Unethical Maybe, Unprofessional Definitely: Saturday Night Live With Host Donald Trump

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

donald trump larry david snl

Last night, Saturday Night Live was terrible, even for Saturday Night Live. The skits were flat and desperate, the performances were slack and lacking energy. My reaction from the almost joke-free cold open (if an actress can’t do a better impression of Rachel Maddow than that, it’s time to hang it up) was, “They are intentionally tanking this!”

My impression got stronger as the show went on. If anything, SNL’s current young cast usually tries too hard. The key to live comedy performing is radiating energy and control, as well as communicating that you are having fun. Last night it was the mostly opposite: no energy, no enthusiasm. An off night that just happened to fall on the night that Donald Trump was hosting? Maybe. You can say my suspicions are born of confirmation bias, but I was surprised. These are supposedly pros. They should be able to deliver if they had to perform with Satan.

Trump wasn’t phoning it in. He was doing his best, and it wasn’t bad by the standards of a non-performer. The SNL cast acted as if it didn’t want to associate with him. Continue reading →

“Baretta,” The Ethics of Criminal Justice, And Keeping The Sentence From The Jury

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Just stay in the box, everybody...

Just stay in the box, everybody…

Florida criminal defense lawyer has made a thorough and passionate argument on his blog for letting a jury know what the sentence is likely to be if it convicts the defendant in a criminal trial. He writes in part:

Florida juries are not permitted to know the most basic truth of a case—the potential sentence. Kind of crazy, right? Citizens are not allowed to know the sentence that will result from their verdict out of fear that such information would sway the jury’s conscience toward not guilty (God forbid a jury with a conscience!). Such fears say a lot about how harsh our criminal justice system has become. Continue reading →

The University Of Missouri Football Players Boycott And The Campus Race Conflicts To Come

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments
In 1967, it was called "Columbia"...

In 1967, it was called “Columbia”…

I have searched far and wide, and this appears to be the full extent of the alleged provocation for the revolt of black students against the president of the University of Missouri, Tim Wolfe:

Sept. 12: Missouri Students Association president Payton Head posts about a racial slur directed at him.

Payton Head, MU senior and president of MSA, renewed the dialogue about racism and the racial climate on the University’s Columbia campus after publishing a Facebook post about his first-hand experience with racism. The night before, Head said he was walking around campus when the passenger of a pickup repeatedly shouted the “N-word” at him.

Head’s statement went viral on social media, and many people shared their support of Head and frustration with MU’s response, or lack thereof, to his post. “I’d had experience with racism before, like microaggressions, but that was the first time I’d experienced in-your-face racism,” Head told a Missourian reporter.

Oct. 5: Legion of Black Collegians members are the targets of racial slurs by a man on campus.

Another instance of racism brought the racial climate on campus again to the attention of students and administrators.

The Legion of Black Collegians shared a letter on social media describing the group’s encounter with overt racism the night before. The group was rehearsing for a performance at Traditions Plaza when a “young man” talking on his cellphone walked up to the group. After being politely and repeatedly asked to leave, the man walked away but referenced LBC members using racial slurs.

That same day, MU Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin responded with a post of his own, acknowledging and condemning racism at MU.

“There was a silence that fell over us all, almost in disbelief that this racial slur in particular was used in our vicinity,” Naomi Collier, president of MU’s NAACP chapter and member of the LBC’s activities committee, wrote in the letter.

Oct. 8: Loftin announces mandatory online diversity training for faculty, staff and students, which is met with widespread skepticism.

The training came after a number of accounts of overt racism experience by students on campus, but was met with skepticism and suspicion.Jonathan Butler, MU graduate student and campus activist, wrote a letter to Loftin saying the training was “a step in the right direction, but it is not enough.”

More recently,  someone used human feces to draw a swastika inside Mizzou’s Gateway Hall. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: United Airlines

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

airplane 1There’s got to be an explanation for this other than the one the creates paranoia and dread. But what is it?

Canadian conservative commentator  Mark Steyn, a funny, bright and eclectic author—I learned about him first be reading his book on the decline of Broadway musicals—was flying on United when he discovered that his website, steynonline.com is on a United Airlines blacklist that blocks passengers from accessing the site on the airline’s in-flight WiFi system.

It really was called a blacklist by the airline. Steyn tweeted United during the flight for an explanation. Someone at American had the wit to tweet to Steyn, still airborne, that they wouldn’t block his site.

What’s going on here?

