ethics

NEVER the Sinner?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

The AP reports that there is a computer virus that causes one’s computer to independently visit child pornography sites and download material.  This has caused innocent people to be prosecuted, fired from their jobs, humiliated and ruined.

I would like the conduct of a person who would create and release such a virus explained to me. I would like the explainers to be those who will describe any bad act , no matter how heinous, as “one mistake,” and who resolutely maintain that engaging in wrongful conduct, no matter how destructive and cruel, doesn’t mean an individual is personally rotten to the core. “Hate the sin, never the sinner,” Clarence Darrow said. Darrow was one of the most persuasive and articulate people who ever lived. I wonder if he could have reconciled this with his convictions.

Now I’m going to check my computer.

And my faith in human nature.

The Card-counting Conundrum

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

There is a terrific thread going on over at the Volohk Conspiracy, consistently one of the most erudite and thought-provoking blogs there is. Noting that a Indiana court has declared that the state’s casinos are prohibited from throwing blackjack players who count cards out of their establishment, Prof. Volokh, who has a libertarian streak, opined that casinos should be able to toss out the card counters, and that the case was wrong. Well, all hell broke out after that, and as usual for that blog (and, some golden day, for this one), there has been a flood of comments from every kind of authority from legal experts to card counters themselves.  They show what an odd and ethically topsy-turvy matter the controversy over card-counting is. Continue reading →

Why Public Flossing IS Our Business

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

In today’s Sunday New York Times, the City Room column is devoted to the increasingly common topic of public grooming, specifically flossing one’s teeth in public. Lion Calandra recounts an exchange with a young woman doing her dental hygeine on the subway, who finished by throwing her used floss to the subway car floor.

“Maybe you should do that at home,” Calandra suggested. “Maybe you should mind your own business,” the woman sneered. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms at Ethics Alarms: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

A journalist from a well-known sports publication called me, and wanted to get my thoughts for an article he was writing, as well as quote me in his story. I like to help journalists, and it never hurts professionally to get quoted, so I readily agreed. We set a time to talk that was convenient for both of us, later in the week. I gave him my email address, and he said he would send me his contact information before he called at the agreed upon day.

My schedule changed, and the call was going to be difficult. I needed to contact him to reschedule, since I knew he was on a deadline. But I had no contact information, because he never sent the email as he had promised. I called the publication and waited through the endless phone trees and recordings. They knew who he was, but didn’t have a phone number, and wouldn’t take a message. Finally, I tracked down his home number, and left a message.

Days passed, and he did not contact me or confirm that he had received my message (I included several alternate times for our call.) Meanwhile, I boned up on the topic, which was interesting ethically but also more extensive than my current familiarity with it. Since I hadn’t heard from him, I had to assume that he had not received my message and the appointment was still on. Though I was traveling, I arranged to be at my cell phone at the designated time, with his call to be relayed to me from my office. I waited for his call for the better part of an hour. Outside, in Times Square, in 45 degree weather.

He never called. I haven’t heard from him at all.

And I am ticked off. Continue reading →

The Price of American Principles

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

As everyone knows by now, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born Army psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, wounding many more.  Although he originally told the Army that he was not especially religious, Hasan had become a devout Muslim in recent years. You didn’t have to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict what the combination of a Muslim soldier and a shooting spree would spark from some voices on the Right: immediate “I told you so’s” about how politically correct squeamishness prevent sensible profiling that could prevent such tragedies. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“If you find yourself chewing the memory card in your cellphone to destroy any record of your misconduct, something has gone terribly wrong with your character.”–Robert S. Khuzami, S.E.C. enforcement director.

[ Wall Street trader Zvi Goffer was arrested today and accused of being the mastermind of the latest insider-trading scandal, a tipping-and-trading ring that involved confidential sources from many places that should know better, like the prominent law firm of Ropes and Gray.  Arthur J. Cutillo, a lawyer at the firm, was accused of sharing secret information with  Goffer on  deals the law firm was handling for clients. Prosecutors say, according to the New York Times story, Goffer insisted his confederates communicate through disposable cellphones, just like drug dealers.
When the illegal trading was complete,  Goffer destroyed his phone records by biting the phone’s SIM card in half with his teeth.]

