Bill Maher

Ethics Quiz: Grade The Misbehaving Celebrities!

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Our subjects:

Oh, Bill...you're such a scream!

Oh, Bill…you’re such a scream!

Bill Maher, bad boy comic, political satirist and host of HBO’s “Real Time”

Maher’s fans

Ron Futrelle, former sportscaster and Las Vegas media personality

Sarah Palin, former governor, VP candidate, Fox commentator and conservative icon

All clashed over a joke made by Maher during a stand-up gig, and your challenge is to decide who gets the lowest ethics grade. Here’s what happened: Futrelle was in the audience for Maher’s show in  Las Vegas. Maher made a joke about Palin’s son, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. According to Futrelle, the joke  upset him, as well as the fact that the audience appeared to enjoy Maher’s using Palin’s innocent and mentally challenged child as a comedy topic, and laughed heartily. Futrelle began heckling Maher, eventually prompting an annoyed audience member to remind him that he was not the attraction, and suggest that he shut his gob. Futrelle persisted, and when confronted by security, left.

Through Futrelle’s blog’s account of his experience, Brietbart and the miracle of social media, Mama Grizzly Palin learned that her young son had been (again) converted into joke-fodder, and tweeted her reaction to Maher:

“Hey bully, on behalf of all kids whom you hatefully mock in order to make yourself feel big, I hope one flattens your lily white wimpy a#*.”

Our grading scale:

A  Exemplary ethical conduct.

B  Ethical and appropriate conduct that could have been better executed.

C  Acceptable conduct according to reasonable social norms

D Unethical conduct

F  Despicable conduct

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is, therefore, to accept this challenge:

Give Maher, Maher’s audience, Futrelle and Palin their ethics grades. Continue reading →

Donald Trump’s Loathsome Lawsuit

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Maher-Trump-Oran

Normally the result of a tiff between Donald Trump and Bill Maher would interest me about as much as I would be invested in the  winner of a battle between Godzilla and Megalon.  Trump’s lawsuit against Maher in retaliation for an obvious joke, however, is unethical and indefensible no matter how much I enjoy seeing Maher, who could only avoid being the most obnoxious human being in world containing the likes of Trump, suffer.

Maher joked to Jay Leno last month that he would pay $5 million to Trump’s charity of choice if Trump could prove that his birth wasn’t the result his mother having sex with orangutan. I missed it, Jay having joined David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel in my talk-show host Hall of Ethics Shame, but the line did make me laugh, I confess. Maher’s faux challenge was an obvious riff on the offensive offer Trump made to President Barack Obama during the presidential campaign, in which Trump raised the birther canard again and offered $5 million to the President’s charity of choice if  Obama released his college records and definitive proof that he was really born in the U.S.A.

Nonetheless, Trump decided to behave as if it were a real offer. He had his lawyers send the verification to Maher (Trump’s father, the brains of the family, was a legendary real estate innovator and mogul), and now Trump is suing for the $5 million on the pretense that the comic welched on a legitimate and enforceable unilateral contract. “I don’t know whether this case will be won or lost, but I felt a major obligation to bring it on behalf of the charities,” Trump said. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Unethical Quote of the Month, or Just A Joke?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“If you’re thinking about voting for Mitt Romney, I would like to make this one plea: black people know who you are and they will come after you.

—– HBO’s alleged comedian and one million dollar Obama contributor Bill Maher, on his current events commentary show, “Real Time.”

Funny!

Oh, I know, I know: it’s a joke. Maher even followed it up by saying, “I’m kidding!”  Maybe you even think it’s funny…there are arguably funny racist, sexist and anti-gay jokes too. This one hits all the keys: suggesting that Romney is anti-black, attempting to intimidate voters, and stereotyping Africa-Americans as violent and dangerous. (And, of course, the comment is divisive, but on that score, Maher is only taking his cue from the Obama campaign, which has reminded everyone that Romney “isn’t one of us.”)

No conservative could make this “joke.” A races-reversed version of the joke would cause an eruption of anger from the Left. Since humor is utilitarian (if it’s funny enough, anything goes), is this joke sufficiently hilarious to justify it? Maher also thinks it’s a joke to call Republican women “twats” and “cunts.” He’s a funny guy.

Here is your Ethics Quiz:

Should Maher’s comment be excused as being within acceptable bounds for a political comic, or is it unethical nonetheless?

__________________________________

Pointer: Newsbusters

Graphic: Libertarian Punk

“Walking While Female”: What’s The Matter With Men, Anyway?

