Observations On “Flight/Risk”…And Related Matters

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Flight/Risk,” an Amazon production, was released on the streaming service today. The documentary is the most recent examination of the tragedy and scandals surrounding the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max planes within a five month period in late 2018 and early 2019. The horrible and disturbing story  is narrated by Pulitzer-winning Seattle Times journalist Dominic Gates, and revealed from the perspective of the deceased passengers family members, their lawyers, and whistleblowers.

Amazon’s fatuous description of its own product, primarily designed to be a “trigger warning,” explains that the movie may be too traumatic to watch for “some” and says the planes crashed “without anyone really understanding why.” That is, to be blunt and vulgar, bullshit. Lots of people understood why, including Boeing engineers, Boeing executives, FAA officials, and anyone (like me) who knows why large organizations are almost always incompetent, unethical and untrustworthy. {Ethics Alarms has several posts about the 737 Max scandal.]

What is so infuriating about the story is that it is so familiar. This is the Challenger disaster all over again, even to the detail of a whistle-blowing engineer being punished for having the courage to speak up, and eventually killing himself. In other ways, it is like the recent Ernst and Young cheating scandal, which Ethics Alarms discussed here.

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It’s Open Forum Friday!

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

As always, you get to decide what ethics matters to raise, analyze and discuss. I am hoping someone delves into the many ethics implications, abstract, direct and otherwise of the now-ended reign of Queen Elizabeth II, especially since I have less than my usual control over my schedule today, and am unlikely to be able to examine this myself.

It’s been a bit of a dead week here traffic-wise, as the week after Labor Day usually is, and yet we have seen some superb comments and debates on many topics.

Keep up the good work!

Afternoon Panic Ethics Rundown, 9/8/2022: Ford’s Courage, Age Limits, Pregnant Men, And Checkmate For Netflix [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The panic is all mine: this really had to be a productive and efficient day, and it wasn’t: life, clients and chaos all got in the way. Now I’m facing down a serious deadline and running out of time.

Nonetheless, Ethics Alarms will not be denied.

This is an unusually relevant  landmark ethics date: On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford infuriated Richard Nixon’s many enemies and pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed or participated in while President. It was a uniquely courageous act that defined (and probably doomed) Ford’s Presidency. In my view, it was also the right and and wise thing to do. Ford, like Joe Biden, was an undistinguished career politician and hardly a towering intellect, but unlike Biden, he understood what was in the best long-term interests  of the nation.  Democrats made him defend this controversial action before the House Judiciary Committee, and Ford said he wanted to end the national divisions created by the Watergate scandal. To this day, there are still those who believe that he cut a corrupt deal with Nixon when he was appointed. Ford was well aware that the pardon would place his leadership under a permanent shadow. “Mister we could use a man like Gerald Ford again!”

1. Since you mention it...I was going to ignore D-list celeb Kathy Griffin’s comment yesterday that “If you don’t want a Civil War, vote for Democrats in November. If you do want Civil War, vote Republican,” mainly because, like Alyssa Milano, Bette Midler, Rob Reiner and so many others, nobody should care what Kathy Griffin says, tweets or thinks. But commenter Willem Reese wrote,  “Were she a sentient creature, she might have realized that her statement was an admission that it is democrats who are prone to violence when they don’t get what they want.” I can’t let that pass. I think Griffin said what she meant, and that it was a threat. She was also correct: Democrats have proven that their current breed believes in violence as the appropriate reaction to events, elections and decisions they disagree with. I fully expect riots if the GOP takes Congress. Griffin is vile and revolting, but she’s not stupid.

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Biden Semi-Fascist Speech Aftermath: Two Pundits, Two Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

One of which is busted beyond repair; the other is just malfunctioning.

Two of the New York Times’ more prominent opinion columnists reacted to President Biden’s “Half the Nation is an Existential Menace” speech, one of the greatest blunders in U.S. political history. One of them, Bret Stephens, is perhaps the closest thing to a conservative in the Times stable (though he has advocated the repeal of the Second Amendment); the other pundit was Charles M. Blow, who is not only an unshakeable progressive but an anti-white bigot and a sufferer from extreme Trump Derangement.

Guess which one loved the speech…

Here’s Blow in “Biden Shouldn’t Apologize to Republicans”:

Republicans who voted for Donald Trump deserve to be called out for their actions. Trump has consistently exhibited fascist tendencies and espoused racism, misogyny and white nationalism. Republicans supported him, defended him and voted for him. They’ve been actively courting this condemnation.

