fairness

Greedo Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Who shot first?

Jedi Emeritus George Lucas betrayed a warped concept of cowboy ethics, self-defense and ethics generally in a recent Hollywood Reporter interview in which he was quizzed about his technological fixes on the original Star Wars trilogy. The topic was the shooting of Greedo in the bar, when Han Solo blasts away at the green, fishy porcupine-like villain, who has a gun pointed at him:

Lucas: Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.

Lucas’s idea of what constitutes a “cold-blooded killer” runs counter to law, common sense, and ethics. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “‘Who Ya Gonna Call?'” Paranormal Ethics, and the Irony of Same”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

"I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for this. Let's go figure it out in a motel."

The Comment of the Day is an interesting one from Melissa Leath, a psychic who is published on the topic of psychic ethics. She is responding to the recent post here about proposed standards for paranormal investigators.

Her measured response forces me to confront my own ambivalence on this issue. I am, as she says, a skeptic; more than a skeptic, really, as I intellectually am committed to the position that all paranormal, psychic and spiritual phenomenon, including those in the realm of religious believe, are imaginary at best and fraudulent at worst. I would have said “unshakably committed, ” but emotionally, I have to confess am not as sure as I would like to be, or should be. Perhaps I watch too many horror movies. I don’t like Ouija boards, and won’t have the damn things in the house. If my kitchen furniture suddenly rearranged itself like it does in “Poltergeist,” or if my ultra-rational son started telling me that an old man in 1940s clothes kept appearing in his room at night and saying that he was going to hurt him, or if I saw dark, inky shadows crawling up the wall like in “The Grudge,” I can say with conviction that I would not be the one insisting that there must be a rational explanation and hanging around waiting for the bed to start raising off the floor. I would be the one out the door and checking into a motel, and from the safety of which  insisting that there was a rational explanation, but also secretly fearing that my house had been built over a Native American burial ground.

I realize that this is inconsistent and silly.  But I have a good friend who is as normal and sincere as someone can be who is a serious astrologer. And when I see the late Telly Savalas finally tell his personal ghost story in a YouTube clip, after personally watching him refuse to repeat it on TV talk shows for decades because “it was too scary,” I do wonder, even as I rebuke myself for wondering. Knowing that I wonder, however, it is only fair to give Melissa her say.

Here is her “Comment of the Day” on “‘Who Ya Gonna Call?'” Paranormal Ethics, and the Irony of Same.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Legal Profession’s Muddled Standard For ‘Fitness To Practice’”

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

...and that's why they wear masks!

Interested Blogger, or “IB,” makes some interesting observations about professional ethics enforcement generally and medical ethics in particular in the Comment of the Day, responding to the post, The Legal Profession’s Muddled Standard For “Fitness To Practice.” Her insight regarding the reasons why professionals are so reluctant to pull the licenses of misbehaving colleagues is astute, I think.  Lawyers and doctors are hesitant to punish individuals for doing something they could imagine themselves doing, though the Golden Rule is  being misapplied. It’s a disturbing thought, but an illuminating one: perhaps John Edwards keeps his law license because other male lawyers think, “Boy, that could happen to me: get smitten by some hot babe in the office, we fool around, she sandbags me on birth control…heck, I might panic. I might try a crazy scheme to cover it up, especially if it was all going to be played up in the tabloids. Poor guy! How can we disbar him?”

Here is IB’s “Comment of the Day”: Continue reading →

In The Catholic Institutions vs Obamacare Showdown, Law and Ethics Trump Morality…And Should

/ Jack Marshall / 118 Comments

The Christian Soldiers are on the wrong side of this argument.

A controversial rule, announced last month as part of President Obama’s health-care overhaul, requires religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals to provide female employees the full range of contraceptive coverage, including contraceptives, the “morning-after pill” and sterilization services. The measure has  Catholic Church-run institutions up in arms over a system that would force them would  to offer plans that contradict their teachings. Catholic bishops have been leading the growing criticism of the rule,  distributing letters and other materials for distribution to millions of worshipers. Talk radio is abuzz with talk of Obama’s escalating “war on religion.” Even the Washington Post editorial staff criticized the move.

