Workplace

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/22/2018: The Returns Of A Terrible Idea, A Times Mania, And Lord Acton’s Observation

/ Jack Marshall / 68 Comments

Morning!

1. Bad Ideas Never Die Dept. The Obama Administration  killed an unethical Bush Administration rule that permitted a wide variety of health care workers to refuse to administer treatments and procedures they found morally repugnant, what the Bush administration termed workers’ “right of conscience.” It was, and is, a terrible idea; The American Medical Association  explained why, in the context of opposing conscience outs for pharmacists, when it declared..

“RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association reaffirm our policies supporting responsibility to the patient as paramount in all situations and the principle of access to medical care for all people (Reaffirm HOD Policy)…

Now that bad idea and the same ethically warped principles are embodied in a new Trump administration policy that provides “religious freedom protections” for doctors, nurses and other health care workers who object to performing procedures like abortions and gender reassignment surgery. This is a sop to the Republican evangelical base. As I wrote here (actually partially quoting myself from an earlier article),

“Conscience clauses” came into being in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade opinion legalizing abortion. Obviously that right to privacy ruling put Catholic hospitals in a difficult position, so the U.S. Congress passed the Church amendment (named after Sen. Frank Church of Idaho) in 1973. This provision allowed individual health care providers and institutions such as hospitals to refuse to provide abortion and sterilization services, based on moral or religious convictions. Most states adopted their own “conscience clause” laws by 1978. Conscience clauses are a terrible idea that encourage arbitrary professional misconduct. It is an example of how morally-based action can lead to unethical conduct….People who voluntarily undertake the duties of a job should either be prepared to fulfill those duties, take the consequences of not doing so, or not take the job in the first place.That is the ethical duty that one accepts when one agrees to do a job. “

President Trump doesn’t do ethics, and not being a deep thinker,  inconsistencies of principle don’t resister on him. The reason for requiring health care workers to perform their jobs regardless of whether some portion of it clashes with their religious beliefs, moral conviction, political passions or gag reflex is the same whether a doctor objects to abortions, a baker doesn’t approve of gay marriage , a restaurant owner doesn’t want to serve blacks, Hispanics, or Republicans, or an NFL football player is offended by the National Anthem. Society doesn’t work any other way. The religious freedom dodge easily turns into a cover for bigotry, harassment and oppression.

Nothing in the Constitution says that citizens have the right to hurt people when they practice their religion, or defy our laws, or refuse to perform the duties of their professions or employment while still getting paid because they cite religious conscience.

2. I Told You Not To Look Under That Rock! Dept. For some reason, I broke my own rule and skimmed a Paul Krugman column. What was I thinking? What is so digsuting about Krugman is his intellectual dishonesty, as he writes down to his readers using rhetorical tricks, rationalizations and lazy arguments that are 90% political bias and 10% substance at best. Here was the sentence that exploded my head,  stopped me from reading, as Krugman twisted reality to hold Republicans responsible for the government shutdown that was 100% caused by Senate Democrats blocking the continuing resolution to keep the government open:

“Protecting the Dreamers is, by the way, enormously popular, even among Republicans, who oppose deporting them by a huge margin. So it’s not as if the G.O.P. would be giving up a lot.”

So, as long as a provision is popular with its base, a party isn’t “giving up a lot” by supporting it—regardless of whether it is responsible, fair, smart, principled, or in the best interest of the country. Got it, Paul. This is the lowest common denominator theory of democracy being peddled to New York Times reader by its Nobel Prize-winning columnist: legislation by poll. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/15/18: Icons, Shitholes And Chianti

/ Jack Marshall / 144 Comments

Good Morning, and Happy Martin Luther King Day.

1 Priorities, priorities…Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga) has made his career out of the fact that he was an associate of Dr. King during the civil rights movement.  On Sunday’s”This Week” on ABC’, Lewis said on he would not vote for legislation that prevents a government shutdown if it did not first resolve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “I, for one, will not vote on government funding until we get a deal for DACA,” the alleged icon said.

That’s right: Lewis, and presumably many of his colleagues, would waste millions of dollars and interfere with life and daily needs of American citizens to obtain a path to citizenship for 800,000 currently illegal residents, and create a permanent incentive for foreign citizens to break our laws so they can get their kids an entitlement.  It’s more important to give illegal residents what they have no right to have, then to ensure legal citizens what their taxes pay for. This is the unethical result when ideology takes precedence over common sense.

