Professions

Ethics Hero: P.G.A. Golfer Brian Davis

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

I don’t follow golf, but if this sort of thing happens very often, I may have to become a fan…in spite of Tiger Woods.

P.G.A. tour veteran Brian Davis was facing Jim Furyk in a playoff at the Verizon Heritage, and trying to finally win a P.G.A. event. His approach shot to the first hole in the playoff bounced off the green and landed in the rough. When Davis attempted to knock the ball back up to the green, his club barely swiped a weed on his backswing. The rules of tournament golf decree that touching anything lying around the ball during a player’s backswing violates  the prohibition against moving loose obstacles or impediments to a shot. The required penalty: two strokes, enough to guarantee that David would lose the play-off and his best, maybe only, chance for PGA glory, not to mention a seven figure prize.

Davis may have been the only one to notice the infraction, but golf is a game that calls for self-reporting. That’s what he did: he called the violation on himself, and made himself a loser. Continue reading →

Rush vs. Clinton: Who’s Right?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Former President Bill Clinton has sounded an alarm he has sounded before, warning that the intensity of the rhetoric on conservative radio emboldens fringe radicals to violence. As he did in 1995, when he was in the White House, Clinton lays the Oklahoma City bombing at the feet of big-government critics, a strategy that then managed to halt the momentum of Republicans in their assault on Democratic policies. Also as in 1995, King of the Radio Right Rush Limbaugh has countered that Clinton is using revisionist history to avoid his administration’s own responsibility for Timothy McVeigh’s attack, which wasn’t timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Branch Davidian massacre by accident. Limbaugh’s argument that the conduct of Federal agents in Waco (as well as Ruby Ridge) had a lot more to do with McVeigh’s anger than anything he heard on talk radio is persuasive on the merits.

Nevertheless, Clinton’s general point that talk radio is playing with fire is a legitimate one. Continue reading →

Ethics, Unfairness and the Palin Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Is it worse for an elected official, leader, public figure or opinion-maker to be dishonest, irresponsible, or stupid? Fortunately, any of three should disqualify an individual for power or influence, so answering the question is not essential. This too is fortunate, because it is sometimes impossible to determine which disqualifying characteristic is on display.

Take, for example, Sarah Palin’s recent comments, made to a religious gathering in Kentucky, that…

“Lest anyone try to convince you that God should be separated from the state, our Founding Fathers, they were believers.” Continue reading →

Crash the Tea Party Today, Teach America’s Youth Tomorrow?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Jason Levin is a media lab technology teacher at the Conestoga Middle School in Beaverton, Oregon, and for all I know, a good one. Jason Levin is also a passionate political activist whose sense of fair politics is a little bit skewed: he has gained notoriety through his plan, detailed on his website http://www.crashtheteaparty.org, to discredit and undermine the political movement through a series of unethical tactics, such as infiltrating rallies and shouting racist and homophobic slogans, seeking out reporters and making wild claims posing as Tea Party advocates, holding mis-spelled signs, and dressing in Nazi uniforms.

Needless to say (I hope), Levin’s idea of political warfare is unethical in every way. Misleading the public and media about a party or group rather than contesting its positions on the merits is dishonest and a disgrace to the democratic system. Continue reading →

Leonard Sedden, Dying for an Ethics Hero—Or a Caring Human Being

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In Philadelphia, a Metro Bus driver called her supervisors…

Driver: I have a passenger that’s not responding to me…It looks as though he had peed on himself and he had drooled a lot. I can’t get any actual response.

Control: Just come on down the street, the supervisor will pick you up on the line and give you some assistance.

Driver: OK, so just leave him on the bus and pickup passengers when I leave on 4:18?

Control: That’s correct. I don’t want to delay service. The supervisor will assist you on the line so we don’t delay service for the passengers.

