Earlier this year, Buzzfeed gathered and posted these sixteen photographic records of people being kind just because that’s how we should be. Yes, I guess one or more of them may be fake; it doesn’t matter much. It is still helpful to remember, especially in my business, that there are a lot of good people out there.
Thanks, Buzzfeed.
1.
2.
3.
“Ma’am, your teenage son was raped by this woman, Isn’t that great?”
Once again, one of my favorite news aggregation websites, the prolific and often hilarious Fark, is laughing at child rape. Its comment on the story from Nehalem, Oragon about the arrest of a 31-year-old model for sex crimes involving at least three under-age boys—15 and 16 years old—was this…
“…niiiice”
Not funny. An adult woman using—that’s the correct word, using—teenage boys as her personal sexual aids isn’t niiice—it’s criiiiminal. In October, I gave Fark an ethics dunce cap for an earlier wink-wink-nudge-nudge comment about a teacher who added statutory rape to her duties, and that was surely worse; after all, she was a teacher, and violating the trust of the school, the parents, the students and the community to get herself laid. Nonetheless, the conduct of model Anna Walsh was neither harmless nor trivial. I know: Fark’s official stance is sophomoric; I get that. I also get that sophomores, and other morons, have staked out the position that any male child who has obtained a sufficient level of sexual maturity to be used as a human dildo by a “hot” woman is a lucky dog. Well, that spectacularly stupid and unethical position does a great deal to help sexual predators like Walsh victimize children, who are misled into feeling that something must be wrong with them if they really don’t want be used.
Since the site is a repeat offender, I’m sure Fark’s wags intend to keep doing this. So I guess Ethics Alarms will have to keep reminding everyone what irresponsible ethics dunces their warped sense of appropriate treatment of young boys shows them to be.
“Duuuunce”
____________________________
Spark: Fark
Facts, Graphic: KATU
Ever since the New York Times instituted its paywall system, which forces you to subscribe to its cyber-version once you use the site more than 20 times in a 30 day period, I have been economizing on my Times use rather than pay its (reasonable) subscription fee. One reason was money; one reason was that I usually don’t have to use the Times more than 20 times a month, with other good news sources out there that charge nothing at all; and a last reason is that the Times annoys me with its hard left-wing bias, well to the left of the Washington Post, which is hardly balanced, and inappropriate, in my view, for the publication that holds itself up as the exemplar of American journalism. The exemplar of American journalism should be objective and non-partisan, damn it, or at least try to be.
I have to admit, however, that even with its biases, the New York Times is still the best news source I know. I get the Post delivered to my door every day, and read the print copy of the Times only when I am on the road. I am always struck at how often a Times story or feature is directly relevant to my work, compared to any of its competition, including the acclaimed publication I read every day. Yesterday I learned that the Times has scheduled yet another round of lay-offs and buy-outs. It is in financial trouble, like all newspapers, and I can no longer justify refusing to do my part to help it survive as long as it can. The Times has given a lot to me, my readers and my field, and what it has provided has come with tangible expenses that are becoming more difficult to cover. The paper drives me crazy sometimes, but it remains a vital resource; it is unfair to focus my disillusionment with the journalistic field at the best of it, much as I would like to see the Times set an even higher standard. Right now, the battle is to allow the Times to maintain the journalistic standard, however flawed, that it sets now.
I just signed up for a cyber-subscription. The Times has earned my support, and with it struggling to keep the print flowing, I can no longer justify taking my 19 free articles a month and giving nothing back in return.
I have to give Lindsay Stone credit. You will seldom see as pure an example of an outrageous denial of the undeniable in a public apology as the one she just authored. Brava! And good luck with the job hunt.
Stone, who is an idiot, and her friend, who is an idiot whose name has yet to be tracked down by the media, collaborated on a photo showing Stone giving an upturned middle finger to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, while yelling something by the sign there that says “Silence and Respect.” The photograph was posted on Stone’s Facebook page and naturally went viral. Thousands of protesters bombarded the website of their employer, Living Independently Forever, with demands that the two be fired. Today, they were.
