Workplace

How DEI Is Systemic Racism: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology essentially addresses “systemic racism” by enforcing and advocating systemic racism. It would be difficult to envision a scenario that better illustrates this than the scandal now being revealed at the University of Washington, where the Department of Psychology hired a black candidate for a professor position despite the hiring committee’s assessment that an Asian applicant and a white one had superior qualifications, with the white candidate rated the strongest of the group.

The decision violated a university policy barring discrimination on the basis of race and sex, as well as the law banning affirmative action practices—that is, racial discrimination for “good” reasons— in the state of Washington. An investigation was launched after a whistleblower complained about the process, and the resulting report by the university’s Complaint Investigation & Resolution Office found that the psychology department distorted its hiring process to give the black applicant an assistant professor’s position titled “Diversity in Development,” though it had ranked a white academic first out of 84 applicants.

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When Ethics Alarms Weren’t Even Installed: A TV Sports Sideline Reporter’s Admission

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

On a recent episode of the “Pardon My Take” podcast, the Fox Sports and NFL on Prime Video host Charissa Thompson blurted out that when she was a sideline reporter in the late 2000s, some of her football halftime reports were just made up on the spot. “I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again,” she began. “I would make up the report sometimes, because … the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime, or it was too late and I didn’t want to screw up the report. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.’ Because first of all, no coach is gonna get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over … and do a better job of getting off the field.’ They’re not gonna correct me on that. So I’m like, ‘It’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.’”

[Sidebar: This alleged professional sports reporter said “I was like” and “I’m like” in one short statement. She should be fired for that.]

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Technology Ethics Fail: Self-Checkout

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

I am happy to say that I foresaw this mess the first time I encountered these things, in a local Home Depot, if I recall correctly. even if they worked reliably and were user friendly—and they don’t and aren’t—it was obvious from the very dawn of the era that they would allow retailers to reduce staff while making the shopping experience less pleasant for consumers. And so it has. But it wasn’t sold that way, and, as usual, much of the public was ovine in its acceptance. Sure, long checkout lines would be a thing of the past! Now you wouldn’t have to deal with the underlings who man the registers. Store employees would be free and able to answer inquiries! Wunderbar!

Right. You still have to wait in line. The checkout kiosks are persnickety if you, for example, fail to set a purchase down in the right spot. Scanning items doesn’t always work, and its easy to scanned an item more than once. Problems and glitches arise so frequently that counter staff are constantly called on to deal with them, meaning that customers who wisely eschewed the delightful self-checkout adventure are stranded in line. Heaven forfend that you try to self-checkout a product with some kind of purchase restriction. Meanwhile, a lot of self-checkout machines break down, and because it’s expensive to fix them, often sit useless for a while, causing more back-ups.

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Rescued Comment Of The Day: “Ethics And The Joker’s Mustache”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

In honor of King Tut’s tomb being opened on this date in 1922, here is a recovered lost treasure from the Ethics Alarms vault…

I know there are many, maybe hundreds, of Comment of the Day-worthy reactions to Ethics Alarms posts that never made it to this point, for a welter of reasons good and bad. If all of them could be tracked down and resuscitated, I could avoid writing about Donald Trump or the ethics rot of the increasingly disturbing American Left for months—wow, an old COTD archeology project sounds better the more I think of it! Stop it, Jack, get back to the point…

The point is that I found this excellent Comment of the Day by Marie Dowd by pure chance as I was researching the site on another matter, and was annoyed with myself for missing it the first time, way back in 2019.

I apologize, Marie! I can only plead that I was distracted: there were 24 comments on that ethics and TV trivia post, but only two that could be called substantive. Three alerted me to my careless mistakes (like calling the collective noun for critics a “snivel” instead of a “shrivel”), and most of the rest were jokes. Actually, there was a second excellent comment in the thread, that one by Pennagain, who has been missing from the ethics wars for quite a while. (I’m worried.)

Anyway, the topic, like the Joker’s hair, is ever-green, so Marie’s Comment of the Day on the burning issue of Cesar Romero leaving his mustache on despite being cast to play Batman’s clean-shaven arch-nemisis remains as fresh today as it was more than four years ago. So here it is, on “Ethics And The Joker’s Mustache”:

***

I’ve thought about this mustache far too many times for my own comfort.

As a kid, the intended audience even if I was too young to care during its run, I really did not notice. The reception was always fuzzy out in the country. >not a problem

In-universe, Joker’s insane. Merry prankster is the most forgiving way to tag him. Any version would grow a handlebar or do anything to mess with people’s heads, especially the Bat. Annoying Batman would be a laugh in character. >not a problem!

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Ethics Quiz: Personal Assistant Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I almost called this, “Stop Making Me Defend Robert De Niro!’