2. Fake news also takes precedence, apparently. “Trump’s Words Eclipsing Deal For Dreamers” reads the above-the-fold headline on today’s New York Times. There are many other similar headlines on display. If, in fact, it is true that the President’s (alleged, disputed, reported initially via hearsay, denied by the speaker, and intentionally misrepresented by critics even if the alleged version is accepted) words have a decisive impact on a DACA deal, then the DACA adherents were posturing all along. What difference does it make to DACA what the President says off-the cuff in a private meeting? Apparently it is more important to Democrats and the “resistance” to denigrate the President than to accomplish substantive policy goals. Good to know.

UPDATE: I just read the opinion of conservative blogger Liz Shield after I wrote this. She said,

My position on sh!ithole-gate is this: It’s not appropriate for the President of the United States use this kind of language. Now, this was a private meeting and perhaps Trump did not think the Democrats would sabotage the DACA negotiations and, in this regard, Trump is terribly naive. There will be no good faith discussions on any policy because the policy of the Democrats is that Trump must FAIL, even at the expense of the Democrat constituencies they claim to be fighting so hard for. That is their position and I hope the president gets hip to this soon. Instead, the conversation we are having is not about policy but rather that Trump is a RACIST. Which is, coincidentally, the sole platform held by his political enemies.

Pretty much. The last sentence is unfair, though: their platform is that the President is a racist, senile, crazy, stupid, a Nazi, a traitor, a liar, a sexual predator and not really President. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: The French Anti-#MeToo Letter

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

This translated open letter received a lot of publicity last week, in part because the famous French actress Catherine Deneuve signed it (that’s her, above, with Harvey Weinstein) , along with writer/psychoanalyst Sarah Chiche,  author/art critic Catherine Millet, actress/writer Catherine Robbe-Grillet, journalist  Peggy Sastre (author/journalist) and writer/journalist Abnousse Shalmani. It was signed by over a hundred other women.

The entire letter is important, and should be read by anyone interested in this issue—and everyone should be interested. All of the letter is ethically dead on, except one crucial element: workplace harassment is not trivial, as the letter mistakenly suggests. The letter states near the beginning:

“This summary justice has already had its victims: men who’ve been disciplined in the workplace, forced to resign, and so on., when their only crime was to touch a woman’s knee, try to steal a kiss, talk about “intimate” things during a work meal, or send sexually-charged messages to women who did not return their interest.”

The French just do not get this. I have seen it, fought it, and trained companies about it: supervisors using the workplace as a dating bar harms women, even when the particular target is receptive. It is a crucial component of the glass ceiling and fuels sexual discrimination, every one of those behaviors mentioned above can create a hostile workplace. Men who engage in such conduct, if the conduct can be proven, should be disciplined, as a matter of policy and ethics.

The rest of the letter is excellent.

Rape is a crime. But trying to pick up someone, however persistently or clumsily, is not — nor is gallantry an attack of machismo.

The Harvey Weinstein scandal sparked a legitimate awakening about the sexual violence that women are subjected to, particularly in their professional lives, where some men abuse their power. This was necessary. But what was supposed to liberate voices has now been turned on its head: We are being told what is proper to say and what we must stay silent about — and the women who refuse to fall into line are considered traitors, accomplices!

Just like in the good old witch-hunt days, what we are once again witnessing here is puritanism in the name of a so-called greater good, claiming to promote the liberation and protection of women, only to enslave them to a status of eternal victim and reduce them to the defenseless prey of male chauvinist demons.

Ratting out and calling out Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up: 1/13/2018: Dumb and Dumber

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

GOOD MORNING!

(I really looked forward to Saturday mornings in those days…)

1 There has to be a special Ethics Alarms category for this…But what? Lizzie Dunn sprayed herself in the face with sulphuric acid, stumbled into a deli on Staten Island, and told horrified customers as her face was melting that a middle-aged black woman had attacked her when Dunn refused her demand cigarettes and money at a bus stop.  Local news outlets spread the frightening tale of the acid-spraying stranger before police questioned Dunn and she recanted.Apparently she has a history of hurting herself. I’d include the photo of what her face looks like now, but that’s no way to start a long weekend.

