Professions

A Secret Service Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

A despicable former Secret Service agent named Dan Emmett has self-published “Within Arm’s Length,” a tell-all  book about his work protecting the Clintons.  I’m not going to repeat any of his stories, and nobody should read his book either. This kind of thing is another fever on the way to the complete death of trust and professionalism.

Emmett’s job was to guard the First Family, and as part of his job he saw them all in private and unguarded moments. The Clintons had to trust that his sole objective was to ensure their safety, not to gather juicy material for a book, and they should not have had to worry about whether every stray remark or imagined slight would later find its way to the internet. “Within Arm’s Length” is nothing less than betrayal, and in my view, it falls just short of treason, and perhaps not short at all. Undermining the relationship between the Secret Service and the President of the United States, which this book does, threatens the safety of future Presidents. For agents to do their jobs, they must be trusted to the extent that nothing is withheld from them out of fear that they will disclose it. Emmett proves that such unquestionable trust is unwarranted, and in this sad era where betrayal is rewarded or shrugged off as predictable, probably impossible. Continue reading →

Actor Ethics: Welcome to Colombia!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yes, Sarah Bernhardt was probably unethical too. Actors!

I just blacklisted an actor, at least as far as my theater company is concerned, and I feel badly about it, because I don’t like banishing artists even when they deserve it. This individual did deserve it, however.

I held auditions a couple of months ago for a very difficult and complex production requiring special talents and a large cast. The turn-out was excellent, and the quality of talent was superb, with the actors obviously excited about the project. Since the script needs to be tailored to individual performers, the fear of an actor dropping out after being cast was especially strong (the maxim in the theater community is “cast early, cast often…”), so I took the unusual step of asking every auditioner who had a good chance of being cast to be honest about their commitment to the show. “If you want to be considered for this project,” I said, “I need to have your assurance that you are serious about it and will not tell me, after we have decided to cast you, that you have changed your mind. The show is like a big jigsaw puzzle, and casting you will affect whether we cast other actors, not just in your role but in roles that interact with yours. And I definitely do not want to cast someone who is going to turn around in a week or a month and say, ‘Sorry, I got a better offer.’ This is a commitment, and if we are committing to you, I need to know that you are committing to us.”

When the offers went out, a few actors nonetheless refused. One had just learned that she needed to seek more lucrative employment because her husband had been laid off; another had union problems. Over the next several months, there was another major loss, as an actress whom I had cast even before auditions—right before the delivery of her first child—told me that parenthood was more involving in reality than she had predicted when she committed to jumping into a major role so soon. I had thought this might happen, and, frankly, now felt that she was making the right decision.  I told her: “As a director, I was happy to let you be irresponsible for the benefit of my show, but as a parent, I’m glad your priorities are straight.”

The other day, however, one of the actors who had gladly accepted a role sent our producer a terse e-mail saying:

“Unfortunately, I can no longer do the show.  Thank you so much for all your help with everything; I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.” Continue reading →

Super Tuesday Confirmation Bias Lesson, Or Why We Can Never Trust Media Analysis

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Checking the Republican primary results as Super Tuesday neared an end, I got an unexpected demonstration of confirmation bias in the news media, so vivid that it could be used in an educational video.

On CNN, John King, Gloria Borgia and the gang were analyzing the razor-close contest in Ohio, widely regarded as a must-win for Rick Santorum, just as Mitt Romney seemed to be pulling ahead for good. Welcome news for Romney? Not so fast!

Gloria Borger, whose contempt for all things Republican is always writ large on her face and unmistakably expressed by her tones of disdain (Does she even attempt to appear objective? It doesn’t seem so, as her demeanor when discussing GOP politics always suggests to me that she thinks she is covering some kind of demeaning novelty event, like a four-poster bed race or a dwarf-bowling, that the audience knows as well as she does is a colossal waste of time), vigorously took the floor and emphasized that Romney was winning in the very communities where Democrats were strongest, and losing to Santorum where Republicans usually did well. This, she said, eyes rolling (“I can’t believe I’m here talking about Republicans when I could be home watching a repeat of ‘Big Bang Theory!'”) showed that Romney would be in likely trouble if he were the nominee in November, since his strength would be wasted in Democratic strongholds and he wouldn’t be getting the support of the blue-collar types that a Republican presidential hopeful couldn’t win Ohio without. “To illustrate Gloria’s point,” King interjected, and then produced a computer graphic showing Romney’s fatally flawed vote patterns. Everyone nodded sagely. Mitt’s victory in Ohio showed that he was a loser.

