ethics

The Despicable Ryan Holiday

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Sub-title: “Buy This Book—You’re An Idiot”

You know those science fiction movies where a scientist can’t get anyone to listen to him about the threat of a man-made virus getting out of control and destroying the world decides to prove his point by creating a virus that then gets out of control and destroys the world? Or the ones about the government computer geek who drives people crazy complaining that the nation’s systems are vulnerable to cyber-attack, so he creates a bug to prove his point and it sends the country back to the stone age?

Ryan Holiday is like those guys. Fortunately, he isn’t a scientist or tech whiz, just an unscrupulous writer and a liar, so his unconscionable stunts to “prove a point” don’t risk ending civilization. Ethically, however, he is no better than those fictional characters, and arguably he is worse. At least those brilliant boobs were trying to prevent a catastrophe. Holiday is just trying to sell his book.

The book is about the news media’s vulnerability to bad information, so Holiday, a 25-year-old marketing director for American Apparel, decided to prove his thesis with an “experiment.” He got himself listed as an “expert” on an online resource for reporters, and when they contacted him, he lied to them. One of the media sources that fell for his deception was the New York Times, which subsequently published this after a story using Holiday’s lies made it into the News That’s Fit to Print, when it wasn’t: Continue reading →

Closing the Memory Hole: Remembering the Dance Marathons

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“Marathon ’33”

“Man lives by a lingering ember,

“And while there are beautiful things to remember,

The ugly things, one should forget.”

—-“Things to Remember” from the musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd”  by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse

Jews sometimes are criticized for evoking the Holocaust at every opportunity. Their explanation is that we “must never forget,” an argument I once thought was bizarre. “Who could forget the Holocaust?,” I wondered. Something so unique and horrible would be impossible to forget; it would be like pretending the Grand Canyon didn’t exist.

That was ignorant of me. Nations, religions, cultures and groups of all kinds are stunningly effective at forgetting historical episodes which challenge their self-image and most cherished illusions. Jews are rightfully and wisely vigilant at reminding the world of what was done to them as the rest of humanity passively looked on in the 30’s and 40’s, because their extermination at the hands of the Nazis is a prime candidate for history’s memory hole, where good and sensitive people, along with their nations, communities and cultures, dispose of memories too ugly to remember. Once the memories are gone, they no longer haunt us, it is true. They no longer teach or warn us, either. The ethical course of action is to remember our worst moments, and evoke them as often as possible. We can only be our best by admitting our worst. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Is a Transgendered Woman Ethically Obligated To Tell Her Boyfriend That She Used To be Male?”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

You never know. My post about the ethics of withholding the fact of one’s past and altered gender from a potential spouse sparked the most passionate, erudite and instructive debate among readers that Ethics Alarms has seen in a long time, involving an all-star squad of some of this blog’s best minds. The prize goes to Zoebrain, though, who scores the Comment of the Day with this three part contribution. It’s long; don’t let that discourage you. It, and the whole thread, which you can find here, is well worth your time, because you will learn something. I did.

“May I give an extended set of replies here please? You see, this isn’t a hypothetical for me, it’s an actual. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

“He didn’t pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain. But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?… You guys have said his wealth is $250 million. Not a chance in the world. It’s a lot more than that. I mean, you do pretty well if you don’t pay taxes for 10 years when you’re making millions and millions of dollars.”

—-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in an interview with The Huffington Post. Reid’s source for the accusation that Romney “did not pay taxes for ten years” is a an individual he refuses to name, and thus one whose allegations cannot be checked or substantiated.

Sen. Harry Reid

In the dirty, slimy world of politics, you can’t get much dirtier or slimier than Senator Reid. Richard Nixon would be proud of him;  Joe McCarthy would applaud, Joseph Goebbels too, and every low-life, gutter-dwelling lie-monger who has used innuendo and rumor to smear candidates, opponents and strategically-chosen victims in between.

Reid is a leader of the Democratic Party, and the Party is accountable for his words. Fair Americans have been justifiably disgusted with the likes of Donald Trump, who has suggested that President Obama’s reluctance to release his scholastic records, and before that his birth certificate, were proof of something nefarious. Guilty until proven innocent—this is the secret ingredient of Big Lie politics, and that is what Reid, who really is beneath contempt here, is practicing. Reid makes Trump look fair and Newt Gingrich look moderate by comparison, and any Democrat, whatever they think of Mitt Romney, that doesn’t have the integrity to condemn this kind of abuse should be have himself fumigated. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Reader John Owens supplies  perspective and expertise on carnivals and local fairs in his Comment of the Day regarding the post “Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games.”    Here it is: Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: The Peculiar Ethics of Carnival Games

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

The AARP website has a post about rigged carnival games, a topic that I have always found intriguing from an ethics perspective. The games…The Basketball Shoot, The Balloon Dart Throw, The Ring Toss, The Milk Bottle Pyramid, The Duck Pond and the rest…are rigged, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know they were rigged. It didn’t stop me from playing the silly things. A carnival is a state of mind, a flashback to the days of P.T. Barnum and flim-flam artists. An ethical carnival? Isn’t that an oxymoron? We eat terrible food, pay to go on disappointing rides, listen to barkers who we know are lying through their teeth, and play games that are scams in order to win cheesy prizes worth a fraction of what we paid out to win them and that we wouldn’t dream of buying outside a carnival anyway. That’s the carnival experience. It’s all unethical, and we consent to it.

