fairness

Coming To A Ballot Box Near You: “The Naked Senator Principle”?

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

 

Go Ashley!

Go Ashley!

Ashley Judd, the accomplished Hollywood actress-feminist (and the non-singing sister in the singing Judd family), is seriously contemplating a run for the Kentucky Senate as a Democrat against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. There is a potential problem, however, implies the conservative “Daily Caller.” Judd will become the first serious contender for high national office who has appeared on screen numerous times in various degrees of nudity. The blog’s entertainment editor has done her research with no less an authority than MrSkin.com, and reports that Judd went topless for 1996′s “Normal Life” and went topless and bottomless in 1999′s “Double Jeopardy.” Meanwhile, in both 1996′s “Norma Jean and Marilyn” and 1999′s “Eye of the Beholder,” Judd went full frontal while also baring her comely tush. Ashley had a lesbian sex scene in 2002′s Oscar-nominated “Frida,” and “Mr. Skin”  categorized nine other scenes as “sexy,” and if you can’t trust him on such matters, whom can you trust?

We have learned that former porn stars can’t be middle school teachers or beauty queens, that art teachers can’t be seen painting pictures with their butts (even with paper bags over their heads) and that “the Naked Teacher Principle” decrees that those we entrust with the the shaping of young minds cannot be trusted to do the job if their naughty bits are just a mouse click away. Doesn’t it follow that there is a “Naked Senator Principle”? Surely internet nudity that was previously available at the Multiplex is a disqualification for Congress. Isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? Continue reading →

Not Jackie Robinson, Not Even Shannon Faukner: Lauren Silberman Flunks The Traiblazer Test

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
"Okay, now I kick this funny-shaped brown thingee where, again?"

“Okay, now I kick this funny-shaped brown thingee where, again?”

Call it the trailblazer’s duty. If your objective is to be a trailblazer and break through the obstacle of prejudice in an elite field, your efforts, even if not successful, had better not make the obstacle greater. The epitome of trailblazing excellence is Jackie Robinson, shattering major league baseball’s apartheid  by simultaneously becoming the game’s first black player in decades, and also one of its greatest players of all time. The bottom of the barrel in the trailblazing pantheon is probably Shannon Faulkner, who waged a high-profile legal battle to become the first female cadet at the Citadel, only to enter the school physically and mentally unprepared for the challenge, resulting in an embarrassing failure and rapid withdrawal.

Lauren Silberman, the first female to try out for the National Football League made Faulkner look good. Continue reading →

Is “Double-Dipping” Unethical? How?

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
"Throw one scoop away, you greedy, unethical bastard!"

“Throw one scoop away, you greedy, unethical bastard!”

Over at Trust Across America, Barbara Kimmel has painted a scarlet “U” on the interim superintendent of the Mahwah School District, who has a $167,000 contract as well as an $131,000 annual pension. She finds the woman’s justification for her extravagant enrichment at taxpayer expense through the practice of “double-dipping,” unethical, and is rankled by the woman’s justification, when she says, “I think it’s the way the system is set up. Greater people than me made that decision, I took advantage of it. ”  This is the epitome of unethical reasoning, Kimmel writes:

“As the Commander in Chief of a school district you are responsible for the “culture of the corporation.” Just remember what you said the next time a student shows up in your office and uses the excuse that “everyone else was doing it,” or when one of your faculty members chooses to use all their days off, leaving a classroom full of kids with no teacher.  After all, it’s the way the system is set up. And the NJ taxpayers- apparently they don’t factor in to your ethical barometer at all. You just “took advantage of it (them).”

The executive director of Trust Across America also finds this to be the perfect example of conduct that is legal but not ethical. Is it? I’m dubious, and I’m not comfortable condemning the interim superintendent’s conduct or even her words, though she could have stated her situation a bit less smugly.

Exactly what is unethical here? Is it… Continue reading →

The Corrupting Culture of MSNBC: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments
Get out while your ethics alarms still work, Rachel. They're already breaking down.

Get out while your ethics alarms still work, Rachel. They’re already breaking down.

I’m not interested in criticizing MSNBC for bias. It intends to be biased; serving as the far Left alternative to Fox News is its niche, and was a conscious business choice. What is interesting is observing MSNBC as a case study in how the pressures of a corrupt institutional culture eventually destroy the integrity and ethical judgment of essentially ethical people. From a point where it was merely left-leaning, MSNBC has gradually jettisoned any shred of objectivity, and most remnants of fairness. Much of the transformation was wrought by Keith Olbermann during his fiery tenure, but others have picked up the baton.

