Professions

In the Aftermath of Biden’s Human Rights Betrayal, Little Integrity From The Media

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Like Diogenes of Sinope searching for an honest man, Ethics Alarms has been searching for a political progressive, here or anywhere, who will acknowledge the blatant pro-liberal, pro-Obama, anti-conservative, anti-Republican, anti-Tea Party bias of the mainstream media. Obvious examples are routinely explained or rationalized away, even when they are criticized by a media outlet’s own internal ombudsmen and ethicists.

The media’s coverage of the recent toadying remarks of Vice-President Biden to the Chinese, as he gave a pass to China’s  long-time policy of limiting families to one child, has been a particularly vivid and disgraceful case in point. Despite the fact that Biden’s remarks were a shocking diplomatic gaffe and human rights betrayal, they were almost solely criticized by Republicans and conservative pundits, and only fleetingly covered at all by the mainstream media. While the so-called “conservative media” kept Biden’s gaffe in the news, the rest either covered the coverage, as in “Right Wing Critics Attack Biden,” or framed the criticism of Biden as a pro-life vs. pro-choice dust-up, as if anyone but a lunatic could describe a program limiting births by law  as “pro choice.” Continue reading →

Pat Summitt, Failing a Great Leader’s Toughest Test

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Be like Lou, Pat...so the next diminished leader can be like you.

Pat Summitt, the legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach who has won more games than any other college coach ever, men’s or women’s, received test results from the Mayo Clinic at the end of May that confirmed early-onset Alzheimer’s type dementia.  The irreversible brain disease is now at work destroying the 59-year-old Summitt’s abilities of recall and cognition, and as it is for the other estimated 5 million Americans with the disabling disease, the prognosis is grim.

Everyone in the Tennessee and sports community as well as the media and all of us who have seen loved ones suffer with the disease are rallying behind Summitt, who is one of the toughest, smartest, most determined figures in sports. But Coach Summitt has decided that her symptoms are not yet severe enough to force her into retirement, and she intends to stay at the helm of the Tennessee women’s basketball team at least three more years.

It is the wrong decision. It is a selfish and unethical decision. The question is whether anyone will have the courage to try to convince Summitt that she has a duty to the team, the school, her own legacy and basic principles of ethics to change course and do the right thing. Quit. Continue reading →

As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A sign in Africa, which corruption continues to ravage. We ignore its warning at our peril.

Last week, three more disheartening cheating scandals were in the spotlight, in completely separate areas of our society: legal education, the military, and college sports. The signs that the cancer of corruption is spreading through America’s culture with increasing speed are frightening, but being frightened isn’t constructive. Working to eradicate the cancer is. Last week’s revelations:

  • The American Bar Association publicly admonished Villanova Law School for a pattern of misrepresenting—inflating—GPAs and LSATs of its applicants and admitted students in order to receive a higher ranking, which in turn would attract more and better applicants. The scandal broke in June, and the ABA was lenient, stating that the school had reported its own misconduct (the responsible parties had been discovered and dismissed). Is Villanova alone, or is it just the first law school in this increasingly competitive environment to get caught? If a law school cheats, what kind of lawyers will it produce? Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Jennifer McKendrick

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

My hero.

Jennifer McKendrick is my favorite Ethics Hero of 2011.

An Indiana County freelance photographer of sensitivity, courage and principle, McKendrick engaged in classic ethical behavior—seeing wrongful conduct that harms others, and taking affirmative action to address it. Her conduct is a template for all of us, and not merely regarding the specific problem she decided to confront: online bullying.

McKendrick had been hired to shoot the senior photos of several high school girls, then discovered that they had viciously denigrated other students on Facebook. She sent the girls’ parents this letter:
 Continue reading →

Sorry, Mr. Buell: It’s Not About Free Speech, It’s About “The Naked Teacher Principle”

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The Naked Teacher Principle rides again!

Jerry Buell, a veteran high school teacher recently named his district’s ‘Teacher of the Year,” was suspended indefinitely by Lake County, Florida’s Mount Dora High School for posting an anti-gay marriage rant on his Facebook page.  In the post, prompted by New York’s decision to legalize gay marriage, Buell said that the news made him want to throw up, that gay marriage was “a cesspool,” and that homosexuality was a sin.

He is welcome to his opinion. He has an absolute right to it. However, he does not have a right to be allowed to teach students, several or many of whom may be gay, after voluntarily allowing it to become public knowledge that he is disgusted by gays and considers them sinful. The school is right to remove him from his teaching duties, and it will be right to tell him that he will not be permitted to teach in the school again. Continue reading →

A Batboy Sells Out His Heroes

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Don't trust him, Roy...he's doing research for a book!

Luis Castillo became a batboy for the New York Yankees at the age of 15, and for eight baseball seasons shared the clubhouse with his hometown heroes. Now he’s cashing in, having written a tell-all memoir of his experiences  that dishes on Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and others, all of whom trusted him to be fair, respectful, and discreet.

