U.S. Society

CNN and John King, Endorsing “Newspeak” and Disgracing American Journalism

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

And so it begins.

CNN’s John King: “Before we go to break, I want to make a quick point. We were having a discussion about the Chicago mayoral race. My friend Andy Shaw used the term ‘in the crosshairs’ in talking about the candidates. We’re trying, we’re trying to get away from that language. Andy is a good friend, he’s covered politics for a long time, but we’re trying to get away from that kind of language.”

What “kind of langauge”? Oh, you know: vivid language. Metaphors. Similes. Can’t have that on CNN, because, as everyone knows, a completely unrelated use of a cross-hairs graphic on a Sarah Palin campaign map had nothing to do with the shooting of  Rep. Gaby Giffords and 19 others, but the media decided to make everyone think it was the fault of the map anyway. So now a news network, which is supposed to convey information, is apologizing for a guest’s use of the word “cross-hairs” in a context that had nothing to do with violence. Continue reading →

“Cat Ballou” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It is generally believed that Lee Marvin’s drunken horsemanship (as well as the comic appearance of his horse, which also appeared to be drunk) greatly assisted his winning the 1966 Academy Award for Best Actor. In case you are considering riding your own horse or mule while in a state similar to Marvin’s “Kid Shelleen,” this article may be of interest. While it is undoubtedly unethical to ride a horse while intoxicated (irresponsible, reckless, and dangerous to both the horse and anyone near it), it may not be illegal, because a horse is not a vehicle.

The Lost Flashdrive and Presumed Consent

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Lose a flashdrive here? Call the Arboretum if you’re one of the visitors in this photo, or phone these guys if they are friends of yours. A flashdrive packed with photos and software has been in our lost-N-found for at least a month — Store manager Lynnea suggested we post a photo from the drive and see if someone cla…ims it. Describe the drive and its contents accurately & provide your postal — we’ll happily return it.”

The Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior Arizona recently posted this notice on its Facebook page, along with one of the photographs a staff member took off the lost flashdrive. Obviously the material on the drive is private; just as obviously, the flashdrive is lost. Is the Arboretum within reasonable ethical boundaries to examine and publicize private information without the permission of the flashdrive’s owner to help the owner recover his lost property? Continue reading →

For Broadway Patrons, A Bill of Non-Existant Rights

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

What do Broadway theater-goers have a right to know and expect? The blog Gratuitous Violins has proposed a “Ticket-Buyer’s Bill of Rights.” While superficially reasonable, this manifesto embodies what is wrong with the expectations of consumers in general and theater patrons in particular. “Let’s face it,” the blogger, “Esther”, writes, “the producers are selling a product and we consumers should be able to make an informed purchase.” Okay. An informed purchase, however, does not require being routinely informed of all aspects of the production, particularly when the information is readily available to the responsible consumer.

Here are Esther’s three tenets of the “Bill of Rights”: Continue reading →

Unavoidable Ethics: Giffords Needs To Resign

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Rep. Giffords doesn’t have to face this inevitable decision now or tomorrow or in the next few weeks. She will have to face it, however, and as soon as she is well enough to evaluate her situation realistically, she owes it to her district and the country to step down, and let someone take her place as Representative of the 8th District of Arizona. Continue reading →

Speaker Boehner’s Sensitive/Cowardly Removal of Harmless/Violent Wording in Response to a Trumped-up/Genuine Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

One of the characteristics of a true Ethics Train Wreck (or ETW for short) is that it eventually reaches the point where unethical and ethical responses to it are indistinguishable. The Tucson shooting ETW officially reached that point today, when Speaker of the House John Boehner apparently yielded to the complaint that referring to the health care reform law as “job killing” was inappropriate in light of Jared Loughner’s near-murder of Rep. Giffords along with killing or wounding 19 other victims.

In a post on his official blog, Boehner referred to the law as “job destroying” and “job crushing,” an apparent concession to critics like Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, who argued that the House bill called the “Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act” should be renamed something without “killing” in it, “for Gabby’s sake.” By doing so, the Speaker of the House gave credibility to an argument that… Continue reading →

Police Raid Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

At 5:30 a.m. on Thursday of last week,  police officers, weapons drawn, burst into the home into the house and pointed guns at the McKay family of Spring Valley, New York. David McKay said officers were screaming for someone named Michael, and when he tried to explain that nobody by that name lived there, the police pulled him, in his underwear, outside into the freezing cold. Then officers ordered McKay’s 13-year-old daughter out of her bed at gunpoint, a trauma that caused her to vomit, faint, and later to have an asthma attack. Continue reading →

Becoming a Society Without Empathy

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Attorney, blogger and legal ethicist Franco Tarulli has a thoughtful post on The Ethical Lawyer about the results of a recent study I had missed, and now that I know about it, I almost wish I was still missing it. The findings are ominous. Continue reading →

Unethical Web Post of the Month: William Rivers Pitt

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

I had been unaware of the existence of a writer named William Rivers Pitt before yesterday, and I now I will look back on those days of naive and blissful ignorance with nostalgia and deep mourning for innocence lost. The face of unreasoning hate and bigotry is always ugly, but one seldom encounters such purple-complexioned, vein-popping, spittle-spewing fury on the web, especially from a published author with a vocabulary exceeding “Deliverance” levels. I had been aware of the website Truth-Out, a hard Left commentary site that I now know exercises no editorial discretion whatsoever.

Mr. Pitt’s rant is entitled “The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right,” which, if it were written by anyone with a history of the relative moderation of, say, Richard Cohen, Nancy Pelosi or Bill Maher, I would assume was satire. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Who’s Responsible When You Hand Your Child An Uzi and He Shoots Himself?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The answer to the quiz, according to Massachessetts. authorities, apparently is that the organizer of the 2008 machine gun shoot at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club is responsible.

Christopher Bizilj, age 8, died when the Uzi submachine gun he had taken in his small hands suddenly tilted upward and backward as it fired, and a bullet blew off part of his head. The boy’s father, Dr. Charles Bizilj, signed a waiver before letting his son shoot the gun, acknowledging and accepting the risks, including the boy’s death.  But law enforcement officials applied the common but ethically-misguided principle of “the crime carries its own punishment” for the devastated father, thus shifting all accountability on the organizer of the shoot, Edward Fleury, who was prosecuted for manslaughter. Continue reading →