character

Manny Ramirez’s Perfect Exit

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The most unethical baseball player since the Black Sox

From  Major League Baseball:

“Major League Baseball recently notified Manny Ramirez of an issue under Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Rather than continue with the process under the Program, Ramirez has informed MLB that he is retiring as an active player. If Ramirez seeks reinstatement in the future, the process under the Drug Program will be completed. MLB will not have any further comment on this matter.”

Perfect. Perfect.

Manny Ramirez was an impressively talented baseball player with discipline of an untrained Irish Setter, and the selfishness of a six-year-old. Throughout his career, he was a textbook example of the management fallacy known as the star principle, in which an extremely talented individual is allowed to break the rules and defy an organization’s culture in direct proportion to his perceived value. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Ex-Con John Collins

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Charlie made a different kind of mistake, too!

“We’re people, we’re not monsters. We’ve just made a different type of mistake than someone else.”

— 34-year-old John Collins, who announced his support for a provision being pushed forward by the Seattle Office For Human Rights, which believes that convicted criminals should be made a protected class.

Collins sure made a different kind of mistake, all right. He served four years in prison for drugging and raping his estranged wife. Continue reading →

The Remarkable Character of George Washington

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Today is George Washington’s birthday, and it is appropriate for every American, and certainly every ethicist, to pause in awe of this unique and indispensable man. Ethics Alarms honors him today with his own words, showing the depth of his good character, good judgment and commitment to ethical conduct in a letter to a man who later betrayed his trust, Benedict Arnold. This is the letter sent to Arnold, then his most trusted subordinate in the Revolutionary War, as Arnold was preparing to invade Quebec.

Happy Birthday, General Washington. More than three hundred years later, you lead us still.

George Washington to Benedict Arnold
September 14, 1775. Continue reading →

The Sad Saga of the Ex-Drug Dealing Law Student

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

David Powers, a certified public accountant working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, standing third in his class at St. John’s University School of Law, was preparing to graduate this spring. Seeking to move from accounting to law (and who wouldn’t?), Powers was completely candid to the New York Appellate Court’s Character and Fitness Committee, disclosing an expunged 1999 conviction for drug possession on his record and the circumstances surrounding it.  He wanted to know if the conviction would be a hurdle to his acceptance for admission to the New York Bar. But when he asked St. John’s to send the Bar a letter of support, it not only refused but rescinded his admission, reports the New York Post.

Now Powers is suing, since St. John’s taught him well. Continue reading →

Hall of Fame Ethics: The Jeff Bagwell Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Members of the Baseball Writers Association of America have been turning in their ballots for the Hall of Fame, their collective totals eventually determining which retired major league baseball stars will have plaques in Cooperstown. If you follow baseball closely, you are aware of the big debates this year: Is Tim Raines worthy? Will Bert Blyleven finally make it? Has Alan Trammel been unfairly neglected? What about Jack Morris and Roberto Alomar? If you don’t follow baseball, you couldn’t care less, and I pity you. One controversy this year, however, should be of interest to non-fans as well as fans, because it involves the proper application of the ethical principles of fairness and equity in an environment of doubt. It is the Jeff Bagwell dilemma. Continue reading →

The Depressing Rangel Censure: Unethical Culture on Display

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Charles_Rangel

It takes quite a bit of doing for the public punishment of a revered figure for unethical conduct to make an institution appear more unethical itself, but the U.S. House of Representatives was up to the challenge yesterday.

As expected, Rep. Charlie Rangel, former ly the powerful Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, received a censure by majority vote, the harshest punishment a Member can receive short of expulsion. Rangel had been found guilty of five major ethical violations, or as they should properly be called, five instances of ongoing egregious unethical conduct. Charley and friends like to say “ethical violations” because that can be spun into mere carelessness, like not putting enough money on the meter. From the beginning, Rangel’s line has been that he made “mistakes,” suggesting they were either accidental or that he didn’t realize they were unethical. Think about that as you review the five: Continue reading →

The Ethics of Outing the Movie Star

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

My least favorite website, the ethically challenged Gawker, became the latest media source to publish rapidly spreading tales of the gay sexual escapades of a well-known Hollywood leading man who is also married, has children, attracts a great deal of positive publicity because of his family life, and, to cap it all off, is a high-profile member of a church (the Church of Scientology) that has in the past treated homosexuality as a curable malady. A book is coming out, and the author is pumping up interest in the tabloids.

The ethical question: is this legitimate news? Should it be reported? If it isn’t news, but rather a vile and mean-spirited invasion of privacy, then Gawker, as usual, is wading in slime. If, however, it is news, then why is the mainstream media ignoring the story?

This is a messy ethical conflict. Continue reading →

Rangel’s Mercy Plea Theory: The Ethics Savings Account

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

As I write this, Rep. Charles Rangel is asking his colleagues for mercy, as they decide what his punishment should be for eleven counts of ethics misdeeds including abuse of his office and tax evasion. He has made the unconvincing argument that it all adds up to sloppiness, not corruption, though the sheer weight and breadth of the charges against him indicate otherwise. Rangel’s main defense, as he tried to stave off censure, was the testimony of Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon and compatriot of Martin Luther King, soon to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Lewis described Rangel as a “good and decent man, an honest man,” a Korean War vet who came to Selma, Ala. and marched alongside King and Lewis in the cause of civil rights, which Rangel, Lewis said, fought for his entire career.

Lewis’s character endorsement is completely irrelevant to Rangel’s current corruption issues. I don’t think it should be allowed.  Continue reading →

Oscar, Jean Luc-Godard, and the Ethics of Honoring Talented Creeps

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Academy of Motion Picture Sciences will be giving an honorary Oscar to French director Jean-Luc Godard, and nobody who knows anything about film can object to the award on the basis of merit. Godard is one of the most influential film makers who ever yelled “Cut!;”  there are dozens of film classes about his work in schools all over the country. He makes great movies, and has for decades. He deserves the honor.

Or does he? Mr. Godard, it seems, has also been resolutely anti-Jewish, at least in his sentiments, for almost as long as he has been making classic films. Some in the industry and without are questioning whether Hollywood should be honoring a likely Anti-Semite.

Excuse me…did I miss something? When did the rest of the Oscars get junked, leaving only the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award? Continue reading →

Krystal Ball, the Dildo Nose, Human Nature, and Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Krystal Ball is a Democrat running for an open Virginia Congressional seat in the 1st District. Today, however, most Americans who know her at all only do so because some spectacularly embarrassing photos of her have gone viral on the Internet. In the shots, a Santa-clad Ball is shown in a series of suggestive poses involving a bright red dildo, which is fastened to the nose of young man wearing reindeer antlers. In some shots, she has Rudolph the Dildo-nosed Reindeer on a leash, just to add that dominatrix flair we all associate with the holidays. Continue reading →