U.S. Society

The Ethics Verdict on the Chris Hayes Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

To be fair, while Chris Hayes is ill-informed, ungrateful and arrogant, at least he’s incoherent.

As anyone could have predicted, MSNBC host Chris Hayes had to issue an apology after his fatuous and inarticulate comments about Memorial Day. If you were lucky enough to miss them, here they are:

“I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Why do I feel so [uncomfortable] about the word “hero”? I feel comfortable — uncomfortable — about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.’

With so many interesting, thoughtful, perceptive and provocative statements being written and uttered every day that vanish forever, never to be repeated or published, it is cruel irony to confer immortality on cretinism like that, but I digress. My commentary on Hayes’ statement is here. His apology was pre-ordained, because he insulted so many, so deeply, so pointlessly and so arrogantly, at the worst possible time, that a national outcry was guaranteed, and the eventual directive, “Apologize or pack!” from his MSNBC overlords was a forgone conclusion.

As forced apologies go, how did Hayes’ rank? Continue reading →

Is It Fair For A Business To Discriminate Against the Homely?

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

 

Take your pick!

The EEOC is investigating a popular Boston area coffee shop chain, alleging that it discriminates in favor of attractive young waitresses to the detriment of older or more homely waitresses. The management of Marylou’s disputes the accusation, arguing that its hiring pool is disproportionately young and attractive.

I don’t want to get into the actual guilt or innocence here, but rather muse about the ethical issue. Should there be laws preventing employers from using attractiveness as a criteria in hiring, if it is relevant to the success of the business, or even if it is not? If a coffee shop owner’s patrons are overwhelmingly male, and the owner believes that having waitresses who look good in a starched uniform makes the customers happy and more likely to spend their money, why should the law prevent that? Is there anything really wrong with the conduct? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Michael Fumento

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“As a conservative, I disagree with the political opinions of liberals. But to me, a verbal assault indicates insecurity and weakness on the part of the assaulter, as in “Is that the best they can do?” This playground bullying – the name-calling, the screaming, the horrible accusations – all are intended to stifle debate, the very lifeblood of a democracy.”

—-Michael Fumento, writing powerfully in Salon about the increasingly viscous rhetoric of too many conservatives, and how it has left him estranged from his own political philosophy.

He writes,

“Civility and respect for order – nay, demand for order – have always been tenets of conservatism. The most prominent work of history’s most prominent conservative, Edmund Burke, was a reaction to the anger and hatred that swept France during the revolution. It would eventually rip the country apart and plunge all of Europe into decades of war. Such is the rotted fruit of mass-produced hate and rage. Burke, not incidentally, was a true Tea Party supporter, risking everything as a member of Parliament to support the rebellion in the United States.

“All of today’s right-wing darlings got there by mastering what Burke feared most: screaming “J’accuse! J’accuse!” Turning people against each other. Taking seeds of fear, anger and hatred and planting them to grow a new crop.”

You can read his whole essay, “My break with the extreme right” in Salon, here.

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Pointer: Volokh Conspiracy

Source: Salon

Graphic: Sleepless heretic

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Memorial Day Ethics Dunce: MSNBC Host Chris Hayes

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

My hero.

Yesterday, the day before Memorial Day, MSNBC host Chris Hayes said this:

“Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow.  Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke , who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible].  Um, I, I, ah, back sorry, um, I think it’s interesting because I think it is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words “heroes.” Um, and, ah, ah, why do I feel so comfortable  about the word “hero”?  I feel comfortable, ah, uncomfortable, about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. Um, and, I don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine, tremendous heroism: hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers and things like that. But it seems to me that we marshal this word in a way that is problematic. But maybe I’m wrong about that.”

   Well, yes, Chris, you’re wrong about quite a lot.

Chris was wrong, for example—as well as disingenuous—to say that “you don’t want to obviously desecrate or disrespect memory of anyone that’s fallen” and then come out with this insulting and fatuous gibberish that disrespect the memories of the fallen. And to do it on the very weekend when millions of families across the nation are honoring their fallen, or, in the case of my family, a father who braved combat in World War II, was wounded, decorated, and regarded his service in defense of his country the greatest achievement of his life.

Hayes was also wrong, as well as incompetent and unprofessional, to utter such a half-baked and incoherent opinion without having the respect to think it through carefully, express it articulately, and in general without meeting his obligations as a broadcaster to be worth listening to. If a commentator is going to make a statement that he knows will offend and upset grieving families, he should at least know what he wants to say and have the skill and courage to say it clearly. As it was, all he managed to do was to make a gratuitous slur against patriots who put their lives at risk because their nation asked them to, instead of taking morally craven positions from the security of a TV studio that only exists because of the sacrifices such heroes made. Continue reading →

Is Elizabeth Warren A Pit Bull?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

You never know.

