bias

The Swiftboating of Mitt Romney, Part II: When “Balanced” is Biased

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

“Did you hear? Mitt Romney killed his wife. At least, that’s what they’re saying…”

I was intrigued to see how my home town paper, The Washington Post, dealt with the latest lower-than-low and Nixonian attack on Romney from Team Obama, the “Mitt Romney killed my wife” ad.

If you have been asleep this week or just in the bathroom vomiting over what “Hope and Change” mutates into when it’s time to pay the piper, the TV ad by pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action features Joe Soptic, a steelworker who claims that Romney is responsible for the death of his wife, because Romney’s company, Bain Capital, shut down his steel plant.  The facts of Soptic’s case, however, are not in dispute: Mitt Romney left Bain in 1999 to work on the Olympics.  Jonathan Lavine, now a top Obama campaign fundraiser, was running the company when it closed the GST Steel plant where Soptic worked in 2001. Soptic was, he now admits, offered a buy-out by Bain, but declined it. He then took another job but declined to purchase his employer’s insurance plan. Soptic’s wife had her own health insurance plan through 2003. In 2006, seven years after Romney gave up the management of Bain, Soptic’s wife was diagnosed with very late-stage cancer, after being misdiagnosed earlier, and died shortly thereafter.

Based on this, Joe Soptic alleges that Mitt Romney killed his wife. He is either lying, or he is nuts. But the point is that he is willing to say it on camera, and has a sad face. That is enough, you see, to justify calling Mitt Romney a murderer. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Day: Slate’s David Weigel

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“The Washington Post condemned Reid for “smear tactics not unlike those of Joseph McCarthy,” which makes sense if you think that refusing to release your tax returns is like being unfairly accused of membership in the Communist Party. It’s a nice idea, that the majority leader of the United States Senate should operate under some rules of decorum about truth, even if it is only randomly applied.”

—-Slate’s David Weigel, in a post dismissing Harry Reid’s Big Lie attack on Mitt Romney as “politics as usual.”

Somewhere at the bottom of the journalism barrel you may see David Weigel, mangling ethics

David Weigel is a Democratic flack posing as a political reporter, and my standards for his writing is low—but not this low.

The Post’s quite correct condemnation of Reid does not, as Weigel disingenuously suggests, amount to saying that “refusing to release your tax returns is like being unfairly accused of membership in the Communist Party.” It amounts to saying that publicly accusing a political adversary of evading his taxes for ten years using nothing more than hearsay from anonymous, dubious and unrevealed sources is like accusing a political adversary of belonging to the Communist party using similar tactics. Romney’s choice not to release his taxes doesn’t justify or excuse Reid’s smear, any more than McCarthy’s victims’ associating with Americans who exercised their Constitutional rights by espousing Communist sympathies justified McCarthy’s smear. Weigel is using a false and flawed analogy to excuse the inexcusable, because, like Reid, he’s on Team Obama. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: The American Bar Association

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments


This week, the American Bar Association House of Delegates passed Resolution 100.

The measure reads:

RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association urges all state, territorial, and local legislative bodies and governmental agencies to adopt comprehensive breed-neutral dangerous dog/reckless owner laws that ensure due process protections for owners, encourage responsible pet ownership and focus on the behavior of both dog owners and dogs, and to repeal any breed discriminatory or breed specific provisions.

Translation: stop discriminating against pit bulls and all the dogs that look like pit bulls, might be pit bulls, or that people who don’t know anything about dogs might think are pit bulls, as well as the dogs’ owners. It’s not fair, it’s unethical, and it’s un-American. Or, as Elise Van Kavage, chair of the Animal Law Committee of the Tort, Trial & Insurance Practice Section, put it, “People love their pets, no matter what their appearance,” she said. “This is America. Responsible pet owners should be allowed to own whatever breed they want.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Absurdly Warped Priorities of the Incompetent Boy Scouts of America”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Bill, a frequent commenter here whom I am proud to call my friend, contributes this story to the recent post about the Boy Scouts and their negligent handling of pedophiles in the leadership. Here is his Comment of the Day on The Absurdly Warped Priorities of the Incompetent Boy Scouts of America.

“When I was ten years old a man tried to snatch my little brother, who was then seven, off the street. The only thing that stopped this from happening was that the two gay men who lived next store saw it happening, ran out into the street, grabbed my baby brother and apprehended the married pedophile who tried to snatch him. They also gave him a pretty good ass-whipping in the process, as they were both bodybuilders.

“A while later another neighbor asked my father how he could stand living next to those two “faggots” my fathers response was, ‘If it wasn’t for those two men, my youngest son would have been raped and most likely dead. Don’t ever call them faggots in my presence again or question their manhood.’”

“The BSA needs to come into the 21st century and recognize that homosexuality doesn’t equal being a pedophile . That’s is an ignorant and outdated belief and by continuing to follow it they are putting their members at risk.”

The Absurdly Warped Priorities of the Incompetent Boy Scouts of America

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

“Follow me into those bushes, boys! You won’t need your pants.”

The Boy Scouts of America, who recently re-affirmed its policy of refusing to accept homosexuals into its ranks because to do so would supposedly undermine the organization’s moral values, have been unconscionably lax in protecting its young participants from child molesters in its ranks.

