censorship

Hey Corey Clark, This Streisand Effect’s For You!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Remember Corey Clark? Neither do I.

Remember Corey Clark? Neither do I.

For those of you fortunate enough to have forgotten about Corey Clark: he had a brief fling with celebrity after he was kicked off American Idol in 2003 and later accused then-Idol judge Paula Abdul of secretly helping him advance in the show while they were having a clandestine, and obviously unethical, sexual relationship. He did this, class act that he is, two years later while he was promoting an album release.

I didn’t remember Corey Clark either, until a typical reputation-cleaner (that is, dishonest and threatening) called me on the phone yesterday, misrepresenting himself as working for Clark’s lawyer, and told me that Clark was engaged in litigation regarding “defamatory” material published about him. He said that a post on Ethics Alarms’ predecessor, The Ethics Scoreboard, had “defamed” Clark in 2005 by stating that he had been convicted of a felony, and this was a demand that I either retract that post or take it down.

This, is, of course, approaching the patented territory of Ken at Popehat, whose specialty is opposing creeps who try to censor opinion on the internet by threatening spurious but expensive litigation against bloggers. As I told Clark’s paid lackey, who spouted erroneous legal theories and had a rudimentary understanding of defamation at best, I was only recounting what I had read in published reports at the time. There could be no defamation, as 1) Clark was, at the time, a public figure, 2) I wrote what I thought was true and accurate and 3) there was no malice involved. He asked me for my source, prompting me to say that I would have been able to supply him with one and would have done so gladly if his employer’s client hadn’t waited seven years to bring the post to my attention. The Scoreboard has not been active since 2009. Continue reading →

The SyFy Channel, Settting A New Low In Political Correctness Censorship

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This is so incomprehensibly stupid that I hardly know how to react to it.

The SyFy Channel, as is its wont, was running a movie this morning that has nothing to do with science fiction, John Landis’s  odd horror/comedy “An American Werewolf in London,” from 1981. When the two doomed hikers visit a gloomy pub in the English countryside, one of the locals tells a joke:

“Here now, let me finish!  So halfway over the ocean the  engines run low on petrol so  they have to lighten the plane.  So they heave out all the baggage, but it’s still too heavy.  So they chuck out the seats, but it’s still too heavy!  Finally this Froggy steps up and shouts “Viva la France” and leaps out.  Then an Englishman steps up and shouts `God  save the Queen!’ and leaps out.  But the plane is still  too heavy.  So the Yank  delegate from Texas steps up,  shouts, `Remember the Alamo!’ and chucks out the Mexican!”

I’ve always liked that joke myself, but whether you like it or not, SyFy decided that your delicate ears shouldn’t be sullied by the punchline. In the edited version the channel showed, the last sentence could only be heard this way:

“So the Yank  delegate from Texas steps up,  shouts, `Remember the Alamo!’ and [ ?].” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Censoring a First Grader’s Poem

/ Jack Marshall / 157 Comments

No-GodThis is a different kind of ethics quiz, because the question is where the blame for an unethical result lies. The result is clearly wrong, but I am uncertain who or what should be blamed for it.

A first-grade student in North Carolina wrote a Veterans Day poem honoring her grandfather, a Vietnam veteran. She had been selected to read the poem at a November 8 Veterans Day ceremony.   One of the lines was, “He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength.”

The Horror.

The school forced her to remove the line. Continue reading →

The Ethics Attic: Notes From Around The Web

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

messy attic

[I’m still feeling lousy, so in an effort to conserve some energy while keeping the torch high, I’m presenting a few links that the ethics-minded might enjoy visiting. Normally I would write about some of these, so consider yourselves lucky.]

  • Historian Paul Finkleman delivers that harshest verdict yet on the hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson regarding civil rights and slavery. You should then read David G. Post’s splendid contra essay here. (The last two sentences in Finkleman’s op-ed are pretty much indefensible.)
  • A fascinating reflection, inspired by the movie “Lincoln,” on Utilitarianism and “the ends justifies the means.”
  • In fact, the program is a benign one, but considering the issue raised in my last post, it is hard to imagine more perfect symbolism for the American public trading self-sufficiency for government protection than the trade described here.
  • If you missed the recent George Will column, a frightening one, about the assaults of free speech and thought around the campuses of American universities, you have another chance to read it, here.
  • I only recently learned that 3-D copiers are a reality, and Dr. Chris MacDonald, on his always excellent Business Ethics Blog, has some insight on their ethical implications here.
  • Once again this year, I have an essay in The 2013 Hardball Times Baseball Annual, and publisher Dave Studenmund references my analysis of the Stephen Strasburg affair here.
  • Finally, thanks to Mary Wright on the HR Gazette for posting the Ethics Alarms Apology Scale.

