America was just introduced to the biking Vogel family, as they embark on a charm offensive seemingly with a potential reality show in their sights. They appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Labor Day, and expect to get a boost in publicity thanks to a typical softball interview by a beaming stand-in for George Stephanopoulos. (Video taken and selected by the Vogels themselves accompanied the interview, further allowing them to present their trip in the most favorable light.) It would be have been both responsible and right, however, if the Vogels had been asked more pointed questions, probing the serious issue of whether John and Nancy Vogel may be exploiting and even abusing their children in pursuit of fame, fortune, and an “Easy Rider” life-style that being parents of young children ought to preclude. Continue reading
child exploitation
Abuse of Power in the Schools, Part 1: Pimping the Kids
Blogger-mom Laura Wellington is making the talk show rounds after a post last month on her blog aroused interest and commentary from various newspapers. In the post, she indignantly described a fundraising drive by her child’s school that understandably raised her ire:
“…the letter [my daughter] handed me stated my daughter was to accomplish chores around the house with the goal of being paid by me for those chores the sum of $20. She would then have to hand the full $20 over to the school to make up for the shortfall in their overall budget which, ultimately, disallowed the kids to go on yet another class trip. Participation was mandatory according to what my daughter told me and the letter seemingly conveyed (however, on a later phone call, my daughter’s teacher altered the word “mandatory” to be “suggested” despite all evidence to the contrary)…”
Wellington’s complaint is that schools need to exercise fiscal responsibility, and she is joining a rising chorus of protest among parents across the country who feel that their tax dollars should not have to be supplemented with constant arm-twisting from schools urging them to buy and sell over-priced cookies or provide additional contributions. This is a fiscal policy issue; the ethical issue should be less controversial. When did schools get the authority to dictate what children do outside school? How do they justify requiring unpaid labor for the school’s benefit? Continue reading
More Bad Parent Ethics
None of them shipped their child to Russia, this week’s bad parents betrayed an infant, a 13-year old boy, and an adult daughter spiraling toward disaster… Continue reading
Petersen Was Right: “Jon & Kate” Exploited Their Kids
Back when everyone was buzzing about TLC’s reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” long before the dark side of the show began to emerge, before the messy divorce of the couple, before Kate was revealed as a castrating control freak and Jon showed himself to have the maturity of a 12-year-old, and long, long before Kate demonstrated that she may be the least watchable dancer ever to appear in televised dance show, child performer advocate Paul Petersen was sounding the alarm that the show violated child labor laws. Reality show producers sneak in through loop-holes in the laws regulating scripted shows, and Petersen, to nasty derision from some quarters, kept making the point that what the Gosselins were doing with their eight children was against the law, harmful to them, and wrong.
Now that the show is off the air, Pennsylvania, where it was filmed, has finally gotten around to looking into Petersen’s allegations, and guess what? He was right all the time. Continue reading
Isolating Corey Haim: Child Star Deceit and Disinformation in the Media
It is clear that the news media, and especially the entertainment and pop culture media, don’t want to lose their cuddly child performers. Thus when a former kid star like Corey Haim perishes at a young age, the victim of a dysfunctional childhood turned fatal by addictions to fame and drugs, the sad story is usually told as a cautionary tale about how one young actor’s early promise and talent turned to dust and destruction because of his own weaknesses and missteps. A responsible media would use such events to examine the larger, serious, and mostly ignored problem of child abuse and exploitation in the entertainment business, and its terrible toll of casualties.The media is not responsible on this topic, however, and in the case of Haim, seemed to go out of its way to falsely represent his fate as the exception, rather than the rule. Continue reading
Octomom and PETA: a Match Made in Ethics Hell
I didn’t think anything could make me feel sorry for Octomom, a.k.a. Nadya Suleman, the serial baby-machine who is a one-woman bioethics seminar with some child exploitation thrown in for spice. Then along came People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the ethically-challenged animal rights fanatics. PETA believes that no person or thing on earth deserves consideration, fairness or respect if he, she or it can be used to advance its message. A few months ago, it plastered the First Lady on some of the organization’s ads without her permission, because it knew that the publicity over this obvious violation of Michelle Obama’s right to be consulted before being used this way would get PETA in the news. And it did.
When you turn off the ethics alarms that are supposed to sound before you violate a person’s dignity, autonomy and self-respect, it is amazing what schemes you can come up with. So when PETA learned that Suleman was about to lose her home in a foreclosure, its brain trust thought, “Wow, she must be desperate. And she obviously has no shame. I bet she’ll do anything for money! It probably won’t even have to be much money, either.” Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 