I know that porn sites are blocked by airlines, but conservative blogs and websites? No, it’s not a First Amendment issue, it’s a “Who the hell do you think you are?” issue. Content censorship by an airline? Steyn wants his WiFi fee back, but imagine if hotels, airports and Starbucks adopted this form of private censorship. I’m assuming/hoping that this was a stupid mistake and just incompetence, since incompetence is what United is best at. Yet so far, if the airline has an explanation, it hasn’t been publicized.

Ben Carson’s Stories

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

ben-carson

The prevailing political foofaraw right now involves Ben Carson’s account, in his 1990 autobiography, regarding a phantom “offer” to attend West Point. Before some analysis, a word or two..

Ben Carson has no business running for President. His supporters are irresponsible and deluded. I was just on WGAN (Maine) on Arthur King’s show, and Carson was discussed. A Carson supporting caller took issue with my statement that he was flat out unqualified for office whatever had been said to him about West Point, and protested that he was a brilliant surgeon, and successfully managed his surgical team. We ran out of time, and I didn’t get to say, “So what?” Is Ned Yost a potential President because he successfully managed a baseball team to a World Series victory? Yost’s training and experience have as much correlation to political leadership as Carson’s, and arguably more. Carson has no qualifications for high office. He is easily the least qualified candidate in either field, with no management experience, no political talents, weak speaking skills, negligible presence, irrelevant education and training, and terrible political instincts. You could throw a rutabaga  into a crowd and have a good chance of hitting someone who would be a more promising President.

Wrote J. Christian Adams succinctly about the current controversy,

“[T]he incident reveals a recurring and perhaps unrecoverable trait of candidate Carson.  He just doesn’t seem to know what he is talking about, whether it be Cuba, the Voting Rights Act, or how West Point works.”

Yes, and that too.

So if this typical example of the news media blowing a relatively minor incident out of proportion because a Republican poses a threat to Democratic domination should result in Carson’s demise, good. Something has to. It is wrong, another example the double standard we are all used to; and the news media should be called on it hard. Still, if it ends the embarrassing distraction that is Ben Carson, I’m not weeping. The ends don’t justify unethical means, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the ends anyway.

Let us pretend that Carson is a competent, qualified and deserving candidate for President, just to try to strip the bias away. How significant and serious are Carson’s various misrepresentations?

These all arise from what Carson wrote about his youth and early years in 1990, 25 years ago, when running for President wasn’t a twinkle in his eye. He…heck, we can’t pretend, because a competent candidate would be smart and experienced enough to say,

“You know, I didn’t expect anyone to read the book, I wrote most of it off the top of my head, my memory was faulty, I didn’t check the facts and I should have. The West Point story is typical. To me, it sounded like I was being told that I could get into West Point if I wanted to, and that I wouldn’t have to pay tuition, which to me meant a scholarship. I wasn’t trying to fool anybody then or now. I’m sorry. I’ve learned a lot in 25 years. I know most of our personal memories are distorted over time, and cannot be relied upon; mistakes like these turn up to varying degrees in all personal accounts. Bill Clinton says he remembered lots of church burning in Arkansas when he was growing up. Hillary Clinton said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, who didn’t become famous for climbing Mount Everest until six years after was born. The difference between my memory flawa and theirs was that mine can’t be attributed to political dissembling. Next question.”

If he had said that, then his other statements that didn’t check out could be explained the same way, and reasonably so. Instead, Carson and his defenders are denying, accusing, double-talking and parsing words like the Clintons. This is foolish because

I) Carson’s not as practiced at it as the Clintons,

2) …The truth is always better, and,

3) Unlike when the Clintons lie, most of the news media are looking for justifications to destroy him as it did Herman Cain. Reporters do not want to not be fair or reasonable with Carson, and certainly not complicit in deception as regularly is for Hillary. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Quote Of The Week: My Progressive, Rational, Educated and Gay Facebook Friend”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

stereotypes

Unlike most Comments of the Day, this one by Penn/Same Penn, who has two aliases here due to WordPress’s inexplicable habit of eating his posts, requires some back-reading to fully appreciate…but it is worth the effort.

The original post is about a Facebook friend’s mass condemnation of the Lone star State as a frightening, bigoted and  violent place where he would never set foot, in part because of his anger over Houston’s rejection last week of a bill that would expand LGBT civil rights in the city. My post noted that painting Texas with such a broad and harsh brush is itself bigotry—a position that cannot be rebutted, I believe—and reader Neil protested that the anti-Texas and Texans sentiment was just.

This inspired P/SP to one of the most eloquent and thoughtful posts Ethics Alarms has ever received, on any topic, and his is complex here, far ranging from its inspiration.