Disney, Mickey, and Childhood’s Betrayal

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

The Disney Corporation has decided to do something about Mickey Mouse’s image. It’s too nice, you see. In the edgy 21st century, where Hannah Montana does a pole dance, female tennis champs threaten to kill line judges for making a correct call, and Glenn Beck can become a hot commodity by calling the President of the United States a racist, Mickey Mouse is bland and boring. For more than fifty years, Mickey’s status as the symbol of Walt Disney’s empire (Walt did Mickey’s first voice) meant that he was polite, dignified, and always, always, child-appropriate. His typical role was as the MC, his job with the original Mickey Mouse Club, where Mickey often appeared in black tie and tails. With his characteristic nervous laugh, he never did anything wrong, mean, or even annoying. The funny bits were reserved for Donald Duck, Goofy, and Chip and Dale. Mickey slowly evolved into more of a corporate symbol than a cartoon character, but when he went on screen, he was always a good mouse. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Joe Girardi

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I’m a life-time Boston Red Sox fan, and the New York Yankees winning anything is like a knife to my heart. Nevertheless, fair is fair. Joe Girardi, the Yankee manager, is an Ethics Hero for November.

Driving home from the Stadium after winning the World Series last night, Girardi stopped to help a motorist who had lost control of his car on the Cross Country Parkway and had crashed into a wall.

Girardi could have passed the buck, as most of us do in those situations. Lots of other cars would have an opportunity to help the driver, and Girardi had every reason to think he had done enough that night—a historic victory, a celebration, and now it was time to go home. It would have been easy to drive on. Nobody would know, nobody would criticize.

He did the right thing: Joe Girardi stopped to help a fellow human being in trouble. His choice had nothing to do with his being a New York celebrity, the manager of baseball’s most famous team and recently-crowned champion. It had to do with fulfilling his obligations as a citizen and a human being.

Today you’re my hero, Joe.

Just don’t expect me to be a Yankee fan.

Would You Buy A Magazine From This Man?

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

NewsMax is a conservative  magazine that is really as doctrinaire and ideological as critics accuse Fox News of being. (Compared to NewsMax, Fox is the Daily Kos.) It also has strange ideas about whom we should admire. I just heard a radio ad for NewsMax that trumpeted, “Dick Morris says it’s his favorite magazine!”

This endorsement is supposed to make me, or anyone who values basic ethical values (including, presumably, many of those core conservative values NewsMax is always invoking), run out and subscribe?  Knowing what I know about Dick Morris, I would have sworn his favorite magazine would be “Con Man Today,”  “Back-stabber’s Weekly,” or ” Hustler.” Continue reading →

How to Lose Trust

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The AP reports that the White House, in measuring the effects of the economic stimulus program, is counting employee raises in salary as “jobs saved.”

“More than two-thirds of 14,506 jobs credited to the recovery act under spending by just one federal office were overstated because they counted pay increases for existing workers as jobs saved,” Brett Blackledge and Matt Apuzzo write. This kind of Orwellian funny business with definitions is an old trick, of course, but also the kind of  deception that President Barack Obama was supposed to eliminate. It is, after all, dishonest. It would be better to learn that this was the inadvertent mistake of some secretary somewhere, but no: according to the story, the Administration stands by its calculations, and defended the use of raises as “jobs saved.”

“If I give you a raise, it is going to save a portion of your job,” HHS spokesman Luis Rosero said.

Rosero then proceeded to sell the reporter a share of the Brooklyn Bridge. One of the resullts of this “logic” is that  it allows the Administration to save more jobs than there were in the first place. For example, to measure the jobs saved at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council,they multiplied the 508 employees by 1.84 — the percentage pay raise they received — and voila!  935 jobs saved!

The problem with this, besides the obvious (it’s ridiculous!), is that it erodes the President’s most precious commodity: trust. People who twist facts and numbers like this are either con-artists or incompetents, and you shouldn’t never trust either. Today the papers were all about Democrats worried about the election results, but in the long run, this story is much more ominous.