is not merely ethically indefensible, but suggestive of brain death.

Such a position is the rush to rally around Emilio Chavez III, an understandably enraged father who caught a naked peeping Tom masturbating outside his  teenaged daughters’ bedroom window. From media reports:

“Police said Emilio Chavez III, his brother and a family friend beat the alleged peeper, Dylan Maho, 29, so badly that he was hospitalized, a local television station reported. The district attorney wants to charge Mr. Chavez with aggravated battery, a third-degree felony that could land him in jail for three years…Mr. Maho is in stable condition at the hospital and will be charged with voyeurism, a fourth-degree felony that only brings between one and two years of jail time.”

The headlines in the majority of national news sources—all what the mainstream media would call “the conservative media”— that have covered this story, for this is the feature of the incident that they deem makes it “national news,” is the “Believe It or Not!” angle that so backward are the priorities of the U.S. justice system that the father will face harsher punishment for his conduct than the sick pervert will for his! Here’s passage and quote included in most of the reports:

“Community members voiced their outrage and sympathy for their neighbor’s plight. ‘There’s a naked man outside his daughter’s window,” Mr. Chavez’s neighbor Bill Morgang told the station. “I think he was well within his rights chasing him down and beating him.”’

The overwhelming majority of the online comments to these news reports agree with Morgang.

From the Washington Times: Continue reading →

NYU Law Karaoke E-Shaming Ethics Verdict: Approved

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Horrible music

Above the Law has posted an e-mail sent to the NYU law school community to reprimand and shame a law student’s dorm neighbors who kept the student awake into the wee hours on a week night, singing karaoke. Most e-shaming is excessive, vindictive and unfair, but I think this is an example of the best of the breed:

Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 4:20 AM
    Subject: An Open Letter to the Occupants of Mercer #[redacted]
    To: Law School Exchange Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Deadly Rock Festival

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments
Looks like fun! Little do these unsuspecting rock music-lovers realize that a deadly culture lurks at the festival, eager to kill them...

Looks like fun! Little do these unsuspecting rock music-lovers realize that a deadly culture lurks at the festival, eager to kill them…

The final day of New York City’s Electric Zoo Festival, held over Labor Day weekend since 2009, was canceled due to “serious health risks,” according to a release from NYC government.

The reason?  Two fans died and at least four became “critically ill” during the first two days of the festival on  Randall’s Island. The statement from Fortress Bloomberg  explained that the reason for the cancellation was “serious health risks.”  Jeffrey Russ, 24 and Olivia Rotondo, 20,  both died after ingesting the drug ecstasy.

The organizers posted, “The founders of Electric Zoo send our deepest condolences to the families of the two people who passed away this weekend. Because there is nothing more important to us than our patrons, we have decided in consultation with the New York City Parks Department that there will be no show today.” Thousands of non-illegal drug-users who planned their holiday around the festival have been sent home.

Your Ethics Alarms Labor Day Ethics Quiz is this…

Is cancelling the music festival an ethical response to two drug-related deaths? Continue reading →

Twerk Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

[The following is blurry, but perhaps that is for the best. It is the only full version of the performance at issue currently available on YouTube, and it may not be there for long. Watch at your own risk.]

To listen to the horrified reaction to Miley Cyrus’s relatively obscene performance at the nationally televised MTV Music Video awards (not so long ago, Miley was that cute tween Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel) , one would think that rock and pop stars intentionally crossing the established lines of symbolic pubic sexual decorum was unprecedented. The furious and shocked condemnations seemed to emanate from some parallel culture, like the alternate universe that implicitly exists on CBS’s updated Sherlock Holmes drama “Elementary” (Sherlock is a precariously recovering alcoholic and drug addict; Dr. Watson is a former Charlie’s Angel) where nobody ever heard of “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Basil Rathbone or the dancing men cipher, because Arthur Conan Doyle never invented the character. ( The British updated Sherlock, uncreatively titled “Sherlock,” is so far superior to “Elementary” —which isn’t bad–that  it’s unsettling.) Have Isadora Duncan, Josephine Baker, Sally Rand, Elvis, the Stones, Jim Morrison,, Madonna and Christina Aguilera been erased from the past by some music-hating cyborg from a dystrophy future where everyone sings like Matt Munro?