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I just finished reading some of the posts on a Washington, D.C. site called Collective Action for Safe Spaces, and found myself simultaneously amazed, shocked, repulsed and depressed. Based on the posts from female victims of random acts in broad daylight raging from harassment to sexual assault, the unethical male treatment of women like prime grade beef on the hoof is far, far more common than I assumed, and raises a genuine question about what kind of values our culture teaches its men.

What would ever lead a man to decide that it was acceptable to pinch a woman’s derriere in a crowd? Or a cyclist to shove his hand up a woman’s skirt as he zipped by? Or a photographer to aim his zoom lens camera at multiple women’s busts in public? Apparently this conduct is so commonplace that many, even most, women don’t bother to report it, reasoning that the police have better things to do.

You know what? They don’t. Either the police have to enforce a woman’s right to enjoy life and appear in public without being sexually molested, or we need to pass laws the allow  anti-harassment enforcement by women and the men, if there are any, who possess a sense of decency and are willing to act decisively to stop the predators—and by that I mean breaking their faces. I cannot imagine anything more important than maintaining the cultural standard that harassing women, touching them without permission and making unwanted and unasked for sexual remarks to them is not merely rude and boorish, but a violation of basic human rights.

If this nation is really raising a bumper crop of men who think otherwise, and we seem to be, it is time for women and men alike to be vigorously non-partisan in rejecting and shunning writers, public figures, entertainers and next door neighbors who make it obvious in their speech and conduct that they believe women exist on earth for their denigration and pleasure. To pick the obvious example, Bill Maher has repeatedly referred to women on his HBO show “Real Time” as cunts, twats, bitches, and other misogynist terms. What message does is send that he keeps getting nominated for a Emmy? Why have Dan Rather, Charles M. Blow, Paul Begala, Andrew Sullivan, Catherine Crier, Michael Steele, and Eliot Spitzer—wait, scratch Eliot; I know the answer in his case—-appeared on Maher’s show, licked his boots, and endorsed his sick frat boy attitudes toward women and giving spiritual nourishment to our rising young rapists?

We have no ethical standards unless we are willing to stand up for them, enforce them, and refuse to tolerate anything less. It is dangerous to “walk while female” because both men and women do tolerate such despicable, primitive, joy obliterating conduct.

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Facts: Collective Action

Source:Washington Post

Graphic: Parterre

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Unethical Quote of the Week: DC Radio Talk Show Host Chris Plante

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

“(MSNBC host) Chris Hayes is like (MSNBC host) Rachel Maddow, but with a smaller penis.”

—-WMAL syndicated conservative radio talk show host Chris Plante, riffing on the anti-Fox MSNBC’s new star, Chris Hayes.

Gee, Chris, do you REALLY want to emulate Bill Maher?

As someone who often talks extemporaneously for a living, and who has slammed both legs up to the hip into my mouth more than once, I am genuinely sympathetic to the perils faced by radio and TV talk show hosts who have to be edgy, insightful and witty for three hours a day without a script, knowing that words, once out of their mouths, are irretrievable, and can lead to career meltdowns with the speed of Chernobyl. It’s a tough job that is akin to walking a high wire over a pit of crocodiles, and I usually have great sympathy for those who fall.

But there is no excuse for this. Continue reading →

Ethics Train Wreck Extra: the Lawyer, the Advisor, and the Kennedy

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The faith-based institution mandate set the train on its fateful journey,  Rush Limbaugh sent a second locomotive into the stalled caboose after the first train jumped the track, and box cars are still tumbling in all directions:

  • Robert Kennedy, Jr., senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council and co-host of the nationally syndicated weekly talk radio show “Ring of Fire”, picked now to tweet this, which rapidly went viral on the internet:

Didn’t we just hear the ladies of The View explain that a word is a word, and it didn’t matter which gender was on the delivering or receiving end of “slut”? Is anyone calling for Kennedy to apologize for using the same uncivil language that has Rush Limbaugh in hot water? In fact, Kennedy’s verbiage is distinguishable: it is directed at a Senator, not a law student; calling a man, especially a politician, a prostitute is not as provocative as using that term to describe a woman, no matter what Whoopi says; Kennedy is clearly using the term metaphorically (so was Limbaugh, but it was too close for comfort, since the topic was sex); and, as one conservative wag said, call girls are classier than sluts. All true, and yet the willingness of Kennedy to use similar terms of denigration in public while the Right is pointing to Bill Maher and shouting hypocrisy indicates one of two things, and maybe both: 1) Kennedy is so confident that a double standard is in play that he feels completely comfortable in rubbing everyone’s face in it, or 2) this is just further proof of the generational dilution of talent, intelligence and skill in the Kennedy clan. Yes, I think “both” is fair. Continue reading →

