This must stop.
Yuri? Your school just called; they want slightly more understated smile from you in the future. Or else.
Yuri Wright, a top ranked high school football player who is being sought by schools in the Big Ten, Pac-12, ACC, SEC and Big East, was expelled from Don Bosco Prep High School in Ramsey, N.J.for sending sexually graphic and racial Twitter posts to his more than 1,600 followers. The action jeopardizes his chances of getting a big-time football scholarship. Continue reading
“The Ethicist,” whom I have not harassed for a while, a.k.a Ariel Kaminer, handles this week an odd query from a woman who has been asked by an elderly friend to pledge to euthanize her dog after she dies. Kaminer, as she often does, makes the issue more complicated than it is and muddles things by implying some kind of inconsistency on the part of pet owners who find the request unethical but who will dine on cooked animal flesh this evening. She even had to consult Peter Singer, the controversial Princeton ethicist, about whether an animal has a “right to life.”
Every living thing has a right to life, and also a right to live, which is why eating other animals as humans have evolved to do is not incontrovertibly unethical. Killing an animal just because you can, or because it makes you happy, or because you have convinced yourself that it wants to die when in fact it doesn’t, however, is incontrovertibly unethical. Continue reading
Believe it or not, Yip Harburg is only 7 years old in this photo...
Third graders at Woodbrook Elementary School in Albemarle County, Virginia recently performed a song called “Part of the 99,” proclaiming their solidarity with the “Occupy” movement’s zeitgeist. The song was part of a program sponsored by “Kid Pan Alley,” a children’s arts organization. The children worked with a facilitator to develop the theme and lyrics for a song, and that facilitator, who so far has not been identified, obviously, and I mean that in the “do these people really think we’re all idiots?” sense of the word, manipulated the process to produce an “Occupied Youth” moment. A blog got wind of it, and the criticism, richly deserved, erupted on the internet.
Incredibly, the school denies that any indoctrination went on, and claims that the children came up with the lyrics and theme on their own. As “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” lies go, this one is superb. Here are the lyrics those third graders supposedly came up with by themselves: Continue reading
I grant you: THIS is a scary pizza. What Nick Taylor had, however, was not.
Nicholas Taylor is 10-years-old and attends David Youree Elementary School in Smyrna, Tenn., 30 miles southeast of Nashville. He is currently serving a week-long sentence at “the quiet table” during lunch time and has had to endure gun safety lectures. What was his terrible offense?
He “threatened” other students at his lunch table with a piece of pizza that was shaped vaguely like a gun because of the bites that had been taken out of it. Yes, some pathetic, parent and culture-warped weenie of a fellow student complained to a teacher that Nick was making “threatening gestures” with his partially-eaten pizza-gun. Taylor denied it. That meant he was lying. More punishment.
Your Ethics Quiz Question—and you better not get this one wrong!—is : Can political correctness “no-tolerance” idiocy in the schools get any worse than punishing a child for the shape of his pizza slice? Continue reading
Sen. Lieu wants Lowe's to see things his way...or else.
In what is beginning to look like a full-blown ethics train wreck, the Florida Family Association’s attack on TLC’s “All-American Muslim” reality show has claimed its first victim among the show’s defenders: California State Senator Ted Lieu, a Democrat. The incident inspired him to out himself as a Constitutionally ignorant bully who can’t be trusted with legislative power. Thanks, Florida Family Association!
This was only after Lowe’s, the lumber, hardware, garden supply chain, outed itself as a sniveling confederacy of unprincipled cowards by caving to the FFA’s boycott threat, a threat motivated by anti-Muslim bigotry and nothing else. Lowe’s pulled its sponsorship of the show, muttering nonsense about how the show was controversial and how such controversies should be left to communities to hash out, which was a non sequitur and offensive, as it suggested that whether or not bigotry is acceptable in America is a valid debate topic, and that Lowe’s has no opinion on the matter. How refreshing it would be if a company like Lowe’s, capitulating to a boycott threat, came right out and said, Continue reading
"Psst! My mom is gay and doesn't need fixing. What's 'gay'?"
Rep. Michele Bachmann’s views on homosexuality are antediluvian and ignorant. Almost anything that causes her discomfort as a result of her bigotry is to be fervently desired. Almost anything. One exception is a mother using her child as a weapon against her in a war he doesn’t understand.