From the Los Angeles Times:

“A Los Angeles Times review of more than 1,200 files dating from 1970 to 1991 found more than 125 cases across the country in which men allegedly continued to molest Scouts after the organization was first presented with detailed allegations of abusive behavior. Predators slipped back into the program by falsifying personal information or skirting the registration process. Others were able to jump from troop to troop around the country thanks to clerical errors, computer glitches or the Scouts’ failure to check the blacklist.In some cases, officials failed to document reports of abuse in the first place, letting offenders stay in the organization until new allegations surfaced. In others, officials documented abuse but merely suspended the accused leader or allowed him to continue working with boys while on “probation.” In at least 50 cases, the Boy Scouts expelled suspected abusers, only to discover later that they had reentered the program and were accused of molesting again.” Continue reading →

Is a Transgendered Woman Ethically Obligated To Tell Her Boyfriend That She Used To be Male?

/ Jack Marshall / 126 Comments

“Is this a bad time to tell you that I used to be a man?”

Sometimes I wonder if Emily Yoffe’s Slate advice column (“Dear Prudence”) is like the old Penthouse Forum, where it was clear to any reader who hadn’t purchased the Brooklyn Bridge twice that a team of giggling writers was coming up with the feature’s bizarre letters about orgies with amputees and people having sex in piles of fresh fish. But never mind: her most recent column makes an interesting ethical assertion is response to a woman who is troubled that her transgendered cousin refuses to tell her serious boyfriend about the jockstrap in her past:

“I think you should tell your cousin she’s living in a dream world and that she’s being unfair to John, even if he has a lack of desire for children. Of course, it could be that John flees, or it could be that he says, “She’s more than woman enough for me.” But it’s his right to know the crucial piece of history.”

I agree with Yoffe that the cousin is deluded if she thinks she can keep her past gender hidden forever if the relationship continues, and that the revelation of a secret of such magnitude is bound to be more disruptive the longer it is hidden. But is she correct that he has a right to know about it? Elsewhere Yoffe suggests that not telling him is dishonest. Why?

I understand the theory that couples shouldn’t withhold personal information from one another in the interest of mutual trust. Surely each member of a committed couple has an obligation to reveal any personal information that has the potential to affect the other. Is there an obligation to reveal personal information that one knows a boyfriend or girlfriend will be shocked to learn, or that will tap into visceral fears or biases? Author William Saroyan left his wife on their honeymoon when she revealed to him that she was Jewish, which highlights the irony of the problem: if a woman knows that a secret may cause a lover to reject her, however irrational that reaction would be, then is she ethically obligated to tell him but not obligated if she is sure he wouldn’t care? In other words, is one only ethically obligated to reveal the secrets that will destroy a relationship?

That seems strange. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Reader John Owens supplies  perspective and expertise on carnivals and local fairs in his Comment of the Day regarding the post “Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games.”    Here it is: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The Boy Scouts of America

/ Jack Marshall / 148 Comments

I owe a lot to the Boy Scouts: namely my father. An only child whose father abandoned his family, forced to move from school to school as his mother sought work during the Depression, my dad was quite literally raised by the Louisville area Boy Scout troop that provided his only lasting friends and only stability. They taught my father well, too: if any man lived his life being faithful to the Scout oath…

On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight…

…it was Jack Marshall, Sr. Had it not been for World War II, I have no doubt that Dad would have made scouting his life.

Thus it is painful for me to see the Boy Scout organization reject its core values and relegate itself to irrelevance and cultural estrangement by refusing to alter its archaic policy excluding gays from participation. After the Scouts received a narrow (and correct) affirmation by the U.S. Supreme Court that it had the right, as a private organization, to refuse to accept gay scoutmasters into the organization, they commissioned a panel to decide whether it was time to enter the 21st Century, and banish the faith-based bigotry that made the Boy Scouts hostile to gay Americans. The Scouts just announced that the two year inquiry resulted in an affirmation of the Scouts’ traditional position, unchanged after 118 years: gays aren’t welcome. Continue reading →

The Bill James Effect, Or How Nature Conspires To Make Us Irresponsible

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Quiz: What do Gen.Lee and Bill James have in common?

You see, our strengths do us in, sooner or later. The greater the strength, the more successful it has made us, the more dangerous it is.

In the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee was the smartest general on the field…so smart that he broke iron-clad rules of battle strategy again and again, and prevailed every time. When everyone told him how it was usually done, always done, Lee knew that he could get an edge by doing something else. You never divide your forces, his aides, subordinates and the military books told him. So Lee did, at Chancellorsville, and won an incredible victory.

Then came July 3, 1863: the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, and Pickett’s Charge. Everyone told Lee that a massed Napoleonic assault, over an open field, into enemy artillery and a fortified line, was suicidal. But when conventional wisdom dictated a course of action, that was when Lee had always succeeded by ignoring it. So he ordered Pickett’s Charge. This time, conventional wisdom was right. The same qualities of creativity, courage, certitude, and willingness to resist the power of convention that had caused Lee’s men to trust him unconditionally had resulted in the massacre of thousands. Pickett’s Charge wasn’t bold or ingenious. It was irresponsible. Lee, because of a lifetime of success challenging what others thought was obvious, was no longer able to tell the difference. Continue reading →

Why Journalists Can’t Shoot Straight

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

George probably wasn’t lying, but Bill sure was.

The issue in the Washington Post’s weekly Outlook section concerned the virtues and dangers of honesty in a Presidential campaign, a matter that interests me from the perspective of ethics, presidential history, and citizenship. Two Post reporters were given the assignment of creating sidebars to the main article, one on candidates who told the truth and were punished for it, the other on campaign lies that came back to haunt the Presidents involved.

These are not difficult assignments, by any means. Either would be a legitimate term paper topic for a high school senior’s history class; both would be rejected as a history major’s thesis topic as overly simplistic. Yet both Rachel Weiner and Aaron Blake botched their tasks, and would have earned D’s at best in high school history, and that’s only because of grade inflation. The reasons for their failures exemplify the inadequacy of the mainstream media for the job we need it to do during a Presidential election.

Continue reading →