2. From the “This is getting ridiculous” Dept. Stan Lee, ta Marvel Comics icon and the creator of many comic book heroes,is 95 years old but still pretty spry s he enjoys late life celebrity. The NHL’s Arizona Coyotes invited hm to be its ceremonial pregame puck dropper for yesterday’s game, but cancelled its invitation after some of the nurses who had cared for Lee at his home accused him of sexual harassment. Lee not only denies the allegation from the company that employed the nurses that he has “spoken inappropriately” to some of them and had tried to “grope them,” he claims to be the victim of a shakedown. His lawyers have threatened to sue the company for defamation, and Lee’s current nurse providers say he is a “perfect gentleman.”

This is #MeToo bullying. As usual, we have no way to know who is telling the truth, but the Coyotes are cowardly and unfair to embarrass Lee publicly by behaving as if he is guilty when investigations so far have proven no wrongdoing. He deserves the benefit of the doubt, and the prospect of eldercare nurses being primed to cry sexual misconduct when some geezer engages in dubious but harmless behavior that he was raised to think was a privilege of old age is frankly frightening.  Lee is wealthy, famous, and at his age poses no physical threat to any caretaker nor creates a hostile work environment in a profession that routinely faces far worse daily indignities than a pat on the rear or a racy wisecrack. He would be easy prey for #MeToo extortion: all that would be needed is a group of nurses to agree to accuse him and split the pay-off.  Meanwhile, the Coyotes would hardly be regarded as enablers of sexual violence if they let the guy drop a puck. Continue reading →

Discrimination Or Negotiation? The Phony “All The Money In The World” Pay Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

As usual, the headlines are misleading, and the reporting is soaked with emotion.. Michelle Williams Is Reportedly Worth 1500% Less Than Mark Walberg To Sony…

is a typical example. Fake news. Mark Wahlberg reportedly made 1500 times what Michelle Williams did for All the Money reshoots. True, but misleading. Here is what happened:

“All the Money in the World” is the film that had to be substantially re-shot after tyhe decision was made to make Kevin Spacey, in a major role, disappear, with his part taken by Christopher Plummer. This required far more re-shooting than a typical finished film requires. Most movie contracts require a certain number of reshoot days as a routine stipulation for the actors, who must make themselves available as needed. If more than the usual additional filming is needed, however, actors are not obligated to work beyond what they reasonably expected.  Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg had agreed to appear in “All the Money in the World” for less than their standard fee, but when they had to go an extra mile to let the film be completed, they each took a different tack.

Williams was nice, and quickly agreed to return, believing, without being told so,that other participants had made the same decision. She even worked over Thanksgiving,  arranging for her 12-year-old daughter, Matilda, to spend the holiday without her. “They could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted,” she Told the New York Times. “Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.” (…to get rid of Kevin Spacey!)

Her co-star Mark Wahlberg, however, realized that he had leverage over the production team. He was the only major cast member with no commitment to reshoot his scenes. The finished film was set to be released in theaters in about a month, on December 25, so he had terrific leverage. In Hollywood, leverage equals big bucks. He told his primary agent, Doug Lucterhand, to play hardball, and negotiate for as much money as he could get.

The production company ultimately agreed to a $1.5 million payment.

Is this gender discrimination? No. Is it an example of bias? No. Is it unfair? Well, only in that life is unfair, some people are more shrewd than others, Hollywood isn’t kindergarten, and nice guys finish last, as Leo Durocher said. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/9/2018: Plan O, Bad Punditry, Racist Trash Talk, And Disrespecting a 101 Year Old Star

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

Good morning, World!

1 Golden Globes hangover I. Following up on a point made in yesterday’s Golden Globes post, presenter Natalie Portman’s much-praised but unfair innuendo that the directors nominated in the “best director” category were there because of gender bias rather than the quality of their work was an example of shooting the bystander rather than the villain. The fact that women don’t get the opportunities to direct major films that men do–as a result of many factors, none of which relate to the relative directing abilities of the two pools–is not the fault of the male directors who get the jobs, nor does the fact of discrimination make the films that women do get to direct inherently better and more award-worthy than they are.

