U.S. Society

And While We’re On The Subject Of Adults Exploiting And Warping Toddlers, Let’s Talk “Toddlers & Tiaras”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Wait! I’ve got an even better idea! How about having toddlers in fake boobs and butt pads FIGHTING EACH OTHER!!!

Bill Verst has asked a Kentucky court to grant him sole custody of his daughter Maddy Verst, now 6, who gained infamy on TLC’s vile reality show“Toddlers & Tiaras” when her mother had her appear in a kiddie beauty pageant dressed as Dolly Parton, with a padded bra and butt pads.

Good. I hope he wins.

This is nothing short of child abuse, and represents exploitation of the very young for an adult’s own (sick) gratification. It may not be quite as despicable as having toddlers duke it out at day care, but it’s close. A court-appointed psychologist agreed with Verst that his estranged wife’s sexualization of their daughter showed she was an unfit parent, and recommended that a judge make Verst the girl’s sole custodial parent.

I’m sure it will not surprise you to hear that Maddy’s Mom, Lindsey Jackson, doesn’t get it. She told reporters, Continue reading →

Toddler Fight Club: The Monsters Among Us

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

“And in this corner, standing 20 inches and weighing 18 pounds…”

There was a joke in an old “I Love Lucy” episode in which Lucy misunderstood a reference to “three-year-olds” in a story about horse racing, and announced in horror, “They’re racing little girls at Churchill Downs!”

Well, this is worse, and it’s no joke.

From CBS in Philadelphia:

“According to Dover Police, three employees from the Hands of Our Future Daycare in Delaware were arrested after a cell phone video showed employees watching and encouraging two 3-year-olds fight each other. Tiana Harris, 19, Lisa Parker, 47, and Estefania Myers, 21, were charged with Assault, Endangering the Welfare of a Child, Reckless Endangering and Conspiracy for the incident, which occurred in March of 2012 and was captured on cell phone video. In the video, police say one child can be heard crying and yelling, ‘He’s pinching me,’ while a daycare worker responds, ‘No pinching, only punching.’” Continue reading →

The Great Scrabble Cheating Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

And you get a 50 point bonus for CHEATERS…

Over at Slate, Stefan Fatsis, one of the competitors at the recently completed National Scrabble Championship—Olympics? What Olympics?— gives background and details to the cheating scandal that put the Championship front and center in the blogosphere  and cable news fare, if only for a little while.

Fatsis has two complaints about the coverage: first, that the cheater (he palmed extra blank tiles to help him make high scoring words) was a kid, not an adult, and thus the media abuse heaped on him for his transgression was unduly harsh and cruel, and second, that…

“Two of the greatest players of all time, joined in one of the most remarkable finishes Scrabble has ever seen, and all anyone wants to talk about is a kid who made a terrible mistake.”

He’s dead wrong on both points. Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Officials of the Month: The California State Legislature

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

California knows what’s best for your maybe-gay child, not your child’s therapist. Resistance is futile…

California’s legislature is poised to pass legislation that would ban state doctors, counselors and therapists from offering sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) treatment for minors, and parents from seeking them. The rationale is a tangle of research, opinion, politics, ideology and political correctness that makes distinguishing legitimate reasons from illegitimate ones impossible. The end result, however, is a law that tells counselors and therapists what is appropriate treatment regardless of their expertise and the wishes of parents, because, of course, the typically moderately IQ-endowed legislators know best, or rather the gay rights advocates who dictate to them do. Either way, this is a serious intrusion of government into the counseling profession, free speech, parental authority and individual freedom, and any competent elected official would see that the second such an over-reaching and presumptuous bill reached his or her desk. Continue reading →

The Melky Cabrera Affair: When Fair Isn’t Fair

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A useful tool, when the government decides that what you did should have been illegal.

Let me bring the non-baseball fans among you up to date, reminding you that while the immediate subject is baseball, the ethical implications of this story are far broader.

Melky Cabrera, until last season, was a standard issue major league outfielder of substantial but undistinguished abilities and accomplishments. Last season, playing with the frequent destination of such players, the Kansas City Royals, Cabrera suddenly and unexpectedly emerged as a star, surpassing all expectations and his previous levels of performance. The Royals traded him, like an over-priced stock, to the San Francisco Giants in the off-season, getting a package of players in exchange for one they probably thought was as valuable as he would ever be.

This season, however, he was even better.  Not only was he selected to the All-Star team for the first time, he was also on the way to leading the Giants to the play-offs and possibly a World Series appearance. Then, this week, a drug test came in positive for testosterone: steroids. By MLB’s rules, Cabrera was suspended from play for 50 games, effectively eliminating him from the Giants season and post season and, not incidentally, marking him as a cheat and an idiot.

And maybe a batting champion. When he was suspended, Cabrera was second in the National League in batting average, and had already amassed the necessary at bats to qualify for the championship (actually, there are some complications with that, but for all intents and purposes, that’s true). He’s only 13 points behind the leader, and averages tend to come down as the season drags on. Not only is Cabrera’s high average a likely product of pharmaceutically-aided cheating, but his suspension for getting caught at cheating may actually help him win the prestigious batting crown, by freezing his average at a lofty .346. Is this fair? Certainly not. Continue reading →

How To Raise An Irresponsible and Dangerous Child

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

After a 14-year old Pennsylvania lad stole Jeep Grand Cherokee and led police on a high-speed chase that ended with him clipping another vehicle and causing a crash that closed the highway and left the boy in a coma, his mother told reporters that her son wasn’t the only one to blame for the accident.

