Quizzes

Ethics Quiz: The Border Humanitarian

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

I am having a hard time with this one.

This week the New York Times and other publications gave a hero’s send-off to Eddie Canales, who died on July 30 at the age of 76. No doubt about it, he was a caring, selfless, compassionate man.

Unfortunately, his caring and compassion were applied to assist those seeking to break U.S. law. From the Times obituary:

For over a decade, Mr. Canales placed dozens of water stations — giant blue plastic barrels marked “Agua” filled with gallon water jugs — along the region’s routes for migrants evading a checkpoint on U.S. Route 281, about 70 miles north of the border with Mexico. The migrants, who are usually led (and sometimes abandoned) by smugglers, known as “coyotes,” leave the main road and undertake a perilous journey through featureless scrub and bush to evade the Border Patrol.

Some don’t make it. Those who fail succumb to severe dehydration, hunger and exposure to the unforgiving elements in a semi-desert where temperatures can easily reach 100 degrees in the summer and drop below freezing during the winter. Mr. Canales led a campaign to recover, identify and ensure proper burials for the migrants’ remains. The mission required forcefulness and tact. The land is private and belongs to South Texas ranchers, many indifferent or hostile. Some have created armed posses dressed in military gear to hunt up the migrants and turn them over to the authorities, as shown in a trenchant 2021 documentary about Mr. Canales’s work, “Missing in Brooks County.”

…Mr. Canales successfully placed more than 170 water stations across seven counties, the outposts recognizable from afar by flags with a red cross flown high….

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Is it ethical to honor someone for intentionally facilitating the efforts of others to violate U.S. law?

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Ethics Quiz: The Google AI Olympics Commercial

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Google pulled that ad after a wave of criticism on social media.

Is the ad encouraging children to use AI instead of writing their own messages and letters? Is it an invitation to cheat in school? Does it suggest that robots are better at expressing genuine human feelings than humans are? Is having someone, or something, write your fan letters to a personal hero a cop-out? A lie?

Is the commercial “Ick!”, unethical, or just ominous?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is that Google AI ad irresponsible, corrupting—unethical? Did an ethics alarm fail to sound that should have?

Olympics Ethics Quiz: The Sexist Commentator

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The Horror.

Bob Ballard is a veteran sports announcer with the BBC who has reported on sports since the mid- 1980s. He’s been involved in covering several Olympic games. However, a wan sexist joke he uttered that would have been standard fair on sitcoms in the 1960s got him sacked from the Paris Olympics broadcast.

After the women’s 4×100 meter freestyle relay that ended with a gold for Team Australia, Ballard felt compelled to comment on the team’s delay leaving the Paris Aquatic Centre. “Well, the women just finishing off. You know what women are like, hanging around, doing their makeup,” Ballard said. Immediately his female broadcasting partner Lizzie Simmonds, a former Olympian and his Eurosport co-host, struck. “Outrageous, Bob,” she said. “Some of the men are doing that as well.” Ballard laughed.

Eurosport, which distributes the Olympic broadcast in Europe (owned by the same company that now owns CNN) confirmed that the comment caused Ballard’s Olympics to be terminated. “We can confirm that Bob Ballard has been removed from our commentary roster with immediate effect,” it said in a statement this week.

Take THAT, insufficiently female athlete-extolling pig at the Parity Olympics!

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was Ballard’s dismissal, fair, proportional and just?

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Ethics Quiz: Biden’s Post-Assassination Attempt Phone Call

/ Jack Marshall / 62 Comments

This one is short and simple.

We are told that President Biden called Trump to express his sympathies, or something, and that the call was “brief and respectful.”

If I were Trump, I would not have accepted the call, or, perhaps, only accepted it long enough to say, “Bite me, asshole.” (Or, “dickhead.” I’m flexible.)

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Would my response be unethical?

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Ethics Quiz: The Biden Campaign Model

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

This one fascinates me the more I think about it.

