U.S. Society

Combating “Linsanity”—The Ethics Variety.

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Look out ! It’s a trap!

In today’s Washington Post letters section, Fred Shwaeary writes:

“In the April 28 Sports article “Harper called up to majors,” Adam Kilgore wrote, “General Manager Mike Rizzo made his bones in player development, and he crafted a careful scheme for [outfielder Bryce] Harper’s ascension.” “Made his bones”? Not the old mob reference again! This is a phrase that should never be used when writing about those of Italian descent — or anyone else, for that matter.”

Thanks, Fred! Now Mike knows he ought to be grievously offended,  Kilgore knows that he was derisively suggesting that Italian Americans are all Mafia types the rest of us know Kilgore is a bigot, and the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League can demand that 1) the Post ban the term, which I have been using now and then for years and never associated it with Italians at all, from its writers’ lexicon; 2) Kilgore issue an abject apology to save his job and 3) Kilgore be symbolically suspended for a slur he neither intended nor that anybody else other than Shwaeary, and perhaps Fredo Corleone, took as an insult. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Elizabeth Warren’s Native American Ancestry

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Remember that old Cher song, “1/32 Breed”?

If Scott Brown wins re-election as a Republican Senator from Massachusetts this fall, he will go on record as one of the luckiest political candidates since, well, Barack Obama. Brown won an upset victory in the special election in 2009 (any time a Republican wins in my home state, it’s an upset) in part because his inept Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, showed herself to be unforgivably ignorant on the one topic most state residents really care about—the Boston Red Sox. Now he has the latest contender for his job, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, on the ropes because of her own self-inflicted wound, Warren’s dubious claim of minority status as a Native American between 1986 and 1995.

Warren listed herself as part Native American in the Association of American Law Schools desk book, she says, in the hope of meeting others in her field with similar backgrounds. She did not, she insists, do so to gain any professional edge. Yet in 1992 she was hired to teach at Harvard, and when she became a permanent faculty member in 1995, Warren dropped the minority claim from her profile in the directory. Harvard, meanwhile, began counting Warren as a Native American in its diversity statistics, just as her previous employers had at the University of Texas and the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever her intent may have been, a former chair of the AALS confirms that minority listings in the organization’s directory were used in hiring decisions by members.“In the old days before the internet, you’d pull out the AALS directory and look up people. There are schools that if they were looking for a minority faculty member, would go to that list and might say, ‘I didn’t know Elizabeth Warren was a minority, ” George Mason University Law professor David Bernstein, a former chairman of the American Association of Law Schools, has told reporters. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: CNN Morning Anchor Carol Costello

/ Jack Marshall / 70 Comments

“Does this make sense in the real world? No. But this is the world of politics.”

—CNN’s Carol Costello, editorializing—as usual—while ridiculing a Republican—as usual. Her target was Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recently announced endorsement of  former rival Mitt Romney, now the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

The ethical values  that “make no sense” to Carol Costello might  fill the Pacific Ocean.

Does it make sense for competitors, once the competition is decided, to shake hands, reconcile, and behave professionally? Not in Costello’s world. Is it absurd, when two members of an organization have made their individual passionate pitches to supervisors  regarding the reasons why they, and not their rival, should receive a major promotion, for the losing employee to promise, and deliver, full support and cooperation to the winner of the job? To Costello, it is. Should loyalty to an organization and the goals of that organization trump the bitterness and animus of prior arguments and disputes, allowing former adversaries to work together? Costello’s answer is no. It makes no sense to her.

It makes no sense to Carol Costello because she has no comprehension of what professionalism is, why graciousness, mutual respect and compromise are critical to any organization’s ultimate success, or that mature, serious professionals do not regard competitive advocacy as personal affronts. It makes no sense to her because she is not professional, and cannot comprehend what ethical professional conduct is. Her statement that Bachmann’s willingness to support the rival she opposed while advocating her own candidacy “makes no sense in the real world” demonstrates her Costello’s inexcusable ignorance of the real world, the status of which she presumes to analyze daily for the viewing public. What makes no sense is that CNN tolerates such smug foolishness from its anchors.

I am no fan of Michele Bachmann, her values or her abilities, as any regular visitor here knows. In this matter, however, Bachmann shows that she understands professionalism, loyalty, humility, respect, cooperation and compromise infinitely better than the foolish CNN anchor who dares to mock her for it.

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Spark: Carol Costello. I heard her say this, gagged, and ran upstairs to my computer to write the post.

Graphics: Wikipedia

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.

Ethics Article of the Week: George Will On His Son’s Birthday

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Happy birthday, Jon.

