I’m still getting hate comments about my verdict on the Bon Jovi DirecTV commercial that extols the virtue of erasing one’s children from existence, so this piece of New Yorker satire, by real parents about a real newborn child, gave me pause. Here is how “An Honest Birth Announcement” starts…
Dear friends and family,
Jen and I are utterly horrified to announce the arrival of our son, Jasper Heusen-Gravenstein, born May 21st at 4:56 A.M. For nine long months, we’ve wondered who this little creature would be. Well, now we know: he’s the living embodiment of our darkest imaginings, with a nefarious agenda and Grandpa Jim’s nose.
At seven pounds four ounces, Jasper may be small, but he’s large enough to have triggered our most primal fears. We’ve already been driven to the brink of madness with unanswerable questions such as: How can we sustain the life of a creature whose incessant, bloodcurdling screams communicate nothing but blind rage and indeterminate need? What if he senses our fear and, like a wild hyena, is instinctively triggered to attack? Will we ever finish the most recent season of “House of Cards”?
It goes on in that tongue-in-cheek-but-you-know-we’re-half-serious-right-fellow-parent-vein…
But it names the child, who is, or course, helpless, blameless and defenseless, and creates a permanent record of parental faux-hate for Jasper to read…when he’s a parent, and old enough to get the joke, or when he’s 8, and a classmate sends it to him.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Keith St. Onge and his wife are professional barefoot water skiers and co-owners of the World Barefoot Center in Winter Haven, Florida. Last week, they had their six-month old daughter Zyla strap on little tiny skis and finally attempt what her parents had spent weeks training her for–water-skiing. She did it, too, for 686 feet across Lake Silver. The proud parents filmed her feat and posted the video on YouTube (of course).
The Washington Post notes that many are criticizing the St. Onges for the stunt, claiming child endangerment. Papa St. Onge defended the unusual pre-toddler (the girl can’t walk yet) activity, saying, “People don’t realize that it was done properly. It was planned and she was ready for it.”
Hmmmm…
Your strange Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
As you can see above, last night Jimmy Kimmel highlighted numerous parents who thought it was just hilarious to employ their own infants as objects of national ridicule. Encouraging child abuse for laughs is Jimmy’s specialty, as I’ve noted before. This was a bit different, because the children didn’t know they were being abused.
After using social media to recruit parents to participate in the segment called “Fat Baby Bingo,” Jimmy joined the couples in mocking their own kids’ chubby thighs and folds of fat as the audience laughed. I bet Jimmy could recruit enough couples for a segment if he wanted them to set their kids on fire.
Of course, this will be on the web forever. My son has pronounced himself mortified by his baby pictures, as many of us are embarrassed by ours. These parents held up their unaware children to the camera, all but naked in diapers, so Jimmy could make jokes about how fat they were. Abuse of power, breach of trust, infliction of humiliation without consent, cruel and irresponsible. Just because a child doesn’t know he is being made the object of ridicule doesn’t make it right.
The talking heads on CNN today, however, thought it was all hilarious.
To these parents, egged on by Jimmy’s usual contempt for the humanity of kids, their babies were just props, like the gag items used by Carrot Top in his act.
Go ahead, defend Jimmy Kimmel and the parents betraying the privacy and dignity of their own infants, by saying it’s all in good fun and harmless.
I’m ready for you.
Thanks to the internet, every day conflicts between ordinary citizens become opportunities for society-wide ethical evaluation . This can be extremely beneficial, helping to reveal disagreements regarding ethical conduct in common situations, and establishing social norms with efficiency that once would have been impossible. Of course, that requires that society reaches a reasonable consensus.
Last week a controversy emanating from a Portland, Maine diner called Marcy’s had blogs bloviating, pundits punditting and social media boiling over. Vacationing parents took their toddler to a crowded diner for breakfast, waited 30 minutes for a table and another 40 minutes for their food. The hungry child went on a crying jag that went on too long for the owner, who suggested that the couple to leave in a less than polite manner, and finally shouted at the little girl to “shut the hell up!” The couple left the diner.
The mother, Tara Carson, couldn’t resist registering her indignation on the Marcy’s Facebook page, the owner responded with even more colorful language than she did in the original confrontation, and social media appeared to divide into the “it takes a village so be sympathetic to parents of young kids and give them a break” camp and the “serves these entitled and incompetent parents right for being so inconsiderate and not controlling their child” camp, with the latter considerably smaller than the former. Then, not content to let the matter blow over, Carson got the Washington Post to publish her op-ed about the episode, which concluded, Continue reading
Let’s take a little break from the Ferguson Ethics Train Wreck, picking up passengers so fast that I can’t keep up with the manifest, and let Bill Cosby hide for a while, as suddenly all sorts of associates and colleagues are finally admitting that he wasn’t such a nice guy even when he wasn’t raping actresses, and focus on some child abuse—but funny child abuse!
Here’s a recent Halos recent commercial:
Wrong. This is an extreme example, but I frequently see infants being used—that’s the clue, “being used”—in TV shows, ads and movies featuring environments and conditions that have to be stressful. Making babies cry to sell products or tell a story is unethical: they haven’t consented, they are helpless, and doing this to them is an abuse of power. It is also cruel.
How could a set full of techs and actors not feature any faint ringing of a single ethics alarm while a baby was duct taped to the back of a door? One disturbing sidebar to this “funny video”: some idiots have actually done this:
Go ahead, Halos, give those happy child abusers out there some new ideas.
This one was flagged by child actor advocate, and my friend, Paul Petersen, who has taken action to make sure Halo doesn’t engage in this kind of abuse again.
Babies aren’t props. They are human beings, This shouldn’t have to be taught to any adult, but it obviously does.
No.
One of the Kantian categorical imperatives is that no human being should ever use another for his or her own selfish objectives. Another ethical principle that is close to absolute is that one should never exploit children. A third is not to treat human beings as objects, or to denigrate, diminish or humiliate them without their informed consent. A fourth principle is that forced child labor is inherently unethical, and a fifth is that making individuals do work that benefits you without compensation is theft.
HEY! I’ve got a brilliant idea! Let’s help parents turn their babies into living, breathing, drooling mops! Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 