Quizzes

Ethics Quiz: Personal Assistant Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I almost called this, “Stop Making Me Defend Robert De Niro!’

De Niro proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he’s a toxic, narcissistic asshole when he was going around the country shouting “Fuck Trump” at various Trump Derangement gatherings. He’s a great actor, but at 80 he’s now in that difficult period of decline when he should be retired but can’t resist the paychecks or the sudden lack of public attention.

De Niro’s ex-personal assistant Graham Chase Robinson is suing him for discrimination, and the trial is not showing the actor in a very favorable light. As her various allegations were presented to him on the stand—-asking her to scratch his back, giving her degrading tasks, making unreasonable demands (like asking Robinson to “Uber him” a martini from a favorite bar at 11 p.m.), not respecting her personal time (he called her twice while she was at her grandmother’s funeral telling her to buy a bus ticket for his son), and being abusive (he called her a “fucking spoiled brat”), De Niro’s response was always some version of, “Big deal. So what?”

De Niro paid his personal assistant $300,000 a year.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it unethical for someone to pay an assistant to accept abuse and disrespectful treatment?

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Ethics Quiz, TV Talk Show Dept.: Unethical Or Well-Known Standard Practice? [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Ann Althouse posted that video as genuine. Is it possible that Ann has never been on a TV talk show or news show? I sure have, and there is no chance, none, that Graham Norton sprung a surprise request on British theater and movie icon Judy Dench, who is 88, that she deliver a Shakespeare speech or sonnet on the spot.

Guests on talk shows are always prepped; they are told what the interview is going to cover, and no competent host, certainly not a veteran like Norton, would dare risk embarrassing a guest by putting them on the spot without notice and adequate preparation time.

Of course Dench knew she was going to be asked to recite some Shakespeare, and was ready. Being an actress, she also was ready to act as if the request was a surprise. And, of course, knowing little or nothing about how show business works, most of Norton’s viewers were impressed and fell for the stunt. Norton wins. Dench wins.

And someone who styles herself a truth-teller passes along the sham as genuine.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is Norton and Dench’s put-on ethical?

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Cultural Literacy Competence Fail!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As frequent vistors here know, I would argue that competent citizens should be sufficiently aware of cultural history to know who Bill Russell, Bob Feller and Bob Gibson are at very least. The elderly female contestant was alive and conscious while Bob Gibson and Bill Russell were active and frequently in the news. Surely someone presuming to appear as a contestant on “Jeopardy!” should have this level of U.S. sports history knowledge.

But perhaps you disagree…

Ethics Quiz: Beer Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The video above tells the whole story.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it fair to stop drinking Tsingtao beer in response to this incident?

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Ethics Quiz: “Oh No! It’s HITLER!!!”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

My ethics alarms just don’t ring very loudly on this incident. Maybe yours do.

A pregame trivia video before a Michigan State football game included a photo of Adolf Hitler on the Spartan Stadium scoreboard. (The question asked where Der Fuhrer was born.)

Though I have seen no record of whether there were complaints, the school felt it necessary to issue a profuse apology:

Really? Displaying a photograph of a historical figure who appears in hundreds of movies, is spoofed in multiple comedies and film classics, as part of a bland trivia question (It’s not like the question was about the Final Solution) requires an apology and results in a contract cancellation?

Your Ethics Alarms “Please explain this to the ethicist” Ethics Question of the Day is…

Is this a fair, competent and responsible reaction by Michigan State?

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Ethics Quiz: The Rehabilitated Brain-Eating Cannibal [Link Fixed]

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

That pleasant-looking chap above is Tyree Smith of Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 2013, he killed a homeless man and ate his brain and eyeballs. (After that appetizer, he went to Subway.) Smith was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, and committed to a state psychiatric hospital for 60 years. Just ten years after Tyree’s bold gourmet adventures, however, the state Psychiatric Security Review Board has ruled that Smith is ready to be transitioned back into the community.

So he’s out.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it responsible to ever release someone like Tyree Smith back into the public?

The report on Smith’s release said in part: “He denied experiencing cravings but stated that if they were to arise, he would reach out to his hospital and community supports and providers.”

Oh. I feel much better now.

Ethics Quiz: The National Cathedral’s New Windows

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The stained glass windows in the National Cathedral show different scenes from American history. Someone made the dunderheaded decision when the cathedral was being designed to have windows honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which seemed, in a setting with limited opportunities to highlight American heroes, an odd choice even back when the structure was opened to the public.

After a gunman shot and killed nine Black worshipers at a church in South Carolina in 2015 and the movement began to ban all things Confederate, the cathedral management decided that Stonewall and Lee had to go. Six years after the glass’s removal in 2017, National Cathedral has unveiled their replacement, which you can see above. The new windows , titled Now and Forever, show black protesters holding protest signs bearing the words “No,” “Not,” “Fairness” and “No foul play.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is this a responsible, appropriate, ethical decoration for the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.?

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Ethics Quiz: Miss Zimbabwe!

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Guess which beauty won the Miss Zimbabwe title! It was 21-year-old Brooke Bruk-Jackson, the only white woman among the contestants.

Brooke was crowned Miss Universe Zimbabwe, and will represent the African nation at the next Miss Universe pageant. Reportedly fewer than 1% of the African nation’s population is white. Her victory has upset many residents of Zimbabwe. “All those beautiful melanated women, and you telling me the European woman won a contest for Black people?” one outraged X-user tweeted.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Was giving the prize to a white woman ethical?

This is a bit of a trick question. In a normal competition, the answer would be easy: if she won, she won. Beauty contests, however, are like dog shows: they are completely arbitrary and subjective contests pretending to be objective. It’s a Bizarro Wotld ethics problem: such competitions are phony (that is, unethical) anyway. They have no integrity; how can they have an ethical or unethical result?

Since any result is tainted by the inherent lie that it is based on objective criteria, isn’t this an ethics zugzwang situation? Choosing the only white woman in the competition has the appearance of bias and discrimination; so too does not choosing a competitor because she’s white, if her “objective” qualities would have made her Miss Zimbabwe if she were the “right” color.

If I were a judge, recognizing that beauty contests are absurd and that the criteria is hopelessly subjective, I would avoid choosing the only white contestant because it would raise all of these questions. If a black contestant were crowned Miss Zimbabwe, nobody would blink a metaphorical eye. Now Brooke is a target of hate mail and death threats, the pageant is under attack, the black population feels insulted, and everyone is miserable.

Good job, everybody!

Ethics Quiz: Oprah’s Surprise

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I did not see this coming at all. Obviously, neither did Oprah Winfrey.

On August 31, Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson united on their Instagram and TikTok accounts to promote their People’s Fund of Maui, which they had co-launched with a combined $10 million donation. The fund would support the victims of the Maui wildfires, and O joined with The Rock to call on the public for more contributions. The following accompanied their joint video, shot in Hawaii, naturally:

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