Conservative columnist George Will has only occasionally mentioned his Down Syndrome-inflicted son Jon in his columns, but when he has, it has provided an extra dimension to Jon’s father, who usually comes across in print and on TV as cynical, dour, and archly intellectual. Today is Jon’s birthday, so Will devotes the full column to him, his challenges, and, when all is said and done, ethics.

It’s a beautifully written piece, as Will’s columns often are, and a tender one. More importantly, however, it is an essay that should provoke thought, beginning with the fact that the only reason Will wrote this column is that he and his wife chose, 40 years ago, to do what 90% of all parents informed that their gestating child has Down Syndrome refuse to do: allow the child to be born.

The column is here

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Graphics: Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Jack Berghouse Cheating Conundrum: Bad Father? Good Father? Ethics Corrupter?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Should we condemn Jack Berghouse for being a good lawyer?

Should a parent defend a bad egg? A cheating bad egg?

Berghouse has intervened to keep his son, a sophomore at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, California, from being kicked out of the honors program for copying his homework assignment from the work of another student. He doesn’t dispute that his son cheated—-his son admits it, and was caught red-handed. Dad is suing the school because he says its policies are conflicting, and thus his son was deprived of due process. He may be right about that. He is also doing it because, as a father concerned about his son’s future, he worries that the blemish on his record will affect his ability to get into an Ivy League college. He’s probably right about that, too.

But is it right—that is to say, responsible and ethical— for parents to use lawyers and the court system to intimidate schools into whitewashing a student’s records? The vast majority say no, which is doubtlessly the reason why Berghouse reports that he is getting hate mail. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Connecticut Lawmakers

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Hayes and Komisarjevky, the Cheshire, Conn. killers

Good thinking, Connecticut!

  • With home invaders/multiple murderers/ rapists/sadists Stephen Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky duly convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection, the state legislature passed, and the Governor signed, a law making Connecticut the latest state to ban the death penalty.
  • Since a majority of the public, the legislators and virtually everyone aware of the horrendous facts of the infamous home invasion murders that Hayes and Komisarjevsky unquestionably committed think these two creatures deserve to die, the legislators made the law prospective only, meaning that it only would apply to those convicted of future crimes.
  • Despite the legislative intent, the obvious Equal Protection challenge to a law that treats two sets of citizens—current convicted murderers and future ones—differently may save the lives of Hayes and  Komisarjevsky,  the other 9 residents of the state’s death row, and such likely future residents as Richard S. Roszkowski, convicted of murder for gunning down a man, woman and 9-year-old girl on Sept. 7, 2006, but still facing a second death penalty phase trial, after his first one was overturned on a technicality.

It would have shown integrity for Connecticut lawmakers to have the courage of its supposed convictions, and to abolish the death penalty while having in its custody as perfect candidates for capital punishment as have ever been captured, Stephen Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky. In case you have forgotten the details of their June 23, 2007 invasion of the Cheshire, Conn. home of the Petit family, or were lucky enough to miss that horror story until now, here are is a mercifully brief summary. Continue reading →

My Field of Dreams

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Yesterday, an Off-Broadway musical closed that I launched on its remarkable run nearly 12 years ago. The show had productions in four states, D.C. and London; it had over 450 performances; it became the cornerstone of one very talented (and very nice) actor’s career, and an important opportunity for several others. It gave a dear friend immense pleasure, satisfaction and recognition in the final decade of his life, and probably saved my theater company from bankruptcy. Most important of all, perhaps, is that it entertained thousands of people. If I got bopped by a trolley tomorrow, the show would undoubtedly stand as one of the major accomplishments of my entire strange, eclectic, under-achieving life.

And yet…feeling good about the unlikely saga of the show, now that it has finally (probably—it has risen from the dead before) seen its last audience, takes considerable effort for me, and has from the beginning. My satisfaction is more intellectual than emotional, because I know that I personally benefited less from the show in tangible ways in proportion to my contribution to it than anyone else involved. Although I restructured the script, re-wrote, added and cut lines, wrote new lyrics to one song and added two others to the show, including the finale, I’m not credited as a co-auther. I own no part of the property, and never received a dime in compensation. Those closely connected with the original production know all of this, but the extent of my role in the creation and success of the show has been invisible to audiences for over a decade. Continue reading →

A Worm In The Culture: Warped Competition Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I'm sorry, Serena, but you're just too good to be on the tennis team. We've decided that you should be on the chess team.