Gross simulated sexual display on television prime time has unethical elements, to be sure. It’s uncivil, to begin with, intentionally placing socially objectionable content before a lot of viewers who don’t want to see it. That’s a breach of respect, but a minor one in this context. Janet Jackson flashed a breast during the Superbowl half-time show, after all: the argument that this was a family event that shouldn’t have been unexpectedly transformed into a peep show was grounded in fact. This week, however, I heard earnest mothers protesting that their delicate pre-teens were watching the MTV awards and had the innocence cruelly seared out of them by the unexpected and horrifying sight of Miley twerking ( simulating sex while dancing—a brand new addition to the Oxford dictionary) on Robin Thicke, dressed as Beetlejuice. Those mothers, not to be excessively cruel myself, are idiots.

What did they expect to see? This is a live show populated by competing shameless self-promoting narcissists who know that the performer who says or does the most outrageous thing will win the publicity game, and be a topic of debate for days or even weeks. Miley won, that’s all. If a child saw something age-inappropriate, the parents can only blame themselves.  This was roughly the equivalent of letting your kid watch “The Walking Dead” and complaining to AMC that the show’s violence is excessive for children. Ethics breach #1 is by any parent who allowed a child to watch this show while wanting to protect the child’s exposure to sexually provocative material. Irresponsible, incompetent, and stupid. Continue reading →

Ethics Verdict On Dr. Phil’s Media Mugging

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
You're in the clear, Phil...this time.

You’re in the clear, Phil…this time.

If a brilliant scholar like Richard Dawkins can get himself in hot water trying to be provocative in 140 characters, you can imagine the scalding a phony expert like Dr. Phil can attract with his tweets. Sure enough, the Oprah Winfrey-spawned arbiter of troubled relationships is now being ground up in the maw of the blogosphere and news media for tweeting this question to his inexplicably large mass of Twitter followers:

 “If a girl is drunk, is it okay to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.”

He did not ask “If a girl is passed out drunk, is it okay to have sex with her?” Nor did he ask “If a girl is drunk, is it okay for me to have sex with her?” (The answers to both of these questions, obviously to me, you, and Dr. Phil, is emphatically  no. But then, he didn’t ask either of them.) He also didn’t suggest that he doesn’t know the answer to the question he did ask. He posed a question for his followers, which it is reasonable to assume was done to get a sense of the majority response.

There was nothing wrong, unethical, “tone deaf,” insensitive, sinister, off-putting, icky, misogynistic or otherwise inappropriate about the tweet or its wording, whether it was sent by Dr. Phil or anyone else.

And yet (from the Washington Post)... Continue reading →

Congressional Ethics: Why Is This Kind of Brazen Corruption Legal? Why Do We Tolerate A Congress That Conducts Itself This Way?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments
How is Eleanor Holmes Norton like Don Fanucci? In more ways than you might think.

How is Eleanor Holmes Norton like Don Fanucci?
In more ways than you might think.

Someone connected to a lobbyist released a voicemail of the D.C. delegate to Congress, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D, not that the same kind of voice mail hasn’t been left by countless Republicans too), shaking down an industry that is greatly affected by the committee Holmes chairs (though she may not vote on the floor, the District being the victim of taxation without representation) for a financial contribution, in a wounded/threatening tone reminiscent of the Sicilian gangster Don Fanucci in “Godfather Part II” who shakes down a poor merchant by asking for “enough to wet my beak.” Cenk Uygur is almost humorously unsettled by Holmes’ naked venality and the quid pro quo corrupt practices it represents, and I sympathize.

As long as voters, leaders and the news media tolerates this kind of culture, complaints about the unresponsiveness of our elected representatives are laughable. It should be obvious that the first step to a better republic is refusing to tolerate bribery.

Here’s the clip.

Weep.

_____________________________

Pointer: Instapundit

Source: Advice Goddess

Clown Act: The Dumbest Ethics Train Wreck Of All

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

deluxe-barack-obama-mask

I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to write about this.

Unfortunately, the saga of the Obama-mocking rodeo clown has, against my fervent hopes, turned into a full-fledged ethics train wreck. The diagnosis was complete once the Missouri chapter of the NAACP decided to disgrace itself, its parent organization’s mission and its supposed dedication to civil rights by calling for a Secret Service investigation into the incident, which Ken White posted on definitively here.

