U.S. Society

Time For The Government To Say Good-Bye To Religious Holidays

/ Jack Marshall / 96 Comments

I'd rather celebrate Ganesh's birthday than L. Ron Hubbard's, but that's just me.

South Brunswick, New Jersey schools have announced that they will henceforth close for two days every year in honor of…Diwali. Quick—what religion celebrates Diwali? The answer is the Hindu faith.

That does it, I think. The canary has officially croaked, and there is no way to sugar-coat it, not that anyone wants a sugar-coated dead canary anyway. State, local and national governments need to cut all ties with religious holidays now, before Americans who observe  Gantan-sai, Dia de los Reyes, Maghi, Timkat, Imbolc, L. Ron Hubbard birthday,  Ostara,  Khordad Sal, Ramayana,  Visakha Puja,  Declaration of the Bab, Ascension of Baha’u’llah and somebody’s god somewhere knows what else start suing every city council in sight, Bill O’Reilly starts screaming about the war on Christianity, and Michele Bachmann gives speeches about how everyone knows America is a Christian nation, because the Founders, you know, like Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln and Jerry Falwell, wanted it that way. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: “The Graduate” Variation—Illegal Yet Ethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Except in THIS version of "The Graduate," it's Benjamin Braddock's MOTHER banging on the window. Come to think of it, Dustin Hoffman couild play her, too!

For your weekend Ethics Quiz, Ethics Alarms asks your assessment of a situation that may be that rarity, conduct that is illegal but ethical, by far the rarest in the spectrum that is…

Legal and Ethical—Legal and Unethical—Illegal and Ethical—Illegal and Unethical

In Nevada, Justin Lew Harris’ wedding at the Carson Valley United Methodist Church was underway when his mother burst on the scene, Dustin Hoffman-style, and loudly objected to the ceremony. As she protested, Harris physically carried her out of the church, which constitutes battery. Mom’s tactic worked, though: that stopped the wedding, at least for now.

Now Harris, 35, faces misdemeanor charges  for disorderly conduct and coercion, presumably being pressed by his loving mother. He was released from the Douglas County Jail on his own recognizance.

No doubt about it: his conduct was pretty clearly against the law. But was it ethical? Continue reading →

Getting Scrod* in Boston: The Ravages of Seafood Fraud

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“Why, certainly that’s a red snapper, sir! Just came off the boat today!!”

If there is an opportunity for profitable dishonesty that nobody is paying attention to, the overwhelming likelihood is that it will flourish to the point of becoming standard practice.

Isn’t that discouraging? I hate to write that sentence, as I hate to think or accept the conclusion behind it. Yet when I come upon a topic like seafood fraud (or fish fraud), it is hard to deny.

The Boston Globe just published the results of a wide-ranging, five-month investigation into the mislabeling of fish in the Greater Boston area and other parts of Massachusetts. The shocking results showed that Bay State consumers:

“…routinely and unwittingly overpay for less desirable, sometimes undesirable, species – or buy seafood that is simply not what it is advertised to be. In many cases, the fish was caught thousands of miles away and frozen, not hauled in by local fishermen, as the menu claimed. It may be perfectly palatable – just not what the customer ordered. But sometimes mislabeled seafood can cause allergic reactions, violate dietary restrictions, or contain chemicals banned in the United States.

“The Globe collected fish from 134 restaurants, grocery stores, and seafood markets from Leominster to Provincetown, and hired a laboratory in Canada to conduct DNA testing on the samples. Analyses by the DNA lab and other scientists showed that 87 of 183 were sold with the wrong species name – 48 percent.” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Fox News

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Hang on, Rod...that phone call is coming any minute now....

Apparently to remind us that it too, like CNN and MSNBC, applies cynical and insulting standards when deciding what its audience will regard as trustworthy commentary, Fox News has announced that it is hiring former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford as a contributor during the 2012 election cycle. Sanford was forced to resign after he shamelessly used his office as a means to conduct a long-distance adulterous romance with his South American fire-cracker soul-mate, going AWOL while supposedly doing his state’s business and lying about it in the process. Is this as bad as what Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced New York governor whom CNN deemed an appropriate hire as a the star of one of its prime time programs, did to end his political career? No. Is it still irresponsible?

Oh yes: Continue reading →

Hilary Swank Gets Nelly Furtadoed. And It’s Still Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

What's that, Mr. Kadyrof? You want me to give you a private ethics seminar for a half-million bucks? What!!! I am outraged! I spit on your filthy lucre! KIDDING!!!!!

I seriously considered taking the Ethics Alarms post on singer Nelly Furtado posted here in March and substituting actress Hilary Swank’s name for Furtado, and Chechen despot Ramzan Kadyrov for now-deceased Libya dictator Muammar Gaddafi. It is the same controversy and issue with the same result: an American performing artist sells her performing talents to a brutal foreign leader, and is bullied and shamed by human rights advocates and media critics into apologizing profusely and donating the large fee ( a million dollars in Furtado’s case, a reported half-million for Swank) to charity.

This was wrong in March, and it’s wrong today.

