ethics

Political Correctness Update: Regarding the Meaning of “Broad”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In the thread following my post regarding Bill Maher calling Sarah Palin a “dumb twat,” I was asked about where “broad” and “babe” fall on the spectrum of misogynistic insults. I replied..

“Babe” and “broad,”: unlike “twat” are almost always intended as a compliment. I would never use either of the first two in direct address of a woman until I was certain that she would take it the right way. In fact, compliments are determined by reasonable intent—some women are insulted, or claim to be, if you say they look nice. In sexual harassment law, it is indeed the object/victim/ accuser who gets to define the dispute (if she likes “broad,” there’s no complaint…if she doesn’t, you better apologize quickly.) That’s the law—that doesn’t mean that a comment reasonably intended as a compliment suddenly becomes uncivil because of a hairtrigger offense.”

This prompted indignant replies from several, reaching a crescendo that indicated that I was hopelessly archaic, and that “broad’ was now officially an insult, an offensive insult, and nothing but an insult. I gave up to the onslaught, and agreed that “broad” was, in fact, now an insult. Continue reading →

U.S. Attorney General Ethics, Rule #1: Remember What Your Job Is

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

"I am acting based on the expressed instructions of my client, who is, unfortunately, a moron."

How does the nation’s highest ranking lawyer forget what a lawyer’s job is? If I had to guess, I would say it could happen when the U.S. Attorney general in question is thinking about politics more that the law, and has been under such continuous fire from the public and the media for repeated bungles that he no longer knows who he’s working for.

But that would just be speculation on my part.

We know for certain, however, that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a statement announcing that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-conspirators would be tried by a military tribunal at Guantanamo, and not in civilian trials in the U.S. as the Obama Administration had preferred. In the middle of this statement, Holder says, Continue reading →

Ethics Phooey: No Self-Serving Bias When I Really Need It

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

At least I'm finally home.

Last month I posted a list of the Top Ten Thought Fallacies That Undermine Our Ethics. This week, I really, really wanted to use one of them. But integrity beckoned. Damn integrity.

I just returned from a week-long speaking trip that took me to Palm Springs and Maui, and involved a total of about 38 hours travel time for a total of 3 hours of actual lecturing and instruction. It would have been about eight hours less and not have required me to be awake for 50 hours (and counting) straight if I had not managed to miss my flight to L.A. out of the Maui airport. Somehow, I got it in my mind that the flight was at 3:30 PM, when it was really at 12:30 PM. I had managed to check the time on the wrong page of my itinerary, and then never looked at my boarding pass. Only dumb luck got me the last seat on the last flight out of Maui on Sunday night. Continue reading →

Chess Learns to Cheat

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The French chess federation has suspended three of its best chess players for cheating in a tournament last Fall. Sébastien Feller, a 20 years old grandmaster, Cyril Marzolo, and Arnaud Hauchard, who is the French team captain, secretly used a computer to feed them moves during their matches. The games were broadcast over the Internet, and a confederate fed the game positions into a computer with a sophisticated chess-playing program (computers beat the world’s best human player very regularly now).  Once the computer made its move, the confederate sent it to the human grandmaster using a text message. The three French chess whizzes matched the  computer almost move for move.

Amazing. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Month: #1 American Asshole, Rev. Terry Jones

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

...or "The Rev. Terry Jones Story"

“If you want to be technical, I guess we broke our word. We thought twice about it.”

—-Rev. Terry Jones, agreeing with criticism that he had promised last September not to burn the Quran, but did so anyway last month when he felt that his anti-Islam campaign was not getting enough headlines.

If you want to be technical, Rev. Jones is probably the biggest asshole in the United States right now. I know, I know—civility. But there are rare situations in which only our crudest, most insulting words can fairly describe individuals and acts. Rev. Jones richly deserves the asshole label, indeed the U.S. Champion, Gold Plated, #1 Asshole label, because nothing else adequately describes his reckless, self-promoting, hateful, irresponsible, deadly, virtually treasonous conduct—all completely legal, of course.

What do you call someone who pours gasoline on a brush fire to get attention? Jerk is too mild. What do you call someone who intentionally makes a difficult problem of international perception even more difficult—intentionally? Fool is too kind.  Unethical, my staple, is too abstract. There just is no civil term for someone like Jones. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Michelle Marie Gopaul

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

"But I'm not a bad person!"

