double standards

Comment of the Day: “The Ethicists, Backing Judge Walker and Gay Marriage, At An Unacceptable Price”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The motion to vacate Judge Walker’s ruling on Proposition 8 has been filed, you can read it here. Since the original post, I have detected some cracks in the formerly near-united front of legal ethicists and journalists deriding Walker’s critics. Some of them are finally, grudgingly, admitting that the Judge might not have handled his potential conflict so well after all, and that the motion is not a frivolous, anti-gay outrage as they originally labelled it.  The most rickety of the rationalizations put forth on Walker’s behalf, advanced by some his most respected defenders, is that he had no obligation to reveal his own sexual orientation by disclosing his domestic arrangement because of its intimate and private nature. Yet the judge voluntarily disclosed it after his decision was in the books, raising a rebuttable presumption that his original silence was to avoid suggestions of conflict, not out of a desire for privacy.

First time commenter Jada adds her Comment of the Day to the discussion: Continue reading →

Colbert King, Obama Abuse, Bias and Double Standards

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Washington Post columnist Colbert King is an around-the-clock Ethics Hero, a relentless journalist investigator and critic of government corruption in Washington. D.C. He has an impeccable sense of right and wrong, as well as intolerance for public betrayal by elected officials. Yet this undeniably ethical, fair man, who eschews rationalizations at all costs while applying rigorous ethical analysis, cannot see a double standard when it is staring back at him from his own computer screen. His is a frightening tale of the power of bias.

In today’s Post, King expresses fury and pain over last week’s despicable birther drama, feelings that I share. He is revolted at the racist undertones of the “joke” photo e-mailed to friends by an Orange County Republican official as am I. He is horrified by the high percentage of Republicans polled who question Obama’s religion and national origin, as indeed he should be And without any sense of irony, King writes… Continue reading →

The Ethicists, Backing Judge Walker and Gay Marriage, At An Unacceptable Price

/ Jack Marshall / 38 Comments

"Oh, all right...as long as we like the decision."

Thanks to the Judge Walker controversy, now have proof that the best legal ethicists in the nation are human. I suppose that’s something.

My colleagues in the legal ethics field are arguing—decreeing, really— that Judge Vaughn Walker’s decade-long same-sex relationship didn’t need to be disclosed before he ruled against Proposition 8 (California’s voter-approved gay marriage ban) because, they say, it created no reasonable doubts about his impartiality. Coincidentally, they also really, really like his decision. But then, so do I. Continue reading →

Misogyny Ethics: Bill Maher Calls Sarah Palin a “Dumb Twat” as Progressives Cheer and Feminists Fall Silent

/ Jack Marshall / 56 Comments

As long as we are on the topic of shunning and consequences (see previous post):

Is HBO comic/political commentator/arrogant jerk Bill Maher stooping to outright misogyny in his gratuitous ridicule of Sarah Palin going to have any consequences at all?

On his cable show “Real Time” this week, Maher’s usual name-calling took a sharp turn into the despicable with this:

MAHER: Oh, and did you hear this? [Laughs] Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan……and she’s demanding that we invade “Tsunami.” I mean, she says, “These Tsunamians will not get away with this.”  Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you…

[Audience hilarity and applause]

MAHER: Oh, you’re right, yeah I let the cat out the bag on that one, huh folks?”

…………………………………………………………

That last line was a “pussy joke,” for those of you too genteel to appreciate Bill Maher’s “wit.” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Arnold Schwarzenegger

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
  • Here’s what an ethical governor does with the power to pardon and commute sentences, when he believes a young man sentenced for his participation in a murder was sentenced too harshly: Continue reading →

Rangel’s Corruption Continues, Whatever He Calls It

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

“In all fairness, I was not found guilty of corruption, I did not go to bed with kids, I did not hurt the House speaker, I did not start a revolution against the United States of America, I did not steal any money, I did not take any bribes, and that is abundantly clear.”

—-Rep. Charles Rangel, less than a week following his historic censure by the House of Representatives for repeated violations of House ethics rules

Thus did Charlie Rangel embrace the Clinton Standard after proven unethical conduct, which can be loosely translated as “it’s not what I did that matters, it’s what I didn’t do that should have counted.” In Clinton’s case, the defense was that his lies and obstruction of justice were in the context of what he and his defenders dubbed “personal” misconduct, not the official “high crimes” required by the Constitution, and that his real offense was being a Democrat. Rangel’s adaptation: sure he broke rules, but that was not what the House has called “corrupt” in the past, and thus he can hold his head up high. Continue reading →

Charlie Rangel, Ethics Corrupter

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Rep. Charles Rangel—statesman, icon, war hero, and Congressional force of nature—stands accused of ethics violations many and serious, ranging from using his influence to raise money for an institution named after him, to accepting trips and other benefits from special interests, to failing to pay his taxes. Actually, “accused” is a technicality in Rangel’s case, or rather cases, because the facts are plain and damning in every single one. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially refused to do anything about Rangel (he was eventually asked to step down, if only “temporarily” from his position as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee) by saying, “Wait for the results of the investigation.” She meant, considering the shameless politicization of the House ethics process, “Let’s see if he can skate by this time.” He couldn’t. Rangel did all of the conflicted, reckless and irresponsible things he has been accused of, and actually admits doing most of them. He refuses to resign, however, and proclaims his “innocence,” not because he didn’t do unethical things, but because he doesn’t believe it should matter. Continue reading →

Biden’s Incivility: No “Big Fucking Deal”?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

For the most part, the media and the culture have given Vice-President Joe Biden a pass on his ebullient violation of a civil discourse taboo, on national TV and during an official ceremony, caught on a microphone for all to hear. That only makes the consequences of Biden’s inability to control his potty-mouth worse, though not for Biden. Biden has made so many embarrassing public utterances that he is treated by the media and much of the public as sort of a crazy uncle, someone we expect to do and say outrageous things because he can’t help himself (it stands as the smoking gun proof of the media’s bias against Sarah Palin that her verbal mistakes were—and are—pounced upon and used as evidence of her incompetence, while her Democratic counterpart’s career-long fondness for saying silly and outrageous things was —and is—excused.) But national leaders set cultural standards, and the shrugging off of Biden’s F-bomb permanently lowers our standards of civility as much as “Baby killer!” or “You lie!” So thanks, Joe, for making America just a little bit less gentile, just a little bit cruder. We knew you had it in you. Continue reading →

Final Ethics Alarms on the Coakley-Brown Race: Fairness and Honesty Take a Holiday

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Some concluding Ethics Alarms from the Brown-Coakley Senate race, many with the same dispiriting lesson: hyper-partisan zealotry is causing many Americans to abandon their senses of fairness, proportion, and common sense : Continue reading →