That said, the bias against female directors is real, and dumb. Here is an excellent article about it.

2. A Nation of Silly People. I warned that electing Donald Trump as President would eventually turn us into a Nation of Assholes, and that has come to pass with unexpected rapidity. I did not see the development resulting in the US becoming a nation of silly people, though that process was well underway already. The rush to anoint Oprah Winfrey as the savior of the Republic based on a speech at an entertainment awards show, however, is new evidence of the damage done to the nation’s values by the Trump trauma. Oprah is a cult, pop culture figure; a democracy deteriorating into a society where celebrities and cult leaders become political leaders was one of the fears expressed by our Founders. For the Left to embrace Oprah is stunning hypocrisy, after more than a year of (correctly) accusing Republicans of nominating a Presidential candidate with none of the qualifications traditionally required to be taken seriously as a contender for the office. Many unhealthy trends of long standing pointed to this eventuality,it is true: celebrity obsession, poor civic education, ignorance of history, and new age gibberish, plus the stunning absence of legitimate leaders in both political parties. Having followed O for a long time, since her days in Baltimore as a rising life-style reporter, I recognize a lot of warning signs regarding her ethical instincts, such as her addiction to talking about “personal truths,” which is just a sneaky way of endorsing “alternate facts,” her troubling anti-vaxx statements, her promotion of fake experts like Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil, her race-baiting, and more. There will be plenty of time to elaborate on these if and when her candidacy becomes more than a twinkle in E!’s eye. I doubt that we’ll get there, but as President Trump proved, you never know in the United States of America.

3. A “Nah, there’s no media bias against Trump” note: During the Golden Globes broadcast, NBC, that paragon of journalism integrity, tweeted this:

4. Fake news in irresponsible punditry.  I have been meaning to write about this op-ed by New York Times “contributing opinion writer” Kashana Cauley for more than a week now, and the task has seemed so odious that I have avoided it. It is as bad an op-ed as I have ever seen, full of false assertions, misrepresentations , rationalizations and racial hate. I wonder when the New York Times editors reached the point where they would regard such trash as fit to be published under its banner. Rather than dissect the ugly thing as I originally intended, I’ll let you do the work, with me just pointing out some, but far from all, of the features that make this such unethical op-ed page content. Continue reading →

As Expected, The Golden Globes Were Ethically Incoherent

/ Jack Marshall / 82 Comments

It is not surprising that last night’s Golden Globes award, pre-hyped as some kind of virtuous purging of the old, bad Hollywood culture where men used their power to sexually abuse women, and women submitted–and stayed silent—to achieve power and wealth of their own, was self-contradictory, hypocritical and incoherent.

What, for example, did the all-black outfits mean? Here is B-list actress Amber Tamblyn trying to explain in the New York Times:

“We actresses are not just modeling clothing when we walk a red carpet on award show night. We are modeling a kind of behavior. We are speaking in a coded language to other women — even young girls — that says: The way I look and what I wear and how I wear it is the standard for women. What is being worn is not an exception. It is the rule. You must dress a certain way and look a certain way if you want to be valued as a woman, no matter what you do for a living or who you are. We never intend for this to be the message we are sending with what we wear, but often it is the perceived one, whether we like it or not…Tonight, you will see just such an experiment as myself and hundreds of women from the Time’s Up movement will reject colorful gowns for black ones on the Golden Globes’ red carpet and at related events across the country. Wearing black is not all we will be doing. We will be doing away with the old spoken codes in favor of communicating boldly and directly: What we are wearing is not a statement of fashion. It is a statement of action. It is a direct message of resistance. Black because we are powerful when we stand together with all women across industry lines. Black because we’re starting over, resetting the standard. Black because we’re done being silenced and we’re done with the silencers. Tonight is not a mourning. Tonight is an awakening.”

Oh. What? This is Authentic Frontier Gibberish. I sincerely doubt that what actresses wear on the red carpet has as much influence, or even close to it, on young women as what the actresses wear in films and TV. The black is a statement of action? What action? Resistance to what? Anyone who thinks that now, suddenly, a hundred years of a corrupt culture has been erased, and that if a message is sent by a male director, producer or star that an ambitious young actress can prevail over her competition by acceding to a date, a grope, or a night of sex, that won’t get essentially the same results it always has is naive. Tamblyn doesn’t think that, and I guarantee that  Meryl Streep doesn’t think that. This means that the all-black stunt was just grandstanding, and a mass deception upon the public.