Naturally, the Republican-run Congress announced, via Speaker Boehner, that it would protect Freedom of Religion and block the measure with legislation. All in all, it is a spectacular collision of law, morality and ethics the likes of which we seldom see.

As for simple-minded me, I don’t think this is an especially difficult problem from an ethical point of view. Politics? Practicalities? Culture wars? Yes, those are all extremely difficult considerations in this argument, but they are also not my proper realm. The ethics are clear.

President Obama is right. Continue reading →

Old Testament Treatment For The Miramonte Elementary School Culture

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

It could be worse; at least no teachers have been turned into pillars of salt.

Following the discovery that two Miramonte Elementary School teachers, Mark Berndt and Martin Springer,  allegedly engaged  in lewd activity with students, Los Angeles Unified School District made the brave decision to replace all teachers and staff, with everyone being re-assigned. Predictably, there have been protests and criticism. The basic argument: it is excessive and unfair. The good teachers, whoever they were, weren’t at fault.

Yes, they were; at least, they were responsible, and share accountability for a culture they were part of. The school district’s decision correctly assumes that when two members of a relatively small teaching staff abuse young children over a long period, something is rotten at the school beyond those teachers. Oversight is lax, administrators are looking the other way, teachers are protecting colleagues or refusing to acknowledge the implications of what they see or hear. There is a substantial chance that the Miramonte Elementary School didn’t just have some proverbial bad apples, but that it had created a culture that encouraged apples to go bad. There can be no certainty that Berndt and Springer were the only abusers on the staff, and the safety of children is at stake. Clear out the school, and wipe out the culture; have new personnel from top to bottom. It is easier to start over with a rotten culture than to try to fix it: this was God’s attitude in the Old Testament, and He had a point. The difference is that He killed off corrupt cultures with floods and fire, or just made them wander in the desert for generations.  Luckily, this isn’t Congress, Wall Street, Hollywood, or Rupert Murdoch’s empire. You can start all over with a school. Continue reading →

Nipping A Terrible Idea In the Bud

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

God bless America.

In policy debates over contentious issues like abortion, national health care, and capital punishment, a common argument, brandished like a flag , is that the United States is out of step with the rest of the world. My reflex reaction to that claim, when I can resist the impulse to say, “Good!”, is to point out that the rest of the world has never lacked for enthusiasms for terrible ideas, and the United States, by going in its own direction, has often been unique, innovative, and right.

Still, a bad idea abroad will inevitably inspire some enterprising social architect here to propose it, and a legislator to try to make it law. Thus, when possible, it is wise to try to identify and reject the most sinister examples of Europe being Europe before anyone here starts trying to play “me too.” In the case of Europe’s current push to create a so-called “right to be forgotten” on the internet, some very effective critics are on the case. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Judge Barbara Jaffe

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Yes, it's true this teacher wrote on Facebook that she wished her fifth grade students DEAD, but the comment was only meant for her friends to see, and hey, just because she hates them doesn't mean she can't teach them...so it's OK. Right, Judge?

New York Judge Barbara Jaffe disagrees with me on the issue I discussed here regarding Natalie Munroe, the elementary school teacher who still has her job despite professing her contempt and dislike for her elementary students and their parents on her blog. Thanks to Jaffe, Christine Rubino, whose online comments about her students were infinitely worse, has won a court challenge to her firing from her job teaching at PS 203 in Brooklyn, New York. The judge is wrong, and I am right. The judge is also a fool.

Imagine: last March,  the day after a 12-year-old Harlem schoolgirl drowned during a class trip to a Long Island beach, Rubino posted a vicious rant about her fifth-graders on her Facebook page. “After today,” she wrote, ” I’m thinking the beach is a good trip for my class. I hate their guts.”

