fairness

The Romney and Paul Smears: Time For U.S. News Media To Admit Its Bias And Address It

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

"Mitt Romney is the one in the middle. Or so we're told. Seems plausible to us."

Although the left-leaning bias of the majority of the news media is frighteningly/absurdly/amusingly/frustratingly obvious (depending on your point of view) every single day, the standard response to complaints remains, 1) “What about Fox?” and 2) “Bias? What bias?”  The latter response, if not proof of dishonesty or pathological denial, is one of the symptoms of the problem: the mainstream media is so used to being biased that bias is now the status quo.

There has been plenty of evidence in 2011, however, that the problem is getting worse, and both the public and self-government are being badly served as a result. Recently there was another flutter of statements from pundits and others, like Bill Clinton, that the media obviously favored Obama over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination battle. Of course it did. That the media then went on to outrageously tilt its coverage in Obama’s favor durin the campaign for the general election is hardly capable of contradiction: Obama was on more magazine covers, got more video time, received more consistently hagiographic stories, his questionably-qualified running mate was barely criticized while the press couldn’t attack McCain’s enough…in short, it was a disgraceful abdication of professional duty. How can journalists decry the influence of Super-PACs and big money in elections when the news media, the most powerful communications factor of all ( because it has—still—the remains of a reputation for being objective, fair and accurate) is consistently biased? Not only is that a bigger problem, it is one journalists themselves have the power to fix…if they wanted to, if they cared. Continue reading →

Dear Ethics Alarms: We Are Stealing Your Content. Love and Happy Hollidays, The Making Relationships Site

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I think this is strange.

Yes, it's true: Nelson may be running a relationship website.

Ethics Alarms got a trackback, which means that a website notified me that it had used a post here. I get these all the time, and sometimes it leads me to a new source of ideas, or new professional relationship. A site has quoted or re-posted some or all of an essay, and that is fine with me.

This trackback led me to a website called “The Making Relationships Site,” and there was my recent post about Zenas Zelotes, the Connecticut lawyer who argues that it’s good for a lawyer to have a romantic relationship with his client. What wasn’t there was a link to the blog, a reference to Ethics Alarms, or any credit to me as the author. My post was presented as the original content of  The Making Relationships Site. The re=post permitted no comments, so I couldn’t write a “What the hell are you doing?” comment, and the site includes no information about who operates it or how to contact webmaster.

But whoever it is was kind enough to let me know, via the trackback, that it had stolen my post. This is the fickish behavior of being candid about being unethical, which also carries an implication of shamelessness, and a dash of Nelson Muntz, the bully on The Simpsons whose reaction to everybody’s misfortune is to point and laugh.

I’m not especially worked up about the theft itself. I don’t like it, but I assume my work will be lifted without attribution from time to time; it goes with the job, though stealing articles about ethics has an especially oxymoronic tinge.

But for a site to make sure that I know about it is strange. Now I’m send it a trackback, so the operators know that  The Making Relationships Site is the first official online fick.

Fairness for Ron Paul

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

So as not to leave you in suspense longer than necessary, let me be direct: fairness to Ron Paul means firmly declaring him unqualified to run for President on the Republican ticket in 2012.

The reason is old, which means that we should have been having this discussion months ago, before Paul first set foot on a debate stage. In the late Eighties and Nineties, while Paul was out of Congress, he published a group of newsletters to true believers called “The Ron Paul Political Report,” “Ron Paul’s Freedom Report,” “The Ron Paul Survival Report,” “The Ron Paul Investment Letter,” and “The Ron Paul Greyhound Racing Tip-Sheet.”  Okay, okay, I’m sorry: that last one is made up—I couldn’t resist. But the others are real.

Also real were periodic statements in the newsletters that could charitably be called “racially-insensitive” or not-so-charitably be called “racist.” Paul has been questioned about these before, and in the run-up to the Iowa Caucuses where he is a genuine contender is being grilled on them again. Yesterday, he walked out of a CNN interview when Gloria Borger refused to let the subject go. Continue reading →

Sarah Palin, Obama and The Dumbest Christmas Controversy of the Year

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Not Christmasy?