Before the inevitable axe fell (more on that in a bit), Stone posted this remarkable explanation:
I’m on the way to New Mexico today, to speak to the news media there and to try to build some consensus—New Mexico is as good a place to start as any—that using faux indignation over manufactured political correctness offenses is no way to run a political system, community, society or culture. It is, in fact, a cynical and despicable practice used by special interest groups and unscrupulous politicians to stifle legitimate debate, or, as in the case that inspired my trip, to unfairly tar the character and reputation of a political adversary. The victim in the New Mexico incident was attorney Pat Rogers, who saw his obviously satirical e-mail intentionally twisted by partisan foes who almost certainly knew its real meaning into being represented in the press as a gratuitous racist slur—which it was not. I wrote about this here, and a similar incident, with parties reversed in Washington state, here.
What am I going to tell the various interviews and reporters I speak with over the next few days? I will tell them that political blood sport has got to stop. That the effort to discredit political positions by seeking ways to demonize their advocates is unethical and wrong. That contrived accusations of racism (or sexism, homophobia, or any other form of bigotry) should not be aided and abetted by the media or tolerated by the public. I will also assert that political warriors on the right or left who intentionally choose to misinterpret innocent expressions of irony, satire or humor as racist attacks both diminish the charge of true bigotry when it is justified, and expose themselves as polluters of our culture and national cohesion.
I don’t know Pat Rogers well; we have only met once. But I know who he represents: those who have been harmed as collateral damage in a hyper-partisan environment encouraged by Washington, D.C. and cheered on by the vilest members of the blogosphere, to the detriment of our sense of community, decency, and trust. My efforts, whatever they are, will be modest at best, and, in all likelihood, inconsequential. But you never know.
Wish me luck.
I routinely edit blog comments for typos and minor grammatical mistakes, both to assist with clarity and reading and also as a Golden Rule exercise—I have typo issues myself, as regular readers well know.
This comment just turned up on Edward Carney’s Comment of the Day (from September of 2011) about flying the Confederate flag:
I was tempted not to fix it (there are four errors) but I decided that would be unfair.
Should I have left it as it was?
Run away!
In no particular order:
I’ve been remiss in posting “comments of the day” of late; it is not a reflection on comment quality, which has been excellent, but rather on my own distractions. Here is a new one at last, from new commenter Kathryn. It appeals to me because it nails the subtext of the original post, and like most Comments of the Day, takes the original topic to the next stage of analysis. I hope we hear more from her. Here is Kathryn’s Comment of the Day on the post, “The Idiot, the Ex, and the Consequences.”
“I am waiting, perhaps overly optimistically, for culture to catch up with information availability and develop new ways of handling privacy outside of responding to information when it is made public, regardless of the source or context for that information. Everyone says/does something particularly unwise/unwell/without grace during their life. Technology is getting to the point that these moments, rather than being forgotten or a story told among friends, are fairly permanently in the public record. (The Internet is public, whatever Facebook settings attempt to convince you.) Continue reading
Denise Helms, who will probably not look like this the next time you see her if she knows what’s good for her.
My position would usually be this: for an employer to use a privacy setting Facebook post as justification for firing an employee is unfair. That applies to vacation photos of an elementary school teacher holding a beer and looking bleery-eyed at a pub, a Sunday school teacher doing a strip tease at a bachelor party, and political posts of a radical, vulgar or offensive nature. Two factors can change the equation, though. Action may be justified if the posting reasonably calls into question the trustworthiness of the employee in his or her job duties, or if the posting becomes public, subjecting the employer to embarrassment or undermining the employee’s ability to do her job, as in the naked teacher cases.
Denise Helms, the idiot referenced in the title above, posted this on her Facebook page, intended only for her closest, presumably most racist or most idiotic friends:
—-Republican Designated Buffoon Donald Trump via Twitter, in the wake of last night’s election results.
Stay classy, Donald.
I can’t stand another picture of Donald Trump, so here is a great photo of a mastiff with a friend. I love mastiffs.
While most Americans instinctively understand that the great strength of our democracy is that after the votes are counted, we stand behind our collective decisions and support our chosen leaders. Not Trump. He doesn’t comprehend that vile comments like these, published to the world, are not merely irresponsible but also unpatriotic.
There is an upside to Trump’s poor impulse control, however. The possibility that a Romney administration might have found any role for Trump at all should make everybody, even die-hard partisan Republicans and end-of-civilization Rush Limbaugh conservatives feel better about last night’s vote tally.
__________________________
Pointer: Ron Sarro
Source: The Examiner
Ethics Alarms 