A Facebook friend quickly asked, “Wouldn’t you throw a life jacket to little Kwami?” Kwami was the child who drowned. The 38-year teacher replied: “No I wouldn’t for a million dollars.” Continue reading →

The Lenahan Effect Meets The Streisand Effect

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

From the Legal Ethics Forum:

The Lenahan Law Firm in Dallas Texas has subpoenaed Google to release the real name of an anonymous critic who posted an un complimentary online review of the firm’s services. The firm wants to sue the poster for daring to question its performance by writing,

“Bad experience with this firm. I don’t trust the fake reviews here.”

For this perceived insult, the Lenahan firm wants to punish “Ben” to the tune of $50, 000 in damages.

Ironically, the lawsuit, rather than the review, proves to my satisfaction that “Ben” has a point. He was clearly expressing his opinion: it is up to him, and only him, whether he regards the experience of working with the Lenahan firm as “bad” or not. In the complaint, the firm says that the declaration that the positive reviews are “fake” alleges dishonesty and fraud by the firm. Utter nonsense. First of all, the allegation, fair or not, is also obviously an opinion. Second, “Ben” is saying that the reviews are fake, which could mean insincere, among other interpretations. He does not attribute them to the firm. He doesn’t say where they came from. He doesn’t know. Maybe I sent them.

On the screen shot included in the complaint, it clearly says that “0 of 3” people found “Ben’s” review helpful. For that, the firm wants $50,000 in damages, since that zero potential client was driven to another firm with his lucrative business.

Unbelievable.

Over at Popehat, lawyer-blogger (and Ethics Alarms 2011 Ethics Blogger of the Year) Ken has been carrying on a vigorous battle against online censorship of free expression by threats and lawsuits. His current target is a ridiculous faux lawyer who is now threatening Ken for pointing out the error of his ways. In his commentary as well as his various emails to the individual, Ken explains with admirable precision why opinions are not actionable assertions of fact, useful passages that I would recommend to the Lenahan Law firm. The firm’s efforts to bully critics by making an example out of “Ben” also unwisely incur the “Streisand Effect,” the online phenomenon by which efforts to censor information on the web has the perverse consequence of giving it more visibility and influence.

I don’t know if there is a name for the effect—“The Lenahan Effect,” perhaps?—by which a law firm’s willingness to pursue a spurious, unnecessary and excessive lawsuit against a former client for expressing his views about the firm’s work has the perverse effect of showing the world why that client feels the way he does, but that’s what the Lenahan lawsuit against “Ben” does.

That’s only my opinion, of course.

The Susan G. Komen Foundation-Planned Parenthood Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 53 Comments

Unlike the 26 U.S. Senators who are unethically abusing their positions by presuming to demand that an independent non profit organization expend its funds according to their interests, I am not going to tell the board of the Susan G. Komen Foundation how to pursue its mission…because as with the Senators, it is none of my business. Ethics is my business, and the full-blown ethics train wreck surrounding the Foundation’s decision to end its substantial financial support of Planned Parenthood has been created by dishonesty, misrepresentation and a lack of fairness from all directions.

Here are some unpopular ethics truths in this fiasco. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: George Clooney

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“I think it’s a stupid thing. I think it’s stupid for anyone, whether they’re celebrated or not, I don’t believe their 911 calls should be broadcast around the world.” 

"Poor Demi! The public has a right to hear us humiliate her."

—-Actor George Clooney, speaking during Sunday night’s Screen Actors Guild Awards.  He was referring to the release and subsequent airing of a 911 call from a woman summoning rescue workers for actress Demi Moore, who, the caller said, was convulsing and had lapsed into semi-conscious.

Good call, George.

911 calls are considered public, but that doesn’t mean that the public needs or has to hear them, or that sleaze-factories like TMZ should put them online when their only purpose is titillation and to embarrass celebrities. There may be special circumstances that justify making a recording of a 911 call, rather than a  transcript, available to the public, but those should be exceptions. In cases like Moore’s, playing them is unfair and unkind, a clear Golden Rule violation, not that TMZ, or most journalists for that matter, would know about that.

If the media can’t control itself when it comes into possession of a 911 call that will embarrass someone who already has enough problems to deal with, then we need laws to keep 911 calls out of irresponsible hands…in other words, the news media’s hands.
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