Above is the model at the Official Biden-Harris Campaign Store advertising the Biden-Harris T-shirt. There are three other models to be seen at the home site: a kind of wimpy male-of-indeterminate-color modeling a “Free on Wednesdays” T-shirt (I don’t know what that means), a butch-looking female model who might be a stand-in for Lia Thomas, and a chunky middle-aged bespectacled guy, also of-some-sort-of-color, holding a “Color-Changing Mug.” This is clearly a DEI campaign site: apparently white models need not apply. But the model above is strikingly unattractive as well as sexually ambiguous. Unless the marketing industry no longer operates according to the Cognitive Dissonance Scale, the idea in advertising is still to connect the product with positive images.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

What’s going in here?

I could see the same model being used in a satirical ad put out by the Trump campaign. Is this flagrant virtue signaling? (What’s the virtue?) Pandering to radical feminists? DEI madness? Gross incompetence?

Oh…here are two of the Trump campaign’s models:

Yeccchh.

Ethics Quiz: Fake Celebrity Voices [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I decided to write about this insidious (but ethical?) phenomenon when I realized that the Jimmy Dean breakfast sausages TV ads are now using an AI-faked Jimmy Dean voice. For decades they only had one brief catch-line from the old ads when Jimmy was still alive (he died in 2010); we would hear the real Jimmy say, “Wake up to the goodness of Jimmy Dean sausages!” in various combinations. Now, AI Jimmy won’t shut up. (The new Jimmy doesn’t even sound quite right, in my opinion.)

NBC announced last week that veteran sportscaster Al Michaels will be doing recaps during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Well, not really Al; a fake Michaels generated by artificial intelligence will re-create the familiar sportscaster’s voice to provide customized Olympic recaps for Peacock subscribers. “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock” will give users a customized highlight playlist, narrated by AI Al.

Al, who is well past his pull-date at 79 (though still younger than Joe Biden), apparently was happy to have AI Al take over for him, and especially happy to receive the check.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz for July Fourth is…

Is this unethical or just “Ick”?

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Ethics Quiz: Harvard’s Honorary Degrees

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Hmmmm.

Here are the distinguished individuals Harvard saw fit to award honorary degrees to at graduation this year. (I’m sure some of them, heck, maybe all, are very fine people) :

  • Gustavo Dudamel, music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, his home country, and music and artistic director-designate of the New York Philharmonic
  • Jennie Chin Hansen, immediate past chief executive of the American Geriatrics Society, and past president of AARP—a pioneer in care for the elderly.
  • Sylvester James Gates Jr., Clark Leadership Chair in Science and Distinguished University Professor and a University System of Maryland Regents Professor, a theoretical physicist who has worked on supersymmetry, supergravity, and superstring theory.
  • Joy Harjo, twenty-third Poet Laureate of the United States, 2019-2022, the author of 10 books of poetry (plus plays, children’s books, and two volumes of memoir), and a performing musician who played for many years with her band, Poetic Justice, and has produced seven albums.
  • Maria A. Ressa, co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 (with Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov) for her brave, independent news coverage of her native Philippines.

(Former Harvard president Lawrence Bacow also got an honorary degree, but ex-Harvard presidents always do if they manage not to get fired for plagiarism, so he doesn’t count.)

Interesting. Out of five honorees, not one was a white American, not even a white woman, or a white LGTBQ warrior. A Venezuelan male, a female Filipino, Harjo is Native American, Gates is black, and Hansen is Asian American.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Week is…

Is there anything wrong with this roster?

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Ethics Quiz: Maryland’s Mass Pot Pardon

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

This is an ethics quiz because I recognize that I am irretrievably biased on the question of marijuana (no, I really don’t care that I’m supposed to call it “cannabis” now: bite me), which I believe should continue to be illegal, though I am under no illusions that this metaphorical horse has left the barn for good.

Maryland’s governor Wes Moore signed an executive order yesterday that pardons more than 175,000 convicted drug-abusers whose crimes were related to marijuana use. Moore said he did this “with deep pride and soberness.”

Yes, he’s proud to announce that Maryland doesn’t think violating laws is anything anyone should be ashamed of.