The most obviously corrupted have been Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, and Rachel Maddow, all previously well-credentialed and with distinguished service as legitimate and respectable journalists. Under the spell of MSNBC, Matthews has devolved into an angry, race-baiting, smearing hack; the days of grilling Republicans and Democrats with equal fervor on “Hardball” have yielded to shrill, one-sided advocacy. Mitchell’s reporting has gradually abandoned any pretense of neutrality. The greatest tragedy here, however, is Maddow. She is young, smart, articulate and skilled. She doesn’t hide her progressive orientation, but once she appeared to be a rising star, a probing journalist with a point of view, but one committed to being professional and fair within that point of view.

Maddow has joined the MSNBC gun control push, but she has so much company there among the entire span of U.S. journalists that I can hardly blame her that on MSNBC. Misleading video editing has become a staple of her employers, however, as in the disgraceful Neil Heslin “heckling” story, and now Maddow appears to have embraced the technique when it suits her narrative. Last week, to add to the “gun control opponents are heartless and callous monsters” theme that is currently popular in the media, Maddow showed a video of Sen. John McCain at an Arizona town meeting, responding to a woman whose son was killed in the Aurora shooting asserting that assault weapons were responsible and ought to be banned. Maddow introduced the clip by saying,“this happened.” What was then seen and heard was McCain tersely answering the woman by saying she needed “straight talk,” and that the legislation she favored would never pass Congress. [See Maddow’s video here] Continue reading →

The Washington Post Gives Up On Independent Ombudsmen: 1) Too Bad, Because It Needs One Desperately and 2) No Wonder, Since Its Last One Was A Bozo

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Agreed: He's an improvement over the last ombudsman. But the Washington Post readers deserve better.

Agreed: He’s an improvement over the last ombudsman. But the Washington Post readers deserve better.

The Washington Post, which in 1970 became the first newspaper to employ a full-time “independent ombudsman” to explore reader complaints and exercise ethical oversight, has given up on the concept, pronouncing it a device “created decades ago for a different era.” You know–that era when people trusted the news media, and occasionally were given good cause to do so. Now the Post will rely on a “reader representative” named from the newspaper’s staff.

So much for “independence.”

Giving up on ombudsmen after having Patrick B. Pexton filling the role for the last two years is a little like giving up eating after Thanksgiving at my late Aunt Anna’s house. Her green, slimy, Wonder Bread turkey stuffing had to be tasted (but, oh God, never swallowed!) to be believed. Similarly, Pexton was an utter disgrace as an ombudsman, making excuses for unethical Post excursions into partisan hackery, and apparently completely unaware that his own biases mirrored those of his paper, which supposedly placed him in his job to offer perspective, not cover. And just as I seriously considered never again taking the risk of putting food in my mouth after that memorable holiday dinner in 1966, I can understand the Post thinking, as Pexton’s two year contract mercifully expired last week, thinking, “If we can’t do better than this clown, why have the position at all?” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Ken At Popehat

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments
Don't look under that federal prosecutor's bag!

Don’t look under that federal prosecutor’s bag!

Not for the first time by a longshot, lawyer/First Amendment warrior/blogger Ken at the sui generis blog Popehat has earned an Ethics Hero award. This time, his achievement included:

  • Recognizing the widespread perpetration of a double standard that cannot be justified
  • Opposing it, though the legal and journalistic establishments are firmly on the other side, and
  • Remedying the immediate situation through his own efforts.

That’s a good year for most bloggers.

Ken was responding to a story that was widely publicized. Justice Sotomayor  had taken the unusual course of writing a separate opinion as she and her colleagues denied cert (that is, refused to take an appeal) in the case of Bogani Charles Calhoun v. United States, using it to condemn what she called the racist tactics of a federal prosecutor. Among her comments, she wrote, sharply, Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Florida Highway Patrol

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

Huge Manatee

Do you recall the post last week about the brain-dead reaction of various website commenters to the Florida arrest prosecution of a man for harassing a manatee?

If they had been commenting about this incident, they would have been on firm logical and ethical ground.

Anthony Brasfield and his girlfriend shared a carefree, romantic interlude one Sunday morning in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard, as they released a dozen red and silver mylar heart-shaped balloons and watched them rise, up, up, up into the air, then slowly float away, high and far, until they became tiny specks against the blue. They squeezed each other’s hands, smiled, and…got arrested by a Florida highway patrol state trooper on the spot.

