double-standard

Whether It’s A Double Standard Or A Biden Exception, It’s Media Bias and It’s Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

On CNN, the gang was discussing and chuckling over one of Joe Biden’s lesser gaffes, not that the same gaffe wouldn’t have had them screaming and shaking their fists if, say, Chris Christie had spoken similarly. In this case (with Biden, gaffes should be given case numbers; I’m guessing this one would be about #6,782,304), Biden used the uncivil term “bitch” when referring to the role of Vice President. This provoked Chris Cuomo to express his affection for Lunch Bucket Joe, saying…

 “I still love Biden for what he is. I just do. I think his candor is refreshing – and when he is insensitive to something, he owns it. What more can you ask for? Perfection?”

What does this even mean? Let me rephrase that. What the hell does this even mean? “For what he is”? Does Chris mean “an ongoing embarrassment”? A gaffe machine a heartbeat away from the Presidency? An unapologetic clown in a position of high responsibility and influence? You know what Chris really means, don’t you? He means nothing more nor less than, “I love Joe Biden because I love liberal Democrats, even silly, inept, dumb ones.”

Is that an admission that we should take lightly? Does it matter? Yes, I think it matters. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: Michelle Obama

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

“Time is short. Change is needed. And women are smarter than men. And the men can’t complain because they are outnumbered today.”

—Michelle Obama, during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit “to a laughing audience,” according to White House press pool reports.

stupid2

Nice!

Misandry.

Bigotry.

Divisive.

Arrogant.

Double-standard. Continue reading →

So Whoopi Goldberg Is A Hypocrite, A Bully And A Racist: Who Is Going To Hold Her Accountable?

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Or fine her two million dollars?

"Whoopie, you ignorant slut..."

“Whoopie, you ignorant slut…”

Donald Sterling expresses racist sentiments in a private conversation in his home and his bedroom, and becomes a national pariah. he is fined millions, and forced to sell his property, his NBA team. He is attacked in columns, blogs and news broadcasts as “disgusting”..”vile”..”the worst of the worst.” His players threaten to refuse to play.

Whoopi Goldberg expresses racist sentiments on a nationally broadcast TV show. Industry sources say that her “clout” on the view is getting stronger; she is the only host who is not fired, or leaving for other reasons.

Yes, it really is that simple. Like Sterling,Whoopi Goldberg is a racist. She has far more visibility and negative influence on the culture than Donald Sterling. Why doesn’t ABC regard her as a detriment to its reputation and business as much as the NBA does Sterling? There are several reasons:

  • The media and too much of the public accepts a blatant, hypocritical double standard.
  • African-American celebrities, politicians and artists, as well as women, are given far more leniency and held to far less accountability for their offensive, racist and sexist statements and conduct. Such lower standards are degrading to them, if useful. Habitual big mouthed bullies like Goldberg exploit the license habitually. The only differences between Goldberg and Alec Baldwin are pigmentation and a y-chromosome. That’s enough to get Baldwin fired from his gigs, and Whoopie extended in hers.
  • White celebrities and colleagues, unlike Sterling’s black team members, have yet to show the integrity and courage to challenge Goldberg, call her what she his, condemn her racism, and refuse to work with her. They should.
  • The mostly liberal pundits are hypocrites, and refuse to condemn one of their own.

Debating, of all things, political correctness on The View with conservative commentator Will Cain, Whoopi was getting thrashed, because her reasoning abilities, education and experience lag far behind her arrogance, certitude, and emotionalism. So, naturally, she indulged in an ad hominem attack as well as racial and gender stereotyping, denigrating Cain’s argument and suggesting bias with the slur, “That is spoken like a true white guy.”

