Hellspawn and Public Louse, Amanda Carpenter. Nice disguise!
The Communications Chair for the Sacramento Democratic Party, Allan Brauer, sent a series of cruel and uncivil tweets assailing Sen. Ted Cruz aide Amanda Carpenter for her own Twitter missive cheering on GOP opposition to gun control, the President’s Syrian policy—whatever it is—and the Affordable Care Act. After some online drama, he apparently regretted his rash and hurtful words, and sent Carpenter this apparently heartfelt apology:
“Hi- am truly sorry for my tweet. I was very upset and lashed out. Your kids are not fair game either. My apologies.”
She graciously accepted. How could anyone quarrel with this resolution of the incident?
Here is how: Brauer, who has a record of social media viciousness, made it very clear in the course of the controversy launched by his commentary that he didn’t regret what he had said at all. Here was his first tweet:
After being swarmed by various Twitter users who protested his language and sentiments, Brauer followed up with these well-chosen and unrestrained statements to them and his Twitter followers: Continue reading →
Prof. Reynolds, the iconic conservative bloggers who wields considerable influence in the right-leaning blogospehere and beyond, has frequently displayed a dismaying affection for the unethical response of “tit-for-tat.” Has seldom done so as blatantly, however, as in a post yesterday, linking to a National Review article about CUNY students shouting down General David Petraeus, who is now a lecturer there.
“I think right-leaning groups should similarly hound Hillary and other Obama Administration apparatchiks — including Obama himself, when he ventures onto campuses, both now and post-Presidency. The standard of behavior has been established. Let them live with it.”
Even giving Reynolds the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he is speaking tongue-in-cheek or hyperbolically, as he often does, this is an irresponsible statement if he doesn’t mean it, and an unethical one if he does. He is considered a sage and an opinion leader among many conservatives, and for such a prominent figure to expressly approve of the downward behavioral tail-spin that inevitably results when each competitor or adversary re-aligns ethical standards according to the unethical acts of the other is embracing all-out culture war and chaos, with no standards at all.
“They started it, so let’s give them a taste of their own medicine and see how they like it!” is street gang thinking, (Jets:“Well they began it!”Sharks:“Well they began it!”Both: “And w’ere the ones to stop it once and for all…tonight!”— “Quintet” from West Side Story) as far from ethics as one can get, and this is exactly what Professor Reynolds is endorsing. That ethically bankrupt approach, and the fact that our political system has been operating by it at least since 2000, accounts for today’s poisonous culture in Washington D.C. It has crippled both the Bush and Obama administrations, paralyzed the government and divided the public. If political and intellectual leaders embrace this reaction to misconduct in one setting, they are implicitly accepting it as a justifiable strategy, and it is not. It is a brutal, unethical strategy.
Students who interfere with invited speakers’ efforts to challenge or enlighten university audiences should be disciplined; it doesn’t matter whether the speaker is an ex U.S.general or Ilsa, Wolf of Dachau. Interfering with speech isn’t protected speech, nor is it ethical protest. That behavior isn’t a “standard of behavior,” it is a defiance of civilized standards. The President, Hillary Clinton and other targets of the right should be allowed to speak, listened to politely, and then confronted, if they are confronted, with civil and articulate rebuttals on the basis of their words and ideas. For a university professor to advise otherwise is unconscionable. For one who is respected and followed as extensively as Reynolds to write this defies reason.
Heck, it seems like everything is an Ethics Train Wreck or getting close to one these days…the NSA, Egypt, San Diego, the New York Yankees, life…
I need a vacation.
Now Texas Republican rep Steve Stockman has come aboard by making the obnoxious, simple-minded and inherently offensive gesture of inviting the unfairly banned clown to perform his classy act at a Texas rodeo. Undignified, unprofessional, cheap, nasty, and stupid…I’m sure I left out some equally accurate descriptors. This is like George Zimmerman in miniature. Is it really so hard to understand that protesting unfair treatment of someone need not, and in some cases should not, be accompanied by affirmative endorsement…and that’s what the invitation by Stockman is. Is he really so dense that he doesn’t realize that? Or is he really such a hyper-partisan, unstatesmanlike boor that he thinks it’s responsible and appropriate for a member of Congress to express his approval of an entertainer who called the President of the U.S. a clown and invited a crowd to cheer at his metaphorical abuse by a bull, some of whom were undoubtedly motivated by bigotry?
I really don’t care. Stockman’s stunt is ethically objectionable on a grand scale, and either he, the House, Republicans, or preferably all three owe President Obama an apology. One would think a Congressman would understand that there are different standards for the high elected officials responsible for our laws and rodeo clowns. But toward the bottom of the ethical and intellectual barrel we call the Republican Party (God, I certainly hope it’s toward the bottom!), this is apparently untrue.