Unethical Quote of the Month: Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“It is a shame that anytime something goes wrong, they pick on women and minorities..All of the things they have disliked about things that have gone on in the administration, they have never called a male unqualified, not bright, not trustworthy. There is a clear sexism and racism that goes with these comments being made by unfortunately Sen. [John] McCain and others . . . How do you say that a person with Susan Rice’s background is not qualified? I wonder what your qualifications are for your job. Where did you finish in your class? You know, I know one of them finished in the bottom of their class. Susan Rice was a Rhodes scholar. How do you say a person like Susan Rice is not qualified?…I mean, Susan Rice’s comments didn’t send us to Iraq and Afghanistan. Somebody else’s did. But you’re not angry with them.”

—-Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), accusing GOP Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Kelly Ayotte (a woman) of sexism and racism for their harsh criticism of UN Ambassador Susan Rice for her repeated assertion on multiple news shows that the Benghazi attack that killed the American ambassador in Libya was a spontaneous demonstration over a YouTube video after the Obama Administration had been told otherwise.

It must be comforting to be able to rationalize all criticism arising from your own conduct and to attribute it to the biases of your critics. Crippling, but comforting. If one cannot regard criticism as legitimate, then one can never assess one’s own mistakes and weaknesses and work to improve.

Fudge is one of the habitual race-card players in Congress: earlier this year, she accused the bi-partisan House ethics committee of racism because a disproportionate number of the Congressional Black Caucus’s members were under investigation. (This was, of course, because a disproportionate number of  the Congressional Black Caucus’s members, like Fudge, have engaged in dubious practices that indicate a weak grasp of ethics.) This time, she had lots of company, including Rep. James Clyburn (D-NC), who later said that the word “incompetent” was racist code. Brilliant! This means that no black public official can ever be called incompetent! Sure to be added to the code book if this theory sticks: inept, ineffective, corrupt, careless, irresponsible, and unqualified. Fudge, Clyburn and their colleagues propose to make legitimate criticism of black and female officials—those who are Democrats, that is—impossible, one word at a time. Continue reading →

Offense By Proxy: “Laugh At The Crippled Girl!”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Offender and his friend,the Unoffended Offended.

Forest Thomer II  says he was conducting  “guerrilla marketing” when he went to a May 23 “Party in the Park”  hosted by the local Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce. Pointing to Ally Bruener, wheelchair-bound because of Muscular Dystrophy, he quizzed various groups in the crowd, asking, “Do you want to laugh at the crippled girl?” Then Bruener, who is an aspiring comic, wheeled up, told a joke and announced the location and time of  her next performance.

Surprise! Someone was offended—so offended that the police were called. They threatened to shock Thomer with a taser and then arrested him, charging disorderly conduct by virtue of “grossly abusive language.” This could have sent Thomer to jail for a month. When Thomer’s attorney made it clear that he was going to argue censorship, the city changed the charge to “Turbulent behavior,” whatever that is. Amazingly, this ridiculous case actually went to trial, and after four days that could have been better spent making napkin holders out of popsicle sticks, a jury found Thomer “not guilty.” Continue reading →

What’s Wrong With The Anti-Jihad Ads?

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Mona Eltahawy, as police infringe on her exercise of the rarely invoked Eleventeenth Amendment, which protects a citizen’s right to spray any message she doesn’t want others to see with pink. paint.

