Unethical Quote Of The Week: Slate Legal Columnist Dahlia Lithwick and Law Professor David S. Cohen

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments
if you think THAT's a distortion, just try looking as the Golden Rule in the mirror...

If you think THAT’s a distortion, just try looking as the Golden Rule in the mirror…

“If Mr. Trump had lost the Electoral College while winning the popular vote, an army of Republican lawyers would have descended on the courts and local election officials.”

—-Slate Editor Dahlia Lithwick and Drexel University law professor David S. Cohen in a NYT op-ed, “Buck Up, Democrats, and Fight Like Republicans.”

I love this quote! It is a pure example of one of the many invalid Golden Rule permutations that appear on the invaluable Ethics Alarms Rationalizations list under #58. The Golden Rule Mutation, or “I’m all right with it!” Among the blatant rationalizations disguised in Golden Rule cloaks are…

  • Do unto others as you know others would do unto you.
  • Do unto others what they did unto you.
  • Do unto others as you wish others would do unto you even though you wouldn’t deserve it.
  • Do unto others as those others treat others.
  • Do unto others as they threatened to do unto you.
  • Do unto others as others who think like you do would also do to those others.
  • Do unto others according to how you feel about what they did unto you.
  • Do unto others before they do it unto you.
  • Do unto me as you would want to have done unto you if you were as devoid of civilized values as I am.

As for #58, it translates into…

“Do unto others as if the others felt like I do, even though they may not.”

The possible variations are infinite, and every one of them is intellectually dishonest and unethical. It’s astounding, and depressing, that two lawyers, one an alleged analyst and the other a law professor, would endorse such an unethical proposition.  They do it because they are openly partisan and politically biased, and as we all should know by now if you’ve been paying attention here, bias makes you stupid.

The op-ed’s Golden Rule mutation is one I should add to the list, though it’s a bit long:

“Do unto others as you conveniently assume the others would do unto you, even though there is no evidence that they would.” Continue reading →

Julia Ioffe’s Vile Tweet: Now The Question Is Whether There Are Any Depths Of Unprofessional Conduct And Unhinged Bias That Disqualify A Journalist [UPDATED]

/ Jack Marshall / 72 Comments

trump-incest-tweet

Julia Ioffe, a columnist at “Foreign Policy” and a contributing writer for “Politico Magazine” was moved to issue the above tweet by accounts that First Daughter Ivanka Trump would serve as First Lady while Melania Trump remained in New York to care for the Trump’s young son . Oh, nice! Keep it classy, news media!

Ioffe now joins John Oliver, Charles Blow, Harry Reid, The View, Harvard Law professor Larry Lessig and others on a growing list of nominees for the 2016 Ethics Alarms Award as the most unsavory passenger on the 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck. The problem is that she isn’t a British comedian, a race-baiting Times columnist, a full-time asshole, a talk show hosted by celebrity ignoramuses, or an especially deluded academic. Ioffe is supposed to be a journalist whose analysis can be trusted, and the vicious character and unrestrained hate that her tweet reveals should disqualify her for that profession. Before Donald Trump—you know, the new President whom the New York Times decreed is exempt from ethical treatment?—such a public statement would have disqualified any journalist and ended her career immediately. This would have happened because journalism organizations once valued not just professional conduct and objectivity but the appearance of it.

The tweet wasn’t just disgusting, it was incompetent, misleading and stupid:

  • The news report has been denied by the Trump transition team, so the alleged journalist was spreading “fake news.”

There have been almost two dozen permanent or temporary First Ladies who had other family relationships with Presidents, including daughters, daughters-in-law, nieces, sisters, cousins, and aunts. Three daughters assumed the First Lady role when their mothers died: Letty Tyler Semple for President Tyler,  Mary Harrison McKee for President Benjamin Harrison, and Margaret Wilson for Woodrow. Oddly, none of them were accused of having sex with their fathers. Margaret Wilson shared First Lady duties with President Wilson’s cousin Helen Bones, who had worked for the first Mrs. Wilson as personal secretary. Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren and Chester Arthur were widowers, so their First Ladies couldn’t be spouses. Jefferson’s daughter Martha Randolph, Jackson’s niece and daughter-in-law Emily Donelson and Sarah Jackson were all First Ladies.  James Buchanan and Grover Cleveland were bachelors when they assumed the presidency,  so Cleveland’s sister Rose Elizabeth served as his First Lady until he married Florence Folsom fifteen months into his administration, and Harriet Lane, Buchanan’s niece, acted as his hostess and was the first Presidential spouse referred to as the “First Lady.” Many other non-spouses served in the capacity for limited amounts of time for reasons comparable to Melania’s conflicts.

In short, Ioffe is ignorant of American history and didn’t know what she was tweeting about, but did so anyway, misleading the public. Continue reading →

14 Ethics Musings On The Death Of Francisco Serna

/ Jack Marshall / 92 Comments
keith-scott

Scott and Serna.

From The Washington Post:

Slightly after midnight on Monday, police in Bakersfield, Calif., received a call concerning a man thought to be brandishing a weapon in a residential neighborhood.

