What awful ethics stories have happened in April!

Today, for example, we note the anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver, in 1999. At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, dressed in trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside. Klebold and Harris murdered 12 fellow students and a teacher, while wounding 23 more. Then they killed themselves. The tragedy opened the chapter of school shootings for the nation and the culture, inspiring other maniacs, began the devolution of high schools into fortresses, and galvanized anti-Second Amendment activism. As is now routine, the news media distorted the tale to its own needs. For example, it was initially reported that one female student was asked by one of the shooter if she believed in God. When she said, “Yes,” she was shot to death. It was an inspiring human interest tale that led her parents to author a Christianity-centered book titled “She Said Yes,” while Klebold and Harris were pigeon-holed as anti-Christian bigots. We now know the question asked of another student who had already been shot. When that victim answered “Yes,” the shooter walked away. Nah, makes the killers seem less evil. “Print the legend.”

1. More “Mikado” political correctness desecration (and another reason to boycott my reunion). The Harvard Gilbert and Sullivan Players (which I and four other students saved from collapsing in 1971), rewrote the script of G&S’s greatest operetta, they claimed, “to avoid featuring Japanese stereotypes and racist interpretations.” The new plot is about, I kid you not, goat-herding in a future Chinese-dominated London. As a director, I applaud and encourage creative efforts to re-interpret classics, but to presume to improve upon Gilbert by a wholesale re-write is the height of hubris.

I would also expect an organization that has interpreted the works of the brilliant Victorian team since the 1920s to be able to explain to the knee-jerk cultural revolutionaries that there is nothing “racist” about “The Mikado,” which is a still funny satire on Victorian British society, set in a typical Gilbertian fantasy-land where characters behave absurdly, but oddly logically.

I would expect that, but I would be tragically wrong. [Pointer: Steve-O-in NJ]

2. Mask ethics update!

• By now you know that a federal judge struck down the CDC’s transportation mask mandate, for the rather obvious reason that it didn’t have the power or authority to inflict it without going through the proper steps, which it did not. It doesn’t matter whether the rule is wise or not: lawmaking and rulemaking still have to follow due process. The Left no longer believes that, as we have seen repeatedly in recent years, notably in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Candidates debate, when Joe Biden was chided (by Kamala Harris among others) for rejecting a policy that he viewed as illegal.
• Here is the New York Times headline this morning: “Masks Ditched To Jeers, Fears And Confusion.” That’s deliberate obfuscation: the most reported reaction on board planes to the announcement of the mask requirement’s demise was cheers. (The Times resorted to a fairer headline on its website.)
• A telling snippet from the article: “Brooke Tansley, who was flying with two children too young to be vaccinated, said she felt scared as the passengers around her slipped off their masks. “All I could do was hope it’s going to be OK,” she said.” This is what two years of media fearmongering, political hyperbole and CDC incompetence has done to gullible and vulnerable Americans, and it will take longer to recover from this than the pandemic.
• Broadway, meanwhile, is still making its audiences mask up to watch unmasked performers (except in “Phantom of the Opera,” of course). Anyone who would pay 100 bucks or more for a ticket to sit in discomfort, glasses fogging up, in unregulated cloth masks that are mostly useless is….well, I guess he or she is a rich progressive, which is who Broadway caters to. This edict is, I assert, more political than health-related.

Live theater is on the endangered species of entertainment list, and professional theater is in denial.

• This relates to the previous post about the intellectual limitations of journalists…here is Slate journalist Mark Stern’s brilliant analysis:

Experts! You know, those health officials who said, in dizzying combinations, “masks not needed,” “wear masks,” “no masks if vaccinated,” “Masks don’t really do much good,” and “Never mind masks if you’re rioting for social justice, but better wear them at weddings.” Judges, meanwhile exist, and are trained, and are by definition experts in what is legal and what is not, no matter who appointed them, or how old they are. Continue reading →

I liked a lot of last week’s Ethics Alarms posts.