The attack, by the way, was called a “quip” by the flagrantly biased Huffington Post. If Cain had come back with “And spoken like a true, black high school drop-out, Whoopi!,” would that also have been a “quip”? Continue reading →

My Hypocrisy Detector Just Blew Up!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

sarcasm

In a favorite episode of “The Simpsons,” the Springfield equivilent of Mensa is having a contentious debate. Prof. Frink, the local mad scientis, complains that the tone has set the readings of his newly-invented “sarcasm detector” dangerously high. “Comic Book Guy,” another brainy member of the club, snarks, “A sarcasm detector? That’s a real useful invention!” Whereupon the sarcasm detector blows up.

Well, my hypocrisy detector just blew up. The readings started going off the charts when I came across this item:

NEW YORK (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday night that excessive partisanship flowing through the nation’s political system is causing the U.S. to march “backwards instead of forward”…Clinton cited the need to “get back to evidence-based decision-making.”

Oh, you mean like telling America that the allegations that your husband had lied under oath about his sexual affairs in a sexual harassment lawsuit and was using the power of his office to obstruct justice and cover it up was the creation of “a vast right wing conspiracy,” Hillary?  When you knew that the allegations were true? That kind of “evidence-based decision-making”?

I swear, if this awful, dishonest, cynical and untrustworthy woman runs for President, everything here will be exploding—my sarcasm detector, lie detector, hypocrisy detector, head…you name it.

This was just a warm-up, though. Then I read a Washington Post puff piece on Anita Hill, who is peddling a new documentary that casts her as a hero, which is ridiculous on its face. Anita Hill is the walking, talking embodiment of feminist hypocrisy, especially when paired with Hillary’s target, Paula Jones. I remember back when I worked for a large trial attorney lobby and Monicagate was in full force. The female president of the association was going on about her support of Clinton and how this was all, well, Hillary provided the talking point, and I had the cheek to remind her that during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings she wore a button that said “I believe Anita Hill.”

Continue reading →

Should A Man Ever Hit a Woman? Well, It Depends.

/ Jack Marshall / 92 Comments

The web is abuzz over this viral video, in which a young woman, aided by a videocam-wielding minion, goes to excessive lengths to provoke a young man of significant size:

The question being debated: Is it ever ethical for a man to strike a woman? Continue reading →

The Internal Revenue Service’s Unethical Compassion

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

News Item (ABA Journal):

Too bad---if only your family tragedy had gotten more publicity, the IRS might have given a damn.

Too bad—if only your family tragedy had gotten more publicity, the IRS might have given a damn.

“After Monday’s fatal bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the Internal Revenue Service has announce that the April 15 income tax filing deadline will be extended by three months for those affected by the crime…”

Oh! Does this mean that the Internal Revenue Service has a new policy that grants penalty-free extensions to taxpayers who experienced a personal tragedy on or about April 15? Well, no, it doesn’t. Does it mean that all the other victims of crimes and tragedies across the nation will get similar compassionate treatment? No, it doesn’t mean this either. What it means is that someone—I wonder who?—is using a Federal Agency to make political hay and get positive publicity from journalists who are incapable of thought.

This is an ethics foul, a significant one, and I would think an obvious one as well. The government’s tax-collecting agency must display absolute integrity and consistency at all times, and must not be influenced or driven by politics or public relations. There are citizens across our land who had family members raped on April 15, or who were raped themselves; who had children or parents die, who were in horrible accidents, whose home or business burned down, who lost their jobs, or who were diagnosed with dread diseases that will change their lives forever. Why are the Boston victims receiving compassionate treatment,while  these citizens are not? You know why: because this was a high-profile tragedy, to which I say, so what? What is the ethical principle being articulated here that is worth sacrificing the IRS’s integrity? That high-profile victims deserve more compassion than other victims? No, the principle is that a government gets better PR brownie points by making beneficent gestures to well-publicized victims who are on TV than it does, say, to a tax-paying father whose kid was gunned down in a drive-by on tax day.

Well, it’s a cynical, sloppy, incoherent, irresponsible ad hoc principle that operates on a double standard, and is inherently unfair and unjust. It also necessarily raises the questions, how else does the IRS play favorites? What other political activities does the IRS perform for its masters?

