fairness

Chicago Flash Mobs, Political Correctness, and the Arrogant Press

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

What kind of people made up the mob? You don't want to know.

Chicago has been beset by several incidents of “flash mobs” that were of not the terpsichorean variety, but rather cell phone-organized marauders who struck suddenly, beating bystanders and robbing them. The Chicago media has adopted an odd policy in reporting the incidents: it has not reported the fact that the mobs were made up of African-American youths.

There is no excuse for this. It is manipulative, dishonest, and incompetent journalism, political correctness expanding into news censorship. It constitutes dishonest reporting, and a lack of respect for the public.  It is the ultimate in arrogance and abuse of their professional duties by people who have neither the credentials nor the right to decide what facts we are fit to know.

A Chicago Tribune writer named Mary Schmick attempted to justify her paper’s conduct, and was spectacularly unconvincing, writing in part… Continue reading →

Those Military Baggage Fees: Bad Journalism and Bad PR, Not Bad Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

The 24 hour news cycle and blogger feeding frenzy often produce snap ethical judgments that defy the facts, logic, and fairness. Today’s example: the supposed “outrage” of Delta Air Lines making Army reservists returning from combat in Afghanistan pay excess-bag fees. A Colorado soldier posted a YouTube video complaining that their unit had to pay $2,800 for extra checked bags, and you would have thought the airlines made the soldiers fly while strapped to the wing. “You’re not going to believe this!” said “Fox and Friends” goof Steve Doocy, introdoocying the story as if it was an act of domestic terrorism. There were similar expressions of horror on CNN’s Headline News and on the local news in Wilmington, Delaware, where I was staying yesterday while doing a musical ethics program for the Wilmington Bar. And yet…

Delta did nothing wrong or inappropriate.

The staff followed policy. What were they supposed to do, spontaneously waive thousands of dollars in luggage fees out of respect for our soldiers…and have to make it up out of their own pay? The military already gets a substantial break on checked baggage; the soldiers were complaining about having to pay for bags that exceeded Delta’s limit for waiving the fees on soldiers’ bags. But if the flights are related to the soldiers’ duties, why are the domestic airlines responsible for paying their expenses? (By the way, what the soldiers don’t pay for gets passed in costs to the non-military passengers.) Simple answer: the domestic airlines are not responsible, and should not be.

When I travel on business dictated by a client or employer, the client or employer pays my costs…just like the U.S. Government pays the travel expenses of soldiers flying to and from deployments. That’s right: soldiers get reimbursements from the military for additional costs if their orders require the expense and they submit receipts. Why, then, was it Delta’s responsibility to pick up the tab for these soldiers’ extra bags, and proof of evil corporate America’s unpatriotic greed that they asked the soldiers for the already-discounted fees for excess luggage instead?

I repeat: It wasn’t. A couple of soldiers didn’t know their own expense reimbursement procedures, used YouTube to make a misrepresentation go viral, and the media indulges its reflex reaction to fault businesses and fall worshiping at the boots of our young warriors. Nobody bothered to think, much less check facts, before condemning the Delta. Terrified, as ever, of any negative publicity, deserved or not, Delta abjectly apologized (for doing nothing wrong), and was followed by other carriers in eliminating bag fees to avoid getting the stink-eye from Bill O’Reilly. Delta said it would allow four bags for free. United said it had increased the number of free military checked bags from three to four. American said it will allow five free bags instead of three for military personnel. This is nice enough, of course, but it is pure public relations nonsense.

These airlines will charge seniors traveling by necessity to an assisted living complex for every bag they check, and the military isn’t going to pay their expenses once they gut the receipts. Do the airlines let military veterans check their bags for free?  Priests and nuns, who have taken vows of poverty? Handicapped travelers, who are unable to carry on heavy bags? The disabled only get two free bags, at best, before they are charged 50 bucks per additional piece. How about pregnant women? The unemployed, relocating to a new city to look for jobs…any breaks for ? Ethically, there are much more compelling arguments for giving breaks to any of these flyers than active duty soldiers, who are going to be reimbursed by the military anyway, and should be.