Brasfield was charged with the environmental crime of helium pollution, under the Florida Air and Water Pollution Control Act.Aggravating the offense apparently was the fact that endangered marine turtle species and birds make their abode in John U. Lloyd State Park, about 1.5 miles east of the motel. The third-degree felony is punishable by up to five years in prison. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Judge Shecky’s Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
"Here come de judge!"

“Here come de judge!”

Vince A. Sicari is a municipal judge in South Hackensack, N.J. who moonlights as a stand-up comic, and a fairly successful one at that, named Vince August.

He is now sending his lawyer to argue before the New Jersey Supreme Court that he should be allowed to continue his night and weekend job, overturning a 2008 ethics ruling that for a judge to do stand-up creates  “an appearance of bias, partiality or impropriety or otherwise negatively affect the dignity of the judiciary,” in violation of the Judicial Conduct Code. The issue is complicated by the fact that municipal judges almost have to moonlight as something—they earn only $13,000 a year. Sicari argues that his comedian gigs generate the bulk of his income, and that the two careers are separate. He says doesn’t make jokes about his cases or lawyers, nor sensitive issues involving race and gender, and on the bench he is as serious as, well, a judge.

Thus, your Ethics Quiz of the Day gives you an opportunity to judge “Judge Shecky”:

Is it ethical for a judge to moonlight as a stand-up comic? Continue reading →

And One More…UPDATE: “Cheated Out Of Their Final Bows: Hollywood Snubs Its Own At The Oscars…”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Yesterday I attempted in a small way to make up for the injustice perpetrated on their own by the Academy of Motion Picture sciences, by noting the passing of ten talented and worthy film actors who were unfairly and inexplicably left off the Oscar’s “In Memoriam” feature. I was afraid that I missed someone important, and sure enough, I did. And it was…

Susan Tyrell (1945-2012)

susan-tyrrell

Leaving out Tyrell was especially callous by the Academy (not that dissing the others was not), because, first of all, she was a previous nominee for Best Supporting Actress (for John Huston’s “Fat City,” made in 1972), and second, because Tyrell had battled courageously against multiple health issues while doggedly trying to pursue her craft.  In 2000, she lost both legs as a result of a rare blood disease, but stayed active, performing in seated roles and voice parts to the end. Susan Tyrell was an electric performer, a veteran of Broadway and Off-Broadway, fearless, quirky, and unforgettable.

Except, apparently, by her colleagues in Hollywood.

I’m sorry I missed you first time around, Susan.

Cheated Out Of Their Final Bows: Hollywood Snubs Its Own At The Oscars, And Worse Than Ever

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Oscars

Once, the excuse that routinely issued from the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences when a significant film actor was omitted from the annual “In Memoriam” segment at the Oscars—“There just wasn’t enough time!”-–seemed almost plausible. It was still a lousy and dishonest excuse, don’t get me wrong: in a broadcast that routinely approaches four hours and wastes time like it is money in Washington, we are supposed to believe that there aren’t three seconds to give a proper send-off to the likes of Harry Morgan (last year) or Farrah Fawcett (the previous one)? That excuse won’t fly at all now, however, as some diabolical deal with the behind the camera members, the warped priorities of the Oscar show’s Broadway musical nerd producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, and the final decisions regarding who would be featured in the movie industry’s public goodbye being made by, apparently, throwing darts at a dartboard combined to produce the most extensive and egregious snubs within memory.

This is a television broadcast and tailored for the public audience, after all. The Academy gives its technical awards in a separate private ceremony: wouldn’t that be the  place to bid a respectful farewell to the seemingly endless list of deceased publicity agents, make-up artists,movie executives and key grips whose completely unrecognizable faces and names were paraded before us last night, often with out of context quotes that made no sense at all? Then, guaranteeing that the “we ran out of time!” alibi would be risible, the segment’s editors chose a non-actor for the prestigious final place on the death list, composer Marvin Hamlisch, as an excuse to drag Barbra Streisand into the proceedings. I appreciate Hamlisch’s achievements, but his movie credits were not so extensive as to justify the honor (we are basically talking about one Academy Award-winning song, “The Way We Were,” and his arrangements of Scott Joplin’s music in “The Sting”), and the award show’s misbegotten “theme” of movie music was not sufficient justification to place a non-actor in the position of highest honor.

Meanwhile, the following actors, all who made significant contributions to American film in their careers, were cheated out of their final bow, and we, the film-going audience, were cheated of our chance to remember them, and say goodbye. It was a disgrace.

Ethics Alarms isn’t the Academy, but here, like last year, is its salute to the faces and careers Oscar forgot: Continue reading →