If this was genuinely turning the page, why didn’t any of the actors—not one–mention Harvey Weinstein? They didn’t because they are afraid that he might come back, that’s why. Mel Gibson came back. David Begelman came back. Hollywood has a cruel, venal, ethics free,culture, and all of these women and actors know it. They won’t burn bridges, not completely. This is why Rose McGowan, who was the most vocal and audacious of the abused actresses, one who took grave personal risks to accuse Weinstein of raping her and then paying her off, as well as Ashley Judd and Salma Hayek, who both went public with the abuse before other stars felt secure enough to come forward–Hayek wrote that Weinstein threatened to have her killed —were completely ignored during the ceremony. Nobody saluted them. Nobody thanked them. Harvey might take it personally.

When host Seth Meyers, in his opening monologue, mentioned Weinstein, it was with this  jibe “Harvey Weinstein can’t be here tonight because, well, I’ve heard rumors that he’s crazy and difficult to work with.”  (That was an anti-Trump shot, of course) “But don’t worry — he’ll be back in 20 years when he becomes the first person ever booed during the ‘In Memoriam’ segment.”

The crowd, supposedly there explicitly rejecting the Weinstein culture,  moaned and booed. What bad taste for Myers! Imagine, being mean to a rapist! (“See Harvey? I didn’t laugh! Can I read for that part?”) Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/7/2018: Lies, Dunces, Fools, Villains, Hypocrites And Big Liars In The Resistance’s Plan E, “The President Is Disabled!” [Part I]

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

I won’t lie to you…

It’s not a good morning,

(until Americas and journalists condemn this for what it is.)

1 The Big Lie Let us begin by calling the pile of news stories spreading the slander, libel and fake news that President Donald J. Trump is mentally disabled what it really is. It is part of a Big Lie strategy by Democrats, “the resistance”, and the mainstream news media to bring down the Trump Administration without having to win an election.

Because the term”Big Lie”  itself was coined by  Adolf Hitler, in his 1925 book Mein Kampf, and because the Nazis were themselves so fond of the tactic, many hesitate to use the phrase when that is exactly what is being done for fear that to do so will be attacked as comparing the Big Lie wielder to Hitler, Goebbels, or fascists. People are free to make whatever comparisons they like. Using a technique the Nazis mastered doesn’t make a group Nazis, but using a sinister, powerful propaganda weapon that honest and fair people recognize as vile and dangerous is unforgivable.

The claim that President Trump is suffering from dementia or some other form of mental disability is a big lie” by definition. Hitler called it a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” The idea, of course, is to make it impossible for the victim of the attack to ignore the lie, and require the victim and others to deny it. The lie is given currency by the denials, and then the Big Lie propagandists can focus on the denials rather than the substance of the lie itself, of which there is none. Brilliant!

An essential element for a Big Lie to work is extreme bias and bigotry. The absence of these in sufficient measure is why other recent Big Lie attempts, such as the theory that the Bush administration bombed the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and the Birther claims, failed. The past year has demonstrated that, thanks in part to the unAmerican efforts by Democratic leadership to undermine the legitimacy and acceptance of President Trump’s election, and a non-stop negative tone and attitude in the reporting of the news regarding his administration, a very large component of the electorate is steeped in irrational fear and hate of the President that is emotional rather than rational. That’s bigotry, and it is the fertile solid where big lies flourish.

2. Why Plan E now? Plan E is one of the rotating plans (reviewed in #5 here) embraced at various times in the past year by “the resistance” to justify overturning the 2016 election.I touched on this yesterday. Plan J, the effort to force Trump to resign in the midst of the Terror-like, Harvey Weinstein sparked witch hunt to drive from positions of power make any man who ever allegedly engaged in any sexual misconduct ranging from a gross proposition to an impulsive kiss to rape, never came close to working, even though Democrats sacrificed an iconic Congressman and a rising Senator in the effort. The death knell of Plan J was when it was revealed that Democratic supporters, including the shameless Media Matters, were paying women, through lawyers or otherwise, to make accusations and bring law suits. The decision to re-animate Plan E was the furor and media feeding frenzy surrounding Michael Wolff’s latest book of whispered gossip, pay-back, rumors and spin, “Fire and Fury.” Wolff is a muckraking entrepreneur whose past books and articles have been frequently criticized for including speculation and outright falsehoods. Never mind: the timing of a sensational best seller purporting to dish the real dirt about the chaotic early day of the Trump White House as it struggled to find its footing and the man at its center, Donald Trump was too good to pass up. Wolff is no Bob Woodward, but as they say, any port in a storm. The new narrative is that Trump is nuts, or senile, or something. He’s not right in the head. Lots of people who work with him say so (anonymously), and lots of people who would have said or done anything to stop him from being President have been saying so all along.

