fairness

Ethics Quiz: Grade The Misbehaving Celebrities!

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Our subjects:

Oh, Bill...you're such a scream!

Oh, Bill…you’re such a scream!

Bill Maher, bad boy comic, political satirist and host of HBO’s “Real Time”

Maher’s fans

Ron Futrelle, former sportscaster and Las Vegas media personality

Sarah Palin, former governor, VP candidate, Fox commentator and conservative icon

All clashed over a joke made by Maher during a stand-up gig, and your challenge is to decide who gets the lowest ethics grade. Here’s what happened: Futrelle was in the audience for Maher’s show in  Las Vegas. Maher made a joke about Palin’s son, Trig, who has Down Syndrome. According to Futrelle, the joke  upset him, as well as the fact that the audience appeared to enjoy Maher’s using Palin’s innocent and mentally challenged child as a comedy topic, and laughed heartily. Futrelle began heckling Maher, eventually prompting an annoyed audience member to remind him that he was not the attraction, and suggest that he shut his gob. Futrelle persisted, and when confronted by security, left.

Through Futrelle’s blog’s account of his experience, Brietbart and the miracle of social media, Mama Grizzly Palin learned that her young son had been (again) converted into joke-fodder, and tweeted her reaction to Maher:

“Hey bully, on behalf of all kids whom you hatefully mock in order to make yourself feel big, I hope one flattens your lily white wimpy a#*.”

Our grading scale:

A  Exemplary ethical conduct.

B  Ethical and appropriate conduct that could have been better executed.

C  Acceptable conduct according to reasonable social norms

D Unethical conduct

F  Despicable conduct

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is, therefore, to accept this challenge:

Give Maher, Maher’s audience, Futrelle and Palin their ethics grades. Continue reading →

Supreme Court Justice Powell’s Ethical Dilemmas

/ Jack Marshall / 39 Comments
Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell

Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell

The New York Times, anticipating next year’s Supreme Court consideration of the gay marriage problem, tells a fascinating story about the late Justice Lewis Powell, who was the swing vote in the 1986 case of  Bowers v. Hardwick, which was overturned in 2003, upholding a Georgia law outlawing sodomy.

During the consideration of the case, Powell told his colleagues that he had never met a homosexual, though in reality he had more than one gay law clerk during his tenure, and according to at least one of the former clerks, knew it.  (Powell even quizzed one of them about the mechanics of gay sex.) The reason he told his fellow Justices an untruth, the theory goes, is that he knew there was a stigma in the legal profession and in Washington connected to being gay, and he wanted to protect his law clerks.

Yet Powell, after flip-flopping on Bowers, finally came down on the side of a state’s right to make homosexual sex a crime. Continue reading →

Self-Webshaming At Dunkin’ Donuts

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

(Watch this after you’ve read the post. Kind of like dessert..)

The ethical considerations one should review when pondering whether to engage in webshaming nicely evaporate when the subject has chosen, though unwittingly, to webshame herself. Thus Ethics Alarms has no qualms about presenting for your consideration, revulsion, and rejection if she ever applies for a job from you, one Taylor Chapman, a 27-year-old woman who lives in the vicinity of Fort Lauderdale. She eagerly and proudly posted to her Facebook page the phone-video above, of her abusing an impeccable Dunkin’ Donuts employee, annoying a customer, and making serial statements with signature significance—no decent human being would utter even one of these appalling comments in public unless suffering from a brain trauma or extreme intoxication.

Chapman was angry because she and her friends had not received a receipt along with their large drive-thru order, and angrily (and abusively, based on Chapman’s manner, but we can only guess) demanded to receive their order free of charge, as Dunkin’ Donuts now promises as part of a service pledge. The employee handling the order apparently did not know how to proceed, and told the group that they would have to come by the store and see her manager the next day.

[An aside: That’s not good customer service, DD. If you make a guarantee that is supposed to mean anything, you have an obligation to train employees how to deliver on it. Telling customers who have not received the promised service that they have to come back to the establishment another day to receive what they are owed is unreasonable and a bait-and switch. I would have said to forget it. I would have written a letter. I would not have done what Chapman did, and I don’t know anyone who would.]

