cruelty

The Revenge of Ashley Judd

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

"Dear Mom, Sis: Hope you take my book in the spirit in which it was intended!"

Yes, celebrities live by different rules, but publishing a book that exposes your family’s secrets, hangs out its dirty laundry for all to smell, and settling scores with siblings in public is a cruel and unfair thing to do no matter who you are….or what the provocation.

Now actress Ashley Judd has published her account of what it was like growing up with Mama Naomi and Sister Wynnona, and her verdict is reportedly harsh. Ashley doesn’t need the money, so the only reasons for publishing “All That Is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir” now are unethical ones: getting the satisfaction of vengeance, and hurting her own family members.

You should have waited, Ashley.

[Note: The original post was written from two sources that suggested that “I’m Not the Fat One” was  the title. I apparently was taken in: this was a joke. My fault. Sorry Ashley.]

 

 

The Charlie Sheen’s Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour : Unethical Performer, Unethical Audience

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"Ladies and gentlemen, CHARLIE SHEEN!!!

Charlie Sheen charged the public money for his “Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour” and didn’t bother to give them anything coherent or entertaining for it. Live blogging of the “show’s” first performance in Detroit indicates that Sheen is simply continuing to spout the semi-surreal egomaniacal gibberish he has been giving to various interviewers, and doing little more. Audience members are walking out in droves.

Unprofessional. Unfair. Disrespectful. Dishonest.

Theft.

As for that audience, yecch. Those who are there to support Sheen, a preening, sexist abuser who is neither trustworthy nor reliable, and who places his own pleasures above commitments, family and friendships, are endorsing antisocial values and despicable conduct. Those who bought tickets in hope of witnessing a “happening” are arguably worse, enabling an addict tottering on the brink of a nervous breakdown, and hoping that they will be there to see it.

Irresponsible, reckless, mean

Cruelty.

Sheen is unethical to charge money for doing nothing worth paying for; his audience is the equivalent of the saloon patrons in the Old West who paid drunks to dance. They are preying on each other. What a revolting and depressing spectacle it must be.

PETA’s Definition of Being Ethical to Animals: Kill Them

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

Good...play dead, and maybe PETA will leave you alone...

I have long believed that PETA, the Norfolk, Virginia-based “People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” not only gave ethics a bad name, but also people, and you might as well throw in pita bread while you’re at it. This conviction was partially based on such stunts as PETA’s using Michelle Obama in ads without her permission and offering to pay Octomom money to put a billboard on her lawn comparing herself to an overly fecund pet.

Then there is PETA’s fondness for killing puppies and kittens. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Who Deserved To Be Fired—Beck or The Duck?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Tough quiz today, ethics fans. Be on your toes!

Our quiz for today: Who most deserved to be fired—Glenn Beck, Gilbert Gottfried (the voice of the Aflac duck),  neither, or both?

The Mad Prophet of Fox, Glenn Beck returned to his radio program with this reflection:

“I’m not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes. I’m not not saying that either… but there’s a message being sent. And that is, ‘Hey, you know that stuff we’re doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it.’ I’m just saying.”

Yes, Glenn Beck said that the devastation of Japan just may be a message from God. Continue reading →

The Bi-Partisan and Unethical Niggerizing of Political Discourse

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Marl Levin, virtuoso niggerizer

The ethics problem with the use of “nigger,” or “bitch,” or “fag,” or any of the other culturally disapproved denigrating labels for human beings belonging to particular groups, is not that they are insulting—adults should be able to  handle mere insults—but that they unfairly diminish the status of individuals, their character, opinions and deeds before they have had the opportunity to be judged on their merits. It isn’t the words, but the effect, in essence sticking a foot out to trip a runner at the beginning of the race—and the race may be a job, an election, a debate, an argument, or policy deliberations.

The No-Labels movement focuses on characterizations and civility, but these are far too vague as concepts to enforce culturally, and subject to easy manipulation for political ends. John Avlon, a leader of No-Labels, still calls politicians he disagrees with “wingnuts.” Why? Because, well, they are wingnuts! Just ask John. Niggerizing, however, goes well beyond labels, and fair people should reject it from either side of the political spectrum. It is a bully tactic, and it is a dishonest debating technique, completely delegitimizing an adversary before addressing his arguments, or giving them an objective hearing. Continue reading →

The War On Gays: “Fair and Equitable” in Corpus Christi

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Some day, one hopes not too far in the future, when U.S. culture has unequivocally abandoned the ancient fear of gay human beings, when understanding, fairness and respect has banished ignorance and hate, when same sex marriages are recognized as manifestations of loyalty, commitment and love rather than perversions of nature, and when no American feels the need to hide his or her sexuality, and thus feels no compulsion to trumpet it either, we will look back on such societal embarrassments as the Flour Bluff Intermediate School District as we do now on past purveyors of child labor, forced sterilization, involuntary human experimentation, mistreatment of women, and racism, and wonder, “What was the matter with those people? How did they get that way?”