The Horror: someone mocked the President!  And because this President is black, and because his supporters have continually tried to use his pigmentation  (which should have no impact whatsoever on how he is treated, respected and judged, which is to say, like every other President) to shield him from unrestrained criticism, opposition, responsibility, accountability and satire, a crude comedy act in a setting where crude comedy is  the norm (a rodeo is hardly the Algonquin Round Table) has been turned into a full-fledged exercise in chilling political speech by intimidation. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg

/ Jack Marshall / 92 Comments

 

"No emoticons were upset in the writing of this post."

“No emoticons were upset in the writing of this post.”

In Slate, renowned photographer Jill Greenberg returns to the topic that gained her unwanted notoriety in May: her exhibition of photographs of children crying their little eyes out. Greenberg revealed at the time that she captured the powerful photographs by giving the very young children lollipops or something else they liked or wanted and then having family members ask the kids to return the item. Strangely,  as Drew Curtis’Fark, one of my favorite web  sources for stories is wont to say, some people had a problem with this.

Greenberg revisits the issue because she has a book of the weepy photographs coming out. Seldom does one read a more casual, “What is the matter with people?”, utterly clueless display of invalid rationalizations for unethical conduct as Greenberg belches out. Unfortunately, another tendency illustrated by the article is far more common: a news sources examination of an ethics issue without any apparent sensitivity or understanding of the ethics issues involved.

Here are Greenberg’s rationalizations, or at least the ones she gave to Slate. I’m sure she has many more.

  • The Trivial Trap, or “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” “I have two children of my own. Crying is not evidence of pain or any real suffering. It’s really just the way children communicate.” Ah. Not real suffering. Then it’s all right, then. The bottom line is that Greenberg is intentionally upsetting the children, who, it can be fairly said, are less anxious and happier when they are not crying. Children who are teased, frightened or otherwise made uncomfortable can also be said not to be in pain or “real” suffering. It’s still cruel, and an abuse of power, to treat them this way. Come to think of it, Greenberg could make the same argument about some of the models in child pornography. Would she, I wonder?
  • “Everybody does it” and the “They’re Just as Bad” Excuse. “Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural.” And, I suppose, making a Bangladesh child cry by taking food from her to make her cry is just as exploitative  and more natural than giving her food to make her smile, because, after all, she’s usually starving anyway.
  • The Saint’s Excuse or “It’s for a good cause” a.k.a “The ends justify the means.” Slate:  “The still image continues to have a ton of strength. An image taken out of context from one fraction of a second to the next can tell a story, and if photographers are looking to tell a certain story, they can curate those slices of time to their advantage. What’s weird about the images is they seemingly can be applied to all these random disparate causes. My husband was saying they’re like emoticons.” True, Jill, but those little smiley faces don’t have to be tortured to get them to frown or cry, because, unlike babies, they aren’t real human beings.

The bottom line is that Greenberg made money and got a lot of ink by making children unhappy, so she can’t see why anyone would argue that the conduct wasn’t justified, and based on the article, neither does Slate or its writer, Jordan G. Teicher. The photographer’s methods are, of course, obviously and indisputably unethical:

  • She exploited the children for her own agendas and benefit.
  • She abused her superior power over the children to get the reaction she wants.
  • She induced anxiety in another, causing needless harm.
  • She created a product, the photo, which memorializes a form of child abuse.
  • She recruited the children’s parents into assisting in the exploitation for the artist’s purposes, rather that doing their job as parents, thus inducing a breach of loyalty and a betrayal of parental duty.
  • She created and profited from a materialization of an unethical abuse of a child, which is identical to what child pornography does.
  • She encouraged others to create similar photographs, which will be created, in some cases, with even less humane methods.

Of course her methods were unethical. She deserves every bit of criticism and hate mail that she has received. But the sophisticates, like Slate and others, just shrug off the concern as foolishness, much ado about nothing. So she made kids cry! They cry all the time! What matters is that she got some great pictures!

Many of society’s problems arise from the fact that our media can’t recognize, and thus encourages, unethical behavior, even obvious examples like making little children cry for fame and fortune.

__________________________

Pointer: Alexander Cheezem

Sources: Bored Panda, Slate, Fully M

 

“It’s A Cook Book!”

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments
Nobody listens to me...