What Chapman did was to return the next day and demand her free order, tossing obscenities at the extraordinarily polite and unflappable employee (his name is Abid Adar, and you should send him flowers) on duty while she recorded the encounter as if it were a health department sting. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Butt Slap In Court!

/ Jack Marshall / 115 Comments

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Once again the issue at hand is judicial restraint, as another unfortunate individual incurred judge’s anger with inappropriate courtroom conduct and paid a heavy price. The question is, was it too heavy?

The object of robed wrath this time  was the former NFL star Chad Johnson, better known as Chad Ochocinco,  in court for violating his parole arising from a domestic abuse conviction (he head-butted his wife—nice), which also ended his NFL career.  His lawyers had worked out a plea deal giving Johnson community service and requiring him to attend  counseling sessions, and the judge had approved it.  But then Broward County Circuit Judge Kathleen McHugh asked the athlete if he was satisfied with his lawyer’s performance,  and in response, Ochocinco slapped his lawyer on the butt. The entire courtroom laughed.

Judges don’t usually like to hear laughter in their courtrooms, unless they’re telling the jokes.

Judge McHugh proved to be no exception. “‘I don’t know that you’re taking this whole thing seriously,” she said. “I just saw you slap your attorney on the backside. Is there something funny about this? ‘The whole courtroom was laughing. I’m not going to accept these plea negotiations. This isn’t a joke.’’ Johnson tried to pacify her, but it didn’t work. She ordered him jailed, and the deal cancelled.

Thus, your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz is:

Was Judge McHugh unfair?

I think so. This was the worst possible combination for Johnson: domestic abuse conviction, a female judge, physical contact, though obviously playful, and laughter from spectators. Remove any of those factors, and I think the ex-player gets his deal. The judge over-reacted.

I’m betting she lets him cool in the cooler while she cools off herself, and reinstates the deal.

Or do you think levity when domestic violence is involved is especially obnoxious, and deserves what Chad O got?

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Facts: The Inquisitor

Graphic: Adriatique

Bad Valedictorian Ethics, Round #2: The Cut-Off Mic

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

This one is easy.

I would have pulled the plug too.

I would have pulled the plug too.

At  Joshua (Tex.) High School, a Valedictorian, in this case one Remington Reimer, agreed to deliver school-approved text and nothing else as his graduation speech. Following the unethical example of double-crossing Valedictorian Roy Costner, recently slobbered over by Fox News as if he were a hero (imagine if Costner had torn up his promised speech and began bashing the Tea Party—do you think Megyn Kelly would have been kissing his shoes on the air then?), Reimer decided to grandstand as well, changing his speech from what he had assured the school he would be delivering. But while he broke his promise, the school, to its credit, did not. He had been told that if he pulled a Costner, his microphone would be turned off. As the wags at Fark neatly put it,  “If you go off-script during your valedictorian speech and mention that you were threatened with having your microphone cut if you were to indeed go off-script, then your microphone just might get cut off for going off-script.” That’s what happened to Remington.

Good. Continue reading →

Still A Jerk After All These Years: Jimmy Connors Takes Revenge On Chris Evert

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments
"Chris! Chris! Run away! What are you thinking?"

“Chris! Chris! Run away! What are you thinking?”

Why anyone would want to read the autobiography of former tennis bad boy Jimmy Connors is beyond me. When he was playing, Connors personified poor sportsmanship and a confrontational attitude toward authority and the world in general. The only cause women’s tennis icon Chris Evert ever gave me to doubt her character was the fact that she actually was romantically involved with such a creep. She’s paying the price now.

In his new tell-all memoirs “The Outsider,” published this week, Connors decided to settle scores with Evert for the reason for the disintegration of their engagement. He writes, vaguely but pointedly, that Evert became pregnant during their relationship and had an abortion without consulting him, though, he says, he was prepared to “let nature take its course.” “Well, thanks for letting me know. Since I don’t have a say in the matter, I guess I am just here to help,” is what Connors says he told Evert over the phone, shortly before they broke up.

As despicable celebrity breaches of confidence and privacy go, this may not be the worst, but it is cruel and ugly. Continue reading →

Bad Valedictorian Ethics In Pickens County

/ Jack Marshall / 143 Comments

People have to learn to stop applauding unethical conduct.

Hijacking in progress.

Hijacking in progress.

