Duncan Roy is a director, producer and writer whom I had never heard of, and I didn’t watch his exploits as a patient/reality show performer on VH1’s “Celebrity Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew .” The reason for the latter was a mixture of ethics and taste: feeding the fame addiction of celebrities while supposedly treating their other addictions seemed wrong to me, and inducing sex-addicted female porn stars, beauty queens and models to go into therapy with similarly attractive and sexually obsessive men is ridiculous, like setting “The Biggest Loser” at a 24 hour, all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. Continue reading
U.S. Society
Proof of Dead Ethics: Attacking Your Adversary’s Family
It is a standard threat in movies about the Mob and TV dramas about thugs: “Do what I tell you, or your family’s dead.” The tactic of going after loved ones as a particularly awful form of revenge is a calling card of the truly despicable. That is why the Valerie Plame scandal so damaged the Bush Administration’s popularity, even though it was never clear (and still isn’t) that anyone there really did try to “out” Plame’s CIA status to get even with her obnoxious husband’s fueling opposition to the Iraq invasion. Just the plausible suggestion that Vice President Cheney’s gang may have committed such an ethical outrage was too much to bear.
You would think, then, that those who most revile Cheney’s no-holds-barred approach to political combat would be the least likely to emulate him. You would be wrong. Continue reading
Ethics Dunce: Sen. Al Franken
In the midst of the increasingly tense and contentious Senate debate over its health care reform bill, Sen. Joe Lieberman asked for unanimous consent to extend his remarks “an additional moment.” Sen. Al Franken was taking his turn presiding over the Senate, and to Lieberman’s amazement, refused. Continue reading
“Operation Chokehold” and the Protest Ethics Checklist
Some disgruntled iPhone users are trying to organize a protest by paralyzing the ATT network with a flood of data this Friday. The mastermind is the so-called “fake Steve Jobs,” Dan Lyons, who calls his protest “Operation Chokehold.”
Blogger Lauren Weinstein [special thanks to Gabe Goldberg for the tip] has effectively identified this juvenile plan for what it is, namely “childish, stupid, irresponsible, and potentially extremely dangerous.” Continue reading
The Casinos and the Whale
Japanese tycoon Terrance Watanabe gambled away nearly $127 million at the Caesar’s Palace and Rio casinos in 2007, and now is suing the casinos even as he faces criminal charges for refusing to pay them over $15 million in additional debts. He claims that the gambling establishments allowed him to gamble while intoxicated in violation of state casino regulations, and otherwise share blame for his outlandish losses, believed to be the most any gambler has amassed in a single year. Continue reading
The Leaked Exam: Teaching Ethics Unethically
Some University of Oregon law students preparing for exams when the full text of an exam for one of their classes, Administrative Law with Professor John Bonine, inexplicably appeared on a university list-serve. Someone in the registrar’s office had pushed the wrong button.
Oops! Yay? Uhhh…now what? Continue reading
When Money Curdles Ethics
A stimulating ethics alarm drill surfaced over at Freakonomics, where Stephen Dubner challenged the site’s readers to help him compile a list of goods, services and activities that one can legally give away or perform gratis, but that when money changes hands, the transactions become illegal. It is a provocative exercise, especially when one ponders why the addition of money should change the nature of the act from benign to objectionable in the view of culture, society, or government. It is even more revealing to expand the list to include uses of money that may not create illegality, but which change an act from ethical to unethical. Continue reading
Save Lindsay Lohan
It’s interesting, isn’t it? People who would never think of ridiculing the sick or mentally ill, who would never dream of condemning emotionally crippled individuals broken by dysfunctional families, will gleefully heap public abuse on a celebrity with the same problems. Why is this? A human being in trouble is a human being in trouble. It seems, however, that with the exception of little girls who fall down wells, the more people who know you are in crisis, the less sympathy you are likely to get.
Take, for example, the sad case of actress Lindsay Lohan, a talented young woman cursed with two narcissistic and exploitive parents. Continue reading
Ethics Heroes, Holiday Division: The Philly Mystery Diners
Ethics Newsline reported a story that we almost missed: a mysterious anonymous couple ate breakfast at the Aramingo Diner in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Philadelphia, and paid for both their meal and that of the diners at a table next to them. Their spontaneous act of generosity set off a “pay it forward” chain reaction worthy of Haley Joel Osment that had one waitress crying tears of joy. For the next five hours, everybody paid someone else’s check, “paying it forward,” with no concern about the price of the meals involved.
Was it just a group of people who decided to act out a scene from a Christmas movie Frank Capra forgot to make? Did it only happen because the diner had reasonably priced meals? Was the whole thing staged by some street theater group?
Let’s hope it was not a stunt, and that the experience of being nice to strangers for no reason other than that it’s a good habit to have will last longer than the family Christmas tree.
As for the Mystery Couple—Ethics Heroes for sure—good work, and Merry Christmas!
Christmas Card Ethics
My family just received a Christmas card from the family of a long-time friend, and my wife commented on how good his wife looked in the photo. I mentioned this to my friend, and he laughed. “That’s what I was going for when I photoshopped out the crow’s-feet and wrinkles. She does look good–just not that good.”
My gut feeling is that this is misrepresentation, and unethical. Continue reading
