Professions

Ethics Quote of the Week: Blogger Jeff Jarvis

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

"If Charlie's unavailable, get this guy. He's hilarious!"

“One way or another, by one definition and diagnosis or another, Charlie Sheen is a sick man. He doesn’t need airtime. He needs couchtime. News people are ill-serving him and the issue of mental illness in this country by putting him on the air as if he were just another source, another celebrity. They are not informing the public. They are exploiting Charlie.”

—Blogger Jeff Jarvis on his site, BuzzMachine, on the media’s disgraceful rush to get celebrity meltdown Charlie Sheen to do as many wacky, self-destructive, “did he really say that?” interviews as possible before he falls completely to pieces as addicts in full denial inevitably do.

Jarvis is right. There is no more news to be milked from the sad Sheen story, other than “Charley continues to say things that are destroying his career, making him dislikable and unemployable, and that prove that he is sick, getting sicker by the day.” This is no less despicable than exhibiting freaks, the brain injured and schizophrenics for the amusement of the crowd. “They want him to act nutty,” says Jarvis. “Ratings, man, ratings.” Continue reading →

“Harry’s Law” Is A Legal Ethics Mess

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

When it comes to legal ethics, "Harry" is no straight-shooter.

As I have noted before, TV has one of its more ethically-sophisticated legal dramas to date in CBS’s “The Good Wife.” Oh, the lawyers (and their investigators) are frequently unethical, all right, but the show has seldom represented unethical conduct as ethical, or implied that it would be defensible if it came to the attention of the bar. In contrast, the new NBC Kathy Bates drama “Harry’s Law” has already ticketed itself for the Dumb Lawyer TV Show Hall of Shame, grossly misleading its audience about what constitutes a lawyer’s ethical duties. (Other recent admittees to the Hall: James Woods’ “Shark,” the Kathleen Quinlan drama “Family Law,” Steven Bochco’s embarrassing “Raising the Bar,”and every legal show created by David Kelley.) Continue reading →

Mike Haridopolos’s Book: Whatever Was Going On, It Had To be Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Four years and $152,000 for THIS??

What was going on here?

It has been revealed that new Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos was paid  $152,000 in taxpayer money to write a book on politics for Brevard Community College four years ago.
All 175 pages of the resulting tome, “Florida Legislative History and Processes,” were published exactly once. The only copy of the 175-page, double-spaced manuscript can only be found, and read, at the school. The book Haridopolos produced didn’t satisfy the original contract’s requirement for a publishable, textbook-quality look at the development of the Florida Legislature, state constitution, the governor’s office and judiciary from pre-statehood until present. But heck..what do you expect? He was only paid a lousy $152,000! What do you want, “Doctor Zhivago?” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Kirk Douglas

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Kirk Douglas: Hero

Amazingly, some bloggers and critics actually called Kirk Douglas’s appearance as an Oscar presenter last night (it was he who announced Melissa Leo’s win, which she instantly turned into an Oscar low-light) hard to watch and even “creepy.” Sometimes you just have to shake your head and wonder how people’s perception gets so warped.

The 96-year-old stroke victim strode to the stage without vanity, fear or hesitation. He flirted, he joked, he took full advantage of his richly-earned status as a Hollywood legend, the last of the great movie men’s men, and indomitable survivor. And he dared to play with the faux suspense of the event, demonstrating with a wink and grand humor that he, better than most, knows how little awards mean compared to the guts of life. Continue reading →

Home-Grown Mengeles, And What We Must Learn From Them

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Josef Mengele: researcher, utilitarian, monster

We knew, or should have known, that this extremely ugly shoe was bound to drop eventually.

Last autumn, when the U.S. apologized for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago, it put us on notice that a vile and unethical cultural standard had taken hold of the American medical and scientific communities in the 20th century, one that held  it was “right” for the weakest, most powerless and most disposable of human beings to be tricked, coerced or bribed into serving as subjects for experiments that could lead to miraculous cures and treatments for the rest of the population. This–depriving human beings of their rights and lives in the interest of science—is “the ends justify the means” at its worst. But the Guatemala experiments proved that this was once flourishing and respectable in the U.S. scientific and medical research communities, so it would have been surprising if there weren’t more stories of home-grown Mengeles, and sure enough, there were. The U.S. acknowledged as much when it apologized for the Guatemalan tests. Now we have details. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Melissa Leo

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Give the soap to Melissa, Ralphie...

That certainly settled it: Melissa Leo is an inexcusable boor after all.

Winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, Leo blurted out, “Really, really, really, WOW” and then,“When I watched, it looked so fucking easy!”

And thus do tasteless, disrespectful, uncivil so-called professionals degrade our language, public standards of decency and respect for others. Continue reading →

ABC News Breaches Its Duty Not To Make The Public Stupid

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Give generously to save victims of ABC's "This Week."

On ABC’s Sunday public affairs show “This Week,” the usually admirable Jake Tapper breached the broadcast journalist’s duty not to promote logically flawed arguments that will make the public dumber than it already is.

Debating with his guests the merits of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s efforts to severely reduce the collective bargaining rights of public unions, Tapper cited an intellectually dishonest New Republic article by Joseph McCartin which used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make this statement: Continue reading →

A Shocking Farewell Confession From “The Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

In Randy Cohen’s farewell column for “The Ethicist” today—he was sacked by the new editor of The New York Times despite providing an entertaining, well-written and provocative column for many years— he makes a statement that I find shocking, and one that challenges the core assumption of this blog and indeed my occupation.

Writing the column has not made me even slightly more virtuous. And I didn’t have to be: it was in my contract. O.K., it wasn’t. But it should have been. I wasn’t hired to personify virtue, to be a role model for the kids, but to write about virtue in a way readers might find engaging. Consider sports writers: not 2 in 20 can hit the curveball, and why should they? They’re meant to report on athletes, not be athletes. And that’s the self-serving rationalization I’d have clung to had the cops hauled me off in handcuffs.
What spending my workday thinking about ethics did do was make me acutely conscious of my own transgressions, of the times I fell short. It is deeply demoralizing.

Amazing. Randy, we hardly knew ye, and we sure didn’t understand ye, either. How can someone possibly spend one’s working day “thinking about ethics” and not become more virtuous in his daily conduct? Continue reading →

Teachers Unions: Not Unethical, Just Uninterested in the Public Welfare

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

His union is competent; it's just that he isn't

Public unions and their Democratic supporters (and supported) are not going to have much luck winning the public relations battle with Republicans as long as teachers unions are front and center. Teachers unions are not— I repeat not-–primarily concerned with the welfare of schoolchildren, or the public, or the deficit, or even education. Their priority is the welfare of their membership, and if any of those other stakeholders have to take it on the chin to make sure that the teachers have good salaries, benefits and iron-clad job security, well, that’s just the way of the world.

This doesn’t make teachers unions unethical any more than lawyers are unethical to represent their clients. But it does mean that any time a teacher’s union official claims to be concerned with anything but his members, he or she is lying through their teeth. And that is unethical. Continue reading →

Tip Ethics Are More Critical Than You Thought

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

She needs that 20%

Here’s why you need to tip, and generously: Waiters and waitresses are screwed if you don’t. Continue reading →