Roy Costner IV, honored with the opportunity to give the valedictory speech to fellow graduates of Liberty High School in Pickens County, South Carolina, decided to defy the School District’s decision to exclude prayers at graduation ceremonies.  He began his prepared and approved  graduation speech, then tore it up dramatically and segued into the Lord’s Prayer, to the apparent delight of many in attendance.

Wrong.

Roy accepted the invitation to give the speech under known conditions. He submitted text, supposedly in good faith. The school trusted him to meet his commitments. Instead, he hijacked the graduation ceremony for his own religious agenda. Continue reading →

Sarah Murnaghan’s Lungs: Unfortunately, Sebelius Is Right

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
Secretary Not-A-Death-Panel

Secretary Not-A-Death-Panel

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is refusing to intervene so that ten-year-old Sarah Murnaghan can jump ahead in line to get the urgent lung transplant that will save her life. Naturally, Sebelius is being attacked as  heartless, and conservatives are having a field day equating her decision with Sarah Palin’s infamous “death panels” characterization of Obamacare.

The manner in which organs are allocated for transplants is justly controversial, obviously flawed, and arguably unethical. Any real person whom the system will fail, however, instantly becomes sympathetic beyond the mere faceless numbers she is being compared to. Sebelius is quite correct: if the girl is moved ahead in line, someone else won’t get lungs, for this is musical chairs and a zero sum game.  If she was to make an exception to the policy for this case, it would be impossible for her to deny the next case, and soon Kathleen Sebelius would indeed become a one-woman death panel.

That’s not what she is doing now. What she is doing is adhering to an existing policy in which there are winners and losers, and the losers die, until the policy is reviewed and perhaps changed for the better. Her decision isn’t cold-hearted, cruel or unkind. It is responsible, fair and courageous. The alternative is to have no policy at all.

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Source: NBC News

Now THAT’S An Ad Hominem Attack

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

"How do I rebut your argument? Here's how, you, brain-damaged Hell-spawn!"

“How do I rebut your argument? Here’s how, you, brain-damaged Hell-spawn!”

David Plouffe at least has done something useful, if not ethical.

We get a lot of accusations here—aimed at me and also between warring commenters—of using ad hominem attacks. Ad hominem attacks are indeed unethical, not because of the negative descriptions of the target they involve, which may well be accurate and fair, but because they are a dishonest and unfair debate tactic. The motive behind a true ad hominem attack is to avoid dealing with the substance of what an adversary claims, argues or asserts by attacking the person, character or background of the adversary.  The intention is to avoid the implications of a fact or illuminating opinion by asserting: “This person is bad, so don’t listen to what he has to say.”  It is a logical fallacy, of course. Whether an individual is bad or not doesn’t change the facts; a bad person may have performed a brilliant analysis, uncovered the wisdom of the ages, or uncovered the key perception that solves enduring mysteries. It is unethical for one seeking to rebut the argument to attack the arguer as if it’s the same thing. When successful, ad hominem attacks deflect the real debate and turn it into a debate about something else, focusing on the original speaker, now feeling the need to defend his honor rather than his position. Continue reading →

The White House Is Lying To Us. Again. Why?

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
David Plouffe...or Dan Pfeiffer...it doesn't matter, really...the voice is the same.

David Plouffe…or Dan Pfeiffer…it doesn’t matter, really…the voice is the same.

Nobody of sound mind who listened to top White House advisor (he’s the current David Axelrod) David Plouffe spin like the Wheel of Fortune on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos could continue to deny that the White House, a.k.a Barack Obama, is determined to obscure every thing and anything it can that might help us assign accountability for the Administration’s negligent oversight and management, if not outright abuse of power. The smoking gun was that this pre-programmed, trained and paid mouthpiece said this:

PLOUFFE: Well, I’d say first of all, you know back in the previous — or the prior administration, the NAACP was investigated after Republican members of Congress asked for it. But there’s been no suggestion — the independent — the prosecutor looked at this — excuse me, the inspector general, and said there was no politics involved in this. No one has indicated at all that the White House is involved. The IRS director was appointed at — under President Bush, served under both presidents attested. No one from — so, this was not a political pursuit.

I don’t know if it was “a political pursuit” or not, but I do know that when the people in power desperately don’t want their fingerprints to be found on something potentially sinister like this, I am more suspicious than I would be if they just let the facts out: Continue reading →