I am not sure even that would be appropriate, however. I don’t think that the airlines should be in the business of charging different fees to travelers in different circumstances; it requires value judgments that I do not trust the airlines to make fairly or rationally. Next we’ll be seeing waived bag fees for registered Republicans, attractive blondes and vegans, or whoever screams the loudest or has the most vocal lobby. The proper, ethical and fair way to do business is to have the same rules for everyone.

Except Steve Doocy and the rest of the media. Charge them double.

Comment of the Day: “Batter Up! The Hypocrisy of Bigotry Victims Discriminating”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

This Comment of the Day from Matt, on my post about gay softball leagues discriminating against bisexuals, is actually two days old.  It was COtD-worthy when it first arrived, but edged out on a competitive day. It is a unique perspective on the issue, and a case of better late than never.

“Its funny… I sing in a gay men’s chorus; we handle music that’s beautiful and “traditional” as well as music that can be emotionally challenging, music about the coming out process or what it means/feels like to be a gay man in society… we’ll sing anything, really, and our primary mission as a chorus is promoting understanding and awareness through music.

“That said, we have straight male singers… we have about 180 men on stage performing, and a handful of them are straight or bi. Ask any of us what we feel about that and the first response you’ll hear is “What, you think *we* are gonna discriminate?” Continue reading →

The Strange, Unethical Saga of Junius Puke

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Junius Puke

This week seems to mark the end of a perfect storm of ethical misconduct that almost drowned a young student in legal persecution for the non-crime of exercising his First Amendment rights. An insufferable and humorless bully with a professorship collided with an irresponsible prosecutor wielding an unconstitutional law, and it has taken eight years to undo the carnage.

A man named Junius Peake was an economics professor at the University of Northern Colorado,  who due to his parody-inviting name and undoubtedly also the character traits that he was soon to display so prominently, found himself being lampooned in a student satire blog called “The Howling Pig.”  The editor-in-chief of the blog was facetiously identified in the newsletter as the obviously fictional “Junius Puke,” who was portrayed with an outrageous photograph of Professor Peake altered to include sunglasses, a different nose,  a Hitler-esque mustache, and, on occasion, Kiss make-up and a Gene Simmons tongue.  Junius Puke, with tongue. “Junius Puke” wrote prose like this:

“This will be a regular bitch sheet that will speak truth to power, obscenities to clergy, and advice to all the stoners sitting around watching Scooby Doo. This will be a forum for the pissed off and disenfranchised in Northern Colorado, basically everybody. I made it to where I am through hard work, luck, and connections, all without a college degree. Dissatisfaction with a cushy do-nothing ornamental position led me to form this subversive little paper. I don’t normally care much about the question of daycare since my kids are grown and other people’s children give me the willies.” Continue reading →

Hateful, Vicious and Wrong…Constitutional or Not

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In New Mexico, Greg Fultz has responded to the loss of the baby he almost fathered with  his ex-girlfriend by putting up a billboard along the Alamogordo, NM. thoroughfare that shows him holding the outline of an infant, accompanied by text that reads, “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!”

His ex-  has taken him to court for harassment and violation of privacy, demanding that the billboard be removed.  Fultz and his attorney are not giving in, and argue the order violates Fultz’s free speech rights.

Fultz may have a good case. I could see him prevailing in a First Amendment analysis that places free speech above the breach of privacy and the embarrassment such a billboard would cause. If his girlfriend really did have an abortion (she claims it was a miscarriage), I can also understand how many would sympathize with his claim of father’s rights.

It doesn’t matter. The billboard is ethically indefensible. It is motivated by hate and anger, and designed only to humiliate and hurt. Putting it up is a mean-spirited act of vengeance, with no redeeming virtues at all. I sure wouldn’t want to be the kid that had a man who would do something like this as a father, and I can certainly understand why the ex-mother is also an ex-girlfriend.

The only good thing about the billboard is that it doesn’t have a picture of any portion of Congressman Weiner.

Should Rep. Weiner Resign?

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

Well, at least Weiner got THAT off his chest. Now all he needs to do is resign.

I was giving a seminar on building an organizational culture free from sexual harassment today, and happened to mention Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter misadventures. “Allegedly!” shouted out one of the participants. “Allegedly,” I conceded. “But I’m pretty sure we’re going to find out that he behaved inappropriately; I knew that the minute he said that the crotch in the picture might have been his. Might have been his? What kind of guy his age takes photos of his crotch?” By the time I left the seminar at about 4 PM, Rep. Weiner was already engaged in his excruciating press conference, confessing, apologizing, and taking the full brunt of the media’s onslaught.