“I’m not downplaying my son’s role in taking something that didn’t belong to him, but I am saying they actually left their keys in the car and the vehicle could have been taken by anybody,” she said. The mother, who has not been identified in press accounts because, I guess, her son is a minor and some people think that teenagers who steal cars, defy police and endanger lives should have their identities shielded (not me!), also found fault with the Jeep’s owners boyfriend, who followed the vehicle after the kid started driving it away: Continue reading →

Movie Ethics: The Disruptive Child, the Weenies, and The Duty To Confront

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Over at Consumerist there is a ridiculous post about a woman, “Kelly,” whose recent movie-going experience was ruined by a couple of boorish and irresponsible parents who brought their pre-schooler to the movie and did nothing while he annoyed the woman, talking to her, nudging her, and generally being a nuisance. You can read her account of the whole fiasco here.

Apparently it never occurred to the woman, or her equally passive and impotent brother, who has apparently been writing indignant e-mails to Regal Theaters after the incident, to tell the couple that 1) they have no right to let their child interfere with other audience members trying to enjoy the movie, 2) they either need to control their child or leave, and 3) if they don’t, then she will go make such a fuss in the lobby with the staff that they will be asked to leave. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Mitt Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

Might as well start the week by sticking my head in a woodchipper…

“Huh? Who’s THAT guy?”

GOP presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s surprise choice of Congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate supplied the first glimmer of hope I’ve had in several years regarding the nation’s political process and its prospects for addressing the long-term financial threats to America’s future. This is not because I regard myself as a Paul Ryan fan, except to the extent that he is obviously intelligent, serious, and qualified to hold office, thus marking him as superior to at least 75% of his colleagues. Nor is it because I believe the choice bolsters Romney’s chances of defeating President Obama: it might actually be a handicap, and very few VP choices make a decisive difference in Presidential elections—arguably LBJ in 1960, and that’s about it. Nor is it because I would have counseled Romney to pick Ryan had I been his advisor in the matter.

The New York Times headline yesterday made the case: Romney’s Choice Is Ryan, Pushing Fiscal Issues To The Forefront. That choice  makes Romney a deserving Ethics Hero because it makes an unequivocal statement about the priorities in the election and the years ahead: close the deficit, reduce the debt, and take the United States off the road to Greece and inevitable insolvency. Ryan is the GOP herald of this cause, and it tells us something about how willfully irresponsible the public and the media have been regarding the debt crisis that most Americans have no idea who Ryan is. All conventional logic and wisdom holds that the issue is a ballot box loser, since Americans are simultaneously unwilling to sacrifice any part of the exploding entitlements the nation can’t afford and hostile to the idea of paying sufficient taxes to keep the country running. Well, too bad. This neglected crisis has to be explained, talked about and debated honestly, and with Ryan on the GOP ticket, it will be. Continue reading →

Are “Freak Shows” Unethical? Because They Are Back.

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Abigail and Brittany Hensel: Who’s exploiting who?

Circus and carnival sideshows were banned by law and ordinance over half a century ago. Silly me: I remember hearing about that as a child and assuming that it represented human progress, that civilized Americans had decided that it was degrading to both the “human oddities” displaying themselves to gawking onlookers and the gawking onlookers themselves, and that we were better than that. The ethical attitude toward people with deformities, strange maladies and unusual physical characteristics was compassion, acceptance, kindness, and treatment as equals, not voyeuristic ogling. It made sense at the time.

Of course, as a child I had yet to experience the full oppression of political correctness. The sideshows were banned because the people who had no interest in them felt that they could dictate conduct to the people who did, and that it was also somehow virtuous to forbid the human exhibits from making a living—for their own good, of course. It is certainly time to repeal those bans, which were of dubious constitutionality anyway, since the freak shows that were deemed unhealthy and degrading on the carnival circuit are now openly thriving on television, making more money and being seen by more Americans than P.T. Barnum could have imagined in his wildest dreams. The original question remains, however: Are they ethical? Continue reading →

Integrity Failure: Rubio and Obama Show How Unserious Our Leaders Are About Taxes

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“The Hopeless Dawn” by Frank Bramley (1888) This is what this story makes me feel like….

If you pay attention, and most American won’t, the evidence that our elected leaders are not serious about being consistent, responsible, or even governing competently is delivered every day in packages large and small. The most recent depressing example was the bi-partisan tag-team of Sen. Marco Rubio and President Obama backing tax-exempt status for medal-winners on the U.S. Olympic team.

Sen. Rubio concocted his Olympic Tax Elimination Act on the theory that “athletes representing our nation overseas in the Olympics shouldn’t have to worry about an extra tax bill waiting for them back at home.” This is spin and nonsense. There is no “extra tax bill,” any more than there is an “extra tax bill” when your boss gives you a bonus for job well done. It’s just a regular, old-fashioned,  tax bill for income, that’s all. Medal-winning Olympic athletes get bonus payments from the U.S. Olympic team. Is their income—that’s what it is, just income—-somehow less fair to tax than your income? No, of course not. Rubio’s  “representing our nation overseas” justification for special treatment is naked and offensive pandering. How about people who represent our nation here, in the United States? They don’t get to travel to London, all expenses paid, like the pampered athletes—why are they less deserving of a tax break? Or why isn’t Rubio arguing, then, that all federal employees who work abroad shouldn’t be taxed? What is his logic, exactly? Continue reading →