3. This Big Lie’s essential smaller lies.

  • Prime among them is that anything new has occurred, or that there is evidence of the President’s mental/emotional unfitness that the public was not fully aware of long before they elected him. There isn’t. The re-emergence of the Plan E narrative is nothing more than a re-litigation of the campaign.

Trump critics (like me, as I variously described him during the campaign—and before–as unstable, narcissistic, infantile, stupid, deranged and worse, based on specific statements and incidents) always believed that he did not have the appropriate intellect, instincts, emotional make-up or character to lead the country, but the electorate did not agree, and that’s all that matters. Conservatives, Republicans and those just sick of the arrogance and divisiveness of the Obama administration adopted  the long-accepted Democratic position, specially reinforced to get Bill Clinton (and, hopefully, his equally ethics-challenged wife) elected and keep him in office, that only results matter, not character. This coalition  elected Trump despite his obvious flaws, and to some extent, because of them.

  • The second attendant lie to Plan E—maybe it should be #1– is that the 25th Amendment’s Section 4 allows the Cabinet to remove any President who isn’t literally unable to function. Section 4 states,

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

Until the Democrats began pretending otherwise, no one, not legal scholars, not Constitutional experts, not people who can read English, ever interpreted “unable” to mean anything but completely disabled: a major stroke, a coma, debilitating illness. A disabled President can’t sign documents, can’t make decisions, can’t delegate, can’t hold meetings, can’t even tweet. If the definition of “unable” bleeds into “doesn’t make decisions or express himself in ways others think are wise or prudent,” then the 25th Amendment becomes an open-ended means to achieve a coup….which is the real purpose of distorting it now. Underestimating the seriousness of this effort, or its existential danger for the nation, would be mistake.

  • Even if Trump were handicapped by a new mental or emotional problem, and there is no evidence that he is, Presidents battling such problems are practically the natural state of the office.  Too many Presidents have suffered through various health issues, physical and mental, in the course of their terms in office to count. The 25th Amendment was not put in place to allow a coup any time a President was temporarily diminished or not in top form. Several Presidents, including Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, suffered from clinical depression. They dealt with it. Others dealt with alcoholism, drug addiction, serious illness, narcissism, old age, and often many of these at once. FDR was dying during his entire last term, until he did in fact die.

Most of our leaders have been mentally and emotionally abnormal in one way or the other, because normal people don’t become President.

  • Finally, contrary to what “the resistance” and the media are peddling, the evidence indicates that the President has been doing his job surprisingly well. Those who hate him and his policies can’t accept or admit that, but it is a matter of record. There is no legitimate, objective evidence to support Plan E. That is why this is, in reality, a Big Lie.

Exposing a Big Lie takes a Big Post. I’ll get into the fools, dunces, villains and liars next.

 

 

Comment Of The Day (1): “Public Confidence And Trust (1): Observations On Gallup’s Trust In Occupations Poll”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

My post on the Gallup poll on public trust in various occupations and professions strayed into Charles Green’s wheelhouse, and the resulting home run comment enlightened us regarding why nurses keep “winning” the poll as the most trusted year after year after year.

Here is Charlie’s Comment of the Day on the post, Public Confidence And Trust (1): Observations On Gallup’s Trust In Occupations Poll:

Speaking just to the nursing angle: my work on trust has involved a diagnostic tool, the TQ (Trust Quotient), a self-assessment of the four components of trustworthiness in the Trust Equation:
(Credibilty + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation.

70,000 people have taken it, and three results stand out above all others.

