empathy

Unethical Quote of the Week: CNBC Financial Analyst Larry Kudlow

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

We've all been there, Larry. Still sounded awful, though.

“The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that.”

—CNBC’s financial guru Larry Kudlow, discussing the economic implications of the Japanese earthquake and its aftermath—a legitimate topic—while giving an instructive demonstration of how tunnel-vision and focus on one objective above all else can disable an ethics alarm, momentarily, or even permanently.

The quote speaks for itself, but here are a few comments: Continue reading →

Ugly Consequentialism: The Daily Beast Backs Perez Hilton

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I am developing a real dislike for the Daily Beast. Tina Brown’s slick news aggregating website has gone out of its way to slander innocent dog breeds, features self-promoting hypocrites like John Avlon, and generally displays the ethical instincts of Piers Morgan, which is to say, none. Today it gave us an update on Serene Branson, who was mocked by blogger Perez Hilton and others for having an obvious, and frightening, on-air neurological event that caused her to be unable to speak coherently. Entitled “Line-Flubbing Grammys Reporter Fine”—trivializing as “line-flubbing” what was clearly nothing of the sort; people don’t get checked out by physicians for flubbing lines—the Daily Beast’s commentary noted that paramedic could find nothing wrong, so “Laugh away.”

This is the ugly face of consequentialism, judging the ethical nature of conduct based on what happens afterwards. Perez Hilton’s cruel amusement at a reporter finding that she cannot form intelligible speech is now retroactively fine and dandy, because Branson hasn’t—so far—keeled over or gone blind. So laugh, jerks, laugh…until she does keel over, tomorrow, or next week, or next month, in which case the ridicule becomes unacceptible to The Daily Beast.

Another human being who is panic-stricken as her body turns on her is not funny, and it is a sign of callousness and a deficit of compassion to laugh at the sight of it, whether or not the apparent catastrophe turns out to be minor after all. But the Daily Beast is proving that it is a playpen, occupied by reporters, columnists and editors with the ethical sophistication of gradeschoolers.

______________

UPDATE 2/15/11 (From AOL News):

“Despite Branson’s insistence that she’s fine, doctors who have examined the now heavily circulated footage of the incident continue to express concerns.

“This is what we call a class neurological event,” Dr. Keith Black, director of the Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, told NBC’s ‘Today’ show. “She was obviously aware that she was having difficulty.”

According to Black, Branson’s episode was likely the result of a transient ischemic attack, essentially a “blockage in blood flow going to the brain,” or a “mini-seizure located in the language area.”

The New York Post also spoke to doctors who viewed the tape, and they said that Branson’s garbled speech could have resulted from “aphasia, which affects the ability to articulate, and that it could have been brought on by a mini-stroke, a tumor or a circulatory issue.”

Ethics Dunce: Blogger Perez Hilton

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

There is snarky, and there is vicious and cruel. Perez Hilton, the over-the-top celebrity blogger who always amasses enough points to be in the running for Media Creep of the Year, hit rock bottom over the weekend, showing a level of humanity, empathy and caring we identify with the people who ridicule  ALS sufferers and terminal cancer patients, and who find watching heart attacks and strokes amusing.

“MUST WATCH!!!” “Grammy Reporter Fail!” wrote Hilton, about a frightening video showing CBS reporter Serene Branson suddenly finding herself unable to speak coherently on the air as she reported on the Grammys, and obviously experiencing some kind of neurological episode that was a lot more serious than being “tongue-tied.”

“Someone call an exorcist!” joked the blogger, who called Branson’s cisis “HIGHlarious.”

[This post originally included the video footage, but CBS has pulled it.] Branson gets a few words out, then you can see the fear and panic that starts to come into the young woman’s expression as she realizes that her thoughts are no longer being formed into words. She utters a stream of jibberish  very reminiscent of the sounds made by the swimmer at the beginning of “Jaws” who is being attacked by a Great White shark, and then the station cuts her off. If watching another human being in peril and terror is “HIGHlarious” to you, “Ethics Dunce” is an understatement.

Hilton quickly pulled his first post on the incident when it began drawing fire, and so far, doctors haven’t been able to determine what caused the incident…so Hilton obviously thinks he’s in the clear.

He’s not. Even if we never know what happened to Branson, she was frightened and something bad was obviously happening to her. I’m sure she’s still terrified, and should be: my law school room mate, last year, had a mysterious episode that seemed like a stroke, but the doctors found nothing, and sent him home. Two days later, he dropped dead.

Yuk it up, Perez.

Jerk.