The recurrent theme from the media’s commentators, which I heard repeated on CNN this morning as it hosted Castillo in his book-hawking efforts (in this case he told an embarrassing anecdote about Yankee catcher Jose Posada) is that “Castillo is able to divulge Yankee secrets in his new memoir because he was part of the last group of batboys who did not have to sign confidentiality agreements.”

This is accurate, but wrong. It is also typical of what passed today as journalistic ethics. Continue reading →

Hypocrite…or Lawyer?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"After we're done, darling, let's discuss your sexual harassment suit. I think you have a good case!"

This story probably will strike you as a bit odd.

Prosecutors have charged a 50-year-old lawyer, Robert Michael Hoffman of San Francisco, with rape after complaints from four women who told police he assaulted them when they answered his Craigslist ad for rough sex. The prosecutors say that he assaulted at least three of the four women  and engaged in rape, sexual battery, forced oral sex and one count of false imprisonment.

The odd part? Hoffman practices employment law , specializing in sexual harassment cases. Sexual harassment law is explicitly designed to ensure that employees are not exploited, debased or discriminated against because of their gender.Needless to say, rape, sexual battery and  forced oral sex would qualify as extreme sexual harassment. Continue reading →

Do Nicer People Earn Less Money? Of Course They Do. And That’s the Way it Should be.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Leo Durocher figured out that "nice guys finish last" 60 years ago, and he never went to college. Now three academics, after extensive research, have "discovered" the same thing. Ah, scholarship!

A study by Cornell professor Beth A. Livingston,  Timothy A. Judge of the University of Notre Dame and Charlice Hurst of the University of Western Ontario study used survey data to examine “agreeableness” and found that disagreeable men made 18%, or $9,772 annually, more in salary than those who are more accommodating. The salary disparity was  less among women, with disagreeable females making 5% or $1,828, more than those who are easier to get along with. Does this shock you? It shouldn’t.

As is depressingly often the case, the academics who come up with such crack-brain studies—I read this one, and will want that wasted hour back when I’m on my death-bed so I can watch one last re-run of “Magnum, P.I.”—have so little experience with the working world and the reality of non-academic cultures that they don’t even comprehend their own research and draw absurd conclusions from it.

“The problem is, many managers often don’t realize they reward disagreeableness,” Livingston told the Wall Street Journal. “You can say this is what you value as a company, but your compensation system may not really reflect that, especially if you leave compensation decisions to individual managers.”

Oh brother. Continue reading →

Case Closed on Obama’s Leadership Skills

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Anyone who watched the Beltway public issues panel show “Around Washington” knows that there is no more loyal defender of Barack Obama than Colbert King. King is a Democrat and a card-carrying progressive, and also a Pulitzer Prize winner and career-long Ethics Hero, as he has doggedly and revealingly documented the corruption in all corners of the Washington. D.C. government. Colbert King, in short, is a truth-teller, and while his ideological leanings have often caused him to defend Obama when it would be more responsible not to, he has integrity. This weekend, in his weekly column for the Washington Post,  he joined a chorus of conservative critics by expressing dismay that the President would choose this time to take a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard:

“Is there anyone in the White House with nerve enough to tell Barack Obama that Martha’s Vineyard is the last place on earth that the president of the United States should find himself next week? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t begrudge the chief executive a little time off from the Oval Office. But to be leaving town to spend 10 days luxuriating in an affluent, New England summer town when millions of Americans can’t find work? To fly off to the Vineyard when the public is losing faith in Washington’s ability to fix the nation’s economic problems, and with people anxious about their futures? What is he thinking?”

I can answer that, and in fact I have. Continue reading →

Would Dennis Rodman Qualify for the Baseball Hall of Fame?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Dennis Rodman, out of uniform

Of course not. Dennis Rodman didn’t play baseball. He was a pro basketball player, and as of yesterday, an inductee into the NBA Hall of Fame for his exploits on a basketball court. There is no question that he is eminently qualified for admission to the NBA Hall of Fame, because the NBA Hall of Fame doesn’t care if players are thugs, drunks, scofflaws, deadbeat dads and couldn’t define sportsmanship with a dictionary as long as they can shoot, score, pass, dribble and block shots.

The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, however, requires that its members demonstrate “integrity, sportsmanship, (and) character,” in addition to outstanding achievements and a remarkable career record.  Because of the steroid era that has rendered a whole generation of players suspect for cheating, an expanding number of baseball greats face being excluded from the Hall because cheating by using substances that are illegal and banned in the sport while implicitly deceiving the public about the use is, by any rational definition, a material breach of integrity and sportsmanship.  The natural reaction by many sportswriters, as in other fields when reasonable standards are routinely violated, is to attack the standards. Why should a sport care about matters like integrity and character? Isn’t it the performance that counts, and winning? Continue reading →