First, women are more trustworthy than men – a finding confirmed by informal polls in 397 out of 400 groups I’ve presented in front of.

Second, the most powerful factor of the four (defined as the highest coefficient in a regression equation) is Intimacy.

Third, the bulk of women’s outscoring men is their higher score on the Intimacy factor (again, intuitively true to the vast majority of groups I ask).

It’s in this context that I note the Gallup work (and other pollsters) finding of nursing at the top of the heap every year but 2002 (which was, not coincidentally, the year after 9/11 – and a year in which firemen, if only for that one year, took over the top spot.

Nursing is an 89% female profession. I ask my audiences, “Which of the four trustworthiness factors do you think nurses most embody: credibility, reliability, intimacy, or low self-orientation?” Most pick intimacy (with low self-orientation a frequent second).

Add ’em up: female, Intimacy, nursing – it’s a trifecta. Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 1/6/2018: The “Too Sick To Come Up With A Good Headline” Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

He’s lucky: he has hair...

Good Morning!

1 A solution to a perpetual problem. I do the mandatory introduction to legal ethics for two jurisdictions. Both are early in the morning,and both have courts monitoring them, insisting that to get credit, attendees must be present for every second of the course. The problem: late arrivals. One of my jurisdictions had a tendency to let late-comers in if it’s just a few minutes, but sometimes it gets ridiculous. Once the line is blurred, when does it get hard again? I have sen the administrators tell a lawyer that she is absolutely the last one who will get a break, only to see another late comer burst through the door panicked, upset, and with a doozy of an excuse…and then another, and another. This is especially ironic because lawyers are ethically required to be on time to court, or else.

In my other jurisdiction, they deal with the problem by absolute enforcement. 30 seconds late, and you have to come back next month. It doesn’t matter why, it doesn’t matter where the lawyer came from (one had flown in from Seoul and was two minutes late). If you arrive after the doors are closed at 9 am sharp, you can’t get credit. This, as you might imagine, often sparks tantrums, tears, threats, and “Do you know who I am?” One furious attendee actually cast a curse on every bar employee in sight. I’m talking about a real curse, right out of the movies, pointing and chanting. Some months we have had more than ten latecomers in the lobby, acting like an angry mob, and threatening a riot.

This jurisdiction has solved the problem by recently telling all who need the course on the bar website and  in email messages that the program begins at 8:30 am, when it really doesn’t. In other words, the solution is a lie: if someone arrives at 8:59, there’s no problem.

Is this ethical?

2. Oh, this was obviously going to be an ethics rain wreck long ago. AG Sessions announced that the Justice Department would not be following the Obama Administration’s policy regarding federal anti-pot laws—which is to say, it would not signal that it wouldn’t enforce the law. As a result,  Corey Gardner, Republican Senator from happily stoned Colorado, announced that he would block any appointments to Justice until the Department charged with enforcing laws agrees to stop enforcing laws. What Sessions did is not the draconian reversal it has been represented as by the Angry Trump Hate Mob, Stoner Chapter. Read the order from Sessions here.

Never mind. Following the lead of California, which has officially announced that it will encourage breaches of the immigration laws, now Colorado wants to impede the functioning of national law enforcement to force the federal government to let another state veto drug laws. This is what we call “a dangerous and irresponsible trend.”

3.  The Tragedy of Joanie Cunnningham. The New York Times Magazine ended the year with biographical sketches, including the sad story of Erin Moran, aka Joanie Cunningham on “Happy Days,” who died of cancer in 2017. It’s an all-too-typical story of a child star with a dysfunctional family who grew up on a set without ever receiving the parenting and support she needed to be able to become a functioning adult. I knew about Moran’s problems after the show ended; I did not know that her bitterness about her fellow cast members stemmed from her feelings as a child that her TV family was a substitute her real family, and that they failed her. Of course, the Cunninghams, Fonzie, Ralph and Potsie had no duty to become Moran’s surrogate family, but I am not surprised that a child actor would feel this way, especially one who was  being neglected and mistreated at home the way Erin Moran apparently was. Interestingly, child actor advocate Paul Petersen has said that his TV mom and dad, Donna Reed and Carl Betz, did act as his surrogate parents in important and beneficial ways.

I continue to believe that using child performers before the age of informed consent is unethical. Continue reading →