Ethics Train Wreck Chronicles: Villains, Victims, Hypocrites and Unlikely Heroes In the Contraception / Limbaugh / Fluke Debacle

/ Jack Marshall / 66 Comments

If this isn’t the Ethics Train Wreck of the Year, we have something truly horrible in store for us down the line. A no-so-brief brief re-cap:

  • The Obama Administration announces that church-run institutions like hospitals and universities will still be required to offer insurance coverage for abortions, sterilizations and other medical matters that might be in direct opposition to church beliefs. It’s a cynical move, designed to cater to the Democratic base at the expense of religious institutions. It is also irresponsible, since it jeopardizes the huge proportion of medical services performed by church institutions.
  • Conservatives scream that the measure is a breach of religious freedom. The is either ignorant or a lie. The Constitution has no provision requiring the government to make special accommodations for churches or church-operated institutions.
  • Caught by surprise by the intensity of the backlash, the Administration crafts a “compromise,” which is essentially deceitful sleight-of-hand, form over substance. The insurance companies now have to provide those services but the religious institutions don’t have to pay for it. But of course they will, through increased premiums elsewhere.
  • Flagging the deceit, Republican attacks on the measure continue. Democrats successfully frame the debate as a conservative attack on contraception, which it is a misrepresentation, and a “war on women,” which is ridiculous and unfair. The issue is churches being forced to provide or pay for services that violate their faith—which the government has every right to do.
  • The controversy activates GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who is a fringe extremist in sexual matters and toes the Roman Catholic line. He really thinks birth control is immoral. This position, which is unethical, is suddenly given exposure it doesn’t deserve in the 21st Century Continue reading →

Is Obama Ethically Obligated To Reject Bill Maher’s Million? Don’t Be Ridiculous!

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Classy, Bill...but don't worry, your money's still good, even if you aren't.

Confirming the Ethics Train Wreck status of the church-run institutions/health care/ religious freedom/contraceptives coverage/Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke mess, the Weekly Standard and other conservative pundits are playing the hypocrisy card and arguing that if Limbaugh is so reprehensible, then the Obama super-pac should apply the same standards to serial misogynist Bill Maher and return his recent $1 million contribution.

Idiots. As long as campaign contributions aren’t the fruits of a crime, the whole concept of rejecting “dirty money” is silly beyond belief. Do Republicans really want to stand for the proposition that only contributions from the pure of heart and word can be accepted by those running for office? Jerks like Bill Maher have rights too; he should have the same opportunity to support political candidates of his choice no matter what offensive and crude things he says to his cheering lap dog audiences on HBO. Politicians are not accountable for the character, words, beliefs and misdeeds of his supporters, nor should they be. This is not a standard that Republicans, of all people, want to establish. Nor should any of us.

Absolutely: Democrats and feminists who are furious at Limbaugh’s despicable misogyny  show themselves as hypocrites by appearing on Maher’s show. But his money is as good as anybody’s, and he has not forfeited his right to support candidates of his choosing. Nobody should be trying to take that away from him.

Ethics Dunce: Rep. Debby Wasserman-Schultz

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Honestly, if you had told me that the Democrats could find someone to chair their national organization who was as big a buffoon, hypocrite and embarrassment as Michael Steele, I would have said that it was impossible. And then along came Debby...

On “Meet the Press,” the Democratic National Committee Chair. Rep. Debby Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.), reacted indignantly to the Rush Limbaugh-Sandra Fluke incident, saying in part,

“…And the bottom line is that the leading candidate on the Republican side for president couldn’t even bring himself to call Rush Limbaugh’s comments outrageous and call him out and ask him to apologize… Rush Limbaugh, in that apology, said that he was trying to be humorous. I don’t know any woman in America, David, that thinks that being called a slut is funny.”

By Wasserman-Schultz’s own conduct, however, we may apparently conclude that she thinks it is funny when a woman is called a “dumb twat” and a “cunt,” both of which vulgarities were directed at Republican women by HBO’s Bill Maher. Continue reading →

Rush’s Misogyny: No Defense

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

This is one of Rush's ugly pictures. He's earned it.

Any idiot, except Rush Limbaugh, apparently, could identify Rush’s outrageous, uncivil, mean-spirited, and ignorant (does he really think a woman has to take more birth control pills the more she has sex?) rant against Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke (who testified before Congressional Democrats to advocate insurance coverage of contraceptives) as indefensible. That is why I wasn’t going to insult anyone’s intelligence by stating the obvious by posting to that effect. But a commenter here reminded me of the Ethics Alarms post about Bill Maher’s misogyny when he called Sarah Palin a “dumb twat” on his HBO show, and I decided that it should be made clear that as despicable as Maher’s statement was, Rush’s was worse. Continue reading →