cowardice

Ethics Dunce: Rev. Stan Weatherford

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Rev. Weatherford with a parishioner

The First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs, Mississippi has never hosted the wedding of a black couple in its 150 year history, so you can imagine how important it was to the congregation not to break a perfect record. All right, that’s unfair: only a handful of white church members protested to Rev. Stan Weatherford when they learned that he was preparing to wed Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson at First Baptist, but their threat that they would have him voted out of his job if he did was sufficient to cause him to tell Charles and Te’Andrea, just two days before the scheduled ceremony, that they would have to move the event to another church.

“I didn’t want to have a controversy within the church, and I didn’t want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te’Andrea. I wanted to make sure their wedding day was a special day,” Weatherford told local reporters. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Who Is More Unethical…the Coward Who Left His Girlfriend and Child to Die, Or the Girlfriend Who Agreed To Marry Him Anyway?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Would an ethical woman marry George?

I am a great fan of the old Seinfeld show in general and the George Costanza character in particular (all ethicists love George, who  exemplifies how messed up a life without ethical instincts can be), but I didn’t laugh at the episode when he smelled smoke at kids’ birthday party and trampled the children as he escaped in panic from the apartment. And that was just a TV sitcom; the actions of Jamie Rohrs, the Colorado man who ran out of the Aurora movie theater when James Holmes started shooting and drove away in his truck, leaving behind his girlfriend and her two young children—one of whom was fathered by him— go beyond unfunny to revolting. Luckily, and no thanks to Rohrs, Patricia Legaretta and her kids did not die, because a stranger, Jarell Brooks, helped them escape the theater and the massacre.

Then comes the rest of the story, revealed to Piers Morgan on CNN: after his act of aggravated cowardice, Rohrs had the gall to propose to the mother of his child, and Legaretta, incredibly, accepted.

Your Ethics Quiz:

Who is more unethical—Legaretta, or Costanza, er, Rohrs? Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “A Last Word on the Kevin Coffay Sentence”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Brain chemistry?

Michael, who is the reigning Comment of the Day champion, comes up with another here regarding the Kevin Coffay sentence and the mitigating factor in juvenile crimes, supported by brain chemistry research, that adolescents are not as capable of rational decision-making as adults, and therefor should not be punished as severely for their reckless acts. This is his post regarding “A Last Word on the Kevin Coffay Sentence.”

“Don’t go overboard with the studies that show adolescents are incapable of being responsible, thinking rationally, or evaluating risks. If you look at such studies, they are done in a vacuum and merely state that older people are BETTER at evaluating risks (duh). The main point is that our brains continue to develop until 25 or so. Much like Titanic research, however, this research is interpreted wildly and without considering evidence to the contrary. Continue reading →

A Last Word on the Kevin Coffay Sentence

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Keven Coffay, the teen who drove drunk, killed three of his friends as a result and fled the wreck as they lay trapped and dying, has prevailed in his effort to get the original 20 year prison sentence (for involuntary manslaughter) reduced. Now he may be released as early as next spring, on parole from his new, lenient, 8 year sentence. I won’t re-iterate my views on Coffay’s case, which are already here and here. I will make this additional observation.

In his column today, George Will discusses the science behind the growing consensus that life sentences without the chance of parole qualify as “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the 8th Amendment. I don’t disagree with his conclusion, nor do I doubt, as the father of a teen-age son, that the brain chemistry of teens dictate special calculations and analysis when trying to decide on what is just punishment for crimes arising from the recklessness and poor judgment of adolescents as opposed to adults. Continue reading →

The Kevin Coffay Tragedy Revisited: Not Vengeance…Survival

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Kevin Coffay took the wheel with four of his teenaged friends as passengers. All four were drunk, and by the end of the evening only Coffay and another were alive, three young people having perished when Coffay’s intoxicated driving caused the car to go airborn into a bloody crash. He was convicted by a Montgomery County (Maryland) court of involuntary manslaughter in January and sentenced to 20 years, not in small part because he had fled the scene of the accident, running and hiding in the woods as his friends bled and died in the wreck.

Today he is in court arguing, through his lawyers, that his sentence is too long. I didn’t think it was too long when I first wrote about the tragedy in January, but after reading his arguments and those of his defenders, I have come to believe that the sentence may not be long enough. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: —Wait For It—Rush Limbaugh!

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

No, not for that!

For this:

Odd...one would think that a bed company would be familiar with this expression. Well, NOW it is!

After Rush Limbaugh’s personal attack on Sandra Fluke for her testimony before some House Democrats generated furious backlash and activist threats of boycotts of his sponsors, Sleep Train, which calls itself  “the No. 1 Bedding Specialist on the West Coast, and most recognized mattress retailer in the region,” announced that it was ceasing its advertising on Limbaugh’s daily radio show. It had been a national sponsor for 25 years. “As a diverse company, Sleep Train does not condone such negative comments directed toward any person,” the company said in a statement. “We have currently pulled our ads with Rush Limbaugh.”