Alcoholics Anonymous and Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 70 Comments

With all the alcoholics in my life, and there are and have been many (some of whom I undoubtedly never knew qualified), today was the first time I ever actually attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Indeed, before yesterday I didn’t know I could attend. Many groups have periodic “open” meetings, however, to which friends and family members of alcoholics as well as “anyone interested in learning about alcoholism” are invited. I know a lot about alcoholism, learned the hard way. Now I know more. More important than that, I realize that Alcoholics Anonymous has a great deal to teach everyone…not just about alcoholism, but about ethics. Continue reading →

Ethics Scoreboard Flashback: “Death on Everest”, a Real Life “What Would You Do?”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

[ The discussion in the earlier post today regarding ABC’s revolting “What Would You Do?” convinced me that I should re-post this essay about a real-life “What Would You Do?”tragedy, which originally appeared on The Ethics Scoreboard in 2006.  Entitled “Death on Everest,” It has been lightly edited to bring it up to date.]

As 34-year-old mountaineer David Sharp lay near death on Mount Everest, over 40 other climbers trudged past him on their march to the peak. All had oxygen with them, and a few even stopped briefly to give Sharp a few breaths. But still they climbed on, and Sharp perished. His demise on May 15, 2006 has gone into ethics lore alongside the infamous death of Kitty Genovese on March 13, 1964. Genovese was murdered outside her apartment building in Queens while thirty-eight neighbors watched and did nothing.
The two incidents stem from very different causes, however. While Genovese’s death was fueled by urban fear and apathy, a mass failure of courage and the willingness to assume responsibility in a crisis, Sharp was the victim of that universal ethics-suppressant, the powerful non-ethical consideration. Continue reading →

The Sad Saga of the Ex-Drug Dealing Law Student

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

David Powers, a certified public accountant working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, standing third in his class at St. John’s University School of Law, was preparing to graduate this spring. Seeking to move from accounting to law (and who wouldn’t?), Powers was completely candid to the New York Appellate Court’s Character and Fitness Committee, disclosing an expunged 1999 conviction for drug possession on his record and the circumstances surrounding it.  He wanted to know if the conviction would be a hurdle to his acceptance for admission to the New York Bar. But when he asked St. John’s to send the Bar a letter of support, it not only refused but rescinded his admission, reports the New York Post.

Now Powers is suing, since St. John’s taught him well. Continue reading →

The Lost Flashdrive and Presumed Consent

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“Lose a flashdrive here? Call the Arboretum if you’re one of the visitors in this photo, or phone these guys if they are friends of yours. A flashdrive packed with photos and software has been in our lost-N-found for at least a month — Store manager Lynnea suggested we post a photo from the drive and see if someone cla…ims it. Describe the drive and its contents accurately & provide your postal — we’ll happily return it.”

The Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior Arizona recently posted this notice on its Facebook page, along with one of the photographs a staff member took off the lost flashdrive. Obviously the material on the drive is private; just as obviously, the flashdrive is lost. Is the Arboretum within reasonable ethical boundaries to examine and publicize private information without the permission of the flashdrive’s owner to help the owner recover his lost property? Continue reading →

Becoming a Society Without Empathy

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Attorney, blogger and legal ethicist Franco Tarulli has a thoughtful post on The Ethical Lawyer about the results of a recent study I had missed, and now that I know about it, I almost wish I was still missing it. The findings are ominous. Continue reading →

The Maine Incivility Project

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Thank goodness for the Maine Incivility Project.

With all the talk about incivility sparked by the media’s determination to blame a madman’s shooting rampage on Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party, it rapidly became evident that civility is a somewhat elusive concept. For example, while shouting “You lie!” at the President while he is speaking is definitely uncivil, arguing that the President was really foreign born isn’t—it’s stupid, but not uncivil. Calling Rush Limbaugh “a Big, Fat, Idiot” in the title of your book, as Sen. Al Franken did, is uncivil, as is calling Nancy Pelosi “the Wicked Witch of the West,” as Rush Limbaugh did. Using cross-hairs to designate Democratic House seats that Republicans are “gunning for'”, “targeting” or “taking aim at”, on the other hand, is not uncivil…just unsettling if one is metaphor-challenged or hoplophobic (having a pathological fear of guns.)

Never fear, however. Before the echoes  of President Obama’s call for Americans to come together had barely faded, the public got a handy lesson from the Governor of Maine about what incivility sounds like, as his term launches the new Maine Incivility Project. Continue reading →

Compassionate Police Work, Vegas-style

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

When should compassion, empathy, and caring outweigh diligence and duty? I’d say this is an example. Too bad the Las Vegas Police Department doesn’t see it that way.

13-year-old girl Takara Davis is in an induced coma to help her recover from being hit by a car. She was walking home and apparently was jaywalking when the accident occurred. Takara was issued a jaywalking citation, but since she had bleeding on the brain and was unconscious, a police officer made a special trip to the hospital to hand it to her mother. “She has got to go to court on March 6th,” Takara’s mom told reporters. Continue reading →