There is ethical indignation in Left-leaning Blogger Land, where Ariana Huffington’s Huffington Post just got $315 million to become part of AOL’s media stable. The six-year-old online news site supplements its staff of 2oo with an estimated 3000 volunteer bloggers of widely varying talent, reliability, and sanity. Those writers, who traded periodic contributions to “HuffPo” in exchange for more traffic and notoriety than they would have received in months of laboring, pajama-clad, on their own obscure sites, now are loudly complaining that they were exploited. Their unpaid labor built the site into a multi-million dollar asset, they cry, and yet Ariana is pocketing all of the profits. Where is the justice in that? There is talk of boycotts and mass defections. Continue reading
fairness
Aesop’s Unethical and Misleading Fable: “The North Wind and the Sun”
Today, by happenstance, I heard an Aesop’s Fable that I had never encountered before recited on the radio. Like all Aesop’s Fables, this one had a moral, and it is also a statement of ethical values. Unlike most of the fables, however, it doesn’t make its case; it is, in fact, an intellectually dishonest, indeed an unethical, fable.
It is called “The North Wind and the Sun,” and in most sources reads like this:
“The North Wind and the Sun disputed as to which was the most powerful, and agreed that he should be declared the victor who could first strip a wayfaring man of his clothes. The North Wind first tried his power and blew with all his might, but the keener his blasts, the closer the Traveler wrapped his cloak around him, until at last, resigning all hope of victory, the Wind called upon the Sun to see what he could do. The Sun suddenly shone out with all his warmth. The Traveler no sooner felt his genial rays than he took off one garment after another, and at last, fairly overcome with heat, undressed and bathed in a stream that lay in his path.”
The moral of the fable is variously stated as “Persuasion is better than Force” , or “Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.”
The fable proves neither. In reality, it is a vivid example of dishonest argument, using euphemisms and false characterizations to “prove” a proposition that an advocate is biased toward from the outset. Continue reading
The Dilemma of the Legless High School Pitcher
Seemingly an inspirational movie in the making, Anthony Burruto is a student at Dr. Phillips High School in Orlando, Florida. He has been playing baseball since he was 8 years old, despite the inconvenience of having both of his legs amputated when he was an infant. He plays the game on prosthetic legs that are all he has ever known, and does it well as a pitcher who can throw a mean curve and a fastball that has been clocked at 80 mph. This is Anthony’s sophomore year, and his goal was to play on Dr. Phillips High varsity baseball team this spring.
After two days of try-outs, Coach Mike Bradley cut him. Anthony’s metal legs, adept as he was at using them, made him too slow off the pitching mound when he had to field a bunt, said the coach, and teams would take advantage of his inability to jump off the mound quickly.
Sorry, kid. Continue reading
Unethical Quote of the Week: Time Magazine
“(CLARIFICATION: Palin did not, in fact, say this. It was a tongue-in-cheek link to an article that was intended as a joke.)”
—Time Magazine, dishonestly claiming one act of unethical journalistic conduct to cover for a worse one.
Maybe I owe blogger TBogg an apology. I thought only left-wing Palin-haters could be so disoriented by ideological fervor that they could believe the satirical story claiming that the former Alaska governor had told Sean Hannity that Christina Aguilera should be banished for botching the lyrics of the National Anthem. But no: Us Weekly, the celebrity gossip magazine, and Time Magazine (!!!) both fell for the same spoof. Us, at least, had the integrity to admit that it had made a mistake and to apologize. Time, disgracefully, issued the above dodge, claiming that a fabled news magazine suddenly decided to start printing “tongue-in-cheek” fake stories that portray national political figures as fools. Continue reading
National Anthem Ethics
Pop songbird Christina Aguilera has been ridiculed and condemned in every forum imaginable for botching the lyrics of “The Star Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl. The last time a performer got this kind of abuse for a National Anthem performance (not counting Roseanne Barr’s infamous crotch-grabbing, off-key screeching of the anthem to begin a San Diego Padres game, which was not so much a performance as a clinical demonstration of what boorishness looks and sounds like) was when the late Robert Goulet massacred the lyrics before a national radio audience to introduce the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston Heavyweight Championship fight. The incident haunted Goulet the rest of his life, although he was a good sport about it.