The President of the United States, especially this one, is blamed for enough without having to endure trumped up charges on trivial issues. Nevertheless, some Republicans and conservative pundits are criticizing President Obama because his Christmas card and the National Christmas Tree aren’t Christmasy enough.

Yes, I really wrote that. I can’t believe it myself. Sarah Palin, echoed by a chorus of talk radio hosts, finds the Obama card “odd” because, she says, it doesn’t feature traditional American values like “family, faith and freedom.” No, it features traditional Christmas imagery like a crackling fire, gifts, Christmas greenery and a Poinsettia plant. At least it isn’t a Gary Larson “Far Side” Christmas card, or the legendary Charles Addams card with the empty manger and a tiny foot sticking out of the cow’s mouth. Who appointed Sarah Palin the Christmas card critic? The card reads,

“From our family to yours, may your holidays shine with the light of the season.”

Completely appropriate. Then there is the tree, which, breathlessly reports the CNS News Service:

“… includes a prominently displayed ornament paying homage to President Barack Obama, but includes no ornament readily visible to a person standing near the tree’s base that uses the word “Christmas,” or includes an image of the Nativity, or bears the name or image of Jesus Christ.”

Wait, I’m checking...oops! Neither does mine! Well, mine has a bunch of angels, now that I check it. And so what? If the government isn’t in the designating official religion business, and it’s not, a religiously neutral tree is completely sensible. Oh, I’m not saying hanging a wise man ornament or two would be a constitutional crisis, but isn’t it enough that Obama has a Christmas tree, instead of Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee’s politically correct, pusillanimous “holiday tree”?

Christmas is a cultural holiday celebrated by Americans of all creeds. There is nothing wrong with the tree omitting Christian symbols completely, much less having “no ornament readily visible to a person standing near the tree’s base that uses the word “Christmas,” or includes an image of the Nativity, or bears the name or image of Jesus Christ.”

Give me a break. Give Obama a break. Give us all a break. Be fair.

After all, it’s Christmas

So Who Do We Trust To Fight Crony Capitalism?

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Shut out of the last Iowa debate because of low poll numbers, earnest, honest, ethical, reasonable, intelligent and boring candidate Jon Huntsman gave his assessment of the event to ABC’s Christiane Amanpour, saying that the main issue facing the country was a trust deficit:

“The most important issue of all was not even touched upon and that is the deficit of trust we have in the United States, in fact it may have played right into the trust deficit. That is, nobody trusts Congress anymore. We need term limits in Congress, we need to close the revolving door that allows members of Congress to move right on into the lobbying profession. No one has trust anymore towards the executive branch, no one trusts Wall Street with the banks that are too big to fail. So I would argue that the issues that are most salient in our political dialogue today were not even touched upon last night…”

Huntsman is right. It was especially astounding that this issue wasn’t addressed in the debate (and that those crack moderators Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos  didn’t mention it) after more than a month of Occupy Everywhere protests that sorta-kinda dealt with the trust issue (oh,  what a little focus could have wrought!)  and the recent “60 Minutes”  expose on insider trading by members of Congress. Also preceding the debate was this trust-buster: in July of 2008, Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson held a meeting with select Wall Street fund managers and gave them advance notice of government action that they could use to make significant profits: Continue reading →

Occupy Manny

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Sing it, Manny! "You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and a pro-rated 20 million dollars a year.."

I admit it: Manny Ramirez’s existence is a constant irritant to me. I regard him as epitomizing the worst tendencies of professional sports stars, and the attitudes of the most conscience-free who walk among us who make/ society and the culture a little bit worse every day. I was thrilled when his baseball career came to an appropriately sordid end, with his being caught using performance enhancing drugs and retiring o avoid having to serve his suspension, and nauseated when he announced the end of his retirement a few weeks ago, hoping to lure some addled team owner into paying him a million dollars or so to hit home runs and loaf.

Now, thanks to the research skills of baseball blogger Craig Calcaterra, my morning began by learning that Manny is also akin to the recording stars, Hollywood actors, rich politicians and toadying business executives who have tried to pass themselves off as Occupy Wall Street’s virtuous and harshly exploited 99% despite all reason and evidence to the contrary. In an interview in Spanish, Manny was explaining that he might have to travel to Japan to play ball again, and said,“Somos un obrero y donde quiera que haya trabajo hay que ir a trabajar;” in English: “We are the working class and must go where there is work.”