The controversial ads went up in DC Metro stations today, after efforts by the city to have them blocked were declared, properly, to be unconstitutional by a sane and objective judge. The ads read,

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The controversy over the subway ads started heating up in the wake of the “Innocence of Muslims” debacle, when a crude internet trailer for a crude anti-Islam movie was used by extremists and fanatics around the world as an excuse to demonstrate against or attack U.S. embassies. The Obama Administration’s less-than-ringing defense of free speech in its efforts to minimize the violence had the undesired effect of emboldening domestic censors, among them  Mona Eltahawy, a free-lance Egypt-born journalist, who spray-painted one of the anti-jihad ads, the creation of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, in a New York subway station where it had been hung on September 24. She argued, as she sprayed, that censoring someone else’s protected speech was her First Amendment right. No, it’s not. A 2011 naturalized citizen, she needs to bone up on her American Constitution before she speaks at any more college campuses. She was arrested. Good. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: Fox News Anchor Shepard Smith

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

 “…We really messed up. And we’re all very sorry. That didn’t belong on TV. We took every precaution we knew how to take to keep that from being on TV. And I personally apologize to you that that happened. Sometimes we see a lot of things that we don’t let get to you – because it’s not time appropriate, it’s insensitive, and it’s just wrong. And that was wrong. And that won’t happen again on my watch and I’m sorry.”

—-Shepard Smith, Fox New Anchor, in his immediate apology to viewers after a live police chase Fox News had been showing to viewers ended with the pursued car’s driver suddenly committing suicide with a pistol shot to the head.  Apparently the network had gone to a 5 second delay in the eventuality of such a development, but technicians still failed to stop the feed in time.

“CUT AWAY! CUT AWAY!!”

Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Those of us who saw the twin towers fall saw 3000 souls die as it happened. I understand Smith apologizing pro forma for an unexpected moment of violence, but the statement,

“Sometimes we see a lot of things that we don’t let get to you…”

…is troubling. Continue reading →

Movie Critique Ethics: Jay Carney’s Embarrassing Lie

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

There was a different arm up Ron Zeigler’s back, but the system, and the results, were the same.

Once again, allow me to express sympathy for Jay Carney who, like all official White House spokesmen (R.I.P., Ron Zeigler—who once offered me a job, by the way…but I digress) regularly lies his head off, sometimes for good reasons, usually just because his bosses want it that way. Still, the lies come out of his mouth, so he is accountable.

Yesterday, Carney came out with this jaw-dropper regarding the multiple protests being directed at U.S. embassies in the Middle East, as well as the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya that left four dead, including our ambassador:

“This is a fairly volatile situation, and it is in response not to United States policy, obviously not to the administration, not to the American people. It is in response to a video, a film, that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting — that in no way justifies any violent reaction to it…But this is not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at U.S. policy, but it is in response to video that is offensive to Muslims.”

I know that the fact that President Obama’s signature charm offensive with the Arab world has been an abject failure is a bitter pill, but it would be both admirable and encouraging to see the President accepting that he was naive and learning from the experience, rather than knowing that he is prompting his spokesman to insist, against all logic and evidence, that, no, really, they still love us—they just shot a rocket at our embassy because they didn’t like a movie trailer. Continue reading →

“Marion Berry’s Dirty Asian Summer Punch” and Attacks on Free Speech From The Left

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The United States’ has to be vigilant in protecting its unique Bill of Rights from dilution, degradation and manipulation. Once the threats came from the political right, as with the Red-baiting tactics of Sen. Joe McCarthy. Now it more typically comes from the kinder, gentler, more hypocritical political left, often in the form of threats to “hate speech,” a term that can mean pretty much whatever the kinder, gentler censor wants it to mean, and is especially handy to stifle dissent.

This First Amendment assault was on view yesterday on MSNBC, as PR loud mouth Donny Deutch, columnist Mike Barnicle and University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler all agreed that the makers of the anti-Muslim video now being used as an excuse to attack embassies should be indicted. Uh, no. Making a movie cannot be a crime in the U.S.: this was what Citizens United was all about, and the principle is called “Freedom of Speech.” But bigger brains than Donny’s are trying to chip away at the right that makes America America, using the ever-popular “everybody does it” rationalization to argue that European nations prosecute those who “hurt religious feelings”, in the immortal words of our Cairo Embassy, so it must be the right thing to do.

Scared yet? If not read this post, and this, from the Volokh Conspiracy, on the arguments for limiting Free Speech being made by Prof. Peter Spiro and former Yale Dean Harold Koh, the latter now working in the Obama State Department.

Or just watch how much the bureaucrats in our nation’s capital respects the First Amendment. Or understand satire. Continue reading →