fairness

Ethics Quiz: Who Is More Unethical…the Coward Who Left His Girlfriend and Child to Die, Or the Girlfriend Who Agreed To Marry Him Anyway?

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Would an ethical woman marry George?

I am a great fan of the old Seinfeld show in general and the George Costanza character in particular (all ethicists love George, who  exemplifies how messed up a life without ethical instincts can be), but I didn’t laugh at the episode when he smelled smoke at kids’ birthday party and trampled the children as he escaped in panic from the apartment. And that was just a TV sitcom; the actions of Jamie Rohrs, the Colorado man who ran out of the Aurora movie theater when James Holmes started shooting and drove away in his truck, leaving behind his girlfriend and her two young children—one of whom was fathered by him— go beyond unfunny to revolting. Luckily, and no thanks to Rohrs, Patricia Legaretta and her kids did not die, because a stranger, Jarell Brooks, helped them escape the theater and the massacre.

Then comes the rest of the story, revealed to Piers Morgan on CNN: after his act of aggravated cowardice, Rohrs had the gall to propose to the mother of his child, and Legaretta, incredibly, accepted.

Your Ethics Quiz:

Who is more unethical—Legaretta, or Costanza, er, Rohrs? Continue reading →

Hypocrites of the Year: The NCAA

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Emmert: “Never again will the NCAA be blamed for the results of the culture we encourage and support. We hope.” (Or words to that effect.)

What’s wrong with the NCAA’s epic sanctions against Penn State in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky pederasty scandal? I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I’ve concluded that the answer is “Just about everything.”

Most of the focus of the media and pundits have been on the “punishing the innocent” complaint. As a general rule, I detest aversion to punishing the innocent as a justification for inadequately punishing the guilty or otherwise avoiding necessary steps to address problems; it’s a rationalization for encouraging unethical, exploitive, illegal and even deadly conduct. This toxic rationale has caused incalculable harm across the globe; it currently abets illegal immigration, out-of-wedlock childbearing, and the international crimes of dictators. The United States, within our lifetimes, may drive itself into financial collapse by adopting the theory that it is unfair and unethical to “punish” the expectant beneficiaries of entitlements that the nation can no longer afford by reducing  benefits, or by taxing wealthy citizens who opposed the profligate spending in the first place. As Ethics Bob writes in his post about the Penn State sanctions,

“Accountability for wrongdoing often brings down the innocent along with the guilty. Think about the workers at Enron, Arthur Anderson, or MCI-Worldcom, who lost their jobs when their bosses’ malfeasance destroyed their companies… there is no way of punishing the guilty without harming people close to, or dependent on them. Even a mass murderer–when he is sent away his mother suffers along with him. When Al Qaeda militants are killed, their family members often die with them.”

Bob isn’t making an invalid “everybody does it,” argument, but a practical, “that’s the way the world works” argument.  If we believe in accountability, we have to accept the fact that the innocent will often be collateral damage. It isn’t fair, but this is utilitarianism at its most persuasive. Allowing wrongdoers to  prosper is ethically worse.

If the NCAA sanctions against Penn State were otherwise appropriate, I wouldn’t have a problem with the collateral damage. They aren’t appropriate, however. The sanctions are unethical. Continue reading →

The Power To Ignore

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

“And now the news…”

The news media’s choice of news stories, which to highlight, which to ignore, which to bury, has never seemed more suspect. NBC has made heroic efforts not to cover the Fast and Furious scandal; the Washington Post made a painted-over slab of rock at a hunting lodge a front page story to embarrass Gov. Rick Perry, and now the latest madman shooting tragedy is being mined for all the anti-gun sentiment that can be stimulated by human interest stories about the victims and solemn grandstanding statements by politicians. Meanwhile, the fact that every psychologist experienced in such matters cautions that publicizing such shootings encourages future massacres carries no weight with journalists at all. They will lecture us on the panacea of gun control but refuse to restrain themselves from giving homicidal maniacs exactly what they seek…fame. Ironically, the anti-gun slanted news coverage may ultimately be more responsible for the next Aurora than lax gun laws.