Baseball’s most embarrassing super-star, the steroid cheat Alex Rodriguez, in playing for the New York Yankees while appealing his long suspension by Major League baseball. As he is unquestionably a repeat liar and a serial violator of the game’s rules against PED’s (performance enhancing drugs), as he signed a contract, in part generated by the results of his cheating, that will both enrich him by millions and handicap his team competitively while conferring few, if any benefits, as he would qualify, by most objective standards, as the antithesis of a sports hero, the fact that Arod, as he is called, still was cheered by a vocal minority in Yankee Stadium when he made his season debut this week is intriguing. What does this mean? Can it be ethical to cheer Rodriquez now?
These are deceptively complex and difficult questions. The threshold issue is whether cheering or jeering any sports figure, or any public figure at all, is an act with ethical content rather than just a communication of an opinion. Is it conduct, or just “words”? I think, in the context of the Rodriquez situation, a sound argument can be made that it is conduct. Registering group approval or disapproval of prominent conduct by someone of status and influence is a crucial societal function in setting standards, registering disapproval, and prompting shame, regret, apology and reform—none of which, so far at least, seem to register with Arod.
That is pretty clearly what the boos convey, but what about the cheers? If the boos are ethical—they are if the disapproval is proportionate, rational, fair, and just—then are the cheers automatically unethical? Not necessarily. Here are some of the things those cheers could be expressing: Continue reading →
Conservatives will grandstand about declining standards of dignity and decorum in the U.S., happily blaming the decline of gentility and civil public expression on rappers, Hollywood liberals and Joe “This is a big fuckin’ deal” Biden, until a Democrat with a name ready-made for bad sex puns and double-entendres shows up, and then its a mad stampede to bad taste.
Wow. Clever.
What is it with the Right: is everybody 12? From Rush Limbaugh (“Weiner is hard to swallow…”) to The Daily Caller (“Weiner blows his lead”) to the New York Daily News (“Cuomo Spanks Weiner!”) to dozens of websites that can’t resist versions of “Will Weiner pull out?” and “Weiner Exposed,” to Drudge (“Weiner Goes Soft”) to CNS (“Boehner Won’t Bite On Weiner”) to, naturally, the reliably crude New York Post ( “Too Hard To Stop!’…”Tip of the Weiner”…”Obama Beats Weiner”…”Weiner: I’ll Stick It Out”…and on, and on–okay, it’s abrand, I get it ), apparently conservative pundits and headline writers can’t resist seeking naughty snickers from obvious gags. Continue reading →
A frustrating aspect of my business travel, other than that raw fact that travel itself is inherently frustrating, is that I accumulate a backlog of ethics issues but am often unable to take the time to write about them until I return home, where I am again free of airplane delays, unreliable internet connections, sleepless nights and dimly lit hotel rooms apparently designed for the comfort of Jose Feliciano. The occasional compensation arrives in the form of enlightening conversations with fascinating people.
One of these was a cab driver on my latest trip. We shared the same space on an interminable ride from the airport to the hotel, the last leg of a theoretical ninety minute journey that stretched into 6 horrible hours. He was an educated, articulate, lively minded man whose life story (so far) would make an entertaining, if inherently incredible, movie. An African American son of two wealthy academics, he misbehaved in a ritzy private school and was sent, as punishment, to finish his high school years in an inner city private school. There he encountered drugs, gangs, bullying and racism, and became a strong social conservative. He dropped out of high school, entered the military and ended up in the Special Forces in the Middle East; he returned, graduated from college, went into the financial industry, rose quickly, got rich. He told me that he saw all of the cheating and manipulation in his own company and the industry in general, but did nothing about it (the money was too good, he said). Then came the crash. He lost everything, including his wife and kids, in the carnage. Resolved, he said, to work for justice and ethics, my driver had just graduated from law school and flunked his first try at the bar exam. (So did my dad, who would have liked this guy a lot.)
We got on the topic of the “bystander syndrome” and our duty to intervene and sometimes confront wrongdoers even at some personal risk—-the subject came up in the context of the Brooklyn EMT who has been cleared of criminal charges arising from her refusal to assist a pregnant woman who had a heart attack (The EMT was on break, you see. I wrote about that terrible incident here. ) My cabdriver was a large, burly man, but he said that every time he intervened to confront a wrong doer in public, he feared that he would be shot. Once, when he stopped a man in a wheelchair from beating the man’s apparent girlfriend, he told me, my cabbie found himself staring down the barrel of a .44. This story, however, had a very different resolution: Continue reading →
The combatants on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show were flaming right-wing madman Bill Cunningham, a god-awful radio talk-show host who must have photos of Sean in flagrante delicto with Nancy Pelosi or something, and Fox house Obama defender Tamara Holder, who is none too sharp herself. The topic is thoroughly obscured by the invective and petty bickering. It began as a discussion over whether Attorney General Holder committed perjury before Congress regarding his involvement in the James Rosen warrant (he didn’t, barely).