Nobody listens to me…

The issues at the core of the Anthony Weiner debacle—which is not the conduct of the ex-Congressman/absurd NYC mayoral candidate/sick puppy, but the fact that so many, like Dan Savage, Huma Abedin (Weiner’s wife, Hillary’s apprentice, carrier of the Clintonian ethisc virus),  Andrew Sullivan, and apparently 16% of New York Democrats still argue that his conduct doesn’t disqualify him from elected office—-are ones which I am especially passionate about, because they are the very issues that launched this blog’s predecessor, the Ethics Scoreboard:

1. There is no division between private unethical conduct and public unethical conduct. It is a false construct designed to assist scoundrels in getting elected. Private conduct is as reliable an indicator of trustworthiness as other prior conduct.

2. Leaders in a democracy should be held to an exemplary level of conduct, not the average or common conduct of those they seek to lead.

3. Some instances of unethical conduct have “signature significance“for the individual involved, meaning that contrary to the common rationalization that “anyone can make a mistake,” there are some things that ethical people never would do even once, and thus the fact that an individual does do it is persuasive evidence that they are generally untrustworthy.

Thus I believe Weiner’s story is more important than the mere sordid political drama involved: if people pay attention, if people learn, if people can get by their partisan biases and convenient ethics misconceptions, maybe we can begin establishing a better, more sensible, beneficial standard for our elected leaders, who, perhaps you have noticed, are, as a group, an embarrassment to the legacy of July 4, 1776. I don’t have illusions that I have any influence, and it is unseemly to say “I told you so,” but sometimes I feel like one of the doomed heroes in science fiction/horror scenarios who end up screaming “They’re already here! You’re next!” or “It’s a cook book!” to unheeding crowds blithely proceeding to their own destruction.

Yesterday the news surfaced that should be the smoking gun on Anthony Weiner’s corrupt character that readers of this blog, at least, did not require to render a verdict—that Weiner’s conduct was not just an irrelevant personal quirk, that his initial lying about it was proof of a corrupt character, and that he is no more trustworthy than John Edwards, Lance Armstrong, Ryan Braun or anyone else who lies to the public to keep its trust. Maybe it will convince Dan, Huma, Andrew and the rest that Anthony Weiner is too corrupt—never mind sick—to lead. If it doesn’t, I think that is signature significance about them. Continue reading →

An Inclusive “I Do! I Do!” for A Post-DOMA U.S.

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Cup

I wasn’t going to mention my current theater (at Arlington, Virginia’s American Century Theater) project here, until I dropped Ethics Alarms’ conservative warrior Steven Mark Pilling a note on Facebook that I had just posted on the topic he is most passionate about, preventing the abuse of child actors in Hollywood. Steven is not, to say the least, a fan of gay marriage (this might be the topic he is next most passionate about) , and I realized that my Facebook thumbnail, showing two same-sex couples in an intimate moment from my show, might put him off.

The show I just finished directing ( with the assistance of Quinn Anderson and my musical director Tom Fuller)  the old Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones chestnut, “I Do! I Do!”, ( Remember “My Cup Runneth Over,“ Ed Ames fans? Hello? ) the tw0-actor Broadway musical based on the 1950 play “The Fourposter.” Back in 1966, when Robert Preston and Mary Martin starred in the musical, it was considered an affectionate and  perceptive look at the institution of marriage, and the show has attracted nostalgic, usually elderly married couples to regional and dinner theaters ever since. Productions of  “I Do! I Do!” are becoming rarer, however, because the societal developments have rendered the tale of the epic marriage of Agnes and Michael Snow increasingly alien to the current American scene. In particular, what was once a musical intended to speak to all married couples and candidates for future nuptials now appears to exclude the very group that comprises musical theater’s hardiest supporters: gays.

In marked abandonment of my theater’s usual principles (we don’t update shows, believing that it is more interesting and fair to the authors to let audiences reflect on what has changed since an original production, and what has not), I decided that for the benefit of audiences, the culture and the show itself, it was time to re-conceive “I Do! I Do!” so it would gain renewed relevance and vitality in a post DOMA age. My approach, courageously and generously approved by the authors, was to show the marriage of the show’s couple through a constantly rotating prism that alternately revealed them as a same-sex female couple, a same-sex male couple, and the traditional heterosexual couple of the 1966 version. This required four very versatile and gutsy actors who could pull off the illusion of showing one marriage three different ways without giving the audience whiplash or confusing them hopelessly. In Steve Lebens, Esther Covington, Chad Fournwalt and Mary Beth Luckenbaugh, I found the dream cast. Continue reading →