Lucky for her, she doesn’t look like one. Then again, she doesn’t look like a Cherokee, either…

After all, it is even easier to be designated a “pit bull” than a Cherokee, believe it or not. As a result, hysterics in the public and on the Maryland Court of Appeals have decided it is prudent to engage in the kind of bias and fear-driven racism regarding pets that would be condemned as brutally unjust if applied to humans.

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that “pit bulls” are “inherently dangerous” and will be subject to higher levels of liability, meaning, among other things, that there will be no “one bite rule” for these dogs, the usual trigger for determining whether a canine is a risk to humans, and that landlords will be forcing tenants to either get rid of their “inherently dangerous” dogs or move out. The ruling is  the result of bad reasoning, bad information, bad statistics and bad law, not to mention bias. What kind of legal standard depends on a term that has no definition and no way to determine what fits it? Yet that is what the Maryland pit bull ruling does.

As I have noted here in other posts, “pit bull” is a generic term applied to several bull dog and terrier-mix breeds, and mistakenly to up to 25 other breeds as well. This renders the deceptively used statistics of anti-pit bull zealot organizations like Dogs Bite.org completely worthless. I would say completely useless, but there are useful…for getting  perfectly gentle and trustworthy dogs killed. In its compiled statistics of deadly dog attacks, the organization states that “pit bull-type dogs” are responsible for 59% of fatal attacks on humans, contrasted with specific breeds like Rottweilers. The category of “pit bull-type dogs,” however, includes at least five distinct breeds that are often called “pit bulls”—  the American Bulldog, American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Bull Terrier, and the Mini Bull Terrier. Anti-pit bull breed-specific legislation also includes absolutely non-pit bull breeds in its definition of “pit bull types” in many jurisdictions, breeds like the Boxer, Bull Mastiff, Boston terrier and French Bulldog, the last two especially deadly threats to lick you into submission. Such laws are, in truth, dog legislation created by people who know nothing about dogs, but who are perfectly willing to take responsible people’s loving pets away and kill them if it will mollify some phobic voters.

Then there are the dog breeds that may be called “pit bulls” by dog attack victims who can barely tell a dachshund from a Great Dane. Among those “pit bull-type breeds” are the Alpha Blue Blood Bull Dog, American Bulldog,  American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Banter Bull Dogge, Black Mouth Cur, Boston Terrier, Boxer, Bull Terrier, Bulldog, Bull Mastiff, Cane Corso, Dogo Aregentino,  Dogo Canario, Dogue De Bordeaux, English Bulldog, English Mastiff, Fila Brasileiro, Fila Mastiff, French Bulldog, Italian Mastiff, Mastiff, Mini Bull Terrier, Neapolitan Mastiff. Old English Bull Dogge, Patterdale Terrier,  Presa de Canario, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Spanish Mastiff, and the Valley Bulldog.

So what does the predominance of “pit bull type dogs” in the dog bite statistics tell us? It tells us that a lot of fearful, ignorant people—and judges— don’t know what pit bulls are, but they are afraid of them and want to wipe them off the face of the earth anyway.

For the record, there is only one true pit bull, the American Pit Bull Terrier, which looks like this:

Continue reading →

The Fojol Bros., Innocent of Racism, Political Correctness Victims

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In its advanced stages, 21st century political correctness becomes a kind of delusional illness, causing sufferers to interpret  benign, harmless and even socially healthy conduct as offensive and sinister. An outbreak of this variety of political correctness is in full flower in Washington, D.C., where more than the usual number of officious defenders of that which needs no defending are trying to gin up public outrage against a creative, fun, and successful small business enterprise, Fojol Bros.