Shortly after police arrived, 73-year-old Francisco Serna — who family members said was suffering from the early stages of dementia — walked out of his home and into his driveway. When Serna, who was unarmed, did not comply with officers’ orders to remove his hands from his jacket pocket, one officer fired seven shots at him, killing him.

During a canvass of the premises that lasted at least until the following afternoon, police did not find a firearm on or near Serna. Instead, they found a crucifix.

Questions and Observations:

1. The shooting occurred two days ago, on December 12. There have been no organized protests, or community groups, family lawyers or anyone else suggesting that the shooting was murder, or an example of police animus toward the community. Why not?

2. The circumstances of the shooting were notably similar to the police involved shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte, North Carolina, except that in the case of Scott, the officer believed the victim had a gun, and he did have a gun. Nonetheless, that shooting triggered two days of rioting. Why?

3. In the Scott shooting, both officer and victim were black. In the recent shooting in Bakersfield, officer and victim were white. Why did one shooting become a racial incident and the other not, when the conduct of the police officers were essentially identical, and the provocation for the shootings  were similar as well?

4. One difference in the two episodes is that in Charlotte, a false narrative was launched by a family member to make the shooting appear to be a case of excessive force with a police cover-up. Is it just felicitous that this did not occur in Bakersfield, or was the Charlotte episode different in some way that caused events to resemble the aftermath in the Ferguson and Freddie Gray police-involved deaths?

5. If Francisco Serna had been black and all other facts the same, is there any reason to believe that the aftermath, including recriminations, accusations and attacks on police, the justice system and the nation’s culture, would have been any different than they have been every time an unarmed black man, or a black man who was reported as being unarmed, has been shot by police? If there is not, what does that tell us? Continue reading →

Question: How Do You Spot A Biased Newspaper?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
Slanted? Waddya mean "slanted"?

Slanted? Waddya mean “slanted”?

Answer: Read the Letters to the Editor.

I now subscribe to the New York Times, and the uniform one-way slant of the Letters to the Editor is palpable and fascinating. I’ve been tempted many times, including today, to do a post critiquing the biases in all the Times letters in a single edition. Maybe some day.

80% of the letters list progressive or Democratic talking points, either because that’s the approximate proportion of liberals among the Times readership, or because that percentage (it is remarkably consistent, day to day, paper to paper) reflects the bias of the editors choosing which letters to print.  I have concluded that the letters are probably even more weighted to the left than the reader opinions published reflect. The Times just feels obligated to include a non-conforming, aka “conservative,”  view here and there so its bias won’t be screamingly obvious. It’s an objective paper, after all.

Today’s mail call was dominated by one letter after another excoriating Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments, which was also the theme of today’s Times editorial. In particular, the appointment of Exxon Mobil’s chief executive, Rex Tillerson, as Secretary of State was a target of the correspondents’ disgust.  The majority view was stated in one letter this way:

“Like Donald Trump, Mr. Tillerson has no experience in the delicate and sensitive art of diplomacy.”

It wasn’t until the fourth letter (out of five: 80%!) that a commenter mentioned the obvious, and exactly what I was thinking as I read all the expressions of  horror: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Ethical Duties Of Santa Claus Imposters

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

11 photos for movie review running Thanksgiving Eve. Billy Bob Thornton in Terry ZwigoffÕs BAD SANTA. Photo Courtesy of Tracy Bennett.

A post yesterday described the outrageous conduct of the management at the Six Flags Over Texas theme park, which declared a local man named Jerry Henderson person non grata and kicked him out of the park because he “looked too much like Santa Claus” (they want him to shave his white beard to resume his park privileges). He also gave candy canes to children after their mom asked him to pose with her kids for a photo.

A regular Ethics Alarms commenter related this 180 degree variation on the story:

My kids take swimming classes at our local park authority pool, and last week, while we were signing in, one of the managers came out of the back office dressed as Santa. However, he was doing it as a gag for the other employees, not for the kids. (About 80%+ of the people there were children.) My kids went running up to him shouting, “Santa, Santa!” He did not acknowledge them or the other kids, didn’t even say hi, and just walked into one of the workout rooms.

I thought my kids were going to cry. I had to tell them that Santa was busy right now, but not to worry, we would go see him tomorrow when he had time to talk to them.

Your “Bad Santa”-themed Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:

If you look like Santa Claus, are you ethically obligated to act like Santa Claus?

Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Philosophy Professor Peter Boghossian

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
"Hmmm. OK, now THIS seriously undercuts some of my strongly held beliefs..."

“Hmmm. OK, now THIS seriously undercuts some of my strongly held beliefs…”

“We’ve taught, “Formulate your beliefs on the basis of evidence.” But the problem with that is people already believe they’ve formulated their beliefs on evidence — that’s why they believe what they believe. Instead, what we should focus on is teaching people to seek out and identify defeaters.

What is a defeater? A defeater is: If A, then B, unless C. C is the defeater. We should teach people to identify conditions under which their beliefs could be false.”

–—Peter Boghossian, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University, who studies critical thinking and moral reasoning, in a wide-ranging interview with  Malhar Mali

He continues, Continue reading →

A Christmas KABOOM! Six Flags’ Sick Parody Of “Miracle On 34th Street”

/ Jack Marshall / 73 Comments
HO HO KABOOM!