It is difficult for me to comprehend the kind of thought processes that Southampton (New York) High School to ban student Keeling Pilaro, the only boy on  the school’s field hockey team, from playing this season because he is too good at the game, which he learned as a child in Ireland.  I do know their logic is unethical, un-American, and unfair, at least as unfair ought to be defined in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

“They told me I wasn’t allowed to play because I had advanced skills that I learned in Ireland,” Keeling told  local TV reporters. “They told me because I have an ‘adverse effect,’ but they didn’t even explain what the adverse effect was, so that’s what I’m kind of confused about.”
The executive director of the Suffolk County field hockey organization told the local Fox affiliate that the boy was being banned because field hockey “is a girl’s sport.” “When a boy plays,” he explained, “it leads the way for other male players to come in and take over. “[Keeling is] having a significant adverse effect on some of his opposing female players. The rules state he would be allowed to play if he wasn’t the dominant player.”

“Adverse effect,” in field hockey-speak, apparently means an unfair physical advantage, danger to opponents,  keeping a girl from getting more playing time or taking away from a female’s ability to garner postseason awards.

Ah. So we’re talking about discrimination, then, are we? Just so we have our terms straight.

If the woman’s movement has integrity, and it often doesn’t, we would see women protesting this indefensible treatment of the sole male player on a female team. The only field hockey team in the school is the girl’s team: Keeling, by the same principles of fairness and equal opportunity that have been enforced to allow girls to try out for boy’s wrestling, football and baseball teams in high schools and colleges around the country if they have the skills to make the team, should have every right to play on the only field hockey team there is, and not be penalized for his superior skills. Have authorities ever kicked a girl off a field because she was too fast, too strong, too skilled, too good? Would they? I certainly hope not.

Imagine if Ted Williams, LeBron James, Joe Montana, Bobby Orr and Serena Williams had been kicked off their high school teams because they dominated. What kind of Maoist, mediocrity-rewarding, excellence-stifling values is Southampton High trying to infect the nation with by penalizing high performance and achievement? Apparently they don’t understand the nature of competition, which is a serious handicap for a school, and a malady that should not be passed on to a single student. The outstanding competitors make every other player better, unless a player doesn’t want to make the effort, doesn’t have the character to accept that one doesn’t have to win to achieve something important in a contest, or is playing for the wrong reasons. I remember that I was once admonished by a stage director of an amateur production that I was too skilful and experienced for the rest of the cast, and was making them look bad. I was aghast then, and that conversation makes me angry even now, decades later. “Tell them how to be better, then, ” I told her. “Because I’m sure not going to try to do any less than my best.”

We have to decide if we’re really serious about gender equality or not. Keeling is not bigger than the girls on his team, and he doesn’t have a beard and 18 inch biceps. There are two things different about him, and two things only: he is really good, and he has male genitals. I thought the lesson of the women’s movement was that one’s genitals shouldn’t matter, that what mattered was whether you could do the job. Or does that rule only apply to female genitals?

I can certainly understand, if not the logic that is stopping Keeling Pilaro from playing the sport he loves, where the seeds of such illogical logic come from. The seeds come from the bizarre regulations that allow women to be firefighters with upper body strength that would disqualify male recruits, and female soldiers to be certified as combat ready without having to meet the same requirements as a male soldier. They come from affirmative action. When equality doesn’t mean equality in our nation’s increasingly warped, discrimination-is-fairness culture created by regulators, activists and bureaucrats, “Through the Looking Glass” decisions like this one, telling a player he’s too good to be eligible for the team, can begin to make sense.

It doesn’t make sense. It’s not fair, it’s not healthy, and if one applies Kant’s Rule of Universality to it, we end up with a nation of gray, where, as the old Chinese proverb cautions, “the protruding nail will he hammered down.” No more Babe Ruths, no Dana Torreses; no David Beckhams, no Michael Jordans, no Carl Lewises, no Muhammad Alis, no Tiger Woods. And also, as this infection spreads, no Meryl Streeps, Thomas Jeffersons, Thomas Edisons, Eugene O’Neils, or Barbra Streisands. After all, we mustn’t make the less talented and accomplished look bad, feel bad, or make them have to aim higher and work harder to achieve their dreams. It’s wrong to excel. It has an “adverse effect” on those who can’t or won’t.

We all have a stake in whether Keeling Pilaro gets to play field hockey this fall.

For My Father

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The better Jack Marshall

My father’s birthday is coming up; oddly, I remember the date now that he’s gone, when I never managed to so while he was alive. It is May 2, and by lucky happenstance, Eugene Volokh chose to post another of my father’s favorite Rudyard Kipling poems on his blog today. I had completely forgotten about it, so this is a gift to me, especially since it helps my dad’s memory burn even brighter, always a boon when I feel the walls closing in.  He loved Kipling’s poems, books and stories, and he was a man whom Rudyard would have admired. Like most Kipling, this poem is about ethics, as well many other things, some of which readers must figure out for themselves.

For you, Dad. And all of you, too:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) Continue reading →