fairness

How Extreme Ideology Makes You An Insufferable, Mean-Spirited Jerk: Case Study…William Ayers

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Thank you for your service, and of course you can board the airplane before I do. By the way, Bill Ayers says you don't work.

Barack Obama’s friend Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, the now retired terrorists, found their way to Occupy Wall Street yesterday, which figures, and these murderous Sixties socialists were welcomed as heroes by the OWS crowd, which figures even more.

In the course of their joint rant about how doomed and terrible the United States is, Ayers, who apparently resented not being in the first group to board a recent commercial flight by virtue of his first class ticket, posed this question:

“We’ve got a militarized society and its become so common sense that, getting on the airplane coming out here, the first thing they said was let all the, uhh, let all the ya know, uniformed military get on first and thank you for your service.  And I said as I always do: let’s let the teachers and nurses get on first and thank them for their service.  I mean, why is it that everything military has got to be good and everything that has to do with actual work, real work, not jobs, real work for people, that stuff gets discouraged and marginalized?” Continue reading →

Lawrence O’Donnell and the Missing Religious Bigotry Ethics Alarm at MSNBC

/ Jack Marshall / 47 Comments

Really?

Religious bigotry? Hey, whatever works!

Is this really how it is going to be? Are the media protectors of President Obama really going to stoop to anti-Mormon bigotry to attack Mitt Romney?  First New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow writes disparagingly about the Mormon “magic underpants” with nary a peep of  protest or discipline from his bosses at the New York Times, and now MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell spews out this last night as Romney’s three primary wins were being tallied:

“Mormonism was created by a guy in upstate New York in 1830 when he got caught having sex with the maid and explained to his wife that God told him to do it. Forty-eight wives later, Joseph Smith’s lifestyle was completely sanctified in the religion he invented to go with it. Which Mitt Romney says he believes.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: What To Do With a Bad Seed?

/ Jack Marshall / 59 Comments

A horror story from Cowlitz County, Washington:

Little Rhoda didn't know what she was doing was bad! Suuuuuure she didn't...

When she was was 11 years old, Cassandra Ann Kennedy decided that her father didn’t love her enough, and that she would have a happier life if he wasn’t around any more. So that she made up a story that her father had raped her, told police, and..voila! In 2002 her father was convicted of rape and  sent to 15 years in a Washington state prison.

In January of 2012, Cassandra, now 23,  confessed that it was all a lie. “I did a horrible thing,” Cassandra told detectives. “It’s not OK to sit and be locked in this horrible place for something you didn’t do. It’s just not right.”

Figured that out all by yourself, did you, Cassie? Continue reading →

Diversity Ethics: “The Ethicist” vs. The Diversity Bullies

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Here you are, Ariel—the perfect, diverse, five-person panel!

Ariel Kaminer, the New York Times’ author of “The Ethicist” column, is being pummeled by criticism by people other than me, for a change. Her offense? Let one of the critics, Kathleen Geier of the Washington Monthly, speak for herself:

“Ethicist columnist Ariel Kaminer has announced a contest inviting omnivores to write essays about why it is ethical to eat meat. The problem? The panel of luminaries she’s selected to judge the contest are ethicists Peter Singer and Andrew Light, food writers Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman, and novelist Jonathan Safer Foer. All, as you may notice, white dudes…for heaven’s sake, by now it should be second nature for every single person who’s in the position of hiring someone, or putting together a panel or committee, to make an effort to include women and people of color whenever possible. That’s just basic human decency.”

Then we have bioethicist Francis Keisling, who weighed in with an indignant protest to the Times ombudsman, writing in part,

“…Finally, what would we expect from the Times and its columnists and editors when a mistake is pointed out in plenty of time for it to be corrected? Does having a column in the Times mean never having to say you are sorry? Ms Kaminer knew no women of comparable stature to the men she chose. She has been clearly shown she was wrong and names provided. All she needed to do was to say woops, let me add three of four women, people of color etc. It would also seem something editors should step in and make happen.”