Here is Penn’s Comment of the Day on the post, Unethical Quote Of The Week: My Progressive, Rational, Educated and Gay Facebook Friend: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Whining”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
(Pssst! John! JOHN! You're not running! )

(Pssst! John! JOHN! You’re not running! )

The resilient and provocative Charles Green offers a challenge to the underlying point in “Whining,” the recent post about efforts by some (but not all) members of the news media to pooh-pooh Republican objections to what they (and I ) regarded as outrageous disrespect and bias displayed by the CNBC panel in the recent Republican debate.

I have a five word rebuttal and bit more afterwards, but for now, here is Charlie’s Comment of the Day on the Ethics Alarms Post, “Whining.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Anti-Washington Redskins Activist’s Bob Marley Costume

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments
The Native American in the middle is dressed as a famous Jamaican. Would it have been offensive if he dressed as Sitting Bull?

The Native American in the middle is dressed as a famous Jamaican. Would it have been offensive if he dressed as Sitting Bull?

Terry Rambler, chief of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, has  been at the forefront of the effort to force The Washington Redskins, a privately owned NFL sports franchise, to change its name and logo of long-standing because both are allegedly racist. [ As I have made clear many times, the team’s name is not racist, as neither its origins nor current use suggest or imply racist intent, purpose or impact, and the team’s owner has a First Amendment right to call his team whatever he wants. The decades long political correctness stunt has gained more traction under the Obama administration, because the Obama Administration and Senate Democrats do not respect the Constitution or follow it when it gets in the way of its agenda. (See: drones, Obamacare, immigration, NSA domestic spying, harassment of reporters, IRS partisan activities, recess appointments, Libya bombing, selective prosecution,  putting government pressure on the Redskins to change its name, etc… )

But I digress.

This year, Rambler’s Halloween costume was Jamaican musician Bob Marley, complete with dreadlocks, wig, and rasta beanie. He also wore appropriate make-up to look like Marley.

Here is what the chief looks like most days:

Terry

Here he is on Halloween as the Reggae icon…

Halloween Marley

The costume is making  Rambler the target of criticism from both sides of the controversy: Redskins defenders who view his make-up as “blackface” and thus hypocritical, and his own Team Political Correctness, which sees Rambler as engaging in the same kind of insensitive conduct they claim the Washington Redskins embody.

To make things worse for Rambler, there was another recent Bob Marley controversy in  Gaston County, (North Carolina), where a sheriff’s captain  apologized  for wearing dark make-up as part of her own Marley Halloween costume after her in-costume photo appeared online.

And thus your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Was the Native American activist’s Bob Marley make-up unethical or hypocritical?

Continue reading →

My Bi-Annual Typo Apology

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

pubic-defender-typo

I just decided to go over recent posts to catch typos until I hit one of them that had none. That took six typo-riddled posts, so now I’m taking a break and beating my head against the wall.

Typos here have been more quickly addressed this year than before, because kind and sharp-eyed reader SamePenn has been checking for them with his proof-reading super-power and quickly alerting me. Unfortunately, I’m about 20 posts behind in fixing the typos he flagged. That’s all my fault: this is the ProEthics crunch time, I’m traveling or speaking a lot, there are a lot of important ethics issues to cover, both of my computers are having issues, and most of all, I am handicapped by a lifetime inability to type or spell. When I’m juggling too many things at once, it gets worse

Believe me, I know: this is publishing, the issues are important, and typos are unprofessional, undermining the credibility and persuasiveness of everything I write. One reason I enjoy Prof. Jonathan Turley’s blog is that he has almost as many typos as I do.  It makes me feel a little better.

I apologize to all of you. It will continue to be a struggle, but I promise that I  am not unaware of the problem, or minimizing its importance.

Ethics Dunce: President George H.W. Bush

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Bush watchThe big news on the Bush-bashing front is that Papa Bush, #41, has a biography coming out next week, and section released by the publisher shows that he didn’t care much for his son’s (#43) staff, as well as containing other critiques.

To begin with, Bush I is a selfish jerk for allowing his biography to be released during the 2016 campaign, when it can only be used as a weapon against his sons and his party. His publishers want that, of course, because it means sales, and other than the campaign controversy angle I cannot imagine a one-term President whose biography anyone but family members would be less interested in reading. Benjamin Harrison, maybe. (But I’ve actually read not one biography of Ben, but three: Harry J. Sievers’s three-volume biography of Harrison, published between 1952 and 1968. It wasn’t my idea.) Bush, however, doesn’t need the money. His ego has obviously swallowed his common sense and loyalty, or he is being manipulated in his dotage.

That’s one obnoxious feature of the book. The worst, however, is this passage from the Times story describing a section in which Bush confesses that nearly didn’t run for re-election: Continue reading →