I just learned that I somehow managed to link to the wrong video in the post about the Seattle officer punching the girl in the face. If you linked to that, you really must have wondered what the fuss was about. I apologize for my incompetence, and thank Lauren Larson for alerting me. It’s fixed now. Not my incompetence, of course, but the link.
On to the next mistake…
Readers of Ethics Alarms know that I think boycotting is at best economic bullying, at worst a non-violent form of terrorism, and generally unethical except in cases so rare that they are difficult to imagine. The current BP boycott is close to the worst variety, blunt and destructive mob anger akin to the reaction of the excitable citizens of Homer Simpson’s Springfield, whose solution to every crisis seems to be a riot.
BP was outrageously and perhaps criminally negligent in creating the conditions that led to the Gulf oil spill, and it is right and just that the burden of accountability and responsibility has fallen on them. And it certainly has fallen on them: as much as every citizen of the United States may want to personally kick the company while it is prone, the fact is that the dire consequences of its misconduct are already overwhelming, both long and short-term. Right now, the Gulf states are still dependent on the diligence and expertise of the company to try to limit the damage it has caused, and the company is, if only for its own survival, doing the best it can to succeed. This fact alone would make a public boycott of BP at this time senseless and counter-productive.
The boycott is also unfair. Continue reading
As it so often does, the world of sport is presenting us with a clear ethical conflict tomorrow night—one of those times when we have to prioritize ethical values, and decide which is more important in our culture, because if we meet one, we violate another.
Manny Ramirez will be returning to Boston’s Fenway Park in a Dodger uniform, as Boston hosts Los Angeles in an inter-league contest. Continue reading
YouTube is a wonderful resource that enriches our entertainment, makes us laugh, holds people in the public eye accountable for their actions, and give us better access to current events than ever before. In the area of police conduct, it has exposed abuses that might have otherwise escaped scrutiny. It is also eventually going to get a police officer killed.
The viral video of a Seattle cop punching a teenaged girl in the face has been getting the Rodney King treatment from the broadcast media and the web, with the immediate assumption that his actions are per se proof of police brutality and excessive force. All the societal hot buttons are stacked against the cop: he punches a woman (“You don’t hit a girl!“); she’s a teen (It’s an adult beating a child!); she’s black, and he’s white (Racism!); the underlying offense that triggered the incident was as minor as you can get. (“Jaywalking?”) Predictable, the sensation-hunting news outlets and the usual knee-jerk critics of the police (the N.A.A.C.P. and the A.C.L.U.) have pounced. This is neither a fair nor a competent way to examine a complex incident. Continue reading
Lost in the furor over the insulting “small people” characterization by BP’s hapless Chairman was a seriously unethical statement by President Obama. If the President is lucky, nobody will remember it. He hasn’t been very lucky lately, however.
As with Hurricane Katrina and President Bush, the Gulf oil spill has subjected President Obama to some unfair public expectations, some of which stem from a basic misunderstanding of Presidential power. (There have also been his genuine failures to meet reasonable expectations based on correct assumptions about Presidential leadership—but that is another topic.) Unfortunately, President Obama brings this upon himself by habitually over-stating his influence over people and events that he can not really control. He did this again, when he announced BP’s agreement to establish a 20 billion dollar fund to address the leaking oil’s damage to the Gulf region, its businesses and its inhabitants: Continue reading
It all comes down to trust.
There are some things candidates for office do or say that render them permanently untrustworthy, and no apologies, however well-crafted and sincere, can change it. That is because there are some ethical boundaries a trustworthy individual literally will never cross. For example, Richard Blumenthal’s repeated claims that he was a Vietnam combat veteran fall below the minimum level of integrity, respect and honesty required for trustworthiness. Former Senator John Edwards has lied so often in public and private that no reasonable person should trust him to hold a leadership position.
Sharron Angle, the Tea Party darling who will be opposing Sen. Harry Reid for the Nevada Senate seat in November, also falls beneath that minimum level. This is not because of her hard, hard right positions advocating the abolishment of government-run Social Security, Medicare and the Department of Education. Those are legitimate topics for debate. But a recent interview with conservative radio talk show host Lars Larson has come to light in which Angle, then the longest of shots to win the Nevada Republican primary, said this: Continue reading
Rand Paul’s resume dishonesty is not in the same league with Richard Blumenthal claiming Vietnam service that wasn’t. It is closer in unethical heft to Illinois Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk’s representation of a group military award as in individual one on his resume. Still, if candidates for national office show a penchant for dishonesty and deceit before they are elected, what can we expect later, when they have the keys to the candy store and genuine power? Continue reading
This video is remarkable and disturbing.
Rep. Bob Etheridge, (D-N.C.) was walking down a Washington street when he was approached by a student holding a cell phone camera. The young man asked the Congressman about his views on President Obama’s agenda. Etheridge angrily demanded to know who the student was, tried to snatch the phone, and then assaulted and battered him. Continue reading
Perhaps we all owe Goldman Sachs an apology. Everyone heaped outrage and ridicule the April spectacle of its executives going before the U.S. Senate and asserting under oath that they saw nothing at all unethical about intentionally selling “crappy” investment products to their trusting customers, then making money for their own firm by betting that the products would fail. Many were reminded of the tobacco executives, in the famous AP photo, all raising their hands to swear that they did not believe nicotine was addictive. After all, Goldman Sachs’s own website pledged openness, honesty, trustworthiness and integrity, saying,
“A critical part of running the marathon is acting consistently and playing a fair and honest game. ‘There’s only one thing we sell, and that’s trust.’ This applies to anything, but nowhere more than Investment Management. Clients trust us to do the right thing, and particularly when you’re in investment management and you’re appointed to manage clients’ money, they trust that you’re going to do it in a prudent manner. The worst thing you could do is breach that trust. We look for people who want to run the marathon, and who understand that trust fuels it.”
Now it seems that we were lacking a crucial document: the firm’s internal Code of Ethics, which Goldman Sachs recently made public. Under the provisions of this remarkable Code, what Goldman Sachs did to its clients wasn’t unethical at all; deceptive, conflicted, and unfair, yes…but not unethical, in the sense that it didn’t violate the Ethics Code itself. “Impossible!” you say? Ah, you underestimate the firm’s cleverness. Continue reading
When does an honor start honoring the wrong values? This tricky ethical problem is now in the spotlight thanks to the sudden self-destruction of Helen Thomas, who blurted anti-Semitic sentiments to a Rabbi, on camera, in an impromptu interview.
There are journalism awards named after Thomas, including The Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement given by the Society for Professional Journalism. Now that Thomas has included among her life time achievements a demand that the Jews “get the hell out of Israel” and go back to Germany and Poland—you know: “where they belong,” what does her name on the award mean to future recipients? Is accepting it a tacit endorsement of her views? Or should individuals be assessed on the totality of their careers, and not solely identified with their inevitable missteps. no matter how reprehensible? The latter was a common theme of eulogizers at President Richard Nixon’s funeral. Continue reading
