fairness

Ethics Poll: The Amityville Kidney

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
"Wait---you're going to put THAT inside me???"

“Wait—you’re going to put THAT inside me???”

In the comments to the post The Kidneys of Orlac, Texagg04 raises a fascinating angle that I had not considered. I have previously written, regarding state regulations that do not require realtors or sellers to disclose that a grisly murder or six occurred on a property, that a purchaser has the right to know about such conditions that may bother him personally, and that regardless of the laws involved, there is an ethical duty inform  a potential purchaser know that he is buying the site of the Amityville Horror (for example). Texagg04 suggests..

“Much like real estate agents ought to reveal that a house had a grisly murder in it, I’d submit that recipients of organ donations of this kind should get to be informed of the donor’s convictions.”

Hmmm. I’m not so sure. One of the reasons for my views about the death houses is that they may be difficult for the uninformed buyer to sell later if the home’s history is known or becomes well known. Also, there are always alternatives to buying a particular house—given a choice between the site of a murder and a similar house with no such history, I might opt for the latter—I’ve seen too many of the “Paranormal Experiences”  and “The Grudge” movies, I guess. But with donated organs, the options are more limited. Maybe not telling the recipient that he has the heart of the Green River Killer is the fair and kind thing to do.

Let’s vote!

Being Fair To Harry Reid: This Began With A Borking

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
Blame the first domino, not the last one..

Blame the first domino, not the last one..

I generally revile Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for his hyper-partisan leadership of the Senate, his unethical statements and his manner of conducting himself.  Still, I am bound to take this rare opportunity to defend Sen. Reid, who is taking the brunt of  criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for weakening the filibuster last week. True: he didn’t have to take this course, and I think it will probably, as the talking head shows Sunday seemed to agree, make the toxic and dysfunctional politics in Washington worse, not better. Reid, however, is not the primary one at fault. He was doing his job as he saw it, dealing with circumstances that are now beyond his control.

What led to the so-called “nuclear option” becoming reality was an unplanned convergence of Machiavellian politics, breaches of professional duty, dishonesty, irresponsible legislating, lack of statesmanship, unfairness, disrespect, bad luck, incompetent leadership, and most of all, a cycle of revenge that is now only likely to continue. Most of this was out of Harry Reid’s hands.

History shows that U.S. Presidents were once virtually always given the benefit of the doubt regarding judicial appointments to the federal courts, except in the rare cases of serious ethical questions or dubious qualifications. It was a good system, and the right system, and both parties followed it, realizing that the ideological mix in the courts was fluid and cyclical, and that today’s new conservative judge would eventually be offset by the appointee of the next liberal President, and vice versa. Democrats destroyed that tradition and accord on judicial appointments when in 1987, the Senate Democrats blocked President Reagan’s nomination of Robert Bork, who had been selected by President Reagan to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Continue reading →

Funny! But Unethical: The “Fuck You!” Spite Statue

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

 FU statue

Lea Tuohy is suing her ex-husband, a wealthy Detroit strip club entrepreneur named Alan Markovitz, to force him to remove his idea of “karma.” This would be his 12-foot bronze statue of a hand with its middle finger extended, which he bought specifically so it could be positioned on his backyard balcony  to face the neighboring mansion where Tuohy lives with the man who (according to Markovitz) broke up their marriage.

Markovitz seems to have deftly avoided the specifics of Michigan’s public nuisance law, which  law professor Jonathan Turley discusses here. The artwork is carefully positioned so that nobody else in the neighborhood has to see it, just his hated next door neighbors, when they look out their window. It is quiet art, not obtrusive noise, or even a giant sign that says “Fuck you, Lea, and the guy you moved in with!” But in all honesty, there really is no question that this is the message he intends to convey, and is conveying, in a clever, under-stated, expensive and fanatical way. This, in itself, makes the message–which could also be translated as “I really, really hate you people!”—even more intense. Imagine buying a lakefront mansion and a $7000 bronze middle-digit just to make someone else miserable. Now that’s a grudge.* Continue reading →

Is It Ethical To Take, Display and Publish Photos Of Sleeping Sunbathers Without Their Permission?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

That’s what Tadao Cern did for his his art project, entitled Comfort Zone, to “explore how different surroundings can affect people’s behavior and inhibitions.”

When someone takes a photo of you in such circumstances, you suddenly find yourself in a gallery in front of  a giant photo of this, while your husband busts a gut:

Sunbather art

Of course it’s not ethical!

If you need some more hints as to why, read the tags below.

