U.S. Society

Ethics Trumps Morality: Ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Almost lost in the din of President Obama’s defiant State of the Union address was his promise to finally end “Don’t ask, don’t tell” as military policy. There is no ethical argument against this long overdue move. It has always been a policy based on the political expediency of politicians afraid to do the right thing.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is unethical. The law treats gay Americans in a biased and discriminatory manner, reinforcing negative stereotypes and the irrational fears. It also hurts the military and the nation by robbing it of able soldiers and military personnel. Continue reading →

PETA Flunks the Duty of Respectability

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have an important mission. It also is a very difficult mission, because most people try to think about cruelty to animals as little as possible. We like our veal and chicken dishes; we like our pets; we want to find cures for dread diseases, and that may require animal testing. The facts about what animals experience, feel and think are not comforting to these wants and needs, so an organization dedicated to changing our attitudes toward the non-human inhabitants of Earth has to be careful, nuanced, articulate, and most of all, respectable.The duty of respectability comes with accepting such an important mission. We do not trust those we do not respect. If PETA doesn’t command respect, its mission, and the innocent and vulnerable animals it seeks to protect, are at risk. Continue reading →

James Cameron, Poul Anderson, and Posterity’s Loss

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

James Cameron, whose ground-breaking film “Avatar” will soon be the top-grossing movie of all time, is currently being bashed in some of the more obscure corners of the blogosphere for plagiarism. This time the criticism is not based on his blatant borrowing from Russian science fiction, but for his lifting of ideas from an American master of the genre, Poul Anderson. Anderson wrote a novella in 1957 entitled “Call Me Joe” that chronicled the adventures of a paraplegic who becomes telepathically merged with a manufactured alien life form created to explore a planet. He is exhilarated by the sensations and power of his artificially-created body, and eventually is seduced into abandoning his humanity completely to become a significant figure in the development of a new civilization. Along the way, he battles vicious alien creatures. Sound familiar? Yes, these are major components of “Avatar” as well. Continue reading →

Solving the Spouse Conflict Problem

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

When spouses are professionals whose jobs intersect, they will usually maintain that they never “talk shop” at home, and that for all intents and purposes, they are two unrelated workers, ships passing in the night. Nobody believes them, and nobody should. Continue reading →

Ethics Conundrum: Poll Finds Fox News Most Trusted!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

A new poll released today says that Fox News is the most trusted television news network in the country.

What?? Fox? The network with the tongue-in-cheek “fair and balanced” motto? The network of Glenn Beck?  The network the Obama Administration says it considers “the communications wing of the Republican party”?  How could this possibly be? Yet a Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, which was 10 percentage points more than any other network.

I think there are several reasons for this result. Continue reading →

Easy Call: Prof. Yoo’s Secret Class

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Prof. John Yoo of the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall  School of Law can’t do anything these days without attracting controversy, whether it be writing a book or appearing on The Daily Show. Yoo, you may recall, is the former Bush administration lawyer responsible for writing key legal advisory opinions justifying the use of waterboarding and other extreme measures to interrogate captured terrorists and suspects of terrorist activity. Since joining the law school faculty, he has been more or less continuously attacked by students, critics and protesters who believe that the memos he authored compel his dismissal, disbarment, prosecution as a war criminal, or worse.

Now Berkeley is being criticized for allowing Yoo to hold his spring semester Constitutional Law class in a secret location known only to class members. Anti-Yoo protesters demand to be permitted to disrupt his class in the name of free speech and campus discourse. Yoo, in his typically provocative fashion, says they are welcome to attend his class once they get admitted to the law school and pay their tuition. Continue reading →

Our Culture’s Teen Pregnancy Ethical Conflict

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Unwed teenage pregnancies are on the rise again. There are many reasons, but one of them has to be this: it is hard to discourage self-destructive and societally damaging conduct while the culture celebrates it. Continue reading →

Jean Simmons and Sexual Harassment

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Jean Simmons has died at the age of 80. She was a marvelous actress, one who began as a child star and had major roles in three classic films before she turned 20. Today we remember her primarily as the beautiful slave who bore the son of Spartacus in Stanley Kubrick’s sword and sandal blockbuster, and perhaps as playing herself as the movie star who sends Felix Unger gaga in a memorable episode of “The Odd Couple.” We do not remember much more;  her career never reached the heights predicted for it, primarily because she fell victim to sexual harassment by a powerful, unscrupulous man. Continue reading →

“The Ethicist” Strikes Out Again

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I’ll make a deal with Randy Cohen,”The Ethicist” of The New York Times Magazine: I’ll stop criticizing his column when he stops justifying dishonesty. Lately, Cohen has not only been advising his correspondents to avoid telling the truth but headlining the questions where he does so.

Lie proud, Randy!

This week’s endorsement of forked tongues surrounded the sensitive issue of designating a guardian for one’s child. Parents had asked their good friends, another married couple, if they would agree to care for their daughter in the event that the parents perished while she was a child. After the couple enthusiastically agreed, the parents learned that their friends were not sufficiently responsible with their finances, and liked to “live large.” They no longer trust the couple with their daughter’s welfare, and want to re-assign the responsibility of being emergency guardians to relatives. This will require the parents to change their wills.

Their question to “The Ethicist”: Do they have to tell their friends? Continue reading →

Believe it Or Not: An Unethical Sorority Dress Code

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Abuse of power comes in all shapes and sizes. Witness the sorority Pi Phi, which apparently is hell-bent on proving that “Mean Girls” was a documentary. The fashion website “Fashionista” got its cyber hands on the sorority’s dress code, which makes West Point look lenient.

Here are some examples from the six page manifesto, the invention of Pi Phi’s rush chair: Continue reading →