U.S. Society

The Triumph of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Ronaiah TuiasosopoIs, getting what he wants.

Ronaiah TuiasosopoIs, getting what he wants.

Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, the silly, sick man who hoaxed his alleged friend, Notre Dame star Matti Te’o, into a public humiliation that will shadow the rest of his life, has everything he wants now. “Dr. Phil” is featuring him on his show with a long interview—a match made in the stars, since Phil achieved his fame as a fake doctor, and Ronaiah his as a fake girlfriend to the most gullible college athlete in captivity. More interviews for the hoaxer will follow, with a book and movie deal near certainties. He behaved abominably, and now the American celebrity machine will reward him for it. I predict he’ll travel the same road as other bottom-feeders who have parlayed a lack of principles into fame, however brief.  Joey Buttafuoco. Jessica Hahn. Octomom Nadja Suleman.”Tanning Mom”Patricia Krentcil. Levi Johnston. They all were boosted to semi-star status by being slimy, foolish, or both, and Tuiasosopo fits right in. Continue reading →

Mutual Destruction At Applebee’s: An Uncharitable Pastor and a Vengeful Waitress Do Each Other In

/ Jack Marshall / 353 Comments

1aloisreceipt

The Combatants!

  • Alois Bell, a pastor at Truth in the World Deliverance Ministries Church. Uncharitable, vengeful, arrogant and cheap, she complained about an autotip of 18% added to her Applebee’s check that was triggered by the size of her group. The bill was small, but the group was large. Crossing out the tip amount and replacing it with nada, she scrawled, insufferably, on the bill, “I give 10% to God, why do you get 18?”, thus stiffing the waiter whom the party later said had rendered impeccable service. She also scrawled “pastor” by the bill amount, thus presuming a clergy discount that didn’t (and shouldn’t) exist. After a waitress colleague of the un-tipped waiter posted the bill on Reddit to inspire some well-earned web-shaming, Bell complained to Applebee’s management, successfully getting the waitress fired.

Verdict: Contemptible jerk. She abused her position to claim a discount that she wasn’t entitled to, and punished an innocent server by withholding a fair tip. [This may not be so; see UPDATE at the end] Then she set out to take vengeance on the young woman for exposing her despicable conduct. So much for showing the other cheek. Bell’s conduct was as far from the teachings of Christianity as one can get, at least at an Applebee’s.

  • Chelsea Welch, the now ex-Applebee’s waitress. She posted the obnoxious bill and scrawled comments online, whereupon the pastor was identified by her handwriting, and perhaps her jerkish personality.

Verdict:  Unethical conduct, though provoked. Her colleague was wronged by the cheap pastor, but she forgot she wasn’t free to do as an Applebee’s employee what she might choose to do as a private individual. Applebee’s can’t have its customers worrying about whether real or perceived slights to restaurant staff will land them on various websites to be mocked and vilified. Her actions were irresponsible and a violation of her duties as an employee, even though her anger was certainly justified. And her method of retribution was excessive and unethical too. Continue reading →

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Today is Jackie Robinson’s birthday. He would be 94, but he lived only slightly more than half that long. He was one of our greatest ethics heroes, and I’d like to honor Mr. Robinson by reblogging a post from April 16 of last year.

Jack Marshall's avatarEthics Alarms

Yesterday, the media, history buffs and Kate Winslet fans were obsessed with remembering the Titanic, sometimes even with proper reverence to the 1500 men, women and children who lost their lives in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912. A strong argument could be made, however, that the most significant event that occurred on April 15 took place in 1947, in Brooklyn, New York. For that was the day that Jackie Robinson ran out to his position at first base as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and became the first African- American to play baseball in the Major Leagues since the earliest years of the game.

With that act, and his epic heroism for the rest of the season, Robinson changed baseball, sports, American society and history. It was a cultural watershed in a nation that had been virtually apartheid since the end of the Civil War, a catalytic…

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No, Mark Mattioli is Not An Ethics Hero

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments
Dexter, for example, is a very civil serial killer.

Dexter, for example, is a very civil serial killer.

I’ve been getting emails from people nominating Mark Mattioli as an Ethics Hero for his comments before a subcommittee of the Connecticut Legislature considering gun control measures following the Newtown, Connecticut school attack. It’s easy to see why they think that is appropriate, since his emotional remarks—he lost his son in the tragedy—sounded ethical themes throughout.  Insisting that more laws were not the solution, Mattioli decried violence on television, and poor parenting. “We need civility across our nation,” he said, and for “common decency to prevail.” He called for accountability, and personal responsibility.  All nice sentiments; he got a standing ovation from the legislators.