Meanwhile, over at Fox, they were discussing the exact same phenomenon. Local politics maven Michael Barone weighed in, and said that this could bode well for Romney in November. John McCain, though losing Ohio in 2008, still “cleaned up” in the blue color districts, noted Barone, so even though Santorum was beating Romney there tonight, they could be still counted upon to go Mitt’s way in 2012 when Obama was the opposition. Meanwhile, the well-educated, wealthier areas that gave Barack Obama the critical swing state’s electoral votes that year have in the past swung Republican, and Mitt’s showing with that group tonight just might indicate that he could seriously cut into Obama’s strength, taking the state red. And Michale Barone knows his stuff, the Fox-ites gushed. Continue reading →

Your Weekend Ethics Update

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Sure, it's touching..but is it sincere?

Here’s what you may have missed if your attention was focused on non-ethical considerations over the weekend:

  • A Washington, D.C. Charter school has been using scenarios out of horror movies to teach math—to third graders.
  • Saturday Night Live gave fallen child star Lindsay Lohan a chance to be something other than an addict and scofflaw again. Was it exploitation or was it kindness? Kind exploitation, perhaps?
  • Rush Limbaugh became a victim of his own mouth, attacking a Georgetown Law student’s advocacy of insurance-covered contraceptives not by questioning her logic—which is questionable—but her character, and in crude and degrading terms. Indefensible.
  • At least two NFL team, it was revealed, put bounties on the heads of opposing teams’ stars, offering thousands to players for knocking them off the field and into hospital beds. Unethical, a violation of league rules, cheating, and criminal…and the reaction of players is, “What’s the big deal?” A culture problem perhaps?
  • While conservatives were rending their garments in grief over the sudden death of conservative web warrior Andrew Breitbart (and too many liberals were disgracing themselves by applauding an early demise that left his young children fatherless), a far more influential and infinitely more ethical conservative voice left us: scholar, author, social scientist, philosopher, historian…and Ethics Hero Emeritus… James Q. Wilson.
  • Rush apologized after his sponsors began to flee. With great power comes great responsibility, and Limbaugh has more power than he can possibly be responsible for. He still is accountable.
  • Finally…Is a forced apology a “real” apology? It depends.

The NFL, Battling Its Own Sick Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

"OK, it's a deal then: we put this guy in the hospital, and split the bounty 50-50..."

The last Super Bowl was phenomenally successful, as its audience size shattered previous records. Yet for many years, I have not been able to enjoy the sport, because of the unethical conflict at its core. Pro football’s appeal and swagger is based on violence, and we now know that the violence damages its players to an unacceptable extent. The players are paid both to accept the crippling and often-life shortening abuse, as well as administer it. For this former fan, that makes football too close to boxing from an ethical perspective. If the NFL is paying  players to do permanent harm to each other, then so are the fans that pay the NFL.  Sorry: there are too many other forms of entertainment that don’t require me to endorse and subsidize brutality. Thus I was not surprised to read this, in the New York Times:

“During the past three seasons, while the National Football League has been changing rules and levying fines in an effort to improve player safety, members of the New Orleans Saints’ defense maintained a lucrative bounty system that paid players for injuring opponents, according to an extensive investigation by the N.F.L. The bounty system was financed mostly by players — as many as 27 of them — and was administered by the former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who also contributed money to the pool. The N.F.L. said that neither Coach Sean Payton nor General Manager Mickey Loomis did anything to stop the bounties when they were made aware of them or when they learned of the league’s investigation.  According to the league, Loomis did not even stop the bounties when ordered to by the team’s owner. “

This practice is not only unethical and against NFL rules, it is criminal.  Continue reading →

Ryan Braun, Steroids and Fairness

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

If Ryan Braun is innocent, this man, who never met him. tried to ruin his career. It can happen…you know, like Mark Furman tried to frame O.J.

The strange case of Ryan Braun, the 2011  National League Most Valuable Player who tested positive for steroids during the post-season play-offs, once again raises the perplexing ethical issue of fairness when formal procedures concerning alleged wrongdoing are involved.

Braun’s positive test sent a shudder throughout baseball. He was supposed to  be one of the game’s rising young “post-steroid era” stars. For Braun to be caught cheating was a discouraging reminder that the game had not left its disastrous days of pumped-up stars and dubious records behind: now the legitimacy of an MVP season was being called into question. Braun vehemently denied the charges (as every positive-testing player has) and appealed them, a move that had been futile in every previous case. To literally everyone’s surprise, however, the three member arbitration panel ruled 2-1 in Braun’s favor. Although the report of the independent arbitrator who cast the deciding vote has yet to be released, the reason Braun prevailed appears to be that the Major League Baseball contractor who had  responsibility for sending Braun’s urine samples to the testing facilities had to store them at his house for the weekend because FedEx had closed before he could mail them to the lab. This created a sufficient break in the chain of custody, it seems, to make the results invalid. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: How Unethical Is This Lawyer?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

"Dr." Susan Friery with "Bowser", who for the last ten years has claimed to be a poodle.