As with Goulet (he was Canadian, for heaven’s sake!), the condemnation of Aguilera is not merely unfair, but ignorant. Continue reading
Comment of the Day: “How Not To Promote Tolerance and Undersatnding of Muslim Culture
From Jeff, a.k.a. King Kool, discussing a Muslim TV executive’s murder and beheading of his wife, who with him founded a New York tlevision channel aimed at promoting better understanding and less fear of Muslims:
“…This will certainly not promote tolerance, but in its own horrible way, it might promote understanding. On the one hand, all variety of men are capable of producing the sort of person who would sooner slay their significant other to avoid the shame of divorce. In a strange way, this just says that they’re just like anyone else.
On the other hand, the misogyny that is integral to some people’s practice of the religion is something that should be held to higher scrutiny. Continue reading
Depressing News from the Superpower Poll
A poll by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion recently asked U.S. residents which superpower they would most like to have. 28 percent said they would like to have the ability to read people’s minds, the same proportion that said they would prefer the ability to time travel.
There is no question about it: reading minds is by far the most unethical power on the list. In fact, there is nothing ethical about reading minds, which is a violation of individual privacy and autonomy, disrespectful, unfair, and primarily useful for unethical purposes, like manipulating the behavior of others. It is an inherent violation of the Golden Rule, and uses other human beings for the mindreader’s benefit.
The fact that so many Americans would choose this power (the other options, other than time travel, were flying, invisibility, and the ability to teleport) is an indication, I think, of declining trust and trustworthiness, increasing suspicion and fear, selfishness, and a callous disregard for the rights of others. No wonder time travel is the co-favorite. People want to go back to a time when we could trust each other.
How Not To Promote Tolerance and Understanding of Muslim Culture
Here is how it works: When a Muslim couple sets up television station specifically for the purpose of advancing understanding and tolerance of Muslims in America, the couple also creates a duty to further that goal by their own personal behavior. It would be more damaging for the proprietors of a station with such an important goal to be implicated in a terror plot, for example. Muslims doing so while claiming to be devoted to bridging the chasm of distrust between America and Islam would make the chasm deeper, perhaps deeper than the usual, garden variety Radical Islamic terrorist plot.
Another no-no for such a couple, I’d say: the husband stabbing the wife to death and cutting off her head. Continue reading
News Flash! Satire Confusion Syndrome Epidemic Spreads to the Left!
The headline reads:
Palin Says She’d Deport Christina Aguilera for Botching the National Anthem
Although nothing Sarah Palin has ever said or done suggests that she would ever advocate such a ridiculous thing, and despite the fact the headline appeared on a clearly labeled comedy site, with the story including such over-the-top statements as…
“Palin also levied criticism on the Obama administration for allowing “spicy Latin princesses” to do the jobs of American pop divas. “Unemployment is at nine percent, yet we have to suffer through a performance by a foreigner with a poor grasp of the English language? If I were president, I’d deport Ms. Aguilera back to wherever it is she’s from and give Amy Smart a call.”
..despite all this, prominent Angry Left blogger TBogg took the story completely seriously, and so did many of his followers, who piled on in a “boy-is-that-woman-ever-stupid-like-all-the-other -Tea-Baggers” orgy of contempt. Continue reading
The Ashley Payne Affair Revisited
What's wrong with this picture?
One of the earliest Ethics Alarms posts concerned Barrow County, Georgia, teacher Ashley Payne, who was forced out of her job at Apalachee High School for posting photos on Facebook that showed Payne drinking beer and wine while on a vacation to Europe. Barrow had a policy stating that employees can be investigated, disciplined and terminated for postings on Web sites that contain provocative photographs, sexually explicit messages, use of alcohol, drugs or anything students are not supposed to do. In the initial post, I took the position that the school over-reacted, but that Payne was still accountable because she knew what the policy was and violated it: Continue reading