This video clip is self-indicting, but before you watch it, allow me make a couple of points:
This kind of uncivil, unprofessional, shouting, insulting, ranting gutter fight provides no information and no illumination. It is an insult to the audience.
If, because of misconduct by guests, such an atrocity breaks out on the air, a responsible network should pull the plug on it, and apologize to viewers.
A responsible host and moderator should never, ever permit a segment to deteriorate to the degree.
Sean Hannity did, and ought to be held accountable. He failed his duty to viewers and to the network.
Hannity was on notice that talk show host Bill Cunningham is an offensive, irresponsible blow-hard. This right-wing racist—anyone who habitually calls President Obama by his middle name is by definition a racist, as well as a jackass—is a serial offender that Hannity has on his show frequently. The man isn’t fair, civil, persuasive, pleasant to listen to, funny, wise or smart.
Tamara Holder should have walked off the set, if Hannity wasn’t going to be professional and tell Cunningham to be civil or leave. Instead, she eventually responded in kind—understandable, but wrong.
Fox should ban Cunningham from TV. Everyone should ban him, for that matter. The message has to be sent that this kind of conduct isn’t “good television,” it is an abuse of public speech.
It doesn’t matter what you do, Bob…there’s no pleasing Rush.
This afternoon, Rush Limbaugh was mocking Bob Shieffer, of all people, for calling out White House lackey Dan Pfeiffer for his various attempts to deflect the Obama scandal barrage. During the appearance of Pfeiffer as a White House spokesman on “Face the Nation,” Shieffer said,
“You know, I don’t want to compare this in any way to Watergate. I do not think this is Watergate by any stretch. But you weren’t born then I would guess, but I have to tell you that is exactly the approach that the Nixon administration took. They said, “These are all second-rate things. We don’t have time for this. We have to devote our time to the people’s business.” You’re taking exactly the same line they did….and I don’t mean to be argumentative here, but the President is in charge of the executive branch of the government. It’s my, I’ll just make this as an assertion: when the executive branch does things right, there doesn’t seem to be any hesitancy of the White House to take credit for that. When Osama bin Laden was killed, the President didn’t waste any time getting out there and telling people about it. But with all of these things, when these things happen, you seem to send out officials many times who don’t even seem to know what has happened. And I use as an example of that Susan Rice who had no connection whatsoever to the events that took place in Benghazi, and yet she was sent out, appeared on this broadcast, and other Sunday broadcasts, five days after it happens, and I’m not here to get in an argument with you about who changed which word in the talking points and all that. The bottom line is what she told the American people that day bore no resemblance to what had happened on the ground in an incident where four Americans were killed….But what I’m saying to you is that was just PR. That was just a PR plan to send out somebody who didn’t know anything about what had happened. Why did you do that? Why didn’t the Secretary of State come and tell us what they knew and if he knew nothing say, “We don’t know yet?” Why didn’t the White House Chief of Staff come out? I mean I would, and I mean this as no disrespect to you, why are you here today? Why isn’t the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?”
I’ve given Shieffer Ethics Hero status for this. Admittedly, in a competent, ethical journalistic environment, such a response to an obvious flack job like what Pfeiffer was peddling would be standard operating procedure, and with a Republican scandal-ridden White House, it might be. The news media’s pro-Obama bias is so strong, however, that Shieffer’s words are welcome, unusual and praiseworthy. So what were Rush’s objections? Continue reading →
“Comedy is not assuming zero responsibility over your actions. It is not telling others how to respond. It is not demonstrating the utmost hypocritical behavior in making callous, lazy, ignorant statements and then lashing out aggressively against critics. Comedy is not free from criticism. This is not an echo chamber containing only yourself and a couple other people exactly like you. You won’t need to do any of these things if you want to be a good comedian, or a decent human being for that matter.”
—-Chelsea Bacon, concluding her account of the reaction she received from male comedians and commenters when she criticized what she regarded as gratuitous sexist jokes.
You might want to read Chelsea’s piece, Seth…
Bacon takes a brave and ethical stand on unpopular topics among comics, such as whether all jokes are defensible regardless of content as long as they make someone laugh, whether rape is ever legitimate joke fodder, whether exploiting minority stereotypes is fair game in pursuit of comedy, and whether it is inappropriate to criticize comedy material at all. Along the way, the dirty little not-so-secret of the gender imbalance in the comedy world also comes to light.
It is a bold and thought-provoking piece, which you can read in its entirely here.
—Boston Red Sox designated hitter and icon David Ortiz, aka “Big Papi”, representing the team in a pre-game ceremony at Fenway Park honoring Boston in the wake of the past week’s violence, heroism and travails.
“Big Potty-Mouth”
I love you, David, and you got us past the Yankees in 2004, but your choice of words was classless, crude and unnecessary.
There were children in that crowd and watching on TV, as I was. You are a role model, and locker room language belongs in the locker room, not in public events. Your obviously calculated incivility moves the culture one more step away from public manners and toward obscenity as standard expression.
Ethics Alarms 