Ethics, however, is not some kind of magic wand that fixes all problems, and how Mattioli thinks it will eliminate crazy teens with semi-automatic weapons is beyond me. We heard the “incivility kills” argument once before, you will recall, when the Left and the media went on a “blame Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin for Jared Loughner”  rampage of their own.  Mattioli’s lament had all the practical relevance to addressing gun violence as Rodney King’s “Can’t we all get along?” and John Lennon’s “Give peace a chance”…which is to say, none. Continue reading →

The Lovers’ Complimentary Meal: An Ethics Tale

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
The couple

The couple

On his blog, Virgin Airlines tycoon Richard Branson told a story, reputedly true, that show vividly how kindness and ethical conduct can have far-reaching consequences.

Three years ago, a young couple was dining  in a Boston restaurant about . Their affection for each other was obvious, and it attracted the attention of a friend of Branson’s named Pankaj Shah. He was eating at a nearby table, and is apparently a lovable eccentric who likes to anonymously pay for the meals of strangers when he is dining out. He had asked the restaurant staff that night to let him pay the bill for “the couple who looked most in love.”

It was done. The couple learned that a mysterious benefactor had paid for their romantic rendezvous, and Shah received his usual pleasure from the random act of kindness.

Three years later, Pankaj Shah returned to have dinner at the same establishment.  The manager recognized and approached him, and said that he night be interested to learn that the same couple he had treated  three years before were also in the restaurant. Not only that: the manager revealed that
the “dude just got down on one knee and proposed.” He asked the aspiring groom why they he had chosen his restaurant for this life-changing ritual, and was told  that three years ago, at the same table, some stranger had paid for their meal right out of the blue. The gesture made the couple ponder on the importance of kindness, selflessness and love, and had talked about the incident many times since. He said both he and his girlfriend had been inspired to be better, more caring, ethical people as a result, and he felt that the place where this epiphanal event occurred would be the perfect place to propose.

The manager introduced them to Shah, who attended their wedding.

It seems that the couple has preferred to stay anonymous, and hell, I don’t know if the story is really true. That couple in the photo on Branson’s blog may be friends of Manti Te’o, if you get my meaning.

But I hope it is true. It should be.

It could be.

And its lesson is true, regardless.

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Pointer and Source: Cafe Mom

Facts and Graphic: Richard Branson

Facts: Richard Branson

How Fake Statistics Become “True”: A Case Study From The Newtown Massacre Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
As predicted, this ethics train wreck keep getting bigger.

As predicted, this ethics train wreck keep getting bigger.

There was a lot to wince about in Diane Sawyer’s “exclusive” interview two weeks ago with former Congresswoman Gabriella Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly. The Arizona couple announced their intention to launch a non-profit organization dedicated to more effective anti-gun violence measures, concentrating, predictably, on the prominent features of the maniac’s rampage in Tucson that left Giffords with brain injuries that will impede her for a lifetime. Nothing to wince about regarding the effort, but Giffords’ diminished state—she can speak in only short burst of words, cannot see well out of one eye, and has difficulty walking—is tragic. It reminded me how unconscionable it was that she held her post in the Congress for more than a year when it should have been clear that her disabilities precluded her functioning as a Representative. The disturbing feeling also arose that Giffords, in her current pathetic condition, is now like the children President Obama used as window dressing for his gun-related Executive Orders announcement at the White House, an exploited figure of sentiment and public manipulation being used in the anti-gun wars. Her name was listed as the author of a first person op-ed in USA Today that contained sentences and perhaps thoughts that she cannot possibly compose. Diane Sawyer told us that she will be dragged into Congressional offices with her husband to seek support from her former colleagues, who will be forced, as Sawyer said, to say no “to her face.”

The most substantive wince, however, came from a statement of “fact” by Mark Kelly, who told Sawyer this:

“You know, how do we get to the point where 85 percent of the children in the world that are killed with guns are killed in the United States. That is a sobering statistic.”

Sobering, and obviously nonsense. Continue reading →

Playwright David Mamet on Abuse of Power, Government and Gun Control

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Mamet

I have wrestled over whether to feature Pulitzer Prize winning playwright ( author, screenwriter, director, teacher) David Mamet’s recent essay in what is left of Newsweek on Ethics Alarms. The essay is at least 50% political/ideological, maybe more, and I try, often unsuccessfully, to keep the ethical analysis of political events as separate as possible from the political analysis—some would argue not hard enough, and not well. I also don’t agree with a lot of his piece, but that’s the least important factor. I decided that the essay, titled “Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm” belongs here because I know, from his plays, his screenplays and his essays, that Mamet is driven by a pursuit of ethical thought and action, and it is a theme underlying most of what he writes. He is also a vivid and expressive writer, one of the very best alive, in my view. Mamet is blisteringly smart as well. That doesn’t mean he is always right—he is, after all, a conservative, and in the prevailing view that puts his presumed  brain capacity somewhere between Hulk Hogan and Todd Akin—but he is always thoughtful, and to those few with open minds and good reading comprehension, potentially persuasive and necessarily enlightening.