Welcome, Ariel, to the world of the diversity bullies! Continue reading →

Ethics Train Wreck Update: Martin-Zimmerman Reflections

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Is it only fair to show one version of the victim?

As the NAACP joined with Al Sharpton today to lead a protest of thousands in Sanford Florida, some notes on recent ethics carnage and confusion in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s shooting death:

  • Roslyn Brock, who chairs the national board of directors for the NAACP, perfectly illustrated  ignorance of the justice system and short-sightedness that has characterized this whole, sorry incident. “We come to make sense of this great tragedy and the entire world grieves with us,” she said . “When the Sanford police did not arrest George Zimmerman, they essentially placed the burden of proof on a dead young man who cannot speak for himself.” But of course, as every American should know, that is where the burden of proof lies. The alleged victim in a death is represented by the state, and it is the state that has the burden of proof of guilt as well as having the burden to justify an arrest. It is not Zimmerman’s responsibility to prove his innocence, though that is what the un-American process engineered by race-activists and the media has come to. Does the NAACP really want to take the position that there should be a presumption of guilt in criminal matters? Or just in circumstances where the victim is an African-American and the suspect is not?
  • While CNN has taken the lead in trying to present a balanced picture of the controversy, NBC, mostly through MSNBC, has thoroughly disgraced itself by essentially taking an advocacy position on Zimmerman’s guilt, even to the point of doctoring his 911 call to make it seem clear that this was a case of racial profiling. “This guy looks like he’s up to no good…He looks black.” is how Zimmerman’s 911 call was played on the  “Today Show” and relayed on MSNBC’s website. The actual conversation was this: Continue reading →

It’s You, Keith.

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The news that The Angry Man of the Self-Righteous Left, Keith Olbermann, was fired by Al Gore’s Current TV was hardly news at all, since most of us had entered a pool on when Olbermann would get jettisoned from his latest gig. The predictable episode does have an ethics lesson for all of us, however, that involves the virtues of accountability, humility, honesty and contrition.

Olbermann, true to form, attacked his former employers and blamed them for his exit, writing  via Twitter…

“…I’d like to apologize to my viewers and my staff for the failure of Current TV. Editorially, Countdown had never been better. But for more than a year I have been imploring Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to resolve our issues internally, while I’ve been not publicizing my complaints, and keeping the show alive for the sake of its loyal viewers and even more loyal staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract. It goes almost without saying that the claims against me in Current’s statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently. To understand Mr. Hyatt’s “values of respect, openness, collegiality and loyalty,” I encourage you to read of a previous occasion Mr. Hyatt found himself in court for having unjustly fired an employee. That employee’s name was Clarence B. Cain. In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. For now, it is important only to again acknowledge that joining them was a sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one. That lack of judgment is mine and mine alone, and I apologize again for it.”

This, of course, is not really an apology. It’s not an apology when your message is, “I’m sorry my employers are unethical slobs who didn’t appreciate the excellent job I was doing.

Keith Olbermann has either been fired or quit under acrimonious circumstances in engagements with, count them, five broadcast organizations: ESPN, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and now Current TV. This, despite being obviously talented and often getting excellent ratings. Olbermann is a smart guy, and yet even now, his reaction seems to be, “Why, oh, why, do people keep treating me so badly?”

It’s you, Keith! Continue reading →

Ethics Flashback: A Letter From Kurt Vonnegut

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Mr. Vonnegut

[From the lovely website Letters of Note comes the memory  of this, a letter sent on November 16, 1973 to the Chairman of the Drake, North Dakota, School Board by the late author Kurt Vonnegut. The Chairman, Charles McCarthy, (a name evoking, appropriately, both the rights-flattening Senator of “Have you no decency?”  fame and the dummy) had been outraged that a teacher at the high school had used Vonnegut’s classic novel, “Slaughter-House Five,” in class, and with the support of his board, saw that all the copies of the book purchased were burned in the school’s furnace, followed by others that he deemed “obscene.” Vonnegut, whose novels teem with ethical themes, especially the importance of kindness, learned about the book-burning from news reports, and wrote the following correspondence.