That’s how trust in the government erodes, and the IRS is asking for it.

_______________________________

Pointer and Facts: ABA Journal

 

Wikipedia Ethics And The Gosnell Trial

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Ah, sunlight! When all the machinations are revealed, it's a lot harder to be unethical.

Ah, sunlight! When all the machinations are revealed, it’s a lot harder to get away with  being unethical.

Apparently Wikipedia almost joined the media outlets operating a cover-up of the Gosnell baby-killing trial. For a while a debate raged on the site, with an editor advocating that the article about the abortion doctor at the center of the horrific allegations and testimony be deleted entirely, because Gosnell’s trial is only a “local multiple-murder story in Pennsylvania.”  Yes, and the Newtown murders are just a multiple-murder story in Connecticut. Outright hoaxes stay on the site for years, puff piece entries on virtual non-entities and insignificant organizations clog it, but a case with major policy implications bearing on a contentious national, bioethics  and human rights issue of long-standing isn’t worthy of a page? The editor in this case, whoever he is, is too biased and incompetent to hold the position. Had his argument prevailed, Wikipedia’s credibility and perceived trustworthiness would have been severely diminished, for an encyclopedia cannot have an ideological agenda, and the desire to marginalize the Gosnell story is smoking-gun proof of one.

Luckily, Wikipedia got it right in the end, and the article survived. What saved Wiki was transparency. The argument about the Gosnell article was open and public, and ethics always benefits when transparency reigns. You would think that would be one of the news media’s mottos…but not, apparently, when it means letting the public know how it is that certain stories get buried, marginalized and ignored.

(The mainstream media, not surprisingly, didn’t cover the Wikipedia debate, either.)

_______________________________________

Sources: Daily Caller1, Daily Caller2, Newsbusters

 

 

Hiding Sandy Hook: The Gosnell Trial, Double Standards, Abortion, And Journalistic Malpractice

/ Jack Marshall / 49 Comments

Have you heard about the Gosnell trial?

The reserved press section at the Gosnell trial, because baby-killing is no longer news in America.

The reserved press section at the Gosnell trial, because, apparently, baby-killing is no longer news in America.

Neither had I until recently, and there’s a reason for that: the news media doesn’t want you to hear about it. Not just the news media, however; elected public officials, advocacy organizations, bloggers and social media-users apparently don’t want you to know about the trial either, because it graphically and sickeningly exposes the ugly and brutal side of abortion, which owes its continuing legal status  and public support to the avoidance of inconvenient truths.

Imagine, if you will, a Sandy Hook massacre that the national media and politicians decided to ignore as a “local story,” because they knew it would spark a national debate over gun control. Imagine Piers Morgan, CNN, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, Fox News and the rest scrupulously concentrating on other news stories so what they believed would pose a possible threat to Second Amendment rights would “blow over” without leaving any mark on public opinion. Imagine all of these and more concluding that the incident would be hyped and shamelessly exploited by anti-gun advocates, perhaps leading to a tipping point in societal attitudes toward gun violence, so in order to prevent this possibility, the story, and the deaths of the children, were deliberately marginalized and kept out of the public eye. Would that trouble you? Anger you? Frighten you? Would it cause you to worry that our democracy is becoming a sham, with fact and truth being manipulated so that our Constitutional rights of self-government were a sham and an illusion?

I am angry, troubled and frightened, because this is exactly what is occurring regarding the Gosnell trial. The only difference is that it is abortion, rather than guns, that unethical journalists and unethical public officials are protecting by employing a blatant double standard. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Drew Curtis’ Fark

/ Jack Marshall / 61 Comments

“Seduced by your teacher at 16 thereby robbing of your childhood, oh yeah that’s surely worth 10 million…”

—Drew Curtis’ Fark, satirical news aggregation site, commenting on a mother’s 10 million dollar lawsuit against Brooklyn and the teacher who had repeated sex with the mother’s 16-year-old son, whom she was supposed to be tutoring.