Mamet’s essay is relevant to current events, of course, due to the sweeping gun ownership restrictions being proposed by Sen. Diane Feinstein, and the hysterical over-reaction to the Newtown tragedy, fanned by a shameless media and demagogues of all stripes that cleared the way for it. I’ve written plenty about all that already, alas not as well as David Mamet could. I am less alarmed at the prospect of Feinstein’s effort succeeding (because it won’t) than I am at what its sudden leap to the fore of Obama Administration priorities indicates beyond question: these people really have no intention of taking any serious, responsible and courageous efforts to address the debt and deficit. To only slightly paraphrase the excitable Matt Hooper in “Jaws” speaking to the pusillanimous mayor of Amity,  I think that I am now familiar with the fact that our current leaders  are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites us on the ass. This is unconscionable, incompetent, weak and despicable…but I digress.

The money quote in Mamet’s essay, I think, is this:

“Disarmament rests on the assumption that all people are good, and, basically, want the same things. But if all people were basically good, why would we, increasingly, pass more and more elaborate laws? The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.”

What ever your thoughts are regarding gun control policies, you should read Mr. Mamet’s essay, and you can, here.

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Graphic: All Music

“What Difference Does It Make?”: The Footlong Sandwich Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

mqdefault

Perhaps this week will go down in history as the Week of “What Difference Does It Make?”.

What difference does it make whether or not the Obama Administration misled the public for days about whether the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous demonstration over a video or a planned terrorist attack, indignantly asks Hillary Clinton. What matters is that four Americans died!

What difference does it make that Lance Armstrong doped to win his titles and lied about it for 15 years, poignantly ask Armstrong’s defenders. What matters is that his foundation helped cancer sufferers!

What difference does it make whether or not the version of Beyonce singing “The Star Spangled Banner” Americans heard during the Inauguration was live or studio-recorded, asks comic-turned radio pundit Dennis Miller. She’s hot! (By the way, my conversation about this issue with Bill O’Reilly before Miller issued his verdict—and referred to me as “Daddy Warbucks”—can be viewed here.)

Now we have a much ridiculed scandal over the fact that Subway’s vaunted “footlong” subs are in fact only around 11 inches, which has spawned viral videos and at least two lawsuits. Ethically-challenged Chicago Trib blogger Eric Zorn carries the flag for this latest army of “What difference does it make?” lie enablers. His argument, predictably, comes down to a cross between the Stephen Colbert-Jon Stewart  market-tested “Let’s exaggerate this real issue and make it look ridiculous” formula and the Golden Rationalization, “Everybody Does It”… Continue reading →

Are Gentlemen Sexist?

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments
"Oh, Tommy---you're such a pig!"

“Oh, Tommy—you’re such a pig!”

On the flip side of the hit post about Emily Heist Moss’s open letter to her harassers, we have the B-side (I know this metaphor marks me as a fogy ): my objections to a New York Times essay by Lynn Messna, who declares that she doesn’t want her son to be gentleman, because gentlemen are sexist.

She writes:

“Start to complain about your preschooler adopting gentlemanly behavior and you quickly discover how out of step you are with the rest of the world. Almost everyone I mention it to thinks it’s lovely and sweet. What’s the harm in teaching little boys to respect little girls?..But I don’t think it’s an overreaction to resent the fact that your son is being given an extra set of rules to follow simply because he’s a boy. His behavior, already constrained by a series of societal norms, now has additional restrictions. Worse than that, he’s actively being taught to treat girls differently,  something I thought we all agreed to stop doing, like, three decades ago. Continue reading →

The President Locks Up The “Lie of the Year” Early

/ Jack Marshall / 48 Comments

forked tongeThere has been controversy lately over the “lie of the year” designation. PolitiFact, true to its partisan-but-nobody-will admit-it soul, picked a Mitt Romney campaign accusation as its “lie of the year,” even though it wasn’t nearly the worst lie of the campaign, or even Romany’s worst. In fact, it was literally true. Romney had issued an ad saying that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China—that was supposedly the lie—and in fact all Jeeps will now be made in China. Oh, well, election over, Romney lost, what’s done is done, mission accomplished, right, Politifact?

Thus it is mighty kind of President Obama to wrap up the lie of the year competition early and decisively in a national forum where one least belongs, his Inaugural Address. I’m sure PolitiFact won’t see it that way, but I’m engraving his name on the Ethics Alarms trophy right now.

The lie:

“The commitments we make to each other–-through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security–these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” Continue reading →