________________________

Pointer: Althouse

Source: The Guardian

Ethics Quote Of The Month: Dr. Jonathan Gruber

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

“We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance. The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return. And that, by my estimate, is about four million people. In return, we’ll have a fixed system where over 30 million people will now for the first time be able to access fairly price and guaranteed health insurance.”

—– Dr. Jonathan Gruber of MIT, an economics professor who is among the designers of the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a Obamacare. He was interviewed by NBC’s Chuck Todd regarding the troubled law’s problems.

lottery

Could it be that the act of getting involved with this administration turns even non-politicians into deceivers and liars? For an economist to talk so deceitfully and manipulatively is distressing. He, of all people, certainly knows how insurance works, and has to work. The insurance company accepts, in essence, wagers from its insured, in the form of premiums, that they will “win” by incurring health care costs that require more funds more than the accumulated “wagers.” The insurance company gambles that it will “win” by the insured remaining relatively healthy, so that the premiums (and whatever investment income they generate) exceed what the company has to pay in medical costs for that individual. The only way a company can keep providing insurance is to win more bets than it loses.

Saying that an insurance company is “discriminating” (in the unjust and biased sense) when it refuses to  accept a wager that is virtually certain to win is like saying that a poker player is engaging in discriminatory conduct by refusing to play with a new player who brings a royal flush to the table with him. It is not discrimination to refuse to lose money, and Gruber knows it. But  like an expert liar, as I must presume he is, he plants a false definition of discrimination at the beginning of his discussion and then treats it as an agreed-upon description of what is occurring. Not selling something to a customer who can’t afford a fair price is not discrimination, and refusing to gamble with someone who is assured of winning is also not discrimination. But discrimination is something that everyone regards as wrong, unfair, and unlawful, so that is how the lawful operation of insurance companies is framed by this clever, learned, dishonest man.

I no longer trust Dr. Gruber, nor should you.

His statement is of additional interest, however, because it starkly defines the unique Progressive definition of “fairness,” by his repeated use of lottery imagery to describe the fact that some people, through no fault of their own, have fewer advantages than others, while those others, often through no virtue of their own, have more resources and opportunities. Progressives regard this as inherently wrong and unfair, and so unfair that it must be remedied by obtrusive government interference. The rest of America regards this as “life.” Continue reading →

Kaboom!*: Will All Those Who Deny The Existance Of An Anti-Conservative Bias In The Mainstream Media Explain….

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments
"Hey, he killed the President---he was a Teabagger, right?"

“Hey, he killed the President—he had to be a Teabagger, right?”

…how it is that both the Washington Post and the New York Times, in the days before  the anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, ran essays that link right-wing, radical, anti-liberal sentiment in 1963 Dallas with today’s conservative political positions? The Post, doing explicitly what the Times does slyly, even makes the connection direct. Its essay is called “Tea party has roots in the Dallas of 1963”—as in the implicit innuendos, ‘people like those in today’s tea party killed JFK’ and thus ‘the people who think like that probably want to kill this President too.’

We’re seeing a lot of liberal despair, nastiness and desperation these days, aren’t we? The instinct seems to be to lash out. Of course, one would think that competent, responsible  and fair editors of the two most prestigious U.S. dailies would read this tripe, hand it back to the authors and say, “Hey, go home, have a drink, and take a nap. It’s not so bad, really. Obamacare may be all right. We’ve got Obama’s back. Now, I’m going to do you a favor and forget you wrote this.”

But no. Continue reading →

Joke Ethics, Jay Leno, And The Rats In The Pantyhose

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Ugh. Come on.

Fortunately, Jay's successor is ready to go...

Fortunately, Jay’s successor is ready to go…

Jay’s ethics alarm was sure malfunctioning during THAT taping. The Golden Rule is made for situations like this. Surely Jay knew about it? Once?

Louann Giambattista, a former American Airlines flight attendant, had sued the airline in June, claiming that American had discriminated against her as a result of her co-workers’ false allegations that she carried pet rats on board planes in her pantyhose and underwear. I get it: it’s an inherently funny story.  But Jay charged over every line of fairness, respect, compassion and common sense when he showed Giambattista’s photo to his national TV audience, and then, in a repeating segment called  “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda,” challenged three guest comics to make their best jokes about the material. They were rolling, too—some examples..

  • “If I were one of those rats, I would’ve been very upset. I prefer not to sit in cooch.”
  • “I don’t understand this woman at all. If she wanted something that creepy in her underwear, she should have hooked up with me.”
  • Giambattista “coulda used what the rest of us ladies use … a Rabbit” (a popular vibrator).