“Today is about equity; it is about racial justice,” Anthony Brown, Maryland’s attorney general, said. “While the order applies to all who meet its criteria, the impact is a triumphant victory for African Americans and other Marylanders of color who were disproportionately arrested, convicted and sentenced for actions yesterday that are lawful today.” This is because a disproportionate number of blacks broke the pot laws. This in turn acculturated many of them into breaking other laws with impunity as well. The progressive rule is that if laws are violated by larger numbers of a minority group than their demographic presence in the population would predict, it is discriminatory to enforce those laws.

I wonder who thought up that dodge? Whoever he or she is, it’s brilliant.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is the Maryland pardon fair and responsible?

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Ethics Quiz: “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Who didn’t see this coming?

And why did it take so long?

Naturally, the reaction was explosive on both sides of the, uh, well, both sides. “News about Heterosexual Awesomeness Month has spread worldwide!,” the bar announced in a follow-up social media post. “Many people have asked how they can support us. Owner Mark Fitzpatrick is excited to build a 25,000 sq ft community event center nearby to host events, provide amazing and wholesome food, support conservative ideas, and help true conservatives get elected. So, we started a GiveSendGo fund. For the haters spewing venom, perhaps you feel bad and want to contribute a few dollars now? For the rest of you reasonable people, if you feel inclined to give, please do! May God bless you!”

The Old State Saloon in in Eagle, Idaho, not far from Boise, and its promotional stunt is the work of new owner Mark Fitzpatrick, a South California transplant who bought the bar in 2023 and who describes himself as “a Christian, conservative, Constitution supporter, retired police officer, and family man.”

Ew!

The fact that this promotion is taking place during “Pride Month,” when everyone is supposed shout out hosannas for minority sexual practices while festooning everything in rainbows, means that it is also being taken as a shot across the hallowed bow of wokeness. LGBQ Nation snarks, ” Fitzpatrick claims to have banned a couple of dozen hateful negative Facebook commenters for ‘using horrific words, expletives, using the name of the Lord in vain, etc,’ but it’s hard to tell one heterosexual man’s hate from another’s unbridled excitement.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” unethical?

I’m open to being convinced otherwise, but I think it is a divisive tactic, essentially tit for tat, but inevitable and perhaps necessary. Once upon a time “days” and “months” designated to celebrate particular components of the American melting pot were benign and opportunities for all to signal appreciation for our component cultures. The practice quickly curdled into group chauvinism and anti-majority bigotry with the continued celebration of Black History Month, Women’s History Month and Pride Month. Those groups once arguably needed their “months” to restore self-esteem after long being discriminated against, but now they just resonate as “Who needs whites and men?” exercises in division.

As an aside, anyone who is “proud” of their sex life has problems. I remember when Grant was tiny and we watched “Sesame Street” together, I was consistently amused by a oft repeated number in which a bovine Muppet sang, “I’m proud, proud, proud to be a cow!” “Pride Month” strikes me as similarly excessive. OK, so you’re gay. I don’t care. I’m bald. What do either of us have to be “proud ” about?

If it is unimaginable to have a “Heterosexual Pride Month” or “White Achievement Month” or “Hooray for Men Month,” and it is, then it’s time for those other month-long celebrations to be retired as past their pull dates, and now doing more harm than good.

To that end, I suppose “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month” has a certain “So how do YOU like it?” appeal. Nevertheless, two wrongs don’t make a right.

Added: I have to include that “Proud to be a Cow” song. Here you go…

Ethics Quiz: The Senators’ Letter

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments

I think I could check through the names of the 20 or so most prolific Ethics Alarms commenters and guess with nearly 100% accuracy how each of them will respond to this ethics quiz.

Eight Republican Senate Republicans released a letter after President’s Trump was declared guilty as charged in his mysterious “he did something illegal in there somewhere and besides, he’s a bad guy and everyone should hate him” trial in Manhattan. It declares that they will not do anything to support President Biden for the rest of his term in office: not vote on any legislation for non-security funding, not vote on judicial and political nominations, not not vote in favor of “expedited consideration and passage” of any Democrat-proposed legislation.

Signed by conservative GOP Senators Mike Lee, J.D. Vance (Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Roger Marshall (Kan.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), the terse missive states,

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