children

Now THESE Are Irresponsible Parents!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

What could go wrong?

When a mother in Maine Township, Illinois noticed that her 18-month-old daughter’s finger was missing, her first thought, the news item tells us, was that the family pit bull did it. Sure, always blame the pit bull. Pit bulls are no more likely to chomp and infant than any other dog, but if the mother assumed that, why was the toddler permitted to have unsupervised contact with the dog? Well, you see, this particular family never heard of the concept of “child-proofing.” Given the real reason for the toddler’s amputated finger, I’m sure other thoughts were going through her mind, like…

.…”I wonder if she did that with the power saw we always keep plugged in for emergencies?”

…..”Maybe that zombie we keep chained in the basement bit it off?”

….”Has she been in my scalpel collection again?”

But no. The real reason that the girl was missing her finger was that she had stuck it in the fish tank, where Mom kept her pet piranha.

If this kid makes it to 12, she’ll be lucky.

Meanwhile, the parents should alert all those kind contributors to weepy bus monitor Karen Klein, who will doubtless send the parents contributions out of sympathy because that mean piranha mistreated their child.

The Monsters, the Baseball and the Kid

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

“WAAA! I wanted that ball! By the way, where am I?”

I skipped this ten-minute controversy from last month, but I think it was worth mentioning from several ethics angles, so consider this catch-up.

Rangers fans Sean Leonard and Shannon Moore were at a Texas Rangers-Yankee game a few weeks ago when a  game ball was tossed into the stands by Texas’s Mitch Moreland. They caught it and gleefully posed for the TV cameras, which also caught a three-year old boy crying hysterically next to them. Immediately, the couple was vilified far and wide, on TV, in blogs and on radio talk shows ( Business Insider called them “The Monsters Who Made A Little Boy Cry”)  for taking the ball and not giving it to the child. The main accuser  who sparked all this hatred was Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, who told his radio audience that the couple was taunting the unhappy boy.

Outrageous, all right, but Kay, not the couple. Kay’s description of what occurred was speculative and even fanciful, and for other commentators to commence vilifying the two fans without knowing anything about them, or even why the child was crying, was frighteningly unfair, irresponsible and cruel. Yes, you too can be caught on camera and turned into a national punching bag! Later, we discovered that…. Continue reading →

Jimmy Kimmel Is Still An Evil, Child-Abusing Jerk, and Apparently I’m The Only One Who Notices

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

I have written twice before about ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s penchant for urging his viewers to inflict emotional distress on their trusting children, because Jimmy and other mean-spirited jerks get a big kick out of watching kids scream and cry following cruelty from their parents. As I wrote the last time Kimmel issued one of his “challenges,” which was to spoil Christmas for your kid by giving them  horrible gifts (like a half-eaten sandwich):

“Children are not props for Jimmy Kimmel’s sadistic amusement, and parents who are willing to use their children this way… are, to be blunt, rotten, despicable, and untrustworthy parents. Something important—Compassion? Kindness? Empathy? Loyalty? Responsibility? Love? — is absent in their parental make-up, and that void is being cynically exploited by Kimmel, who has crossed the threshold from arrested adolescent to full-fledged villain. Since Kimmel has twice been rewarded with positive publicity for egging on parents to harm their kids, what can we expect next from Jimmy?…There’s almost no limit to the great YouTube videos one can create when you’re willing to lie to your kids to upset them.”

Well, now we know. Jimmy asked parents to pre-chew their kids food and serve it to them, to see their horrified reactions. Last night, he showed the hysterically funny “winners.” One disgusted and enraged teenage girl, finally told by her folks that the prank was Jimmy Kimmel’s idea, said to the camera, resoundingly, “You suck, Jimmy!”

Indeed he does. Continue reading →

Role Model Ethics: A Spring Training Drama in One Act

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Kevin Youkilis, role model

From Fort Myers, Florida, where the Boston Red Sox are in the early stages of  Spring Training, Boston Globe sportswriter Pete Abraham reports the following scene involving Kevin Youkilis, the Boston third baseman:

The Red Sox infielders were taking grounders on Field 2 this morning when a kid who looked to be 10 or 11 yelled out, “Hey, Youk, give me a ball!”

Kevin Youkilis looked up and said, “What’s the right way to ask?” Chagrined, the kid said, “Can I please have a ball?”

Youk tossed the kid a ball. “Don’t ever forget that for the rest of your life,” he said.

“Thanks,” said the kid.

It may not take a village to raise a child, but the village can certainly help out, especially those who children admire, look up to and respect. Kevin Youkilis took the time to teach a boy he had never seen before a crucial lesson about politeness, civility and respect, and because the lesson  came from a baseball player, the boy really might remember it for the rest of his life. This was a gift. It only took a few seconds, but it might make a huge difference over time as the boy grows to manhood, and all because a professional athlete accepted the responsibility of being a role model.

Nice job, Youk.

Now try to stay healthy this year.

School Insanity: A Warning From Canada…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Jessie Sansone and his trouble-making daughter

…And the warning is: the police and schools aren’t this crazy and irresponsible in the U.S. yet, but all the signs are present. From the news in Ontario:

Police arrested a Kitchener, Ont., father outside his daughter’s school because the four-year-old drew a picture of him holding a gun. Jessie Sansone told the Record newspaper that he was in shock when he was arrested Wednesday and taken to a police station for questioning over the drawing. He was also strip-searched.

“This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school,” he said.

Officials told the newspaper the move was necessary to ensure there were no guns accessible by children in the family’s home. They also said comments by Sansone’s daughter, Neaveh, that the man holding the gun in the picture was her dad and “he uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters,” was concerning.