Note that Blow doesn’t bother to give any specifics; he’s writing to Times readers who just accept “resistance”/Democrat/mainstream media narratives dating back sic years or more. What racism? What white nationalism? (If pressed, I assume Blow would use the deceitful “very fine people” quote…or perhaps cite wanting to enforce immigration laws). Trump is a sexist (like Bill Clinton, Jack Kennedy and Biden, among others), but what policy of his could be called “misogynist”? Oh, right! I forgot: not believing that women should have carte blanch to kill nascent human life whenever they feel like it is misogyny. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Fox Sports Radio host Doug Gottlieb

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I’ve been somewhat remiss in my coverage of baseball ethics in recent months; its been like Sauce Bearnaise Syndrome: the Red Sox have been having such a nauseating season that even thinking about baseball has been painful. This story broke through my wall of pain because it also pings my legal ethics alarms.

Back on June 29 (before the Red Sox turned into mud, in fact),  Fox Sports Radio host Doug Gottlieb tweeted that LA Dodger Freddie Freeman’s agent, Casey Close, never communicated a contract offer that the Braves had made to free agent Freeman last winter before Freeman left the team he had always played on to sign with the Dodgers. Freeman was upset about the report; the Braves, and the Atlanta fans were also outraged, because Freeman was a popular and superb player for the Braves. Casey Close, however, was more upset than all of them combined. Not communicating a contract offer to a client is a throbbing neon ethics violation for a sports agent (it would lead to suspension of a law license if a lawyer did it) and Gottlieb’s claim could ruin Close’s career if it couldn’t be disproved. Close sued Gottlieb for defamation in July. Continue reading →

Our Arrogant, Ignorant, Corrosive Celebrities

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Hollywood blogger Christian Toto can be forgiven for perhaps—perhaps—over-estimating the influence of celebrities on public opinion; he does live in Tinseltown, after all. But if he’s off in his alarm, he’s not off by much. Reacting to superstar Jennifer Lawrence’s political rants in a new Vogue interview, Toto writes in part,

There’s no reason for Lawrence to get political in a Vogue feature story….Lawrence mentioned politics to gin up support from her fellow progressive stars. It’s a career choice, and arguably a smart one considering the state of the industry. It still hurts the country, and apparently she doesn’t care.

Conservatives will blast her comments. Liberals will either nod in agreement or think she’s gone too far. Everyone, though, will acknowledge the obvious. It’s another sign of a country teetering toward a breakup.

Yes, Lawrence is just one celebrity. And no, celebrities can’t stop climate change, gun crimes or other maladies. They can’t even pull off an Oscars ceremony without a physical altercation …

They do have bully pulpits, though, and when their interviews go viral the messages reach the masses. For better and worse.

Lawrence’s message is clear. Hate half of the country that doesn’t align with your political party, even if they’re your own flesh and blood…she’s so intolerant she can’t share empathy with her family.

Where does that leave the rest of us?

Well, unless we recognize that in most cases celebrities don’t know what they are talking about when they delve into topics unrelated to their specialized niche, and have been made stupid by bias, narcissism and living in an echo chamber (if they weren’t stupid already), it leaves us being influenced by fools.

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Morning Ethics Warm-Up, 9/7/2022: Neil, Sam, Kwame, Mehmet And More

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I took a wild guess that Neil had to have done this parody of his biggest hit because it was so obvious, and sure enough, I was right!

It’s not exactly an ethics story, but it does involve my home town of Arlington, Massachusetts: on September 7, 1813, a local newspaper in Troy, New York wrote about how Troy’s Samuel Wilson, a meat packer who supplied barrels of beef to the United States Army during the War of 1812, was being facetiously called “Uncle Sam” by soldiers because he stamped the barrels of meat “U.S.” The trivial story caught on and the nickname persisted. Decades later, brilliant 19th Century political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902) began using a character called Uncle Sam as the personification of the nation, giving Sam the white beard and stars-and-stripes suit that he still wears today. Troy, quite reasonably, later dubbed itself “The Home of Uncle Sam.” But Wilson was born in Arlington, Mass., and the town management, frustrated with its relative obscurity despite being in the midst of other Greater Boston tourist destinations like Concord, Lexington and Cambridge, decided a few decades ago to promote Arlington as “The Birthplace of Uncle Sam,” essentially horning in on Troy’s historical territory (Troy was not pleased). Arlington even paid to have a statue of Nast’s Sam designed, cast and erected.

Nobody cared.