Journalists also will avoid confusing the public with stories that suggest that the issue of gun violence is more complex than they would like to acknowledge.

A week ago, 71-year-old Samuel Williams and his wife were  with 34 other patrons at a Jacksonville, Florida internet café.  Duwayne Henderson, 19, and Davis Dawkins, also 19, burst in on the scene, Henderson with a handgun and Dawkins with a baseball a bat. They announced their intent to rob the café and its customers, prompting Williams, a concealed carry permit holder, to pull out his .380-caliber handgun, drop to a semi-crouching position, and open fire on the would-be robbers. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The Internal Revenue Service

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Question:

What is the monetary value of something that can’t be sold?

Answer:

Nothing.

That’s an easy one.

So why is the IRS claiming that the heirs of the New York art dealer Ileana Sonnabend  owe $29.2 million in taxes on an art work that U.S. prevents from ever being converted into cash? Continue reading →

Worst Sequel Ever: “Cheer Your Rapist II”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

The Penn State disease is not restricted to colleges.  Now there comes a lawsuit showing how ugly it is when the contagion hits a high school.

The Southern Columbia Tigers are a real high school football power in Pennsylvania, and naturally the Southern Columbia Area School District and Southern Columbia Area High School Principal James A. Becker wouldn’t do anything to change that…like, for example, barring two rapists from playing on the team when they were so good at scoring the legal way, as well as…well, you know.

A law suit filed by “C.S.” in Federal Court alleges that the school district and high school principal protected two star student athletes after it had been proven in court that they had sexually assaulted the girl, a student at the school as well. From the complaint: Continue reading →

Protecting Rapists and Savanah Dietrich’s Vigilante Tweet

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

Savanah Dietrich, teen rape victim facing charges for refusing to protect the privacy of her rapists,

One of the Ethics Alarms principles that many find infuriating is my position that violating the law is inherently unethical. Like all rules, this one doesn’t make sense in all cases, and one of them has surfaced in Louisville, Kentucky.

Savanah Dietrich, a 17-year-old rape victim, was infuriated when her teenaged rapists managed to negotiate a lenient plea bargain for sexually assaulting her and circulating pictures of the incident to friends. She took to Twitter, named them and described what they did to her, despite being under a confidentiality order from the judge in the case. Her attackers were juveniles, and the court records were sealed. Now Dietrich is facing a jail sentence longer than her rapists, because their attorneys have asked a Jefferson District Court judge to hold her in contempt. Continue reading →

Justice for the Nicholas Brothers [Corrected (1/27/25)]

/ Jack Marshall / 32 Comments

At the Sun Valley Lodge, there is a television station devoted to playing the 1941 film “Sun Valley Serenade” on a loop. It is a genuinely awful movie, starring John Payne of “Miracle on 34th Street” fame, Norwegian ice skater Sonia Henie, and Milton Berle, although it does show the famous ski resort in the days when guests used to be towed around the slopes on their skis by horses. Last time I was in Sun Valley to give a presentation, I watched about half the film in disconnected bites, since I never can sleep on such trips. This time I finally saw the whole thing. At about 3 AM, as Glenn Miller was leading his band in the longest version of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” in history, Fayard and Harold Nicholas suddenly flipped onto the screen, and Sun Valley Serenade briefly went from fatuous to immortal.

If your reflex response to that last sentence was “WHO??“, you are part of the reason for this post, and also in the vast and deprived majority of Americans. As I went among my future audience of lawyers and their spouses yesterday morning, happily informing them that the terrible movie playing around the clock in their rooms included the dance team called “the unforgettable Nicholas Brothers” in more than one tribute, I learned that none of them had any idea what I was talking about, and many of these individuals were old enough to have been able to see Fayard and Harold in a theater. The Nicholas Brothers were, you see, the greatest tap-dancers who ever lived, and the most amazing dance team that ever will be. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: ABC’s Brian Ross