Or is this just a rationalization? Is capitulation the proper ethical course, or should we carefully regulate carnival games, make sure all of the food is cholesterol-lite and sugar-free, and force the barkers to issue disclaimers and warnings like the recitations in TV drug commercials?

That’s your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz for the day, my friends:

Do traditional unethical practices become ethical in the culture of a carnival and similar environments, where the public voluntarily participates in and consents to its own victimization?

With cotton candy dancing in my head, corn dogs singing their siren song and images of the Wild Man of Borneo howling in my fevered brain, I have to confess that my inclination is to say, “Yes.”

And you?

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Spark: AARP

Graphic: Photolibra

Ethically Excusable Self-Promotion

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I’m going to be a guest on NPR’s “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin this morning, participating in a discussion of the Chick-fil-A controversy on which I have commented here and here. “Check local listings,” as they say.

Regardless of whether I say anything significant (you never know; miracle happen), Michel is superb, and her voice is Debussy and Grieg to your ears.

Unethical Website of the Month: Opinion-NYTimes.Com

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Yes, it is also an extremely well-done unethical website, a clone of the New York Times editorial pages, even featuring links to the real Times.

It is, however, a web hoax that presents a defense of Wikileaks, itself an unethical position, under the by-line of a real person, former Times editor Bill Keller, who didn’t write it, in order to mislead and fool people. One of those fooled was Times technology editor Nick Bilton, who passed on the link on Twitter. Keller eventually used a tweet to expose the hoax.

What a riot.

Hoaxes like this are constitutionally protected, but they are the news and commentary equivalent of the scene in “The Naked Gun” in which Leslie Nielsen throws  ten baseballs into the air as a catcher is trying to catch a foul pop-fly. They are information vandalism, and until the media and the public stops regarding them as newsworthy or funny, they will proliferate, and some will cause tangible harm

The technical term for the purveyors of web hoaxes like this is “assholes.” Once that is agreed upon, unequivocal and clear, we might have a chance of discouraging them.

Update: I had just finished writing the post when I  learned that Wikileaks itself has taken responsibility for the hoax. You see? The technical term was accurate.

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Facts: Yahoo!

Source and Graphic: Care 2 Make a Difference

 

 

“The Truth About Human Nature”: Gulliver, Horse People, Absolutism and Lies

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Gulliver among the Houyhnhnms

As I recuperate from air travel hell and try to gather my wits, here is a provocative essay examining how Jonathan Swift explored the complex function of lying in human nature. The essay is by Prof. Lee Perlman, in the New Atlantis, and you can read it here.

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Source: The New Atlantis

Graphic

Bob Nightengale’s Rationalization Orgy

/ Jack Marshall / 41 Comments

“OK, he got caught, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t still the BEST at Rubik’s Cube…”

I was interviewed on a radio news show early this morning, and one of the questions I was asked was whether what the host called “the decline of ethics in the country” could be reversed. I’m not convinced there has been such a decline, but if there is, it sure doesn’t help to have so many  journalists with big microphones displaying infantile analysis of ethics-related issues on a regular basis.

Today’s case was USA Today sportswriter Bob Nightengale, who took the occasion of the annual induction of new members into baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown this weekend to trot out nearly every rationalization and ethical invalid argument imaginable to explain why he would be voting for all the proven or suspected steroid cheats  for the Hall when their time comes:

“There, I said it. I will vote for Bonds. And Clemens. And Sosa. And Piazza. I’ll think about Bagwell. And will continue voting for Rafael Palmeiro, who tested positive in his final season when he reached 3,000 hits.”

And then come the rationalizations:

  • “Hey, it’s OK to admit racists, criminals, drunks and recreational drug abusers, but let’s not tarnish the sacredness of the Hall of Fame.” This is essentially a “there are worse things” argument with an overlay of ignorance and stupidity. This is a baseball Hall of Fame with very clear character requirements: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the team(s) on which the player played.” No other sports Hall of Fame has such standards: just wait for the fight over admitting Joe Paterno into the College Football Hall of Fame (O.J. is a member in good standing.). Continue reading →