Newburyport (Mass.) lawyer Susan Friery, a partner at the New York-based law firm Kreindler & Kreindler, has been suspended from being able to practice law in Massachusetts until February 2014.

Why? Two years..that seems pretty stiff. Well, it seems that from the time she joined the firm as a part-time paralegal and medical consultant in 1986 to her resignation, she represented her self to the firm and its clients as an MD.  Friery joined the law firm in August 1986 . In truth, she had only completed taken four semesters of medical courses at SUNY Buffalo School of Medicine, and never got a degree. But she got her entre into the  firm by falsely claiming that she had graduated from another school, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in New York. In 1989, the firm paid most of her tuition to law school,and by 1993, Friery became an associate, specializing in medical malpractice cases and personal injury law suits with medical injuries. Her name appeared with the title MD or Dr. on the firm’s letterhead, business cards, legal correspondence and other documents filed in numerous courts.

Court documents also show that Friery presented herself as a doctor at seminars and meetings. By 1998, the law firm had included Friery’s alleged medical credentials in its web-based advertising.

Your Ethics Quiz for today, therefore, is this…TWO YEARS??? I’m sorry, let me calm down. <big breath> Ok, here’s the question:

Do you think a suspension of two years for 25 years of falsely holding oneself out to the public as well as colleagues as a medical doctor is sufficient punishment? Continue reading →

Academy Awards Curtain Call Ethics: The Unkindest Snub of All

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Every year the Academy Awards manages to neglect a distinguished actor or actress who has died since the previous Oscars ceremony, and usually it is inexplicable. Two years ago, it was Farrah Fawcett who was snubbed. This year  Oscar was more callous and negligent than ever before, robbing at least eight deserving performers of their final curtain calls, and there is  just no excuse for it. As usual, Oscar flacks will claim that time was limited, but that won’t fly: why was there time to include, for example, Whitney Houston, who not only had minimal film credentials but who also  had an entire awards show dedicated to her just a week ago? Whitney hardly rated a gratuitous nod from Oscar, especially while it was snubbing so many real actors.

I will be generous and apply Hanlon’s Razor, but with reluctance: it seems to me that there were too many blatant omissions and too many obscure insiders included for it all to be accidental. Did the behind-the-scenes members of the Academy stage a coup, and demand that their fallen colleagues get their names displayed this year to millions of Americans who almost certainly never heard of them? If so, that still couldn’t justify the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences showing such apathy and disrespect for deceased actors that audiences do remember, or if not, should be reminded of one last time.

Here are the actors who Oscar neglected to help us remember, appreciate, and thank: Continue reading →

Unethical Headline of the Month

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

From the Scientific American website:

“Should Global-Warming Activists Lie to Defend Their Cause?”

"Hmmm... that's a real brain-teaser!"

The fact that this question can even be asked in seriousness, or be deemed worthy of debate in scientific circles, tells us all we need to know about why climatologist Peter Gleick decided to use deception and theft to try to discredit the Heartland Institute, a vocal critic of global warming research. It also makes it impossible to know who to trust and when, in the global warming debate and others.

Great.

Nice job, everybody.

Charles M. Blow’s Bigoted Anti-Mormon Tweet, Chapter 2: Ironies, Regrets, and Hypocrisy on the Left

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Charles M. Blow, trapped in regret-apology hypocrisy. Fortunately for him, his paper doesn't care.

Charles M. Blow, the New York Times columnist who sent his followers an uncivil, unprofessional and bigoted tweet regarding Mitt Romney and his faith during Wednesday’s debate [“Let me just tell you this Mitt ‘Muddle Mouth’: I’m a single parent and my kids are *amazing*! Stick that in your magic underwear.”] issued a fascinating…something...today in response to criticism, which did not come from the supposedly bigotry-sensitive left. He tweeted:

“Btw, the comment I made about Mormonism during Wed.’s debate was inappropriate, and I regret it. I’m willing to admit that with no caveats.”

It is fascinating to me that this is being called an apology by Blow’s supporters and conservative critics alike. If it is an apology, and that is open to dispute, I’d like someone to explain to me how Blow can use “regret” as a stand-in for “I apologize,” and yet the same commentators who are interpreting the word that way have insisted that President Obama’s repeated use of “regret”to refer to past U.S. foreign policy actions was not the equivalent of apologizing, and have in fact stated that this interpretation by conservative critics is “a lie.”

Among those who have defended the President in this way, I believe, is Charles M. Blow. Continue reading →