A bit later, the Driver called in again… Continue reading →

Obama’s Coal Mine Tragedy Verdict=Abuse of Power

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

There are two disturbing implications of President Obama’s premature condemnation of  Massey Energy for the recent tragedy at its Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where an explosion killed 29 miners on April 5. The first is that the President appears to have a flat learning curve, as this repeats his error in the Professor Gates fiasco in Cambridge, Mass, in which Obama condemned the conduct of a Cambridge police officer without getting all the facts. The second is that for a former law professor, Obama has a rather loose grasp on the concept of Due Process. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: CNN

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

CNN has begun to get hammered in the ratings, in the midst of a policy change that has the venerable cable news staking out novel ground: it is being objective. This used to be known as “journalism.” Continue reading →

A. J. Pierzynski, Baseball Cheating and Moral Gray Zones

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The baseball season is certainly off to an unethical start.

In Tuesday’s game between the Blue Jays and White Sox, Toronto pitcher Ricky Romero’s gestating no-hitter was aborted in the 8th inning in part because of some deceptive play-acting by ChiSox catcher A. J. Pierzynski. Every era  has one player who acquires a reputation for being tricky, a.k.a. “dirty,” and Pierzynski is the current title holder. When he came to bat against Romero, the catcher with the unspellable name took advantage of a pitch that bounced in the dirt near him to hop up and down as if his widdle toe had a ball-induced boo-boo. Incredibly (for even the White Sox announcers were chatting about how obvious it was that the ball hadn’t touched A. J., noting that he wasn’t even hopping on the most plausibly injured foot), home umpire Tim McClelland stood by silently as Pierzynski trotted to first base. Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston protested to no avail, and, not for the first time, A. J. Pierzynski had stolen first base. Now Romero had to pitch from the stretch rather than a wind-up, and the no-hitter (and the shut-out) was no-history seconds later, as Toronto’s Alex Rios hit a home run.

Did A. J. Pierzynski cheat? Should he be fined or punished for feigning an injury,  as some have suggested? Continue reading →

Roman’s Rule, Guam’s Peril and Rep. Johnson: No Minimum Standards of Competence For Congress

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Ever since I saw the video of Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA) declaring his anxiety over the possibility that the island of Guam will “tip over” and “capsize,” I’ve been wrestling with the question: Shouldn’t there be some minimum level of intelligence and competence for members of Congress? I’m not considering anything lofty here, but a man whose vote helped pass a health care bill of unprecedented complexity that will affect every American just revealed that he thinks islands are like icebergs or floating trash can covers. This suggests that he may be subject to many other misconceptions, since he has apparently never read a newspaper, much less watched a National Geographic special. Not to be unkind about it, but such a statement, uttered on television for all the world to see, is prima facie evidence that he is an ignorant dim-wit. Whatever a safe and responsible cut-off point would be for admission to Congress, can we agree that fearing the capsizing of Guam would put one well below it? I don’t know about you, but I’m a little frightened. Continue reading →

The Conundrum of the Unsuccessful Cheat

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A sharp-eyed Chicago White Sox fan with a blog at his disposal caught something interesting in yesterdays Twins-White Sox game, which ended in a ChiSox victory when Twins baserunner J.J. Hardy was thrown out at home to end the game. As Hardy rounded third, Twins third base coach Scott Ullger stepped on to the playing field, planted one foot on third and for all the world looked like a runner holding the bag until he saw if the relay throw was going to be fielded cleanly. Was his intent to fool Twin Mark Teahan, who had just received the throw from the outfield, into believing—just for a crucial second—that he was Hardy, thus delaying the relay throw home? If so, it didn’t work: Teahan threw home quickly and well, and Hardy was a dead duck. As the blogger,Jim Margalus, writes,

“…it would’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened if the relay were botched, because what Ullger is doing seems to be in violation of rule 7.09(h), in which…‘With a runner on third base, the base coach leaves his box and acts in any manner to draw a throw by a fielder;… is defined as an act of interference’.” Continue reading →