“Everyone thinks I’m a bad person but I’m not a bad person.”

—- Actress/model/child-stealer Michelle Marie Gopaul, pleading guilty in a Toronto court to one count of child abduction. Gopaul, 25, was arrested Dec. 31 after police recovered one-month-old Roma Patel. The baby disappeared four hours earlier at  a western Toronto production studio during a fake casting call set up by Gopaul to  attract a baby for her to steal.  The child”s parents had responded to an ad on Craigslist that offered $15,000 in compensation for allowing their baby to be used in a film. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Barefoot Contessa…” (Again)

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Thank you for your comment, Sharon!

A classic. A commenter named Sharon Jones became outraged over an apparent counting error I made in one of the replies to a comment on the “Barefoot Contessa” post, but refused to be specific about what “seven words” I mistakenly called six. This sparked the abusive rant below, which contains so many of the standard sputterings of those who object to what I do for a  living—the fans of ethical relativism, and the “let he that is without sin” crowd, who often have no use for the Bible except when it can provide rationalizations for ignoring bad conduct—that it begged to be honored as a  Comment of the Day.

If you’re interested in my reply to this, it can be found in the comments to The Barefoot Contessa and the Compassion Bullies, which for the third time has generated a COTD, by Sharon Jones. Sadly, we won’t be seeing any more of Sharon around these parts…

“Apparently a Harvard degree gives you the right to be a self pretentious jerk with no accountability.

“Anybody who assumes the title of “ethics police” truly deserves to have his testicle hairs plucked one by one, followed by a hot sauce after-shave. Self righteous jerks, with an overinflated sense of self worth that gives them the feeling of entitlement to force feed the foul slop of “ethics” in a public forum. A self-worth, consequently, that is directly proportional to the balance of their checkbooks and IRAs.

“That being said, I fully grant the spineless bastard his first amendment right to say whatever feeble-minded drivel he can manage to scrape out of his Syphilitic skull and slap onto a blank canvas. More power to him. May he have a long and erectile dis-functioned life.”

Oh, All Right: Montana State Rep. Alan Hale is the Incompetent Elected Official of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Rep. Marino just got bumped to second place. Here is the Republican Montana state rep (also bar owner) Alan Hale—no relation, presumably, to the actor who played the Skipper on “Gilligan’s Island,’ or his almost identical and more versatile, father, Alan Hale, Sr., who played Little John to Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood in the MGM classic film—extolling the virtues of drunk driving.

No, seriously.

Integrity Check: Obama’s Embarrassing Transparency Pledge

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

President Obama is getting a mixture of ridicule and contempt from some pundits over the revelation yesterday that he accepted an award for transparency in secret. From Forbes:

“President Obama was scheduled to receive an award from the organizers of the Freedom of Information Day Conference, to be presented at the White House by “five transparency advocates.” The White House postponed that meeting because of events in Libya and Japan, and it was rescheduled…That meeting did take place – behind closed doors. The press was not invited to the private transparency meeting, and no photos from or transcript of the meeting have been made available. The event was not listed on the president’s calendar…Nor is the award mentioned anywhere on the White House website, including on the page devoted to transparency and good government. Were it not for the testimony of the transparency advocates who met secretly with the president, there wouldn’t seem to be any evidence that the meeting actually took place.”

I can guess why the President didn’t want to publicize the meeting: the same day, he had to go on television and explain why he hadn’t been transparent to the U.S. Congress about his military plans in Libya. Or perhaps he knew that the news was about to leak that the Fed had secretly sent billions in loans to foreign banks during the financial crisis, not telling the public because it would make them worried and angry. Or maybe it was the just the dawning realization that transparency in government is often neither wise nor safe, and that he was sick of being embarrassed by awards that only point  up the yawning chasm between Obama’s idealistic words and reality. (See: 2010 Nobel Peace Prize) Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official of the Week: Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA)

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Thank God we're not in AFRICA...

Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA), talking to the Scranton Times-Tribune this week, criticized the Obama administration’s actions in Libya.

“Where does it stop?” he said. “Do we go into Africa next? I don’t want to sound callous or cold, but this could go on indefinitely around the world.”

Marino is still a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as well as the House subcommittee on African foreign policy.

Libya, meanwhile, is still in Africa.