Here are five highlights that you might want to check out if you missed them…

• Ethics Dunce: The Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.)

From 4/11: And especially relevant today, as they are now running the Boston Marathon as I type this.

• The Great Stupid And Seattle Transit

From 4/13: It’s getting to the point that I can barely believe the things I read coming out of the Northwest

• Unethical—And Funny!— Quote Of The Week: BLM Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors

From 4/13: In which the woman who not only was responsible for the Black Lives Matter fundraising arm but who also illicitly spent donors’ money says that requiring charities to be transparent and accountable is racist.

• Baseball Ethics Batting Practice, Part 1: The Historic and The Good

From 4/15: It doesn’t matter if you don’t care about baseball. Everyone should care about Jackie Robinson.

• Disney And The LGTBQ Activism Ethics Train Wreck: A Prelude

From 4/17: Opening the door to a series of ethics issues more nuanced than “Don’t Say Gay!” vs. “OK, Groomer!”

A woman using climbing apparatus became ensnared upside down as she tried to cross illegally into the United States from Mexico by going over a 30-foot-high steel border fence in southeastern Arizona last week. By the time authorities found her, she had died.

She was responsible. 100%

The presence of a fence or wall at a border says, “Stay Out!” Anyone who tries to climb or scale the fence is voluntarily attempting to break the law. The woman’s death is a tragedy, but it was a self-activated tragedy. Perhaps, if one were determined to spread blame around, one could hold the illegal immigration activists partially responsible. They promote the message that wrong is right, and that breaking U.S. laws because a foreign citizen wants to do so isn’t wrongdoing,  but noble, or fair, or “a matter of the heart,” as Jeb Bush so fatuously put it. Joe Biden and his administration similarly encouraged the woman by signalling lax immigration law enforcement policies. Continue reading →

It seems like Jackie Robinson Day received more publicity and commentary than usual yesterday, which was appropriate, and besides, Robinson deserves it. In fact, I would support a national holiday honoring him. I watched, again, the 2017 film “42” last night in Robinson’s honor. At the same time I was watching that film, TCM was showing “The Jackie Robinson Story,” a remarkable independent film made in 1950 while Robinson was still playing. Amazingly, Jackie played himself, a very brave thing to do. There were no black male stars in 1950 who could have sold the film to white audiences, and Robinson recognized how important his journey was to tell, so he agreed to play himself. Sure, he’s a bit stiff, but Robinson doesn’t embarrass himself at all. Like so many old movies and plays, “The Jackie Robinson Story” is a window on a different era and how racially divided America was. (Of course, according to the antiracism, “1619,” BLM cult, nothing has changed.)

Back to “42”: I had forgotten its classic entry into the “print the legend” sweepstakes, which I wrote about here.

Finally, I have a bone to pick with Joe Castiglione, Boston’s Red Sox play-by-play broadcaster for the past 40 years, and as astute a student of the game as one could find. While I was listening to the Sox play the Twins in Fenway yesterday (Boston lost), Joe called Jackie Robinson “the most important player in baseball history.” That description is understandable hyperbole on a day honoring Robinson, but it’s wrong. Jackie Robinson is the most important baseball player in American history, but Babe Ruth has to be acknowledged as the most important player in baseball history. Not to diminish Robinson’s achievements in any way, but if he had not existed, another black player, like the great Larry Doby, who was the first black man to play in the American League a year after Robinson, would have broken the color line. However, there were no other Babe Ruths, and without him, it’s very possible baseball wouldn’t exist today.

Reckless hyperbole can cause confusion and long-term misconceptions.

1. Hey! That obnoxious “Black Lives Matter” sign that has stood in front of my neighbor’s house for two years (along with a suit of armor, for some reason) is gone! I hope the various Ethics Alarms posts about BLM’s scams I left with the knight influenced her decision….

Continue reading →

[Part 1, “The Good,” is here.]

The Bad

If it weren’t that I was emulating the Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, the title here would be, “The Terrible.”