HO HO KABOOM!

Call it “Miraculous Stupidity On Six Flags’ Street.” I’m sure I could come up with something more clever if my brains weren’t splattered on the walls and ceiling.

Get this:

Jerry Henderson and his wife visit Six Flags Over Texas almost every weekend to walk the park for exercise. Jerry has white hair,a long white beard, and a little round belly that shakes when he laughs like a bowl full of jelly. Around this time of year, he wears a red vest and a Santa hat.

“This ain’t a costume,” says Henderson. “I go to Walmart like this. This is me,” he said. “I enjoy making kids smile.” He’s looked like Santa Claus for  almost 20 years . On this visit to the theme park, a woman asked him to pose for a picture with her children. “Knelt down, put my arms around them, and afterward I reached in my wife’s walker, pulled out two candy canes, handed it to them,” recalled Henderson. The kids were thrilled.

The Horror.

Jerry was then confronted by park security, who ordered him to leave the park.  “For what reason?  Jerry asked. The stupid answer was, “You look too much like Santa Claus.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Bill Gates

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Funny, he doesn't LOOK evil...

Funny, he doesn’t LOOK evil...

Yes, it’s really this bad: a prominent liberal and Democrat qualifies as an Ethics Hero because he’s willing to give Donald Trump a chance.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told CNBC this morning that after speaking with the President Elect, he believes that Donald Trump has an opportunity to establish “American leadership through innovation,” Trump’s fellow billionaire told  “Squawk Box”:

“A lot of his message has been about … where he sees things not as good as he’d like…But in the same way President Kennedy talked about the space mission and got the country behind that, I think whether it’s education or stopping epidemics … [or] in this energy space, there can be a very upbeat message that [Trump’s] administration [is] going to organize things, get rid of regulatory barriers, and have American leadership through innovation….Of course, my whole career has been along those lines. And he was interested in listening to that. And I’m sure there will be further conversation.”

What could possibly prompt Gates to keep his head while all around him are losing theirs and blaming it on Trump? I see six possibilities: Continue reading →

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Whitney Tilson, And Bigotry

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

warren2

The PPP Poll on Democrats’ 2020 preferences found that “Joe Biden leads the way for Democrats with 31% to 24% for Bernie Sanders, and 16% for Elizabeth Warren. They’re the only folks we tested with meaningful support for the nomination at this point.” Since Warren is the only one in that groups not eligible for Social Security, she’s at least the putative front-runner for the 2020 race against President Trump. That’s not bad entirely bad news for Democrats. Warren’s smart and passionate, and she’s a fiery speaker.  Unfortunately, she’s also a jerk and more important, a bigot.

Warren has been on an anti-Trump rampage for months, and an anti-Wall Street rampage forever.   She recently graced  Facebook with another anti-business rant to her nearly 2.5 million followers. In it, she condemned Whitney Tilson, who runs Kase Capital, calling him a “hedge fund billionaire” who is “thrilled by Donald Trump’s economic team of Wall Street insiders.” The Massachusetts Senator wrote, “Tilson knows that, despite all the stunts and rhetoric, Donald Trump isn’t going to change the economic system…The next four years are going to be a bonanza for the Whitney Tilsons of the world.”

This gratuitous attack was pure bigotry.  To bigots, what matters is what people are—blacks, whites, Jews, gays, men, women, Muslims, poor people, rich people, Democrats, Republicans. Also Trump voters, feminists, Christians, college students, bankers, and lawyers. Bigots assign unattractive, negative character traits to individuals based on neat categories they can be placed in, and their real beliefs, principles, and most important of all, acts don’t matter. Warren’s reference to “the Whitney Tilsons of the world” is the mark of a bigot. If you work on Wall Street, you are just like all the rest to her. Greedy. Corrupt. Bad.

The  hateful attitude from Warren is especially unfair in Tilson’s case. He was one few financial executives who publicly opposed Trump and supported Hillary Clinton. He is a lifelong Democrat, and he helped start the terrific volunteer teacher program Teach for America; he doesn’t just sit around counting his money.  (Warren, incidentally, is about as rich as he is.) Tilson was also  one of the very few Wall Street executives who  donated to Senator Warren’s campaign for the Senate. Tilson, like Warren, has supports tough regulations for his industry.  “I’m a fan of Dodd-Frank,” he said in a recent interview. ” I think banking should be boring…I worry about Wall Street returning to being a casino.” Continue reading →

Baseball Installs An Anti-Hazing, Anti-Bullying Policy That Proves It Doesn’t Understand What’s Wrong With Bullying And Hazing

/ Jack Marshall / 42 Comments

mlb-drag-1

Every year, Major League Baseball teams indulge in a high-profile, stupid and offensive ritual by forcing their rookies to dress in ridiculous costumes as they travel  home after their final road trip. This is  hazing, the team’s veterans humiliating the team’s young players and forcing them to show proper deference and character by submitting to it. Most of the time, the humiliation involved dressing in drag, because, as every red-blooded American male knows, nothing is worse than being compared to a woman. Continue reading →