Police also searched Sansone’s home while he was in custody. His wife and three children were taken to the police station, and the children were interviewed by Family and Children’s Services. Continue reading →

“King Lear” in Connecticutt

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Happy 98th birthday, Mom! Now get the hell out of my house."

Perhaps it is not fair to compare 71-year-old Peter Kantorowski to King Lear’s heartless  daughters Regan and Gonoril. After all, Peter says that his 98-year-old mom, Mary, is welcome to stay with him and his wife at their home, but she refuses. Still, Kanterowski, like the Lear girls, is trying to evict an aged parent from her residence after she had signed the property over to him. And even Regan and Goneril didn’t serve their father the King with an eviction notice on his birthday…but that’s what Peter’s gift was to his mother last December.

According to Probate Court records, in 1996 Mary Kantorowski and her husband, John transferred their small, yellow Cape Cod-style house to a trust administered by eldest son Peter on the condition that Mary could live there until her death, and that upon her death the house would go to Peter and his younger brother, Jack. In July of 2005, Peter quitclaimed the house from that trust to another he and his wife set up, giving him ownership, he says, without the prior conditions. A retired taxidermist, Kantorowski swears he is trying to evict his mother from the home she has lived in since 1953 for her own good. “She would be better off living with people her own age,” he told the Connecticut Post.

Well at least he doesn’t want to stuff her. Continue reading →

A Brief Note Regarding The Supposed Difference Between Male and Female Teens Exploited For Sex By Adult Authority Figures

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"Come on! What 14-year old wouldn't enjoy being forced to submit to sodomy from her?"

I am posting this as my contribution to the epic argument on the post about Nevada’s wrist slap to the teacher who had various kinds of sex with multiple students. The gist of the dispute is whether it is appropriate to give disparate (harsher) punishment to male teachers who take advantage of female students than is given  to their female counterparts in the sexual predator world,  because “boys are different,” and are more likely to enjoy the sexual awakening without long-term adverse affects.

Yesterday’s sexual predator story (for there is indeed at least one every day, it seems) came from St. George, Utah, where a female fitness coach was sentenced after pleading  guilty  to two counts of forcible sexual abuse as part of a plea deal in which prosecutors agreed to dismiss three additional counts of forcible sexual abuse and five counts of forcible sodomy….of a 14-year-old boy she was supposed to be training.

The boy, now 16, says that he is treated completely differently in school now because of  his “experience.” Was he lucky to be made the sex toy of a hot adult fitness coach? It doesn’t sound like he thinks so. Nonetheless, the woman told the boy, “Well, you learned a whole lot, didn’t you?’ in a secretly taped conversation in which she tried to talk him out of helping prosecutors.

You see?  The attitude being advocated in the comments encourages and rationalizes the actions of female predators.

Ethics Dunce: Libertarian Andrew Cohen

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The ethical virtue at issue is integrity.

On the other hand, some times you just have to say, "oh, the hell with it" and stomp on the damn snake...

Those who oppose abortion as the taking of innocent human life may not, consistent with integrity (forget about logic) also say that abortion is a personal choice. Those who oppose capital punishment as a matter of principle (rather than as a problem of fair application) may not, consistent with integrity, announce that of course they would make exceptions in the cases of Hitler, Bin Laden, and Ted Bundy. A pacifist who won’t explain why the U.S. shouldn’t have fought World War II isn’t a pacifist at all, but a poseur.

Now Andrew Cohen, a self-declared libertarian blogger, has written a defense of the state determining whether or not potential parents may have children.  He writes: Continue reading →

Judging McQueary: Child Rape Bystander Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

You have no excuses, Kal-El. But the rest...

“It was cowardly for a 6′4″ graduate assistant to witness the rape of a child by an older man and not only take no action to stop it but also not even call the police,” writes David French in the National Review.

He is, of course, referring to Mike McQueary, then a 28-year-old graduate student assistant coach for Joe Paterno at Penn State. Others have declared that it was an “absolute moral imperative” that McQueary physically intervene to stop the sexual assault.

It is interesting that the absolute moral imperative is nonetheless linked to qualifiers. French references McQueary’s size and the fact that the alleged assailant, Jerry Sandusky, is older. Some critics have focused on his gender. Still others, making the argument that McQueary failed to intervene because he didn’t take a child rape seriously enough, have suggested that he would have acted differently had Sandusky been beating, rather than raping the child. Of all the ethical debates surrounding the Penn State scandal, the question of how much scorn should be heaped on McQueary for not acting immediately to stop the rape in progress has been the most fascinating, and to my mind, the most disingenuous. It appears that every commentator, male or female, young or old, fat or fit, is convinced that would have charged in and battled the 57-year-old former wide-receiver, pummeling him into wet submission while the child escaped. Maybe. Studies and anecdotal evidence indicate that in fact, most people wouldn’t physically intervene. Perhaps sportswriters and op-ed writers are made of sterner stuff that the rest of the public.

Yes, that must be it.

None of this is to suggest that physically stopping a child rape in progress isn’t the right thing to do; it is. For his part, McQueary reputedly didn’t take any action to stop the assault,* which in order of effectiveness would be… Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Jimmy Kimmel and Too Many Sadistic Parents

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

How hilarious.

ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel suggested to parents among his audience on Halloween  that they lie to their young children and tell them that they ate all of their Halloween candy, and video their reactions to post on YouTube. Kimmel ran the “best” of the results on his show, introducing the segment by saying, “I didn’t expect so much crying.”

Oh. Well, it’s all right then. It’s all right to appeal to the true assholes—there is no better word — among his audience members and urge them to upset their own children for his entertainment and the entertainment of YouTube viewers. That’s Jimmy! It’s good to know who the sociopaths are among late night entertainers. Letterman, we know about. Ask Conan about Jay. Continue reading →