This week, Los Angeles Dodgers Hall of Fame-lock Clayton Kershaw was pitching a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins with just two innings and six outs remaining. There have only been 23 perfect games—no men on base at all, no hits, no runs, no walks, no errors— in baseball’s 150 year+ history. Kershaw has never pitched one, and at 34 he’s closer to the end of his career than the beginning. He had only thrown 80 pitches, meaning that he was likely to finish a perfect game, if he succeeded at pitching one, with less than 110 pitches thrown, well under what is considered risky for starters. Yet Dodger manager Dave Roberts took Kershaw out of the game. He’s done this before with pitchers in the midst of no-hitters, usually when their pitch count was high, but this time there were no reasons, just excuses.

What’s going on here? It’s the corporate approach to baseball. Roberts used a utilitarian argument, saying that what mattered most was getting to the World Series, not any single game. In other words, the fans don’t count; even if the chances of our ace being hurt by pitching two more innings is remote, the decision has been made organizationally that protecting long-term investments like superstars with multi-year guaranteed contracts has a higher priority than the game itself.

Watching a pitcher try for a perfect game or even an ordinary no-hitter is any fan’s dream; not only is it pitch-to-pitch suspenseful, but if you witness one, you have been a part of history. Your ticket and program become collector’s items. Baseball’s priorities as demonstrated by this sickening episode are literally upside down. In recent years, it has eliminated two of the most exciting plays in the game, take-out slide at second base to break up a double play and the collisions at home plate, and all but eliminated the prominence of star starting pitchers by reducing their workloads drastically. It’s a professional sport where its athletes are all millionaires, but as Roberts’ decision proves, it is unwilling to take any risks to keep the game exciting and memorable.

Utilitarian trade-offs only are ethical if competing factors are assigned the right values.

The Ugly

Then there are the MLB teams that don’t even try to win or field a competitive product. The strategy is called tanking. After World Series title runs first by the perennial cellar-dwelling Chicago Cubs and then the Houston Astros, tanking has become a popular way to rebuild. Instead of accepting mediocre play that holds little chance of pots-season glory, a tanking team will trade away high-priced veteran players for unproven prospects and, to be blunt, stink for season after season, with small payrolls and a series of 100-loss seasons. Such teams do not reduce the price of tickets or ballpark food, though what they are selling has lost much of its value. The practice alienates fans and enriches tanking owners. Players hate it, because in any season at least four or five teams have taken themselves out of the market for the best free agents.

The new, contentiously-negotiated agreement between the players and the teams was supposed to address tanking, which can only be effectively addressed by a mandatory minimum payroll rule. When ethics fail, law or rules have to step in. Baseball teams are supposed to serve their communities, but the contagion of elevating profit and single-goal success over integrity and concern for stake-holders has taken hold of baseball’s culture. Days after the owners ended the lock-out to allow the season to begin, two franchises with grand traditions of fielding exiting teams held fire sales, slashing their budgets and signaling that they were joining the tankers: the Oakland A’s and the Cincinnati Reds. Good job, everybody!

In Cincinnati, fans and sportswriters were vocal in expressing their anger, so last week the team president, Phil Castellini, told them to stuff it, saying in part,

Well, where are you going to go? Let’s start there. I mean, sell the team to who? That’s the other thing — you want to have this debate? If you want to look at what would you do with this team to have it be more profitable, make more money, compete more in the current economic system that this game exists? It would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else. And so be careful what you ask for…I think we’re doing the best we can do with the resources that we have. We’re no more pleased with the results than the fans. I’m not sitting here saying anybody should be happy. I’m not polishing trophies in the office right now, and that’s what we’re here to do. 

His rant did not go over well.

Later the same day, after the team’s PR director had grabbed him by the throat and screamed, “What the hell’s’ the matter with you?” the Reds CEO issued a pro forma apology:

I apologize to Reds fans and regret the comments that I made earlier today,” he said. “We love this city, we love this team and we love our fans. I understand how our fans feel and I am sorry.

Right.