1. More on “quiet quitting”:  Gallup estimates that at least half the workforce is “quiet quitting,” meaning that it does the bare minimum required to keep jobs rather than working to do their best. Gallup’s analysis blames management, which is certainly part of the problem. It does not address the serious cultural ethics issue of workers seeking to be excellent because it is beneficial for society as a whole and an embodiment of the Golden Rule, as well as a life habit that develops good character and justifies trust. Quiet quitters are just a few degrees better than freeloaders, an anchor on the nation, the economy and the quality of life. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Fox News White House Correspondent Peter Doocy

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I guess I’m going to have to show young Doocy more respect. The flagrant nepotism that allowed him to acquire an on-air job with Fox News made me reflexively suspicious of his qualifications, but he has proved himself to be a quick learner, a tough questioner, and as in this latest episode, gutsy.

Doocy asked President Biden’s paid liar Karine Jean-Pierre about Democratic claims that the 2016 election was “stolen” or illegitimate as a counterpoint to the President’s Reichstag address last week asserting that GOP rhetoric that Biden’s 2020 election victory was illicit threatened democracy.  When Jean-Pierre ducked Doocy’s question, saying that the White House will focus on the present rather than 2016 (baseball fans recognize this as the “Mark McGwire Deflection”), Doocy read her some of her own past tweets, like…

and…

“If denying an election is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?” Doocy asked. Continue reading →

Afternoon Ethics Provocations, 9/6/2022: The Angry Edition

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Close calls: I recently stumbled upon some polling from the period preceding World War II regarding the American public’s position on whether the U.S. should fight Germany. Here’s the most depressing of the surveys:

Another set of figures, from Gallup, are a bit better. These old survey results lead to the following notes:

  • What would the world be like today if Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor, and Hitler had not preemptively declared war on the U.S.? The attack might be one of the best examples I know of how a terrible event can lead to an objectively beneficial outcome: moral luck exemplified.
  • Karine Jean-Pierre, who speaks for the White House, said last week that “when you are not with where a majority of Americans are, then, you know, that is extreme.”
  • You know: polls.

1. I did not know this, and I’m now sorry I do. But not especially surprised: a Pew survey from 2019 revealed that the “U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.” I see no reason for the data to have improved in three years, do you? And, of course, the reason this terrible condition exists is for the reason discussed frequently here: an elimination of crucial ethical norms because the society decided that it was more important not to shame or stigmatize irresponsible and damaging conduct than to minimize it. The consequences flowing from this failure in maintaining ethical standards is wide-ranging, disastrous, and too extensive to analyze here. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Arizona Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Since when can we not ask questions about our elections? As a journalist for many years—I was a journalist after 2016 and I distinctly remember many people just like you, asking a lot of questions about the 2016 election results and nobody tried to shut you up….”

—-GOP candidate for Governor of Arizona Kari Lake, responding to a reporter who baited her with a “whataboutism” question referring to Donald Trump “dividing the nation” by “falsely telling people he won [the 2020] election”?

I don’t know much about Lake or the Arizona governor race, but GOP leaders, candidates and party supporters should study and memorize Lake’s full response to the Democrat-pimping reporter’s question, ““You feel like Joe Biden is dividing the country. Do you feel Donald Trump is doing the same by falsely telling people he won that election when he lost it?”

Lake’s full (perfect) reply:

“How does that divide the country? Questioning an election where there are obviously problems is dividing the country? Since when can we not ask questions about our elections? As a journalist for many years—I was a journalist after 2016 and I distinctly remember many people just like you, asking a lot of questions about the 2016 election results and nobody tried to shut you up. Nobody tried to tell Hillary Clinton to shut up. Nobody tried to tell Kamala Harris when she was questioning the legitimacy of these electronic voting machines to stop. We have freedom of speech in this country and you of all that people should appreciate that. You’re supposedly a journalist. You should appreciate that. So I don’t see how asking questions about an election where there were many problems is ‘dividing’ a country. What I do see divided a country is shutting people down, censoring people, canceling people, trying to destroy people’s lives when they do ask questions. Last I heard we still have the Constitution. It’s hanging by a thread thanks to some of the work some people in this area have done. But we’re going to save that Constitution and we’re going to bring back freedom of speech. And maybe someday you’ll thank us for that.”

As to that last sentence, I very much doubt it.

Assuming the quote is being reported accurately, that is an impressive and fair response even if Lake had expected the question and had her answer polished and ready. Gee, isn’t it nice when candidates can speak in complete sentences and make clear, organized, articulate statements on the fly?

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