In the video conveniently taken by a friend of 8-year-old Elijah’s mother and subsequently posted on YouTube, the child reluctantly, after much prodding, whispers “My mom is gay and she doesn’t need fixing” in the strange Minnesota Congresswoman’s ear. If it makes some people happy to believe that Elijah did this on his own, I suppose that’s a plus; this makes two plusses when added to Bachmann’s probable pique. Sorry, it’s not enough. I know it wouldn’t create a viral video if Elijah’s mother delivered her sentiment herself, but that’s just too bad: children are not puppets, props or trained terriers, and using them to deliver political messages is unethical—unfair, irresponsible, a breach of trust, and an abuse of power. Placing a child’s programmed act on Youtube, where it will haunt him forever, just adds to the offense,
Elijah’s message was inaccurate. His mother does need fixing, just not in the way Michele Bachmann thinks she does.
The Comment of the Day is a short and pithy one from Fred, inspired by the essay from 2005 I posted in response to yet another report of a Scrooge-like elementary school teacher taking it upon herself to enlighten young children about the non-existence of Santa Claus. That essay involved a substitute teacher named Theresa Farrisi.
Here is his Comment of the Day, on “Another Santa Assassin”:
“The three ages of man: He believes in Santa Claus; he does not believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.
Farrisi obviously never made it to the third stage and discovered the ultimate truth about Santa Claus. For me, each stage had its own appeal: First the magic; then maturing and being let in on the literal truth while protecting the magic for my younger brother; then being Santa and bringing the magic to my kids. That was by far the most rewarding.”
In Nanuet, New York, a teacher ruined Christmas for her second-grade class this week by presuming to alert them that their parents were liars, and that there is no Santa Claus. This presumptuous act occurred during a lesson about the North Pole. You can read the whole story here. This occurs every Christmas season, in many locales and perhaps with increasing frequency. I stated my position on the matter in 2005, in an essay entitled, “The Attack of the Santa Assassin.” The recent story prompted me to revisit it. My opinion hasn’t changed:
“The parental conspiracy to support Santa Claus mythology as an excellent rebuttal to the Kantian contentions that all lies are unethical. Here is a fantasy told to the very young that imbues them with a sense of magic and wonder, and greatly enhances their enjoyment of a holiday having great social, historical, and cultural significance. It draws families together, and produces a uniquely memorable series of annual rituals that become a focal point of childhood: the late night parental setting of the scene around the tree, a child waking parents at dawn to see what Santa has brought, the first sight of the presents, and the subsequent ecstatic moments of unwrapping, surprise, and discovery. If there are children who feel that they had been mistreated by their parents perpetuating the Santa fantasy until it was no longer credible, they are a distinct and peculiar minority. Even Natalie Wood in “Miracle on 34th Street” wanted to believe in Santa Claus.
“But Theresa Farrisi, a substitute music teacher at Lickdale Elementary School in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, just couldn’t bring herself to participate in this vile falsehood. So as part of her assigned duty of reading “The Night Before Christmas” to a first grade class (!), Ms. Farrisi took it upon herself to explode the myth, spill the beans, and break the spell. Continue reading
I love this Cain-trapped-in-amber image, except that the idea of a future entrepreneur creating an island attraction where former disgraced presidential candidates are cloned from their preserved DNA to roam free is terrifying.
Herman Cain has withdrawn from the GOP presidential nomination competition in the wake of Ginger White’s claims that he and she engaged in a 13-year long romantic affair. He withdrew in a particularly deceitful way, saying that his campaign was being suspended. Like most of his recent conduct and statements lately, this resort to face-saving euphemism does not speak well of his character. Yes, it’s true, his quest for the White House is suspended. It is also what is technically called toast. A more honest, courageous, candid and accountable man would have said so. I think we can safety say that one way or the other, this campaign took the measure of Herman Cain, and found him to be as wanting in character as he is inexperience and diligence. The system, ugly as it is, worked.
What else can we now fairly say of Herman Cain? I believe we can fairly conclude that… Continue reading
What's that you say, Mr. Wood? Marital infidelity is irrelevant to a presidential candidate's qualifications? Did John Edwards tell you that?
“Mr. Cain has been informed today that your television station plans to broadcast a story this evening in which a female will make an accusation that she engaged in a 13-year long physical relationship with Mr. Cain. This is not an accusation of harassment in the workplace – this is not an accusation of an assault – which are subject matters of legitimate inquiry to a political candidate. Rather, this appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults – a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public’s right to know and the media’s right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one’s bedroom door. Mr. Cain has alerted his wife to this new accusation and discussed it with her. He has no obligation to discuss these types of accusations publicly with the media and he will not do so even if his principled position is viewed unfavorably by members of the media.”
—Attorney Lin Wood, on behalf of his client Herman Cain, in a statement to Fox News in response to its interview with a Georgia woman, Ginger White, who says she had a 13 year adulterous relationship with the Republican presidential contender.
Sorry, Mr. Wood. You are dead, dead wrong. Continue reading