Erin Sayer—teacher, child molester, sex fantasy. “How to GO kid! I’d hit that, for sure!”

Let me begin by saying that Fark is one of my favorite sites. It is consistently irreverent and funny, and its news links have inspired some of the most interesting exchanges on Ethics Alarms. Let me also say that I understand that the point of the site is to make snarky, often irreverent, sometimes obscene and intentionally outrageous tongue-in-cheek comments about news stories  trivial, major and odd, and that for the most part, it accomplishes its mission with wit and good humor.

This comment, however, is wrong, unethical, because whatever value it has as humor is outweighed by the harmful attitude it reinforces. Whether it is the  sentimental, , “Summer of 42” myth of the beautiful right-of passage of a teen-aged boy with the help of a loving, lovely, adult woman, or the macho “All right–I sure would have loved to have had a roll in the sack with MY hot high school teacher!” reaction of the locker room crowd, the idea that an adult teacher seducing and having sexual relations with a minor student is anything but sexual assault, rape, and a dastardly breach of trust, position and power does affirmative and continuing harm. The currency and resiliency  of this enabling attitude (read the comments to any online news story about a female teacher prosecuted for having sex with a student) emboldens sexual predators in the schools, reinforces an indefensible double standard ( a male teacher who has sex with a female student is an unequivocal villain, but a boy being raped by a female teacher is a lucky stiff) ) and worst of all, makes student victims more vulnerable.

The cultural assumption that a boy who is seduced by a teacher has been given some kind of gift is in the same category as the claim that women who are raped secretly “want it.” It is important that this theme be rejected, which means that websites like Fark shouldn’t reinforce it even in jest, because the jest does reinforce it.  Hitting communities, schools and teachers with tough jury verdicts is an essential part of eliminating this far too common crime in our schools. Ten million dollars in damages properly states how wrong and intolerable the conduct is, and like all forms of rape, it is nothing to laugh at.

________________________________________

Facts: Fark

Source, Graphic: Daily Mail

(Again, thanks to Jeff Field for catching a typo!)

Casey Anthony’s Lawyer is Pronounced Unethical By an Expert

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Jack Thompson knows incivility

Ah, the Casey Anthony trial continues to be the legal equivalent of “Jersey Shore,” or some other annoying TV reality show. In today’s episode: Hypocrisy! Revenge!  Irony! Abuse of process! Incivility!  And a special guest!

Cheney Mason, one of Casey Anthony’s defense attorneys, gave a raised middle finger (the international symbol of “I have nothing but contempt and utter disdain for you and your untoward words and conduct, so please have some form of unpleasant sexual intercourse with yourself!”) to a spectator who was verbally harassing Mason and others celebrating Anthony’s July 5 acquittal at a restaurant immediately after the trial.  Such public conduct by a lawyer is rude, undignified and inappropriate, but it is also rude, undignified and inappropriate for sea captains, puppeteers and plumbers, too. Incivility by a lawyer has to be especially egregious and must in some way threaten to undermine the administration of justice to raise the possibility of bar discipline, and flipping the bird to a jerk in a restaurant just plain doesn’t qualify. Now, a lawyer running all over town giving the finger to everyone for weeks on end, or a lawyer making the gesture to judges, opposing counsel or jury members in court would be very different matters. Such conduct would call into legitimate question a lawyer’s fitness to practice law. One such incident? No. I won’t speculate on what percentage of lawyers have given the upturned finger to someone during their careers, but you can.

Nevertheless, a Florida citizen decided to file an ethics complaint against Mason, which is his right. But this wasn’t just any Florida citizen; the complainant was Jack Thompson, a once nationally prominent attorney who managed the nearly impossible: he got himself disbarred for life in Florida for incivility, along with other ethical misconduct. Continue reading →