De Niro proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he’s a toxic, narcissistic asshole when he was going around the country shouting “Fuck Trump” at various Trump Derangement gatherings. He’s a great actor, but at 80 he’s now in that difficult period of decline when he should be retired but can’t resist the paychecks or the sudden lack of public attention.

De Niro’s ex-personal assistant Graham Chase Robinson is suing him for discrimination, and the trial is not showing the actor in a very favorable light. As her various allegations were presented to him on the stand—-asking her to scratch his back, giving her degrading tasks, making unreasonable demands (like asking Robinson to “Uber him” a martini from a favorite bar at 11 p.m.), not respecting her personal time (he called her twice while she was at her grandmother’s funeral telling her to buy a bus ticket for his son), and being abusive (he called her a “fucking spoiled brat”), De Niro’s response was always some version of, “Big deal. So what?”

De Niro paid his personal assistant $300,000 a year.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it unethical for someone to pay an assistant to accept abuse and disrespectful treatment?

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Ethicist’s Diary: A Father Encounters His Son’s Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Yesterday was my son’s birthday (also the anniversary of the Boston Red Sox finally winning the World Series after 86 years, but that’s just why I can remember my son’s birthday), but he gave me the best present: a window into his ethics and values.

I had barely seen Grant for several months, despite the fact that he has an apartment in the lower levels of our home; we’ve both been busy. When he came upstairs last night to get our birthday greetings and a few presents, he apologized for not being in closer touch, explaining that he had been promoted to a management position at the dealer where he is an auto tech.

He said that he had long been frustrated at the inefficiency and mismanagement there, and had set up a meeting with the vice-president to quit. They’ve invested a lot of training in Grant, and the exec said that they could pay him more money. Grant told his superior that his issue wasn’t the money, that his primary concern wasn’t what he was paid but what he could accomplish. (Uh-oh..ominous signs of paternal influence there…) He laid out the aspects of the operation that he found frustrating and unconscionable, and, Grant said, he “wasn’t very nice about it.” Then he described what needed to be done, and that he had suggested many of these solutions without seeing any action.

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Ethics Quiz: Beer Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The video above tells the whole story.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

Is it fair to stop drinking Tsingtao beer in response to this incident?

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Next, SAG-AFTRA Will Tell Its Members To Paint Themselves Blue And Wear Ducks On Their Heads…

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I would quit any union that started behaving in the fascist manner of The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

The labor union representing approximately 160,000 media professionals worldwide is currently on strike, and as labor unions seem inclined to do, is making nutsy-cuckoo demands of its members. They have been assimilated, after all, and resistance is futile.

Yes, as that graphic from the unions shows, members have been told that they are doing a bad, anti-labor thing by dressing up as characters from “struck content,” meaning any movie or TV show, recent or ancient. That means they can’t be King Kong, Dracula (but a generic vampire is OK), Abe Lincoln, or Barbie, or else.

Morons. Worse than that, autocratic morons abusing their power.

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Cartoon Ethics Quiz: Hamas-Israel Ethics Train Wreck Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The British newspaper The Guardian fired its long-time (over 40 years) cartoonist Steve Bell after he submitted what is being called an anti-Semitic political cartoon (above).

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Does that cartoon justify termination?

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The Wholly Ethical “Cancellation” Of Ryna Workman

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Many NYU law students are indignant and outraged that Chicago-based super-firm Winston & Strawn has withdrawn its offer of employment to Ryna Workman. As president of NYU Law’s Student Bar Association, Workman issued a statement stating that “Israel bears full responsibility” for the long-planned terrorist attacks that left more than 1,300 Israeli citizens dead, including at least 30 Americans.

The law firm had every right and many valid reasons to reconsider its offer to Workman, who had worked at Winston & Strawn as a summer associate. In a statement, the firm said her comments “profoundly conflict” with the firm’s “values.” Yes, that, and there was also a substantial likelihood that having a terrorism-celebrating associate would cost the firm clients as well as risking tension among other firm lawyers. I would add that as a potential client, I would question the judgment of any law firm that would hire someone who showed such a reckless disregard for history, facts, and the impact of inflammatory rhetoric.

Like demented lemmings, other anti-Semites, race-baiters and critical thought-deprived NYU students issued a letter supporting Workman and condemning Winston & Strawn. The firm’s decision is an instance of the “systemic, concentrated violence” Workman has experienced since issuing her anti-Israel screed, the letter claims. That’s novel: deciding not to hire someone is “violence”! The letter’s signatories, including the Black Allied Law Students Association and the Women of Color Collective, declare that NYU is complicit “in the abuses of the Israeli government,” and condemns “the broader NYU administration for not protecting Ryna as a student and important member of our community.” How exactly can any school protect a loud-mouthed student from the consequences of her own foolishness? Oh never mind: people who reason like Ryna and her fans are always victims, and nothing is ever their fault. This is also a good reason not to hire her….or her defenders.

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