excuses

Ethics Quote of the Month: Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“I did not have an ethical alarm go off.”

—Dallas Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, explaining (but not really) how she managed to give  23 of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation scholarships Johnson has awarded since 2005 to two grandsons from Austin, two great-nephews from Plano, and two children of her top aide, despite explicit rules prohibiting nepotism, and requiring the scholarship to go to needy recipients in her own district, which none of these recipients were.

But thanks for the plug, Congresswoman! (It is “ethics alarm,” however, not “ethical alarm.”) Continue reading →

Steven Slater And The Rest of the Story: No Surprises

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Occasionally, there is cosmic justice. The astounding number of bloggers, media commentators and  ordinary working folks who have expressed admiration for Steven Slater, the irresponsible and unprofessional flight attendant who threw a tantrum of Adam Sandler proportions at the end of a recent Jet Blue flight, appears to have been itching for a confrontation throughout the flight, and had behaved is a rude and provocative manner to more than one passenger.

Well, of course. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Steven Slater Defenders

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

You probably have heard about Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who snapped like dry twig when a female passenger refused to sit as instructed after a landing at New York’s JFK Airport, pulled out her luggage from the overhead compartment, bonking him on the head, then refused to apologize and cursed at him. Slater, emulating a scene from a Chris Farley movie that never got made, took to the public address system to curse out all the passengers, grabbed a beer, launched the emergency chute, slid down it, and fled the plane and the airport.

He was later arrested at home.  Sources told NBC that he was “having a bad day.”

No kidding. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Non-Voting Candidates

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Meg Whitman, the former eBay  C.E.O. making a run at the California State House from the Republican side, didn’t bother to register to vote until 2002.  Nassau County’s candidate for attorney general, Kathleen Rice, registered 18 years before Whitman sis, but still didn’t bother to go to a polling place or cast a ballot until the same year, 2002. She calls this repeated lapse, which ended when she was 37 years old, a “youthful mistake.”

No, it was a series of the same “mistake” repeated over and over again from youth, though young adulthood, into early middle age. Continue reading →

Jeter, Bob Sheppard, and Funeral Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Bob Sheppard, the “Voice of God” who announced batters in games at Yankee Stadium from Joe DiMaggio to Mark Teixeira, died this month at the age of 99. Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter announced that henceforth he would be introduced by a tape recording of Sheppard’s distinctively cultured tones, and the tributes from former players and current team members were generous and loving.

But when Sheppard was finally laid to rest over the All Star Game break, no Yankee player, past or present, took the time to attend his funeral. The team itself sent appropriate representation, and General Manager Brian Cashman spoke. Still, some journalists, bloggers and New York sportswriters found fault with the complete absence of the Yankee players, considering Sheppard’s iconic stature and their stated admiration of the man. The Daily News’ Bill Madden called it a blatant lack of class.

Perhaps. I’d call it coldness and insincerity. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

“You gotta understand, there were only 28 people who had my job in the whole world. And thousands of people wanted those jobs, and every year, there were guys trying to take my job. So I needed to do anything I could to protect my job, take care of my family. Do you have any idea how much money was at stake? Do you?”

—Former Mets and Phillies star Lenny Dykstra, explaining why he used banned and illegal anabolic steroids throughout his career Continue reading →

Desperate Lie of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

A Connecticut television station traffic reporter, Desiree Fontaine was caught by security personnel as she apparently tried to shoplift a Hawaiian shirt, a bottle of cologne, two pairs of earrings and a necklace from a Sears store. When she was apprehended, Fontaine explained that she was shoplifting as part of a freelance reporting project she was doing “on the side.” Presumably this will set up a First Amendment defense at her trial, with her lawyer arguing that shoplifting is protected by Freedom of the Press. Continue reading →

Ethics Blindness: Why Is The Media Minimizing the Etheridge Assault?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Bob Etheridge street mugging story seems poised to join the coverage of Van Jones and ACORN as another depressing example of the mainstream media’s abandonment of objectivity, responsibility and ethical priorities.

Today, the day after a video surfaced showing North Carolina Congressman Bob Etheridge grabbing, restraining, and wrapping his hand around the neck of a young man who dared to ask him a question on a Washington D.C. sidewalk, “The Daily Beast’s” #4 story was the revelation that former Ebay CEO and current G.O.P. candidate for governor of California once shoved an Ebay subordinate in a moment of anger and paid six figures in damages. The story about a sitting U.S. Congressman assaulting a U.S. citizen without provocation on a public street doesn’t appear anywhere in the liberal-leaning news aggregation site’s news summary. Continue reading →

Accountability Lessons, Oil Spill Ethics, and Obama’s Leadership Failure

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

President Obama has shown his inexperience and unfamiliarity with executive leadership ethics in many ways since he took office, but none are likely to be more damaging than his unease with accountability. He had better learn fast.

It is not surprising that so many mayors lose their jobs as the result of blizzards. Budget limitations guarantee that a city’s snow removal capabilities are set to the most likely levels of snowfall and not the extraordinary, once-in-a-decade event, yet when that once-in-a-decade event arrives, it will not do for the mayor to blame the budget or the weather or the City Council or the lack of a magic wand. The public doesn’t want to hear any of that: they want to be able to drive to work. They want the leader to fix the problem, because that’s what leaders are supposed to do. If a leader can’t fix the problem, he had better look as if he is doing everything possible and impossible to try. And he had better make it clear that he understands and accepts that it is his job. Continue reading →

A Brief Note on Leadership Ethics, for Sen. Kirk and Others

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Attempting to explain Martha Coakley’s difficulties convincing a Democratic populace in Massachusetts that it should elect a Democratic U.S. Senator, the current place-holder in the seat she is running for, Sen. Paul Kirk, said this: “It comes from the fact that Obama as president has had to deal with all these major crises he inherited: the banks, fiscal stimulus…”

You should not have to be a Republican or an Obama opponent to see the ethics fouls in that statement, which echoes what has been, sadly, something of a default position of the Administration whenever things go sour. Continue reading →