Apparently he received no reply.]

“Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Day: The Editorial Board of the Washington Post

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

“Sadly, even before the sessions on health-care reform had ended, some liberals were preemptively trying to delegitimize a potential defeat at the court. If the justices strike down the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, they said, they will prove themselves partisan, activist and, essentially, intellectually corrupt. We share in the disappointment that the justices on both sides of their ideological divide are, for the most part, so predictable. That’s not, in the ideal world, how judging is supposed to work. But we also think there’s a kind of cynicism, or at least intellectual laziness, in asserting that this is an easy or obvious call — that no justice could possibly strike down the mandate out of honest, reasoned conviction.”

—The Editors of the Washington Post in this morning’s superb, balanced and fair editorial entitled “Civics Lesson From

the Supreme Court.”  The Post leaves no question that it supports the individual mandate as necessary—at least now, after the fact of

"Biased political hacks!! The ones who disagree with us, that is..."

Obamacare’s passage into law—because “no American should go without health care, and that society as a whole should be willing to pitch in toward that end.”  But the editors also properly chastise the cynical and cowardly political calculations by the bill’s supporters that placed the constitutionally-dubious mandate in the position to jeopardize the whole law, as well as criticize the unethical phenomenon that Ethics Alarms discussed here-–the preemptive effort by Democrats and their pundit allies to blame the rejection of Obamacare, if it occurs, on “judicial activism” and political bias by the conservative justices. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: What if the Westboro Baptist Church Is Just Kidding?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I know just how you feel, Homer.

This is a unique Ethics Alarms quiz, because I am offering it while having absolutely no idea what the answer is, or even, perhaps, what the right question should be.

The story you can read here describes the Westboro Baptist Church’s interactions with an openly gay DJ. You will recall that the church’s followers have achieved infamy by loudly protesting on the scene of private funerals for military personnel killed in combat, with “God Hates Gays” being one of their signature protest signs. Yet the DJ, when he visited the group, found them to be friendly, unthreatening, civil and kind. They hugged him. The asked him over for dinner.  The surprised and puzzled writer suggests that the Fred Phelps followers’ act may be a form of First Amendment-testing performance art, sort of like Bill Maher. Maybe they aren’t really hateful after all. Maybe they just act that way!

My Ethics Quiz question for you to consider:

Does the fact that they can be kind, tolerant and accepting in the privacy of their abode make the Westboro Baptist Church protesters less unethical, more unethical, or does it make no difference at all? Continue reading →

Obama, Trayvon Martin, Biases and Kansas City Burning

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

In Kansas City, Missouri, a 13-year-old East High School student was walking home after the end of his daily classes when he was grabbed by two older teens just as he reached his front porch. They pinned his arms behind his back,  poured gasoline on him, and set him on fire. The victim of the attack was rushed to an emergency room, where he was treated and released. Doctors fear possible damage to his lungs and eyes, but outside of losing his eyebrows and some hair, he only suffered first degree burns.

The boy is white; his attackers were black. They allegedly said, as they were lighting him aflame, “You get what you deserve, white boy.”

This frightening incident occurred on March 2. I only recently learned of it, because the news media didn’t treat it as a national story. Though the boy’s attackers have not been found, no activists are demanding that the police chief resign. There have been no marches or protests, and students aren’t walking out of Kansas City schools. Nobody, as far as I can determine, has claimed that this is just the tip of a lurking race iceberg, and that it shows the racial hate of blacks toward whites that is hidden by the media and the culture. Most of all, the President of the United States did not say , just to give a wild, hypothetical example… Continue reading →