The company sends food trucks around downtown D.C. and serves strangely named hybrid ethnic dishes inspired by Indian, Ethiopian and Thai cuisines. The Fojol employees who hand out the delicious fare wear turbans, robes and fake mustaches,  claim to hail from  “Merlindia” and “Benethiopia,” and go by names like “Kipoto.” This was once called “theater” and “fantasy,” no more offensive than Disney employees in Frontierland dressing in cowboy and saloon girl garb and calling themselves “Tex” and “Lilly.” Now some are calling it “offensive,” because too many people have forgotten what offensive is. Continue reading →

Condemning Wanetta Gibson

/ Jack Marshall / 179 Comments

There’s no treatment harsh enough for Wanetta Gibson

Hardly a week goes by when I don’t receive a nasty and haughty message attacking me for harshly judging the unethical conduct of another. “Who are you to judge?,” the critic will write. “Are you so perfect? Have you never made a mistake? How can you know what was going on in that person’s life, or how bad she (or he) feels? What right do you have to find fault with someone else?” My answer, if I bother to send one, seldom varies. I tell these correspondents that all of us have a duty to judge others so that we are qualified to judge ourselves, to make certain that societal standards are carefully considered and vetted, and to identify conduct that we believe is destructive to society. Refusing to judge others makes it easy for the predators around us to take advantage of our ethical laziness, and people get hurt as a result.

And in those dark moments late at night, after a difficult day when my confidence is at low ebb, as I begin to doubt the purpose of my life and question my own values, I think about people like the horrible Wanetta Gibson.

From the New York Daily News: Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Lubricant 2: Ken at Popehat on Integrity and Free Speech

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Today has been designated “Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day,” and unlike the last declared day of mass web defiance, “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”, which was really “Everybody Go Out of Their Way To Insult All Muslims Because Some of Them Are Violent Fanatics And Comedy Central Didn’t Have The Guts To Stand Up To Them Day”, I support this one fully. Kimberlin is a violent far Left activist, the founder of the group Velvet Revolution, and a convicted terrorist who, in 1978, set off eight bombs in Speedway, Indiana, earning him the title of “The Speedway Bomber.”

When bloggers like Aaron Worthing and Robert Stacy McCain in Maryland wrote about  Kimberlin’s past, and his current involvement with active progressive groups, he mounted a campaign to silence and harass them, filing law suits and engaging in other tactics far more menacing, if not as expensive. You can read Worthing’s harrowing tale of Kimberlin’s campaign against him here.

The web’s most tireless crusader against free speech suppression by litigation, threats and harassment is, of course, the Ethics Alarms 2012 Blogger of the Year, Ken at Popehat. He has already blogged about Kimberlin, who fits nicely with the other Internet Furies and speech bullies that he has exposed, like Crystal Cox. But his theme this week was broader, and it is one that constantly troubles me. Taking off from blogger Michelle Malkin’s post declaring that there should be solidarity for targeted conservative bloggers, Ken protests that since free expression is the objective, the ideology of the bloggers being bullied shouldn’t matter. He writes: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Safeway…Ethics Hero: Ryan Young. Justice? Waiting…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

“You’re suspended, Kent.”

I’ve asked many times on Ethics Alarms why so many Americans stand by, inert and passive, when a fellow citizen is in peril.  Maybe the stunning ethics blindness exhibited by Safeway in a recent incident is part of the answer.

Ryan Young, who works in the meat department of a Safeway grocery store in Del Rey Oaks, California, was on the job when he witnessed a man beating a pregnant woman, apparently his girlfriend. Young told the man to stop, but he continued with his assault, shoving and kicking the her.  Young jumped over his counter, pushed him away, and ended the attack.

His reward was to be suspended without pay. Safeway has a policy that directs employees to summon security personnel and not to personally intervene when they see a crime or fight in progress. Even though police confirm that Young may have saved the woman and her unborn child from serious injury, the company is insisting that Young’s conduct warranted discipline, not praise. Continue reading →

So Wrong It Defies Belief: The Green Bay Police Heist

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Maybe the public and the media are finally waking up to the astoundingly un-American abuse of power that are the  civil forfeiture laws,  which allow property and cash to be seized as helping to facilitate a crime, and later are divvied up between the police and the state. There are some promising signs. Libertarians like Radley Balko have been trying to ring the ethics alarms on this horrendous example of government misconduct for years, and the Institute for Justice continues its lonely battle to defeat the most egregious offenses, but George Will just used the trumpet of his weekly column to expose the Caswell family motel scandal, which Ethics Alarms discussed in February here. Now comes a tale of civil forfeiture from Wisconsin that is so brazen that it defies belief, and also compels the following question:

How can this happen  in America? Also this one: If the government will use its power to steal money and property from law-abiding citizens, and no effort is made on the part of national government leaders to do anything to stop it, how can at least 50% of the American public continue to advocate giving more power and money to a government that obviously cannot be trusted with either?

The first question is frightening in its implications.

The second is a mystery, on par with “What happened to the Mary Celeste?” Continue reading →