A woman had come forward to reveal more photos the Congressman had sent to her over social media…sad, embarrassing photos for any man over the age of 16 that hinted at untreated emotional problems in a man with a new wife, a high-profile job, and so much to lose. Rep. Weiner had to come clean, not that he had been doing a very convincing job of lying over the past week.

Give him credit for a forthright capitulation to the truth, once he changed his story. Continue reading →

Toronto: Religious Bullies Distort the Alcoholics Anonymous Mission

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

In Toronto, two Alcoholics Anonymous groups that specifically removed reference to God and religion in their version of the Twelve Steps have been de-listed by the central organization there, a straight exhibition of the abuse of power and a breach of integrity in the pursuit of selfish ends.

Alcoholics Anonymous, as anyone who has listened to Charlie Sheen’s anti-AA rants knows, employs repeated evocations of God and “a higher power” in its formula for treating alcoholism.  But while many have successfully turned to faith in their journeys to sobriety, most individual AA chapters neither insist on religious belief nor preach it, leaving it to each member to decide what his or “her higher power” is. To many, it is a God, and to many it is the fellowship of AA itself. The point of the higher power is to help an alcoholic discover the spiritual strength and resolve to conquer a pernicious and powerful disease with no known cure. the objective of AA, however, is not to seek to strengthen religion. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Lincoln School in Spring Valley, Illinois

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Thanks to Lincoln School, this isn't me. Yet.

Thank you, oh thank you, Lincoln School in Spring Valley, Illinois! Your superb and inspiring decision has stopped me, for the moment at least, from seeking species reassignment surgery. My membership in the human race has been an embarrassment to be of late, and I had been seeking alternatives. You give me hope.

Spring Valley’s Lincoln School gymnasium held a day of appreciation this week for custodian Edward “Red” Nestler,  88, who will retire on June 30. To his surprise, Red did not receive just a free lunch, or a watch, or a jacket, or a plaque in appreciation and commemoration of his many years with the school, a journey that began when he was a student there in the 1930s. On his “day,” Red learned that the school board, responding to a petition from students and staff, had voted to name the school gymnasium in his honor. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Broward (Florida) Circuit Judge Barbara McCarthy

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Come on! How can you put a guy like this in jail?

Many Americans don’t comprehend the meaning of “justice.”  It is unfortunate that some of these Americans are  judges.

Ryan LeVin, 36, is a drunk, a drug abuser, a playboy, a scofflaw and a killer. He killed Craig Elford, 39, and Kenneth Watkinson, 48, as they were walking to their beachside hotel in 2009. LeVin was driving recklessly in his $120,000 Porsche 911 Turbo, ran them down, and  fled the scene. That was only the latest of his offenses: LeVin was already on probation in Illinois for crashing into a Chicago police officer and instigating a high-speed chase. He has more than 50 traffic violations. What really matters, however, is that Ryan LeVin is rich.

Because he is rich, when LeVin offered enough money to the widows of the two men he killed in his act of vehicular homicide, a Florida judge agreed to let him off with two years of house arrest rather than the 45 years in prison that you or I would serve for a similar crime. Continue reading →

Batter Up! The Hypocrisy of Bigotry Victims Discriminating

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

If there is something dumber than gay-only softball leagues, I don't want to know what it is.

This is a story rife with such mind-melding stupidity and hypocrisy that I really don’t want to recount it in all its nauseating detail. To be brief, there is an organization called The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, and it oversees gay softball leagues in dozens of U.S. cities.It also runs an annual tournament called the Gay Softball World Series. Now it is in court, as three men filed a lawsuit complaining that their team’s second-place finish in the 2008 Series  was unfairly nullified because they are bisexual, not gay, and thus caused their team to exceed the limit of two non-gay players.

Fascinating. And why, oh why, are there athletic teams in the United States of America that restrict their roster according to who the athletes have sex with? Why are not all self-respecting, intelligent, ethical gay Americans telling these organizations that they are an embarrassment and a disgrace to the very values gay rights advocates are fighting for in more substantive realms, like marriage, the priesthood, and corporate America? Continue reading →