Earlier this month, Swank and other celebrities attended Kadyrov’s birthday bash in Chechnya. She was working. But while every other corporation and contractor, as well as the United States itself, can do business around the world without being held to the impossible standard of only accepting morally exemplary customers, Swank, like Furtado, Mariah Carey and others before her, was targeted for not doing the bidding of human rights activists and sacrificing her livelihood to be their billboard. The bully in this case in the Human Rights Foundation, which unethically brutalized Swank to achieve publicity for its own mission—a worthy one to be sure, but not so worthy that it justifies a PR mugging with a $500,000 loss to its victim. Continue reading →

The Selfish Brother, the Stranded Passengers, and the Key To Ethical Problem-Solving

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Carolyn Hax is an advice and relationship columnist, not an ethicist. Still, her ethical instincts, values and ethics problem-solving technique are impeccable. This week, she schooled her readers on the most important step in approaching any ethical dilemma: define the problem correctly.

An inquirer asked Hax,

“Am I being selfish in insisting that my parents can stay with us for only two weeks after the birth of our first child? My brother thinks so and isn’t speaking to me.”

As the letter proceeded, crucial details appeared.  The writer’s parents had suffered some kind of financial crisis that required them to move into the brother’s home. The brother’s wife is pregnant. It looks like the stay will be six months, and the brother wants his sibling’s family, new baby notwithstanding, to do its fair share. Two weeks out of six months doesn’t seem fair to Bro.

Hax nailed the problem with the letter immediately: Continue reading →

Count The Ethics Alarms: A Lingerie Football YOUTH League?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Looking forward to the opening of the Lingerie Football Junior League...

The headline: “Lingerie Football League Wants to Start a Youth League.”

All right, maybe it’s not as bad as it sounds. Still, we can watch four-year-olds wearing falsies and “shaking it” in kiddie beauty pageants on “Toddlers and Tiaras.” How far removed from that is a future football league with 13-year-old girls tackling each other in their training bras?

Lingerie Football League founder and chairman Mitchell Mortaza issued this statement on the LFL website:

“Obviously the improvement of our game is directly tied into the development of the future LFL athlete. What excites us at the league is seeing the caliber of athletes improve so vastly each season, now imagine in five years when we start fielding athletes that have trained their entire life for the opportunity to play LFL Football.”

And what does early training to to play lingerie football consist of, I wonder? The more important and troubling question: what does it say about our cultural health that the only route available for young female athletes who enjoy football to practice their sport is to train to eventually play the game while dressed like a Victoria’s Secret model?

What Would Happen If, While Submitting To a TSA Search, You Started Singing “The Piña Colada Song”?

/ Jack Marshall / 87 Comments

"Would you cut the comedy please? I'm trying to feel you up!"

A retired Air Force Lt. Colonel apparently was arrested at a TSA airport checkpoint after she refused to stop reciting the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights (“Searches and Seizures”) while she was being screened. You can read her account here.

I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon of the various commentators from both sides of the political spectrum who are leading condemnation of the incident. My interest is in the ethics of the encounter and its subsequent reporting, as I do not see this as an example of official abuse and suppression of rights.

I object to much of how the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA has handled airport screening policy since 2001, as I discussed in this post and elsewhere. I agree that the public should not meekly accept what it regards as unjustified intrusions on their privacy, dignity and health, and that complaining, petitioning the government, putting pressure on elected and appointed officials and leveling criticism in various forums is a necessary and reasonable response. Nevertheless, the episode described in the accounts of this arrest has been mischaracterized. It was a situation in which TSA agents were placed in an impossible situation for the purpose of generating third-party indignation. The woman engaging in the protest also targeted individuals who can only be called innocent parties, the TSA screeners. They have a job, they have procedures to follow, and they have to follow them. They also have a lousy job, having to brush up against the privates of strangers while being glared at or verbally abused.

My question, as with many protests, is, “What was the objective here?” To be as annoying as possible? To cause a scene? To let everyone in the vicinity know that the woman objected to the procedures? To come as close to interfering with the screening process as possible without justifying an arrest? To get her name in the papers? To delay her fellow passengers, most of whom just want to get through the vile process and make their flights?

Or to get arrested? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Allahpundit

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Hide! The Vice-President says that if the jobs bill doesn't pass, we might be raped!!!"

“The very first question at the next Solyndra hearing should be, “How many rapes could Democrats have prevented by giving that $535 million to cops instead?”

—“Hot Air” blogger Allahpundit, marking the below-the-belt tactics of Vice President Joe Biden, who angrily suggested that Republicans who voted against the President’s jobs bill would be responsible for rapes and murders because of the resulting inadequate numbers of police.

Biden’s fear-mongering is beyond demogoguery, whatever the virtues of the President’s bill. States make budgetary decisions, and if a state’s priorities in funding didn’t include sufficient police personnel to prevent rapes and murders, the state is accountable, not Congressional Republicans (and Democrats) who don’t like the President’s bill. Meanwhile, the jobs bill seeks $5 billion for cops (and firefighters) and $30 billion for teachers. Is Obama willing to risk more rapes by not putting more money into law enforcement and less into teacher’s unions?  Continue reading →

Herman Cain’s Unethical Abortion Doubletalk

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

Republican presidential contender Herman Cain’s explanation of his position on abortion while chatting with CNN’s Piers Morgan is causing his growing legion of fans and supporters discomfort, and with good reason. It was ethically incoherent at best, unethical at worst. In either case, his comments show that he hasn’t devoted sufficient serious analysis to the issue to allow him to have a responsible and consistent approach. That is status quo for most Americans. It is not acceptable for a President of the United States.

Here is the relevant section of the interview (emphasis mine):

PIERS MORGAN: Abortion. What’s your view of abortion?

CAIN: I believe that life begins at conception. And abortion under no circumstances. And here’s why —

MORGAN: No circumstances?

CAIN: No circumstances. Continue reading →