Sleep Train is, to use the vernacular, a corporate worm. It began advertising with Limbaugh when it was a small company, and he has treated it well. At a moment when the talk show host was under attack by political opponents who want to get him off the air and be free of influential political commentary that often spears their cherished objectives, the company not only abandoned Limbaugh but kicked him when he was down. It was also deceitful about it: while it’s announcement sounded unequivocal, in fact it had only suspended its ads rather than withdrawn as a sponsor. Continue reading →

Punishment for Color Blindness: ESPN’s Unfair and Cowardly Suspension of Max Bretos

/ Jack Marshall / 71 Comments

What Max Bretos means by "chink in the armor." Not that ESPN cares.

The headline “Chink in the Armor: Jeremy Lin’s 9 Turnovers Cost Knicks in Streak-stopping Loss to Hornets” appeared on ESPN’s mobile web site last week, and it was quickly removed. ESPN apologized, then fired the over-night headline writer who thought it would be cute to make a racially-offensive play on words between the derogatory slur for a person of Chinese descent, and the old, respectable, and the completely non-racial phrase meaning “a flaw or weak point.”

ESPN’s response to the tasteless headline was appropriate.

But it wasn’t enough for ESPN, which was under a full barrage from the  political correctness police and race bullies as well as Jeremy Lin fanatics. So the station also decided to make a victim of  innocent anchor Max Bretos, suspending him for 30 days because he used the expression Wednesday when he asked New York Knicks legend Walt “Clyde” Frazier on air about Lin.

“If there is a chink in the armor, where can he improve his game?” Bretos asked. Continue reading →

Post-South Carolina Confession

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Sunday morning, I am duty bound to play roulette with the talking head shows on the networks, watch “Reliable Sources,” Howard Kurtz’s weekly journalism ethics critique on CNN, and scour the Washington Post, all in search of contentious or interesting ethics topics.

But rather than listen to endless rehashes of the South Carolina Republican primary, endure Newt Gingrich’s gloating, and again hear so-called experts repetitively apply their imaginary expertise to musings about what will happen in the next primary, Florida—-last week’s consensus: Romney had South Carolina wrapped up– I am watching “MVP: Most Valuable Primate” on Encore Family. It’s about a hockey-playing chimp (named Jack, appropriately enough).

It’s not bad.

Screw it. A man can only take so much.

Comment of the Day: “Unethical Website of the Month: The Florida Family Association”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Proam comments on boycotts, in today’s Comment of the Day regarding the post, Unethical Website of the Month: The Florida Family Association:

“Unless I am mistaken, The American Family Association (AFA) has a long-running and ongoing boycott call against the other large hardware chain, Home Depot, stemming from the corporation’s continued kindness toward persons whose sexual practices are objectionable to AFA. To my knowledge, Home Depot has not caved. I don’t know whether the AFA-led boycott has had any effect on Home Depot’s business. I wonder if Lowe’s examined Home Depot’s situation prior to its decision – if it’s even relevant.

“Over time, I have become a much more selective and reluctant boycott-joiner. I would like to think that any boycott I might join would be so justified, so humanitarian, so economically and morally and ethically correct, that even the collateral damages and unintended consequences would be tolerably recoverable, or “for the best in the long run” – but I know I’m dreaming. A boycott just seems more and more to me like a “nuclear option” a la Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One day I may feel I have no other option, but then, I will know ahead of time that abiding by it (a boycott) won’t soothe me any more than having never taken part in it, even if I ‘win’.”

Unethical Website of the Month: The Florida Family Association

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

"Hey, wait---where are the terrorists?"

Organized bigotry is un-American, and organized bigotry under the banner of American values is misrepresentation. That’s what can be found on the Florida Family Association website here, as it simultaneously engages in several of Ethics Alarms’ most deplored conduct: bias, dishonestly accusing others of bias, bullying, boycotting, and worst of all having success at bullying and boycotting. I suppose I should add to that list making its readers stupid, because its arguments will do that too.

The Florida Family Association is offended by The Learning Channel’s latest reality show, “All-American Muslim,” which shows American citizens who happen to be Muslims pretty much living, acting and sounding like you and me, except when they are practicing their religion. I think it is, unlike most TLC series, an excellent idea. American attitudes toward  Muslims since September 11, 2001 are substantially based on ignorance, the kissing cousin of bigotry and the mother of fear. Learning more about American Muslims can only be beneficial to all, but The Florida Family Association views the program as a plot:

“The Learning Channel’s new show ‘All-American Muslim’ is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law.  The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.” Continue reading →