Or, come to think of it, we could ask that question right now.

Seventeen-year-old Bianca “Nikki” Peet, a senior at Flour Bluffs High School in Corpus Christi, Texas, high school senior requested the she be permitted to launch a Gay-Straight Alliance in her school. The Equal Access Act, a federal law passed in 1984, requires schools receiving federal funding to offer “fair opportunities for students to form student-led  groups, regardless of their religious, political and philosophical leanings.” If the school district was going to allow any extracurricular groups, it had to allow Nikki’s.

So it shut down all extracurricular clubs at the school. Continue reading →

Outrageous Prosecution: The Eric Rinehart Story

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Asst. U.S. Attorney DeBrotas predecessors

Eric Rinehart, a 34-year-old police officer in  Middletown, Indiana, began consensual sexual relationships with two young women, ages 16 and 17. Rinehart was going through a divorce at the time, and in Indiana, he was doing nothing illegal, for 16 is the age of consent in the Hoosier state? Unethical? I tend to think so, but that isn’t part of the story.

One of the girls told Rinehart that she had posed for erotic photos for an earlier, presumably younger boyfriend, and suggested that she do the same for him. So Rinehart gave her his camera, with which she took the lascivious photos. This inspired Rinehart to take some more sexy photos and at least one video of both girls, which he downloaded to his computer.

For this, Rinehart was convicted on two federal charges of producing child pornography. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Blogger Jeff Jarvis

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

"If Charlie's unavailable, get this guy. He's hilarious!"

“One way or another, by one definition and diagnosis or another, Charlie Sheen is a sick man. He doesn’t need airtime. He needs couchtime. News people are ill-serving him and the issue of mental illness in this country by putting him on the air as if he were just another source, another celebrity. They are not informing the public. They are exploiting Charlie.”

—Blogger Jeff Jarvis on his site, BuzzMachine, on the media’s disgraceful rush to get celebrity meltdown Charlie Sheen to do as many wacky, self-destructive, “did he really say that?” interviews as possible before he falls completely to pieces as addicts in full denial inevitably do.

Jarvis is right. There is no more news to be milked from the sad Sheen story, other than “Charley continues to say things that are destroying his career, making him dislikable and unemployable, and that prove that he is sick, getting sicker by the day.” This is no less despicable than exhibiting freaks, the brain injured and schizophrenics for the amusement of the crowd. “They want him to act nutty,” says Jarvis. “Ratings, man, ratings.” Continue reading →

Home-Grown Mengeles, And What We Must Learn From Them

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Josef Mengele: researcher, utilitarian, monster

We knew, or should have known, that this extremely ugly shoe was bound to drop eventually.

Last autumn, when the U.S. apologized for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago, it put us on notice that a vile and unethical cultural standard had taken hold of the American medical and scientific communities in the 20th century, one that held  it was “right” for the weakest, most powerless and most disposable of human beings to be tricked, coerced or bribed into serving as subjects for experiments that could lead to miraculous cures and treatments for the rest of the population. This–depriving human beings of their rights and lives in the interest of science—is “the ends justify the means” at its worst. But the Guatemala experiments proved that this was once flourishing and respectable in the U.S. scientific and medical research communities, so it would have been surprising if there weren’t more stories of home-grown Mengeles, and sure enough, there were. The U.S. acknowledged as much when it apologized for the Guatemalan tests. Now we have details. Continue reading →

Take “The Natalie Munroe Ethics Challenge”! Today’s Challenge: Who’s A More Unethical Educator—School or Mom?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Decide which of these stories from today’s newswires show more unethical conduct.

First, the Mom:

Tampa mother Ronda Holder was at her wit’s end trying to get her son, James Mond III, 15, to take school seriously. Neither she nor this father finished high school, and she told reporters she wasn’t going to let her son end up begging for spare change. She said they have offered James help, asked to see his homework, grounded him, lectured him and taken away his cell phone. Still he fails. “He’d tell us, ‘That school doesn’t give homework’ or ‘That teacher has a problem with me,’ ” Mond Jr. said. James did poorly in math, poorly in history, and when his latest report card showed an F in physical education, his mother felt it was the final straw.

So, naturally, she forced her son to stand near an East Tampa street corner for nearly four hours on a Wednesday afternoon, wearing a large sign around his neck with the message:

“I did 4 questions on my FCAT and said I wasn’t going to do it … GPA 1.22 … honk if I need  education.” Continue reading →