“Working class!” Continue reading →

My Theatrical Ethics Dilemma: Integrity or Fairness?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

It doesn’t come up here often, but I am the artistic director for a professional regional theater company. It is dedicated to producing 20th Century stage works of artistic and historical value that other, more commercial (sensible?) companies wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Every now and again I find a play that is especially risky, challenging, and rich in theatrical possibilities, and those are the ones I direct myself.

This summer, I will be directing such a production, a harrowing recreation of Depression era dance marathons called “Marathon 33.” It was written by the fascinating June Havoc, Gypsy Rose Lee’s sister who became a Hollywood star and who is perhaps best known as the irritating “Baby June,” the  blonde and perpetually juvenile vaudeville headliner in the musical “Gypsy.” Havoc survived the Depression by competing in dance marathons during the Thirties, and wrote two autobiographies about these terrible spectacles, in which desperate couples would stay on their feet for thousands of hours for food and the promise of a cash prize, as more fortunate Americans paid to see who would drop first.

The show, at least as I and my artistic collaborators envision it, involves recreating dance marathons as accurately as possible, down to the smallest detail. The audience for the show will be immersed in the action as if it were the heartless mob that cheered the real dancers on, and we will avoid anachronisms of any kind. And yet, as I prepare to cast the show after a wonderfully productive round of auditions, I face an ethical conflict. Several of the strongest candidates for dance contestants are African-American, and there were no black competitors in the real contests. Even if there had been, mixed-race couples would not have been tolerated, especially in Virginia, where we are setting the show. Yet if I cast the best actors available without reference to race, I will have both. Continue reading →

Letting Homes Burn in Obion County: Re-send the Memo

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

"I'll pay the $75 now."

Just in time for Christmas, we have the heart-warming story—or just plain “warming”—of the South Fulton (Tennessee) Fire Department once again standing by as someone’s home burns down.  Ethics Alarms wrote about this  outfit doing the same thing in 2010, following Obion County policy: pay the yearly $75 fire department fee, or be prepared to put out your own damn fires.

In 2010, it was the home of a cheapskate named Gene Cranick, who, like the people who can afford health insurance but don’t buy it anyway, figured that his  community would still do the right thing if the worst happened, so he gambled to save the money.  The South Fulton Fire Department did the right thing, all right, at least according to Obion County officials. They let his house go up in flames.

This time, it was mobile home owner Vicky Bell whose dumb gamble backfired.  Continue reading →

Was Butch Cassidy a Sexual Harasser?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The story out of South Boston about a young student who fought off a bully’s school bus attack by kicking him in the groin and is now being investigated by the school for sexual harassment (inappropriate touching, don’t you know!) made me think of many things.

It made me think of the Chinese proverb that “When the only tool one has is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” And its longer version, which adds “especially if you are a school administrator….”. And the even longer version, which concludes with “who has the IQ of a gerbil and the judgment of Lindsay Lohan”.

It made me think about how the education profession might end the long reign of journalism as the Ethics Alarms “Most Unethical Profession” winner this year. That would be remarkable, since journalists have been especially vigorous in disgracing themselves in 2011, but education is certainly making a spirited year-end rally.

Mostly, however, it made me think of Butch Cassidy. Continue reading →

What’s Fair To Herman Cain Now?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I love this Cain-trapped-in-amber image, except that the idea of a future entrepreneur creating an island attraction where former disgraced presidential candidates are cloned from their preserved DNA to roam free is terrifying.

Herman Cain has withdrawn from the GOP presidential nomination competition in the wake of Ginger White’s claims that he and she engaged in a 13-year long romantic affair. He withdrew in a particularly deceitful way, saying that his campaign was being suspended. Like most of his recent conduct and statements lately, this resort to face-saving euphemism does not speak well of his character. Yes, it’s true, his quest for the White House is suspended. It is also what is technically called toast. A more honest, courageous, candid and accountable man would have said so. I think we can safety say that one way or the other, this campaign took the measure of Herman Cain, and found him to be as wanting in character as he is inexperience and diligence. The system, ugly as it is, worked.

What else can we now fairly say of Herman Cain? I believe we can fairly conclude that… Continue reading →