Classy as ever, I see, Jay! Continue reading →

Op-Ed Columnist Kathleen Parker, Case Study: Why A Truthteller Can’t Be A Weenie

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments
You are so NICE, Kathleen! Now please find a another job where that's an asset.

You are so NICE, Kathleen! Now please find a another job where that’s an asset.

“I tend to be generous with the benefit of doubt,” wrote Kathleen Parker, the mildest of conservative Washington Post columnists, in a recent effort at punditry. That’s an understatement, but then, understating is what Parker does. She also excels at writing equivocal near-condemnations that end up in pretzel form and stuck in dead-ends of ambiguity when clarity is called for.

This makes her very useful to the mainstream media, which like to present the illusion of balance while rigging the game. When I see her on a Sunday morning “roundtable” as one of the conservative voices recruited to spar with sharp, aggressive, no-holds barred progressives like Kathleen van der Heuvel  or Van Jones (and a left-biased moderator), I know that the discussion will make any uninformed viewers believe that the truth consists of the midpoint between progressive spin, and Parker smiling and raising her eyebrow. She is, in short, a weenie. A nice weenie, to be sure, but when your job is battling in the marketplace of ideas, unyielding politeness, measured words, and the insistence that all sides have merit—which is often, indeed usually true–results in shorting her side, and giving the contest to the combatant with no such reticence about full-throated advocacy. Parker isn’t wrong. Parker is incompetent at her job, as it has evolved. Thus when she accepted a co-hosting gig in a CNN “Cross-Fire” clone as the Right commentator to Eliot Spitzer’s Left, he completely dominated her (he was also a bully and a boor in the process) until Parker left the show, frustrated and humiliated.

I was horrified recently to discover that Parker had written a column about the President’s non-apology apology that tracked closely with mine (posted the following day), because I dreaded  Ethics Alarms readers concluding that I was cribbing from her. Her column was also notable for its theme, which was signaled by its opening sentences: Continue reading →

Fairness And George Zimmerman

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

squashed 2George Zimmerman is in trouble again, this time from a domestic abuse incident. Presumably the justice system will work, and protect his pregnant girlfriend, as well as give Zimmerman whatever punishment the evidence indicates that he deserves.

In the meantime, the news media should be giving his misadventures back page rather than front page attention. I have heard Zimmerman described in the news media as the new O.J. Simpson, which is a slur (O.J. murdered two people in cold blood, with intent and malice aforethought), but which correctly describes how reporters want to treat him. In truth, he is the new Rodney King. Like Zimmerman, King was a maladjusted individual with poor judgment and a penchant for violence, who nonetheless did not deserve the fate that befell him, and was a reluctant celebrity. After the events and the trials stemming from his arrest (which was warranted), his resisting it (which was wrong) and his brutal beating (which was also wrong), King had more arrests and incidents involving law enforcement. These were news items, but not major ones, and the minor coverage they received was proper and appropriate.

Why is Zimmerman’s arrest the lead on this morning’s cable shows? It is because so many in the media fervently wanted him convicted of murder, and to have an official declaration that he stalked and killed Trayvon Martin out of racial prejudice, although there was, and remains, no evidence this was the case. Now they want to frame his current legal issues as proof that he should have been convicted, which is a biased, warrantless, illogical and unfair assumption. A far more plausible conclusion is that Zimmerman’s conduct and instability today arises from the chaos of his life, which was inflicted on him by a culture-wide, media-assisted effort to turn him into a national villain, and the face of racism in America. Continue reading →

Feel Smarter Now? Don’t.

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

There’s been a lot of gratuitous Harvard-bashing lately, lately being defined as, oh, the last two hundred years or so. The latest plot to embarrass Harvard, my alma mater, came from the campus newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. This also isn’t a new development: I often found the Crimson embarrassing to Harvard back when I was student, when its staff was as often as not on a picket line chanting “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

It’s latest effort was to send a roving reporter out with a video camera to show how ignorant Harvard students are. The question featured: “What is the capital of Canada?”  Here is the video:

Sure enough, none of the students shown could answer the question, except a Canadian. How humiliating! I can only imagine how many people will be flush with pride because they know that the capital city is Ottawa, and Harvard students don’t.

Of course, the video is meaningless. One Crimson reader, a student, wrote in to point out that he was interviewed for the stunt, gave the right answer, and turned up on the cutting room floor. He theorizes that there were others like him, and I wouldn’t be surprised: “Only six out of 19 Harvard students know the capital of Canada” isn’t much of a headline, is it? “Lame” was this student’s verdict for the Crimson’s rigged version of “Jaywalking.” I agree. Continue reading →