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Now that I think about it, nobody gets shot in Pixar movies. I wonder if movies about violence vigilantes need to be regulated…

He just couldn’t help himself. Learning of the horrible Batman theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, ABC reporter Brian Ross got on the air and reported a possible “tea party link” with the killer, James Holmes, and if you don’t think this sent a thrill up his leg, I have some gold mine shares to sell you. Anything to smear conservatives: why was he looking at tea party web pages, any more than PETA sites, or Parcheesi fan sites? Because, you see, the tea parties are violent—don’t you remember? They inspired that guy to shoot Gaby Giffords! Where else would you expect to find a madman killer?

It was fantasy, of course, and Ross and ABC duly apologized, but never mind: it worked. Confirmation bias is a sure thing. I was in a Food Court at LAX today, and heard someone at the table next to me eating similar unidentifiable swill say, “Did you hear? One of those tea party guys shot all those people!” I finally got to my room in Sun Valley (it was easier to get to Mongolia than Sun Valley) to check what she was talking about. So you see, Brian? Mission accomplished!

Others are politicizing the Aurora shooting in only slightly less outrageous ways, mostly with the sadly predictable rush of anti-gun advocates to point to the slaughter and say, “See? Guns bad.” Then comes the related cognitive dissonance trick, linking gun rights to automatic weapons to madmen and criminals using such weapons to the tragic deaths resulting from said use, hence Republicans and conservatives are really allied with killers and murderers, which gives us some insight into their true character.

I’m sure Brian Ross approves.

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Facts: Huffington Post

Graphic: Shout Omaha

Ethics Hero: Sen. John McCain

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

It’s good to have the old maverick doing what he does best.

“Bachmann!”

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota’s shame, used her oxymoronic presence on the House Intelligence Committee to argue in a June letter to the State Department and a letter this week to fellow Minnesota Representative Keith Ellison, that  Huma Abedin, the top aide of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, may be a security risk  because Abedin’s late father, mother, and brother had or have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Abedin’s position, Bachmann suggested  ominously, ‘‘affords her routine access to the secretary and policy-making.’’ Her letter to Ellison was signed by  five other Republicans: Reps. Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Thomas Rooney of Florida and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia.

Sen McCain angrily took to the Senate floor to call this example of ethnic profiling and Muslim bigotry what it is: Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Ice Child” and Staging Theft Ethics”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Arts blogger Jeremy Barker contributes a provocative counter-argument to my stance in the controversy over a D.C. based theater company that borrowed/adapted/stole an original production concept from a New York company without attribution or permission.  My position was (and is) that no rule, principle or law designed to discourage such conduct could avoid suffocating legitimate adaptations, mutations and new uses of  ideas devised by others, with devastating effects on creative expression. This is one of the great ethics controversies in the world of art, and I am glad to see it back in the ring.

Here is Jeremy’s Comment of the Day on my post, “The Ice Child” and Staging Theft Ethics.

“Jack–I just came across this piece and wanted to respond because I think, in quoting me, you ignore part of my argument, and I’m curious if you can clarify your perspective.

“Specifically, I feel like your caveated argument in favor of Factory 449 is based on the sense that it’s common practice to borrow such design or staging elements in text-based theater. I agree, it is. But if we were speaking of a specific author’s text, I think most commenters would have swung the other way. We tend to protect the playwright’s text in a different fashion than we do a design concept. A writer could be accused on plagiarism for either (a) imitating a distinctive plot, or (b) appropriating the same words. Yes, we can argue about what is an acceptable form of “referencing” (no one thinks Arthur Laurents wrote Romeo & Juliet, for instance) and what crosses the line. Often, this applies to how the text is used. But we understand and appreciate a playtext as a protected, distinctive thing.

“Indeed, I’d argue that this logic, which privileges the text, is the basis on which people in this thread are defending Factory 449′s appropriation. Since it wasn’t the same “play,” by which they mean “play text,” it’s not really the same thing, ergo, it’s not ripping someone off wholesale. Continue reading →